Last Contact

by Samuel Best

  “Then I didn’t need to come along after all.”

  Riley spread out his arms, gesturing at the ship.

  “Yeah, but…adventure. Excitement. Right? How is that pointless?”

  Her eyes met his, and she gave him a genuine smile. “It’s not,” she admitted.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” said Brighton. “We have to burn.”

  Piper typed on her keyboard workstation, swiped away error messages from the screen, then pushed a large green thumbs-up icon.

  “Away she goes.”

  Riley waited.

  “So that’s it?” he asked. “Now what?”

  “Now we wait for an answer,” Piper replied.

  “Everyone back to the command cabin,” said Brighton. “Strap in for the burn.”

  Riley gestured for Piper to go first, and she mock-curtsied as best she could in her bulky spacesuit.

  Halfway through the crew cabin, Commander Brighton gasped in surprise over the intercom.

  “Riley!” she yelled.

  He pushed Piper’s boots from behind, launching her forward. Riley pulled on a handhold in the wall and flew into the command cabin. He hit his chair with an “Oomph!”

  “Look,” said Brighton, pointing to the cockpit window.

  A brilliant blue fireball swelled around where the comet had been moments before. At that distance it was no larger than a ping-pong ball. The explosion quickly collapsed on itself and vanished, leaving behind three distinct, glowing blue embers.

  “Is that it?” Piper asked as she strapped into her seat. “Did it blow up?”

  Riley forced his eyes from the window and called up the long-range visual scans on the control panel.

  He swallowed hard as he studied the incoming data.

  “No. It didn’t blow up. It split into three pieces. The system is telling me at least one of them is still headed for Earth.”

  “Relay the info back home,” said Brighton, swiping at her console. “They can give us a new trajectory if we need it. In the meantime, let’s get this ship turned around.”

  Piper drifted next to Riley and grabbed his shoulder for support as she looked at the three comets.

  “Mon Dieu…” she whispered.

  Riley glanced sideways at her. “Maybe it was something you said.”

  Commander Brighton tried to suppress a laugh and failed. Piper looked at her, mouth open in shock, then at Riley.

  “This is no joke!” she protested.

  Riley couldn’t help himself. He started laughing, too.

  Soon Piper was smiling, shaking her head and chuckling softly. She tried to wipe away a tear pooling at the corner of her eye but her hand bumped her face shield, which made her laugh even harder.

  “Miller, you want to get in on this?” said Riley.

  The sergeant had been silent the entire time.

  “Miller?”

  Riley floated over to the sergeant’s chair and looked in through the face shield. Miller was unconscious, his head cocked back at an odd angle in his helmet. Globs of dark blue liquid floated out of his open mouth.

  “Commander,” Riley said slowly. “We have another serious problem.”

  16

  KATE

  The rigid inflatable dome over the impact crater was opaque white, preventing satellites and news crews from constantly trying to catch a glimpse.

  Kate flashed her badge at the entrance to the clean room outside the dome and began the hasty process of donning a blue hazmat suit. The room was divided into two sections, with a clear wall between them. While Kate slipped into her hazmat suit and struggled with the seal, someone on the other side of the wall peeled theirs off. They dropped it down a chute which led to an underground collection bunker. Where it went from there, Kate didn’t know. Perhaps the used suits were put into sealed toxic waste barrels and buried elsewhere.

  The guard on duty buzzed her into the dome after she passed through the decontamination chamber.

  “Come on, come on,” Kate whispered, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  The situation inside the dome was remarkably calmer than the one on the outside. No one was rushing about like a chicken with its head cut off. In fact, she only saw three other people on the rim of the crater. One of them operated a pulley connected to a cable which disappeared into the crater. The other two were watching the other man pull the cable, chatting amongst themselves.

  Kate stepped carefully to the edge of the crater. She had to push down the bottom of her voluminous soft helmet to watch her own feet.

  A large plastic tunnel with transparent walls, wide enough for two people to walk abreast (if they could walk inside at all), descended into the crater. A string of lights attached to the roof of the tunnel illuminated the dark passage, along which ran a sectional ladder and a long ascension rope. At the bottom of the crater, one-hundred-and-fifty meters down, a brilliant blue light pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat.

  “Back again?” said the Colonel from behind.

  Kate was startled and her foot slipped over the edge. Brighton caught her arm and pulled her back.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said quickly, adjusting the helmet of his hazmat suit. “I thought you would have heard me coming.”

  “I guess I was daydreaming,” said Kate. She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. Then she shook her head to clear it and remembered why she was there.

  “Did you know about the signal?”

  “You told me about it last week.”

  “I mean, did Raj tell you what he found? The narrow beam? It’s a beacon for the larger comet.”

  Brighton peered over the edge of the hole.

  “That’s one working theory, yes.”

  “So you did know?”

  “Kate, we’re working on it.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked. “You know how to stop the signal?”

  “Something is in the works. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about it.”

  “Why not?!” she almost shouted.

  “Our work here must remain compartmentalized. Each team has a specific goal. There are a dozen reasons why, but I can’t tell you any of them. I carved out a lot of leeway for the people here on the ground, but my hands are still tied in many ways. Speaking of teams, how’s yours doing? Can I get you anything?”

