Beyond Our Stars

by Marie Langager

  When we made it outside I skidded to a halt with Pilgrim beside me, and felt the crushing squeeze of his hand. My brain couldn’t comprehend the sight before me. Haven was gone. And now there was only metal, strangely shaped metal…

  I walked with Grim over to Faith and Gaia, who were pointing. I could hear some people screaming.

  “What is it?” I muttered softly.

  Legacy came running up to us, “It’s all around. We can’t get out.”

  Now, he looked worried.

  ***

  Each cylinder was an eighth of the height of our bigger ships, and row upon row of these strange, giant metal monstrosities had suddenly appeared, encapsulating our landing site and cutting off our view of the planet. They formed half a circle, bowing slightly in to make a half-moon shape around us, with a force field between us and the sky. Four tunnels at equidistant intervals protruded into the landing site from the curving wall of the Stacks.

  Closer inspection revealed that each of the four tunnels bore one of the markings on its side. I had managed to get most of the sticky substance off, but it still felt burned on my skin.

  Someone spotted them approaching through the tunnels. No one wanted to be too close, but we could see them through the openings that were also sealed by a force field. I stood in the crowd watching the one in our tunnel and I knew he was coming for me.

  Legacy was still by my side as the tall gray aliens walked halfway down each of the tunnels and then waited. They didn’t look directly at us, their heads titled down slightly. They didn’t come closer.

  I was afraid. I was so afraid.

  “They hate us. Can’t you see it in their eyes?” Legacy asked me. He stood close to me, our shoulders touching. I couldn’t see anything in their downcast eyes.

  “They want us to go in those things,” Legacy said. My eyes traveled up the Stacks. I swallowed. They’d marked us, they’d been close enough to kill us already and they hadn’t. I pushed my fear aside.

  “So we go,” I replied, trying to sound brave. I even took a few steps forward before Legacy put his arm out to stop me.

  I didn’t understand his look of disbelief. I was scared, yes, but I wanted answers.

  “Are you crazy?” he said. “There’s no way I’m going in there!”

  It turned out I didn’t think the way most everyone else did.

  Some of the marked protested. Some were afraid but willing. Everyone was worried. After a long and heated deliberation out in the grass it was decided that we should do as the aliens asked. While this greeting wasn’t exactly welcoming, they hadn’t killed anyone.

  The groups of ten gathered by their tunnel entrances, some people shaking and holding hands. We heard a sound like a faint buzzing hum, barely as loud as a rush of wind, and the shield was gone.

  The adults went inside. We were next. As we began to walk the Local turned to lead us. The other two groups filed in as well.

  A second later Legacy started to run back outside. He made it a few feet into the grass when the same soft buzzing hum originated in front of him. He smashed into a force field, falling onto his back. He started to lift himself up and then we watched as the field forcibly pushed him back into the tunnel.

  He didn’t scream. He stood up, picking grass off his clothes and out of his hair, and met my eyes with a knowing look.

  Chapter Six

  PRESENT DAY

  “I don’t know if these creatures are worthy of your trust, Hope. We have to think of strategies if their intentions are hostile.” Chief Up was very concerned by the latest session. Every time he looked at me, I could see him as worried as if he’d watched me fall and get sucked into the water. I shifted in my seat in the Chief’s quarters and hid my bandaged hands under my thighs.

  “I’m okay,” I answered.

  I could take it. I mean, there was a reason, I was sure. I didn’t want anyone to see how tired and scared I really was. And the last thing we needed was more talk of revolting.

  We’d brought a stockpile of weapons with us, of course, enough to arm everyone, and we hadn’t brought them all out. The thinking was that we shouldn’t reveal all of our cards yet. But I was sure now that our weapons were useless, anyway.

  “I don’t think there’s any other way than exactly what we’re doing. I don’t like being at their mercy any more than anyone else, but we simply have no options. We have to see this through, and hope that they decide to let us…” I stopped talking, searching for the words. Let us come out? Let us live? I didn’t know how to finish it.

  Chief knew, and he didn’t push me. He sighed, rubbing his wedding ring. Even in his sixties, he was still a handsome man. Chief Up had no wife, not anymore. She’d died back on Earth. People knew not to ask about her. There were those that wanted to commemorate things, but Chief Up was so devastated by her loss that he found it impossibly painful to even have her mentioned.

  He was saying, “Hope, they’ve made no attempt at direct contact. Those things ignore us. If they even tried to communicate…”

  I stopped him. I was over-stepping but he always forgave me for that.

  “The Stacks are communication. I think,” I said.

  Chief sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “But we don’t know. How many times do those creatures have to hurt you for you to doubt them?”

  I looked away. How could I still say the Locals meant us anything other than harm? After everything they’d done to us? I wasn’t sure I could. Especially because the sessions only seemed to be getting worse, more cruel, more dangerous. When was the last “easy” session? I couldn’t remember.

  “Hope,” he said in a low voice, running a hand through his hair. “I know some sessions have seemed like they were trying to understand what we are, or see what we’re like. But, also,” he shook his head once, “some of the sessions are…look at it this way. They’re testing our bodies. How fast we are, how we react. Psychological fears. That’s how you might prepare for battle, Hope.”

