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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Fantasy
eBook Description: Thrust into the savage Martian past, Garvey Dire must solve the mystery of time in a world of alien monsters and brutal violence, or see his own world destroyed by war.

eBook Publisher: PulpWork Press/PulpWork Press
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2008

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Joel Jenkins' Dire Planet Series

14 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [296 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [291 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [251 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [840 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [285 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [313 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [290 KB] , hiebook (KML) [649 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [355 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [234 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [294 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [375 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [386 KB]
Words: 85214
Reading time: 243-340 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 9780979732942

"I've said it before, I'll say it again and I'll keep on saying it until they slam the lid shut: Dire Planet is the best Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novel not written by Edgar Rice Burroughs."--Derrick Ferguson, Author of Diamondback

"If high adventure and deeply-realized alien cultures with lots of beautiful warrior women are your bag, you owe it to yourself to check this sucker out."- Russ Anderson, author of Mythworlds

Chapter One

The Stasis Loop

Her footsteps crossed the cracked stone dais, leaving no impression in the fluorescent blue moss that covered the time-weathered stone like a cushion. Long, pale hair fell about her shoulders in a twisted profusion, amethyst glistening from sloe eyes smeared with some dark makeup. The bare flesh that peered from beneath her torn, reflective cuirass was tinted green, and her lips--the lower being fuller than the upper--bore a purple hue.

A scabbard slapped against her bare thigh, the narrow hilt of a rapier-like blade protruding. On her back she wore some sort of firearm unlike anything Garvey had ever seen, built with a wide bore and massive vents. The strange woman looked toward the stranded astronaut, and her lips parted. Just as Garvey Dire thought that she would speak, her lithe form began to shimmer, and she faded into nothingness like the apparition that she was.

Each time that she appeared it was the same. She sprang into existence near the shattered pillars at the top of the dais, and crossed from the collapsed passage to the bottom of the dais where Garvey sat nursing a broken right leg that had been shattered when his probe, the Mars Climate Orbiter crash landed on Mars' arid surface. Once he had even reached out to touch the woman, but his hands passed through her as though she were made of mist.

Officially, NASA designated Garvey's ship, the Orbiter, as an unmanned space probe, but elements within the space program were far more ambitious. They equipped the craft with landing capabilities, and enough supplies and equipment for one man to survive indefinitely on the hostile surface of Mars. Following the claustrophobic nightmare of the 286-day trip from Earth, Garvey began the descent onto Mars' surface and one of the landing thrusters gave out.

The only things Garvey managed to salvage from the Orbiter were the space suit he was wearing, a few days worth of food, and a small atmospheric generator, which was feebly pumping out oxygen next to him.

The air supply in his suit had long since been exhausted, and he rested his right elbow on the fishbowl helmet, grimacing as he once again felt blood flowing from his compound fracture, and pooling in the bottom of the space suit that he still wore.

It was only a matter of time now. After the crash he managed to crawl from the flaming wreckage and into the shelter of a rock fall, where he jammed himself between two boulders to protect himself from the gritty winds that swept across Mars' rugged surface. As he struggled his way deeper, the ground gave way beneath him, painfully depositing him among the rubble of this alien-constructed chamber buried beneath the surface of the planet.

She came every hour, her step and stride never changing. Garvey knew each movement and glance by memory; it never altered. Though the lure of adventure had never been greater for him than the lure of human companionship, as his life wound down to its last minutes, and his breathing grew labored as the atmospheric generator faltered, Garvey found himself wishing that this woman was more than just a wraith, more than some phantasmal vestige of a decayed and lost civilization that Mars once possessed.

While he sat bleeding, waiting to draw his last breath, he tried to push aside the agony of his broken leg and in the dim light shed from a globe hanging on the cracked and heaving ceiling, his eyes searched for the mechanism that might be projecting this three-dimensional illusion. Finally, he perceived a trio of mechanical devices that pushed from the moss growing on the dais.

He checked the chronometer on his suit and saw that it was another ten minutes before his exotic visitor would once again appear. Curiosity got the better of him, and he decided that, even dying, he could not sit idly by while the great mysteries of Mars remained still unexplored. Clenching his teeth, he dragged himself up the broad steps of the dais, and began brushing the rubble away from the metallic knob protruding from the moss. Garvey ripped away a great clot of the bluish bryophyte and uncovered a metallic box that had once been hidden beneath the stone pavings of the steps. The lid was jammed tight, but Garvey withdrew a multi-tool from one of the pockets on his suit, and managed to pry it away with his screwdriver extension. Inside the box rested a dazzling array of capacitors and circuits constructed from no metals or materials, which he had ever seen. Thick cables penetrated the box from beneath, and Garvey guessed that these might be providing the power source for the projectors. Maybe a more brilliant man might have been able to adapt this alien source of energy to feed the dying atmospheric generator, but Garvey had no idea where to begin.

Once again the alien woman appeared at the top of the dais, her booted feet carrying her weightlessly across the moss. Garvey's atmospheric generator chugged to a halt, and black spots appeared before his eyes, marring his vision of the ephemeral beauty that walked toward him in her predestined, and unending circuit. It was only moments before he lost consciousness, but still Garvey's curiosity drove him to experiment. He lowered the metal tip of his screwdriver into the box until it touched the nearest capacitor.

Blue fire arced from the box, leaping up the screwdriver and climbing Garvey's right arm. For a brief moment a blue aurora played across the marooned astronaut's body, then the misdirected energy picked him up and hurled him through the air, directly into the image of the palehaired woman that crossed the dais.

This time, however, he did not pass through her. Their bodies met, flesh against flesh. She cried out and they went down in a tangled, rolling heap, blue fire playing about them, soaring in great jagged arcs. The scent of ozone hung thick in the air as energy crackled, leaping from mechanism to mechanism. A blinding flash filled the chamber, and then blackness descended like a great sheet.