The Face of Earth

by Kirsty Winkler

  Luvian landed and went out the lab section door. He waded into the water and retrieved the bag from the boat, then returned to the ship. He left the bag by the door and went to the bridge. Megg was at the helm.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, sitting at the navigation console.

  Megg took the ship straight up into the sky until they were no longer visible from the surface.

  “How long do you think it will take for her to return?” Luvian asked.

  “Not long,” Megg replied. “Meanwhile, I’d like you to scan for other Earthlings in this general area.” Megg moved from the helm, allowing Luvian to resume his position.

  Luvian followed her orders while keeping an eye on the viewscreen. The sun rose over the horizon, lighting first the ship, and then the surface of Earth below them. “There are no other Earthlings in the immediate area,” Luvian reported.

  “And the female?”

  “She’s on the edge of the lake.”

  “Good. Let’s go get her,” Megg said.

  Luvian took the ship down, landing it silently. He disembarked and approached the Earthling, who lay unconscious on a flat boulder. Luvian pocketed the gadget, as he had no need for the serum with the Earthling already insensible. He stared at her for several moments. Her breath was slow and even, her eyes tightly shut. Even the female of this species was larger than any Stelairian male. He lifted her up and carried her into the ship.

  Megg looked up as Luvian brought the Earthling aboard the ship. “Is it the one that belongs with the bag we picked up last night, Luvian?”

  “I believe so.”

  Megg wrinkled up her nose. “She stinks, but not as pungently as the others. Test her for a soul, and if she has one, add her to the others on the lab tables.”

  Luvian nodded in acknowledgement and carried the female into the next room, setting her down in the resin cradle. She lay there, breathing lightly. Her odd shirt had a low neck and no arms. He attached a sensor to her chest just above her shirt’s neckline. It glowed as he touched a key on the console, initiating the program Megg had designed to detect souls. He watched as the readout scrolled down the screen.

  The console chirped, indicating that the sequence had completed. He removed the sensor and picked up the female, taking her into the next room. This one did have a soul, and could be used in the test for an immortal soul.

  The room contained five metal tables, lined up and reflecting the low light. A large clear container stood next to them. Thin tubes hung by the head of each table, awaiting insertion into their test subjects. Three of those tables already held occupants with tubes attached. Luvian set the female Earthling on the fourth table.

  As the cold metal touched her skin, Karina was startled awake. She sat up and looked around, disoriented by her unusual surroundings. Her eyes landed on her abductor and narrowed with suspicion. She sat up and jumped off the table, landing lightly on the floor with the table between herself and the stranger.

  Karina looked around the room, taking in the metal tables and the enormous glass apparatus next to them. Her eyes widened as she recognized Melissa, Sarah, and Matt lying unconscious on the tables. They were secured with metal straps, and there were tubes coming out of their throats. John was slumped in a corner, also unconscious. Karina turned her attention back to the small man in front of her.

  “Who are you, and where have you taken me?” She glared at him, trying to hide her fear. She could feel a surge of adrenaline, and the weight of her knife against her knee gave her courage. She could take him if he gave her trouble.

  The strange man was lean and diminutive, at least six inches shorter than her, and didn’t appear to be more than twenty. He was exceptionally attractive, with pleasing features and sleek blond hair. He wore a long brown smock with black leggings. He stared back at her without replying. Her skin began to crawl as she noticed his unusually large and dark eyes. The irises were almost as black as the pupils and covered most of his eye, making his eyes appear deer-like. Instead of answering her, he called over his shoulder to someone outside the room. All of Karina’s hair stood on end at the sound of his voice speaking in an unearthly language.

  A young woman entered the room, stopping just short of the threshold when she saw Karina standing defensively behind the table. She too was unimaginably beautiful, as well as small in stature, even shorter than the man. She wore a flattering blue gown that hugged her waistline. Her wavy black hair cascaded down her shoulders, framing her porcelain face. Her dark eyes bored into Karina’s.

  “Luvian, why is the Earthling not restrained?” There was an edge to Megg’s voice that made Luvian nervous.

  “She regained consciousness and jumped off the table before I could activate the restraints.”

  “And what do you suggest we do now that she’s free? These Earthlings are barely evolved and prone to violence.” Megg’s voice sharpened in displeasure at her assistant’s ineptitude. “You’re abnormally strong for a Stelairian, that’s why I agreed to take you on as an assistant for this project. Subdue her.”

  While this unintelligible alien discussion progressed in front of her, Karina reached into her cargo pocket to retrieve her knife. By the time Megg and Luvian turned their attention back to her, she was pointing its extended blade at them. The sharp knife glinted viciously in the dim light of the room.

  Luvian’s eyes widened at her aggressive stance. “Perhaps we should let this one go. She doesn’t look as if she will surrender easily.”

  Megg narrowed her eyes at the Earthling, but moved away from the doorway, allowing the female access to it. The Earthling wouldn’t be able to kill them, but the damage she could cause with her weapon would be very painful. Megg preferred to let her go rather than suffer needlessly.

