Dark Matter

by S. W. Ahmed

  But then, in the distance, he saw a sparkling light, like a star. As the glowing star moved closer, it brought light and warmth. Another star followed, and another, then three more. He stopped shivering, and began to feel stronger. The evil shadow’s laughter was fading away. Hope was replacing despair.

  The stars moved up next to him. He turned towards them and smiled, feeling happy and reassured, as if long lost friends had reappeared in his life.

  The last remnants of darkness disappeared, and he heard a familiar voice speak. “Good morning, Marc.”

  Marc opened his eyes, and saw Sibular standing right in front of him. He had finally woken up from his trance, if that was indeed what it was. Blinking, he looked around. He was lying on a bed, in the middle of a small, sparsely furnished room. Except that it wasn’t really a bed – just a thin, solid sheet that was somehow floating in thin air.

  “Where… am I?” he croaked.

  “In the medical facility at the research center,” Sibular said, standing near him. “You are still on Ailen.”

  “How long have I been here?” His mouth felt dry and bitter, and his eyes hurt.

  “7.6 hours.”

  Marc whistled. “I don’t understand… what happened. I was talking to… I’m sorry, what was her name again?”

  “Osalya Heyfass 00000663.”

  “That’s right, Osalya. Then, all of a sudden, I just collapsed.”

  He noticed a small, transparent device lying on his chest, probably monitoring his body’s main functions. Behind Sibular, a large screen was displaying some charts – most likely the data transmitted by the device. Another Mendoken was standing in front of the screen, keeping an eye on the data.

  “Am I alright?” he asked.

  “You appear to be functioning perfectly,” Sibular replied. “We cannot determine what caused your abrupt breakdown. We were taken by surprise, but wasted no time in bringing you to the medical facility.”

  “I don’t know either. I was suddenly having all these visions. They were horrible, so horrible!”

  “Visions of what?”

  “Death, destruction, it was insane.”

  Marc decided not to elaborate, since Sibular might think he had gone over the edge. He stared at Sibular. He didn’t know why, but it felt very comforting to see him.

  “How do you feel now?” Sibular asked.

  “Okay, I guess. Just weak.” Trying to get up, he felt a slight hint of dizziness. But it went away as soon as he had rubbed his face and swayed his head from side to side.

  “We have made good progress in the meantime. We furnished a small shuttlecraft with consar capability, and successfully sent it through a consar to a neighboring star system. The next step will now be to outfit one of our battleships.”

  “That is great news!” Marc exclaimed. He felt truly happy to know that all the endless hours he had spent in his lab at Cornell had finally amounted to something worthwhile.

  “There is still a ship waiting to take you back home, whenever you are ready,” Sibular said.

  Marc looked down. “No, I would rather not go back home.”

  “I do not understand, Marc.”

  “I would like to stay here, and help your people win the war against the Volona. That is, if I’m allowed to.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s nothing left for me back home to return to, especially not after all I’ve witnessed in the past few days.” He paused. “When I was about to answer to Osalya that I was ready to go back, I collapsed into a horrible trance that lasted over 7 hours. I don’t want to take that chance again.”

  “What do you think was the cause?”

  “I don’t know, but I think the chances of finding the answer to that question are higher if I stay.”

  “Very well, if that is your choice,” Sibular said, not expressing any surprise or emotion. “I do not believe it will be a problem, as long as you realize what this might mean for you.”

  “I think I do.”

  Chapter 13

  Dumyan and Sharjam cautiously made their way on foot across the surface of Tibara. In such freezing temperatures as those found on this planet, most forms of life would quickly die. But Aftarans were different. With their supernatural abilities, they could survive under the harshest of conditions. Their robes could be magically stretched and wrapped around their bodies many times, providing them with as much warmth and protection as they needed.

