Bouquet of Fireflowers

The spacesuit had seen better days, but when Antoine started the test mode, only two indicators on the breast panel gleamed red. Antoine paid no attention to that. Those were connected to the radio, which was useless on the planet’s surface. The interference from the star was blocking the radio waves.

Antoine checked the oxygen levels in the tanks. Full. He was lucky that service depot equipment, including the compressor, was still working smoothly. Antoine climbed into the spacesuit, snapped on his helmet, sealed the seams, and strapped the cargo baskets to the external harness. Three minutes in the hissing airlock, and there he was, standing in the outer hangar, cutting through the darkness with the beam of his helmet light.

Years ago, the outer hangar looked different. Filled with bright light with breathable air, holding several crawlers and an orbital shuttle resting on the ramp. But now, all that was left were the empty spaces and gaping holes where instruments and machinery had been ripped out. Anything that could be taken away had been scavenged and moved to Sanctuary as spare parts.

Antoine shook his head and staggered toward the long ramp at the far end of the hangar. The gate was welded shut as soon as they ran out of power to maintain the entrance force field, but it didn’t help. The air kept leaking out, and the hangar was soon abandoned.

There was a small door in the rock to the left of the roughly welded plates of the gate. Axel opened it, closed it carefully behind him, walked down the narrow corridor, opened another oval door, and found himself on the surface of the Xiuhtecuhtli. Antoine immediately activated the countdown timer projected on the visor of his helmet. He now had one hundred and fifty-six minutes and not a second more.

Fireflowers were growing all over the Pioneer Crater, in certain places, using the slopes of the giant thousand-kilometer crater as a partial shelter. Even these incredible plants, which survived in a vacuum and extracted nutrients from the dead rocks of Xiuhtecuhtli, could not truly withstand the sizzling heat of Tonatiu, the F3 star around which the planet orbited. The planet that became Antoine’s prison and the grave for most of Sanctuary’s inhabitants. Xiuhtecuhtli was a twin of Mercury but almost as big as Earth and rotating at such a rate that the local day was only four hours.

And then there were the fireflowers. No one understood how such a form of life could exist: unique plants that managed to adapt to a deadly environment. Natural accumulators absorbed the monstrous energy flows from a nearby star to survive the three hours of the cosmic night until the next hellish day.

The timer reminded Antoine that it was one hundred and thirty-four minutes until sunrise. He quickened the pace.

Unfortunately, all of the fireflowers near the entrance to the Sanctuary had long since been harvested, and the plants were incredibly slow to grow. New fireflowers suitable for powering the Sanctuary will eventually grow, digging their tenacious roots into the fissured basalt rock. But they will acquire full power no earlier than ten years from now. And the Sanctuary needs energy by tomorrow at the latest.

Antoine thought about all this as he walked across the rocky plain, stepping over small debris and huge, up to a dozen meters high, rocks. Twelve minutes until he reaches a fresh fireflower field. Then about half an hour to gather the firebrands before he had to head back in time for the sunrise. But after a few more steps, Antoine stopped dead in his tracks.

The road was slashed by a great cleft that extended as far as he could see in either direction. It was at least thirty feet wide and so deep that its bottom was lost in total darkness. Antoine looked at the timer: ninety-seven minutes to sunrise.

There was no way to jump over the chasm. The area where fireflowers were harvested looked like a big semicircle on the map. The cleft has cut a large slice from this semicircle. So if you follow the cleft, you may reach the area with grown fireflowers and then go back. If there’s enough time…

Antoine turned left and ran along the cleft. The cliffs on the horizon were already beginning to reflect the dazzling light of the rising sun.

It was already freezing cold in the Sanctuary. Reactor power had dropped to ten percent and was directed to heat the hydroponic farms. People will survive for a while, but no food means all inhabitants will die. Almost all people gathered at the door of the inner airlock. Tonatiu had risen a few minutes before, but Antoine had not yet returned.

Everyone was silent, realizing what this meant. Antoine wasn’t the only experienced fireflower collector, but it was the last spacesuit. As soon as the reactor stops, the Sanctuary will turn into a frozen tomb.

Suddenly the red light on the airlock door lit up. Everyone almost stopped breathing. The indicator changed color to green, the airlock door moved aside, and Antoine fell out of it.

For some reason, he was wearing a spacesuit, though he was supposed to take it off in the upper airlock vestibule. Several people rushed to Antoine and froze in horror as they looked at him closer.

They saw why he hadn’t taken off his spacesuit. All the outer surface was charred, the chest terminal was melted like a paraffin candle, and the seals were welded together by Tonatiu’s infernal flames.

Antoine, lying on his back, suddenly raised his head and slammed it violently against the floor, again and again. Before anyone could understand what was happening, Antoine sat up and smiled with the thin burnt lips through the shards of his visor.

“Well, well, don’t cry,” he said, taking the basket of fireflowers off his belt. “Look what a beautiful bouquet I have brought.”