A black hole appeared below. He could see nothing beyond it.
The cave walls disappeared as he plummeted into the open ocean. Willard came to a complete stop, hovering in space, attempting to get a bearing on his location. Looking up, Willard noticed the gentle waves of ice in the ceiling. Beautiful. But other than that, the water was too cloudy to see anything at all. How did Connelly and Robert see where they were going? Willard wondered, and how did they see anything alive in this milk?
He thought back to his communications with Connelly while he was topside. What was it she had him do? Switch off the lights? It was worth a try. He would never find them with such poor visibility.
Willard turned off his headlamp and was plunged into a deep, weightless, darkness.
Willard's eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. He could make out the faint impressions of the glowing world around him. His mouth opened as he saw what had lured Connelly and Robert away from the sphere cable. "Wow…"
A surge of water passed by, causing Willard to spin in place. His gear stretched out away from his waist like a dancer's skirt. When he came to a complete stop he realized that something had just swam past him—close enough for its wake to send him spinning.
Willard gripped the controls of his propulsion pack and prepared to launch himself towards the ocean floor. He couldn't make it out fully, but whatever had passed appeared to be the size of a skyscraper and was quickly turning around. Its dark shape was silhouetted by the slightly brighter waters. As the beast reared around, Willard saw a wiggling creature floating above its head…a parasite?
Click, click, click.
Willard shouted in agony as sound pounded through the water and bounced off his body. Willard's eyes burst open. He was concealed in the water. With no light to give away his position, he was invisible to the naked eyes. But something had tipped this creature off to his whereabouts…and now it knew exactly where to strike.
Willard felt a wave of displaced water suddenly push on him. The creature was charging! As Willard throttled the propulsion pack to full speed, he thought, this must be the same creature that chased Connelly. Is it waiting for them? Or is this its normal stomping ground?
Shooting straight down, Willard was sure that a creature of that size wouldn't be agile enough to make the turn and follow him. He turned back to look and was pleased when he saw nothing there—just the black, black water. He turned forward again and saw the glowing ocean floor. He smiled as he noticed it was alive with living creatures and plants.
Confusion gripped Willard's mind as he attempted to comprehend what he saw next. From above and below, massive spikes closed in, blocking his view of the bottom. As the walls closed in, the darkness around him grew more intense.
Click, click, click.
The sounds were so loud that all Willard could do was scream and cover his ears. When the resounding pulses dissipated, he felt an echo of vibration tingling through his body. He looked for the ocean floor. It was gone; replaced by pitch black space.
With a shaking hand, Willard flicked on his headlamp. "Shit." He spoke the word calmly. He knew where he was—in the mouth of an alien predator. And he knew there was only one way out, that is, if aliens had similar digestive tracks to Earth animals. He prayed they did, and that the PMS suit would be strong enough to withstand the beast's digestive juices. Then he would make the most undignified escape of his life…
Well Jonah, Willard thought, if you're watching this and have any ideas…. No visions came to him, not that he really expected them to. Fine then, he thought, just don't laugh at me after I die.
The creature swallowed and sucked Willard down its throat and into its 747 sized stomach, where an ocean of acid began to work at breaking down the PMS suit.
CHAPTER 21 -- PRESSURE
A series of questions sprang to Choi's mind all at once. How had Peterson come down to the surface? He wasn't a trained pilot. What happened to Harris? Why weren't the com systems working? What was wrong with Peterson's eyes? That was just the beginning. But she dared not speak, not a single word. Something was wrong with Peterson.
His red eyes were locked onto her. With flexed arms and clenched fingers, he stalked slowly forward. She kept moving, trying to keep the ATV between them. But Peterson moved in a wide circle, tightening his distance with every step.
Choi had no desire to make a stand against Peterson. He was stronger than she was and very physically fit. And in the low gravity she was clumsy and slow. But running was impossible. In the time it took her to mount the ATV and start the engine, Peterson would be on top of her. She would have to injure or distract him long enough to make her escape.
As she looked into his fiery eyes, she could see nothing but loathing. What happened to him? She rounded the back of the ATV, Peterson came around the front, his back to the field of Europhids. It was at that moment that Choi noticed his eye color perfectly matched the red hue of the field.
No…
Peterson seemed to notice the change in expression on her face. He stopped his advance and took on a very unnatural stance. "I understand what you are thinking."
Choi didn't say a word. The voice sounded vaguely like Peterson's, but it wasn't him speaking. Like he was possessed.
Controlled.
"How did we…get inside his mind?" Peterson twisted his lips with an expression that was a poor imitation of deep thought. "The world…all you see…was created by me. By us. All of us. Me. Do you understand?"
Choi stood her ground, but slowly moved her hand to the side of the ATV storage trailer.
"I have seen what he has seen…this Michael Peterson. I know what he knows. You are not my children and you are not welcome here."
Choi slid her hand inside the trailer. "Why are we not welcome?"
"You are a contamination."
Choi shuddered. Whatever had possessed Peterson saw them the way humanity viewed disease, germs, bacteria—the enemy, who could be wiped out without any moral qualms. To the unknown denizens of this moon, they were the foreign invaders, they were the disease.
