Finding Satori
A Starship Satori Short Story
Kevin McLaughlin
Role of the Hero Publishing
Contents
Finding Satori
Finding Satori
John stumbled and fell. The leg of his space suit made a horrible noise as it slid along the rock he’d tumbled into. He reached out with both hands to break his fall, catching himself on the same rock formation before he went down completely. His eyes were glued to the small heads-up display panel inside his helmet. If his suit was compromised, the readout would start flashing red warnings. It was still green.
He held his breath another moment, but the light remained green. John exhaled, sagging a little in relief.
“You OK?” Andrew asked from behind him.
“Yes. Just banged my knee a bit. Suit is still fine,” he replied.
“Why come out here at all, John? It’s not like we can’t do the survey without you. We can bring all the data back to the shuttle, and you can go over it from there,” Andrew said. “Safely.”
John shook his head. How to explain? Andrew hadn’t even been born yet when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the surface of the moon. But John Carraway could remember it. He’d been young at the time, but that feeling of excitement, of just knowing that anything was possible, it had stuck with him. It was part of what kept him reaching for the stars.
To actually be out there, walking on the lunar surface, exploring things that no human being had ever seen before? It was a rush, no denying it. There was no way he was sitting this one out back on the ship. Even if he did slow the younger, more spry members of the team down a little bit.
But there was more to it than that. The initial sonar scans of the caverns had been damned peculiar. Sonar reflected back differently based on the density of the material the sound waves passed through, which made it ideal for finding large natural caves. These caves were singular, though. They showed some very odd areas of much higher density. Pockets of an ore that might be mined and manufactured, perhaps? It was impossible to say without getting eyes on the site and taking some samples.
“I’m safe enough with you here to look out for me,” John said.
“If you say so,” Andrew replied. “We should be nearing the entry point for the caves.”
“Right over here, sir,” Dylan called out, beckoning the others to come closer. He was standing just in front of a meter wide hole in the moon’s surface.
There were four men in the expedition. Two sets of buddy teams. John was partnered with Andrew. Being the boss had some benefits, and one of them was picking his teammate. That left Dylan and the other man, Kyle, working together.
Everyone on the team had been picked for their spelunking ability and experience in microgravity. Well, everyone except John, anyway. He wasn’t what you’d call a cave enthusiast. There he was looking for a good cave to set up shop in, though. Natural caves were the idea place to put a lasting human settlement on Luna. The rock would block much of the radiation coming from space. It would also help protect the base against sudden decompression by limiting vulnerable places where the base contacted vacuum.
All he needed to do was find the right cave: one structurally sound enough to become the core of his new base, nearby a good concentration of water ice, and close enough to the helium-3 he would be mining.
This cave ticked off two of the three. All he needed to do was check the structural integrity of the caves, see if they were stable enough to not come crashing down on their heads when they began work expanding them. John had a vision of what this place could be, with enough work. Now it was time to see if the reality could be made to match his dream.
Andrew and Kyle went about setting up an anchor for their ropes. They’d have to climb down, and then get out again. Even with the low lunar gravity, John could see that the ropes would be necessary. He peered into the hole and saw only darkness. Yanking a chem-light from a pocket, he snapped the thing to activate it and then dropped it into the hole. It plinked against the bottom. It was only about a fifteen foot drop. Too far to jump back out, but getting down was another matter.
He took another step forward into the void. All at once John was dropping. He landed, soaking the impact with his knees, which groaned in protest. Johns heart was thumping away rapidly. No matter that the gravity was a fifth of Earth’s. His mind still told him that he was falling from a dangerous height, even if he wasn’t. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and peered around.
“John! You OK?” Andy asked from above.
“No problem,” he replied. “Big cave down here.”
The rope dropped down behind John. Andrew slid down it a moment later. John could see his young friend’s glare through the space-suit’s faceplate and stifled a short chuckle.
“You should have waited,” Andrew said.
“I’m perfectly fine,” John replied. “You can stop the mother-hen routine.”
“It’s my job to keep you safe, and I can’t do it if you take reckless risks,” Andrew replied.
“Very well,” John said, turning his head aside so Andrew would miss the smile he couldn’t otherwise conceal. He was very fond of the young man, but sometimes Andrew took his duties too seriously. “I’ll be more careful.”
Andrew made a scoffing sound. “That’ll be the day.”
John heard the other two men descending as he glanced around the cavern. It was a decent size, and from what he was seeing it seemed fairly stable. The true test would be in the readings their instruments gave them, but he didn’t see any obvious signs of cave-ins or much debris. The moon was tectonically stable, but they’d need to bring heavy construction equipment into the caves to expand them. If the site wasn’t up to handling that, he’d need to find another.
There were two passages leading away into the dark, one on either end of the big cave. Judging by the sonar scans, the one off to his right ought to lead down toward the strange density readings the scan had found.
“Andrew and I will go that way,” John said, pointing off to his right. “You two check out the other passage. Report back anything unusual. We’ll rendezvous here in an hour.”
