Zed slammed both control bars forward as hard as he could while simultaneously rotating them out and down. The Chariot lurched forward and dropped into a crouching position as it picked up speed. The racer directly to his right had gotten off to a slower start, giving Zed a clear line of sight to Alina.

  Zed spied a small dip followed by a low rock outcropping ahead.

  “Perfect,” he said under his breath as he made a beeline for it.

  He felt his wheels roll into the dip. A half second later, his knees bent as the Chariot hit the upward grade. When the front wheels reached the top of the ridge, he flipped both wrists up, the left wrist starting a moment before the right. The Chariot leapt into the air, veering to the right.

  Zed wasn’t sure if it was the low gravity or the adrenaline, but the graceful arc he traced seemed to last for ages. When his wheels finally touched Martian soil again, Zed was just a few meters ahead of Alina. He couldn’t risk a backward glance but hoped that one of the drones captured the look on her face when he dropped out of the sky.

  As satisfying as that little maneuver had been, it had allowed three other racers from down the line to pull in front of him. Zed fell in behind them as they made their way around the rocky wall of the plateau to their left. He knew he hadn’t paid complete attention during his course walkthrough, but he remembered the hill that was coming up. It had been brutal to walk up. He assumed the Chariots would struggle a little as well.

  As they reached the base, the path grew steeper. The other racers seemed content to roll up the center of the path, perhaps hoping to gain a better position on the way down the other side. Zed had something else in mind.

  Rather than sticking to the relatively smooth path up the center of the course, Zed veered to the left and made his way toward some larger rock ledges sticking out of the hill along the side. He began using them as stepping stones. With a mix of luck and practice, Zed placed each tire atop a stone outcropping and pushed off, catching the next outcropping with the opposite tire. In this way, he made progress up the hill with a sort of bounding, sidestepping jog. His competitors spun their wheels in the red sand at a steady but limited pace. By the time Zed reached the top of the hill, he had passed all but the front runners.

  As he started his descent down the other side of the hill, Zed looked for anything that would give him an advantage. Thankfully, there were still three-quarters of the course left to go—plenty of time to find an opening. He fell into place behind the lead racer, biding his time for the right opportunity.

  On Earth, racers would pull into close formation behind one another to draft the car in front of them. The person in the lead might have been winning, but the car riding his bumper was getting an extra boost of speed and fuel efficiency by letting his competitor do the hard work of piercing the air in front of him. For a moment, Zed considered trying a similar maneuver but realized that it would be a wasted effort in Mars' thin atmosphere.

  His eyes were glued to the edge of the rock wall to their left as it sped past, blocking his view of the course ahead. Finally, he came around the corner and caught sight of the next stretch of the race, which wound its way between a series of massive boulders that looked like they had come loose from the plateau at some point in the distant past. Now they presented Zed with obstacles as well as opportunities.

  “One place at a time,” he muttered to himself, repeating some advice that Janice had given him.

  “Don’t try to jump to first place; just get ahead of the person in front of you,” she had said.

  Zed cut to the right, using the slight downgrade in the terrain to pick up speed as he positioned himself on the inside curve of the course. This put him directly to the right of the racer who had been just in front of him. He would find himself falling back when the course swung left again if he didn’t act quickly. With a massive rock coming up, Zed pushed his Chariot to the left, forcing the other racer to slow down for fear of being caught between Zed and the unforgiving face of a Martian boulder. Zed pulled in front of him, once again taking the inside of the turn and picking up speed. One down, two to go.

  They were coming out of the rock field now. The racers flew through a narrow gap at the valley’s end and found themselves barreling down a steep, sandy hill. Zed hit a rock and felt his Chariot pop into the air and hang there for several seconds before touching down onto the coarse sand again. His tires kicked up plumes of dust that he hoped would at least slow the racers behind him.

