“Ah, Houston,” Kath says. “This is Iris. Get Sara Hendi on the line. Tell her this thing is a celestial predator. Top of the chain. She’ll understand… Okay? Okay?”
The response over the radio is, “Copy, Iris. We hear you.”
Nikki says. “You’re going to have to hurry. I can barely hold this thing together.”
“Okay,” Kath says yet again. Nolan looks down at her from where he’s positioned in the hatch, peering over the collar of his helmet. Her gloved hands are trembling. She’s stressing, unable to compress her thinking into a coherent message. He wants to say something, to urge her on, but it won’t help. Come on, Kath. This is the final hurdle.
Kath clears her throat. As much as he and Nikki want to push her along, she seems determined to bring everything together.
“We’ve wondered about the silence. We’ve looked out at the stars and we haven’t seen anyone. Why? We thought, maybe it’s us. Maybe all civilizations have to pass through some great filter. Maybe they fight among themselves like we do and end up destroying themselves. Or maybe the universe is a dark forest. We thought, maybe there’s someone else out there, some advanced civilization that wipes out the competition. We wondered if anyone would be so callous, destroying other civilizations before they could reach the stars. But no. That’s not it.
“Don’t you see? They’re not smart. They’re not intelligent. They evolved to prey on life as it emerges on other planets. Nolan was right—they hide between the stars. They avoid the gravity wells, drifting between systems. They’re like locusts. They lie dormant, watching, waiting for life to flourish.
“Every living thing follows a lifecycle. Eggs hatch to become larvae, which cocoon to reach adulthood. Then the cycle starts again. An̆duru is a cocoon. To mature, these things have to grow. They have to feed. That’s what’s missing when it comes to An̆duru. They need us to complete their lifecycle. My grandfather once told me, birds gather wherever seeds may fall. These creatures are drawn to Earth as a food source.
“You’ve got to destroy them. Get deep inside that thing and detonate. You can’t let them make landfall. Not on Earth. You’ve—”
“I’m sorry,” Nikki says. “I—I can’t hold it any longer. It’s burning through my gloves.”
“They heard us,” Kath says, sounding manic, on the verge of sobbing. “They had to have heard us.”
“I hope so.”
Nolan takes up the slack on the line as the top of Nikki’s helmet appears on the edge of the Orion. She clambers over the Service Module, but she loses her handhold.
Nikki scrambles, trying to grab hold of the Orion as she drifts out of reach, floating into space. Nolan reels her in, pulling slowly on the tether and drawing her toward him. Her gloves are black. The rubber on her palm and fingertips has melted. He retreats inside the capsule, helping her in. Rather than grabbing handholds, she uses her gloves like a boxer, nudging instead of holding onto the rails.
Once the hatch is shut, Nikki says, “W—We need to pressurize the cabin,” but it’s clear she’s in no state to help. She stabs at the controls with her disfigured gloves. Her hands are shaking.
“Let me help,” Nolan says.
With pressure restored, the crew open their visors. Nolan grabs a medical kit. To his surprise, vapor dances on his breath in the chilly air. Kath removes Nikki’s gloves. Blisters have formed on her hands. Her fingers are covered in burns and red welts. Nolan applies some cream and binds her hands with a compression bandage.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Kath says.
“It’s okay. They heard us,” Nikki says, gingerly working her hands back into her gloves. “I know they did.”
“I hope they heard enough,” Kath says.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Nolan says, seeing the Moon as it drifts over the window. From this distance, An̆duru isn’t visible.
“We’re still venting,” Nikki says, checking a readout on the display screen. “Goddamn it. I’d hoped the epoxy would hold, but it hasn’t. We have to depressurize to conserve oxygen.”
Nolan’s heart sinks. The Orion has become a tomb. They can’t reenter Earth’s atmosphere with a broken heat shield. That would turn their crypt into a crematorium. He wonders about the future, trying to imagine the cosmos beyond the span of his own life. How long will the Orion drift in an eccentric orbit? Are they destined to crash into the lunar surface or plummet to Earth?
