by Geoff Nelder
The atmosphere was damper, cooler to his relief, and he could breathe easier. His headtorch illuminated the hole’s walls. He expected it to be full of roots, mud, stones and the occasional Keplerian worm, but it was remarkably smooth, yet not perfectly straight. Undulating but not so much he couldn’t see something of the hole above. He reached out to touch the sides, but another jerk and he dropped more. A series of falls with gut-wrenching sudden stops at least prevented his mind churning with what might have happened to Em.
He managed to reach the wall en passant. Not at all what a sinkhole should be and more like a plastic well, or no… not intestine. Surely. Yet a little slimy. He must remember to wash his hands before eating.
“Penn, are you receiving me? I can only hear crackles. Too much interference at this depth unless we are line-of-sight. Hope you can lean over a little? Anyway, this could be a well. All right, there’s no settlement on top now, but the forest might have overgrown and—”
Crackling noises. “…won’t be a well. Have to delay. Run out of vine. We’ll acquire another and tie on. Kick yourself a ledge to take weight.”
Gaston hoped that the wall wasn’t so artificial that it wasn’t kickable. Smooth mud would be better. However, once he’d swung himself within reach it was more plastic. He gasped at its warmth and a nasty thought wheezed up that it might be a vent from a volcano or furnace.
A savage kick at the wall sent him flying backwards so much his back hit the other side.
“Gas, keep still you idiot,” Delta yelled via their implant radios.
He could have argued, but hung there in silence instead. He thought to use his knife with a telescopic handle, but suppose he managed to pierce the wall? It would hardly afford sufficient purchase to take his weight and it might cause an ingress of whatever was behind it. Probably rock, but why a plastic sleeve? To keep water out? Or worse. Perhaps it was clay, a natural phenomenon though all the limestone sinkholes he’d seen on Earth were nothing like this.
Another downwards drop.
Too long. He accelerated. Nooooo.
The improvised airbag saved him from injury when he landed. Moving quickly wasn’t his forte, but he scrambled sideways almost instantly in case Em was beneath. She wasn’t. The ground was as smooth as the hole’s walls and stretched out in a tunnel in three directions. No sign of Em.
“Penn, Delta. I’m at the bottom. It is artificial. I’m going to look for Em. No sign of blood, or her pack. Heading in the direction of their town.”
He left the improvised air bag under the hole, obvious now that it was an air vent for the tunnel. The air was a little cooler. He checked his wrist sensors—18 Celsius compared to 28 in daytime on top. The light from the surface didn’t reach this far down, but his head torch was enough for him to see footprints on the thin dust. In spite of alerting the natives he decided to try a proper yell.
“Allo! Are you down there, Em? Shout, scream or switch on your radio! Allo! I mean hello!”
He heard, “…hello…lo…lo.” Plus something else after the echoes. After a few metres walking slowly as fast as he could, a blue glow grew in the fabric of the tunnel. Enough to see fifty metres ahead and that its width, floor and height varied. It reminded him of the last time he saw his own intestine via an endoscope. He turned off his headlamp and resumed progress, but now broke into a jog only to discover the light go out again. Ah, but the area in front welcomed him with its glow. A movement sensor? Pity the tunnel wasn’t straight so he could see far ahead. One of Suppose We’s QM marbles would have been useful for zipping ahead, finding and mapping.
Finally, he heard Em’s voice through his implant, but… “Gas, keep away. Keep away. Go back.”
“Em, mon amour, what has happened? I must be close to you. Ah, you’ve turned off your radio, or something has.”
Perhaps he should not run around blind corners. He slowed to a brisk walk. There might be unfriendly creatures, or a giant ball rolling towards him á la the ancient movies.
“Penn, can you hear me? Hopefully, you or Delta, or both are—”
“Gaston, it’s Delta. Penn, being our mightiest, is staying on top in case he needs to haul us back up. I’ve brought a repeater so he can hear me. Have you sight of Em?”
“Mais, Penn? Tell him to come down. Does he know it is a system of tunnels? We might not return to the same entrance-exit.”
