by Ken Liu
“Their programming must have detected us as creatures that needed to be hunted—we’re vermin,” said Tyra.
The droids hovered in the fetid air, and their humming grew louder as their electric zappers charged up.
“Can’t we stop them?” asked Teal. She jumped out of the way as another bolt shot past her, ricocheting off the bulkheads.
“These things are nimble and deadly,” said Tyra. “They have to be, because the vermin that live in the bilge can get pretty big.”
“Except we’re not vermin!” said G’kolu.
G2-X beeped excitedly.
“No way. Nuh-uh. Absolutely not,” said Tyra.
G2-X beeped some more and whistled sharply for emphasis.
“What’s he suggesting?” asked Teal. “I only caught bits and pieces of that.”
Tyra sighed. “He says the rest of us need to dive into the sludge to act as bait, and he’ll take care of them for us.”
“Dive into the sludge? Is he out of—”
Another maintenance droid clicked loudly and swooped for Teal’s head. She managed to duck out of the way, barely, but the breeze from the spinning blades passed right over her scalp. She shuddered.
“All right,” said Flux, who was preternaturally calm. “It’s not a big deal. This slime is made up of the same substance as everything else in the universe.”
“You keep on telling yourself that,” said Teal. “But the rest of the universe doesn’t make my skin crawl.”
Flux ignored her. “It’s all part of the Tide. We just need to hold our breaths and dive in. If Luke can jump into the acid mines of the Deep, we can survive being under sewage for a while.” She took a few deep breaths, almost gagged, and then resolutely dove into the slimy sludge, burying herself completely.
Tyra, G’kolu, and Teal looked at each other, sighed, and followed suit.
The maintenance droids hovered over the sludge, trying to determine if the targets had drowned or were still active below the surface. Moving silently on his robber wheels, G2-X slowly approached. The lack of body heat emissions from his chassis caused the maintenance droids to ignore him as a threat.
When he judged he was close enough, G2-X burst into a frenzy of motion. He scooped up handfuls of mud from the bottom of the bilge with his manipulators and chucked them into the propellers and exhaust ports of the maintenance droids. As the surprised droids struggled to gain altitude, G2-X leapt onto them like a bird-catching foxcat and pressed them into the thick sludge. The propellers and maneuvering jets sputtered and choked as the droids put up a desperate struggle, but eventually they stopped moving.
The deckhands and the stowaway burst out of the slimy water, sputtering and gasping for air. They gagged and dry-heaved, but eventually they managed to catch their breaths.
G2-X hoisted one of the disabled maintenance droids like some kind of trophy. Its searchlight was still working, and G2-X hung it over the access port like a lamp. The custodian droid chirped proudly.
Teal wiped the mud off her face and spat in disgust. “I’m never doing that again.”
“I think you made us do that just to see how ridiculous we’d look,” said Tyra accusingly.
G2-X let out a noncommittal chirp.
“At least we’re safe for now,” said Flux. “Who knew that there would be a whole other world down here in the belly of the ship?”
The deckhands had to agree that the adventure was rather exciting.
The companions climbed out of the sludge onto the platform and tried to clean themselves off as best they could.
“We just have to wait until the ship docks and climb out of the sewage pipes,” said Teal.
“How long until that happens?” asked Flux.
“A few hours at least,” said Teal. “Once the customs inspection is over, the ship has to get into orbit and then glide down to the surface.”
“Time enough for one last story?” asked Tyra.
Teal turned to G’kolu. “You’re always full of tall tales.”
“Make it a Luke Skywalker story,” said Tyra. “Stay on theme.”
“Well,” said G’kolu, “now that you mention it, all this talk about finding a new world in the belly of the Wayward Current does remind me of a story. I once met a scientist from the University of Bar’leth who was possibly the strangest person I’ve ever known—”
“You didn’t look in the mirror this morning, did you?”
“Ha-ha. The scientist wanted to raise money for a research expedition to go inside giant space slugs.”
“What?”
“Why would you do that?”
“That’s such a strange idea!”
“That’s what everyone else said. But her reasons for exploring the space slugs also had something to do with Luke Skywalker….”
THIS IS NO CAVE!
—HAN SOLO
AFTER THREE WEEKS ON A WORLD where the insects had wingspans of three meters and eyes as big as my head, I was very glad to bring out my universal beacon and activate the call for a ride.
I was a young biology student trying to get some fieldwork done in the remote Agoliba-Tu system.
Agoliba-Tu had two life-supporting planets: warm, jungle-covered Agoliba-Ado (where I was) and icy, snowbound Agoliba-Ena (where I needed to go). The orbits of the two planets, with their divergent ecosystems and distinct fauna and flora, were separated by an asteroid belt. There was a debate between my professors over whether Agoliba-Ado or Agoliba-Ena had given birth to life first and colonized the other one, or if life had evolved independently on the two worlds. I was supposed to gather data that could help settle the debate.
Since there were no trade routes through the Agoliba-Tu system, and my university was far too budget constrained to maintain a dedicated research vessel, I had to rely on the kindness of strangers who occasionally jumped out of hyperspace in the system on their way to somewhere else. The universal beacon let anyone popping out of hyperspace know that I was interested in hitching a ride. Watching the flashing beacon and listening to its gentle beeps, I fell asleep.