  Karina kept the knife between herself and her captors as she backed around the room to the doorway. They moved opposite to her, keeping their distance. She entered the other room, glancing over her shoulder to ensure that she was alone. An odd concave table occupied the center of the room. Karina backed around it to the only other door. She paused as it opened automatically at her approach. She peered into the next room. It appeared empty.

  She entered the room warily. An open door with sunlight streaming through at the opposite end caught her attention, and she backed her way toward it, keeping an eye on the inner door for signs of the strange people. She had almost reached the outer door and freedom when she tripped over something large and bulky on the floor. It was her backpack.

  She scrambled up as quickly as she could, grabbing a strap and hauling it to the door with her. There was no movement from the inner room, and she backed out into the sunshine. She stared in horror at the silvery ship she had just exited, dropping her knife in shock. She bent down and grabbed it, closing the blade and shoving it back into her pocket. She quickly strapped on her pack and ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction, away from the lake and the UFO.

  CHAPTER 3

  Inside the ship Megg was staring in exasperation at her inept assistant. “Luvian, why didn’t you inject her with the serum I gave you to render her unconscious?”

  Luvian squirmed a bit under her heavy stare. “She was already unconscious. I didn’t think I needed it.”

  “You fool, she was asleep. Inferior species must do that in order to regenerate. Didn’t you read the literature on this assignment before we left Stelairius?”

  Luvian became sulky, not wanting to admit his incompetence. “I read most of it; there was just so much.”

  Megg glared at him for another minute before relenting. He was young, just under a thousand years old; she could hardly expect the same perfection from him that she demonstrated at her mature age. “Never mind. We still have the four Earthlings we took earlier. How did they test?”

  Luvian was relieved to get off the subject of his mistake and back to work. “These have souls,” he said, gesturing to the ones on the tables, “that one doesn’t,” he continued, p
ointing to the male on the floor.

  “Good. They should give us an idea of how the experiment is progressing.” Megg went over to the control console to prepare for the immortal soul test.

  Luvian had previously readied the test subjects by inserting a thin tube into each throat just above the sternum, pointing down into the chest cavity. The tubes led from them into the large, clear container. Luvian stationed himself next to it, watching for something through its walls.

  Megg entered several sequences on the console. Dark crimson light arced around the Earthlings, and even in their unconscious state their bodies reacted with violent spasms to the draining force. Megg watched impassively as they died, paying close attention to the data on her screen. As they expired, Luvian sighed, shaking his head at Megg.

  “Nothing. Not one of the souls was able to survive the death of the body.”

  “Wait,” Megg said, watching her data.

  “There!” Luvian exclaimed in excitement as a violet mist flowed into the container from one of the tubes. He was shocked; it was impossible for inferior species to have immortal souls. The mist slowly formed a humanoid shape, but even as it did, it seemed uncertain. It lost its form, filling the container. The violet color drained from the mist, leaving a white fog. Then it dissipated completely.

  “It’s gone. It wasn’t able to exist without its body,” Luvian said.

  Megg felt exasperated. “Well, they would evolve to that point eventually if they stopped messing around with their DNA and interacted more with their natural environment. It’s a shame their brains evolved faster than their souls. Now their souls won’t have a chance to evolve, since they’re eradicating what they assume are inferior mutations.” She pondered for a moment. “Luvian, take the ship up into orbit. I need to contact Stelairian Command before determining how to proceed with this experiment.”

  “What about the soulless Earthling?”

  Megg looked over at the large male slumped in the corner of the room. “Put him off the ship. We have no use for him.”

  “Yes, Megg.” Luvian rushed to carry out her order, dragging the unconscious man out of the ship and dumping him on the ground. He went back into the ship and closed the door, sealing it. He headed to the bridge and sat at the helm, engaging the system drive and taking the ship rapidly up into space.

  Megg returned to her quarters where she placed a call to the Stelairian government. After a several minute delay, the face of a handsome young man appeared on her screen.

  “You have something to report, Megg?”

  “Yes. The experiment is a failure and the species is on the verge of space travel outside of their solar system.” Megg waited while her words were relayed to her superior. Despite advances in communication technology, it was still impossible to communicate instantaneously between galaxies. The Stelairians were the only species even capable of intergalactic communication, and they had only been able to narrow the delay down to a few minutes.

  After those minutes elapsed, the man’s expression changed to concern. “You’ve been on this project from the beginning. What do you suggest?”

  Megg was brief. “Termination.” She waited.

  “Very well. Proceed.”

  Megg signed off and went to the bridge to inform Luvian of their new orders. She wondered how he would react. His conduct from this point on would let her know if he was truly as trustworthy as his tests had indicated. When she arrived on the bridge, Luvian had already placed them in orbit above Earth.

  “Luvian, find a comet.”

  Luvian looked up from the helm in surprise. “What?”

  “Initiate the Locating And Structure Securing Orb. We’re going to lasso ourselves a comet. Make sure it’s the right size for species extinction and not planet disruption. We don’t want to disturb the physical balance of the solar system, just the biological.”

  Luvian was flabbergasted. He hadn’t expected this day to come so soon. “We’re terminating the project?”

