by Unknown
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
He trembled, the knowledge now rising like a dark tide. He felt connected in some horrible way to something vast and unspeakably evil. He sensed, as though by the tugging of innumerable, invisible threads, things happening in distant corners of the world. People like Julian…possessed by those parasitic alien abominations. He could hear their cold, half-human thoughts as they set events in motion that curdled his blood. Dark forces were rising across the globe, all moving toward an unholy joining in a great dark pit at the end of the world. The monstrosity below was gathering its servitors to free itself, just as Julian had said. That’s what Julian had meant in his final words. Kearns had to stop it. Before it was too late.
He took another swig of bourbon. The metal box, still tucked under his arm, had been growing increasingly hot. Slipping on his gloves, Kearns examined its strange and polished gray surface, finding a catch. He opened it. His eyes grew wide at the contents. The crystals Hazelwood had mentioned. Crystals that glowed green, as if bits of starfire were imprisoned within them.
They blazed with green fire, like irons hot off a forge. Energy, he realized with sudden clarity. A source of power that could save the world, or destroy it. “I must go, Miss Cummings,” he said, gathering his faltering courage as he closed the box and struggled to his feet.
“Go where, Professor Kearns?” she demanded.
“To Egypt, of course. To that crater in Kebir, where your father disappeared. I sense he’s still alive there, but…if I can’t stop what Julian’s tamperings have awakened…then God help us all.”
“You know the way?” she asked in an excited tone, her eyes widening.
He rubbed his throbbing forehead, trying desperately to organize the scattered and fragmented alien thoughts swirling through his mind. “Bits and pieces, only, I’m afraid. But, it’s enough to point the way. I can only hope that’s enough.”
“You’re not going without me, Professor,” she declared, offering a supporting arm as she guided him towards her buggy.
“None of that, young lady,” he snapped, pulling his arm away. “This is my responsibility. I’ll not place you in any further danger. You most certainly are not going with me to Egypt!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Sir. You said yourself time was a factor, yes? Well, I have my father’s letters, the maps he drew, the local officials he dealt with, which will help guide us. The information he shared with me is as incomplete as your borrowed memories apparently are, so it will take the two of us combined to retrace my father’s journey and find him in time. I suggest you make yourself comfortable with my presence, Sir.” Her face was set in a look of solid determination.
He felt a strange and growing sense of admiration for this young she-wolf, which did not sit well with his mounting irritation at her audacity. He recoiled at the thought of putting her life in danger yet again, especially in the hellish place where he had to go. But, grudgingly, he realized she was right. He did require the knowledge her father had passed onto her. He sighed, deeply. “Very well, Miss Cummings. I suppose I have no choice.”
“Well, come on, then. The police will be along directly, I expect.” They climbed into her buggy and departed in haste. As she lashed her horse and they sped into the night, Kearns glanced back at the roaring flames. A deep, numbing fear clawed at his heart at the thought of the unearthly horror that awaited them in the darkness ahead.
Illustration by Vincent Sammy
‘Square One’
SQUAREONE
BY WILLIAM LEDBETTER
Umma clutched her husband’s hand as the Cochran bucked and rattled into the ionization stage of the descent. She wondered if he could feel her worry through the insulated gloves, but he squeezed back and turned just enough so that she could see his wide grin and exaggerated wink through the helmet visor. He mouthed something. Only the flight crew had inter-suit communications during this phase, but she knew what he said and had to smile.
“We were born for this!”
The phrase annoyed the hell out of her and he’d said it thousands of times during their twenty-one year trip. Ian and Umma had both left Earth at sixteen. They’d met on the flight. But for their daughter Rachel, who had been born enroute, the words were true. Still, he was right to be excited. Umma took a deep breath. She turned so she couldn’t see the fire beyond the viewports and tried to ignore her feeling of impending doom.
She’d just started to relax when her pressure suit tightened abruptly. Her visor fogged and she felt a distinct change in the vibration resonance. Even through the quivering condensation, she could see flashing red lights and frantic activity on the flight dais. She clenched Ian’s fingers tightly and started to hyperventilate.
From his docking cup atop Umma’s helmet, Goober, her softball-sized personal AI, read the spikes in her vitals and tried to calm her.
“We’re going to be fine, Umma. Some of the seals failed and we’re losing cabin pressure, but the heat shields are still protecting us. This is why you wear pressure suits during descent and launch. Now slow your breathing and let your gasses balance or you’ll black out.”
Umma thought about Rachel and Ian and the home they planned to build on their new world. It helped - some - and her breathing slowed. As she regained control, the descent smoothed out and the fire beyond the viewports faded. Ian squeezed her hand and smiled through his visor again.
“We can talk now, darlin’. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine once we’re safe on solid ground.”
“Awwww, don’t be too hard on Cochran. Considering she’s been nothing more than a frozen zit on Sinacola’s butt for twenty-eight years, I think she’s performed admirably.”
Umma laughed. “Well, we’re not down yet.”
