Last Contact

by Samuel Best

“Ready? Here we go.”

  The outer airlock door swung open silently.

  There was a good reason Venus was the third-brightest object in Earth’s night sky, Jeff realized as he drifted from the airlock. Thick clouds completely covered its surface, brilliantly reflecting sunlight.

  Those clouds amplified the greenhouse effect on the surface, causing temperatures to rise upwards of eight-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It was the hottest planet in the solar system because of it, though Mercury was nearer to the Sun.

  Jeff had grown accustomed to looking down on Earth over the last few months while he worked on the new space station. As he stared at Venus, it was easy for him to envision Earth being swallowed by poisonous clouds of sulfuric acid in a similar manner, the surface eventually cooking beneath a thick blanket of atmosphere until all life was choked from existence.

  Had that happened here? he wondered. Is Earth another Venus waiting to happen?

  Jeff thumbed his control stick and his pack let out a spurt of nitrogen, pushing him away from the station. He drifted along the length of the thermal antimatter drive attached to the stern of the Seeker. Two-meter tall block letters on the hull proudly proclaimed DEEP BLACK.

  Jeff passed the engine wash housing at the end of the antimatter drive, and then he saw the alien.

  His breath briefly caught in his throat as suppressed memories flooded into his brain simultaneously.

  —running across the breaking, shifting frozen surface of Titan as the alien passed through one torus after another, growing and changing with each emergence—

  —saying goodbye to Tag and Noah inside the torus before trying to find his way back to Earth—

  —standing with Kate on the floating debris of an oceanic research station as the alien emerged from a giant torus in the water and disappeared into the sky—

  He shook his head to break the trance and thumbed his control stick.

  “Proceeding,” he said.

  Red light glowed within deep cracks of the alien’s exterior, dimly illuminating the pitted, igneous-like outer shell or skin. Its shape defied easy explanation. Its body was tube-like—roughly the length of a football stadium—perhaps eighty meters in diameter at its widest point, with a slight pinch in the middle. Each end tapered down to points that were sharper than they were blunted, but not precisely sharp. A pool of lava-like substance covered the end of the alien aimed toward Venus.

  The outer shell or skin seemed to have an almost faceted appearance anywhere it wasn’t scored by deep chasms, as if it were comprised of a million smaller flat surfaces. If pressed to put it into words, Jeff would say it looked like a stretched-out hour glass without as much squeeze in the middle, and with a half-rocky, half-faceted surface instead of a smooth one.

  He maintained a steady speed of approach. His wristpad relayed information to the visor readout in his helmet, which told him he would reach his desired distance in four minutes.

  “Jeff,” said Hideo over the comm channel. “Why did you ask about our children?”

  “I shouldn't have said that, Hideo. It was careless.”

  There was a pause, then: “I would like to know.”

  Jeff made a slight adjustment to his course and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

  “Are you aware of the details surrounding the first mission to Titan?”

  “Only what was declassified two years ago.”

  “That’s about a quarter of it,” Jeff told him. “We encountered a torus not long after parking in orbit. And also another ship. Before we arrived, the torus had swept over the other ship, killing everyone inside. It also killed our commander.”

  “Riley,” said Hideo.

  “Yes. And at the end of that mission, one of them got me, too.”

  There was a long silence before Jeff continued.

  “Two survivors from my crew made it safely to a ship and went home. But three of us on that mission returned to Earth with the help of a torus. Out of everyone who was killed by the torus, only Riley, myself, and a crew member from the other ship were sent back. We were the only ones without children.”

  Jeff slowed his rate of approach. The alien steadily grew before him, and now he could discern a slight pulsing sensation from the lava trails in its surface.

  “The tori are machines,” Jeff continued as he tapped on his wristpad. His pack spat nitrogen and he slowed to a stop. “They were designed to bring this alien back to life. As a side-effect of their programming, I believe they treated us like organisms that hadn’t fulfilled our ultimate purpose.”

  “Procreation,” said Hideo. “Everyone who had produced children never came back.”

  “In its machine reasoning, those people had ticked that evolutionary box,” Jeff replied. “The three of us who returned were brought back because we had unfinished business, is maybe the simplest way I can say it.” His eyes ran the length of the alien’s body as the clouds of Venus moved slowly in the background. “But it’s just a theory,” he mumbled.

  “I have two boys and one girl,” Hideo told him.

  Jeff smiled. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Hideo. I don’t think they kill us on purpose, at least not anymore. When we encountered the torus on Titan, it was collecting materials to build human drones for use on the surface. We can manipulate objects much easier, move around quicker...and we’re easy to replace. When it killed the crew of the other ship, and Commander Riley, it was gathering the pieces of a puzzle. Now that it has all of those pieces, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Another pause.

  “Thank you, Jeffrey. Are you ready to proceed?”

  “I’ll open up all my comm channels. Not sure what I can do beyond that.”

  “Okay. Sending the frequency in three...two...one.”

  A soft crackle of static played over the comm channel.

  “I don’t hear anything,” said Jeff.

  “The frequency is outside our audible range.”

  “Is it sending back the signal?”

