by Vivian Venus
The stream met the reflecting pool’s edge and the water crept higher and higher around his legs as he waded out to its center until he was up to his thighs in the dark water, the reflection of that great yellow planet surrounding him in a halo of light. Tor looked up into the faces of the Great Ones, their dark gazes steeling back at him like a circle of stern elder relatives.
“Great Ones,” he said, “Before you is Tor, hunter of the Ulduuk people you have deemed worthy to spare. I have brought the little one, Toovah, who is hot with sickness. I will trust you will not be angry for me bringing him here before his coming of age. Your Great Eye has opened and I have come to stand before you to ask for your mercy and guidance. You have brought us wisdom for all our generations, kept us strong. I do not know what we had done to displease you and call upon your wrath, but I must trust that you will give me guidance now.”
He bowed his head again. He had told himself he would be strong in the presence of the Great Ones, but he felt hot tears coming to his eyes. He held his spear across his chest with both his hands. “I beg you to spare Toovah. Spare his life and show me how to rebuild my people.”
He untied the liklik, a small rabbit-like rodent creature, and sloshed forward through the water, leaving the glowing circle of the Great Eye and placed its body on a stone before the Great Ones. From his belt he drew out a small stone dagger and with practiced quickness, slid it along the belly of the dead animal. He ran his fingers along the cut, coating them with its blood, a dark ruby orange, and drew them down the feet of each of the statues. He then used his thumb to put a dot of blood on his own forehead and then Toovah’s.
“In your honor and name I give this sacrifice,” he murmured.
Tor had expected their usual silence and turned to leave, wondering how they would answer his call – or if they even would at all – when he felt something change in the air. It was barely perceptible, like a low hum that was just outside of his range of hearing. His long, canine-like ears twitched and pricked up. He frowned. Something’s coming.
The sensation grew stronger until he could actually hear it now – a vibration in the air. It sent the tiniest of ripples across the surface of the pool, and just the slightest shiver through all the leaves of the jungle. Tor looked around, trying to locate the source of the disturbance. His eye was drawn upward towards the night sky, and that’s when he saw it. A star glimmering brightly just over the top of the Great Eye, and it was steadily glowing brighter. In fact, he saw now that it was moving. It was a falling star, and this star was falling in their direction. Tor’s mouth dropped open. He could see its tail streaking out behind it like a spark from a fire, the head smoldering with red flame. It was so bright that it illuminated the jungle canopy below.
The ground shook hard now, pebbles chattering against each other at the pool’s edge, the water rippling like it was being pattered with rain drops, and then the prophetic star roared directly overhead, heading straight back the way that he had come
It was going to fall into the jungle! The light that burned off of it as it came overhead shone as bright as the sun, and cast brightness over the Great Ones, sending shadows rippling over their features which seemed to bring their stone set faces into motion.
“Go!” they seemed to beckon, “follow the star!”
The noise of the shooting star had woken Toovah. “Tor,” he said weakly, “Where are we, Tor?”
“I’m sorry, Toovah,” Tor said, quickly retying and tightening the hide bindings that he had used to strap the boy to his back. “The Great Ones have given me a sign. I asked for them to help you and they gave me a sign. Hold on tightly, try to go back to sleep. Save your strength, alright?”
Emerging from the pool, Tor placed one arm around to his lower back to give Toovah extra support and then leaned his body forward and burst into a sprint. His steps were nimble and sure and he knew exactly where to keep his footing, hopping so deftly off rocks and roots it was as if he were flying. Toovah, normally energetic and exuberant, was quiet. His eyes were heavy with exhaustion and sickness but he peered over Tor’s shoulder to see where they were going. Tor could feel the heat of the boy’s body and the clammy moisture of his wet, feverish skin against his back. He was getting worse. He hoped that bringing him out like this hadn’t weakened him.