"We only want to understand you."
"Ironic, that in taking this mind," Peterson said as he motioned to his own head, "I now fully understand who I am."
Choi waited.
"I am the father of this world. I am the defender, the protector. I give life and I take life."
A growing apprehension about what and who she was speaking to began to churn a stew of vomit deep inside Choi. She was accustomed to the microscopic world; an enemy that could not speak. What she experienced now felt entirely unnatural. It felt wrong.
It felt evil.
With the next words out of Peterson's mouth, she knew it was.
"I am that I am," Peterson said"
The words shot through Choi's mind like a bullet and came to a stop at a memory from four years ago. During a weekend excursion to visit in old friend in Montrose, California, she had visited a church with an old friend. The sermon was on the calling of Moses and how he had resisted God's call to save the Hebrews from their Egyptian masters. She remembered the words, "I am that I am," from that story. God had spoken them to Moses, identifying himself as God, the great I am.
And now, Peterson, under the control of…something, had identified himself word for word, as God.
Choi's memory snapped back to a few months previous. She recalled a conversation over dinner during their days spent training at the GEC faculty. Robert and Peterson were exchanging personal histories. Both had grown up in the Church, Robert in a Catholic family, Peterson in a Baptist. Whatever had taken control of Peterson's mind must have merged with his thoughts taking on the identity of his memories it most identified with.
He—it— believed it was God.
The solid metal handle of a trowel grazed across her fingertips and returned her thoughts to the present. She reached inside the ATV trailer and grabbed the nearest tool, a trowel that she'd used to dig up Europhid samples. She would now use it as a weapon.
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br /> She glanced down at the trowel as she gripped it, then back to Peterson. She was relieved to see he hadn't made any further movement, but the look of total confidence unnerved her to the core. "You're not God," she said.
"I am the beginning," Peterson said as he took a step forward.
Choi stepped back, keeping the trowel hidden behind her body.
Peterson jumped and floated gracefully through the low gravity. He landed a few feet from Choi. "I am the end."
"I am everywhere and know everything." He was only a few feet away.
"All you are," Choi said, "is delusional." Before Peterson could respond, Choi brought the trowel around and bashed the side of Peterson's head. A vibration shook through Choi's arm as metal collided with skull. The force of the blow surprised Choi and she suddenly became concerned that she may have killed her crewmate.
Any fear that Peterson was dead dissipated when she recovered from her swing and came face to face with Peterson, who was leaning forward, burrowing into her mind with his eyes. He smiled. "You cannot hurt God with a shovel."
With an amazing burst of speed, Peterson reached forward, clasped onto Choi's PMS and lurched her up into the air. She sailed over ten feet of ice before the world below her turned red. He had thrown her towards the Europhids. Choi watched as the ground approached and wondered if the impact would hurt. She was moving fast and falling hard, but the Europhids would break her fall…or would they?
Choi's body collided with solid ice. The Europhids had moved out of the way. Her head struck the ice hard. Brilliant colors warbled in her view, combined with sparks of white light.
As consciousness faded, Choi became aware of a strange sensation. Something soft touched her body on all sides. It caressed her gently, lifting her up onto a comfortable mattress. Points of pressure undulated against her legs and torso like she was being held up by a crowd at a concert. She was being moved.
She was being taken.
* * * * *
The world was wet and thick. Willard had been thrown down the esophagus of the alien predator. He'd bounced off throat walls like a racquetball and had been repeatedly poked by sharp talons designed to shred prey as they slid to the creature's first stomach. Only the impenetrable skin of his PMS suit kept him from being filleted. Upon awaking, he found himself afloat in a viscous white liquid that reminded him vanilla pudding.
Swimming through the digestive juices wasn't like dogpaddling in water. Moving was slow, tedious and muscle burning work. It took fifteen minutes of pumping away to reach the stomach wall, churned with motion, circulating the stomach fluids. The ribbed stomach wall, which he could see thanks to his still functional headlamp, was covered in splotches of pink and brown. He placed his hand against the stomach wall and felt the bumpy lines across his finger tips.
A surge of motion caused his hand to slide across the ribbed wall. He was being pushed along through the stomach like a piece of food, towards the stomach's exit and into the bowels beyond. Willard closed his eyes, ignoring the images conjured by his imagination. When the surge pulled him forward again, he didn't resist. He knew it would lead him to the exit, which he would never find on his own.
His theory proved correct five minutes later. With a quick surge he felt the floor beneath him open in a pulse. He was yanked down, sucked into another chamber of the beast's intestinal tract. Blinded by the quick movement and entrance into a tight tube, Willard became disoriented. He felt the thick ooze pulled away from his body as he slid, head first, through the conduit. The walls around him rolled with muscle, pushing him forward.
Then he slid into open air and dropped. He fell for several feet and saw a sloshing world of clear liquid below. Within the liquid rested an assortment of partially decayed alien corpses—previous meals that had yet to be fully digested.
Willard crashed into the liquid and thrashed about, panicking, searching for the surface even though all the air he needed to breath was provided by the PMS. He reached the surface and sucked air into his lungs. Twisting his body violently, he searched the chamber for any danger and found only the lonely dead eyes of alien sea creatures. Loose flesh hung from bones. Decaying muscles dripped into the liquid.