The noise and turbulence of a spacecraft landing startled me awake.
The ship wasn’t something you saw every day: a two-seat starfighter with an A shape, a worn paint job, and plenty of marks and dents all over the hull. It was probably an old military surplus vehicle that had been converted to civilian use and patched and repaired so many times over the years that it was hard to say if any original components remained.
“Need a ride?” The pilot’s boyish, happy eyes twinkled. The lived-in state of the cockpit told me he had been traveling for a long time. “Hop in. I’m Luke.”
We chatted as Luke piloted the A-wing through the asteroid belt. He explained that he’d modified the cockpit in part to take on passengers on his long flights around the galaxy as a way to relieve some boredom.
I had a hard time figuring out who Luke was. Some of the things he said made it seem like he had been a fighter in the Rebellion against the Empire, but once he heard that I was an academic, he started peppering me with questions about the worlds I had visited and whether I had seen any signs of ancient ruins of the Jedi.
“Are you an archaeologist or something?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Something like that. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the Jedi.”
Personally, I thought a lot of the legends about the Jedi were either exaggerations or simple tall tales. But many members of the public, who had little knowledge or interest in actual galactic history, seemed obsessed with these legends. Maybe this Luke was some kind of smuggler who specialized in Jedi-related “artifacts.” I didn’t want to pry. The galaxy was a large place, and it had room for all kinds of eccentric characters.
Regardless of what his real profession was, he was a heck of a pilot. The asteroid belt was packed with obstacles ranging from planetoids as large as cities to rocks barely bigger than my fist. Luke wove and dodged among them as naturally as a fish darting through a coral reef, and
he squeezed through some cracks so narrow that I had to close my eyes and pray to every deity I knew in the universe.
“Ha, that’s interesting!” he said.
I opened my eyes and saw two bright dots of light flittering and dancing beyond a large asteroid. Their movement reminded me both of the food-signaling dance of Hrelan bees and the mating ritual of Awalian newts. It was so orderly that I couldn’t take my eyes away. Are they alive?
“Want a closer look?” Luke asked.
I nodded. No biologist would have said no to that.
Luke piloted the A-wing closer. As we approached, the two pinpricks of light suddenly froze, as if aware of our presence, and then zoomed about five hundred meters away, where they began to dance again.
“They’re playful!” we both exclaimed, and then we laughed together.
I felt like a kid going after Orowatan fireflies in the backyard. Luke nudged the A-wing to follow the retreating lights, and we began a new dance among the asteroids.
The “fireflies” led us on a merry chase, and Luke swerved and swooped through the dense space debris, nimbly following along. Eventually, the two bright sparks disappeared inside a large cave on an asteroid as big as a moon.
By that time, both of us were eager to track the new creatures to their home. Luke landed the A-wing right outside the mouth of the cave. We sealed our helmets for spacewalking and climbed out of the cockpit.
Gravity on the asteroid was light but sufficient to keep us securely rooted to the surface. Gingerly, we hop-walked to the cave, whose mouth was smoothly polished, as though it had been carved out by a river. I was baffled by the unusual geologic feature. An asteroid that small couldn’t have had flowing water.
We stepped into the cave, which was about twenty meters across and about as tall. We turned on our helmet lights and scanned the inside. The walls were covered by long, smooth grooves that again indicated the presence of flowing liquid sometime in the past.
“There!” Luke pointed deeper into the cave, and I saw the flickering lights of the fireflies far in the distance.
We hiked for about twenty minutes as the cave twisted and turned, going deeper and deeper into the interior of the asteroid. My head-up display showed that the temperature was rising steadily (though I still wouldn’t call it “warm”). Each time we got close to the lights, they flitted deeper into the cave. Eventually, we arrived at a smooth translucent membrane that barred our way like a frozen waterfall.
Luke reached out to touch the barrier. It gave a little and bounced back, like a rubber sheet.
“This is probably their hive,” I said into the helmet microphone, drawing on what little I knew of the biology of near-vacuum ecosystems. “There are some social insects and brinyvores that live in airless environments such as ocean-bottom trenches or shielded moons, subsisting on radiation and other sources of energy. Maybe this barrier is something they’ve built to protect their home.”
I was about to suggest that we turn back—almost any animal would get quite hostile when intruders invaded its home—when Luke held up a hand for me to be quiet. He pressed his helmet’s visor up against the barrier and looked through.
“There’s writing on the other side,” he said, the excitement in his voice palpable.
I pressed my visor up against the barrier, too. The cave continued beyond the membrane and then made a wide turn to the left a few meters in. With the dim light from our helmets, I could just make out letter-like markings on the wall on the other side of the barrier.
Before I could stop him, Luke took out a utility knife and cut a slit through the membrane. He pressed his way inside, and I followed.
Once we were through, the two sides of the slit joined back together and the membrane resealed itself. I pressed my hands against the barrier. The rubber-like sheet seemed to have healed completely, leaving no sign of our surgery.