  As he stared at the Chariot ahead of him and looked for some way to take advantage of this new terrain, Zed found himself granted a gift in the form of a sand-seized strut. The left leg of the second-place Chariot suddenly locked into place. Instead of balancing the central Chariot gracefully, it now left the rider vulnerable to every little bump and dip the left tire hit. This quickly caused the rider to lose control and put the doomed Chariot into a nauseating tailspin, kicking up graceful arcs of rusty sand before coming to a safe, if jarring, stop halfway down the hill.

  As Zed blasted past, he could see that the rider was unharmed, at least physically. They pounded the Chariot carriage in frustration, presumably cursing their bad luck.

  Zed felt for them, but that didn’t stop the hit of adrenaline he got as he sped past and turned his attention to the first-place racer. The final stretch was approaching faster than he would have liked.

  As they approached the base of the hill, the terrain abruptly flattened out. Zed reduced his speed a little, afraid he’d bottom out at the transition to the plain. The first-place racer plowed on, apparently unconcerned.

  They're going to hit the valley floor and bury their Chariot in the sand, Zed thought. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Moving slightly to the right, Zed positioned himself to avoid having to swerve at the last minute if the racer came to a sudden stop. If he timed it right, he could zip around and take first place with a few hundred meters to spare before entering the box canyon.

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  “I can actually win this thing,” he thought, smiling as his mind began to see victory as a real possibility. No, not just a possibility, a real certainty.

  The first-place racer reached the base of the hill. The Chariot legs took the impact as designed, but not enough to stop the central chariot from digging into the sand, sending up a torrent of dirt and stones. Miraculously, the rider managed to hold on, preventing themselves from flipping over the control console, if only just.

  Zed was ready. As soon as his wheels touched level ground, he flipped his wrists forward hard, ready to jump to the center of the track and seize first place the moment he was clear. As he made it to the other side and started his turn in, he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Before he could even process what was happening, he found himself completely cut off on the left as another racer moved between him and the former leader’s downed Chariot.

  Zed narrowly avoided spinning out of control as he found himself on two wheels after overcorrecting from his attempted dash left. When he finally managed to get all his wheels on the ground, he found that he was once more tailing the first-place racer, only now he was staring at the back of Alina Kotov.

  The euphoria of a seemingly guaranteed win that he had felt just moments earlier vanished. With the canyon approaching at fast, Zed's mind scrambled for a way to make up the distance between them. It was more or less a straight shot to the canyon. Without any turns or major terrain changes, all he could do was keep the throttle at full and hope Alina made a mistake.

  The dirt and rocks flew by, but Alina’s Chariot stayed dead center on the track, at full speed and unwavering. Then the lights went out as they entered Beggars Canyon, and sheer rock walls rose up on either side. Rather than rage at this, Zed found his attention fully absorbed in keeping his Chariot in the center of the path. With only a meter gap on either side, it was all he could do to avoid bouncing off the walls. Alina appeared to navigate it with ease. She didn’t seem to let off the accelerator even the slightest as the canyon twisted and turned.

  The path straightened out. It was the home stretch. Whoever reached daylight first would be the Earth Rise Day champion.

  Zed looked on as Alina’s Chariot sped down the narrow rock corridor ahead of him. All he could think was, how had this happened? After all the work, all the crap of the last few days, how had this win been snatched right out of his hands at the last moment?

  It wasn’t as if he minded Alina getting the win. She was amazing. She deserved it. He wouldn’t even be here if she hadn’t advocated for him with his parents. No, it was just…

  “What, you think you were owed a win because you had a few rough weeks?” said a voice in his head.

  This particular inner voice sounded a lot like Ethan Johns. Zed could picture the big man saying something like that as he leaned against his workbench with his tree trunk-sized arms crossed. Zed smiled at the thought.

  Screw it. He was going to finish this race with his head held high. Alina could enjoy her well-deserved win, and he’d come back faster than ever next year.

  When he thought back on the moments that followed, Zed was never sure if he saw something or just a shadow passing over. His view ahead changed in an instant. One moment, Alina was speeding along in front of him, the finish line just a dozen meters away. The next, she disappeared in a sudden, silent flash, followed by an explosion that tore the Chariot and Alina’s suit apart.