  “Not yet.”

  Jeff let out a spurt of nitrogen from his pack and drifted closer. He was five kilometers away, and the alien appeared as large as a fifty-story skyscraper if he had been standing right under it.

  “I don’t remember it being this big,” he said. “I think it’s grown.”

  The red glow from the deep cracks in the surface of the alien dimmed until they went black.

  “Did you see that?!” Jeff asked.

  A metallic screech filled his helmet, and he screamed in pain, instinctively putting his gloved hands to the sides of his face shield. The screech faded and was replaced with a gentle, low-frequency thrummmmmmm.

  “That’s the signal,” said Hideo. “It’s talking back.”

  Jeff shook off the piercing echo of the metallic screech and tried to pop his ears.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Try talking to it.”

  Jeff cleared his throat, feeling more than a little ridiculous.

  “Hi,” he said stupidly. Then he addressed Hideo. “Can you record over that?”

  “Already done.”

  “I appreciate it. Okay, starting over.” He cleared his throat again. “This is Jeffrey Dolan. I would like to extend sincere greetings from Earth. That’s the blue-green one next door.”

  Erikson’s sleepy yet still disapproving voice came on the line. “Oh, well done, Mr. Dolan.”

  “It doesn’t know what we named the planets,” Jeff said in defense.

  “Move closer,” said Erikson.

  “No.”

  “Then this exercise is pointless.”

  “Give it time, Niels,” said Hideo.

  “Oh, so now you’re talking to me?”

  The red glow returned to the cracks in the alien’s skin. Instead of the slow, steady, heartbeat pulse from before, the light cascaded along its length, starting at the pool of red lava-like material at its “nose” and sweeping back to its “tail”. The sweep increased in speed, and seeme
d to Jeff to resemble a machine powering up to release a massive charge.

  “I think it’s time to—”

  His next words were cut off when the power in his suit died.

  “Hideo? Niels?”

  The comms were dead. He thumbed the control stick but got no response.

  A torus streaked into view from deep space and slammed to a stop next to the alien. The motion was so precise, so outside the realm of what should be physically possible, that it caused Jeff’s mind to freeze while he struggled to make sense of the image.

  A black membrane spread to cover the opening of the torus.

  Blue light glowed from the middle of the torus, spilling across the alien’s pitted exterior and tinting the clouds of Venus. A meteor identical to the one that hit Earth streaked out of the torus and punctured the planet’s thick atmosphere, trailing blue plasma in its wake. Even after the atmosphere closed in to cover the tunnel it bore through the clouds, the brilliant blue comet was still visible as it plunged toward the surface.

  The torus vanished as quickly as it had arrived, seeming to blink out of existence.

  Jeff floated helplessly next to the alien. He tapped on his wristpad, but the screen was blank.

  This is a real problem, he thought.

  How long could he survive without the pack pumping fresh oxygen into his suit? Five minutes? Maybe six?

  He had shaved off a minute of his travel time on the front end by stopping short of his destination, but that still left a little over six minutes of travel time to get back to the space station...assuming the power returned to his suit.

  Without functioning heat elements in his gloves, a slight cold sensation began to creep over his fingertips.

  Jeff tucked his knees up to his chest as best he could in an effort to spin around. It didn’t have the exact desired effect, but he turned slowly just the same.

  As he spun in slow motion, his gaze swept over the space station in the distance.

  The lights were still on. They were probably calling to him to see if he was alright.

  His spin turned him toward the alien. The red glow pulsed slowly from its open veins, and it remained unmoving.

  When Jeff saw the space station again, a suited figure was drifting his way, holding a spare power pack. The figure was still minutes away.

  Jeff blinked slowly as a wave of fatigue washed over him. His breathing became increasingly difficult, like trying to suck air through a wet cloth.

  He was in a gentle spin. His vision dimmed to black while he looked down on the sunlight bouncing off the clouds of Venus.

  By the time Hideo arrived, swapped the shorted-out pack for a fresh one, and switched on the circulation system, Jeff was unconscious.

  15

  RILEY

  The cabin lighting in the Odyssey had switched from emergency red back to surgery-room white, indicating that, at least for the time being, no more micrometeors were on an impact course with the ship.

  “Only the starboard-side impact ruptured the hull,” said Riley. “I can’t find the other two, and sensors are kicking back a single breach.”

  Commander Brighton didn’t seem to hear him. Her gloved fingers flew over the control console as she calculated an unplanned reverse burn more than a day ahead of schedule.

  “Why don’t we just drop the bomb and get out of the way?” Piper asked.

  “We can’t place it when the ship’s moving in the opposite direction,” Brighton replied. “We have to reverse course first and match trajectory. The only way to be sure the comet will hit the bomb is if we drop it as close as possible. Then we clear out.”

  There was a grunt over the intercom.

  “Miller?” asked Riley.

  “Could use a hand,” he replied, his voice strained.

  Riley quickly unbuckled and drifted past Piper, still in her chair. She looked up at him, worried, and he offered her a small smile.

