Luna

by Rick Chesler

Stenson stood his ground. “No. You can read about it in the report I submit. If we can manage to get back home, that is.”

  “What do you intend to report?” Kennedy’s gaze bored into Stenson’s eyes.

  “I intend to report exactly what I observed happening here, which is that in your rush to be first to the moon and beat your competitor here,” Stenson said, nodding to Blake, “you took shortcuts that compromised—”

  Kennedy shoved Stenson back with a hand on his shoulder. “Bullshit!”

  Blake and Arnie separated the two men, Blake standing in front of Stenson and the Black Sky man in front of Kennedy.

  “Hold it, hold up, everybody!” Blake shouted. They all eyed him expectantly, including Kennedy.

  “I have a solution that should enable us to fix both of our ships.”

  30 | Teamwork

  Once he had everyone’s attention, Blake spoke. “There is a small cache of Outer Limits equipment inside a network of underground tunnels in the nearby crater.” He paused to see if mention of the tunnels triggered any recognition, but everyone from Black Sky appeared genuinely stunned.

  “Tunnels, you say?” Kennedy asked, his curiosity overcoming his recent adrenaline surge.

  Asami nodded, figuring that this was her opportunity to showcase her expertise and reason for being on the moon in the first place. “That’s right. There’s an extensive tunnel system beneath the crater’s interior that, from what little preliminary investigating and firsthand observations I’ve been able to do so far, appear to have been formed...” Her mouth tugged down at the corners as she broke herself off.

  “Formed how?” Kennedy prodded. “What’s the matter?”

  Asami looked confused. “I’m a selenologist. I came here to study the moon’s geological processes and learn more about how it formed. When I first saw the tunnel system—the first time I even heard about it was after I arrived on the moon on this trip—” she said, narrowing her eyes ever so briefly at Blake, “I thought it must be similar to a lava tube. But now...” Again she trailed off, unsure of how to broach the subject of the creatures and how the tunnels may in fact be the result of biological, rather than geological, activity.

  Caitlin picked up on this and made eye contact with Blake, prompting him to address it, but it was Kennedy who broke into the pause.

  “So you mean to tell me that there are tunnels beneath McMurdo crater right over there?”

  All of the Outer Limits people nodded. Kennedy remained silent, contemplating this.

  “That is correct,” Blake said. He glanced over at Caitlin again before continuing. “But listen. We have gear in that stockpile that can help both of us. I’m more than willing to share it.” He eyed Kennedy directly with this last statement. “However, there are risks to obtaining it far beyond those associated with a normal EVA.”

  A round of quizzical looks from the Black Sky team ensued, and Blake went on. “We have oxygen canisters there, some raw electrical components that can be utilized for any number of purposes, and even extra spacesuits. But to get to it we need to brave certain biological hazards.”

  “Please explain,” Kennedy said, eyes alight with curiosity.

  All eyes were on Blake as they waited for him to speak. “There are living animals of some kind underground. Like worms or snakes. Some of them are very large.” He paused to let that sink in. Arnie and Takeo exchanged knowing glances and then Kennedy spoke up.

  “We’ve seen small ones around the ship—right outside. We weren’t sure what to make of them at first, but...”

  Caitlin nodded slowly, recalling what she’d seen on the way into the Black Sky lander. Kennedy continued.

  “At first, we thought we were suffering some kind of space-induced psychosis—agoraphobia or something, but we all kept seeing them.”

  “They seem to have increased in number the last day or so, though,” one of Kennedy’s crew said, eliciting nods from the others.

  “They seem harmless enough,” Kennedy ventured. All three Outer Limits personnel shook their heads wordlessly until Blake said, “They’re not harmless.” Then he recounted what happened to Suzette as horror registered in the eyes of their hosts. Blake completed his account, and then, when Asami started to provide more detail at the urging of a Black Sky astronaut, Kennedy waved her down.

  “I’ve heard enough, thank you. I get it. But I don’t think we have much choice here, do we?” he asked, looking at his crew in turn. “They’ve got gear we can use. We need to help them get it.”

  Blake nodded. “We couldn’t carry it all with just the three of us, and multiple trips are not an option, it’s too far.”

  “Then we’ll go. Myself and one volunteer,” he said, looking at his crew. “Not you, Mr. Stenson.” The FAA man said nothing, most likely glad he did not have to go on the risky outing.

  Takeo said he would go while Arnie and another astronaut—a quiet but observant man introduced as Jack Williams— stayed behind to continue work on repairing the ship.

  Without delay, the EVA party of five—three Outer Limits and Two Black Sky—donned their spacesuits and entered the airlock. “Good luck,” they heard from Arnie just before they stepped outside. They weren’t prepared for what they saw.

  The ground teemed with small creatures, writhing and wriggling and squirming across the top layers of moon dust. The soil seemed positively alive with them, like a school of fish at the surface of the ocean. Not only that, but their presence didn’t seem to be localized around the LEM; a long line of the life forms stretched all the way to the crater.

  “So many of them now!” Takeo said.

  “We haven’t seen this many in one place before,” Blake admitted before adding nervously, “but at least these are the small ones.”