  The perpetual ice storms kept slowing down the two brothers’ pace, but also provided them with much needed camouflage from Lord Wazilban’s surveyors. They did, however, face other challenges during their trek. On the first night, a surveyor came dangerously close to the cave they were staying in, but luckily didn’t spot them. The next day, Sharjam slipped while climbing up the steep incline of a volcano, causing him to tumble down and over the edge of a cliff. The only thing that saved him was Dumyan’s lightning-speed reaction. Shedding off his robe, Dumyan opened his wings and flew down after Sharjam, catching him in the very last second of his fall of almost a hundred feet.

  Although Sharjam was saved, Dumyan instantly began suffering from hypothermia without his robe. Sharjam retrieved the robe right away and wrapped it several times around his brother. He then lay over Dumyan for a good hour, using his own body to give his brother some warmth. After a drink of yellow rauka, a very bitter-tasting but magical, strength-giving Aftaran drink, Dumyan finally felt strong enough to continue the journey.

  Eventually reaching the top of the volcano, they crouched behind some rocks and peered out cautiously over the edge. An active crater that periodically spouted large chunks of lava, this most uninviting location was the first destination of their journey.

  “How do you propose to do this?” Sharjam asked.

  “I’m thinking, unlike you,” Dumyan said.

  Dumyan was indeed thinking furiously, but he really wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Perhaps we should just approach one of them,” he whispered, getting ready to stand up and climb down into the crater.

  Sharjam looked astonished. “Are you out of your mind? To come all this way, only to be killed in so stupid a fashion?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  They both looked again through the rising ash and steam at the gaping hole below. It had to be at least a couple of hundred feet in diameter, and another hundred feet deep. The entire surface was glowing red in heat, ready to shoot out another spurt of lava at any moment.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” Sharjam said. “Unlike you, I actually have read about their behavior. Unlike you, I actually am well read.”

  “Very well, O Knowledgeable One, be my guest,” Dumyan said sarcastically. He generally hated acknowledging that his younger brother could ever be right about anything.

  They were talking about Roxays, highly unusual creatures that spent much of their time hovering around or inside volcanic craters such as this one. Roxays were the only known living beings to have the durability to naturally survive on Tibara. They were also the only known living beings with the ability to naturally fly through space for millions of miles at a stretch. Aftarans generally avoided contact with Roxays, because of their often rowdy and unpredictable behavior. They had very bad tempers, and could sometimes attack and kill others for no reason. Roxays were definitely not known for their good manners or friendliness, or even for their good looks.

  There were a number of Roxays inside the crater, most of them comfortably perched on ledges and stretching their necks to the steaming boulders below to gulp them down. For that was what they ate – hot rocks. With the nourishment they obtained from rocks, they could grow to monstrous proportions. The adult Roxay averaged 30 feet in length, from the tip of its round head, through the long, slender neck, to the very wide, bulky body and abrupt end with no tail.

  The internals of the Roxay were a unique marvel of nature. The whole body functioned as a highly efficient engine, breaking down the consumed hot rocks into combustible liquid fuel.
It then burned the fuel when needed, generating enough thrust to overcome gravity and propel itself at high speed into space. Other nutrients from the rocks were extracted to support basic life functions. Once stocked up on a solid meal of rocks, a Roxay could actually survive for weeks on end without having to eat again or even having to respire.

  A disproportionately tall hump on top of the Roxay’s body served as its fuel storage tank. The animal also had two massive wings, one on each side of the hump, usually kept neatly folded unless it was taking off from or landing on the surface of a planet. A long horn extended outwards from the top of its head, believed to be some kind of radar device used for navigation and communication.

  “They are as ugly in real life as they are in pictures,” Sharjam observed.

  For once, Dumyan had to agree with his brother. Neither of them had ever seen a Roxay before in real life, and it definitely wasn’t a sight to be enamored by. No Aftaran would ever be envious of its strange body shape, and even less so of its insect-like face with eight eyes and long, dangling tentacles. Surrounding the large mouth in the center of the face, the tentacles were used to pick up rocks and push them straight into the mouth.

