Sand and Shadow

by Laurisa White Reyes

  “So, what happened?”

  Adán shrugged. “I dunno. I guess looking down into that canyon sent my head spinning for a second, that’s all. Like motion sickness or something, but I’m better now.”

  “Positive?”

  “Positive.”

  “All right then. I’m going to clean up the rover and get it ready for tomorrow. The drive shaft’s grinding a little. I think some grit got into the gears. I don’t want it seizing up on us.”

  “Yeah, that’s all we’d need is to get stranded miles out from the shuttle.”

  “Exactly.”

  Tink and the rover headed toward the back of the shuttle and the rear cargo bay where the rover’s spare parts and tools were kept. When Adán entered the shuttle, he was surprised to find Scott Dryker awake and hunched over one of the tables, sipping from a warm cup of cocoa and a blanket draped over his shoulders. It was the first time since before the shuttle’s departure that Adán had seen their Mission Commander sitting upright. He had forgotten how big Scott was, easily six feet, with an intimidating athletic build that was evident even through the blue jumper he wore.

  Fess nodded to Adán as he came in. The rest of the crew stood silently around Scott in a ragged semi-circle. Dema had been very clear about what to do once the commander awoke. Don’t aggravate him. Don’t ask too many questions or reveal too much information. At least not right away. He’d been in a coma, and he was likely to feel a bit out of sorts for a while.

  Scott shakily set his cup on the table, a thick tendril of steam snaking into the air. When he lifted his eyes, everyone else looked away.

  “This is crazy,” said Scott. “You don’t have to ignore me. No matter what Dema told you. I’m fine. Really.”

  Fess glanced at the others as if asking for permission to speak. “You’re okay then?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. Have a hell of a headache, but otherwise I’m no worse for wear. You guys act like I came back from the dead or something.”

  “You did,” said Jonah.

  “Jonah,” snapped Dema.

  “Well, I don’t see why we have to walk on eggshells around him,” Jonah replied. “I mean, look at him. He’s not brain damaged. His limbs are all functioning properly. If he says he’s fine, he’s fine.”

  Fess spoke next. “Jonah’s right. We’ve got a mission to accomplish. Now that the commander is in a position to command, we should get on with it.”

  “I agree,” said Scott. He stood up and let the blanket fall to the floor, but he wobbled and grasped the edge of the table to steady himself. “I expect to be briefed on what happened while I was out.”

  “The ship was damaged,” said Fess.

  “I can see that,” said Scott. “All that crap in the Quarters isn’t pixie dust. What caused the breach?”

  Fess glanced at Adán. “We don’t know exactly.”

  “You don’t know—exactly?”

  “Something punctured the hull,” offered Jonah. “Possibly during landing or just after.”

  “And the rest of the crew?”

  Lainie hesitated, but then spoke up. “They were already dead when we got here.”

  “I suspect they were dead before we passed the Moon,” said Dema.

  “How so?” Scott’s tone was skeptical.

  Dema refilled Scott’s cup. “They’d been dead for years. They were all but mummified.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You didn’t see them.”

  “I don’t have to. The Carpathia’s cryo system is the most advanced in the world. I initiated the sequences myself after liftoff.”

  “That’s right,” said Jonah. “You’re the Mission Commander. You piloted the shuttle out of orbit and verified cryo stabilization before putting yourself under.”

  “And when I went down,” countered Scott, “everyone was fine. All systems stable.”

  Adán had been standing aside, listening to the conversation, surprised no one had brought up the most important question of all.

  “Did you check our coordinates, too?” he asked, stepping forward into the circle.

  Scott noticed him for the first time. “Coordinates? Yes, of course. Three years to Europa.”

  “The coordinates were changed,” said Adán.

  “Changed?” asked Scott. “By whom?”

  “That’s what we want to know. We’re twenty light years from earth on a planet called Gliese 581g.”

