Sometimes the mind has a hard time accepting what the eyes can take in at a glance. What Zed saw was an open cavern space with no end in sight. He could see the ceiling arching up a few dozen meters above his head, but the far wall was out of the range of his lights. It wasn’t entirely due to distance, however. There was some kind of fog in the air. It probably wouldn’t have been all that noticeable on Earth, but on Mars, it was downright bizarre.

  As his gaze returned to the floor, Zed saw the thing he had come in search of. Or at least, he saw something strange that he hoped was worth putting in the sample case he’d dragged along all this way.

  The cavern floor was dotted with dark circular pits. It looked as if a meticulous Martian gopher had had a heyday.

  Please don’t be a giant alien gopher, Zed thought.

  As Zed approached the closest of the odd circles, he could make out wisps of what looked like thin steam pouring out over the edge of the hole and dissipating into the air.

  In a flash, Zed remembered what Baat had said during the planning meeting before Jacob’s fateful attempt to reach this very room. One, or perhaps all, of these dark portals might lead to some kind of natural nuclear reactor. As excited as he was to be here, the threat of nuclear contamination was enough to make him decide against looking straight into one. No amount of curiosity was worth a blast of radiation to the face.

  Zed shifted his focus to the concentric rings that surrounded the pits. They really did look like target rings framing a bull’s-eye. Even standing here now, Zed couldn’t quite decide if they were made of some kind of mineral deposits or something more. He walked closer to the nearest pit, being careful not to step on anything that wasn’t rock.

  With effort, Zed lowered himself to the floor to get a closer look. Even prone, it was hard to get a clear view in the light of his headlamp. Whatever the rings were made of was incredibly delicate and small.

  Now that he was at eye level, Zed felt like he was staring into a tiny alien forest. It was beautiful. They were beautiful. Zed didn’t have a good point of reference to describe the individual plants, assuming that’s what they even were. Each one could have been a little modern sculpture. They were all different, but in the same style, as it were.

  Thinking of them as tiny ornate mushrooms was the closest Zed’s brain could get to a fitting category. Instead of a typical mushroom cap, the dome on these plants was inverted. It was as if Zed had stumbled upon a crop of tiny goblets. There was a crystal-like quality to them. Zed was pretty sure they weren’t actually made of crystal, but it was as if they had taken on some of the attributes of the stone floor they sprouted from.

  As a final touch, each plant had a mesh skirt that hung from the upturned cap and swirled down the main stalk. The shape and size of the skirt varied from plant to plant.

  Perfect for a little alien finger food, Zed thought, his heart rate rocketing as his doubts fell away. This really is some kind of alien life! OK, not aliens, but life!

  The closer he looked, the more mesmerized he became by the tiny works of living art that spread out before him.

  Zed extended a curious finger and pushed on one of the little plants, as if he were afraid it would shatter. In truth, he had no reason to think it wouldn’t. The little Martian mushroom bent with some resistance but didn’t shatter or break. When he pulled his finger back, it settled back into its original resting position.

  Definitely not just pretty rocks, Zed thought.

  An alarm sounded, pulling Zed out of his awestruck reverie. He was halfway through his air supply.

  “Crap!”

  He was out of time but felt like he’d just arrived. The dark pits spread out into the thick air. Zed found the pull of the unknown drawing him further in. How could he possibly leave the most mysterious place mankind had ever stumbled upon?

  Another alarm sounded. A different tone this time. A RAD counter popped into Zed’s field of vision. He looked down and realized he’d wandered closer to one of the pits. He backed away, nearly tripping into the pit directly behind him.

  When he finally found his footing, Zed looked down and realized he’d crushed a section of one of the rings of little Martian mushrooms. At first, he was horrified by his blunder, then a flicker of movement caught his eye. An almost imperceptible wave of motion ran around the mushroom rings he had just intersected with his boot.

  Are they reacting to me? Zed wondered as he watched the tiny plants gently sway. He removed his foot, and the swaying stopped.

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  Another alarm sounded. The oxygen again.

  Zed swore and grabbed the sample case that was still tied to his ankle.

  “Thank you, Johns. Your donation is not going to waste.”

  Zed smiled as he slid open the little door on the side of the case and grabbed the small sample tube that popped out. In an age of devices that could do it all, there was something satisfying about a gadget that only did one thing and did it well.

  “Here goes.”

  Zed exhaled like a sniper taking his shot as he scooped up a few of the translucent mushrooms. They clung with surprising strength to the spot where they were rooted. Thread-like tendrils connected the plants to the rock floor. Zed wasn’t sure, but they appeared to be embedded in the rock itself.

  With a little more force, Zed finally got a few of them free.