Somewhere out there, remnants of the Apollo missions from the 1960s are still drifting through the dark void. Snoopy was the name given to the Apollo 10 lunar ascent stage. Rather than abandoning it to crash on the Moon, NASA sent it into a heliocentric orbit around the Sun. Perhaps like Snoopy, one day, amateur astronomers will search for Iris among the stars.
After changing into fresh diapers and suiting up again, they don their helmets and prepare to depressurize the capsule one last time. It’s futile, but it’s human to fight for life.
“Alright,” Nikki says as they strap in. “I’m going to try to stabilize the craft before we run out of juice. Keep your backpacks handy. Once we lose electrical power, we’ll have some oxygen under pressure, but the pumps won’t run. Scrubbing CO2 is going to be an issue. Eventually, we’ll have to switch to our backpacks.”
Nolan admires her perseverance. There’s no reason to go on, but she persists regardless. He goes along with the procedure dutifully. If nothing else, discipline provides a way to deal with fear. What would you do, Nolan? Panic? Scream? Spend your last minutes hyperventilating? Damn, Nikki is calm under pressure, helping him keep himself together. She’s probably thinking the same about them. Their tacit, unspoken agreement not to talk about death is all that keeps them focused. Like Scott on the Antarctic, with base camp too far away, they’re determined to remain calm until the bitter, cold end.
“Can we still see it?” Kath asks once Nikki has corrected their spin.
“An̆duru? The Prince of Darkness?” Nikki says, bringing up the long-range camera. “Maybe.”
Nolan’s not sure what their distance is from An̆duru, but the image before him looks like that of a raisin in the dark. Rather than being crisp, the view is hazy, on the outer limits of what’s possible with their remaining camera.
“That thing in there,” Nikki says. “I don’t understand. How could it evolve to live in a vacuum?”
“I don’t know,” Kath replies. “Evolution is fickle but predictable. Evolution will exploit any niche available to it. Eyes exploit light, so over fifty different variants have evolved on Earth. Flight exploits air, so we have birds, insects, mammals like bats, and even plant seeds that have taken to the skies. Hell, there are spiders that fly by releasing silk threads that act as sails.”
“But a vacuum?” Nikki asks.
“Species love niche environments. It means they can own them, and by owning them they can avoid the direct competition that drives other species extinct. We have plenty of extremophiles on Earth. A vacuum is just another extreme environment. We’ve got microbes that live in complete darkness around volcanic vents on the seafloor. Somehow they thrive under pressures that would squash us like a bug on a windshield.”
Nolan echos Nikki’s sentiment with, “But a hard vacuum, that’s different, right? How likely is that?”
“It’s as likely as the scalding water kicked up by a geyser. Or the inside of a nuclear reactor. Space is the single biggest environment there is—and there’s plenty of energy. From the perspective of biological life, if you can exploit a vacuum, you’ve got it made.”
She laughs, adding, “Space is like New York. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”
“I guess,” Nikki says.
As an afterthought, Kath says, “I can imagine a scenario where these things evolved beneath the surface of an ice moon orbiting a gas giant. The first time they break the surface, they die. But if that moon is like Europa or Enceladus, regularly erupting with geysers bursting out into space, eventually, something might survive. And if it
survives and makes it back beneath the surface, it gains an evolutionary advantage.
“On Earth, we have microscopic organisms called water bears. We’ve stuck these critters on the outside of spacecraft. We’ve exposed them for months on end to a hard vacuum, harsh cosmic rays, and extreme temperature variations. On returning to Earth, it was a case of just add water! If tardigrades can do that, why can’t they?”
“But how did they end up with An̆duru?” Nolan asks.
“It’s a nest—a hive,” Kath replies. “We’re only seeing a glimpse of their lifecycle. Like parasitic wasps or a colony of fire ants, there are phases they need to progress through. The last stage would be launching these seed pods across space with astonishing precision.”
Nikki says, “So it’s an invasive species—like rats on driftwood. Instead of following ocean currents to some distant land, these things follow gravitational pathways.”
“Yes,” Kath says. “And like the isolated species on those islands, life on Earth would be unable to compete with such an aggressive predator.”
A flash lights up the screens in front of them, erupting from within An̆duru.
