Visit to Mars

“Honestly, I don’t know where you get that, Sharon,” Dr. Aires told his young assistant. She was an MIT graduate and could build just about anything he asked her to. Now she was arguing with him over a simple teleportation device.

“Dr. Aires, you know there is a moratorium on teleportation. The last time someone did it, that anyone is aware, they brought back an alien species and now it’s all over the ocean floor. The first time someone else saw that thing it scared the hell out of them.”

“Well, it’s not every day you see a jelly fish with colored chaser lights. The kids thought it was fascinating.”

“Well, be that as it may, we are mandated to cease all teleporting and I cannot in good conscience build a new device for which I may be arrested.”

“Sharon, you have been an excellent assistant and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the work you have done for me, but at this point, I must say good luck in your future endeavors. I’ll have a letter of reference for you in an hour. Pack up your desk.”

“You’re firing me?”

“Absolutely,” he replied. “Your job is to build devices which I require to do my work so that I don’t have to. Since you don’t wish to do that, you no longer have a job.” He turned and picked up his office phone and called to security to escort Sharon out of the building as soon as her desk was cleared out with special emphasis that she was not to take anything with the company logo or files.

Sharon stalked out of the office. “Good luck finding someone else to build that thing,” she snarled over her shoulder.

Three weeks later Dr. Aires had his teleporter built using proprietary plans Sharon had started before the mandate to cease production of such devices went into effect. He tested it on a rabbit to see if he could get it to come back using a timer device he added to the rabbit’s harness which also had a tiny oxygen tank and hose that wrapped close to the animals nose. The apparatus looked very strange and the frightened animal did not like it attached to him. It returned an hour later nervously hopping about the examination table. Up to then the rabbit had been a docile animal not taken to being skittish as most rabbits were. Just the same, Dr. Aires was pleased that the animal had survived the return trip in one piece, albeit frightened, and prepared for a human trial with plans to study the animal later for long term ill effects.

Dr. Aires donned the device and the return timer set for four hours, checked his own oxygen tank and a protective suit. He set the machine and hit the send command.

Light-years away he appeared on Mars, dizzy and with blurred vision. He had a hard time balancing to stay standing and ended up falling over. He turned his oxygen tank up for a richer mix.  His vision cleared and he marveled at the red dust he stirred with every step he tried to take. His feet dragged across the powder with the added weight from being plunged into a different gravitational ratio from Earth. He smiled as he congratulated himself for being able to build the apparatus without Sharon's help and getting it to work successfully.

He kicked rocks and threw them to see how far they would go but his suit encumbered his movements and they only went a few feet. Suddenly he saw something emerge from the soil unlike anything he had ever seen. There was a rare puddle of what he could only deduce was water without testing it and the creature reached a straw-like appendage into the puddle and drew from its wet depths before disappearing once again into the red surface. Dr. Aires mouth fell open. He thought about trying to dig up the creature but then wondered if perhaps it was larger than what showed from beneath the surface or if there were more below where he couldn’t see them. He stood a little ways back and watched to see if it, or another, would come back for more water. One by one more than a dozen times he saw creatures of the same type appear out of the ground near the water source and drink and then submerge once again. They didn’t quite resemble an octopus, for they had narrower tentacles and they had no suction cups on those tentacles, and they lived below a dry surface, but they were pretty close, at least as far as he could see.

Suddenly the ground shook underneath his feet and he fell over onto a dune as one of the creatures fully emerged. To his horror it was almost twenty feet long and had what he could only perceive as a gaping mouth. It twisted around on the ground and then he felt the ground shake again as another emerged, and then another until there were at least a dozen. One turned its head in his direction, noticing him for the first time as it tangled with another of the beasts.  It let go of its companion and squirmed his direction. He tried to back away but knew at the rate it was moving, it would catch up to him at any moment, and then it let out a strange ear-piercing screech and the others turned in his direction as well. The fierceness of the sound it made was added by the others and then the ground shook as more of them emerged surrounding him.

Dr. Aires dared to glance down and reset his timer. What seemed like hours were only a few minutes until he arrived back in the lab. He was breathing hard, clutching at his chest and shook violently and then he smiled with relief, but then just as the rabbit had done, he fell down dead.