by J. L. Wood
Jessica and Justin stared at the monitor in disbelief. The rocks were not rocks at all—they were made of something that was moving on its own, combining with others, reforming, and breaking off. The dust clouds contained all the outliers, circling around Lerner 4i, looking for an attachment.
Justin enhanced a monitor from the rear side of Pitch Jr. The animated rocks neared the satellite then shot straight up at a ninety-degree angle. They had a mind of their own. There was life in whatever this was, and it was aware that they were there. “They won’t collide with him!” Justin yelled. “They’re moving of their own volition!”
The small asteroids swayed left and right, teasing Don. “Houston, we have a problem!” Don yelled, not breaking focus.
“Buddy, listen up,” Justin said. “I want to try something, but I need you to trust me. Stop maneuvering Pitch Jr. Just let go of the control wheel.”
“Not on my watch. Do you have any idea how much this thing costs? There aren’t any clear spaces here to coast.” Don dodged another rocklike object as he tried to see through the thick black cloud that was beginning to collapse on top of the satellite.
“They’re not gonna hit you!” Justin cried. “Just trust me. Let go. Let go right now so we can get some pictures. We need to get you out of there.”
Reluctantly, Don released control of the wheel. The group watched as the satellite moved into orbit with the other particles and rocks. As the rocklike pieces moved back and forth, they never crashed into Pitch Jr. Some circled around it, some trailed it, but they never collided. Like a bed of ants, they shifted and moved, forming colonies, tightly combining with each other as if they were trying to create perfect tiny globes. Their movement resembled the fluidity of water as the brown lumps shifted and rearranged.
“Incredible,” Jessica whispered, staring at the thick cloud of particles. She leaned forward and spoke through the intercom. “Hey, Don, just stay put while we gather some data. And remember, do not, under any circumstance, break suit.”
“Yeah…yeah…” he replied, still staring at the swarm through the satellite’s camera feed.
Jessica flipped through the channels until she landed on a view from the side of the ship and stared in awe at the tiny creatures, as she decided to refer to them. She was proud to have come out here—proud to be on the team to discover a life-form outside of Earth. Although it wasn’t what anyone would expect, it was still something.
When anyone thought of aliens, they always thought of green men with large eyes and an agenda, because that was something their mind could grasp—creating something in their likeness. The people of Earth had been fooled. There was an infinite number of possibilities beyond Earth. The sightings in the tabloids were all people just looking to stir up chaos and earn a buck. This was the real alien, a swarm of creatures—a million anthills that probably held a million answers.
Justin pulled several freshly printed photos of the creatures and belt from the printer. “This is enough,” he said. “I have a full drive of the feed and more still photos. Forget the FRBs. Don needs to leave.” He tossed the photos on the table and then flipped through the video feeds again and settled on one of the rear cameras facing a large swarm. “We can’t bring Pitch Jr. back. It’s too risky bringing it here just in case anything attaches itself to the—”
Before he could finish, one of the creatures attached itself to the satellite’s camera, using long tubes with suctions at the ends that sprang from its core. Jessica zoomed in and gasped as the creature’s small mouth opened on the end of the camera, several rows of sharp teeth opening and closing, as if trying to devour the ship. Its circular body was covered in spikes, some longer than others, that stood erect. The body was brown, but the tips glowed a faint pink. It moved its long translucent tentacles over the camera lens, pulling its body behind while the teeth still gnawed at the lens.
“Jesus…fucking…Christ,” Justin whispered.
“Don, go to camera three,” Jessica demanded, concentrating on the creature.
Don flipped through the channels until camera three was on his main dash monitor. “What. The. Shit. I have…so many questions. For instance, why does this look like it belongs in the sea?” He paused for a moment. “We should send Junior to the thermosphere now.”
“No. We are aborting this mission,” Justin said over the intercom. “Leave Junior there and prepare to leave.”
Jessica looked at Justin, irritated. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She had been waiting for this moment her whole life. She was not going to just walk away. “No, this mission is not over. Send him to the thermosphere.”
Justin muted the intercom. “No. Don has no backup. No preparation.” His eyes danced wildly as he looked at his friend on the monitor. He flinched at the sight of the creature still attached to one of the satellite cameras. “It will take hours to get the imagery you want. Don needs to leave now. What we have is enough.”
“What am I doing, guys?” Don called over the intercom.
Jessica stared at the creature. “Compromise. We can’t take Junior back. The creatures could stay attached, and we can’t bring them with us. Let’s push through the thermosphere and crash Junior on the surface. We can get imagery along the way as well as get surface shots. We’ve come this far. Aren’t you curious? It will only be a few minutes.”
Justin clenched his teeth, then pressed the intercom again. “Don, we should send Junior down to the surface and see what that exoplanet has to offer. Maybe they have a mother beast down there. It’s not made for the journey, but we could probably get some sort of visual. Besides, Junior is compromised, and Cadence Science has insurance, so why the hell not?”
*
Don sent Pitch Jr. into the atmosphere of the exoplanet, causing his command board to light up with warnings.
“Caution,” Carrie stated. “Caution, satellite approaching unsafe temperatures.”