He approached a bend, slowly because light remained in the wall, so Em might be close, or something else was.
He whispered, hoping not to alert whatever had scared Em, but enough for Delta to pick up. “She has warned me to keep away and she sounded scared. I’m continuing slowly.”
“No, Gas. Stop and wait for me. Safety in numbers. Promise?”
Of course, she spoke with logic, but he acted with his heart. Holding his breath, he shuffled, inching round the bend watching his viewpoint lengthen with each step. Pausing to breathe, and attempted to quieten the cauldron in his stomach, simmering from nerves, he detected a metallic odour. His left hand hesitantly touched the curved wall leaving him undecided whether it was plastic or an alloy. It pressed in a little when he poked. He snatched his finger away, trembling with the memory of his right hand’s absorption by the tree. Forward again, into the curve and he saw a yellow lump perhaps a hundred metres distance. Em’s backpack was that colour.
He didn’t need the radio implant now. He called, not too loudly, “Em, are you all right?”
“I told you to wait, Gaston.” Delta’s rebuke, reinforced by her grip on his elbow, didn’t divert his eyes on what must be Em ahead.
“Her pack is there and I hope she is too.” He pointed.
Delta stood at his shoulder, narrowed her eyes then brought up her viewer for magnification.
“Yes, but we should wait for Penn. Surprisingly he agreed with you.”
Gaston was impatient. “We should go immediately, Em is there, is she not, floored? Penn can aid us.”
Delta’s hold on his elbow tightened. “You suspect she’s been attacked by something? Did she tell you?”
Ah, Delta hadn’t heard everything.
“Em said to come quickly, but to faire attention – erm, be careful,” he lied.
He shrugged off her hand and strode out. He started off with zeal, a rescue-mission-leader, but after five steps his boots found difficulty in lifting off the floor.
“Delta, stay back, something is happening to the floor ici. Or gravity is increasing.”
“Not gravity, even local, although it has increased a little to point seven. Here’s Penn.”
The big man’s voice boomed around the tunnel, and probably all the tunnels connected, scaring wildlife over half the planet. “Gaston, you idiot, stop where you are.”
“Em is in trouble.”
“Sure she is. I don’t want to lose her, our party is too small as it is, but blundering into difficulties won’t help her. No, don’t return just yet, we need to know what’s happening. Stay still and probe the surface with…whatever.”
Gaston took off his pack placed it on the floor and rested his good arm on it while his feet tap-danced a circle. “It is firm behind me, but tacky in front. Em, can you hear us?”
He was sure he saw the yellow pack in the distance gain height a little. “Gas, I told you to stay away, go back!” Her voice quivered as if cold, but probably in fear or shock.
Delta whispered in his ear, after she and Penn came up behind him. “You’re sneaky, Gaston. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“We cannot abandon you, Em,” Gaston called, “The floor – are you stuck?”
“Yes. I am about ten centimetres into the rubber-cum-tarmac substance and sink more when I try to move.”
“Je comprends, hold still—tight—and we’ll get you out.”
Delta opened wide her arms. “Classic man-in-quicksand scenario.”
“Yeah,” Penn added, “we need planks and rope, and guess what?”
Gaston frowned. “We have neither, but be
tween us we have the cleverest human brains on the planet.”
Delta scratched on the wall with her knife. “If only that meant something, Gas. Hey, this wall material. Gives me an idea.”
Penn stood beside her and dug in with his knife too. “I don’t think we have time to dig a parallel tunnel to reach her.”
“No, Commander, look the tunnel is quite narrow in its convolutions near Em. We make foot and handholds on either side. And the lightest one…” They both looked at the Frenchman, who spluttered.
“Un moment! You can’t expect me to hang upside down from the roof.”
“Em,” Gaston called while he hung upside down above her. He wore their only pair of crampons on his boots. He’d grinned with relief when he first tried them. The spikes drilled into the wall and sent out miniscule hooks, along with a spider emulation with temporary stickiness. “Em, wake up, I’m above you. We need the ladder in your pack.”
Her eyes slowly opened, brightening Gaston with their sapphire blueness.
