Are We On Mars?

Chapter Forty-Six

"Who has the key?" Lionshine hissed, whirling around from the door. It was locked. The keypad flashed red. "I know I gave emergency keys out a while ago!" 

"What?" meowed Pebblepounce, his tail dragging in the Martian dirt. "Are you sure you're typing the code right?"

"It's in lockdown mode," Lionshine explained. "Emergency function installed by K.G.I.S. or something. I knew it existed, but it must've been accidentally turned on... it can only be deactivated by someone on the inside."

"And the only cat inside the ship is Alderwood," finished Shadepelt. Her amber eyes flashed. "Do you think he locked us out?"

The other cats paused, then burst out laughing.

"Alderwood? Smart enough to lock someone out of a ship?" snorted Greenface. He stopped laughing when Lionshine kicked up a cloud of red dust in front of his face. The white tom's suit soon became coated in red. "Hey!" he coughed, trying to protect his ventilator from the dust.

"Alderwood likes to lock things," Lionshine meowed quietly, staring at her paws. "Especially before taking naps..." 

"He's taking a nap in there?" Pebblepounce meowed doubtfully, but he looked uneasy. 

Lionshine nodded solemnly. "I'd wager it. So, back to my original point... does anyone have an emergency key? If you have it, we can get it through the rover garage, which would make this situation a whole lot easier. I'd like to go whoop that idiot's but-"

"Okay," interrupted Greenface. "I don't have the key. I grabbed the wrong suit." He pointed his tail at the name label on his chest, which was blank where it should've had his name.

"Neither do I," Shadepelt meowed, pulling out the fabric of her pocket.

"I lost the key when we were on Jupiter," Pebblepounce mumbled, staring at his paws. "S-sorry?"

Lionshine flopped in the dirt, her suit smudging with a rusty brown. "Great. We're going to die out here thanks to you cats being stupid and unprepared for obvious, probable situations. It was bound to happen at some point - Astro's horrible at organizing missions. We're all going to die!"

"Shut up, you're so melodramatic," groaned Shadepelt. "We'll be fine. We can wake up Alderwood. C'mon, his room is what... near the bottom of the ship?" She padded away from the door and the other cats, toward the opposite side. 

"Left," moaned Lionshine, the helmet of her suit pressed into the dirt. "It's closer to the left."

Shadepelt's eyes narrowed, but she followed instructions.

Inside the ship.

Alderwood was snoring, and Alderwood was dreaming. He could see the field of cotton candy in front of him, Fransnarf dancing in the pink and blue candy. "Come to me!" he called to his girlfriend, rolling over in his bed. "I love you Fransnarf!"

Outside the ship.

"Yep, we're going to die," confirmed Shadepelt. "I don't think anything could get him to wake up." 

She had already tried throwing several large rocks, Greenface, and a gravity-defying container of Greenface's vomit at the side of the ship where Alderwood was supposedly snoring. 

"Really? Aww, I wanted to see the last Harry Pawter movie," grumbled Pebblepounce. He joined Lionshine on the ground. 

"You know we had an Internet connection on the ship?" Greenface asked dizzily, still slightly sick from being thrown against the side of the ship. "It's a new wormhole technology invented just about a year ago - you'd know that if you did anything but play strange variants of popular board games."

"Yeah, but I was going to see it with my mom," Pebblepounce meowed.

"You hate your mom," interjected Lionshine, her ears twitching. 

"No, she hates me because she's homophobic," snifffed Pebblepounce. "Check your facts, Lionshine." 

"So that obviously means she'll want to watch a movie with you?" muttered Lionshine distastefully.

"Can we stop arguing about a movie and try to get back into the stupid ship?" hissed Shadepelt. "You guys know that Greenface's pills are inside, and he's going to start vomiting everywhere if we don't get some to him soon."

"It's getting dark," Lionshine pointed out. "Greenface's vomiting isn't as... significant as the fact that we're going to be stuck out here in the Martian night. Why don't we sleep under the ship?"

"I didn't know you could see the sky when you were lying face-down in the dirt for the last five hours," muttered Greenface.

by Rio.