by Rick Chesler
“Go, c’mon!” somebody said. The point was clear. Asami was dead for sure now, there was nothing they could do for her, and so unless they wanted to be next, it was time to get out of here. Caitlin fell into line behind Takeo, who scrambled to wriggle his way around the creature into the open tunnel, down which Blake and Kennedy were already tripping and loping and tumbling. They moved any way they could to put distance between themselves and the specter of death that had claimed Asami.
In his struggle to keep up, Takeo tripped and let go of the other oxygen canister, sending it tumbling over Caitlin’s head and back toward the creature which now sat in a loose pile blocking the tunnel, quivering with digestive effort.
The canister sailed over Caitlin’s outstretched arm and she had to watch it tumble onto the tunnel floor on the other side of the mammoth, amorphous beast. She looked on as a river of Asami’s blood sluiced down the alien hide before turning back toward the group. Takeo met her gaze, as if to acknowledge the severity of his mistake. They had lost fifty percent of their precious new oxygen supply. More than that including the leak from Kennedy’s tank. But it was a matter of live as best you could with half of the supply or die trying to get the other half. Caitlin wasn’t ready to die, and so she moved away from the creature down the tunnel.
But Takeo stood his ground staring at the engorged animal.
“What are you doing? C’mon!” Caitlin called.
“I can get it. I—” He broke off as the worm-beast rolled on the ground, a ripple of weird flesh trembling in waves up and down its body.
“No, Takeo! Don’t—look, they’re coming!” Caitlin pointed past him, where the big worm had curled itself into a tight ball, leaving a narrow gap between itself and the tunnel wall. Past it they could see a river of the smaller creatures—most the size of rats but a few more like footballs, undulating through the regolith, heading their way en masse.
The astronaut saw that Caitlin was right and he gave up on saving his pride, not to mention his oxygen. He turned and loped off down the tunnel, where the others were now out of sight around a bend. Caitlin followed after him, finding it difficult to keep from bouncing into the walls and ceiling when taking the longer strides used in running. She had experience moon walking, not moon running, as did they all.
She caught up to the rest of the group as they emerged from the tunnel system into the interior of the crater. They were farther down toward the crater floor than the tunnel they entered earlier with Suzette, though, and so had a longer hike to the rim. Caitlin tried not to look down, tried to simply put one foot in front of the other until she was far up the crater, but she hadn’t even reached the next tunnel entrance when she looked behind her and below.
And there they were: a veritable horde of the creatures, burrowing their way up the crater along with them. Moving fast, too, Caitlin noticed. “Step on it, guys, these things are coming after us and they’re making good time!”
The comm loop was punctuated with heavy grunting and pants as the team loped and clawed their way up the inside of the crater. A couple of times someone tripped and fell, bouncing at an awkward angle until someone else pulled them back up. Progress was made but it became clear that the creatures were even faster. At the current rate, they would be overrun by the space animals before they reached the lip of the crater.
Caitlin couldn’t imagine what the thousands of small creatures would do to them, but she didn’t want to imagine that, especially after not having to imagine the fates of Asami and Suzette. Of the two, she supposed Asami had the more enviable fate, being killed quickly. She found herself wondering why Suzette still lived and then forced herself not to think about it. There was no time. Not if she wanted to live herself.
She yelled into her comm unit. “Need to do something, guys. Those things are gaining on us.”
“We could split up,” Kennedy suggested. “Take different routes to the lander.
No one disagreed, and with the shuffling of the lunar dirt growing closer to them, Blake said he and Kennedy would head off to the left and up, while Caitlin and Takeo would go right and up.
“At the very least,” Blake said, “even if these things follow both of our new groups, they’ll have to split their numbers in order to do it.”
Just as Caitlin uttered her agreement with the new direction, she caught a boot on a rock and went floating horizontally until she impacted with a boulder. Takeo helped to right her and urged her to get going. “They’re almost to us,” he said, voice unemotional.
“Damn these things are quick,” they heard Kennedy say, from his part of the slope. They all continued their hard-scrabble ascent, zigzagging at times in an attempt to throw the creatures off. It didn’t seem to, since the pack of dirt dwellers continued in a straight line for as long as they had to and then adjusted accordingly once they picked up a scent or a signal or whatever it was that enabled them to hone in on the humans.
Caitlin and Takeo were about twenty feet from the rim of the crater when they heard Blake’s voice issuing an expletive, followed by Kennedy telling him to calm down.
“What is it?” Caitlin demanded while bunny-hopping over a large depression in the ground.
“The parade of these animals is still making its way from the crater to the LEM,” said Blake.
“Is that where the ones that have been chasing us are going?” Caitlin reached the lip of the crater at the same time as her new colleague. She looked out over the lunar plain and instantly saw what Blake was talking about. Yes, there was a flood of creatures as there had been before when they left the LEM, but now there were very large individuals—perhaps even as big as the ones that had consumed Asami and Suzette in the caves—interspersed with the junior variety. When these behemoths moved, clouds of dust eased away from the ground ahead of their passage.