  “Yes. It’s a failure, and the inferior Earthlings are violent and a danger to other species. We must clean up our mess.” Luvian continued to stare at her in shock, and Megg became irritated at his inaction. “Now!” she snapped. Without another word Luvian turned back to the helm to input the search parameters into the lasso. Megg’s displeasure faded and she turned to go back to her quarters. “Let me know when you find a suitable candidate.” She left Luvian on the bridge and returned to her room to begin writing her final report on the Earthling species.

  Luvian initiated the lasso and input the density specifications for the comet. The program began scanning the surrounding area of space, moving beyond the solar system in an expanding search pattern. Luvian steered the ship in a straight path out of the system. He did all of this automatically and almost numbly as his mind recoiled in horror over what Megg was about to do. At over eleven billion years old, she may have the distinction of being one of the longest-lived Stelairians, but that didn’t give her the right to play with other species’ lives, not even if she had been the one to create them in the first place.

  The Earthlings deserved the chance to continue their evolution, and if they managed to spread through the galaxy before they became mature enough to interact peacefully with each other and other species, then that was a risk the Stelairians should take. Other inferior species traveled interstellarly, and even intergalactically. Just because Megg had created the Earthlings in her laboratory and seeded them on Earth didn’t give her the right to so casually order their destruction. From the little he had learned while working on this project, he believed that the Earthlings had evolved enough to be considered a true species rather than just an experimental species. They were very similar to the other true species he had seen throughout the universe; so they should be accorded the same rights.

  The lasso chirped at Luvian, indicating that it had found a match. As he steered the ship to intercept the comet, the comm beeped at him. He stared at the blinking light on the console, surprised that there was intelligent life in this galaxy capable of communication with their ship.

  The comm beeped again, and he reached over and tapped the comm pad, connecting the call to the viewscreen. A man’s face appeared, wearing a jovial expression which was meant to be disarming, but which Luvian found to be extremely alarming as he recognized Agnar, the most notorious pirate in three quadrants. What he was doing outside those quadrants was unclear. Here in the unexplored Fourth Quadrant Luvian hadn’t expected to see anyone from the known quadrants, let alone a criminal.

  “Are you the captain?” Agnar asked in Stelairian.

  Luvian tried to put on a brave face. “Agnar. If you even attempt to board this ship, I will shoot you out of the sky.”

  Agnar laughed. “So you are the captain.”

  “No, but I don’t need to be to operate the weapons.”

  “Relax, I was only wondering what the Stelairians were doing this far out of their territory.”

  Luvian was quiet for a moment, considering Agnar intently. Agnar would make a good distraction for Megg while he prepared to destroy the ship, killing Megg and stopping her from annihilating the Earthlings. He would die too, but he was willing to die for his cause. He forced a smile at Agnar. “I’ll put you through to the captain.”

  Agnar waited as the viewscreen blinked and Megg’s face replaced Luvian’s. She appeared surprised at first, but then delighted at seeing him.

  “Agnar, what are you doing way out here?” Agnar was an old flame of Megg’s. They had met four hundred years ago during his attempted piracy of her ship. She had captured him and was returning him to his home planet for trial when he escaped, but instead of fleeing, he sought her out and declared his desire for her. He had awakened a passion in her that no Stelairian man had ever aroused, and she soon found herself in love with him. They had met for romantic interludes several times since then.

  Agnar hid his surprise at seeing Megg, acting as if meeting her here in the far reaches of the universe w
as an everyday occurrence. Hundreds of years ago during a romantic tryst on the planet Bellos, she had given him an elixir that extended his life span thousands of years beyond its normal limit. He knew the elixir came from the rapid decomposition of a Stelairian, but he didn’t know how they obtained it, so he continued to seek favor from Megg in the hope of learning the secret of the youth elixir. He assumed a nonchalant pose and said, “I have some business. What are you doing here?”

  “Just checking up on my species project on the third planet.”

  “And how’s that going?”

  Megg sighed. “Not well; they haven’t progressed to the point I was expecting. But at least I’ll be able to use the data from this failure to increase the chance of success in future projects.” She paused, eyeing Agnar hungrily. She wished she had time for him. It had been a century since she last indulged herself. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’m in the middle of a crucial part of the experiment.”

  Agnar smiled, concealing his relief. Megg always took up too much of his time whenever she wanted his company. “Well, I wish you the best and hope to see you again in the civilized quadrants,” he said, feigning disappointment.

  “You as well, Agnar.” Megg disconnected and sat back with a smile. It was improper for her to be romantically involved with a member of an inferior species, let alone a pirate, but Agnar had the kind of charisma that made any woman putty in his hands. She simply couldn’t resist his charms. She even went so far as to supply him with a Stelairian youth elixir, making him the longest-lived Yalsan in history. If her government knew what she’d done, she’d be exiled.

  The sound of the proximity alarm interrupted Megg’s reminiscence. She jumped up and rushed to the bridge. When she stepped through the doors, Luvian was steering them directly into the comet they had come to lasso.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  Luvian hadn’t noticed her entrance. He had been busy trying to shut off the proximity alarm. He turned and said, “I’m not going to let you do this. I volunteered to give my life to protect experimental species, and I give it willingly in order to take yours. All life is precious, even life created in a lab.”