  Scott’s jaw muscles tightened. At first Adán wondered if Scott doubted him, but then the commander’s gaze wavered, and he looked down at the table. His hands, clasped in front of him, tensed and relaxed over and over like he was considering his next move. Finally, Scott placed his palms on the table, looking from one team member to the other.

  “Well, wherever the hell we are, we have a mission to accomplish, and we’re going to do it right. Fuentes, has anyone tried to hail the rest of the fleet, or are we the only ones on this goddamned sand pit?”

  That’s it? thought Adán. We tell him we’re twenty light years off course, and he just accepts it and moves on. Odd.

  Adán responded to Scott’s question in an official tone. “We’ve sent dozens of hails since we awoke, but we haven’t gotten any responses—yet.”

  “I see,” said Scott. “Well, keep sending them. Until we hear from someone, we’ll have to assume we’re it. Where’s Seoung?”

  “In the cargo bay, maintaining the rovers,” said Adán.

  “I need a full report of everything’s that been done in my absence, and I mean everything. I want to know what you all ate, drank, and crapped—you understand me?”

  Scott looked at Fess, taking in the bandage around his leg. “What the hell happened to you?”

  Fess glanced nervously at the others before responding. “I was attacked.”

  “Attacked? By who?”

  “Not by who,” said Lainie. “By what. And we don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” interrupted Dema. “Commander Dryker’s got enough to worry about. He needs to rest—”

  “Tell me.” Scott’s voice was firm, insistent. So Dema, clearly against her better judgement, filled him in on the story. When she had finished, Scott sat in silence for a while as if digesting all the information he’d been given.

  “So, we’re not on Europa,” he said. “Most of the crew is dead. And something, we don’t know what, destroyed the shelter. All right. Put up another shelter.”

  “But Scott—” Dema protested.

  “I said put up another shelter. Got that? Or are you and I going to have issues?”

  Adán glanced at Dema hoping to share some unspoken comment on Scott’s call to action, but the moment his eyes met hers, she looked away, fixing her gaze on her tablet instead.

  “Sarkissian,” said Scott in a voice that was more demanding than it needed to be, “I want an updated bio scan on everyone—stat.”

  Dema visibly bristled at the sound of her name. Lainie placed a hand on Dema’s shoulder in a show of support. “She performed complex scans on all of us when we came out of cryo.”

  Scott did not even acknowledge Lainie. He kept a stern eye on Dema until she lifted her gaze to him. “I’ll take care of it, Commander Dryker,” she said.

  “But it’s only been three days,” Lainie started, but Scott cut her a look that immediately silenced her.

  “I’m going to review and update the logs,” he said. “I don’t want to be disturbed. And just so we’re all on the same page, whatever happened over the past couple of days is of no significance.” He aimed his glare directly at Adán. “I’m in charge now, and we’re going to do things according to mission protocol. By the book. Is that clear?”

  No one responded.

  “Is that clear?” Scott repeated.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jonah with just the slightest hint of contempt. Lainie, Fess, and Dema followed with hesitant “Yes, sirs” as well. Dryker’s dislike of Adán was pretty evident, and he wondered why the comman
der had a grudge against him. Adán had done nothing but try to keep the mission going despite being short three quarters of their crew and being attacked by some unseen indigenous creature. It wasn’t personal, Adán reasoned. Dryker needed to regain his authority.

  “Yes, sir,” Adán said.

  Scott headed for the cockpit. When he stumbled, Dema instinctively reached toward him to help, but he pushed her hand away and made the rest of the way on his own.

  My name is Raymond, but I don’t think anyone here knows that or cares. They dubbed me The Professor, Fess for short, but it wasn’t meant as a compliment. They know I’m not supposed to be here. They know it took serious brains to do what I did.

  Like a lot of the team, I’m bright. Smarter than your average high school graduate. Funny, the ad for colonists said nothing about intelligence being a prerequisite. In fact, NASA made a big point that the selection process would be anonymous, random. Anyone from any walk of life could get lucky, but those of us on the final ticket figured out the truth pretty quick. There was nothing random about it.

