The airbags deflated almost instantly. I was looking upward through the porthole at a sky that was a deeper shade of blue than mine. I checked the seals on my suit and helmet, and cautiously—maybe timidly—fingered the latch to unseal the pod. I hoisted myself out of the seat, then stood partly out of the augie, gazing at the world around me. I swayed as I stood, feeling dizzy and nauseated.
I was in the middle of a teal-green field of fern-like plants. Other plants dotted the field: low-lying shrub-like entities with long tendrils, more of a teal-blue color, drifting about, and several tall, thin objects that I took to be plants, like tree-trunks with smooth green bark, but no branches or leaves.
Further off, at one edge of the field, stood dark blue “trees” with branches like the tentacles of a sea anemone. I had seen many colors on the world from the ship, but the area that surrounded me was almost entirely teal, green, or blue. Opposite the “forest” the landscape looked more brushy, and was dotted with russet splotches. The sky could best be described as a cornflower blue. The sun was bright and whiter than ours.
I felt heavy, but that was natural since I’d been weightless for hours and was wearing an EVA suit that was no longer deprived of gravity. Nowhere around me did I perceive any immediate threat: no fearsome alien dragon, no giant preying mantis, no eight-legged tiger, no bug- eyed monster menacing me with a ray gun.
Nothing, that is, except miles of alien landscape with no idea if I could breathe here, no recognizable food, and no way off this multicolored sphere with its strange, wrongly-colored plants.
My nausea mounted and waves of tingling arched from my hands and feet inward toward my stomach. I belched and tasted bile; my stomach started heaving. I was about to throw up inside my helmet.
I tried to slow my breathing and relax, but it wasn’t happening. I hastily unfastened the helmet and, as stupid as it was, took it off. I was distracted from vomiting by the powerful smell of vinegar, which set me to coughing, then gagging and coughing. Then I threw up.
I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew I found myself lying on the fern-covered ground outside the capsule. I hurt in several places and saw a small puddle of blood next to me. The ground was covered with something like a green-grey lichen or moss between the ferns, which upon closer inspection, looked very much like feathers, with thin branches and long, thin, hair-like leaves.
I spit several times to clear my mouth of vomit and carefully stood up, holding the side of the augie. Only then did I realize I was breathing the planet’s air. The vinegar smell persisted, but not as strong as when I first removed the helmet. Okay, so if the atmosphere was going to kill me, it would do it slowly.
“That’s a plus, I guess,” I said.
I still felt weak and shaky, so I sat down leaning against the augie, noticing as I did so, that the vinegar smell was stronger on the ground near the ferns. The air was warm and humid, the sun halfway between the horizon and noon—but I had no way of telling if it was morning or afternoon.
When my strength returned, I carefully stood up and began prodding my various aches and pains. My hand came away from my face bloodied. I worked my way to the porthole, climbing half on top of the augie, and made out my reflection in the porthole—a poor mirror, but better than nothing. A cut marked my left cheek below the eye. It wasn’t still bleeding, but blood was smeared down that side of my face.
My next step was to scavenge the augie. There was a latch that raised up the seat, revealing a small compartment underneath, holding a first aid kit, some emergency rations, and a thermal blanket.
I opened the first aid kit to find swabs, ointment, bandages, and even a small mirror, which I used to examine the cut. It was deep but not long; maybe it could use stitches, but scarring wasn’t my main concern. I cleaned it and bandaged it.
I checked the contents of the rations and guessed they would keep me alive several days, if they didn’t kill me with boredom. Water was a bigger issue—I only had enough to last a day or two.
I flopped down in the seat and let despair wash over me. I was too exhausted to be terrified. It was overwhelming: an alien world untold light years from home, a few days of food and water, no communication, no tools, no way off the world, no idea what, if anything, was edible. I had thrown away a life, an entire world, to rescue a woman who wasn’t in danger, or in love with me. No one was coming for me—
Or were they? I had no way of knowing! I didn’t know how LodeCorp knew about this world, or why they had chosen to send their ship here. Who knew? Maybe they had more ships. I hadn’t heard of this one; I wouldn’t have heard of any others! Maybe they would come looking for me. Maybe looking for their ship. The augie would be sending an automated homing beacon. If they came to this world, they might find me—if I stayed near enough the augie. Lena rejected me, but she cared—she would come for me, or send someone, if she could.
