Elaina. In search of a planet.

Martian guardians, part 7

On one of the screens, someone began to show others what they saw in the porthole.
"Hey, look, look! It's that tornado from the eye!" he shouted, pointing his finger out the window.
At that moment, the round window of the Biosphere broke into pieces, and through the portholes, a mass of sand with hurricane force blows away the people who were standing nearby. An alarm was raised due to a seal failure. The survivors began to evacuate to another capsule, closing the hatches behind them. Those who survived and did not have time to leave, holding their breath, tried to put on spacesuits. Some were out of breath and fell, writhing in convulsions. Their lungs were simply bursting from low pressure and lack of oxygen.
One of the cameras captured how the skin of the whole capsule began to pierce something. Small holes appeared, which rapidly grew in diameter. Jets of sand began to seep through them. This force shattered the plating, tearing it to shreds and creating a hole.
At that moment, a sandy vortex burst into the interior of the habitation module. This place was a laboratory, where everything immediately began to circle and destroy the research equipment from the force of the wind.
In this cell of the Biosphere there was a person who had already managed to put on a spacesuit. He barely kept on his feet, holding on to the railing, trying to close the hatch in order to seal the next cell.
A minute later, the whirlwind calmed down and in place of a small whirlwind stood a creature similar to a man, but created from sand. Its sandy surface was fluid. The grains of sand, moving, outlined the silhouette of a man who emerged from the storm, and their friction created a menacing hissing sound, like from a rattlesnake.
The scientist in the suit was taken aback. He pressed himself against the wall, still holding on to the railing. The Sandman swung. A spear appeared in a whirlwind in his hand. Throw. The spear pierced the suit in the chest and pinned the man to the wall. Then it disappeared, crumbling into sand. The scientist slumped to the floor, one hand clinging to the equipment. It was the same hand, later covered with sand to the brush.
The third camera recorded what was happening outside. In the area of the scientific station, a tornado was circling all the time, lifting into the air: dust, sand, all-terrain vehicles, aircraft with the wreckage of the hangar.
Then the tornado approached the fuel tanks. The force of the wind could not destroy them. After a while, a disk began to elongate in the lower part of the vortex. The sand buzz saw approached the tanks. A second and liquefied methane exploded into a rarefied atmosphere, tearing apart the iron tanks.
Along with these events, another camera recorded what was happening in the surviving domes. The sand creature was heading for the control box. Behind him flew a small tornado, which had a destructive force. The jets of sand spun so fast that they whipped everything in their path, wreaking havoc on the cells of the capsules. Shouts were heard muffled by the sound of the rising wind. Then the light flickered on and off. The recording has been interrupted.
Striver's crew was shocked by what they saw. Who or what is it? Everyone went over it in his head. To fly for several months sixty million kilometers from the Earth, waiting for the long-awaited meeting with the planet and its explorers. But we saw people die. They were so shocked that they did not know how to react to what had happened.
A moment of silence was interrupted by Yablonsky:
"Well, what do you say, commander?"
Amano glanced from under his forehead at the flight engineer, then out the window. There, a light breeze drove dust along the bottom of the crater.
"Whoever it is," he answered seriously. "But now the main thing is how we survive in this desert. The base is destroyed, nothing survived there. Food, water, oxygen -- there is enough of this in orbit to return home. Methane production is destroyed. And methane from Earth will have to wait another year, maybe more. The flight window has passed. Mars is moving away. So, we are here for a long time ...
The commander was interrupted by Johnson, who was sitting at the console in headphones:
"Attention! Earth is in touch!"
Maxim took the headphones and listened to the message. Then, turning over the buttons on the remote, he said:
"They want black box information, and we need to decide what to do with the dead."
"I will take facial cells for analysis, and then we will bury him," Tanya suggested.
Janos at this time, looking at the destroyed base, said:
"I can't connect this living tornado with a falling unidentified object. The tornado swept almost a day ago. And we saw the object recently. The farther into the forest, the more Martian devils."
"We are investigating the object," Amano said, finishing the transfer of the black box information. Scratching his stubble with his hand, he continued. Let's just bury the researcher, we'll go on the Beetle to the crash site.

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