The Cochran had been tested extensively before she’d left the main ship, but an increasing number of equipment failures had plagued the Sinacola during the past ten years of their trip, so they expected the worst. And the little survey ship had to work, because the Sinacola, with its three thousand colonists, needed a two-stage braking assist - a close pass by the elliptically orbiting gas giant named LongFellow and then the star itself - before she would slow enough to enter orbit around Epsilon Eridani Two. The Cochran and her twelve-person crew had been committed the instant they left the main ship two weeks earlier. They would be isolated until Sinacola returned in four months’ time.
As the Cochran slowed and neared the selected landing site, Scooby, Ian’s AI, produced a monitor pane so they could see their new home. Vast rolling prairies, punctuated by occasional lakes or small forests, extended in every direction. Huge herds - some spanning twenty or thirty kilometers - grazed on the grassy terrain. This is what the American plains must have looked like before Europeans arrived, Umma thought.
The flight commander started a reverse countdown that ended in a gentle thump when they touched down. Umma immediately felt the higher gravity. The spin on Sinacola had been gradually increased to 119% of Earth normal, to acclimate the colonists, but she had just spent two weeks in micro-gravity, and it suddenly felt as though she were made of lead.
A cheer erupted. The Cochran was not designed to fly back to orbit, so this was now home. The crew had planned to stay inside the ship and do nothing but atmospheric and soil tests on the first day, but Ian immediately made a case to take the two-man sled outside and start their work. As the colony’s chief xenobiologist, his arguments carried weight. He dragged Commander Darroch to the still-open monitor pane and pointed to the huge herd approaching their landing site.
“We’ve analyzed atmosphere samples returned by the probes for years. We’re not going to find anything new and we know we can breathe it. What we don’t know enough about is these animals that will soon be all around us. Besides, we’re not leaving, so we might as well get started figuring out how to live here.”
The Commander grinned and crossed his arms. “We already discussed this, Ian. We have a timeline an
d need to stick to it. We need to do contamination studies. And we still don’t know why those rovers shut down.”
“Why? We’ve already vented to the atmosphere during descent and the chances of any local bacteria being able to hurt us are infinitesimal. Besides, that argument was made and lost forty years ago, when humanity decided to send colonists to Donnie Two, instead of more study probes. We couldn’t abort when the rovers died and we can’t abort now. It’s not like we can just go somewhere else.”
Commander Darroch looked at the animals on the monitor for a couple of seconds and then shrugged. “Fine. You’re the biologists. Knock yourselves out, but at least wear sealed field suits.”
Their open two-person flier lifted away from the Cochran and the equipment airlock sealed behind them just as the herd arrived. The natives were not in the slightest bit afraid of the invading spacecraft and immediately surrounded it. The large herd animals looked like elephant-sized caterpillars. They were all covered by a seething second skin of little hooked frog-like animals that immediately started leaping from their hosts to land on the Cochran.
Rachel had been the first to see the returned probe video and had dubbed them ‘frogvarks’. The fist-sized animals had jumping legs like those of a frog and a stiff, tapered proboscis resembling an aardvark’s. It’d been funny then, but they gave Umma chills now.
Within seconds, they had covered the Cochran in such numbers that her features were rendered blurry and indistinct.
“Astounding,” Ian said with child-like wonder. “I wish Rachel could see this.”
The comment stung Umma, but shouldn’t have. She knew Ian didn’t mean he would have preferred Rachel’s company to hers, yet she and Rachel had argued bitterly about that very subject before the survey team had departed the Sinacola. Rachel had always worshiped her father and wanted to be with him when he saw their new world for the first time, but the team could only take two biologists. Umma had refused to give up her place next to Ian and it had infuriated Rachel.
“Look at that,” Ian said. “With them swarming strange objects like that, I can see why our ground rovers all died minutes after touching down. Let’s get a little closer, but stay out of frogvark jumping range.”
Before Umma could act, ten or twelve of the largest herd animals raised up, each one lifting perhaps two-thirds of its length into the air. Hundreds of frogvarks launched toward Ian and Umma, like invaders from siege towers. They hit Umma ten or twelve at a time, shotgun blasts of hooked horrors that adhered to everything. Their claws sank into her neck, back and arms, not actually puncturing the field suit’s rubbery fabric, but pinching the skin beneath like sharp, miniature vises.
She batted and pounded at the little gray beasts, but forcefully pulling them off was the only effective strategy. Her suit integrity held, but alarms sounded as skin sealant and painkillers were pumped through the damaged inner layers. She looked back at Ian, in the flier’s passenger seat, hoping for help, but he was fighting them too.
“Goober, help me!”
The little AI darted around the flier, burning the aliens with microwave emitters normally used for communication. His power indicator flickered red after every concentrated burst, but he didn’t slow down. Each dislodged attacker left behind a moving white powder. Lice. They hadn’t been able to see more than moving white dots from the aerial probes, but Ian had dubbed them frogvark lice, even though they seemed to infest every other living thing on the planet as well.
Ian slapped her shoulder. “Go up,” he said through the comm link. “Get us out of their range!”
Another volley landed and latched onto Umma, but she gritted her teeth, fought the pain and tried to focus. With a tug on the control yoke, the flier leapt upward. A quick slap engaged the hover lock and with a squeal of pain, Umma yanked a jumper from her neck, crushed it to pulp and flung it groundward.
