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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by RDeal[/i] [br]This short story can be ordered to be downloaded in its complete version as an email attachment for .99 cents by going to the catalog page's "Downloaders Store" or clicking the following link: http://ironpyramidpublications.com/proddetail.asp?prod=%23027 Science Fiction - Word Count 4643 [center]EXPEDITION 9 Author... ...R. D. Peters[/center] We were the largest group of human cargo to set down at any one time on the rusty colored Martian surface. We had been here now for six weeks and had already lost our three "old timers" as we referred to them, Jim Barnes-45, Alan Deacons-44, and Sherman Brinks-44. They had succumbed to the rigors of too many missions into space, pressing their luck one too many times. I was now the oldest at thirty-seven in our colony of what had originally been twenty-four persons. "What's the SHELL status, Wimpman?" asked the ranking officer who was ten years my junior, and who annoyingly continued to address me in a manner which was to his liking instead of that written boldly above the blue jump suit chest pocket, Winkman. "It's like any air filled blimp anchored on its side in a hostile environment. Light fabric walls standing against wind storms takes a beating. You've seen the Sphinx in Egypt? And that erosion was caused by little grains of sand. What we've got is fabric and millions of little pebbles that continue to eat away the fibers. No synthetic can withstand the sand blasting these storms dish out." I painted the commander a bleak picture, hoping to infect his adolescent mind with fear. "What would you propose, Winkman? You are the Chief Maintenance Officer," he immediately noted, relegating authority like a professional. "That's correct, Captain Hall...I'll take care of it," my glaring into his eyes broken by the scream of a female member of the expedition. "And that's your baby, Hall...so rock it to sleep." Again the female shrieked her hysterical alarm throughout the lozenge of bright yellow fabric pulsing and rocking from the wind currents of the Martian atmosphere. Then the SHELL, (Space Housing Environmental Life Line) was filled with the chaos of other female screams and the yelling of men whose voices contained their panicked fears of something not yet readily understood. I could see all the members of our expedition clambering atop crates and containers of supplies, or one of the land craft vehicles to escape something within a swirl of dust. The reddish dust helped to generate the pandemonium of the moment as it rose upward to create a dry fog, transforming frenzied words into choking gasps of overwhelming confusion. The several lights hanging from the twenty foot high ceiling of the eighty foot long SHELL, all but disappeared. COPYRIGHTED [/quote]   Check here to include your profile signature.