This must be where the real digestion takes place, Willard thought as he began to calm himself. Several deep breaths later, Willard became aware of something…a noise.
Splashing.
Beyond the fear of being eaten and digested inside the giant, he now had a sense that he wasn't alone, that the beast's digestion was aided by smaller creatures that lived within the bowels of the larger. Maybe parasitic.
Willard looked into the distance and saw only the dead and the distant grey walls of the grand organ. He ducked beneath the surface and scanned the depths. It was then that he saw his equipment, resting on the bottom. It had been stripped from his body when he was swallowed. The oxygen tanks, the personal propulsion system and the emergency medical supplies all sat on the floor of the stomach.
Forgetting the splashing sound, Willard dove down, knowing that if he had any hope of surviving and saving Robert and Connelly, he needed that equipment. He kicked his way down and clawed past the fragments of endless dead bodies.
As he moved closer to his goal, something nagged at his mind. Something fought for his attention. A sensation he hadn't realized was building began to scream and pound at his intellect.
He was hot.
He was burning.
Willard took another look around. The bodies that littered the bottom were awash with tiny bubbles. The liquid seemed to grow hotter…or more acidic the further down he swam. It had become hot enough outside his suit that the cooling system could no longer compensate. Willard wondered at what temperature the suit would reach its limit. If it got much hotter, the PMS would boil him like lobster meat in its shell.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed for the bottom. Every surge brought him closer to his equipment and nearer to death. As his arms and legs slid against the inside of the PMS, it felt as though a hot iron were being gently grazed across his skin. The sweat oozing from his pores stung his eyes and obscured his vision. His vision was all but obscured when he reached the bottom, but his aim had remained true. He felt the hard surface of the equipment strike his hand.
Moving as quickly as he could, feeling that the suit would soon fail him, Willard strapped the propulsion unit to his back, grasped the controls and set the throttle to full. Body parts were liquefied as the propulsion unit burst to life, dragging Willard up. After bashing through a few flimsy bodies, Willard broke the surface. He was exhausted and terrified, but alive and beginning to cool down. Laying on his back and hugging the rescued equipment to his chest, Willard caught his breath.
In the silence that followed his near broiling, he heard the same splashing. He scanned the area for the source of the noise. A ripple of liquid came from behind a large carcass that looked like a whale with a vertical mouth. Its skin was clear, but Willard wasn't sure if that was normal or caused by the digestive process. Willard eased himself toward the body.
As he closed in, the splashing grew louder, more desperate.
"Help me," a voice said.
Willard flinched. Had someone else been swallowed?
"Help me!" The voice was terrified.
As Willard prepared to aid whoever else had become victim to the beast, he realized that the voice was his own…inside his mind.
"Please," it said, "do not be afraid."
Willard felt strangely at ease as he moved around the whale-like creature. On the other side he found another body. It was built like a fish, but its skin was translucent and its internal organs glowed a dull blue. The fish flapped on top of the water, spinning in odd circles—twitching as death slowly claimed it. But what held Willard's attention was a small organism attached to the side of the animal. It had the same shape and size of a Europhid but was blue.
The blue Europhid was limp and motionless. With a final twitch, the dying creature passed away. Willard moved in c
loser.
"Save me," the voice said. "Save me and I will give you a gift in return."
"Are you…are you the fish?" Willard said.
Silence followed.
"Show me who you are."
The Europhid glowed a gentle blue and then faded.
Willard set his confusion aside. Something…or someone had asked for his aid. As his instincts took over, he responded the only way he knew how. "What do I need to do?"
"Touch me."
Willard felt a stab of distrust. He squinted and said, "And what will you give me in return?"
"Hope," the voice said. "Life."
The last word was weak, fading. Willard reached out with his hand before he could weigh his options. He could sense the creature fading. His finger brushed up against the Europhid and a shock, like electricity ripped through his body. He shook as though claimed by an epileptic seizure and felt his mind, his very thoughts, merge with another's.
When the shaking subsided and his mind cleared, Willard looked back to the blue Europhid. It was withered and colorless—dead. With a hard heart, Willard knew he had failed. But then a new emotion filled his body.
Hope.
"Are you there?" he asked.
No response came. Other than the bubbling of rising digestive gases, not a sound could be heard. Willard wondered if he had had a hallucination brought on by stress.
It felt so real, he thought. But the voice was inside his head, which only supported the idea that his experience had been a delusion. The blue Europhid, which shimmered lightly with life only moments ago now looked decomposed and long dead. Willard concluded without a doubt that the Europhid had not communicated with him.
It was just a damn plant anyway!
Willard focused his thought on the task at hand, escaping from the gargantuan bowels. The feeling Willard couldn't shake, even after determining he'd hallucinated the talking Europhid, was the nagging sense of hope—the knowledge that he knew what to do. Without questioning why, Willard turned to the far wall and gunned the propulsion unit forward. He sped through the digestive fluid, not being able to see any exit, but believing, knowing, it lay ahead.
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