Don continued to push Junior onto the exoplanet, ignoring the warnings. The control wheel for the satellite became unresponsive, causing Pitch Jr. to barrel through the sky, eventually smashing onto the surface, pieces of it shattering and flying in all directions and landing on the smooth, sandy ground.
“Well, that was graceful,” Jessica said as she flipped through the video feeds, hoping to find a decent visual. The terrain seemed flat, as far as she could tell from the camera. There were no structures or mountains, just a smooth black sand-like ground devoid of any indentations or imperfections beyond the landing of the satellite. The sky was a light pink that faded into a calming purple as it met with the surface of the sand on the horizon. Jessica wished she were there to look up at the sky and run her bare feet through the sand, as if it were a hidden vacation spot.
“That one!” Justin yelled, snapping Jessica out of her daydream. “Don, fix four.”
Don moved the satellite controls for camera four around until it was focused on an object in the distance. “Better?” Don asked, staring at the object that was on his small monitor.
Jessica watched the monitor as Justin zoomed in on the object in the distance, until its structure was in full view. The brown object was slim and seemed to reach far into the sky. She couldn’t tell how large it was based on the distance, but from the design and size distribution, she assumed there was more of the structure underneath the surface of Lerner 4i. The base of it illuminated a blinding bright-pink hue that traveled toward its tip, then briefly subsided as if an electrical current were running through it.
Justin monitored FRBM83-L4I on the computer. “Looks like we found the source of the FRB after all,” he said. “A giant…tower?”
“What is that?” Don asked. “Why does this keep getting weirder? Did you get enough data?”
“There’s never enough data,” Jessica replied. “I honestly don’t know what to make of this. There’s a swarm of creatures around this exoplanet, and a giant tower is lighting everything up and sending radio pulses. But we have something—we were right, even if they
weren’t trying to contact us specifically, we found them.”
“The radio pulses are off the charts, and the repetitions are on point,” Justin said while taking notes in his leather journal. “It’s time to come on home, Don. Let’s get you going, then we’ll find a way to get this info to the NASA Collaboration. Let’s not give David the privilege of breaking this one. This is our finding.”
“Agreed,” Don said. He typed in the commands to start the Pitch’s engines again.
“Action denied. Thrusters not operational,” Carrie responded.
Don clicked through the error log. “Diagnose problem,” he requested, agitated.
There was a pause, and then Carrie continued, “Thrusters locked. The engine is corroded, Dr. Wolf.”
“Hey, guys,” Don said. “What’s going on here?”
Justin was already working on the problem. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I think you’re going to have to check it out. Maybe some debris got in there. Did you feel anything?”
“I didn’t feel shit,” Don said. He unstrapped himself from the seat and glided over to the exploration suits hanging from the wall of the ship. While holding one of the ship’s movement bars, he pushed himself into one of the bulky mustard-colored suits and pulled it up over his legs, then slid his arms through. He then put his hands on the bottom of his travel mask to unsnap it.
“Wait!” Jessica yelled. “Don’t do that!”
Justin pushed her away from the intercom. “The exploration helmet won’t fit if he doesn’t take it off. He has to. Calm down, or he’ll never get home.” Justin spoke into the intercom. “Go ahead, Don, and let’s do this real quick.”
Don unclipped the snap on the front of his helmet, twisted it to the side, and lifted it off. As he went to put on the space helmet, the shuttle shook and creaked, causing him to lose his balance. He jammed the large helmet on and snapped it closed.
“What was that?” he yelled, his breath fogging the front of the helmet.
Justin flipped through the video feeds on the shuttle and landed on a large cloud of the creatures from the asteroid belt just outside of the ship’s cabin.
“They’re at the Pitch,” he whispered. “Oh shit.” He hit the comm button. “Strap back in until we can figure this out.”
Don grabbed the oxygen hose and snapped it to his helmet. He then swam back to his seat and buckled himself in, taking huge breaths as the oxygen filled his suit.
Justin stared at the camera feeds from the cabin. The shuttle continued to shake and creak, dents forming on its interior. Through Don’s helmet feed, he could see the front glass of the ship. The alien-filled dust cloud that swirled around in tight concentric circles eventually covered the entirety of the Pitch.
Don gripped the arms of his chair as the ship began to violently shake, his head yanked back and forth as if he were on a rickety wooden roller coaster ride. The motion of the ship caused him to gasp for air in terror, and as a natural response, he unclicked his helmet and ripped it off.
“Put that back on, goddammit!” Jessica yelled through the intercom, slapping the hub command board with her palms, but it was too late.
Don stared straight ahead at the dark dust cloud that filled all of his visual feeds and front window to the ship. “Now I know,” he whispered as the ship began to crush inward like an old tin can, his body still shaking and whipping around in his seat like a coin being rattled and shaken about, his eyes fixed forward. The dust cloud pulled the ship through space toward Lerner 4d, through an identical creature-filled belt and finally tossed it down to the surface of the exoplanet.
“They’re coming for us,” Don whispered before the feed cut to static and all transmission was lost.