  Caitlin studied the side of the lander. A dense conglomeration of burrowing creatures festered along one side of the LEM. She turned to face Kennedy. “Do you have an external oxygen leak? Our exobiologist said they could be evolved to extract oh-two from the soil—and this is just my own personal guess—but pure oxygen is something they’d normally never be exposed to on the moon, so if it’s leaking from your ship, maybe we’re finding out now that they’re attracted to it.”

  Kennedy looked back to his LEM and followed the trail of animals with his eyes. “So they could actually be drawn to it from some distance away?”

  Caitlin nodded. “Like ants to a pile of sugar.”

  “Or like sharks to blood in the water,” Asami said.

  The group stood there silently for a few moments, watching the alien activity on the ground until Blake started walking the rest of the way to the rover. “We best get going.”

  “Nice toy, Blake,” Kennedy said when they got to the vehicle.

  “This toy—the remaining one after your people got done trying to cannibalize the other one, I might add—”

  “Blake,” Caitlin warned softly.

  “—is going to get us to the crater quickly, and back here with our stash of equipment.”

  “We’re all going to fit?” Takeo asked.

  Blake shrugged. “It’s made for four people, and we’re a crew of five on this little sortie, but I think it’ll hold us, don’t you think, Caitlin?”

  The astronaut nodded. “It should. Would be better if we still had two, though, especially since we’ll hopefully be returning with equipment,” she couldn’t help but adding.

  “I apologize for that,”” Kennedy said. “But can we just move forward, please? There’s nothing else I can do about it now except to cooperate with you to fix our ships.”

  They boarded the rover. Blake took the wheel with Caitlin riding up front. Asami squeezed into the back with the two Black Sky men, Takeo hanging a little over the side. They made the drive to the crater, noticing that the stream of creatures was unbroken the entire way, like a moving river of living animals from crater to the LEM. Kennedy made radio contact with his astronauts in the lander to warn them they should get that oxygen leak shut off ASAP,
that it was attracting the creatures.

  When they arrived at the crater, Blake parked only a little ways up from the base and the five of them exited the moon buggy. They had to skirt around the line of smallish animals making their way down from the crater. In some spots, they could only see the ground itself moving, puffs of dust being thrown out, but in others they saw the actual bodies of the aliens, lined with the frilled “sand gills” Martin had discovered. They could also see that a few of them were larger than the others.

  The expedition made its way up the outer crater slope. “First time up here?” Blake asked Kennedy.

  “No, we did climb up here once to have a look down inside, but we never ventured down in there. I see you’re a little more used to the hop you need to move efficiently up the side.”

  Blake laughed as he bunny-hopped toward the rim of the crater. “Practice makes perfect.”

  A throng of creatures poured and tumbled over the rim. They gave them a wide berth as they stepped over and down into the crater’s interior. Blake led the way down into the crater, explaining that the rock outcroppings that dotted the slope were actually tunnel entrances. They could see that the creatures poured in thin lines from several of the higher openings, but not from the ones deeper inside the crater, as if they knew they needed to leave the crater higher up by the rim.

  The team had to step over a line of the worms a couple of times, but they managed to reach the same tunnel entrance Outer Limits had been using without incident. Caitlin was surprised, however, when Blake passed this and continued to descend deeper into the crater.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, which caused concern among the Black Sky team.

  “I thought all of you have been inside the tunnels before?” Kennedy asked.

  “It’s a different tunnel that leads to the equipment cache, and only I have been to that one before,” Blake explained.

  They made their way further into the crater, stopping about three tunnel entrances lower than the one Outer Limits had used earlier. They all activated their helmet lights and peered inside. To Caitlin and Asami, it didn’t look much different than the other one.

  Blake made a final check of his suit and gauges, and then led the way into the tunnel.

  31| Afterlife

  “Be right there, Martin.” Dallas finished putting on his anti-biocontamination gear—face shield, rubber gloves, scrubs, the works. It was time to do what he could for Martin, whose condition had deteriorated significantly in the last hour. James watched Dallas adjust his face mask for the fourth time.

  “He’s really sick, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s going to die, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know, James. I’m going to evaluate him and see what I can do to help.”

  It was not lost on Dallas that James did not volunteer to go with him into the lab where Martin was, either to help in some way or to do his job as an observer of shipboard practices. Dallas’ mind echoed the thought that he knew bounced around in James’ brain. What if whatever Martin got from that thing is contagious?

  The exobiologist was lying down on a cot Dallas had set up for him in the lab. Dallas, an experienced former trauma surgeon, sucked in his breath at the sight of his patient. Martin’s skin was entirely a bluish, purplish color. The color of venous blood. And yet his skin was oddly translucent, but with a bluish cast. It sort of reminded him of the realistic anatomical models he had studied with in medical school, in addition to human cadavers. And worse, his veins. Veins, Dallas emphasized to himself. For he couldn’t see any arteries. Even though his skin—all of it that he could see, anyway—his arms, hands, face, neck...was weirdly clear. Yet there were no arteries—that was it, Dallas realized. No arteries, only veins. All of his blood vessels were blue, or perhaps purplish—the same hue as the rest of his skin, where he supposed that his blood vessels and capillaries had burst, releasing their micro-rivers of blood to flood the body cavities.