  I had no answer. We weren’t their enemy. Each session seemed so different, I couldn’t explain it.

  My faith that the Locals meant well was dwindling fast, but I clung to remnants of it to keep me going. Because despite the sessions, despite having to admit to myself that at the very least the Locals weren’t exactly friendly, we needed to find a way. We had to make this home.

  Chief always calling the Locals ‘creatures’, and saying, ‘it’, and ‘those things’ wasn’t helping. We were never going to make any headway if we kept thinking of the Locals as completely unknowable entities. There had to be something we had in common.

  It had been a week and a half since the last session. We never knew when they’d come for us again. Days, weeks, hours…But I didn’t want to give up.

  I was scared, but I was the one going into sessions, so I should have a say in what we do next. Even if I wasn’t sure what that was yet. Chief Up was my best shot at that.

  The door to Chief’s office slid open and Chance came in. His face was grave.

  “They’re back,” was all he said. Oh, man. For all my talk about how the sessions were for a purpose, I wasn’t ready.

  I didn’t let Chief see that, though. I got up and followed Chance.

  “Get back here as soon as it’s over,” Chief called behind us as the door closed. I heard the restrained anxiousness in his voice.

  “You think we should keep going into these, no fight?” Chance asked me, without any emotion I could read. We can’t fight them, I thought.

  “Yes. For now.”

  Chance shook his head at me.

  I wished for the millionth time since sessions started that he hadn’t been chosen as one of the Specs. It was so hard, enduring the sessions together but then being alone again afterwards. I needed my best friend back.

  We walked in silence to join our group at the entrance to the Stacks. I hated this part, before we went in. I hated to see the children who were Specimens at the tunnel to my left. The groups got different
sessions, they didn’t match very often. And they did seem to be targeted specifically. The kid’s sessions were always easier to get through than ours, thank goodness. The adults often got some of our scenarios, and always at the same time, so no one got any warning. The elderly weren’t put in as many extreme physical situations, but they had their own torments to deal with. And some of them had ‘died’ as I had.

  One Local waited inside each tunnel, as usual.

  Some people just called them the Locals, others used the name of the planet that was supposed to have been our salvation. CR-3ans. COMPATIBLE: Riggs-3. Riggs was the supposed genius that found the galaxy, and this was the third planet from their sun.

  The soft sound told us that the field that covered entry to the tunnels was gone. And like the good soldiers we’d become we marched inside our entrances in an orderly fashion. I watched the last child’s head disappear into their tunnel, her blond wispy hair floating on her head like a feather.

  We followed our Local.

  I picked up my pace so I could get closer to watch him. I always had to look up because of their height. Their heads are misshapen, long and slightly narrowed at the center, but with a wide, angular jaw. No hair, only a protrusion shaped like a half-moon growing from the top of their skull. Their skin is a mixture of light gray that blends with rounded blue markings unique to each of them along their throats and jaw. They wear long, loose dark blue tunics and billowing robes of the same color. Their large eyes were usually lowered but I’d seen that their irises were blue and the pupils were an even deeper sapphire color. I thought I was noticing that some of their mannerisms were like ours. It was hard to tell. They never made eye contact or touched us.

  He led us back toward the Stacks but this time he walked to an elevator. The Local stayed outside, a few feet away from us and we got in and were taken up several stories.

  We’d gone to the upper levels of the Stacks before, but it didn’t mean anything. We’d had good and bad sessions up here. The doors of the large elevator opened up to an identical stark white hallway.

  Like always, I kept to the back of the group and paused when we got to the door of the Stack at the end, only two feet between me and the Local waiting there. It kept its head down, not moving.

  I waited. Please, look up at me. Show me what you’re thinking. I’d started trying to memorize their subtle differences. Some seemed younger. They had slightly darker, smoother grey skin. The young ones, if I was right that they were younger, had fewer markings along their throat and jaw. Because the markings were different for each Local, I tried to see if I could remember who was who.

  This one looked older. The Local moved its arm swiftly to the side. One small jerk, without raising its head. Its blue robe hung from its arm and revealed the wide silver bracelet each of them wore as their only form of ornamentation. Then it made a sound, the first I’d heard from them, like a low vibration. One deep, tremulous grunt that echoed in the tunnel and made me take a frightened step back. It was such a strange sound, so unlike anything human.

  But I’d gotten a reaction. I walked inside the Stack, as I thought he was ordering me to do. I looked behind me as the doors slid shut but he remained as motionless as before, head down. Another time then.

  The Stack lights began to brighten and I started to count down in my head. Three, two, one… and my eyes searched for the black half-moon window. Someone, maybe, was watching. I closed my eyes this time so my vision wouldn’t do that refocusing thing when the session started.

  I heard Weeks let out a low whistle followed by a weighted breath. I opened my eyes. We were standing on a metal floor that rose up and down, reminding me of sand dunes. I examined it more closely and it seemed like it was comprised of squares that bent and molded into small hills. It was really dim, I couldn’t see the far sides of the dunes.