Nikki punches a few buttons, magnifying the image as she says, “Looks like Houston got your message.”
The view is blurry. The onboard AI image processing algorithm kicks in, upscaling the footage. Bands of fire appear, highlighting the chasms that have opened up on An̆duru. From this distance, it looks as though lava is spewing out onto the surface of the alien pod. Molten blobs seethe and boil, defying the darkness.
For a brief moment, superheated gases surge out of the gaps and cracks in the thick shell. Plasma glows as it tears through the alien husk. Gases expand into the bitter cold vacuum of space. It’s not an explosion as such. There’s no billowing fireball or clouds of smoke. Over a matter of a few seconds, fiery geysers erupt from the cracks on An̆duru. They fade into the eternal night, leaving a shattered hull breaking apart.
“That’ll be the X-37,” Nolan says. “They must have slipped it inside one of those chasms.”
The cracks on An̆duru radiate heat, dissipating the energy of a thermonuclear blast within its core. Several large chunks of the outer hull come loose, drifting into space, revealing a layer of thick, gooey molten rock.
“Now that,” Kath says. “That’s beautiful!”
Desert Sun
A blue glow seeps in through the windows of the Orion.
Kath is so cold she’s beyond shivering. She can barely see past the ice crystals that have formed on the inside of her helmet.
A soft mist emerges with each breath. It’s been nine hours since they switched to their life support packs, six since her heating coil failed. It’s been a day since they ran the batteries on the Orion dry, two days since any of them ate or drank, and four days since a thermonuclear explosion tore through the heart of An̆duru. With the death of the Orion, internal comms failed, leaving them isolated from each other. The three astronauts are hidden behind the glass faceplates in their helmets, unable to talk in a vacuum.
Kath’s mind is shutting down. Reality is a blur. Dreams offer bitter solace. Those points at which she wakes are only brought about because a spasm of pain ripples through her legs. Long ago, she withdrew her fingers from her gloves, bunching them up into a ball inside the rubberized palm material. She curled up in a fetal position. Occasionally, she bumps into one of the icy panels lining the inside of the Orion. Her lips are parched, while her skin is cracked.
The hatch on the Orion is open.
There were numerous cracks in the cabin following their encounter with An̆duru. Rather than allowing air to escape into the vacuum of space, Nikki depressurized the capsule. She had them take turns standing in the opening, warming themselves in the sunlight. With their suits failing, it was like trying to gently warm a frozen turkey in a blast furnace. Fatigue set in and the extreme temperature differences became too much to bear. Why prolong the suffering?
A long, deep sleep is the best death she can hope for.
The only thing that’s kept Kath going is seeing Earth looming larger in the window. One last glimpse of home and it’ll be time to sign off.
With their batteries dead, there’s no way to fire the main engine. Nikki said their orbit would bring them close to Earth. Three thousand miles above the surface isn’t that close, but at least Earth is no longer a postage stamp in the window. Their orbit will see them swing around the planet and soar out toward the Moon again. Gravity has trapped them between these two celestial bodies. They’re doomed to repeat this loop for eternity. Kath wants to see her home one last time. She hopes to spot Montana from orbit, giving her a chance to say goodbye.
A dark shape passes over the windows, blocking the sunlight reflecting off Earth. Kath winces, shrinking in fear. A burst of adrenalin causes her heart to surge. As quickly as it came, the shadow is gone. Her joints are stiff. Somehow she unravels. She kicks with one boot and drifts to the nearest window.
Nolan is curled up in a ball near the exercise bike at the rear of the craft.
Nikki is dead. Her body floats inert. Her back is arched while her arms and legs are outstretched. Not long now, Kath thinks. She can’t bring herself to pull her arms away from her chest. They’ve been locked in place for hours, held rigid against her suit in a bid to stay warm.
They’re somewhere over the Pacific.
Brilliant white clouds blind her, causing her to squint as she tries to make out any sign of land. Which way are they going? Is America, Asia, or Australia about to pass beneath them? From this height, there’s no sign of life, let alone humanity, but it’s a beautiful day down there. To the south, storms swirl, obscuring the ice of Antarctica. Beneath her, the clouds look like candy floss. A light smattering of white has been daubed across an azure blue ocean. Earth is serene. Warm. Inviting.