They answered, he thought, the jungle whipping by around him. They actually answered. He heard a distant echoing shudder, like the fall of a gigantic tree hitting the earth, and he knew that it must’ve been the star meeting the ground. Whatever it was that the Great Ones had delivered to him, he felt certain that his pleas had been answered.
THREE
Kaylee Mentz was in serious trouble, and when she looked out the tiny viewport window of the escape pod that was licked with red flame and got a glimpse of the jungle far below, she knew she wasn’t going to be getting home any time soon.
Or ever.
Kaylee was lucky to be alive, but she wasn’t sure if this was fortune or just another check mark on the scorecard of terrible occurrences in her life as of late.
I’m going to crash, she thought. I’m going to crash and this is going to hurt like hell.
“Please maintain seat restraints,” the computer said in a calm tone that struck out against the chaos of the situation. The entire escape pod seemed to be rattling to pieces, of course she was going to maintain the damn seat restraints. “Brace for emergency landing. Inertial dampeners, engaging. Have a great day.”
Have a great day? Seriously? She gripped the ends of the armrests, her knuckles turning white. She couldn’t bring herself to look out the window, so she closed her eyes and prayed that it would be over soon. The pod jolted and there was a loud roar as the dampeners kicked in, doing their best to slow the rocketing hunk of metal’s descent to the planet’s surface.
There were dull pangs and thuds against the metal shell of the pod as it tore through the jungle canopy, all mixed up with the constant deafening roar of the dampeners and the rattling as it got rocked by the turbulence. Then, just before it happened, it seemed like everything went silent like time had stopped. Kaylee’s eyes flicked open.
Impact.
The pod hit the ground with a lurch, dirt spraying up over the viewport windows. The seat restraints tightened around her like the chair was trying to hug her to death, and for a moment it felt like its squeeze would be the thing to kill her and not the impact. The roaring now gave way to a terrible grinding noise as the pod crashed along the ground, smashing through trees and churning up the earth until it finally came to a stop. The restrains loosened. Kaylee wheezed and gasped for a breath.
She was okay. She had survived.
“Praise science,” she muttered after she had collected herself. Those restraints would definitely leave bruises, but she was surprised at how smooth it had been. Well, smooth for a crash landing at least. She wondered how badly it was going to hurt the next day.
Kaylee hit the release on the restraints and slowly climbed out of the chair, gripping the ends of the armrests for support. Her legs were rubber and she nearly fell onto the ground, but managed to collapse back into the chair. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll just take a second.”
The holographic display blinked to life, showing a readout of the pod’s statistics.
LANDING: COMPLETE
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY – 38%
LIFE SUPPORT: INACTIVE – VIABLE ATMOSPHERE
SYSTEM: PILDAR 4B
PLANET: UNKNOWN
UNABLE TO BROADCAST DISTRESS SIGNAL
The last line blinked red, and Kaylee stared with only vague acknowledgement. There was something wrong with the communicator. The computer had no clue what planet she was on. She was stuck here.
Had Kaylee been a scientist or a soldier or someone who knew what to do when these kinds of things happened she might’ve just shrugged it off and said, “No problem, all I need to do is fix the ________,” but she wasn’t, she was just a regular old girl trying to escape from Mister Wrong. S
he hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do in this situation.
She held fast onto the arms of the seat and pushed herself up. Her legs were working properly this time. She pulled the hatch release and it unsealed with a noisy hiss of escaping gas, and then swung open. Kaylee just stood there and stared, the open hatch framing the outside like a painting on an office wall – dark nighttime jungle against the white metal of the pod.
For having just crashed on an alien planet, Kaylee was remarkably calm. She realized this to herself and thought that maybe it just hadn’t all kicked in yet, and so she stood there staring at that foreign landscape outside and told herself over and over, “Alright Kaylee, you’ll be okay. You’ll find a way to figure this out. Don’t freak out, don’t freak out.”
She took a deep breath. She was still calm, but she could feel the panic just bubbling barely below the surface. She needed to keep herself together.
