Lorenz of Mars

     Lorenz had hurriedly donned his spacesuit, left the spaceship, and was laboriously making his way against the stiff wind to where his three fellow astronauts were collecting samples of Martian soil at the bottom of a shallow crater. They had been overdue in their return by an hour, and he had begun to worry. Especially since the increasing ferocity of the static-generating dust-storm was preventing crew-to-ship communication, and the sun was beginning to dip beneath the distant Martian horizon. So after another desperate but fruitless effort to reestablish contact on all available frequencies, Lorenz had panicked and decided to personally make certain that everything was indeed OK by going to the location.

     But he needed to hurry.  The wind was picking up, and the thrashing of the sand-laden gusts were making progress extremely difficult. Fortunately, they were just beyond a nearby sand-dune. Finally, after seemed like an eternity, Lorenz stood gazing on the crest of the dune and he caught sight of the three crew-members below. They appeared totally unaware of his arrival, as each seemed totally engrossed in his task. He heard his transmitter crackle back to life as he descended below the crater's ridge where the sandstorm was not as intense, and called out to them. That's when  they all ceased what they had been doing immediately, turned, and stood motionlessly and silently staring up in his direction.

     “Lorenz, what the hell are you doing out here?" the mission’s captain, Ronald Buford, a tall athletically built dark complexioned man in his mid forties, asked gravely, as Lorenz stood rigidly at attention despite the thrashing gusts of wind. He noticed the extreme uncharacteristic tension in the captain's voice, and struggled to decipher why, but it did not compute.

     “I was concerned that you had been some mission mishap, sir! Because of the storm-sir.” Lorenz finally responded after an extended pause, expecting to be commended for his concern and actions. The captain had taken several more steps closer.  Lorenz was baffled at the cautious way in which he was being approached. As if posed some kind of danger. But that also didn't compute.

     “But you should know that we aren’t due back for an hour, Lorenz!” the captain said, while giving him a quick once-over with his nervously-concerned, dark eyes. Laurens had always wondered why the captain seemed to gazed at him in that worried examinatory way so often, since he never did so it with anyone else. Neither did he like the suspicious way in which the rest of the crew had ceased their activity and were now staring intensely at him.

     “True, sir, but communications were down, and I didn’t know if there had been some incapacitating accident, you know, like an avalanche, a sink-hole, or sudden eruption of some kind,” Lorenz responded nervously, suddenly realizing the gravity of having ignored the strict protocol.

    “But that’s just the point," the captain responded while shaking his head in disapproval.

     "You see, communications are just fine, Lorenz. It was you who wasn’t responding to us, not us refusing to respond to you. In fact, we were about to cut the excavation activity short to find out what exactly was going on."

    “That’s impossible sir!”

     “No Lorenz, our communication has been, and still is working just fine. You can check it out yourself. So why would it be malfunctioning just a few hundred yards from us on the ship?”

     Lorenz pondered the question for an unusually long time as the captained eyed him with even more suspicion. He was also holding a tool that Lorenz was unfamiliar with. Something resembling steel calipers with flashing lights along the handle.  

    “I don’t know sir! That’s what I travelled out here to find out!” Lorenz finally answered. His voice had suddenly crackled with static, and he winced at the peculiar sound that he had never noticed before. He frantically attempted to modulate the output several times, but the static remained. He would definitely need to check that out once he returned to the ship. After all, a defective spacesuit electrical-system could cost a life out here, and he would be held responsible. His ruminations were cut short as the captain calmly continued:

    “I hope you realize that this is highly unusual behavior, Lorenz.”

     The captain took a few slow steps closer with the instrument partially extended in his direction. For a brief moment, Lorenz felt an almost overwhelming and irrational need to flee-as if there was something uncannily predatory in the captain’s demeanor, and in the unusual silence of the other crew-members who were also moving closer and staring as if  they were inspecting some exotic microorganism in a petri dish under a microscope

    “True sir, but I was very concerned--”  Lorenz said while instinctively taking a few steps backwards towards the base of the dune that rimmed the crater he had just descended into.

     “Regardless! You were strictly instructed to stay behind at the ship, Lorenz. This is extremely unusual behavior! Extremely unusual!” the captain continued in what sounded to Laurence like barely-restrained impatience, tinged with a worried animosity.

     Lorenz was now finding it hard to resist the increasingly strong urge to bolt back to the safety of the ship. He began wondering about the crew’s mental stability. If indeed the crew were suffering some type of violence-prone dementia induced by the alien environment, then they needed to be sedated and placed in the ship’s infirmary to be examined and treated by the medical units on-board. Otherwise, they might all soon run amok and endanger the entire mission.

     “Sir, as I said, I became worried--” Lorenz took two cautious steps backwards toward the base of the wind-whipped sand-dune as the possibility that they had indeed become demented repeated itself as if a broken record in his mind.

     “Yes, I know Laurence. I know!” the captain answered in a voice tinged with subdued impatience.

     “Do you want me to return to the ship sir?” Lorenz said.  He was hoping to go back and return with a sonic-blaster set on stun in order to carry out what he now felt was his duty.

     The other crewmembers briefly looked at one another in a tense silence.

     “No. Lorenz, it’s better that you remain here until we finish our work and we will return to the ship together.” the captain uttered in a determined tone.

     “But why sir? There is much work to be done back at the ship, and it’s really a waste of valuable time for me to linger here uselessly observing while I could be back on board to complete my extensive re-calibration of the navigational systems.”

    Laurence heard a high pitched gasp from Mauricia Del Veccio, the young female member of the expedition, and noticed how the captain flinched as if he’d been prodded by a laser cattle-goad, and how his dark eyes narrowed behind his gold-plated spacesuit helmet visor.

    “You were doing what Lorenz?” the captain asked in a tremulous voice that verged on panic.

     “My job sir, calibrating the navigational computer programs as you personally instructed me to do just before leaving the ship.” Lorenz responded proudly.

    “But you see Lorenz, my friend, you were never programmed nor ever instructed to do such a thing!”

     Those were the last words that Lorenz detected, followed by a fading hum and a screeching whine, as his power-source was suddenly disconnected from his chest, by a quick swipe of the calipers. Then his positronic brain went totally blank, and his synthetic body went entirely limp.