  He knew that blood was actually red, from hemoglobin, even though in veins it appeared blue through normal skin because it lacked oxygen, since veins carried blood back to the heart after their blood had been depleted of oxygen during its travels throughout the body. Then that same blood, after being pumped out of the heart, would be full of fresh oxygen again to tour the body anew via the arterial system. But Martin’s blood vessels were all the same color—as if all he had were veins, or as if all of his blood was devoid of oxygen.

  He was so stunned by the implications that it took him a bit to realize Martin was talking. Ranting, really, in rapid, monotonic bursts about how ironic it was that the first interaction of human-alien life resulted in the death of not only likely himself, but also the creature. He ended with a, “What do you think, doc?” which caught Dallas by surprise.

  He cleared his throat and said, “It’s only a weak hypothesis at this point, but it’s possible that when the creature’s blood entered your system, its specialized oxygen-gathering cells—if it has cells— went into overdrive in our spacecraft’s relatively oxygen-rich environment, causing your blood vessels to rupture, basically to have a massive, circulatory system-wide aneurism.”

  Martin’s expression changed then, at the realization that he was in critical condition, on the moon, so very far from help, if he even could be helped. He knew that Dallas was his only hope if there was hope at all.

  “Let me hook you up to an IV,” the physician said, wheeling one next to the cot. He prepped Martin’s arm, noticing how easily it bruised with the ordinary contact needed to swipe it with an alcohol pad, and then further with the needle injection. Dallas then went about setting up machines to monitor Martin’s vital signs, the results of which were highly discouraging. Dallas was stone-faced as he looked at the readouts while Martin’s face grew paler under the lab lights.

  “I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you, Martin. There’s no time for that. Short of a major blood transfusion operation, which we are not equipped for here, I’m not sure if there is anything I can do to save you.”

  “I—” Martin began but then broke off, one of contemporary society’s most eloquent writers and speakers on philosophical matters at a loss for words.

  “Save your energy.” At this, Martin seemed to relax.

  “You are bleeding internally, Martin. Very severely, because your blood vessels have all ruptured. That’s why all of your skin has turned blue.”

  “Am I...am I contagious? The creature gave me this condition?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s more of an oxygen-related phenomenon where your cells are splitting—lysis, it’s called— with the introduction of whatever mechanisms are present in the moon animal’s fluids that you came into contact with.”

  Suddenly, Martin was racked with spasms. Dallas held him down while continuing to talk to him. He raised his voice to be heard above the rattling cot. “Martin, listen to me. You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.”

  The stricken biologist continued to jerk and twist but his eyes seemed to regain some measure of light as he held Dallas’ gaze.

  “I don’t think you have much time left, Martin.” He found he had to concentrate on not saying the words, “on this Earth,” since they were on the moon. In his hospital days, he had seen ministers deliver many a bedside prayer to patients, and while he was no priest, he was familiar enough with the language that he could approximate it if it would offer comfort to the patient. He could do nothing else, after all.

  “If you like, I can say a prayer for you. No one has to know about it,” he added, in a nod to Martin’s outspoken atheism. He knew the man publicly did not believe in God, but when someone was about to go, he thought it was best to give them the option. Besides, he knew that Martin’s atheism was big business for him; he’d made a celebrity career out of it, after all, so what if it was only an act?

  But Martin’s next words dispelled that notion. “Say a prayer for yourself if it makes you feel any better, Dallas. You’re
going to need all the help you can get.”

  And with that, a gush of dark purple blood oozed from Martin’s mouth, the monitoring machines began frantically beeping, and he flat-lined.

  32| Asking for Directions

  The tunnels all looked the same. They’d been walking, searching for a landmark, anything to let them know that they’d made some progress. But the gray passageways were indecipherable in their sameness. They saw no footprints, but making matters worse was the fact that the ground here was hard rock with a very thin to non-existent dust layer, too thin to leave footprints. For the Black Sky members of the party, it was all a new experience and they simply took it in, marveling at the subterranean world so close to their spacecraft. But for Outer Limits, and Caitlin in particular, the wandering carried ramifications.

  “Blake, haven’t we been past this junction before?”

  “Don’t think so. I think it’s just up ahead here.”

  “You keep saying that, and we keep circling around!”

  “This is definitely the same passage we came through before,” Asami said, running a gloved hand along a distinct pattern of striations along a tunnel wall. “Look at this, how unusual it is. I remember it.”

  Blake slammed a booted foot into the regolith and turned to look at the wall. “Forgive me for not knowing the entire goddamned moon inside and out like the back of my hand. I’m doing the best I can.” He said nothing further and plodded off down the tunnel.

  “I don’t think I need to remind you,” Caitlin said, “that this is a situation where your best might not be good enough. It’s not about effort here, Blake. It’s about right or wrong. Period. You’re right: we live. You’re wrong: we die. Which is it?”

  Suddenly, Blake spun and faced Caitlin as she nearly bumped into him while she walked along. “Was it about right or wrong, Caitlin, when you and Dallas landed the LEM far enough off course that finding our planned destinations became an issue in the first place?”