“First things first,” she said out loud. “I should make inventory. See what I have to work with.” The pod was tiny inside, with room only for the seat. Along the right wall panel was a compartment marked “SUPPLIES”, and so Kaylee pulled the latch to open it up. Inside she found a small box of first aid, a respirator, a small survival kit which contained a week’s worth of sustenance and other survival supplies. They could’ve included a gun, she thought grimly. The most she could find in the way of weaponry was a small energy knife. She put it in her pocket.
Kaylee poked her head out of the capsule and took a quick look around. The air was cool and hung with a slight humidity. Lights from the pod streamed out to illuminate the surrounding area, but the jungle was thick and so only a short distance was lit, the trees casting crisscrossing shadows over one another before the light fell off into blackness. She looked up above, and gaped. The night sky was filled with the brightest stars she had ever seen, and the huge glowing face of the yellow gas giant. She was in awe of it all – the incredible view of the heavens that was unimaginable back on Earth, and the fact that she was really on another planet.
An unknown planet, she noted.
She figured that there would still be a search party. That's what happened after shuttle accidents - a ship would come through hunting for distress beacons, searching the planets of the system where the accident occurred for survivors. She had a creeping thought at that moment, reminding her that the distress transmitter wasn’t working, but she pushed it away. She’d be fine. She’d be fine.
Since it was the middle of the night, Kaylee figured she would shelter in the safety of the pod until morning when there was light and she could do some looking around. She stepped outside, her foot sinking into the alien soil, the pungent smell of the alien jungle filling her senses. The nose of the pod was partially buried in the ground, trees smashed and charred at its front, but it wasn’t on fire or anything and seemed like she wasn’t in any danger of it exploding on her. She turned around to go back inside when she saw something out of the corner of her eye that made her freeze.
Oh, no, she thought, turning slowly.
Standing maybe some thirty feet off in the jungle was a man. No, he wasn’t a man, not a human one at least. He was an alien – his body humanoid and tall with rippling muscles. He had an angular face with dark hair and shimmering green eyes, his ears were long, pointed and canine-like, and he had a tail like a lion’s, long with a puff of fur or hair at its end. He was naked save for a crisscross of animal skin tied across his chest, a loincloth held by a cord of leather around his waist, and hide moccasins. In his right hand he held a long spear, and even from this distance Kaylee could see that the length of the shaft was intricately carved, its tip made of a shining, glass-like stone. He stared intently, his eyes shimmering reflectively in the perimeter lights of the escape pod.
Her heart started pounding, and her legs became rubbery again. She tried to think of something to say, but nothing came out. What could she say to an alien anyway? She slowly backed up to hatch of the pod.
The alien man stretched out his hand. “The Great Ones sent you,” he said, slowly.
Kaylee nearly stumbled over herself. “You speak English?” she said in disbelief. How could an alien on some unexplored planet be speaking English?
The alien cocked his head. “I don’t understand.”
“How do you…we’re speaking the same language.”
“Yes,” he said, with some urgency in his voice, as if question is there any other language?
The alien stepped forward. Kaylee was realizing just how tall he was in comparison with her. She stepped away from him, her back pressing up against the metal hull of the escape pod. The alien dropped to his knee and undid the tie of the hide that was crossed over his chest, and it was only then that Kaylee realized she had something strapped to his back. A child. A little alien child. He let him slide off his back and slowly laid him out on the ground before him. The little alien boy, with ears and a tail just like the man’s, was sweating profusely. His eyes were half open and glassy, staring blankly up into space. She could see immediately that he was very sick.
“Please,” the alien said, “help him.”
“What?” Kaylee stammered. “Help him? I just crashed here.” She pointed up at the sky. “The ship I was in. Do you know what that is? A ship? It, boom, exploded.” She made a gesture with her arms. “And I…crashed here.”