Hope grew, little by little. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something. I stood up and climbed back out of the augie. My next step was to figure out how to survive.
[1] URSA: United Regulatory Space Agencies
[2] IP Dock: InterPlanetary Dock
[3] Augie: spacer slang for Auxiliary Pod i.e. escape pod
Chapter 2: The Wild
Dad, being an avid outdoorsman, took me camping every summer. For me, it was just a chance to spend time with Dad. I didn’t pay that much attention to his survival lessons. Now, I hoped I could remember the basics. Food would be an issue: for all I knew everything on this planet was poisonous to humans. I could remember a little of how Dad had taught me to identify edible plants. Most animals were edible, he’d said, but that might not apply here.
Food, shelter, water: I had a little of all three, enough, perhaps, to keep me alive long enough to be found, or to give me time to learn how to live on this world. Top priority: water. Dad had taught me to search downhill for water. The field didn’t slope much, only a little toward the anemone trees, and the brushy area was definitely higher.
I worked myself out of the EVA suit and sought for something I could use as an axe or machete. Among the feathery ferns I found a few rocks, and one was sharp and about 10 inches long. I walked across the field to an anemone tree, and struck it with the rock. The teal blue “bark” was thin and soft, and cut easily enough, revealing fibrous-looking pale blue flesh underneath. So I made my way through the sparse forest, cutting gashes in the bark showing the direction I’d come from.
The anemone trees varied from about four to ten feet high. Their trunks branched out about halfway up into three or four stumpy branches, each sprouting thick tentacle-like branches of a teal-blue color. I touched the branches: they felt heavy and soft.
After a few minutes, the anemones were mixed with what could only be called trees. No earthly tree I recognized, but real trees, with rusty brown bark, branches gnarled and twisted, and teal-green leaves, long and about an inch wide, hanging from twigs in spiraling clumps. They even had a woody smell to them. Further on they were joined by short trees with smooth grey bark and round yellow leaves about the size of my palm. The undergrowth was a mix of saplings from trees and anemones, plus the bushes like those in the field. A grey-blue vine with broad leaves wound its way around some of the trees and bushes and across much of the forest floor.
The woods were noisy with buzzes and chirps that could have been birds or insects, punctuated by a trilling whistle every now and then. A few times I was startled by a sudden rustle in the underbrush that must have been some animal scurrying away. The vinegar smell was not noticeable there, encouraging my belief that the feather ferns were its source.
After about an hour, the ground rose sharply ahead, terminating in a hillock that descended onto an open plane of rocks, ferns, and tendril-bushes that stretched as far as I could see. There was no source of water in sight.
Discouraged, I turned to retrace my steps, which proved far harder than I had imagined. I hadn’t thought through my marking system very well: I had slashed
the trees and anemones on the side where I had approached. Now that I was trying to backtrack, the marks weren’t visible. Several times I went to where I expected to find a slash, only to find none. I’d wander back until I found a slash and started over from there. It was a long and slow process. A dark shape above me caught my eye. I glimpsed some bird-like or bat-like creature overhead.
On my way back I collected downed branches for firewood. I doubted I would ever manage to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, but I knew I wouldn’t start a fire without something to burn. It probably took me twice as long to find my way back as the outbound trip, but with a sigh of relief I finally spotted the augie resting in the middle of the field.
The sun was nearly overhead, telling me that I had shown up mid-morning on this world, and which way was east and west. I stacked the wood up next to the augie and sat down to rest, sipping a little on my existing water supply. It was not until then that I notice how tiring my jaunt had been. Though I knew I ought to resume my search for water, I flopped down in the seat of the augie and fell asleep.