  I looked at the others in the dark. Chance was watching for any approaching threat. Then there was Grim, who hadn’t reached for my hand and was bending down to look at the curving metal.

  Legacy was doing his best not to look intimidated. His sidekick, Boston, was standing with him as usual, but he had sweat glistening on his forehead.

  Faith and Gaia were starting to wander off slightly, investigating. Faith rapped her knuckles on the metal floor and looked up at her sister.

  “We got this,” Gaia said.

  Cairo was watching Marseille as he often was. I saw her flit a worried look in his direction. He moved toward her and gave her a reassuring squeeze on the arm.

  The metal hills under my feet began to move. They rose up a foot. The sensation reminded me of the ship and I instantly felt sick. But there was no water, so maybe…I didn’t let myself finish the thought. Legacy had been right. True to my name, I always got hopeful. Only to have that feeling crushed. I had an ironic, punishing name, if you asked me.

  The swells were rising higher, and they began to look less like dunes and more like rising columns. We were getting separated fast in the commotion.

  “Together, stick together!” I yelled.

  We all tried to move closer together but it was difficult when we were being tossed around on the moving metal. I was trying to formulate a more impressive plan when one of the tiles slid away. A black gaping hole remained underneath it.

  “Watch it! Watch out!” Chance yelled. He was nearest to it.

  “What’s down there?” I yelled back. I let my feet slide down a dune and then used my hands to help me crawl up the next one and stay in relatively the same place, without being pushed further out. “Don’t get too close.”

  Chance inched his way toward where the tile had disappeared on unsteady legs as the floor shifted. He managed a few steps, and then as he lifted his foot the tile he’d been standing on slid away, too. It slid into the adjoining tile and left the same blackness.

  “Chance!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  He leapt and ran over, barreling into me as I caught him in my arms. Both squares had disappeared from near where he was standing. I knew we were sharing a thought, maybe if we avoid that area.

  “Hope!” Weeks called out, jumping to the side. The metal tile next to him slid away. “There are stars down there, it’s a fall, into space,” he said, being too daring and getting closer than I’d like to the edge.

  I began scanning the periphery. At the far end, nowhere near where we were standing, there seemed to be something in the darkness. A shape I could barely make out that was different from the rest of the shiny metal.

  Another square disappeared near Weeks and he began running toward us. I felt dizzy, he was coming for help and safety but I wouldn’t be able to do anything if the floor disappeared from underneath us. As he ran, squares began sliding away, both behind and in front of him, causing him to zigzag.

  I made a snap, gut decision.

  “Follow me!” I yelled. Pilgrim was near me so I grabbed his hand.

  They all took off after me as I began running to that faint shape. Squares disappeared, and I fought the urge to look behind me.

  Pilgrim screamed next to me as the square underneath him fell away. I pulled him up before he could fall, dragging him after me as he regained his footing. “Fast! Fast!” I yelled.

  I could make out the shape now. A long floating bar, barely wide enough to stand on. We kept running.

  I threw Grim up. “Keep your balance,” I said, and made sure he was steady before I turned to check on the others. People began catapulting themselves up onto the bar. There wasn’t going to be room. Not for all ten of us. Two more got up, squeezing and balancing to make room.

  Maybe nine. Maybe. But not ten. Whole sections of the floor were falling into a black sky. Now, I could see so many stars. It was a beautiful twinkling darkness, waiting to swallow me up.

  Suddenly Chance climbed onto the hovering bar, and I silently blessed him for not making me argue about leaving me down here.

  Then arms pulled me up, and Chance pressed my body to his as the floor under my fee
t disappeared. My feet dangled above the stars.

  I could feel his heart hammering in his chest.

  He adjusted his arms slightly, getting a tighter hold around my waist. But he couldn’t do this forever. None of us could.

  We balanced precariously there for only a minute, but I could feel the desperation of the group, the hopelessness. I heard one of them whimper.

  I felt Chance press his cheek to my head.

  Then pitch-blackness enveloped us before the lights flashed on.

  And we were back in the Stack.

  Chapter Seven

  Chance let go of me after a few moments of stunned waiting. So it was over? It’d been fast. The doors to our Stack slid open.

  We walked outside, still completely stunned by the last few minutes. A Local took us back to the elevator and we went through the tunnel back to the landing site. We were the first ones back, but fairly quickly the other Specs started to arrive. Apparently the children had been in a session with all the lights turning off for a few seconds, then back on, then off. One of the youngest kids had gotten scared but they all comforted her. The old-erly were back as well, though more shaken.

  They’d also been in a session that dealt with darkness, but theirs had been a total blackout the whole time, with strange noises and the feeling of things crawling on their skin.

  I didn’t know if I would’ve liked that one much better than ours, but at least they weren’t running for their lives. Why did we seem to be doing that so often?

  The adults were the last to arrive, and they were completely shell-shocked. None of them were talking yet and a few looked confused and lost. I finally managed to get Celina to talk to me. She was in her fifties, a calm and generous sort of woman. I think she’d been a housewife before, which meant that she’d probably had children. None who were with her now. I’d never asked and I never would.

  “What was it?” I put my hands on her arms softly, forcing her to look at me.