The Thoat
by Keith P. Graham © 2006
The thoat paused and spread its wings. The pores of the leathery green skin sucked in the thin Martian air and chemical reactions captured the traces of carbon dioxide and water that it found. Finn Fenton, the man inside the thoat, coughed in his sleep, turned over in the hammock, and started to snore. Molly, his wife of twelve years, did not move. The new romance novel, just downloaded from the Phobos link, kept her busy.
The thoat, rested in the sunlight. The thoat's bio-engineered metabolism stored enough energy to continue. The oxygen level inside the living vehicle rose slightly.
The thoat, with the Fentons inside, lumbered across the Martian landscape on eight stubby legs. It looked for surface ice, patches of red rhizome, and mineral outcrops. The thoat's onboard computer recorded everything, analyzed it, and beeped when she found something showing signs of potential profit. Finn mostly slept. Molly looked out the monitors at the unchanging landscape, she read her novels, or she dreamed of far away places.
The thoat's nervous system centered on a nexus of merging nerve fiber connected to an ordinary neural net; the same kind found in most complex pieces of equipment. The Thoat was no more sentient than a refrigerator, but Finn trusted the thoat more than he trusted any human being, including Molly.
Finn swore that the thoat was aware and cared for him. Molly, on the other hand, considered the cramped and cluttered thoat a poor excuse for a home. The living space consisted of a tiny living room, the control room, and the head. She spent her time reading her romance novels, and managed to ignore her husband most of the time.
When Finn awoke after a long (twelve hours) nap, he heard the wind howling outside. He climbed out of the hammock and then reached up and unhooked one side of it so that it fell off against the gray interior wall. He then sat at the thoat's control panel and looked at the view monitor displays. All were dark.
“Open your eyes a bit, will you babe?” he said into the microphone imbedded in the ceiling. The thoat cracked open an eyelid and Finn saw a wall of swirling dust. The thoat's eyes snapped shut, but the still image grabbed from the momentary look outside hung a few inches above the status display on the 3D panel. The wind speed indicator showed 340 KPH, which, although fast, is not usually dangerous. The thoat kept her eyes closed to keep the clinging dust out.
“What did you say, Finn?” Molly asked from the other room. “Why have we stopped?”
The panel display rearranged itself and a chart came to the fore, showing a ragged line of data growing to a crescendo of activity. “Ah,” Finn said stroking his dirty red and gray beard. “Lightning is it?” The graph showed atmospheric static discharges.
“No need to worry about that, my darling.” Finn whispered to the thoat, “Just some lightning. Mars sparks can't hurt a fly.” Martian lightning was boring compared to the juicy earth flashes.
The thoat did not move. “We've got miles to go before we sleep,” Finn whispered into the microphone, “Let's get a move on it.” As he spoke, the panel display of the static discharges refreshed itself and the level of activity rose even higher on the graph.
Outside, in the thin Martian atmosphere, a dust devil swirled around the beast. Finn urged the Thoat onward with gentle words, but the living mobile home refused to move. She was safe for now, but Dust Devils can move sand and dust particles at hundreds of meters per second, enough to cut right through rocks. She was being cautious.
Finn sang an old song, calming himself. He hoped that the song calm
ed the thoat as well. The susurration of the thin air as it worked its way through the maze of bifurcating tubules that ran just beneath the tough hide of the thoat, whistled along with Finn's songs.
Finn checked the readings. The tough outer hide of the thoat was good protection against the corrosive winds, but the static charges built up in the clouds of dust and Martian lightning shot cold blue sparks up and down the dust devil's sides. The charged dust particles clogged every opening on the thoat and covered its photoelectric wing surfaces.
“Easy girl,” Finn spoke soothingly to the thoat. “We'll just ride this out. It won't last long.”
The storms lasted for almost two weeks. The thoat rocked back and forth in the winds. Martian air is extremely thin, but charge the wind with dust and it feels like a hurricane. At one point, the thoat glowed with static electricity. Fingers of blue lightning shot out in all directions. The thoat waited patiently, with her thick skin tingling and her eyes tightly shut.
The storm ended with strong gusts of cold wind. One blast of dust-filled wind caught the normally stable thoat directly against her side. The sand, undercut by the wind, collapsed under the stubby caterpillar-like feet and she lost her footing rolling to one side.
Molly screamed as she fell off the couch in the living area. She tried to get a grip on something. Papers, book readers, unwashed clothes, and dirty paper plates flew through the air. The thoat's short legs tried to regain their footing, but the she rolled completely over. She rolled over again and then two more times. Finn and Molly each managed to get a hold on something and then rolled along without damaging themselves.
The thoat stopped in the upright position, but the thoat could not move. The lights were out and the computer was down. The design of the thoat's body did not include rolling about, even in Mars' low gravity. The pressure snapped the main neural pathways and the power lines to the batteries were broken. The only things running were a few appliances embedded in the thoat's photoelectric grid and some devices that contained lifetime batteries. Only a few of the thoat's autonomic functions were still active.