“At least they’re still pretty much in a straight line,” Caitlin said. She glanced back down into the crater, where the avalanche of smallish worms tunneled through the soil, perhaps a minute away from reaching her.
“Down we go, c’mon.” Takeo jumped off the crater lip, bounding down the crater’s outer slope in high leaps with long, arcing trajectories. After a quick look back at the deluge of rampaging alien mass, Caitlin also leapt down the crater, eyeing the Black Sky lunar lander on the flat plain in the distance and the moon buggy at the foot of the hill.
They heard occasional shouts from Blake and Kennedy as they made their way down, fighting their own mini-battles as they navigated their part of the slope. “Watch it! Look out for that—no...there! Go...”
Near the bottom of the crater, Caitlin was enveloped in a cloud of moon dust. At first she thought her companion was behind her, kicking it down on her after one of the many rough tumbles they took during their descent, but when it cleared a little she saw him ten feet in front of her, angling towards the rover. So what had caused it? She craned her neck around for a look.
A massive worm reared up above her, a ring of tendrils each several feet long, surrounding its mouth opening. “Move, Takeo!” she cried out, attempting to motivate herself more than anything. With a great sense of relief, she saw Blake hop into the rover’s driver seat and power it up.
Kennedy was tossing a large boulder in slow motion at a squat worm the size of a compact car. As soon as he lobbed it, he wheeled and ran for the rover without waiting to see if he had hit his target. As Caitlin ran for the rover, she saw the big rock land squarely atop the creature’s tubular upper body, where it disappeared into its copious folds without dropping back to the ground, as if the being had simply absorbed the heavy projectile.
A cascade of smaller animals continued to slide down the crater toward them. All of the team reached the rover and climbed in. Blake put the vehicle into gear and accelerated out onto the flat lunar plain. At first, the momentum of the oncoming horde was such that the animals kept pace with the car, only a few feet back. But as the seconds ticked on, it became clear that the beasts were not able to close the gap. Surp
risingly fast as they were, they could not travel through and over the ground faster than the rover at its top speed.
Suddenly, an alarm brayed from the cockpit of the vehicle. Blake narrowed his eyes at a blinking red LED.
“What is that?” Kennedy asked what they all wanted to know.
“Battery overheat alarm,” Blake reported. “Never had it come on before.”
“Probably due to the sustained top speed,” Caitlin said, craning her neck around to monitor the creatures’ progress. “You could ease back a hair, but not much more than that the way these things are coming at us. They are fast.”
Blake did that to take the strain off the batteries and Caitlin watched as the worm tribe narrowed the rover’s lead by ever so much. By the time they were half way across the plain to Kennedy’s lander, though, the creatures had fallen back some, unable to maintain the shocking speed over long distances. All four riders bounced around crazily in the rig as Blake propelled them across the plain, the wheels dipping into small depressions occasionally, sending Takeo flying up into space at one point, holding onto a tubular frame rail by one hand before being pulled back in by Caitlin.
As they neared the lander, a new danger appeared. The rover crossed over the line of animals that had already been making its way to the LEM, scattering them momentarily. But as Caitlin looked back in the wake of the crossing, she saw them reorganize and join the newer path of following creatures, and together the two streams of animals plowed after the rover as it drove up to the lunar lander.
“Out, out, out, everybody out!” Blake yelled as he applied the buggy’s brakes. Kennedy transmitted on the frequency to his crew in the LEM.
“Incoming, open the airlock, we’re at the front door, over!”
They heard an acknowledgement as they fell out of the vehicle and made giant steps over to the LEM’s airlock. Caitlin could see from the way the creatures piled up on the side of the craft that the oxygen leak had still not been fixed. The team, slowed somewhat by the equipment they had salvaged, ran up to the outer airlock door just as it slid open.
“In! They’re almost here...” Caitlin pointed to the oncoming rush of turbulent moon flesh. A large animal pushed a compliment of smaller ones ahead of it like a bow wave in front of a seagoing vessel. The moonwalkers piled inside the airlock and the outer door slid closed just as the creatures reached the LEM.
From inside, they watched the door bulge slightly with the onslaught of the rushing life forms.
35| Dilemma
Outer Limits Lunar Lander
“I’m not sure that ‘body disposal’ is among those things in my list of duties for this flight.” James Burton narrowed his eyes at Dallas from behind the plastic safety glasses he wore as they stood over Martin’s dead body. Dallas gave him a pleading look. A look that said, ‘I’m trying to work with you, here, rather than one of dissatisfaction or intimidation.”
“Look, Mr. Burton, I know that. Believe me, this is the last thing I was hoping to have you get involved with, but it’s much safer to have two people carry his body outside than one. Can you please just help me out so we can get his corpse out of here and not wait to see what happens once he starts to decompose?”
That had an effect. Burton said nothing but averted his gaze from Dallas’ to that of the semi-translucent corpse on the lab table. Checking that his spacesuit was secure one last time, James snapped his helmet into place, to avoid having to do it later once they were carrying the body, and because it would keep him from breathing in any contaminants or fatal fluids on Martin’s body. He bent to the task of lifting the dead exobiologist. Dallas did the same and they hefted the body.
