Hourglass

by Pauline C. Harris

  The immediate area looks almost exactly like any forest you’d see on Earth, but just the fact that its “alien” has Holden, Jackson, Gregory, and Angelica all openmouthed and gawking.

  I’m the first to step outside, onto the ramp and the first to venture onto the grass. We’re surrounded on all sides by trees and bushes and underbrush. From what I read on the monitors, the whole planet is covered in flora similar to this. I bend down to pinch a blade of grass through my gloved fingers. It looks the same as on Earth. I straighten up and gesture for the others, who are still frozen in the entryway. They follow me down the ramp and after a few minutes, Holden is actually giggling.

  “We’re on a planet,” Gregory nearly squeals. “Other than Earth.”

  I snort at his excitement and continue to inspect the landscape. As I’m staring around, I’m finding nothing at all that looks even remotely different from anything on Earth, which is odd, considering we’re on a different planet and at least something should be a little off. But the plants seem normal and fine. Which reminds me of the oxygen situation.

  I glance around and everyone seems to be preoccupied with their own little things; Gregory and Jackson competing over who can run the fastest in their space suit, while Holden and Angelica are having a conversation that’s, hopefully, more intelligent than Gregory’s and Jackson’s. And Sylvia is already dissecting a flower.

  I turn away and begin clicking the buttons at the front of my helmet, feeling the pressure inside slowly escape as the hull clicks open. I freeze for a moment before taking in a deep breath and then slowly let it out. I wait a few seconds. Take another breath. Wait a little more. It seems fine. I seem fine. Apparently, I’m breathing.

  I shrug and lift the helmet off my head, holding it beside me as I smell the air. Still seems the same as on Earth. Sylvia notices my lack of headgear and raises her eyebrows in question. I nod back at her and she removes her helmet as well. Slowly the others notice too and come over to ask me if it’s alright. I let them take their helmets off but decide we’re not going to spend too much time outside today. Just in case.

  I walk over to Sylvia, who has petals and flower parts strewn across the ground by the ramp. “Anything...interesting?” I ask. She gives me a look, knowing full well what I think about the importance of flower dissections.

  “Actually, nothing new,” she answers. “It’s pretty much—”

  “The same as Earth,” I finish for her. She nods. “Everything here is amazingly similar.” I stare at her mutilated flower for a few seconds before turning to face the others.

  “Guys,” I call and they immediately turn to look at me. “Let’s head back in.” I can tell they want to protest, but bite their tongues. I took them down to this planet on their request, after all.

  We slowly file back up the ramp and into the spaceship, sealing the hatch behind us.

  “Happy?” I ask Jackson as we’re all peeling off our suits.

  A grin shoots across his features. “Best day ever. Seriously.”

  I smile down at the folded up suit in my arms and then stash it away in the closet. Minutes later, we’re all headed down the hallway to the diner and picking out whatever we want for dinner. With surprised pleasure, I find that this is the first time no one’s complained about their food. We all sit around the table, taking bites of whatever canned or preserved goodies we’ve got, while conversation of the planet takes flight in everyone’s minds. Even Angelica is talkative tonight and I’ve rarely seen her utter more than a few words at a time.

  “We seriously have to go exploring tomorrow,” Gregory gushes and I’m too surprised to even say anything. To tell the truth, my plans hadn’t gotten any farther than this moment. My plan had been to land on the planet, take a look around, and then leave. It didn’t involve exploring or whatever else is packed away in the boys’ minds. Then again, we’re here and we might as well take advantage of our situation. Now that I think about it, almost seems stupid not to explore the planet.

  I dig back into my dinner, new ideas spinning through my head. What if this planet really was just accidentally overlooked? It’s extremely rare but...is it impossible? What if we really have stumbled across something huge here? Something we could make a difference from, make a profit from, be remembered from? I frown in thought and go back to eating my dinner.

  * * * *

  It’s hours later when I’m in my quarters and I hear a knock on the door. I throw the book I was reading aside and I get up to answer it. Holden stands out in the hallway and smiles a little when the door is opened. “Sorry to bug you, Captain, but...” he trails off. “I think we might have hit something when we landed, is it okay if I check outside on the hull?”

  I frown. “Is there something wrong?”

  He shrugs. “Nothing big, but I’ve been running the regular diagnostics and everything’s been just a little...off.” He shakes his head as if he’s not quite sure what’s wrong.

  “You think it has something to do with the hull?”

  “Well, when I was down in the engine room when we landed, we seemed to hit ground pretty hard. Everything was rocked down there and I think something might have been affected. I just want to check outside to see if there’s any indication that I’m right so I can go ahead and figure out what to do.”

  “Seems valid,” I tell him. “But I’ll go out and check.” I don’t want to risk the only head engineer we have on board. And besides, I’m not sure I completely trust this planet yet.

  “Oh, no, I didn’t want to bother you,” Holden sputters.