  “You really are sure there’s no other way to get off this planet?” Sharjam asked, eyeing the nearest Roxay.

  The Roxay looked up into the sky and let out a screeching bellow, a bellow so loud that both brothers had to cover their ears for its duration.

  “Why, are you frightened?” Dumyan sneered, once the bellow had subsided.

  “As if you aren’t!”

  Dumyan had to admit that it was a very scary sight, but he quickly brushed that thought aside. “There’s no other way. This is the only chance we have. If we try to take our ship out of its hiding place and use it to leave the planet, surveyors will locate us in an instant and blow us up before we even exit the atmosphere. A Roxay, on the other hand, is a perfectly natural flying creature that will arouse no attention.”

  “Not even our enemy will imagine that we’re foolhardy enough to try riding on a Roxay,” Sharjam agreed. “This is insane! How will we survive in space for days on end, maybe even weeks?”

  “Our robes will protect us.”

  “You’re absolutely mad!” Sharjam said, shaking his head.

  Dumyan was getting annoyed. “We’ve come all this way. Give me a better idea, or go back to our father and tell him we’ve failed! I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be a failure in his eyes.”

  Sharjam was silent for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “Well, this is what I know of these Roxays. They’re not very intelligent or friendly. They don’t like strangers, and often don’t even like their own kind. Annoy one of them, which, by the way, is extremely easy to do, and it will literally pick you up with its strong tentacles and tear you to pieces. That is, if it doesn’t first let out a ball of smoking exhaust from its rear, instantly burning you and everything else behind it to the ground.”

  “We can use our boryals, no?” Dumyan was referring to the standard weapon that many Aftarans carried on their journeys. Although boryals looked like short swords, they actually discharged powerful rays that could destroy targets on contact. The unique thing about the boryal’s rays was that they traveled in curves, not in straight lines. That generally made it difficult for a target to realize that it even was a target until it was too late.

  “Our boryals will only be useful in destroying the first, and perhaps the second Roxay,” Sharjam said. “But as soon as the others see what we’ve done, they will pounce on us from all sides, spraying their exhaust on us and converting both our bodies and our boryals into pure ash.”

  “Can’t we use any of our enchantments on them?”

  “Other Aftarans have apparently died trying. These are amazingly resistant creatures.”

  Dumyan was feeling more uncomfortable by the second. “Is there a bright side to this story?”

  Sharjam sighed. “As a matter of fact, there is.”

  “Please enlighten me.”

  “Well, the key is to get one of these monsters to fly into space, right? In order to do that, we need to know what natural instinct causes them to migrate between planets and moons in the first place. They’re not affected by hot or cold, fire or ice, by light or darkness. But there is one thing that does affect them very much – their tremendous fear of vegetation.”

  Dumyan almost jumped in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “They’re terrified of trees, bushes, grass – any kind of plants. Direct contact with a plant kills them. Even the pollen some plants release in the air can cause their inner body parts to quickly decay, yielding a most painful death. That is why they love planets like Tibara, because it is absolutely devoid of any flora. At the first sign of plant life on a planet or moon, they take flight again, looking for the next barren world.”

  “Bizarre! So the trick is to show them some plants, and then they take off?”

  “Yes, but there is a catch. They’re not easily fooled – the plants need to be growing from the ground, and they do need to be large enough to be noticeable. Unfortunately, even with the eight eyes on its head, the Roxay is very shortsighted. So the plants will have to be very close to their faces before they show any reaction.”

  “Do you know how to create and grow a plant?”

  “Of course! That was one of the first enchantments my Master taught me when I was a child.”

  Sharjam took out a silver coin-like object from inside his robe, ran his finger around its edge, and uttered several words that sounded like a verse. He then made a sweeping motion with his hands and clasped them together. A light flashed above his hands, and out sprang a green hupee plant, a native of the planet Yarkuba in the Afta-Parmeen star system. It had a thick, vertical stem, with numerous branches that shot straight out. Hexagonally shaped leaves appeared at the end of each branch.

