Mars Life by Ben Bova

cracked, the room shook as if struck by a sudden earthquake. Books slid off the shelves.
    “What the hell was that?” Dex hollered.
    Jamie saw black smoke billowing above the campus buildings outside his window, then heard the wail of sirens. Footsteps pounded by in the corridor outside his door.
    “Jamie, are you okay?”
    “Yeah,” Jamie answered shakily, staring at the rising smoke. “I’ll call you back, Dex.”
    He rushed to his door and yanked it open. The corridor was empty now. Hurrying downstairs, Jamie saw that the lobby of his building was a blackened, smoking ruin, windows shattered, doors punched in, ceiling tiles dangling precariously. In a few minutes, firefighters and campus police officers were hauling bodies outside, where ambulances were pulling up. People were screaming, crying, bleeding.
    Jamie helped lift the bloodied, mangled bodies of students and staff people out into the sunshine. A crowd was growing outside the yellow tapes the campus police were stringing across the parking lot. City police were arriving. A SWAT team van squealed to a stop.
    “Goddamn towel-heads,” one of the campus cops muttered as they tenderly laid the dead body of a young female student on the concrete. Her legs had been blown off. Jamie fought down the urge to throw up.
    It seemed like hours, but Jamie’s wristwatch told him that hardly thirty minutes had passed since the explosions. Television vans were pulling up. Helicopters thuttered overhead. The lobby of the Planetary Sciences building was a twisted, shattered mess.
    His pocket phone jangled. Straightening up, he fumbled in his jeans pocket for it, flipped it open.
    “Are you all right?” Even in the phone’s minuscule screen he could see the wide-eyed fright on Vijay’s dark face.
    “I’m fine, honey,” he said, wiping at his sweaty brow.
    “You’re not hurt?”
    “No. They bombed the lobby. I was in my office.”
    “They said on TV that four people were killed.”
    Jamie glanced at the bodies laid out in a row. “It’s more than that.”
    “But you’re okay?”
    Nodding, he replied, “Yes, I’m fine.”
    “Your face looks bruised.”
    He almost smiled at her. “Dirt, more likely. I’ve been helping get the bodies out of the lobby area.”
    “Come home, Jamie. That’s where I’m heading, right now.”
    “The police’ll probably want to ask me some questions. I’ll get home soon’s I can.”
    “I love you, dear,” said Vijay.
    “Same here, love.”
    He clicked the phone shut, returned it to his pocket. And felt the bear fetish that Grandfather Al had given him all those years ago. It didn’t make him feel any better, any safer.
    One of the paramedics came up to him, pulling off his latex gloves. “That’s the last of the bodies. Thanks for your help’”
    He took the man’s proffered hand, then walked off a ways, feeling stunned, numb. Who would do this? he asked himself. Why?
    A city policeman stopped him to take his name and phone number. “The investigators’ll wanna talk to you. You’re not plannin’ on leavin’ town, are you?”
    Jamie couldn’t help a wry grin. “Only to Mars,” he murmured.
    “Huh?”
    “No,” he said, more distinctly. “I won’t be leaving town in the next couple of weeks.”
    “Okay, good,” said the police officer.
    “Any idea of who did this?”
    The policeman shook his head. “Hasn’t been anything like this since the troubles in the Middle East, back when I was in the Army.”
    “Was this the only building hit?”
    “They got the astronomy building, too. Over on the other side of the campus. And one other. Three, altogether.”
    And then Jamie realized who had set off the bombs. Oh my god, he repeated silently as he walked stiff-legged alone around the Planetary Sciences building to a side entrance. Oh my god. It wasn’t Islamic fundamentalists. We have our own fanatics right here at home.
    He picked his way through the litter in the hallways and entered his own office. It was