“Will do, boss,” Dylan said.
John turned to start in the direction he’d chosen. At first, he’d assumed these caves were old lava tubes, left over from when the moon was a cooling ball of molten rock. Looking at the walls now, he wasn’t quite as sure. They were smoother than they ought to have been if they’d been formed by heat. He ran a hand along the wall, wishing that he could feel the surface with his fingers. The gloves of his space-suit were too thick to get much detail.
He continued along the passage, Andrew following close behind. It cut down at a slight angle. The suits had large lights built into the helmet, which illuminated the pitch black cave, their beams cutting through the gloom like lasers. The caves gave John a sense of incredible age, like he was exploring some long-abandoned crypt.
All at once the beams were lighting nothing. John stopped, holding up a hand to alert Andrew. The cave floor ended abruptly, dropping off into darkness below. He couldn’t see the far side of the hole, nor did his light reach far enough to see the bottom.
“Some sort of ravine or bigger cavern,” John said.
“We’ll need the ropes to continue,” Andrew said. “I’ll go back for one.”
“Sounds like a plan,” John replied. He knelt down near the edge of the cliff face, running a hand along the stone. It was cracked, crumbling. “The rock is damaged here. Going to be hard to place a piton.”
John shifted his weight to stand again. But before he could step away from the
edge he felt the rock shift beneath his feet. Acting on instinct, he froze, not wanting to disturb the rock any more than he already had. But it was too late.
The edge of the cliff tumbled away beneath him. He tried to dive back toward Andrew. There was nothing to push off from. The rock under his feet was already gone, dropping toward the darkness below. John shouted something inarticulate and lunged for the cliff face, hoping to grab onto something, anything that might save him from the fall. He saw Andrew reaching out a hand toward him, but he was simply too far away.
John bounced off the cliff wall as he tumbled into the depths of the cavern.
John woke to flashing red lights and a harsh beeping alarm. His eyes fluttered open, then closed again. For a long moment he didn’t recall where he was, or what was going on. Then it came back to him with a rush. The cave exploration. The cliff face. His fall. Which meant those alarms weren’t just an annoyance. He was in real danger.
He forced his eyes open. The red light was from his HUD, which was flashing an atmosphere alert. The audible alarm was the same. The rushing noise he heard was the reason for both alarms. His suit was venting atmosphere. It must have torn during the fall! The suit was trying to compensate, pushing extra air in to replace what he was losing, but it could only do that for so long before his reserves ran out.
He had minutes left, if that. Judging by the rate he was losing air, he couldn't have been out too long, maybe a minute tops. Much longer and it would have been too late. He would simply never have woke at all.
John took a deep breath, trying to steady his hammering heart. He needed to calm down and think the problem through. First thing, he had to find out where the air was leaking from. The face plate of his helmet seemed intact. He looked down over the rest of his suit. The helmet light gave him enough illumination to see a steady trail of mist rising from his right thigh. He grabbed the spot in his gloved fist, and the leak slowed some.
A heavy thud yanked his attention away from the suit tear. John looked up and exhaled heavily in relief. It was Andrew. He'd jumped down. The noise was his boots connecting with the ground.
"Never been so happy to see you," John said.
"Wasn't sure what I was going to find when I hit bottom," Andrew said. "I couldn't see you at all."
"What do you mean?" John asked.
"Later. Can you climb?"
"Not right now. Suit tear. Got it to slow down, but it needs a patch," John said.
"Let me take a look," Andrew replied. John removed his hand from the hole, and air gushed out again. The alarms in his helmet were giving him a headache. Andrew peered at the rip, then carefully folded over a chunk of the suit, hiding the torn spot inside a double fold of material.
The alarms faded, and the air loss went to a barely audible hiss. Andrew pulled a roll of tape out, and wrapped three coils of it around John's leg, covering the torn area of the suit.
"That will hold, provided you don't try any fancy athletics. A better patch will have to wait until we have you back in a breathable atmosphere," Andrew said.
"Athletics - like climbing a cliff wall?" John asked.
Andrew made a face. "Yeah, I don't think you'll make the climb with that kind of damage to your suit. I'll radio for the other team, have them grab ropes."
There was a click inside John's helmet as it registered Andrew broadcasting on another channel. They were all set up for two channels - one private to each team, and the other a general radio frequency so that all four explorers could reach each other if need be.
"Kyle, Dylan, we've got an issue here. John's suit is damaged. Going to need you to bring me the ropes, please," Andrew said.
There was no response. Andrew repeated the message, but still nothing came back to them.
"Let me try the shuttle," John said. The fifth member of their team had remained behind there as backup. "Carmen, you hearing our call? We need assistance down in the cavern."
No response.
"We must be too deep," John said. "They're not hearing us through the rock."
"I'm not so sure that's the case. When you fell, I went to the edge to see if I could spot you. But you'd vanished," Andrew said. "I dropped a chemical light down, but it just disappeared too."
