It was meant to be a triumphant return from the first crewed mission to another planet: a watershed; a breakthrough. Yet as the spacecraft approached—
C: “We are ill.”
M: “Describe symptoms.”
C: “Nausea. Lethargy. Vomiting.”
[…]
M: “Fatalities?”
C: “Three. Five remain.”
[…]
C: “It’s [inaudible].”
[…]
C: “Shall we commence auto-destruction?”
M: “Negative.“
M: “Prepare for re-entry.”
—rushing the Captain and remaining crew into hospitalised isolation. Blurred lights. He could scarcely breathe, wheezing, gasping. “Tell them…” On his back in the sterile chamber he remembered
Planetfall.
Brilliant verdure dripping with life in colour. A blue liquid vastness.
Softness underfoot.
Horizon-line broken by great orogenous arrangements—
protruding—
“Veins.”
Three dead crewmen lay autopsied on three tables. The medical council was in consultation. “Determination?”
“Parasitic.”
“Prognosis for living?”
“Good.”
/
The Captain felt the needle slide in and he faded…
/
“Organisms?” the General asked.
The Captain awoke.
There was a third in the room:
a scientist:
“Alien organisms… living in their blood. What’s more—” He passed the General a video-screen. “—look:
they
“…are miniature versions of ourselves,” said a newscaster.
Everyone listened.
The organisms wiggled and writhed.
“Taken out of blood, they die,” said the scientist. “Yet within blood they prosper and grow.”
C: “How large?”
Both turned to him in bed.
“Unknown.”
The Captain imagined the creatures growing;
clogging up his veins;
killing—
“Build it,” said the General.
/
And they did:
An immense metal-lattice cube covered with transparent panels, hermetic and impregnable; imposing, a city-sized emptiness; a monster-structure to be satiated—
“We collect the blood ration,” said the bloodman.
She ran, but they caught her;
hooked her up—
Thus the Sanguinarium was filled, gaining crimson until complete, and into were the specimens released to grow.
Everyone saw as they equalled, then surpassed them in size.
Although alike, they were yet different, and tourists came from across the world to gaze at them—
Back they gazed.
Multiplying deep within the blood-murk.
/
The Captain appealed to end it.
But:
“The structure holds!“
/
He aged.
/
When there became insufficient room for the growing, multiplying super-specimen, they began to meld together: into misshapen fleshlings: into pressure:
One day it cracked—
And they poured out, a crimson flood upon the planet. Uncontainable. Blood-fluid hissing, corrosive, toxic with their vile waste-secretions, dissolving in- and animate, spreading across the planet; and, in spreading, growing: in volume and predestination.
Populations migrated, seeking the dry.
But there was no escape.
Only deferral.
/
The Captain remained in the empty city, watching stoically the crimson come.
Tidal wave of / the end.
/
Once it had enveloped the entire Martian surface, annihilating everything, the demon-liquid abated. The fleshlings shrivelled into microorganisms, into hibernation; and the blood seeped into the soil, staining the planet forever red.
/
“This is it,” Overmars said—
flicked on his radio: “Trailblazer to Earth. Do you copy?”
“Copy that.”
“Not about to quote Neil Armstrong, but gotta say it feels special. First human being to touch another planet.”
“Good luck,” said Earth.
With that, Overmars descended.