  Kate sighed, reluctant to let it go.

  “We need more injectors,” she told him.

  He nodded. “I’ll have a fresh batch sent over. Any progress?”

  “We’ve exhausted our attempts to fortify native flora against the blue substance. If this stuff ever gets out, there’s no stopping it.”

  The Colonel turned to face the crater, frowning.

  “It’s the same story from every camp,” he said grimly. “I really hoped we’d find a way to neutralize it.”

  “Neesha says we should bury it. Maybe that would mute the signal.”

  The Colonel knelt down at the edge of the crater and scooped up a handful of grayish, crystalline powder. It slowly fell through his gloved fingers, glimmering in the light from the overhead halogen lamps.

  “This was all green,” he said, standing back up. “Lush farmland. It’s not the impact we have to worry about, Kate. It’s what this blue substance does to our soil once it’s here. That’s the real threat.”

  “It changes our soil,” said Kate. “It sucks out the oxygen and alters its structure.”

  “Which in turn affects our air,” Brighton added.

  “But why?” Kate asked. “I don’t see the point.”

  “I’m no scientist, but I would think the first part of moving to a new planet is changing the thermostat to a more comfortable temperature.”

  “The alien,” Kate said quietly. “I thought it was near Venus.”

  Brighton shrugged inside his blue hazmat suit. “Some people have a summer home.” After a pause, he said, “I’ll get you those injectors.”

  He walked away, leaving Kate alone, staring down into the dark
ness of the pit. The blue heart at the very bottom gently pulsed, and she found herself unable to look away.

  On the other side of the hole, one of the three men near the pulley shouted for help.

  The sleeve of his hazmat suit was caught in a clamp on the pulley line. From the look of it, he had been trying to free an empty sample bucket from the clamp and reached too far.

  The pulley line moved continuously on its track. The man’s tiptoes dragged across the ground as he slid toward the edge, screaming. Behind him, the other two men leaped forward, each grabbing a leg.

  They were also pulled toward the ledge. Soon, the man with his arm stuck in the clamp hung over the open pit. The other two men let go of his legs when they realized they would go over the side as well. They scrambled back as the man over the pit swung forward after they released him. His legs went up toward the roof of the dome, then came back down hard.

  His suit ripped away from the clamp and he fell.

  “He’ll hit the safety net,” Brighton said through clenched teeth, suddenly at Kate’s side once more. He pushed a comm button on the neck of his hazmat suit. “This is Colonel Brighton. We need medics and quarantine personnel to the dome, right now.”

  A ring of nylon mesh encircled the pit five meters down, sticking out from the edge at a ninety degree angle and stretching inward for two meters.

  The falling man hit the sloping edge of the hole just above the safety net and bounced right over it.

  “Oh no,” Kate whispered.

  The man howled as he tumbled into the darkness. He smacked against the plastic tunnel descending into the pit and scrabbled to hold on. His hazmat suit squeaked against the plastic as he slid lower.

  Then he slipped off the tunnel and fell into a puddle of blue substance.

  The goop had pooled in a small nook on the side of the tunnel. The man stood up, staring at the arms and hands of his suit, completely covered by the glowing blue substance.

  “Stay right there!” Brighton shouted down into the pit. “Someone’s coming to get you out!”

  The man looked up at the Colonel, but Kate could tell he wasn’t really listening. He was terrified. After a moment of uncertainty, the man jumped at the plastic tunnel.

  This time he caught a ridge where two sections had been sealed together. He clenched a fistful of the soft plastic on each side and pulled them apart, yelling as he strained.

  “He can’t rip that open, can he?” Kate asked.

  “It’s just plastic,” Brighton replied in a grim tone.

  A small hole opened in the seal. The man shoved his arms inside and widened the hole until he could slip inside. Holding the ascension rope which ran the length of the tunnel, he climbed quickly, his hands leaving smears of bright blue on everything he touched.

  A group of soldiers burst into the dome from the clean room. Brighton held up his fist, telling them to stop.

  “He’s coming up the tunnel,” he told them. “Who’s on tranqs?”

  “I am, sir,” said one of the soldiers, stepping forward and showing his tranquilizer gun.

  “Okay, Marsh. Good. Nobody else shoots unless I say so,” the Colonel ordered. “He is not to reach that clean room.”

  The two men who had been working on the pulley stumbled toward Kate, dumbfounded.

  “What’s his name?” she asked them.

  “Ed,” one of them replied.

  Kate peered into the pit. Ed was almost to the top of the plastic tunnel, a look of sheer panic in his eyes.

  “Ed!” she yelled. “Listen to me!”

  He stopped climbing and looked around until he found her.

  “We’ll get you out of that suit, but you have to be calm!”

  He shook his head and continued his climb. Grabbing the platform at the top of the hole, he hoisted himself up and quickly got to his feet.

  “Stay right there, Ed!” Kate shouted.

  The soldiers behind her advanced. Ed saw it, too, and ran around the opposite side of the crater, toward the clean room.

  “Marsh!” barked the Colonel.