  In the slow seconds that followed, Zed remembered thinking how different this looked from the explosions he’d seen in videos—no fireball, just everything ripping apart and flying in all directions. Pieces of the Chariot accelerated out and bounced off the canyon walls. The rock and dirt in the immediate area were pulverized from the places they’d sat for undisturbed eons. He could see a ripple carrying down the canyon as sand dislodged from the cliff face on either side, carried aloft by an invisible shockwave. Zed felt it hit him, almost knocking him off course and into the wall. In hindsight, he had never been more thankful for the thin air of Mars. On Earth, the shockwave alone would have most likely killed him.

  The thing that stuck with him most, though, was Alina. She didn’t see whatever it was coming. She didn’t turn back to look. Zed never saw her face. She just stood there on the Chariot for a brief moment, as if the world wasn’t exploding around her. The suit absorbed an amazing amount of the impact, all things considered, but whether from the pressure of the explosion or the shrapnel from the Chariot, rips started to show along the arms and torso of Alina’s suit. As her body started to twist unnaturally from the combination of the explosion and her forward momentum, the tears began to vent red mist in swirling arcs, growing wider and faster with every turn.

  That was the last thing Zed saw before his own momentum carried him full speed into the cloud of dust and debris that the explosion had created in front of him. He wasn’t sure what he hit that finally brought him down. He hoped beyond hope it wasn’t Alina, but there was no way to know for sure. Most likely it was some piece of the Chariot, or perhaps one of his wheels bouncing off the canyon wall. He found himself thrown headlong over the central console, flying through the air as he exited the canyon, followed by the remains of two Chariots and a fast-moving wall of dust and rocks.

  The canyon exited onto a sandy slope, which was lucky for Zed, who landed none too gracefully. The safety mechanisms on the suit stiffened, keeping him from breaking a limb or worse. The sand took most of the impact, leaving him breathless but unharmed.

  Douglas’s disembodied virtual head appeared above him, looking down into his visor. A message appeared.

  —Congratulations, Zed Marsh! You’ve won the Earth Rise Day race!—

  Douglas did a little jig, which then transitioned into him doing the worm with his overly bendy cartoon body.

  The utter ridiculousness of the whole thing snapped Zed out of his shock. He attempted to sit up and groaned. Nothing seemed out of place, but he was certain there was a lot of black and blue under this suit.

  Zed looked back at the canyon exit that marked the finish line. There was no fire, but waves of dust continued to billow and swirl out. He could see the occasional shower of sparks flashing in the haze. Probably one of the Chariot’s damaged batteries.

  As Zed lay there in the sand, a hand grabbed his shoulder. He nearly screamed from the surprise. The group of onlookers that had gathered at the finish line to congratulate the winner was rushing toward Zed. Others were making their way through the dust to the canyon.

  The light Martian wind had shifted direction, and now, at the edge of the canyon, he could just make out Alina’s lifeless form. Her limbs were posed in a twisted way that didn’t seem quite human. Her suit must have lost pressure completely now because the vents of red mist had stopped.

  “Zed!”

  He heard a voice calling through his helmet speaker, but it felt like it was meant for someone else. The people who had made their way up the slope had reached the still body now. He saw the first one arrive gently roll the body face-up and then turn and retch into their helmet.

  That must be the worst thing imaginable, Zed thought. To vomit in your own helmet and then be stuck smelling and tasting it until you could make it back to an airlock.

  Then Zed started to cry. Not a heaving cry, just tears streaming without pause down his face.

  “ZED!”

  Now hands were on both shoulders, shaking him.

  “Are you OK?”

  He looked up and saw his father standing over him. Zed gave a little nod. He tried to stand, but his father held him down.

  “Whoa there. Medical is on their way with a stretcher. You could have a broken limb or something and just be in too much shock to realize it.”

  Zed knew that if anything major had been damaged, the suit would have detected it, but he just nodded again and sat there, trying not to look back at the spot where Alina had died.