One by one, Umma pulled the aliens off. The remnant lice raced up and down her limbs, stopping and abruptly changing direction, testing every seam and seal, as if looking for a way to leak in. She called to Ian but received only grunts in answer.
When she glanced back she saw why. He had slipped from his seat and was writhing on the flier’s deck, all but buried in clinging aliens. Both AIs darted in and out, burning and bumping, until in a display of concerted effort, four frogvarks launched into the air, hit Scooby simultaneously and held on. The little AI burned one with microwave emitters, but it remained attached and amid the high-pitched whine of useless lifting fans, Scooby dropped from sight.
Ian thrashed around, slapping at frogvarks and clawing at his helmet. His wide eyes darted around behind the visor. Umma had never seen him panic and that frightened her more than the attack. She initiated a link with his suit and the gas numbers told the story. He was suffocating. His helmet’s air intake filters must be coated with the white lice, she realised.
“Damn it Goober, help me,” she screamed. “Clear Ian’s filters! Hurry!”
Goober darted to the mesh panels on Ian’s helmet and using his emitters, turned the white swirls into ash that still clogged the intake screens.
She sent the order to change Ian’s filter purge settings, but got an error.
“Goober! His suit won’t let me change the purge settings!”
“It’ll give you passive information, but only Ian or Scooby can change the parameters.”
She reached back and grabbed Ian’s leg. “Listen to me! Your breather purge default is at fifty per cent, you have to change it to ninety per cent long enough to clear your filters! Ian! Change your purge!”
He clawed at the visor and his face turned crimson. She could hear him gasping and choking, but he never gave the command. Instead, in a move so quick and unexpected Umma couldn’t stop him, Ian released his helmet seal. The visor popped open.
With a long, shuddering gasp, he became the first human to breathe the atmosphere on Epsilon Eridani Two. Before he could take a second breath, the organisms poured into his helmet like bathwater down a drain. They entered his mouth, slipped under his eyelids and streamed up his nose like a pale, backward nosebleed. On his face they burrowed into the skin, leaving a field of blood-welling pinpricks.
“Ian!” Umma scraped and swatted at them, trying to stem the tide, but only made it worse as new swarms poured down her gloves and onto his face.
“Call the Cochran, Goober! We have to get him inside.”
“He’s contaminated. We all are. They won’t let us in.”
Ian thrashed and cursed and clawed at his face.
“Just call them, dammit! Inform them of our situation and … and get help.”
Ian’s medical stats scrolled down the screen inside her visor, showing elevated heart rate, blood pressure and temperature. The suit had already given him the maximum painkiller load, but it had yet to kick in. He jerked and squirmed beneath her.
“Ian! Hold on, sweetie.”
An alert sounded from his suit. He’d dropped into unconsciousness, but still thrashed from the pain.
Goober cut in. “Cochran doesn’t respond. I’m continuing to ping on all standard channels.”
Ian started jerking violently and slid over the side. His safety tether prevented him from falling to the ground, but he dangled precariously from the fan strut. The added weight on a single fan unbalanced the flier, tipping it nearly onto its side. Unstowed gear and dead frogvarks fell fifty feet into the churning herd below. If not for her own tether, Umma would have followed.
The flight computers tried to compensate for the imbalance and electric motors whined in protest as the starboard fans strained in vain to right the flier. The little craft went into a slow, descending spin.
Umma stretched, but couldn’t reach her husband. “Ian! Can you hear me? Give me your hand.”
He didn’t respond, but instead shook violently. The screen showed he was experiencing a grand mal seizure. She grabbed the sampling pole, hooked it onto his belt and pulled, but he was too heavy. She had no leverage.
“I can’t get him back up here by myself. What the hell should I do?”
“We’re close to the ground. He should survive the fall and he’s already infested. It’s an acceptable risk.”
She braced against the seat and pulled on the pole, but Ian didn’t budge. “Acceptable risk?”
“You may be the only crew member not compromised. You have to stay alive until the Sinacola returns,” Goober said, and turned his microwave beam on Ian’s strap.
“Goober! No!”
She swung the sampling pole and hit Goober solidly, sending plastic shards into the air. The little AI whirled and sparked, then dropped like a brick. For the first time since receiving him on her twelfth birthday, all links between Umma and Goober flickered out.
Frogvarks launched from the herd beasts’ backs and landed all over Umma and the flier. Dozens flew through the fans, degrading the lift even more. Within seconds, the drooping fan pod hit the ground with a bang and the jolt sent Umma over the side. The flier spun around, dragging Umma and Ian in a spiral path over rocks and squirming frogvarks. Umma detached her tether and rolled to a stop, hoping that the sled could regain altitude and take Ian with it.
The flier, suddenly lighter, lifted back into the air and spun away over the herd. She scrambled to her feet but was surrounded by big herd beasts. She quickly lost sight of Ian.
“Shit,” she said, as thousands of frogvarks crashed down on her like a living tsunami. And this time, through tears in the suit or separated seals, the little white bastards found their way inside.
They filled the void between her suit and skin, then started burrowing. Umma thought childbirth had been the ultimate agony, but immediately realized she had never really known true pain.