She turns, catching something out of the corner of her eye.
Light shines within the open hatch of the Orion, but it isn’t the sun.
Kath reaches out, forcing her arms to respond. She ignores the rush of cold that clings to her skin. Her undergarments are frozen. She rests her hand on the edge of the opening, stopping herself from drifting out into space. Two stars shine in her eyes, blinding her. Instinctively, she reaches up, slapping at rather than grabbing her visor. She drags it down over her face, unable to see beyond the lights.
Kath feels drawn to the stars. Although she knows it’s impossible, it seems as though she could reach out and touch them. Pushing forward, her backpack catches on the edge of the hatch, knocking her to one side.
The twin lights disappear, leaving her eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness.
As her upper torso clears the edge of the hatch, Kath finds herself bathed in the sunlight reflecting off Earth. Warmth seeps through the insulation in her suit. Down below her, the Baja Peninsula is visible. It’s moving on a strange angle. No, it’s her and the Orion that are strange, crossing from southwest to northeast. She’ll pass over Texas along with some of the southern states, but not Montana. Her heart sinks.
Wait. Where did those two lights come from?
Kath turns in the hatchway.
Bursts of gas dart from the leading edge of another spacecraft. Fine white puffs of gas dissipate into the darkness as the vehicle maneuvers.
Black nose cone. White body. No windows.
In her dull state, Kath struggles to understand what she’s looking at. Is her mind playing tricks on her?
Black tiles line the leading edge of the delta wings. At the rear, there are twin tail fins, rising up at opposing angles. A set of cargo bay doors open, revealing an array of complex machinery. It’s a space shuttle, but it’s not. It’s too small. Barely the size of a SUV. There are logos—Boeing, NASA, USAF, USSF.
The craft hangs in space, slowly positioning itself in front of the Orion.
Waiting.
She raises her sun visor, wanting to get a better look, trying to convince herself this isn’t a cruel d
ream. Kath pulls herself back inside the frozen capsule. She pushes her fingers into her icy gloves. The cold is painful. She floats over to Nolan, grabbing him by the shoulders, shaking his pumpkin suit and yelling, “Wake up!”
He can’t hear her.
His eyes flicker.
With a firm grip on his stiff suit material, she pulls him close, pressing the faceplate on her helmet against his. Kath yells at the top of her lungs, “Goddamn it, Nolan! Wake up!”
His eyes go wide. Even though they’re in a vacuum, vibrations pass between their two helmets as the glass touches. He can hear her. His lips move, but he can’t talk. She pushes again, saying, “Outside. They’re out there. Waiting for us.”
Nolan looks past her at the hatch.
Although their helmets are no longer touching and he can no longer hear her, she pushes him on, saying, “Go. I’ll get Nikki.”
Nolan’s movements are achingly slow. He reaches for the opening with both arms outstretched.
Kath cradles Nikki’s limp body, pulling her toward the hatch. She’s dead. She has to be, and yet Kath cannot give up on her, not while there’s at least a sliver of doubt.
Ahead of her, Nolan pushes off, drifting through twenty feet. He has his arms outstretched, ready to grab the machinery within the other craft. From within the Orion, Kath watches as he collides with one of the cargo bay doors. Nolan ricochets, bouncing off the thin panel. His legs swing wildly, colliding with a support strut, but he has a handhold. He works his way into the cramped confines of the cargo bay. Once he’s set, he turns back to the Orion and beckons Kath to follow.
Kath struggles. Maneuvering through the hatch is an ordeal given her frail state. Trying to steer an unconscious body ahead of her is nigh on impossible. Kath pushes Nikki on, working her up in front of her as she positions herself beside and below the hatch. She grabs one of Nikki’s boots, clinging to it as she pushes her out into space.
Kath follows, but with only one free hand, it’s difficult to avoid bumping into the Orion. Her backpack catches yet again on the rim of the hatch. Her spacesuit is unnatural and bulky. She feels as though her chest is three feet thick, but she’s not letting go of Nikki.
Wherever Seeds May Fall (First Contact) Page 32