  The balance between races was the first giveaway. I mean, think about it. The American population is made up of 76% white, 18% Hispanic, 13% black, 6% Asian, and a smattering of “other”. Due to the laws of probability then, a truly random selection would mean the list of finalists should break down very close to these numbers. Instead, there is a very discernible even number of races represented here. And there’s a pretty obvious 50/50 ratio of men to women.

  Then, to really ice the cake, all of us—I mean all of us—are brilliant. Some more than others, of course, but it doesn’t take much sleuthing to figure out that every team member either has an advanced degree at a young age or has excelled in his/her field in some other extraordinary way. I’m the exception, of course, since my expertise can’t be found on any public database.

  My question is: Why didn’t NASA just recruit these guys instead of going through a façade of random selection? My guess is it had something to do with public opinion. Get the country all excited about throwing their names into the hat for a chance to be the first. The thing spread through social media like a California wildfire. By the time the names were announced, the whole damn country, the whole damn world, was on board.

  Maybe it also had to do with funding. The application cost a pretty penny, not so expensive as to exclude the middle class, but expensive enough to dissuade the “undesirables”. I imagine that was the first culling. They say more than a million applications were submitted, non-refundable. That’s a chunk of change.

  Clearly, the teams were selected for their intellect, their DNA, gender, race. I mean, c’mon. We’re space colonists, right? NASA expects us to breed, to populate Europa with the human species. Though it’s not written in the protocol, it’s pretty obvious, and I don’t think there’s a guy in the entire program averse to that idea. So why the secrecy? Why the smokescreen? Money—check. Public support—check. There’s got to be something else, something I’m missing.

  In any case, I count myself lucky to be here not because I’m one of them, not because I fit in—but because I’m not, and I don’t. I’m better. I’m more.

  I beat the system.

  I’m a hack, see? I didn’t even make the first cut. I dropped out of high school, so maybe that was it. Steve Jobs was an average student and a college drop out. Zuckerberg. Gates. Dorsey. They were too smart for school, and so am I, but on paper, that doesn’t look so good.

  Maybe they’d already reached their quota of egotistic young black studs and didn’t need anymore. No matter. I wanted on the team, and when Raymond “Fess” Duchene wants something, he gets it.

  The hack wasn’t easy, but in the end, my name was on the list. Not the front list, mind you. That would have been too obvious. I placed myself on the backup crew. Then I waited, and when the time was right, I fixed the blood test results for some guy named Trey something-or-other, gave him a positive for the latest mutation of Covid, and got him bumped.

  So now here I am, training with the best of them. Yeah, so I’m a little younger than the rest of the crew. Hoping my future “soul mate” won’t care about that when the time comes to pair up and propagate. In the meantime, I’m here and that other guy isn’t. That’s what matters. And if NASA has any suspicions that their system isn’t as crack proof as they thought, they haven’t said anything to me about it. In a week, I’m heading into space to see a new world and leaving this shitty one behind once and for all.

  Tink was just securing the rover when Adán found him.

  “I thought you were gonna grab dinner and take a nap,” said Tink, cinching the safety strap around the rover’s rear wheel.

  “I was,” said Adán, “but Commander Dryker had something else in mind.”

  “Scott? You mean he’s up?”

  “Yeah, he’s up all right and slinging orders like hash. He wants us to erect the other shelter.” He pointed to the thick silver log tucked under his arm.

  “After what happened to Fess?”

  “He doesn’t buy it. And why should he? He was in La La Land during all the excitement. Now he’s here and in charge, and he wants things to be done by the book.” Adán framed the words with fingered quotation marks.

  Tink chuckled. “Sounds like Dryker.”

  “Anyway, Jonah and Lainie are placing the stakes now. We decided to move it closer to the shuttle, twenty yards directly ahead of the nose. That way whoever’s on post can have a clearer view of it.”

