Old Mars

I broke down when I spoke about how I’d heard Omar al-Baz calling my name, desperately trying to find me even as the air was filled with stinging red sand and visibility was reduced to only arm’s length. That much, too, was true. What I didn’t say was that Dr. al-Baz had come within three meters of where I was huddled, my eyes covered by goggles and a scarf wrapped around the lower part of my face. And yet I remained silent as I watched his indistinct form lurch past me, arms blindly thrust out before him, slowly suffocating as sand filled his nose and throat.

My tears were honest. I liked the professor. But his knowledge made him too dangerous to live.

As an alibi, my story worked. When a search party went out into the desert, they located my overturned jeep. Omar al-Baz’s body was found about fifteen meters away, facedown and covered by several centimeters of sand. Our footprints had been erased by the wind, of course, so there was no way of telling how close the professor had been to me.

That settled any doubts the cops might have had. Dr. al-Baz’s death was an accident. I had no motive for killing him, nor was there any evidence of foul play. If I was guilty of anything, it was only reckless and foolish behavior. My professional reputation was tarnished, but that was about it. The investigation was officially concluded the day I was released from the hospital. By then, I’d realized two things. The first was that I would get away with murder. The second was that my crime was far from perfect.

Dr. al-Baz hadn’t taken the chieftain’s blood specimen with him when he’d left the hotel. It was still in his room, along with all his equipment. This included the computers he’d used to analyze the sample; the results were saved in their memories, along with any notes he might have written. In fact, the only thing the professor had brought with him was his room key … which I’d neglected to retrieve from his body.

I couldn’t return to his hotel room; any effort to get in would have aroused suspicion. All I could do was watch from the hotel lobby as, a couple of days later, the bellhops wheeled out a cart carrying the repacked equipment cases, bound for the spaceport and the shuttle, which would ferry them to a marsliner docked at Deimos Station. In a few months, the professor’s stuff would be back in the hands of his fellow faculty members. They would open the digital files and inspect what their late colleague had learned, and examine the blood specimen he’d collected. And then …

Well. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?

So now I sit alone in my neighborhood bar, where I drink and wait for the storm to come. And I never go into the desert anymore.

MATTHEW HUGHES