“You came for me, you disobedient monster. I don’t know, Gas… this stuff I’m in… it’s sapping my strength… my will… I’ll try…”
His initial euphoria at upside-down hiking transposed to concern then worry as the minutes dragged by. He imagined movement in his boots. He was packless, jacketless and even the deep trouser pockets emptied of gravity-hungry items such as snacks, tweezers, lenses, small sample boxes and electronic gadgets.
Eventually, they anchored the ladder across the three metres width of the tunnel just above Em, and with her head and arms between rungs, hauled her up. A now-what-moment set up a panic in Gaston as he forgot the next stage. However, when Penn and Delta detached the ends of the ladder and while keeping it taut walked back down the tunnel, he climbed back too doing his bit to support Em.
The four of them stood at the exit of one of the other tunnels. Unlike the first, lights permanently lit the uneven and narrow cavern. Gaston had noticed slimy swathes of blue-green algae on the walls making him wonder if like cyanobacteria on Earth it released oxygen. Perhaps the gunge in which Em had been trapped was the same, perhaps growing out of control. Even so it was too much like the hand-eating tree, or bacteria, for Gaston to be anything but exceedingly cautious. The occasional bead of worry sweat precipitated to the floor adding something human to its chemistry. Dwelling on the local biology and its activity, perhaps there were no mammals here because the flora’s microbes ate them.
“Em, I need to examine the slime on your trousers. Ah, look. Even without a microscope you can see tiny bacteria, peut être huge prokaryote. They might find you as delicious as I. Best to disrobe. Wash all of it off.”
“I have no spare pants, Gaston, have you, Delta?”
Nevertheless, she took off her boots and everything waist down. Nudity, was no biggie between space crew. Delta helped her wash and Penn gave her a pair of shorts. Gaston wiped as much as he could off her boots.
Penn used a large specimen bag for Em’s trousers. “We can’t discard anything. We’ll wash them in a stream or whatever. We’d better keep an eye out for this bacteria stuff.”
Gaston placed a tiny sample of the large bacteria on the back of his good hand. He couldn’t expect the others to be guinea pigs. He’d already been one with his other hand, but perhaps it wasn’t’ this bacteria and Delta scraped and washed it all off back then. He drew a centimetre diameter red circle around the microorganism and mental noted to keep watching it.
He noted a large patch of fluorescent bacteria on the left wall.
He checked his wrist instruments. Oxygen levels in the tunnels nearly reached twenty percent, one higher than in the open on this planet, reinforcing his hypothesis on the algae—or similar. Caves held less oxygen than open air on Earth. He wondered how much mild hypoxia was affecting the others out in the open. The mild breathlessness, he’d put down to his poor fitness and the headache he awoke with could be symptoms. He’d not bothered the others in case they started worrying, but it would be important eventually.
Outside, three hundred metres ahead and fifty metres below the elliptical exit nestled the settlement they’d viewed from their orbiting sensors. The so-called runways couldn’t be seen. Perhaps they came and went with daylight. Blooms changing their look explaining why the orbital remote sensing missed the phenomenon though a sheet of stratus cloud might also have hidden them.
No obvious means of egress showed itself. Gaston leaned over the mossy edge. A little woozy now, which surprised him as he’d not experienced vertigo before. None had in the missions or they would not have deemed to have ‘the right stuff’.
“Hold on to me, Penn, si’l vous plait, I desire to inspect our way down. Looks like we might need to return to cut more lianas.”
Delta looked over. “The ladder will reach most of the way. And I see plenty of creepers. We can either haul some up to fashion a knotted rope or use them as footholds. I’m game for the latter.”
Gaston was about to advise a more cautious plan, but found himself the only one left. He lay on his stomach to watch three heads bob on their way down, the cool moss wetting his shirt through to skin. He was distracted by a blue caterpillar-like creature, as long as his hand, nibbling a glossy near-circular green leaf.
“They don’t appreciate, mon ami, that I no longer possess two fully-functioning hands. Pardon? I should do as you do? I don’t think crampons work well on ladders and ivy. Ah, but I can use carabiner hooks, linked on my belt and onto a small grapple. Good thinking. Merci. Enjoy your pique-nique.”