  Zed sealed the little canister and held it up close to his face for a better look. They truly were little works of art. Amber veins just under the surface of each plant created intricate patterns that gave the illusion of impossible depth.

  Zed shook his head. No time for that now. He had to get the samples and get out.

  Zed pressed the canister into the opening on the opposite side of the case from which he’d retrieved it. It vanished with a thwump that he could feel through the tips of his gloves. It reminded him of the pneumatic tubes he’d seen in some old movies set in New York. Those had been used to send messages like some kind of analog email.

  No one's ever gotten a message in a bottle like this, Zed thought.

  With as much haste as he could manage, Zed collected the rest of the samples, scooping up specimens from different rings at varying distances from the central pit. He also gathered a few from some of the other pits. There was no way of knowing what might be important, and he just hoped he had enough.

  Zed filled the final canister and was about to return it to the case when something made him stop.

  Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket, he thought, and stowed the final sample in one of his suit pockets.

  Zed made his way back to the claustrophobic exit and took a deep breath. He wasn’t looking forward to another terrifying passage, nor was he excited about the exhausting trek back to the surface. He’d spent too much time here already and needed to pick up the pace if he wanted to replenish his oxygen supply at the Chariot before he, well, died.

  Kneeling, Zed was about to tie the sample case to his leg again when he thought better of it. The idea of the case and its precious cargo bouncing around behind him didn’t seem right, so he decided to push it ahead of him on the way back.

  Zed took a deep breath, and once more disconnected the pack, and shoved it into the passage, gently pushing the sample case and himself in after it.

  The crawl back felt shorter somehow. Knowing that a thing was possible made it inherently less daunting.

  As Zed pushed the pack and case out the other end of the passage, he allowed himself to exhale and smiled at how much better he’d handled himself this time. His smile vanished as he felt a shudder run through his suit, followed by a shock of pain in his left ankle.

  With mounting horror, Zed realized he could no longer move his left leg. In fact, he couldn’t move forward at all. He looked down and saw that his left leg was pinned under a large rock that had given way in the passage.

  With all but his lower legs having emerged from the passage, Zed’s first instinct was to twist and bend as much as he could toward his now immobile appendage in a desperate attempt for his brain to understand what was happening. This only resulted in another, much sharper wave of pain, followed by the realization that his lungs were now burning as well.

  With an animal hunger, Zed’s eyes darted to the pack. He reached for it, only to find that he had shoved it just out of reach. Those few centimeters between his fingertips and the edge of the pack felt like kilometers as the air in his suit became more toxic with every breath.

  Zed’s mind scrambled for a solution. He pushed back against his natural instincts and tried to slow his breathing. In the training leading up to launch, there was one phrase every instructor seemed to repeat as the solution to every potential issue:

  Work the problem.

  Zed had grown tired of hearing it, but now it looped in his mind like a bad song.

  Work the problem.

  The problem was that he was going to suffocate within sight of a source of oxygen because his arms weren’t five centimeters longer. The rigidity of the suit was keeping him from…

  Zed’s thoughts trailed off as his mind flashed back to the first time he tried to put on a turtle suit—the sudden claustrophobia as the suit tightened to conform to his body.

  “Doug—Douglas!” Zed gasped, his voice cut off by a fit of coughing.

  Douglas appeared, his goofy grin shining in horrific contrast to the life-and-death context.

  “Loosen the suit!”

  Douglas cocked his head, and a question mark appeared above it.

  Zed coughed again.

  “The suit fitting—release it or relax it. Make it baggy!”

  Douglas nodded but brought up a scrolling window of text with safety warnings from what Zed could only assume was the turtle suit's manual.

  “Just do it! DO IT NOW!”

  Douglas winked.

  Zed lurched forward as he felt the form-fitting pressure of the suit give way around him.

  Several things happened at once.

  The strain Zed had been putting against the suit carried him forward. His fingers grasped the edge of the pack and jerked it toward him. At the same time, the pain in his ankle became almost unbearable. The release of tension in the suit had allowed him to slide and stretch forward, but that same tension had been pushing against the rock that was pinning Zed’s leg. When it released, Zed moved forward as the rock shifted downward, adding further pressure and pain.

  Zed cried out, but his desperation far outweighed any pain or fear. With shaking hands, he rushed through the reconnection procedure. As the vents opened and fresh air flooded in, Zed collapsed onto his face, teetering on the edge of consciousness.

  He wanted to sleep. Slipping into the darkness of unconsciousness sounded like a warm hug, but right now, sleep meant death, and he knew it.

  “Douglas, return suit tension to normal.”

  Zed felt the all-over pressure return as the suit cinched itself together. He winced. The pressure that had once terrified him was actually comforting now. It did not, however, relieve the pain in his leg or budge the rock in any way.

  Work the problem.