  Miller was at the back corner of the crew cabin, straining to move a metal storage cube up the wall. Riley was about to ask him what he was doing when an empty juice sachet zipped past his helmet and vanished behind the container.

  “It’s a pinhole,” said Miller, then he laughed. “But I still can’t slide this stupid thing.”

  Riley floated over and grabbed the storage cube. Bracing his boots on the floor, he shoved upward. The metal cube scraped against the wall in protest as it slid millimeter by millimeter to cover the hole. As soon as it was sealed, the metal cube groaned from the stress and rapidly vibrated.

  “How long until we can stop?” Miller asked.

  “Six hours,” Riley told him.

  “Well, good thing this isn’t the only storage cube.”

  Miller drifted away from the wall, revealing his hand that had been behind the crate, hidden from Riley’s view.

  It was covered in glowing blue goop.

  “Hey now,” Riley said in surprise, slowly drifting back. “Whatcha got on yourself there, Sergeant?”

  Miller looked down at his hand. “Oh, yeah. This was all over the wall near the hole.” He wiped his glove across the chest of his spacesuit, smearing a bright streak of blue.

  “Don’t do that!” Riley ordered. “Don’t put it anywhere else.”

  A look of concern crept over Miller’s face as he looked at his gloved hand. “Why, what is it?”

  “We don’t know. Are there any backup spacesuits on this rig?”

  “Three.”

  “Can we risk getting out of our suits with that hole in the wall?”

  Miller looked at the metal storage cube covering the hull breach. “Smarter to wait…” he hesitantly admitted.

  “The suits are designed to keep stuff out,” Brighton’s voice came over the intercom. “We’ll keep you strapped into your chair until we fix the breach, Miller. Then we’ll swap out your suit.”

  “Copy,” he said.

  He almost patted Riley’s shoulder as he drifted past, then remembered the goop and shrugged.

  After he was gone, Riley used his wristpad to switch to the secure comm channel that only he and Brighton could access.

  “Commander?” he said.

  “I’m here.”

  “Any word from home about what that goop might be?”

  “Not a clue. But we don’t have a quarantine room and it’s all hands on deck.”

  “Understood. Out.”

  He switched back to the ship-wide comm channel.

  “Piper, report to the work lab.”

  “On my way.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Brighton.

  “All hands on deck, remember?” Riley replied.

  “Just tell me if you’re planning anything stupid.”

  “Who, me?”

  Riley drifted aft, into the galley and work lab. Piper arrived a few moments later.

  Her linguistics equipment was arranged in a neat cube behind the work table, secured to the wall with thick black straps.

  “What have you been working on recently?” asked Riley.

  “I’m coding an algorithm to scan for patterns in the data Colonel Brighton sent me. Patterns lead to character discovery, and that leads to an alphabet.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  She laughed, surprising him.

  “Sure,” she said. “‘Simple’.”

  “Do you have anything ready to go?”

  She drifted closer and grabbed the edge of the table. “Why?”

  “After that micrometeor shower, I don’t know if we’ll get another chance to test your equipment. If anything you have in your bag of tricks has a chance of working, I don’t think we should wait on it.”

  “I agree,” Commander Brighton chimed in.

  “Can the equipment interface with the ship systems?” asked Riley.

  “I modified it for that purpose before leaving Earth,” Piper answered, not without a hint of pride. She pointed at a workstation built into the wall next to her stack of equipment. “I can use that console right there
.”

  “Plug it in and send it out,” Riley said. “Let’s at least give it a shot before we’re smashed to smithereens.”

  Piper clapped her gloved hands together. “Good. I was starting to feel like a vestigial organ.”

  “Gotta flip around for the burn soon,” Brighton warned.

  “Five minute warning?” said Riley.

  “You got it.”

  Piper worked quickly, unhooking the black straps one at a time and securing her equipment to the work table. It all looked like different-sized boxes to Riley. Cables snaked out of each one, and Piper plugged them all into a long black panel that she kept strapped on top of the equipment pile. A thick red cable ran from that panel into the ship’s workstation.

  Piper called up an interface on the workstation screen that Riley had never seen before.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “You like it?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s my program. It runs the equipment from a graphical interface instead of me having to manually adjust each one.”

  Riley floated over the table, looking down at the varied boxes.

  “What do they do?”

  “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” she said brightly.

  “Right.”

  She pointed at the boxes in turn. “This one’s the brain, this one’s the brawn, and this one is my secret ingredient. I’ll give you a hint. It weighs a ton, powers the other two, and rhymes with ‘mattery’.”

  “Please don’t kill me over that,” said Riley.

  “Commander,” Piper said. “You might see a slight draw on your computational reserves.”

  “Already seeing it. How much will it drop?”

  Piper swiped through screens on her workstation and tapped an icon.

  “That’s all.”

  “Ship can handle it. Proceed.”

  “How long will the message take to get there?” Riley asked.

  “At this distance, not long.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It’s all mathematics. If there’s anything sentient inside that comet, it shouldn’t be hard to miss.”

  Riley chewed on that thought for a long moment. “And what if there’s nothing sentient inside?”

  She smiled again, only this time it wasn’t because she was happy.