The Other Things

by Jonathan Dransfield

  There was no sulphurous stench or latent heat as the rocks solidified 8 million years ago. Should they go left or right? Elin’s instincts led them up the incline. There was no noise save the echoes of their footsteps.

  Enza strode forward. She imagined it to be a grand archaeological journey of discovery. Her mother’s heroes ran through her mind. She’d quote Howard Carter, shifting through the dust into the darkened chambers of a young king’s tomb: ‘sì cose meravigliose’. Yes, wonderful things.

  Bheki felt nervous. He couldn’t tell what was behind him as the torch always faced forward. Even in the blackest of African nights, the stars gave some comfort. Hidden creatures were lurking in every shadow.

  They travelled up the curving chamber for hundreds of yards until the light of day was a memory. Every so often Elin would stop to examine a patch of rock and beckon Buzz to take samples of some pongy goo. Enza would sit on her pack to sketch the stark shapes caught in the headlights.

  ‘Ach! Can we get back now?’ Bheki moaned. The echoing walls gave the others their spatial bearings, but here Bheki felt very lost and scared.

  Elin bravely pushed them on. Their pace quickened as the unremitting tunnel dropped downwards until the walls and roof opened into a larger space. Then in the near distance the flash and glimmer of green water lay before them, the light beaming through the depths of a deep pool blocking their path.

  Elin worked out the topology and firmly announced, ‘Look! The old chamber where from all this lava flowed – it this must have been.’ Her beam flashed ahead. ‘From somewhere this water must have come…’

  Bheki jumped! Staring into the beautiful clear liquid, they saw a strange glow bouncing up off the sandy bottom. Tiptoeing on the rim of the pool, Xing hissed to turn off their torches.

  Stomachs in knots, they instinctively held hands as the strange submarine illuminations darted around. These lights were not only getting closer but they could see moving shapes behind the glowing beams.

  Swimming Monsters

  Their grips tightened, and as one they hastily stepped back as these subterranean apparitions glided towards the surface.

  The silence was riven as three cyclopses emerged from the rippling waters, light streaming from their foreheads. These forms let out a guttural gasp and a cacophony of shrill, ear-piercing screams split the air.

  The children broke ranks, scattering away from the spectres. Desperately blundering into one another or the cave walls, they fumbled blindly to find the switches of their lamps. Elin could have fled all the way back to the entrance, but forced herself to stay with her friends.

  Turning, she found the switch and scanned the depths. Her blood froze. To her shock, the beam landed not on Buzz or Mo, but straight in the face of one of the monsters.

  The figure seemed wildly animated, the head torch flashing insanely. It advanced and its clammy hands struck out and grasped her tight.

  She screwed her eyes shut and screamed, ‘Mummia!’

  Her mother and ‘The Elves’ had been on their own trek, not to the lava tubes but to the baking-hot tops of the cinder cones and, seeking shade, had dropped down into a cavernous old chamber at the bottom of the caldera.

  To their joy and amazement, they found a welcoming pool, whose limpid, clear, cool waters had been beyond temptation.

  Sirens

  Stripping down to their underwear the dusty and parched women slipped into the refreshing water and in the half-light they made out a curious ethereal glow in the depths. With deep breaths they dived to investigate, swimming beneath a low rock ceiling and up again searching for its origin.

  Then the light suddenly vanished. Desperately breaking the surface on the other side, they gasped for breath and with horror saw six screaming trolls standing silhouetted in the black void.

  As their torches scanned the darkness, the figures scattered. There was a cacophony of footsteps and squeals, then suddenly, a couple of feet in front of Kirsten, a light flashed on and she saw two unmistakable china-blue eyes.

  She grabbed hold of the terrified creature as it let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  ‘Mummia!’

  Kirsten stood fast and with soothing words said, ‘I’m here, little one!’

  Chapter 25

  Stephen in the Wilderness

  Section of Lander

  Stephen Dyer had learned something new.

