In the Shadow of the Stars
by J. F. Sebastian
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
After five minutes of preparations and adjustments to her suit, Jer finally allowed Rhea to launch herself towards the wreck, using her integrated propulsion unit. Feeling completely weightless for the first time, Rhea looked at the digital rendering of the debris field in front of her, feeling as if she had integrated yet another simulation. Playing with her guiding system, she accelerated and slalomed between twisted and torn pieces of wreckage, playing with the boosters’ intensity, until she hit a large piece of debris that sent her spinning.
“Careful there: you don’t want to impale yourself on something,” Jer commented.
“How long can we survive out there with a torn suit? Two minutes?”
“More or less, depending on your biology. My people were built for space, so I can survive longer, of course. That’s why Abaktas is sending me, the ship’s only engineer into the vacuum. You, on the other hand, don’t have that luxury. So be careful, okay?”
“I will. Hey, Jer?”
“Yes?”
“I heard the others say that you could be out here without your suit, is that true?”
“They really didn’t teach you much in that orphanage, eh? Yes, I can work suit-less in a vacuum, but wearing one reassures those who can’t. Also, I need the suit’s boosters to move around, so...”
“Now I feel stupid, sorry Jer,”
“Don’t worry about it. Now let’s get to business but remember: this might be a wreck site, but it still deserves respect.”
Worry, doubt... faith? Rhea perceived, surprised by the engineer’s curious attitude shift.
“Okay,” she said.
After ten minutes of unsuccessful scavenging, finding nothing but empty cabinets and drawers, Rhea had started to let her mind wander towards the black hole and Jer’s unusual emotions, when she found a container: a slowly moving, battered cube of corrugated metal about sixteen feet long on each side. She approached it carefully and stayed in front of it for a little while, pondering on her next action. She first thought about calling Jer or Abaktas, but she hesitated, for this was what was expected from someone like her.
So she pushed away her anxiety and moved cautiously around the cube, trying to look for details that might be useful, but found nothing. She was browsing the suit’s options to see if there was anything it could detect when she saw something on the thermal spectrum: an acid green shape glowing inside the dark-blue contours of the container. Something emitting heat.
“Jer?” Rhea said, suddenly feeling very much alone.
“Yes, Rhea?”
“I’m getting a heat signature.”
“What?”
“I found a container, and it seems that there is something in it. Something warm.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I think you should come and take a look.”
“Okay, I’m coming. Don’t move. Don’t touch anything.”
“Are you close?”
“Look up.”
Hovering in what, from Rhea’s perspective, was an upside down position about fifty meters above the container, Jer quickly rotated and came down to her, not even bothering to avoid a few articles of debris that bounced off him. Once he shared the same vertical direction as Rhea, he positioned himself next to her.
“Do you see it?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Jer said, getting closer to the object.
“Is that normal? Do you see that often?”
“No, not really... Captain? Are you getting this?”
“Yes, I’m checking it as we speak,” Abaktas said. “It doesn’t appear to be very hot, though.”
“Well ‘not very hot’ is still pretty hot for anything in space, Cap’. Are we certain that the wreck is that old?”
“Positive. Katu said they stopped building cargo ships like these about two hundred years ago. Any idea why something would still be producing heat after so many years?”
“No, not in a container like this,” Jer said, touching the pockmarked surface.
“Contraband? Something else? A power source maybe?”
“Hard to say from the outside, but two hundred years ago power sources were typically very hot or very cold. And they wouldn’t stay warm after such a long time,” Jer said.
“Okay, then. Rhea? Any idea in that little head of yours?” Abaktas said.
“No, sir. At first, I thought it could be something alive. But since it’s been there two hundred years... I guess I got my answer.”
“Could be some sort of heat-producing bacteria. We’ve seen that before. So what should we do, Cap’?”
“We’ll follow the protocol. Just bring the damned thing back. I’ll send a couple of stabilizer drones to give you a hand. We’ve wasted enough time already.”
“You sure?” Jer said.
“Yeah, we’ll take the necessary precautions. I want to know what’s inside.”
“You’re the captain.”
“You don’t think we should?”
“No, not really.”
“What about you, Rhea? Surely a kid like you would be excited to see what’s producing heat after two centuries, yes?”
“I don’t know, Captain.”
“You scared?”
“No, but I can tell that Jer is worried.”
“Don’t worry, kid, monsters don’t exist.”
“How do you know, sir?”
“I know. Captains know everything.”
“What about human monsters?”
“You read too many scary stories, kid.”
“I just hope you’re right, Captain,” Rhea said.
* * *
The first time Rhea had seen the Thanaku’s cargo-hold, it had reminded her of the orphanage’s garage workshop. The inner structure of the hold as well as most of the metallic objects within it were bleeding rust under a briny, gasping set of neon lights. Decrepit, smelling of wet corrosion and fuel, it was haunted by dead machines and clumps of withered artifacts.