I awoke to a nearby trill followed by a flapping sound. I opened my eyes and looked about to see a small animal hunched atop a green trunk-plant. From my vantage point it was just a brown silhouette, perhaps the size of large house cat. It clung to the top of the plant like a bird on a perch with its head bent to the top of the trunk, and took no notice of me, as far as I could tell. I could make out no limbs and few details. It looked fuzzy. The sun had sunk nearly to the horizon: I had slept for hours.
Most animals were edible, Dad told me. Could I catch this one? Well, not on top of a ten foot green cigar. I had no weapon but my crude stone knife. I stood slowly, to avoid the animal’s notice, and let myself slide down the augie, feet first, on my belly. The creature’s head moved up and down a little but it didn’t seem to notice my actions.
I found another rock among the feather-ferns, this one rounder and fist-sized. I crept closer to the cigar and animal and, drawing on my faint memories of little league baseball, pulled back the rock like a pitcher and let it fly.
It tumbled through the air in very straight line that utterly failed to hit the target, bouncing off the trunk about a yard from the top. The accompanying thunk startled the animal, which surprised me by suddenly fluttering long, bat-like wings and flying away, but not before I saw that it had a long snout or proboscis that dripped with liquid.
Did the trunk hold water? Had I wandered for hours, searching for water, when it was right here? The snout of the creature had to have been inside the trunk. Could I climb the trunk? I was determined to try.
I approached the strange plant. It was eight or ten feet tall and not quite a foot and a half wide. The skin was smooth and green (the greenest plant I’d seen so far), and resembled a cactus without any spines.
I did not need to climb it. The trunk bent easily to my weight, and I pulled it downward with some effort. The top opened like the crater of a volcano and I smelled a sickly sweet aroma. As I pulled it further down to peer into the crater, a thin, syrupy sap spilled out. It may or may not be edible, but it was not water. And it was filled with dead bugs.
I don’t know if the bat-thing was after the sap or the bugs, but neither appealed to me. Lots of people on Earth ate bugs, but I never had. I looked at the multicolored carapaces and asked How hungry would I have to be? and hoped I wouldn’t find out.
I wiped the sap off my hands on the legs of my flight suit, thinking. There must be a good water source for these plants to produce so much syrup, plus the flesh felt like a succulent. Underground water, or ample rain. Maybe the bat-thing got all of its water from the sap, but maybe not. I made a point of remembering the direction it flew. Nightfall was approaching and I didn’t want to follow it now.
I turned my attention to fire. I stacked my newly acquired firewood into a tent shape, piling up at its base some dry brown ferns I plucked from the field. I tried to match what my father had done to start fires, but about an hour later the sun was down and I was no closer to a fire.
The warm day was quickly turning cool. I ate a little from my rations, then climbed into the augie, closed its lid mostly (leaving a little crack for ventilation), wrapped myself in the thermal blanket, and settled down to sleep.
As I waited for sleep, an acute homesick loneliness crept over my thoughts. I had always been very comfortable with my own company. Over the last several years in my work I had spent long hours and even some days, completely alone; it didn’t bother me. I liked being alone.
But this was different: this wasn’t alone; this was lonely. Not just on my own. Alone. Nobody. Would I ever even see another human face? Would I go mad in solitude, like a prisoner too long in solitary confinement? How long would I live alone? Completely, totally, utterly alone. No humans. No people. No Lena. No Dad.
I hadn’t thought much about Dad in a while. I still saw him every year or two. Now he was on my mind constantly, reminding me of all the things I could have learned from him, but didn’t. Because I wasn’t interested. Because I was so sure I’d never need to know them. Who could have imagined I’d actually wind up in the wilderness on a distant world with so little to help me survive?
The dark outside the augie seemed so empty. Never had the night been so utterly threatening. I could only remember once in my life that I’d really felt homesick. Figuring that since I loved camping so much, my mother had sent me on a camping trip with a church group one spring (not that she ever attended church except for one brief period when she dated a guy who did). She hadn’t realized, nor had I until then, that it wasn’t camping I loved—it was camping with my dad. I was miserable that entire weekend. I just wanted to be home: Mom’s, Dad’s, Grandma’s. Just home. I threw up my first breakfast and could hardly eat anything else.