  Tonight there was a celebration, quite an event for this remote outpost. The never-ending grasslands would have been lost in the darkness, if not for the momentary flashes of the spectacular display that boomed, crashed and whizzed before the expectant crowd.

  Dong Dong was his host tonight and was at pains to look after the American guest. Sprays of silver and gold bespeckled the black skies, while dancing shadows played on the dark, undulating plains.

  Overhead, streaming rockets and globular explosions burst like rows of gigantic alliums.

  ‘A thousand years!’ Dong Dong shouted above the booms.

  ‘A thousand years of what?’ quizzed Stephen.

  ‘Rockets! We have been making rockets for a thousand years!’

  Stephen had considered China to be a technological ‘Johnny come lately’, but his stay had made him think again. He now understood that, but for the last few hundred years, it was Western civilisation that had lagged behind in many respects. This Eastern enlightenment dawned over 7,000 years ago and spawned a continuum of arts, science and culture reaching to the present day.

  Jiuquan

  Inner Mongolia, China

  40.6N 100.2E

  Altitude: 4,865ft

  Geology: Rain shadow desert

  The crowd of scientists and technicians cheered at the climax. Then, as the smell of oxidation dissipated on the wind, Dong Dong shepherded Stephen into the hall for the banquet to celebrate the successful completion of the design stage.

  The temperament of his new colleagues had also taken Stephen by surprise and he liked it. Respectful, undemanding and diligently focused on the job at hand and none of the liberal crap that he’d despised in California. He’d latched onto the chief designer, often spending hours at her shoulder, working her magic from her workstation. He’d even re-built some bridges with Rocky, who’d join their weekly reviews, albeit by video link, of progress on the MEM – the Mars Excursion Module.

  The task of the MEM was fraught with danger. After the by no means simple task of successfully deploying the fuel probes from their base on Phobos, the MEM and crew would then embark on the perilous 3,800-mile descent in series of slow glides and climbs. Crashing through the thin atmosphere it would hopefully lose momentum until it could deploy the massive parachute. Still at a frightening speed the MEM would finally fire its retrorockets and make a controlled landing precisely in the middle of the fuel pods. At least, that was the theory.

  If all went well, the crew would frantically set everything up to harvest the fuel to get them back up to Phobos and the mother rocket that would take them home. Only then could they explore the planet.

  Dong Dong’s passion in life was flight and, having had no opportunity to fly a real aeroplane, he had pioneered the sport of hang-gliding in China. He was also obsessed by the ancient art of zhezhi, or paper folding.

  Paper was invented in China in the sixth century, and the beautiful and intricate shapes of boats, hats and umbrellas have been refined over the centuries.

  Dong Dong’s unique contribution to the mission was to develop a lightweight folding wing system to help the MEM glide through the thin atmosphere. His genius was to transform it to unfurl into an effective parachute. It was a task beyond any computer-aided designer to accomplish, and Dong Dong had spent hours drowning in reams of paper, working out the transformative shapes required for the metamorphosis from neatly stowed panels to wings to parachute.

  This had been the turning point: the weight saved would allow for the excess fuel needed to land the massive weight with precision.

  Stephen had admired Dong Dong’s pat
ient, analytical approach to the task, in the way he enjoyed the precision of chopsticks in picking out the specific morsels of food he decided were worthy of his fastidious palate.

  ‘You must miss your family, Mr Dyer,’ Dong Dong enquired attentively as Stephen took in the tables of chatting scientists.

  ‘No, I’ve just got my mother and we never got on.’

  ‘Well, your work mates?’

  Stephen laughed, ‘Ha, like a dog misses its fleas!’

  The mood around the room changed and glasses were being filled. Dong Dong nudged him.

  ‘This is “ganbei”, Mr Dyer – our toasts. Only one rule. You must drink up!’

  Baijiu is an intensely strong spirit and the first toast was to the heads of the project. They then insisted in toasting their honoured guest, Stephen.

