Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan (easy readers txt) 📕

nothing like that. Their strong front legs ended in heavy claws for climbing. Their equally strong but shorter back legs had much smaller claws set in webbed feet.

It dawned on West that these creatures swam to get food and climbed to escape predators. The Secchi Crater was once a sea. Somewhere further down might be the fossils of those predators, but the odds were likely there would be relatively few of them and the sea would have preserved them less well than this cave.

West looked at all the small pits dug for breeding. Clearly, the soil was soft when there was water here. What surprised him was how close the pits were. Then he saw the teethmarks and the tadpoles bitten in half. The wall had breached between two pits, and the two adults had torn each other apart, seemingly stepping on their own young in the process.

“This was an environment under pressure. We’re looking at their last sols.”

He’d used the Martian word by habit, but it felt right. Their last sols, the first sols of human habitation.

They were kind of like a barrel-chested bulldog but with a completely different face. They seemed to have brought fresh water to their young in a throat pouch. They brought food in, too, in the form of — head, clawed hands, tail — only a rough parallel, but the headline would stick. Mermaids.Small, like a sea-born Rhesus monkey.

Gradually, an even greater truth swept over West.

“These aren’t fossils.” The color was right but much else wasn’t. He should have realized sooner. “They’re mummies, aren’t they?”

“They were probably freeze dried, Commander.”

“Earth Command has to know. But when they do, they’ll invoke Protocol I: We’re here for good.” No one said anything. “We can mine the gold we found and sell it for supplies and immigrants. With a bit of luck we can mine, melt, cool, and send a shipment at the next launch window.”

“Will they let us do that?” asked Casey.

“If Earth Command doesn’t like it, we’ll declare ourselves the Indigenous Republic of Mars.” He looked at the mummies in the pits surrounding him. “Their extinction has given us a forever.”

~~~

JASON COOPER was born in Fort Erie, Ontario, but grew up in Buffalo, New York. While in Buffalo, he attended a school for gifted youngsters when he was still a youngster, and gifted, and before the school closed. He went to Australia and got a Bachelor of Arts degree. He now lives in Perth with his daughter, Shadra, and his son, Darius. He has authored seven books, including the novel Slums of Paradise (Twilight Times http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/SlumsParadise_ch1.html). He has wrestled professionally twice, but in an unrelated accident injured his knee, and the reconstruction didn’t work too well.

Endless Power, Inc, had prepared Angel Perez for the physical dangers of harnessing the newest source of unlimited energy. But no one thought to prepare him for how to cope once his tour was up.

Hunting The Mantis

by Adam Knight

The needle jabs into Stomper’s arm and he grits his teeth. Amphetamine solution squirts into his artery and his heart thuds in his throat. Sweat bursts onto his face and his legs twitch. His brown pupils dilate. Light and shadow tangle among the arches and spires of rock. Starlight streaks across the blackness.

Stomper stands on asteroid C13398, which hurtles end over end and shudders with the impact of debris. Yet Stomper remains securely attached to the rock in his magnetized boots and bulky, pressurized suit. A six-pack of neutralizing spray cans dangles from his belt. The amphetamine boost — standard operating procedure — leaves him wide-eyed and twitching, drenched in sweat as the drugs filter through his lanky frame. Within a minute he feels like pure electricity. So do the four other men on the scouring crew, as well as clusters of men on hundreds of similar asteroids in the Belt, all employed by Endless Power, Inc.

“Clear it out!” shouts Splash, the squad leader. All five men scream in their helmets, charging headlong into the caverns of C13398. Zappy and Clown shine beams of light from the phosphorescent lamps mounted under their EP-19 blasters, scanning the surface of the porous rock. The rifle-style blasters fire non-lethal pulses of energy, the only projectiles of any use in the constantly spinning, shifting Asteroid Belt. Stomper and Custer prowl behind them in combat stances, wielding their J-4s. Those long, light, titanium-graphite blades do the killing. The five men move like fleas across the asteroid surface, turning their magnetized boots on and off, propelling into space and crashing to the surface. Space dust and distant stars whip across their vision.

“Report,” commands Queen Bee in the headset. He is in a distant, orbiting command station.

“Negative for Wasps and Spitters,” Splash replies.

“Nucleite?”

“Negative.”

“Damn,” says Queen Bee. “Keep looking. Activate scanners.”

Splash aims a beam of blue light at a distant patch of rock, which glitters.

“Bingo,” he says.

“Wasps ahead!” shouts Clown. The swarming Wasps are as big as labradors and camouflaged to the rock, with stingers like steak knives. Clown and Zappy lift their EP-19s. Two electric blue orbs smash into the Wasps, knocking them back. Stomper’s heart and brain buzz like live wires. He and Custer hold their J-4s in attack position and activate their boots. From a dozen meters up they crash toward the surface. Stomper’s empty stomach climbs into his throat. Like lightning bolts, they slam onto the Wasps, and the J-4s puncture the alien exoskeletons. Iridescent fluid sprays out and the bodies thrash. All around, dozens of hidden Wasps flutter. More EP blasts smash into the pests, and Custer and Stomper charge from one to the next, jabbing the blades into the armor, cracking the shells apart. Minutes later, inert Wasp bodies hover above the surface.

“Good work,” Queen Bee says. “If there are Wasps, there’s nucleite.”

Nucleite. The word has been so embedded into the men’s minds that hearing it spoken is like hearing one’s heart beat, or hearing one’s own breath. With their every sensor scanning and every eye probing the twisted lattices