Gaston scrambled over the edge, the handle of the grapple in his mouth. A thought flit by that he could have been a Hollywood pirate. The ladder swayed and banged against the rock and ivy, but it soon run out, forcing him to use his healing right hand to deploy the hook after he’d wrapped its lanyard around his shoulder. To his surprise an arm came around behind him and something luscious found his neck.
“You don’t think we’d forgotten about you,” Em said, “My God, you did. Look at your improvisation. Come on, Gas, there’s an old rusting ladder to your right. Implies there were non-flying creatures with arms and legs with the acumen and tech to make it a while ago, yes?”
“Si’l vous plait, allow me to see!” His exuberance caused his foot to stretch out and flounder, his other foot left the last ladder rung too soon, and he fell.
Em screamed and grabbed at the grappling hook.
Delta screamed, “Idiot, but you’ll be all right Lay back, Penn will catch you. Won’t you Commander?” They looked down, Gaston in mid-flight.
Penn was nowhere to be seen.
Gaston half panicked, half floated on his back through the Kep’s low gravity. He’d undone his jacket and held it open to reduce his terminal velocity, but just as he thought of extracting a large poly specimen bag, he crumpled into an orange-blossomed bush that sank a metre releasing an overwhelming fragrance akin to a rich port before the plant pushed him up again.
He lay there, breathless, looking up at the lilac sky decorated with streaks of green cirrus. His gaze dropped to the cliff-face, spotting the tunnel entrance. No decorative markings around it—so different to the way a Victorian architect would have designed it. Penn climbed down the ladder and paused holding his hand out to the right.
Gaston’s gaze followed and saw that the supposed antique ladder extended laterally and only partly downwards. It was a lattice growth of an old creeper. Just as they were building up knowledge of the local’s possible history, it was taken away. At least they had the tunnels.
He rolled over to his left, grateful this wasn’t a barbed bramble bush, and stood on uneven ground. He allowed his breathing to return to normal, even though that meant slightly breathless on Kepler-20h. In the meantime, he inspected his experiment. The bacterial grey patch on his hand had shrunk to nearly nothing. Perhaps he’d scraped it on his descent, or more hopefully, it rejected humanity, or vice versa.
Em rushed over.
“I can hardly contain my
self. They’re coming, Gas, the locals. Three of them kind of gliding towards us and not walking on water this time.”
CAPTAIN’S NOTES
I test my air-worthiness. It wasn’t difficult to scavenge from the wreckage of Suppose We to fashion quadruple rotors, powered by a drop of the spaceship’s recyclable fuel, regenerated by sunlight. I have eyes, ears, touch, olfactory, taste-in a way—and all remotely along with various detectors.
I labelled myself CAN, an irony.
Suppose We’s radiation leak is becoming critical. Assistance required. The inner hold must remain intact.
I have yet to unlock the complete data in Commander Penn Booth and the others although vagaries in the electromagnetic field in synergy with other phenomenon might beat me to it, especially in Science Officer Gaston Poirier. Organics possess unreliable dynamism, a random quantum effect.
Satellite observation indicates ordered life markers 111.2 kilometres northwest. They do not respond to the protocol array of radio transmissions across all frequencies. This is not a surprise as a zero response was returned when Science Officer Gaston Poirier tried periodically when the giant sphere was destroyed until Suppose We left orbit.
Alternative communication techniques will be needed.
Signed CAN (as opposed to CANNOT)
Date: Earth January 16th 3645 Kepler New 7 days
Gaston stared open-mouthed at the three beings coming towards him, now two-hundred metres away.
Planetary expeditions had not met alien lifeforms face-to-face before. Penn’s brother had died towing a seemingly abandoned alien craft. It’d become personal, but surely out here light years away, it would be different aliens and a different mindset for Penn to adopt. Worries about his commander’s attitude were sublimated for the time being by nausea. Gaston was so exalted by this experience, his stomach threatened to rebel.
Em put her arm around Gaston. “Are they like the one you saw before that apparition went all sparkly and vanished?”