A Merry Martian Christmas by Stuart Atkinson

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She told me - as I sipped the day's first coffee (which was delicious!) - that everyone else was already outside on a Drill, but they hadn't wanted to wake me cos I had obviously been so tired. But if I wanted to join them I could..? Did I?!! Half an hour later I was suited up and the airlock, where Lara was already waiting for me. Checking my suit, as I checked, she warned me that when she opened the outer door I'd be in a different world, it would be like nothing I'd ever seen before, or even imagined. I smiled politely, biting back what I really wanted to say - that I'd imagined how the pole would look since I was a baby thank you, I pretty much knew what to expect.

Then the door opened, and my own arrogance slapped me in the face. Hard.

White. The whole world was a blazing, crisp white.

I was on White Mars.

It's hard for me to describe what it felt like to be plunged into such an alien environment; I'm so used to being surrounded by what I guess you'd call the "traditional" colours of Mars - the reds, browns oranges and tans - that when I stepped out onto that snow-covered plateau I honestly felt a moment of panic as I told myself, ridiculously, that I'd been abducted in my sleep and taken to another planet entirely: Europa! I thought, staring at the vast expanse of ice all around me, I've been kidnapped and taken to Europa!

But no... looking more closely I saw that the plateau stretching away from me in all directions was smooth, its surface was flat, just plain ice and snow. There were no fractures or rilles or ridges anywhere in sight. So, I wasn't on Europa - maybe I was a tiny spaceman novelty figure stood on the top of a huge, iced cake..! :-)

I took a tentative step forwards, moving away from the airlock, and my eyes opened wide in surprise as I heard, and felt, my boots crunching down into the snow. That was so odd! Beyond "odd", it was Wrong! Unnatural! I took a few more steps, and gasped each time my boots sank into the ground with a softly-muffled scrunching noise as the snow compressed beneath my weight. I lifted up my foot and saw clumps of snow pasted over its sole and heel, and tried in vain to shake them off, balancing precariously on one leg, like a stork -

Then Lara started to lead me away from the airlock and away from the Outpost. We walked for ten minutes or so, scrunching through the martian snow. I felt like Scott, or one of those early Terran arctic explorers, the only thing missing was a sled behind me. Then the strangest thing happened - Lara told me to trust her, and to close my eyes. I wasn't at all sure about this; after all, I'd only met her an hour earlier, for all I knew she could have been a psycho or something... but she had been friendly until then I decided to take a chance, and squeezed my eyes tight shut.

The world went dark, and I felt her take my hand in hers and start walking forwards. I followed her blindly, taking small, uncertain steps, hearing only the scrunch-crunch-crisch of snow flattening beneath my boot soles -

Suddenly I felt hands on my waist, holding me steady, and wondered why, but didn't have time to ask why.