All that welled up overwhelmingly now. This was far worse. Back then, home was a two hour drive. Three, if Dad’s. Now, home was a virtually infinite void away. The strange world I found myself in was frightening not just because it was strange, but because it was nowhere near, and nothing like, home.
I had slept too long that afternoon. Now I wasn’t sleepy, just bored and sad in the dark, captivated by every rustle and chirp, every trill or gurgle. There were animals out there. I tried to shift around in the augie, but its padded seat was like a lounger fixed at one angle, designed for sitting, not laying on your side.
I seriously considered leaving the augie but I knew how foolish that could be. Wandering in a field in the dark on a strange world filled with who knows what? I decided against it. I felt desperate, but not suicidal. So I lay in the augie and stared up at the sky, trying, without luck, to make out any constellations I knew. But it did look like it was the Milky Way, not that I had really considered the possibility that I had left our galaxy.
After an hour or so (I had no timepiece since I wasn’t wearing the EVA suit), a moon rose, not quite full, smaller than ours, and greenish-white in color. Like our own, it was riddled with blotches that I presumed were also craters. I don’t know why, but the little greenish moon cheered me. There was something playfully wistful about it—I know that doesn’t make sense—but it seemed to say that while I longed for home, there was something to be had here. I was still miserably alone in the night, but somehow the loneliness was a little less biting, the homesickness a little less final.
My reverie was broken by shuffling noise nearby. From the sound, it wasn’t made by anything small, and it made me very nervous. I closed the augie’s hatch as well as I could, but it wasn’t designed to be closed by hand: they were factory sealed and designed for single use. The noise I made prompted a sudden bump and fading rustle, then silence. Apparently, I had scared whatever it was away. Maybe it wasn’t as big as it sounded, or as fierce as I had imagined.
I whiled away the time napping briefly and fitfully, and trying not to think about needing to pee.
I awoke in the morning with the porthole of the augie blindingly lit and hurting my eyes. It took
me a moment or three to realize that the glass was coated in dew and the morning sun was lighting it up. I opened the hatch a crack and looked out. Noises drifted in from the field: buzzing, chirps, and trills. I opened the hatch bit by bit, looking about.
The field was alive with activity. Insects (or something like) flitted about in the air. What looked like a spotted furry lizard skittered up a chimney tree (as I had come to think of the green trunks) and snapped at something it found there. Several of the bat-things sat atop the other trunks, bobbing their heads up and down. Another flew in, and getting a better look at it, I saw the wings had only a single finger, like a pterodactyl instead of a bat, and on a whim I dubbed them the chimney-dactyl.
At the edge of the field were a couple of long-legged quadrupeds munching on tendril bushes. Flapping shapes flew briefly through the air, but with the rising sun behind them I couldn’t see them well. My melancholy of last night faded as I watched in wonder at the spectacle. Why did a world of alien plants fail to mystify me, but a world of alien animals enchant?
I relieved myself at the edge of the field and returned, moving slowly and as quietly as I could, watching the buzzing flight of the bugs. Some lit on a nearby chimney tree, and did not fly away as I approached, so I crept in for a better look. They were brownish green and insect-like, but not insects, having only four legs, and about an inch long, with two cicada-like wings, and had only two body segments.
Another bug landed amongst them, looking like a short red centipede with four diaphanous wings, snatched one up it its many legs, and flew off. Another was caught by something that flew in from my side, I thought a bird at first, but when it landed atop the chimney tree, I wasn’t sure what to call it. It was the size of a crow; it was built like a bird, complete with a pointed beak and clawed toes, but it lacked any feathers, having instead orange leathery skin and membranous bat-like wings and a dangling, rat-like tail. It cocked its head sideways and looked at me a moment before issuing a clicking rattle and flying off, snapping at airborne bugs along the way.
Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1) Page 3