Hell on Earth Read Online Free Page A

made my skull vibrate.
    â€œPumpkin” was our name for the horrible, floating alien heads—mechanical, I think—that vomited ball lightning capable of frying you at fifty paces. I threw myself off the table we used as a bed, figuring the vacation was over: the aliens had found us at last!
    But when I dropped to my knees, Sig-Cow rifle at the ready, all I saw was the dark hole in the wall left by my overly enthusiastic motor test of a week ago.
    Arlene ran down the passageway ahead of me, firingwildly; firing at nothing. But those bastard alien “demons” could be fast! I had no reason to doubt my buddy as I joined her, ready to do what we’d done countless times during our assault on Phobos, Deimos, and the tunnel.
    Then she ran straight into the bulkhead like it wasn’t there, and I suddenly realized something was seriously wrong with her.
    She knocked herself out. I couldn’t look after her then; I had to make sure about the pumpkin.
    Knuckling the residue of sleep from bloodshot eyes, I ran like a mother down the corridor, eyes left, right . . . not wasting a shot but ready for the enemy. For an instant I thought I saw a flying globe and almost squeezed off a shot. But it was a trick of peripheral vision, just a flash of my own shadow.
    A cul-de-sac at the end of the corridor finally convinced me that there was no freaking pumpkin.
    I stood for a moment, desperately trying to get nonexistent air into my burning lungs. Then I returned to Arlene, who groaned and panted as she started coming to.
    â€œPal, honey, I hate to do this . . . but I’ve got to relieve you of your weapon.”
    She stared uncomprehendingly.
    â€œThere was no pumpkin,” I explained. “You’re suffering from low-pressure psychosis.”
    â€œOh Jesus,” she said quietly. She understood. Sadly, she handed over the scattergun and her AB-10 machine pistol.
    I felt like the bottom of my boots after walking through the green sludge. You don’t relieve a Marine of his weapon, not ever. By doing so, I’d just effectively demoted her to civilian. And the worst part was, even she realized now that she’d been hallucinating.
    She was crying when we walked slowly back to thevehicle assembly room, a.k.a. the hangar. I’d never seen Arlene cry before—except when she had to kill the reworked, reanimated body of her former lover, Dodd.
    â€œHey,” I said a few hours later, “can’t we electrolyze water and get oxygen?”
    Arlene was silent for a moment, her lips moving. “Yes,” she said, “but we’d only get a few breaths per liter, and we need the water too, Fly.”
    â€œOh.” Not for the first time, I wished I knew more engineering. I vowed to take classes when we made it back home . . . if there even was a “back home” anymore.
    I started having unpleasant dreams, so I didn’t mind giving up more of my sleep allotment. It was always the same dream, actually. I loved roller coasters as a kid. They were the closest I could get to flying in those days. I lived only five miles away from a freestanding wood-frame monster. I thought I would love nothing better, until they built a tubular steel, eight-loop supercoaster.
    I’d never been afraid on the old roller coaster. With all the courage of an experienced ten-year-old, I’d sit in the car as it slowly reached the top, the horizon slanting off to my left, and pretend it was the rim of a planet and I was an astronaut. As it went over the top, plunging down a cliff of wood and metal, I made it a point of honor not to hold on to the crash bar. I was too grown-up for that!
    I was always interested in how things were put together and how they worked. So I asked about the new roller coaster. A man who worked at the amusement park told me stuff he wasn’t supposed to say, stuff he knew nothing about—about how the forces generated could snap a human