  Each time Stephen took a sip, Dong Dong gestured him to knock it all back and tip his glass to the throng, to show its dry bottom.

  ‘You need “juidan” – drink courage!’

  As toast after toast was made, the room became animated.

  For Stephen, the room literally began to spin. The whirling haze was interrupted by Dong Dong. ‘Your turn now, Stephen!’

  The glasses were filled again and Stephen rose unsteadily to his feet. He proposed ‘ganbei’ to Dong Dong, who blushed and declined, saying, ‘I am not worthy, Mr Dyer, toast more high person.’

  Stephen squinted blearily at the expectant throng, straining to think of someone important. ‘To the Emperor!’

  A few coughs broke the silence. Dong Dong whispered, ‘That was a long time ago – we have a chairman now.’

  ‘Chairman Mao!’ Stephen held his glass high. The embarrassing silence grew thicker.

  ‘Not good, Mr Dyer, try something less political?’

  ‘Bruce Goddamn Lee!’

  Relieved laughter erupted round the tables.

  ‘Bruce Goddamn Lee!’ they shouted, to the chinking of glasses.

  News was now spreading around the room that they would soon have another honoured guest: Luther Garvey, on his state visit to the People’s Republic.

  Amid the chatter, Stephen toyed with a chicken foot. He knew he must eat something more substantial to absorb the alcohol. He thought he’d be safe with fish. ‘Any seafood?’ he enquired.

  Dong Dong scanned the food-laden wheel and gestured to a dish. ‘Well, Stephen, you must try these!’

  A row of little eyes stared up at Stephen. Each crab had hairy mittens on its claws. Stephen, now even more woozy with the drink, chased one round the plate with his chopsticks, before skewering it like a lollipop.

  They got on with the job. The speed of manufacture was extraordinary. Since committing to the project the Chinese Space Agency had the full weight of the state behind it and the pride of the nation.

  It was not lost on Stephen that while his NASA colleagues were struggling to reuse a fifty-year-old piece of hardware, he had a ‘state of the art’ facility and focused minds to produce an exquisitely engineered vehicle in a fraction of the time it would have taken back home. It was like revisiting the 1960s or the 1940s in the US where the country could command an urgency to do extraordinary things on impossible timescales.

  While the teams sweated it out in the desert the MEM took shape in the large air-conditioned hangar. Its shiny titanium and carbon-fibre form now looming large above the teaming blue-overalled technicians. The moon shot of 1968 had a lander that was strangely bug-like compared to the sleek geometric solids of the rockets and orbiters. Although more symmetrical, this one also broke from the tubular pattern of conventional rocketry. It had been based on a hexagonal plan, which allowed a stable three-pointed landing platform and plenty of straight sides to attach the other bits of kit that would be needed on the descent and exploration.

  A tubular space frame made up the main body in a diamond lattice, with the thinnest of detachable shells protecting the inner workings. The beauty of this was that only the knuckle joint needed to be designed; the rest was cutting tube to length.

  Stephen busied himself distracting the designers with his own flights of fancy and learning as much as he could about Chinese capabilities. He had not had to take his wallet out since he arrived and delighted in the fact that his expense allowances kept rolling in.

  They were still a long time off the fitting out of the crew’s module, but he fretted about this element in particular. He just couldn’t get a straight answer on the numbers to be accommodated. Two, three or six were not numbers he could work around. Eventually the order came through to prepare the crew module for any combination of the twelve potential recruits, and a crate arrived with twelve fibreglass seats, each formed, like a racing driver’s, to the precise shapes of their posteriors.

  It was a Friday morning. Stephen had been called to the hangar to inspect the fitting of the wings. The delicacy of them astounded him. The thin transparent carbon-fibre fabric was stretched over a web of black interlinking tubes, appearing like a giant mayfly. The technicians were folding them into their closed state, reminiscent of the old films of seafarers stowing the sails in the teeth of a gale. Then he spotted the seats, now unpacked and being carefully stowed in the storage racks to the left. Stephen had been so engrossed with the technicalities of the task at hand that his anger over Ford’s ‘dumb idea’ had abated.