  The tranquilizer gun puffed smoke twice. Two tranquilizer darts struck Ed in the chest. He stumbled forward, still trying to run, and fell facedown on the ground, an arm’s-length from the clean room door.

  “Get a containment unit in here, now!” Brighton ordered.

  “What will happen to him?” Kate asked.

  The Colonel sighed with exhaustion. “I hope we don’t have to find out.”

  17

  JEFF

  Jeff awoke shivering in a sleeping bag. Someone had stuffed him into it and zipped it up to his chin. He balled his hands into fists and slowly opened them. They felt like blocks of ice.

  Niels Erikson floated in a seated position next to him in the corridor, his legs crossed and his hands gently resting on his knees. His eyes were closed and he appeared, for once, almost serene.

  “Hideo brought you back,” he said without opening his eyes. He pulled off his wireframe glasses and wiped the lenses on the breast pocket of his green nursing scrubs. “You were almost dead.”

  “My suit power cut out.”

  Erikson nodded and opened his eyes. Despite the wild tufts of white hair sticking out behind each temple giving the doctor a manic appearance, Jeff could tell that something had changed.

  “The lights flickered in the station when the comet passed. If we had been closer, I have no doubt we would have lost power as well.”

  Jeff shifted in the sleeping bag and groaned in pain. Pins and needles jabbed his entire body as the numbness began to wear off.

  “You have a strong constitution,” Erikson commented. “Someone more fragile, like myself, probably would not have made it back alive…even with Hideo's intervention.”

  “Where is he?” Jeff asked.

  “Back in his isolation room.”

  Jeff gave up trying to get comfortable and relaxed, allowing his body to float loosely inside the sleeping bag. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the pain.

  “He still thinks you killed Sandra.”

  “He doesn’t want to think it,” Erikson replied, “but he thinks he has to.”

  “What about the comet?” Jeff asked.

  Erikson uncrossed his legs and grabbed a handhold along the corridor wall, then pulled himself slowly toward a laptop workstation near Jeff’s sleeping cubby.

  He adjusted his glasses and typed on the keyboard. “We don’t know much. The station doesn’t have the equipment for external sampling. We have video feeds, but I can’t analyze substance. There’s no way to see the comet’s core. Sandy would know more about it, but…”

  “It was the same as the one that hit Earth,” said Jeff.

  “And it might not be the last.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “As I said, we do have video feeds outside the station.”

  He unclipped the laptop from its workstation and spun it so Jeff could see the screen. It showed a black expanse of pinpoint white stars, and a single blue dot in the middle.

  “I take it that’s not Earth,” Jeff said.

  “No,” Erikson replied. “It most certainly isn’t.”

  “Bigger than the last one?”

  “Orders of magnitude bigger. Until several hours ago.”

  He tapped a button and the blue dot split into three distinct points of light.

  Jeff rubbed the stubble on his chin. “It broke apart? That’s a good thing, right?”

  “This is where it gets tricky,” said Erikson.

  He called up an image of the solar system on the screen. Wide arcs tracked the orbit of planets around the Sun. Erikson tapped a key and three blue dots labeled “X” popped up on the screen. Their trajectories were calculated to sideswipe the Sun by a mere hundred thousand miles before impacting Mercury, Earth, and Venus.

  “Is that simulation accurate?” Jeff asked.

  Erikson nodded. “Three planets. Three comets.”

  “Then I hav
e to send a message back to Earth!” said Jeff urgently.

  Erikson floated away from the workstation. “Oh, what’s the rush? Their comet is smaller now, anyway. But go ahead, if it makes you feel better. I would guess they already know.”

  He hummed softly to himself while he opened a sachet of orange juice and ducked into a sleeping cubby.

  Hideo floated past the window of the supply room at the end of the corridor. He appeared to be talking to himself.

  As Jeff pulled himself quickly down the corridor, toward the airlock, he wondered if isolation inside a small space station would turn anyone quirky like it had these two. In the past, astronauts had done longer tours closer to Earth, but they had more people inside the station and faster communication with home. Venus Lab was humanity’s first real experiment in distant space habitation. Jeff understood that it was bad enough being so far from Earth, but to lose long range communications as well certainly didn’t help the situation.

  He drifted into the airlock and closed the door behind him, then waited as the system cycled through its required integrity checks. A green light flicked on next to the door in the Seeker’s hull, and Jeff went inside the ship.

  The air inside the Seeker was cool and stale. He sealed the door behind him and strapped himself into the command chair, then powered up the systems. The control panel flickered like a faulty fluorescent light.

  Jeff frowned. He had never seen that before. Usually the control panel lit up instantly. He swiped away some routine notification boxes and called up the communications interface.

  There was one audio message waiting for him.

  Jeff tapped it, and a quiet static filled the cabin.

  “It’s me,” said Kate. “Your ship has been sending back routine check-in pings, so I know it's in one piece. I just wasn't sure about you. This is not an official message, by the way. This is an I-miss-you message. Brighton would probably frown at my personal use of resources, but one of the perks of running a private space company is being able to talk to whoever you want. You're so far away that it almost makes me wish there was a torus near you so we could communicate with each other instantly.”