"How did you know to jump down, then?" John asked.
"I crossed my fingers that whatever was causing things to disappear from view was near wherever the bottom was," Andrew said. "Also, I knew that if you weren't responding to my radio calls, you were likely in trouble."
"I never even heard your calls," John protested.
"That's what I was afraid of. Something very weird is going on. First you vanish from sight, when I should have been able to spot you - we're only about twenty feet down," Andrew said.
Twenty feet. So close to getting out and back to the relative safety of the shuttle, but it might as well have been twenty miles. The rough patch Andrew had put in place wouldn't last for even half the climb, and he'd be out of air long before he could reach the top. John glanced over at the meter on his wrist showing his remaining oxygen. He was already halfway into his reserves. No, a climb wasn't going to work.
"You think whatever was blocking your vision is also blocking radio waves?" John asked. That didn't make any sense. Nothing ought to be able to do that. But then again, there were those strange sonar readings they'd gotten. Half the reason he'd been so excited about exploring this cave was the chance they might run into something new and unique. It was increasingly seeming like they'd done precisely that.
"It's the only thing that makes sense," Andrew said. "Even if it doesn't make sense. Best bet is probably for me to climb out and go get the ropes myself. I'll be back as fast as I can."
"You'd better hurry, then," John said. "I lost most of my reserve through that tear."
"How much time you have left?" Andrew asked, leaning in to look at the meter. Two glowing red bars showed the bad news.
"Maybe ten minutes, if I breathe really shallowly?" John said with a dry chuckle.
"I'll hurry," Andrew said. "Hang on."
"Not really going anywhere," John replied. He sat down on the ground, figuring to conserve air by moving around less. He'd found a mystery all right, but the discovery was dangerously close to killing him.
Andrew began climbing the cliff wall. It should have been an easy climb in the low gravity, but John watched his friend have to retrace his path more than once to avoid some section where the rock had become brittle and threatened to break away at a touch.
By the time Andrew had reached the top, the last red bar on John's wrist flickered out. His air was gone. All he had left was what was inside his suit, and that was still slowly leaking out through the partially sealed tear. He looked up at Andrew, who had finally made the top. His young friend was waving at him, and John thought he must have been trying to say something through the radio. If he was, nothing was getting through. Andrew paused on the cliff edge for only a moment before rushing off down the tunnel, back toward the surface where their ropes waited.
John did a little mental math. Best possible pace, Andrew could make it up there in five minutes. Another five to get the rope. Another five back. Then he would have to fix the rope in place, climb back down, haul John out and get him back to the ship. John wasn't going to have enough air to last until he returned. It wasn't even a close thing. He'd be dead before Andrew even got back to the edge. The air he inhaled was already becoming thin and cold.
"If I'm going to survive this, I'm going to have to be a self-rescuing princess," John muttered to himself. He activated his radio, hoping that it might get through. "Andrew, can you hear me? Dylan? Anyone?"
There was no reply, but he hadn't really expected one. Whatever strangeness was blocking the radio seemed fairly complete. John brought his knees in toward the rest of his body, careful not to dislodge the tape wraps holding the tear closed. He had little enough air remaining in his suit. He couldn't afford to lose even a single breath.
His foot slipped on
the dusty surface, sending his knee down to bang painfully against the rock he was sitting on. The slip brought his entire body crashing down, his face-plate grinding into the dust. John heard a loud sound like a big bell ringing through the contact between his helmet and the surface. Which was odd. That wasn't at all how rock ought to sound. It sounded hollow.
John brushed some of the dust clear from the rock beneath him, and discovered that it wasn't rock at all. It gleamed, reflecting his suit lights back to him with a bluish shine. It was some kind of metal alloy. And those bumps, which had felt like protrusions in the rock? He brushed away the dust there, too. They were creases or joins in the metal.
This wasn't possible. If he hadn't been seeing it with his own eyes, he'd never have believed it. This thing couldn't be man-made. There had never been a landing anywhere close to this place. He was sure of it. John had studied every lunar landing and expedition in preparation for this mining venture.
"Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true," John muttered to himself. This was a constructed thing, made by machines. Either there was some other mission so secret that he hadn't been able to find out about it, or someone other than humans had built the thing he was sitting on. The more he uncovered, the more certain he was that he was sitting on the outer hull of some sort of spaceship.
John continued brushing more dust off the thing. The air in his suit was growing thin. This discovery might be marvelous, but unless there was a spare canister of air somewhere nearby, it wasn't going to help him.
"Air. Maybe an airlock?" He could search the interior, find something that would allow him to breath. Even as he went over the thoughts he knew it was hopeless. There simply wasn't time to find something. His vision was growing spotty, his breath coming in ragged gasps. With all the determination he could muster, John continued wiping away the dust layer covering his discovery. It was either that or sit down and just accept his impending death, and he'd never been good at accepting things.
Finding Satori: A Starship Satori Short Story Page 1