The Barsoom Project

The air was gray with a dense mist that flowed like an angry ocean, churned in the cavernous opening like cold smoke. Every sound they made, every footstep or whisper, reverberated like a sneeze in a tomb. The mist chilled Max to the bone. It was a sticky cold. The furs and thermal-reflective lining of his jacket seemed helpless against it.

His mind noted, trying to make sensible shapes out of that roiling fog. It formed and re-formed itself into grotesque illusions, shadows cast by impossible shapes: a suggestion of tremendous jaws, a sudden glimpse of a hundred pairs of eyes, the bones of a hand brushing across his face. As the other Adventurers pushed through behind him, he felt their unease as an extension of his own.

“Welcome to Hell,” he said quietly, helping Trianna past a stack of ice chips. She looked pained.

Without any stated intention, the group formed a circle, standing close enough to touch shoulders. One could not see the size of it, but the moving rivers of fog, the echoes, all told of a cavern as big as the world.

Max felt the urge to scream, to do something to fill the horrid emptiness around him. He felt utterly cowed.

“It must be your decision to go ahead,” Snow Goose said. “I don’t know how much protection I can offer you.”

Yarnall peered out into the mist. Somewhere on the other side of that shifting veil, a vibration sounded. It might have been something natural-the sound of the earth shifting, perhaps, or the cry of an animal. If it was an animal, it was a maddened one, and the hair on Max’s arms stood up and tingled. “We’ve gotta go,” the National Guardsman said. “Listen. There’s something out there. We can’t go back-the sun is dying, and so will we. We can’t stay where we are. The Cabal will just send something to get us.”

Frankish Oliver’s club raised in agreement. “Let’s meet it head-on.”

Snow Goose nodded approvingly. “We will sing songs for the spirits of those who die.”

Unless we all buy it,” Orson reminded her.

“A rainbow of light and happiness, you are.”

Chapter Sixteen

THE PAIJA

The fog swallowed them. Snow Goose seemed sure of her directions. There was rarely a choice. They followed ridges and smooth rock, the path of least resistance. Where the path forked, Max glimpsed smoke drifting from Snow Goose’s mouth.

Now they were crossing a land bridge so high up that the floor vanished into the mist, and only giant stalagmites rising up like mountains through the clouds told them there was any floor at all. They trooped single file, and Max found himself behind Charlene. She was limping. A glimpse of her profile showed excitement and anticipation and a certain sadness.

“Charlene?”

She half-turned with that oddly angular grace: she reminded him of a praying mantis. She was breathing too hard, trying to disguise it behind a game smile.

“Do you miss your friend? Eviane?”

Charlene sighed. As tall as she was, she was losing inches, drooping. Gravity was pulling her down. Brother Orson hung back to listen to the conversation.

“We’re friends, but… we’d barely met,” she said wistfully.

“How’s that?” Orson asked.

“We met on the Gaming channels. For maybe a year we’ve been playing everything we could get into, and she kept telling me about Dream Park. I’d heard of it. She said that I had to come. Tell the truth, I wasn’t all that hot on it. I thought one of the Cook Islands, or maybe Greece. But I wanted to meet Eviane.” She paused. “I don’t have that many friends. So I came, and before I could blink, Eviane was killed.”

“Doesn’t seem fair, does it? How’s your leg?”

She smiled ruefully. “I thought I was hiding that. I can walk it out.”

Orson noticeably straightened up. “If you need help carrying anything, let me know.”

Her long face softened and her eyes shone gratefully.

The bridge narrowed up ahead, and now walking single file became more critical.

Max knew he shouldn’t look down, but his eyes wouldn’t obey. Down there in the frozen, crawling wastes, something lived, something watched. He knew it. Maybe not alive. Maybe dead and damned…

From up ahead came a repetition of the roaring, piercing bass note. Quake! The entire cave shook with it. Max dropped to his belly, set his cheek against the stone of the natural bridge, and waited. He saw Johnny Welsh lose his balance, drop to his hands and knees, and roll toward the edge anyway.

Trianna caught him with one arm, helped him, shaking, to his feet. “I’m always falling for blondes,” he said.

The mist thickened and thinned in pulses. The tremors had not quite died. Yarnall, taking an unsteady lead, kept peeking back over his shoulder as if the bunch of them might rabbit at any moment. The bridge now measured barely two feet across. Beneath gaped infinity.

If you focused your eyes carefully into the depths, the mists occasionally parted, and the cavern stretched away into endless night. It seemed to Max that he could see stars down there, but it might have been the reflection of strange light on ice crystals. He shivered.