The White Moss on Mars

Tommy gulped as he looked into the deep, dark cavern. It wouldn’t be the first cave he journeyed into, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first one he went into alone. But it would be the first time he went into one to search for his missing crewmates. It would be the first time he entered a cave so dark that it seemed like it could swallow Tommy whole. It would be the first time Tommy didn’t know how deep the cave went.

And it would be the first time Tommy explored a cave on Mars.

Tommy took another deep breath and reminded himself that Gina and Harry should have been back an hour ago, no, exactly an hour and a half ago now. They needed help.

If it wasn’t already too late.

The young astronaut shook his head before he walked forward, instinctively tightening his grip on his flashlight. Within seconds, he was in the cave and, as he feared, it was like he had been swallowed up. Even with his flashlight endorsed by NASA, he could only see a few feet before him.

“Gina? Harry?” Tommy cried out hopefully as he kept on walking forward carefully. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t receive an answer. He just took another deep breath and kept going, very slowly, and carefully.

Which turned out to be the right decision when half of his right foot hit empty air and Tommy felt himself starting to tip over.

Despite himself, Tommy cried out in alarm as he quickly threw himself back, causing him to stumble back onto stable, rocky ground. With a hand over his heart, he calmed himself down with a few deep, albeit shaky breaths. He then looked over to the cliff, or hole, in front of him.

Is that what happened to Gina and Harry?

Tommy inched carefully to the edge and when he reached it, he scanned his flashlight slowly around the area. If it was a hole, it was big enough that even Olympic athletes couldn’t jump over it because Tommy couldn’t see the edge. He pointed his flashlight down the hole and as he suspected, he couldn’t see the bottom.

“Gina? Harry?” he called. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get an answer. Tommy just sighed as he unhitched the emergency box attached to his waist. When he opened it and saw the rope, he recalled how his fourth teammate, Trick, stuffed his emergency box with extra essentials, taken from his own emergency box, before Tommy left their rocket to go find Gina and Harry. It had been Trick’s way of helping since one of them had to stay behind with the rocket.

Tommy was really thankful for the extra rope now.

The astronaut then took out the rope and a pole out of the box. A minute later, the pole was stuck in the ground and the rope was tied tightly around the base of it. The other end of the rope was tied around Tommy’s waist, his shining flashlight now fastened to his waist. Tommy checked the rope and the pit behind him one more time before he began his descent.

As he rappelled down the pit, Tommy couldn’t help but wonder what he would find down there. Would Gina and Harry be injured, but alive? Or would they be...gone? Oh, Tommy didn’t want to think about that.

But wait, if they were dead, how was he going to bring their bodies back? He couldn’t just leave them down there...but what if they were alive but injured enough to not be able to move? How was he going to bring them out of the pit? This wasn’t Earth, where Tommy could just call 911 and they would send in a helicopter. This was-

Tommy touched ground.

He blinked for a second before he accepted the truth, that yes, he had only been rappelling for only a few minutes. And he had been rappelling slowly so...if his math was right, then the pit was only a few feet deep.

Deep enough to possibly cause a sprain or a break, but not death. Even if one of his teammates landed on their head, their helmets were strong enough to sufficiently protect their heads from instant death or even a concussion.

In other words, Gina and Harry were probably alive and reasonably whole and healthy. The relief this brought Tommy was almost immeasurable. Though, it begged the question…

Why didn’t they come back? Both of them were adventurous explorers but they knew the importance of time-

Tommy felt something wrapped itself around his leg.

He cried out in alarm as he instinctively tried to both shake the thing off and pry it off. However, his panic movements only caused him to fall on his side.

Tommy’s heart skipped a beat when he heard the flashlight break.

Pitch darkness surrounded him instantly as the thing, which almost felt like what Tommy imagined a snake wrapped around his leg would feel like, crawled up his leg.

It was alive.

Incoherent shrieks and words left his lips as Tommy tried to grab a hold of the thing but he failed with each frequent attempt.

It...it was slimy.

“Tommy?!” Despite his terror, Tommy’s immediate gasp was filled with hope.

That was Harry’s voice.

“Ha-”

“Oh no! Tommy run!!” Tommy’s relief quickly faded as horror came back to hit him full-force at Gina’s warning.

Run? Wh-

Then there was light.

It wasn’t the white light from one of their flashlights. It was a blue glow and it grew stronger as a fast pit-pattering of feet grew louder. Tommy would have looked to see what was coming towards him if it wasn’t for the glow illuminating the thing on his leg.

...The best way Tommy could describe it was like a worm. It had even ridges on its whole body and it was so long that its tail was resting on his calf and its head was currently on his thigh. The worm had no eyes from what Tommy could see but he could definitely see its teeth.

No. Not teeth. Fangs. Fangs edged its tiny, wide-open mouth.

It was going to bite him.

The pit-pattering of feet stopped.

Tommy finally tore his sight away from the worm to see...a lizard. Not small like a gecko, but big like a Komodo dragon. A bioluminescent lizard with a forked tongue and four eyes, two on its face and the other two on its long antenna attached to the top of his head.

Tommy could feel the worm raise its head.

The lizard sucked in its tongue.

There was a whipping sound and suddenly, there was no more worm on his leg. And the lizard was busy chewing.

...The lizard ate the worm.

Did the lizard just save his-

The bioluminescent lizard then stopped chewing and spat it out. Tommy’s eyes widened in shock as he gasped. It wasn’t because he heard his friends running towards him. It was because he wasn’t looking at a chewed-up worm’s body.

It was the white moss. The white moss that six months ago, in March of 2050, the previous team on Mars found in a cave several miles north of this cave. The white moss that the scientists on Earth discovered had properties that could cure pancreatic cancer. And it did. Despite being discovered six months ago, it has so far cured every person who had pancreatic cancer, no matter if they were in stage one or stage four. No chemo was needed, just a pill a day for a certain period of time, depending on the stage they were in. And it wasn’t just a cure for pancreatic cancer. The scientists were gleeful when they found it was also a cure for breast cancer. Based on this, they theorized that it could potentially cure other cancers as well.

The white moss was the main reason why Gina and Harry were in the cave, so they could find more white moss for more medicine and research purposes.

Never had Tommy imagined that the reason for many people’s salvation would be the result of a lizard chewing up a worm. He doubted that the scientists imagined this origin for the moss as well.

But...he somehow doubted that people back on Earth would care that much.

Before he could wonder how a lizard might have turned a worm into moss, however, the lizard walked closer to Tommy. The astronaut closed his eyes because he couldn’t fight against this lizard. Not when it could save so many people-

He felt something lying on his lap.

Tommy opened his eyes to see the lizard lying across his lap like it was a big dog. It was even panting and looking at him like a dog, its forked tongue hanging down.

The astronaut slowly held out his hand and when it was above the lizard’s back, he patted it.

Tommy could swear the lizard smiled as it panted even harder, its saliva dripping off onto his astronaut suit and harmlessly sliding off onto the rocky ground.

“Tommy! We’re-what the?!” Tommy looked up to see that his two friends had finally arrived, panting with exhaustion and standing still in shock. Harry, who was the one who had spoken, was currently pointing back and forth between the lizard and the white moss.

“What...we couldn’t go back because he was blocking us...we thought he was going to attack us. Was...he just studying us instead?” Gina asked in bewilderment.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. Then he patted the lizard once more, causing it to flip over to its back. Tommy accepted the invitation and patted its stomach happily.

“But I vote we call him Asclepius. Clep for short.”