  “Will the hupee’s roots survive if we plant it in the crater?” Dumyan asked.

  “No. We’ll need to plant it right here.”

  “Then let’s do it!”

  “Hold on!” Sharjam cautioned. “There is only one spot on the Roxay’s body that we can hold onto without being thrown off – the base of each wing. It’s the one spot on the body that has no senses. We’ll need to jump into those spots – me behind one wing and you behind the other, and settle there for the entire journey without moving an inch. Trust me, it won’t be easy.”

  “Who said this mission was going to be easy?”

  Sharjam decided not to respond to that comment. Now he was more convinced than ever that Dumyan was out of his mind. Still, he knew there was no other option. He certainly couldn’t turn back, at least not without proclaiming himself a total failure in front of his father.

  He chanted another verse and let the hupee drop to the ground. The moment the plant touched the surface, the rocky ground around it turned into soft, muddy soil, enabling it to easily take root. It grew taller instantly, rising almost to his height.

  Dumyan then got up and stood upright, so that his head came into clear view from the depths of the crater. “Hey!” he yelled, waving his arms. “Yes, you ugly beasts! Look at me! Right here!”

  Sharjam got up to see what was happening. The nearest Roxay, no more than 70 feet away, turned its head toward them. Another Roxay further away also looked up, dropping a rock it was just about to devour. They both let out screeching, deafening roars. As they did so, other Roxays began noticing the commotion, many of them joining the growing chorus of screeches.

  “Oh, they’re upset!” Sharjam observed. “Roxays don’t like surprises.”

  “Hold your boryal!” Dumyan shouted, barely audible over the shrieks of the monsters. “Here they come!”

  Sure enough, the nearest Roxay had lifted off its perch, opening its wings and heading straight towards them. Its wing span had to be at least 35 feet, longer than the creature’s body itself. Another Roxay lifted and followed, and others further away began doing the same.
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  “May the Creator protect us!” Sharjam yelled.

  Both brothers took out their boryals from inside their robes. The weapons were gleaming in silver, no more than a foot in length each, looking very much like the bottom parts of swords that had been cut in half. They held their weapons tightly, ready for battle.

  The first Roxay came over the edge of the crater’s wall, lowering its head towards the Aftarans. Its slimy tentacles shot out towards Dumyan.

  “Don’t shoot!” Sharjam cautioned, as much as his instincts and training told him otherwise. He pulled his brother back with him behind the hupee plant.

  The Roxay came to an abrupt halt in midair when it saw the plant. Instead of screeching, it let out a loud howl, as if it was suddenly in a lot of pain. It turned around to face the other Roxays, and kept howling.

  “It’s working!” Dumyan whispered.

  The wailing was sending the Roxays away. The ones already in the air began flying upwards. The other ones still on the ground dropped their last rocks and spread their wings, following their kinfolk into the sky. There had to be at least 30 of them in total, beginning their exodus from Tibara.

  “Right, now!” Sharjam yelled.

  They both sprang up and jumped onto the back of the howling Roxay. It immediately stopped its howling and began violently shaking its body from side to side, trying to lose them. But they held on with all their might, using the retractable claws on the edges of their fingers to dig into the animal’s tough, rubbery skin.

  “Get behind the wing!” Sharjam ordered. “It is our only chance!” He scrambled toward the base of the right wing, while Dumyan did the same on the left side.

  With great difficulty, Sharjam made it to the base and quickly burrowed himself in it. He could no longer see Dumyan now, his view to the left blocked by the Roxay’s body. But he guessed Dumyan had made it to the other base, for he hadn’t seen anyone fall off and the Roxay had suddenly stopped thrashing about. No longer sensing any presence on its back, it probably thought it had finally dropped its highly unwelcome cargo. Flapping its long wings, it began its escape into the sky, following the trail of the other Roxays already in flight.