– 14 –
Transference
“OH MY GOD! NO!” Jessica screamed, flipping through the channels on the hub, all of them static. “We killed him!” She clicked the intercom. “Don! Don, are you okay? What happened?” she asked frantically, but there was no response. She banged the control board with her open fist and then tried going through the channels again. “Don. Don. Can you hear me? Report back.”
“He’s gone,” Justin said, saving the video feeds and data to a hard drive. “The creatures took him. We need to go.”
Jessica continued flipping through the channels, although she knew they would come up empty. “You don’t know that he’s gone! You can’t say that. The only thing you can say is that there’s no video, and until I see a corpse, Don is stranded down there.”
Justin pulled up the heart rate monitor on Don’s backup device. There was a drop in his heart rate. It was slow—he was still there but barely alive. “There’s nothing we can do from here. We need to go. We can get this data to NASA and try to procure a ship to retrieve him. It’s Sunday, so it will be difficult. Hopefully they can get the Collaboration involved.”
Jessica fumbled through her papers, trying to quickly collect them, but her mind was on Don, and in her wonder, her hands gradually released the stack of papers. The leaflets scattered about the floor of the hub as she stood blankly in a trance, forgetting any sort of urgency. “You were right,” she said. “We should have pulled him out earlier.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” Justin said as he picked up her papers.
Jessica continued to stare at the screen while Justin rushed about the hub, grabbing the rest of the paperwork and backup drives.
“You heard the man,” he said, gathering his personal belongings. “They’re coming for us. Do you get that? They are coming…for us, and if they can do what they did to that ship, just imagine what they will do to Earth. Now get your shit. We’re heading out.”
*
Jessica tried to rest the heel of her foot with her toes still on the gas pedal. Her foot was aching from the long drive, and she could feel her sneaker rubbing the back of her ankle raw.
Only a little while longer, she told herself, pressing the gas pedal down farther, the odometer in turn rising to ninety miles per hour, the fastest she had ever driven in her life. Her eyes darted left to right on the now-deserted Texas highway, hoping that no adventurous coyotes would jump out in front of her while Justin continued flipping through the reports from their mission, making notes in his old, worn journal.
The duo had sat in silence for nearly the entire trip to the satellite NASA station, neither of them ready to discuss what had happened to Don. His voice replayed in their heads. Now I know. A frightening repetition of what was to come.
Jessica shivered at the thought of Don alone on Lerner 4d with the creatures, terrified and vulnerable. “Try the phone again,” she instructed, eyes still fixed on the dark road ahead.
Justin pressed redial on his cell phone. “Still nothing. We’ve gone back to the Stone Ages. At this point, it feels like the phones are purposefully being jammed or are not getting fixed on purpose.”
Jessica thought about his comment. “You know, I’m willing to bet it’s all connected. It’s too big of a coincidence. Whatever we saw out there, the large structure, the illumination, the radio pulses, the repetition. It could be to disrupt our communications.”
Justin pulled a printout of one of the creatures from his stack of papers and held it up to Jessica. “How can this halt communications? What’s it gonna do? Use its little suction cup doodles on a keyboard?”
Jessica briefly glanced at the photo, then returned her eyes to the road, terrified that she would wreck her car, killing them both, leaving the whereabouts of Don Wolf a mystery. “Let’s not rule anything out,” she replied, swatting the picture away.
“We just saw a space urchin,” Justin said in disbelief.
“We did. Now, are you ready to terrify the world?”
Justin nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
*
Steven Schwartz leaned forward in his office chair, the printout of the creature in his hands, causing it to crinkle from his firm grasp. “And Donald Wolf is still out there?” he asked. “He could still be
alive?”
Jessica slowly nodded, now uncertain if that was still the case. She didn’t understand how he could have survived the descent onto the planet after being pulled through space and thrown onto the surface with no regard whatsoever. She watched as Steven flipped through the fast radio burst reports, occasionally resting his index finger on a data point and then letting out a sigh.
“This is strange,” he muttered, looking up at Jessica. “Don should have at least cleared this with us first—then he wouldn’t have been alone. We would have gone.”
Jessica pushed a printout of the tower across the desk toward Steven. “The last thing he said was, ‘Now I know. They’re coming for us.’ And this is what we saw on the surface of Lerner 4i.”
Steven stared at the photo. “What does that mean? ‘Coming for us,’ as in, coming here? Or coming for us as in destroying us? And was it like, ‘now I know,’ as in he saw something, and then ‘they’re coming for us’ because they told him?”
Justin shrugged. “I don’t know. It was like a ‘now I know, period.’ ‘They’re coming for us. Period.’ And to your point earlier, we sought out Don. We never expected it to turn into all of this. We just wanted quick visuals. Don is stranded on Lerner 4d, and the odd thing about his location is that we initially found eight FRBs, not nine. We didn’t realize there was a second FRB on 4d until Don was in Messier 83. His ship broadcast from that exact location before we lost signal. Can we get a ship from the Collaboration?”
“Most likely,” Steven said. “We have been looking for something like this for a long time. I can’t tell you more than that—the way you went about doing this was wrong, but I understand your intentions. I will see what we can do about getting Don as well as investigating this matter more in depth. Sit tight. I’ll call headquarters.”
“Call?” Justin and Jessica said in unison, dumbfounded.