  He’d assumed that ‘The Other Things’ would be weeded out early. Seeing concrete evidence of the idea of sending them into space was still a possibility sent him into a demented fury. He gathered up the straps on their seats, three in each hand, and ignoring their pared down engineering tossed them into the welcoming aluminium bins. He summoned Ford on his video link.

  ‘Ford, what the hell are you doing wasting time and resources on those crackpot schemes? Pick your best team and make the most of it!’ Stephen could see he had taken Ford by surprise.

  Ford ran his fingers through his hair. He took a deep breath and in reassuring tones told Stephen that the crew evaluation would be going right up to the wire and nothing conclusive had emerged from the training and tests so far.

  ‘Look, whatever the logic you are following, the reality is… you can’t send a bunch of kids into space! And… if you don’t get it, I’ll talk to the president when he’s here next month.’

  Wilma had done a great deal of travelling in her seven years as first lady. Like many business people discover, it’s no holiday, with the forced pleasantries, the staged banquets and the punishing schedules.

  Their last major trip would be different and she was going to relish it. No hectic negotiations, troubleshooting or high-level treaties to be signed by Luther. They were being feted as an out-going president and his wife, and his itinerary was full of promise.

  The first city had always intrigued Wilma as it was twinned with her home town of Atlanta. Compared with that brash skyline, the secret rose of Toulouse was a beautiful sibling. It was their first stop, away from the Parisian seat of pomp and power and a chance to experience a more relaxed French culture. It also happened to be the centre of the European space industry. Wilma’s excitement on landing turned to frustrated anger. She couldn’t quite believe it when they simply crossed the tarmac into the large hangars where the second rocket with the reusable boosters was being constructed.

  Toulouse

  Occitanie, France

  43.4N 1.3E

  Altitude: 300ft

  Geology: River valley – alluvial deposits

  She fixed her husband in the eye. ‘This evening better be darned good!’

  Fortunately, it was.

  Harmony returned for the second leg when crowds of adoring citizens swamped the streets of Maputo. They swept past its extraordinarily ornate station as the warm winds of the Indian Ocean beckoned them to the corniche. They stayed at the fabulous Hotel Tello, where Luther’s uncle had worked as the head chef in the colonial days, before the winds of change had called him into the bush to join Frelimo in the fierce battle for their independence.

>   Maputo

  Capital of Mozambique

  25.6S 32.4E

  Altitude: 154ft

  Geology: Large natural bay

  The salt cod that evening brought her back to meeting Luther’s family for the first time and the exotic fusion of African and Portuguese cuisines that underpinned his upbringing.

  This brief African interlude was a mere stepping stone to their final destination of China. They had entertained many delegations from the Oriental power house and were delighted to finally reciprocate. For her husband this was one country whose wealth and ambition could rejuvenate the exploration of the cosmos. Also, to his never-ending gratitude, they’d filled a gaping hole in the budget and he was desperate to see their work at first hand.

  There was a distant whinny as a herd of wild brown horses broke cover at the sound of a drone taking off. Stephen and Dong Dong stood, controllers in hand, away from the small crowd, their eyes fixed on the ascending machines. A dark insect-like form was silhouetted against the morning haze, with a strange body suspended swaying beneath.

  ‘Ready!’ shouted Stephen as he flicked the switch. The payload dropped like a fruit bat from its tree, the wings picking up lift as Dong Dong edged the controls to guide it into a leisurely glide.

  He expertly circled it over their heads in an expanding spiral until, faltering and stalling, he eased the nose upwards, then flicked another switch. The body transformed itself as the three wings opened up like spring buds to unfold into a large blue hexagonal parachute as the thin tethers drew out from the silver tube below. Stephen sidled over to join the president to watch the model landing.

  Dong Dong guided the craft as best he could in the persistent breeze to the spot where a large cross had been cut from the luscious grass.