Jer was standing on the right side of the container, his pressure suit still on for it always took him forever to get in and out of it. Beside him slithered Vikta, the deckhand, who was wearing only some sort of face mask and was using a vacuum-type machine to decontaminate the dark surface of the container with something that looked like liquid blue smoke. There was so much of that gas on the floor that Rhea couldn’t tell Vitka’s tentacles from the machine’s tubes.
Behind them, Abaktas suddenly banged against the window of the control room. “Vikta, how many times do I have to tell you? This decontaminant is not cheap. Could you please stop wasting it?” he said through the I-link.
“But it’s so pretty; it reminds me of home,” Vikta said, to which Abaktas said something that even the I-link couldn’t translate.
The deckhand spewed out more smoke then simply cast the machine aside.
“How are you feeling? Glad to be back to normal gravity?” Jer asked through Rhea’s private I-Link channel.
“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just—”
“You’re disappointed by your first experience of space?”
He turned towards her. Despite his enormous eyes and upturned mouth, Rhea could feel kindness and a hint of worry seeping off him.
“Yeah, I-I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Do you think it is because of your training at the orphanage?”
“I’m not sure, maybe. It’s just that I had dreamed about this day, and about the stars, for so long, you know? I thought that the conditioning wouldn’t make a difference, I thought I’d be able to feel something, you know? My own emotions instead of... what others feel.”
“But what were you hoping to feel?”
“I don’t know, Jer. The stars on Vör seemed so much closer and... magical. They were like wind crystals hanging above the snowy mountains. It’s that image that kept me going. Made me less alone. But what I saw today...”
While she was talking, Jer took a large blowtorch from one of the shelves and was about to cut the large bolt that kept the door of the container closed. On the far left corner of the room, Vikta was now foraging in a pile of tools while the decontamination tubes now lay scattered and crumpled on the floor.
“Yeah, no one realizes how empty and lonely space is until they actually get there. Okay, stay back,” Jer said, igniting the deep-cutter.
Rhea retreated as red sparks and blue flashes started to light up the hold. Suddenly, in those sharp color transfigurations, the large, dark brushed-metal box looked like a monolith surrounded by a band of differently-shaped alien explorers. She could feel the excitement, worry and even a bit of greed from the people around her, but nothing that came from her own self. She took another couple of steps back to retreat from the team. Since the I-Link feed was silent, she consciously tuned down her empathic receptors.
There was a sudden clanking noise as the rectangular piece of metal fell heavily to the floor grating.
“Here we go,” Jer said, taking a couple of steps back as a faint wall of mist suddenly cascaded from the container, unfurling on the floor like ghostly water.
Abaktas, standing behind the small window of the control room that he had temporarily filled with his own blend of warm wet mist, banged on it and said, through the I-Link: “Vikta! Get your damned spray off the floor and be ready.”
“Yes, sir,” chirped the deckhand through the I-Link.
Rhea was about to join her crewmates standing in front of the opening but stopped in her tracks when she suddenly heard Jer’s anxious voice in the I-Link.
“What in the known universe...” he said, emitting a sudden blue burst of fear.
“Jer? Vikta? What is it?” the captain said.
Looking inside the darkened container, Rhea didn’t understand what she was looking at. The floor of the metal cube seemed to be covered by thick strands of thin, stringy material, like a furry carpet in the middle of which emerged a skeletal silhouette that was partially covered by it.
Jer took a few steps forward and turned on his wrist lights, shining them on the figure inside the container. It had a round head, two closed eyes, a slightly protruding nose and a lippy slit that could have been its mouth. It had two partially concealed limbs and was essentially hairless, covered in a whitish, fragile-looking skin that seemed to be covered with tattoos, and looked dirty in the artificial light. Rhea also noticed two sagging mammary glands on its chest.
Two arms and two legs. Just like me, Rhea thought, but they look... wrong, somehow.
“Is that... hair, growing out of its head?” Vikta said with disgust.
“Looks like it. A lot of it. It’s bipedal too, it seems. Two arms and two legs. Like you, Rhea,” Jer said.
Rhea opened her receptors again, and felt something dark starting to brew inside the engineer’s mind.
No, it cannot be what I think it is, Rhea thought.
“Guys? What is it? I can’t see anything from here, and the faceplate’s images are crap,” Abaktas said.
“But the hair’s so long! It’s covering the bottom of the container!” Rhea said.
“Well, given enough time...” Jer said.
“What are you saying, Jer? That this thing’s hair has been growing for two hundred years? That it’s still alive?” Vikta said, unusually talkative.
“It was still warm when we picked it up,” Jer said.
“But it’s impossible! This is deep space! How can—”
“People, what in the-many-names-of-the-many-fake-gods is going on?” Abaktas interrupted.
There was a static-infused silence as the crewmembers remained silent for a few seconds, trying to make sense of the strangely familiar alien they were seeing.
“Cap’? I was right, we shouldn’t have messed with that wreck,” Jer said, a rumble in his voice.
“Jer, don’t make me ask again: what’s in the container?” Abaktas said, now brightly impatient.
But since Jer seemed unable to talk, it was Rhea who answered. “Captain... I think we’ve found a human.”
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by J. F. Sebastian