  “No trouble,” I answer, grabbing my coat and shoes from my room and striding into the hallway. Holden trails after me, babbling about how he doesn’t want to put me out, but I’m responsible for my crew—I’m supposed to protect them—and I’m not going to let him go out into the dark on a planet we know nothing about, all by himself. And I happen to know which part of the hull corresponds with the engine room.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell him, pressing the button that opens the ramp. I grab a flashlight from the closet that holds the suits. “You watch the ramp, just in case you...see anything.”

  “See anything?” Holden’s eyes grow wide.

  I shrug. “We’re being cautious.” And with that, I pull my jacket around me and head down the ramp. I’m startled by the darkness that so suddenly envelops me and a chill slithers up my spine.

  I glance back at Holden, suddenly feeling nervous. But I know I can’t go back up and ask someone to come down with me. I’m the captain. I’m not supposed to be afraid of something as trivial as the dark. So I grit my teeth and venture out alongside the ship. As I’m glancing around, every sense heightened a million times, I happen to look up and with a burst of surprise, I see nothing in the sky. Sure, there are stars glittering in the distance but...no moon. None at all. Now that I think about it, I didn’t see one when we had scanned the planet from space. But it’s still weird. I switch my flashlight on.

  I run my hand along the hull of Hourglass to guide me, and mentally curse myself for forgetting how far away the engine room is from the ramp. It takes me nearly five minutes to stumble through the dark and to the area of the hull I’m trying to find. I glance down, but it’s too dark to see anything very well, so I shine the flashlight across the metal. I run my hands over it, trying to find any inconsistency, but everything seems fine. I walk a few more paces, inspecting the area around it. But I don’t see any intrusions, or anything to suggest Hourglass had anything more than a peaceful landing. I shrug. Holden must be overreacting. I bend down closer to the ground to inspect the metal touching the surface, just to be sure. I suddenly realize that my hands are shaking ever so slightly and I chide myself for being so stupid in coming out here alone. It’s dark and although I know that darkness holds the same things as the day, it frightens me to my core.

  Suddenly, I hear a noise. I leap to my feet and spin around, pointing the flashlight ahead of me like a weapon. The trees gleam in front of me as I
twirl my flashlight from side to side, searching for something in the woods. I shake my head. I couldn’t have heard it. I’m just scared. The dark has always bothered me.

  There’s no way I could have heard a voice. But then it happens again and my heart skips in my chest like a broken record. A laugh. A giggle. Lots of them. My throat is closing up and my heart is beating so fast I’m afraid it’s going to beat itself to death. I shine the flashlight in the direction of the sound.

  “Who’s there?” I ask, but my voice is quieter than I had intended. So much quieter. Someone giggles. A child. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. The voice is too shrill, too young. “Who’s there?” I ask again, but this time the laughing comes from a different direction, multiple directions, too many for just one person. I spin around, nearly tripping, but my flashlight catches something dark moving in the shadows—a flash of something small, something pink. A glimpse of blonde hair disappearing into the trees. I clamp a hand over my mouth, trying not to shriek in surprise while every thought, every system in my body, is moving a hundred miles an hour.

  I turn my flashlight back in the direction of the ramp and scramble across the uneven underbrush until the gleam of Hourglass’s lamplight on metal sends relief flooding my system like endorphins. I run up the ramp so quickly, I nearly fall head over heels into the hallway. I punch the button on the wall, sealing the ramp closed behind me as I flick off my flashlight and close my eyes, trying to calm my panicked heart. I stare down at my hands and realize, with a jolt, that my metal fingers have left indentations on the flashlight.

  “What’s wrong?” Holden asks, his voice just as frantic as I know mine would be if I opened my mouth. “Is something wrong? What happened?”

  I take in a deep breath before straightening up and opening my eyes. I stare at the sealed doorway between me and the planet outside, but for some reason it doesn’t make me feel that much better.

  “Someone’s out there.”

  “What?” Holden asks blankly, his expression a mask of blissful confusion before the truth hits him. “You mean, someone from the ship went out there?”

  I’m shaking my head, wishing that were true. Because he’s so wrong, so terrifyingly wrong. “No. Someone else.”

  Holden’s expression is still puzzled as he stares at me for a long moment. “Someone else,” he echoes. “I thought we determined this planet was uninhabited...”

  I nod. “We did, but I saw someone.”

  Now Holden is shaking his head, almost as if he thinks I’ve had a bad dream or imagined something. “We checked for humanoid life. You said so yourself, there’s nothing here.”

  “Something is out there,” I spit.

  Holden and I are silent for a long moment, all the while his expression becoming more and more worried. Although, whether he thinks I’m crazy, or that there might actually be something out there, I’m not sure.

  “What...do we do?” he eventually asks.

  I take another breath, still trying to calm my body back to normal. “We wait until morning and...”

  “We investigate.” Holden’s eyes light up.

  “I was going to say, leave.”

  “But there could be intelligent life here,” Holden protests.

  I stare at him for a long time, still thinking about how terrifying that laughter had been, the figure running into the trees. “If they’re intelligent, I hope they know how scared I was out there,” I snap before turning and heading back toward my quarters. “And by the way, I didn’t see anything wrong with the hull, so get some sleep and deal with it in the morning.”