Inside the thoat, it was dark. The air was still fresh, however. The metabolism of the thoat was self-regulating and it produced air and water for as long as the sun shone. The thoat's metabolism was exothermic and offered some protection against the Martian cold. The thoat protected the Fentons from freezing or dying of thirst. The larder only contained enough supplies for a three-week trip, and unless someone found them soon, they would starve.
“I knew that I should have stayed back at the dome.” Molly said bitterly. “Come along, you said. You'll enjoy the peacefulness of it, you said. Well, I will be resting in peace now. My mother was right about you. She said you'd have a bad end. Now I'm going to die with you.”
“Aw, Molly. The thoat ain't going to let us die. There's plenty or air and water. They'll be miss us back in town. McCarthy, at the supply company, knows we're out here. Someone will be along in a day or so.”
“McCarthy be damned. He doesn't care a whit about you and me. He sold you the new drill extensions and some dry food and you think he's your best friend. He's just worried about you paying on the note. We're five thousand miles from the nearest soul, without food or a link, and we're going to die.”
“This thoat” said Finn patting the gray-green wall, “has saved me from certain death before. She'll do it again. Just think of this as a picnic stop. I'll get to work on the electronics. I'll rig up something and we'll be on our way before you know it.”
Molly finished her romance novel that afternoon and in the next few months practically memorized it and the nine other books that she found scattered around the living room.
Finn was not as good at electronics as he claimed to be. Repairs went slowly at first, but soon reached the limit of Finn's skills. The thoat's metabolism, however, chugged along. Finn and Molly didn't freeze and they didn't die of thirst. Strangely enough, the two of them even gained a little weight before Albert McCarthy found them.
“McCarthy!” Finn exclaimed when he heard a voice in his helmet's communicator. It isn't easy to knock on the front door of a thoat and Finn's thoat didn't have a door any more. Finn reached for the helmet and put it on.
“We're in here, Albert.” Finn communicated. “We'll be out in a jiffy.”
“Isn't that a sweet thing, Molly?” he said to his wife. “My old friend missed me and has come looking.”
Molly moved around a little to look Finn in the face. She was sitting on Finn's lap. Although being a large woman who weighed in at 150 or more kilos back on earth, she was light as a young girl in the Martian gravity. In truth, Finn was not a small man, either.
“It's about time, too.” she laughed, “I've been sitting in here for two weeks now, unable to move more than a few inches.” Entangled in an embrace, the two sat on the lid of the john in the thoat's bathroom.
“Get yourself dressed, my dear,” Finn told her, “Put on your P-suit. It looks like we've finally been rescued.”
The two of them struggled with the pressure suits in the tiny cubical. Finn tugged on the door. The air pressure was holding the door closed. He finally cracked the seal and the door opened.
McCarthy was waiting out in the sand staring at the couple and the remains of their thoat. He arrived in a fancy new 12-legger thoat that was standing off about 50 meters away. Its six huge wings spread towards the sun.
Molly fell out of the head and down onto the sand, but was able to save herself gracefully in the low gravity. Finn bounded over to the merchant and hugged him.
“My old friend!” he shouted, “I knew that you would come for us.”
“I would not let my oldest and best customer die on the Martian plains.” Albert McCarthy said, “Besides, you still owe me 700 credits on your thoat's drill extensions.”
Finn turned around to look at the thoat.
“Well, about that...” he said, “I may need to extend a little more credit.”
The two men looked at the remains of the thoat. Once over 10 meters long and 4 meters wide, all that remained of her was the bathroom and large gray ribs of cartilage that ran in a row on either side of frozen piles of dark leathery hide.
Molly was poking about in the middle of the remains. She stopped and removed a tool from her utility belt. She bent over, sawed at something, and pulled loose a frozen slab of gray-green flesh.
“Good girl!” said Finn, as his wife bounced up to them.
“Perhaps I should not ask,” McCarthy said, “but how did you survive all of this time?”
“Easy,” said Finn, “I was imprisoned with the most beautiful cook on two planets.”
“Shut your mouth, you liar.” Molly said.
“I'll say it as often of like. The lovely Molly Finn offered me aid and succor in my time of need. She is not only a good companion,” he patted his wife on her ample backside, “but I discovered that she can cook.”
“Well,” Molly protested, “there wasn't hardly anything to do for three months but eat and...” she giggled, “and talk.”
“I don't understand.” McCarthy said. “What did you eat? I know that you were only stocked for three weeks.”
“Let's go inside and Molly will show you.” Finn said. “I've often told you that that thoat has saved my life more than twenty times, haven't I?”
“Yes.”
“Well make it twenty-one.”
“Don't I count?” asked Molly, coyly.
“Of course, my dear, make it twenty-two times.” Finn continued.
“Do you have a broiler aboard that thing?” Molly asked Albert.
“Yes, but...”
“Well, my friend Albert,” said Finn, “You haven't lived until you've eaten a well prepared thoat steak.”
Molly bounced toward the merchant's thoat, the large steak in her hand. “It's been a month since we've eaten it cooked.” She said. “I was tired of eating it raw.”
Albert looked back at the Fentons' poor thoat. A partially raised wing was trying to point towards the sun. There was little else left of her.
The couple's appetites decimated the rest of her. He turned and followed them.
Molly called back to them. “You'll love it.” She said, “It tastes just like chicken.”