The alien looked at her, his expression serious and concerned only for the child. “The Great Ones sent you,” he said. “To save him. To save our people.”
“I…hold on,” she said, thinking of something. She went back into the pod and snatched up the first aid kit that lay on the floor and then went back outside. The child coughed and turned to glance weakly at her. She gritted her teeth. The poor thing looked like it was burning up from fever. Inside the first aid kit was a small handheld medi-scanner, along with an injector, a variety of liquid filled tubes, various packets of different pills, a laser tool, and bandages. She pulled out the medi-scanner and looked at the instructions that were written beneath it in the kit.
“Press rearmost button to activate. Okay…” She turned it over and pressed a red button, and the holo-screen blinked to life. “Select, ‘diagnosis’, wait till the light turns green, and then wave the scanner over the patient.” She did as it said, and when the light on the scanner turned green a thin blue laser emitted from the end. “Oh,” she said in surprise, and held it over the child.
The alien watched in awe as the scanner’s light glowed mystically in the night, sweeping up and down the child’s body like the gaze of a wandering eye. His mouth was hanging open, the blue glow from the scanner lighting up his face, and Kaylee noticed that he had two sharp wolf-like fangs. His tail swished around, and she couldn’t help but think he looked like a curious cat.
The scanner beeped, and the holo-screen scrolled out its analysis.
SPECIES: Unknown. General analysis indicates 98% probable compatibility with provided medications.
AGE: Unknown, adolescent.
GENDER: Male.
BLOOD TYPE: N/A.
DIAGNOSIS: Saicodian Influenza. [Non-contagious to humans. Please select for information on further immune species]
TREATMENT: [Select for more information]
“It’s just the flu,” she said. “Some weird alien version of it, but just the flu.” She tapped her finger on the holo-screen and the treatment instructions scrolled out. After reading the instructions she removed the injector and one of the small vials of liquid, which inserted into the bottom of the injector. Next she took the injector and plugged it into a socket in the side of the scanner, and then tapped the holo-screen. A progress bar filled, and the liquid inside the vial turned from clear to pink. The scanner chimed, and Kaylee then removed the pen-like injector, shut off the scanner and put it back into its place in the kit, and then pulled the cap off the end of the injector.
“I’m going to give him medicine now,” she told the alien man, who looked at her with wide eyes.
The little boy’s eyes had closed. His chest was rising and falling with labored breaths, and sweat was dripping down his forehead. She touched him and was shocked at how hot his body was. “He’s on fire,” she said quietly, hoping that it wasn't too late for the medicine to work. She pushed the injector up to his arm and then pressed the activator button in the side, and the little device hissed as the liquid drained out of the vial. She pulled it away, a little red mark on his arm where it had pricked him.
“That’s all I can do,” she said, putting the injector back into the kit and closing up the box. “He needs rest now. If it worked, you’ll know tomorrow, I think.”
Kaylee stood up, holding the first aid kit under one arm. The alien picked up the child, looking down at him with concerned eyes. “The Great Ones have sent her to save us, Toovah,” he whispered. “You’ll be fine now.” He put him on his back and wrapped the straps around his body to tie him on. “My name is Tor,” he said, “last remaining hunter of the Ulduuk. I’m thankful that the Great Ones chose to send such a beautiful woman to my side. Though I must admit, I am surprised by your appearance. You are not Ulduuk.”
Kaylee found herself blushing. She didn’t think anyone had called her beautiful before, besides her mother. “My name’s Kaylee. Kaylee Mentz, and no, I’m human,” she said. “Speaking of humans… Do you know where I can find any?” She assumed that because he spoke English he must have interaction with human colonists, or maybe miners. She had read that miners often came out to distant unknown planets to take advantage of an abundance of natural resources.
“Hyoomahn,” Tor repeated, blinking his large, green eyes. “There’s only Ulduuk.”
“You’ve never met anyone else that looked like me? That taught you how to speak English?”