  That night, my dreams change. I don’t dream about the girl, or him, I dream about someone else. Someone I don’t know but...get the feeling it's someone I used to know. He’s a young boy. A boy who’s always smiling at me. He’s holding my hand and we’re sitting somewhere out in the open—somewhere that seems like a field, only it’s too dark to tell.

  We lie in the grass and stare up at the stars together. He points out constellations and spouts out names, but I get the feeling he has no idea what he’s talking about and he’s making them up as he goes. Then the girl walks up, her blonde hair blowing slightly in the breeze as she situates herself next to me on the cool grass. Her mouth opens and she’s talking to me, although I can’t make out what she’s saying, but some part of me—some detached part—seems to be understanding and replying. And suddenly a name comes to mind. A name from nowhere stumbles through the air and through my thoughts, landing in the perfect moment between sleep and consciousness; just enough to pull me from my dreams and send my eyes blinking open.

  Winifred.

  Air catches in my throat as I sit up in bed, pushing my hair from my face and over my head, out of the way. I don’t know where the name came from. I was only dreaming. I throw my covers off, suddenly feeling hot. Why does it sound so familiar? Why do I feel the same way about that name as I do about “Dad” or “Mom” or “Sylvia”—like someone I’ve known my entire life? Winifred. It’s a random name, completely out of the blue.

  I lay back against the pillows, taking a deep breath and staring up at the ceiling. Suddenly I feel the same as I did on Earth. Smothered, stuck, imprisoned. I need to get off this planet, and I need to get off now.

  But why do I feel like it will be harder than escaping from Earth?

  Chapter Seven

  It’s the afternoon and Holden’s been begging to go outside all day. Actually, everyone has. I’m not sure whether they believe me about the incident last night. Or possibly, they’re more intrigued by the idea of life on the planet. Sylvia knows how I am about the dark, so I get the feeling she thinks I conjured up whatever was out there. But I know I saw something. And heard it, too.

  “Come on, Captain,” Jackson whines and I can’t help feeling more like a mom than an actual authority figure. That was probably the problem with hiring a bunch of teenagers. And being one myself. I stare ominously at the hull of the ship, wondering what waits for us out there. My skin crawls just thinking about it. But if going out there one last time is what will shut them up and make them happy about leaving the planet, it’s what I’ll do. Besides, we were outside yesterday in the daylight and nothing happened.

  And a part of me is curious about what I saw. I can face things better in the light.

  “Yes, we can go out,” I say, but glare them all down before they have a chance to cheer and laugh. “For a few minutes, and then we’re leaving.”

  No one has the guts to protest, so we all head over to the ramp, grab jackets and weapons just in case and press the button. Sylvia is staying on the ship. Apparently she’s seen enough of the planet and claims someone should stay on board in case of an emergency. So Angelica, the guys and I head out.

  I can’t help but notice how fast my heart speeds up upon leaving the safety of the metal hull. Even though the sun shines brightly upon us, illuminating everything, I still feel exposed and fragile.

  “Where did you see...whatever it was you saw?” Holden asks me. I point in the general direction and we start walking. When we reach the part of the hull I had been inspecting last night, I look around. Everything seems fine. There isn’t even a sign that anything, other than I, was here. I stare down at the ground. There are footprints in the dirt—

  my footprints. But no others. Holden seems to realize this too, and after giving me a look, pretends not to come to this conclusion.

  “It was probably some animal,” he says.

  I nod, although I don’t agree with him. The others are snooping around beside the ship, so I stare out at the trees surrounding us. It’s not like I can’t see anything—it’s daytime, it can’t hurt—so I venture a little farther into the surrounding brush. I push a few tree branches away, inspecting the area for any sign of life.

  And suddenly, my eye catches it. A footprint. I bend over quickly, my hair falling in my face. It’s small, really small. Like a child. Shivers dance up my spine as I remember the giggling from last night. I swal
low. The footprints don’t even look like shoes – they’re feet. I can see the toe indentations, and the heel.

  “Holden!” I call and he comes hurrying through the brush. “Look,” I order, pointing to the ground. He comes up beside me and peers down. After a few seconds, I know he’s noticed the footprint, but he hasn’t said anything yet.

  “It looks human.” His voice has changed. So dramatically that I turn to look at him. Even his face seems whiter.

  “Do you believe me now?”

  He nods silently.

  “We’re going back to the ship, and we’re getting out of here,” I declare, standing up and heading back in the direction of the ramp. The sun is starting to go down anyway, so I take it as a good time to get back to Hourglass. Holden follows me and as the others notice our gait, they catch on as well and soon we’re all filing back into the ship.

  “We’re leaving,” I tell them as I store my gun back into the closet and motion for the rest of them to do the same. “Holden, get the engines ready and everyone else prepare to get back to our real jobs. We have some ships to find.” I leave the rest of them scrambling to their posts while I go in search of Sylvia. She’s in her quarters, fiddling with her computer and she smiles when I walk in.

  “Hey,” I greet her. “I just wanted to let you know we’re about to take off.”

  Sylvia smiles wider like she’s relieved. “Good. This was a bad enough idea in the first place. It’ll be nice to get out of here and actually do something proactive.”