“Try to avoid it coming into contact with any surfaces,” Dallas cautioned. “We don’t want to contaminate anything.”
“I got him, let’s go.” Burton had the corpse by the legs while Dallas hefted him from the chest. They shuffled out of the lab and into the main working area of the spaceship. They were making their way across when Blake’s voice erupted from the radio, tinged with urgency. Dallas threw his head back in frustration; they had just gotten into a workable rhythm carrying the dead body, and now they would have to set it down. Dallas listened for a few seconds while he and James still held Martin’s corpse above the floor, but Blake’s message required attention.
“Set him down.” Dallas ran to the radio after they dropped Martin unceremoniously to the floor.
“...I said, DO YOU READ ME?”
Dallas scooped up the transmitter. “Dallas here, Blake. I read you loud and clear, over.”
“Good. Listen carefully, please. Caitlin and I are transmitting from Black Sky’s lander.”
“Excellent! So you got there and they let you in. I assume they let you in, right? You’re not still standing outside knocking on the door, are you?” Dallas turned around to smile at James, who had backed away from Martin’s corpse. He was paying close attention to the radio call but did not return Dallas’ grin.
“Caitlin and I are inside the lander, Dallas.”
“What about Asami—where’s she?”
The frequency seemed to go dead. Dallas furrowed his brow. “Blake?”
“Asami didn’t make it out of the tunnels.” He proceeded to recount the events of their moonwalk, while James listened with his face gradually transforming into increasingly horrified expressions. James was stricken with as much grief as one could have for knowing someone so short a time, flashing on her gloved hand holding his as they stood outside the lander.
When Blake had finished relaying what had happened, he asked Dallas how the repairs to the ship were going. Dallas shook his head even though he knew Blake couldn’t see him. “I can’t make further headway without that part, the actuator—did you find one?”
“That’s a negative, Dallas. We did recover the box of parts that was left behind in the tunnels, but Caitlin combed through it already and there’s no actuator in there, repeat no actuator found, over.”
“Are any of the parts you found helpful?”
“We did find a part to fix Black Sky’s ship.”
“So what about them—do they have the part we need? Can you make a trade?”
“They don’t have it. Well, that’s not entirely true. They do have one actuator—the one that’s working and in use now. But without it, their ship would be unable to function, too.”
“So...let me make sure I’m hearing this right... To save one ship is to sacrifice the other, is that what I’m hearing?”
“Unfortunately, that is the situation as it now stands, Dallas. Unless something develops to change that, but...”
“But our oxygen and battery power will only last so long.”
Blake did not respond to this. He didn’t need to. It was the truth, their reality. Dallas continued. “Okay...it sounds like Black Sky’s lander is closer to being operational than ours is, since they have the parts they need.”
“And they have one additional oh-two canister, yes.”
“All right, so because we’ve...” Dallas shook his head and seemed to choke back his words a little as he turned to face away from James, whose stare was unwavering as he watched the conversation unfold. “As tragic as it is, because we’ve lost three people—Martin’s dead, too— I think we might be able to fit all of us in Black Sky’s craft for the return trip to one of the command modules. What do you think?”
Sounds of commotion issued over the communication channel. Blake’s voice came back sounding harried and stressed. “Probably. Listen, they’re close to fixing the oxygen leak here with that new part, but because it leaked for so long, there’s a large horde of the creatures around the ship. Something’s banging out there now and I’ve got to go help if I can.”
The first hint of worry crept into Dallas’ voice as it dawned on him that he and James were a long way from the others in the craft that was most likely to be working soon. He avoided eye contact with the FAA monitor as he transmitted to Blake before he could sign off. “It’s too fa
r for us to walk over there, Blake. If we combine crews into Black Sky’s LEM, how do we get over there, over?”
There was a disconcerting moment where a series of clicks were broadcast, leading Dallas to believe Blake had signed off or simply left the transmitter hanging, but then the CEO’s voice came back through the speaker. “I’ll send Caitlin in the rover to pick you up. By doing that, she might be able to draw the creatures away from the ship long enough for us to make the serious repairs. The rovers are faster than the creatures, fortunately, although I wish I didn’t know that firsthand.”
“Sounds like a working plan.” Dallas was relieved. He didn’t really know Blake all that well, as a person, and he wasn’t sure what kind of moral compass the man possessed. His business instincts were known for being positively ruthless, of course, but that was just business. Wasn’t it?
“It is, but we’ll need a much larger distraction than that if we are to get the craft off the ground without interference from the worms. I’ve really got to go, but let me outline the plan for that so you can bring the items we’ll need from our ship on the rover.” He didn’t want to mention it, but Dallas was relieved to hear that he had things Blake wanted, which would make it that much more likely he sends Caitlin back in the rover.
Blake proceeded to describe the plan, at the end of which Dallas sighed heavily. It was very dicey, full of what-ifs and multiple variables like landmines in a field of uncertainty. But if everything went just so, it might possibly work.
Then a reverberant clanging noise emanated from the speaker and Blake shouted, “Over and out, Dallas!”
36| Bait...
Black Sky Lunar Lander