  “Computer, close the storage bay hatch, please,” said Tink into his comm. In response, the eight-foot metal panels began to move on massive hydraulic hinges, controlled from the ship’s hub. Had the electrical damage affected this part of the grid, opening them manually would have been challenging. Not impossible, but the hatches weighed several hundred pounds apiece and would have required several of the crew to heft them.

  “So, how is he—Scott?” asked Tink, brushing a layer of dust from his gloves.

  Adán shrugged. “Says he’s got a whopper of a headache. Seems a bit wobbly on his feet, but he’s as ornery as ever.”

  “In other words, he’s back to normal.”

  The two of them headed over to where the new shelter’s metal skeleton now stood. Adán unrolled the silver tarp and handed Jonah, Lainie, and Tink each a corner.

  “Secure the corners first, then we’ll raise the support beams,” said Adán, “just like before.”

  “You know I’m not sleeping in this thing,” said Jonah. “I don’t care what Dryker says. He can bullwhip me for all I care.”

  “No one blames you for that.” Adán adjusted his helmet. “I think we all feel the same, but it’s been more than twenty-four hours since—I don’t even know what to call what happened—since the incident, and it’s been quiet since then. If it makes Dryker happy, we should at least make a good show of it.”

  “I’m sleeping in the shuttle with Fess. Period.”

  “I’ll stay in the shelter,” Lainie volunteered, attaching her corner, “as long as someone else stays out here too.”

  “Scott will be out here for sure. And Dema.”

  “I will, too,” said Tink.

  “All right,” said Adán. “That makes five of us. I’ll take the first watch tonight.”

  “Dryker might claim that for himself,” said Jonah.

  “He’s still pretty weak,” said Adán. “Dema’s going to insist he get a good night’s rest, and you know how persuasive she can be.”

  “I’ll take second watch,” said Tink. “I could use the time to study the schematics for the grid, and I want to look at the transmissions again. I spotted what I think may be a glitch in the program. Might explain why we haven’t heard from anyone. I think I fixed it, but I want to make sure.”

  With the four corners firmly fastened, the crew worked together to hoist the inner framework, locking the beams and supports into place. The experience reminded Adán of an old-fashioned barn raising. They would soon be constru
cting greenhouses in the same manner.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll report to Scott and then bring out the heater and comm. Lainie, Tink, can you help with the cots and bedding? Jonah, I’ll tell Scott that Fess has to stay in the shuttle until his wound has healed. Dema doesn’t want any chance of infection anyway, and he shouldn’t stay alone.”

  “Thanks,” said Jonah, relieved.

  By midnight Ephemeris Time (ET), everyone was settled. Scott, having little energy remaining after his initial tirade, quickly agreed to all of Adán’s suggestions and was the first to fall asleep in the new shelter. Lainie, Dema, and Tink soon followed suit. Adán retreated to the shuttle cockpit. Just as he had anticipated, from its windows he had a clear view of the shelter and much of the surrounding terrain. Nothing could approach within miles without his seeing it. Just to be on the safe side, however, he had erected a motion detector on the far side of the shelter, the side he couldn’t see even from the cockpit. If anything moved within range, it would trigger a signal on his E-Tab.

  Adán tapped on the overhead console, and a list of diagnostics appeared on the screen, the same information Tink had been studying when they’d first awoke. Beyond the screen, through the shuttle’s windshield, Gliese’s barren landscape lay like a vast sea of orange. The planet couldn’t all be like this, Adán thought. Earth had deserts and plains and mountains and forests. If an alien visitor were to land in the middle of Iraq, he might mistake the planet to be a barren wasteland. Only after traveling hundreds of miles would the alien begin to see the true nature of Earth. It could be the same for Gliese. This was supposed to be the most Earth-like of any of the planets. There had to be more.

  Adán passed the first hour easily, playing “Survive” on his E-Tab, a simulation from training that the crew members had turned into a game. When he grew bored, he read from a paperback copy of Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat and Other Stories, one of the many books rescued from the dead crew’s personal stores. In three hours, Tink’s alarm would wake him to start his watch, but Adán didn’t even make it to two.