“I don’t understand…” Luke’s puzzled voice came over the comm.
I turned to find Luke already at the wall examining the writing. I joined him and saw the source of his puzzlement. The markings were regular and resembled writing, but they didn’t belong to any script or alphabet I had ever seen.
Up close, I realized that the letters seemed to be carved in relief in the cave wall, and they gave off a faint glow. Luke ran his hands over the letters.
“These…look alive,” Luke muttered.
I had to agree. The markings pulsed and brightened momentarily as his gloved hands ran over them.
“I wish Threepio were here,” he muttered. “He’d know how to read this. All I can make out is ‘mist.’”
“Mist?” I asked.
He shook his head, frustrated. “Could be related to the Jedi…but I’m just guessing. Looks like someone was here before us. I wonder if this is a warning or an invitation.”
It was true that some social insects, though individually not very intelligent, possessed sentience collectively as colonies. But I had never heard of any that communicated by writing inside their hives.
A growing unease filled my heart. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I muttered.
As if in response, the floor of the cave lurched and we fell down. A faint glow lit the cave walls in pulsing rings. We felt a bone-rattling rumble that came from somewhere deep down, and the floor and walls shook some more.
“Let’s get out of here,” Luke said, and he pulled me up. We sliced through the membrane again, and hop-ran for the cave opening.
In the low gravity, our footing was already unstable, but our escape was made even more difficult by the constant jostling and buckling of the ground as the asteroid quakes continued. Like stumbling grasshoppers on Agoliba-Ado, we finally made our way to the last turn in the cave, and I expected to see the stars as we bounced around the last bend….
And we did, except that the oval slice of the heavens was shrinking, like a great eye closing.
“Run!” Luke yelled into his helmet mike. “This must be a cave-in!” We redoubled our pace.
Just then the ground buckled violently again, and I was tossed off my feet and slammed against the cave wall. I tried to get up, but my right leg would not support my weight. I almost blacked out from the pain.
Luke had gone on running about twenty meters before realizing that I wasn’t following. Because of the light gravity, it took him several skidding attempts before he could stop and turn around.
“Go on! Go!” I screamed. I could see that the cave opening was now just a narrow slit. “You have to get out!”
“I’m not going to leave you behind,” he said, his voice determined. He bounded back, slung my arm over his shoulder, and began to hop-run for the opening again. My right leg hung uselessly, either broken or badly sprained. At least the light gravity made it possible for him to carry me.
But the ground continued to contort and shake violently, which slowed our pace. We watched helplessly as the starry sky narrowed to a slit and then disappeared completely.
By the time we made it to what used to be the cave opening, we found a solid wall in our faces. Tracing the jagged line in the wall, I realized that the wall seemed to be made from a giant pair of jaws fused together, and we were on the wrong side of the mouth.
All of a sudden, everything made sense.
I slumped to the floor and hung my head between my knees. “We’re inside an exogorth,” I said.
“Ah…” Luke let out a held breath. “A giant space slug. Han would have—Never mind.”
I didn’t bother correcting him for using the nontechnical name. Scientific terminology could wait until we weren’t dinner for an asteroid-sized predator.
Luke looked at me. “You’re the biologist here, so tell me: are we in danger?”
I shrugged. “Not immediately.”
The truth is, even today we don’t know a lot about exogorths: giant, silicon-based creatures that live on asteroids and can grow large enough to swallow starships. It’s not even clear how many species of these slugs there are, muc
h less what their individual biology is like.
What is known is that they tend to live in environments where opportunities to feed are few and far between, and the exogorths have an extremely slow metabolism (they aren’t called space slugs for nothing).
“So we could just wait here until it feeds again and escape when it opens its mouth?”
“In theory, yes. But…”
I explained that an exogorth rarely moved, and when it did move, it could do so only in quick bursts that exhausted its entire supply of energy. After that exertion to swallow us, it probably wasn’t going to move again for years.
“Years?”
“Maybe decades. Probably takes that long to fully digest us.”
“This is like being in the belly of a sarlacc,” Luke muttered. He pounded on the rock walls around him.
“If I were you, I’d stop moving around so much. You’ll use up your oxygen supply in no time.”
“Well, I have no intention of waiting around to be digested.”
“We don’t have many options,” I said. “This thing is basically made from kilometers-thick layers of rocks. I didn’t bring any asteroid mining equipment. Did you?”
“I’ve been in plenty of hopeless situations,” he said. “Let’s look around. Maybe there’s another way out. After all, we know someone has been here before.”
I very much doubted that there was another way out, but something in his voice made me think, Why not?
We got up and, with him supporting my weight, limped deeper into the beast.
As we slashed our way back through the rubbery film, Luke and I speculated on how our host lived.
“This is clearly a sophisticated predator,” I said.
“A sophisticated space slug? How?”
I explained that the space slug—it was just easier to use the common term—had probably developed those “fireflies” as lures to attract prey.
“Like an opee sea killer or a deep-sea finned-fry-trap,” Luke said, catching on.
“Exactly.” I was glad to be talking to someone with a quick mind.