Lethal Planet

by Rob May

  ‘Yes,’ Hewson said. ‘But seriously, Jason, the more you can do to help keep everyone’s morale up, the better. At least until Brandon and his team of boffins figure out a destination for us. You have the respect of the zelfs and the balaks—that’s why we made you captain.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Jason said. ‘But whoever wins the match tonight, nobody’s going to be very impressed by the party afterwards. We are going to have to seriously ration the food out.’

  They had arrived in the residential quarters. Jason walked up the Brandon’s door, but Hewson beat him to it and knocked.

  ‘How did you know I was going to see Bran?’ Jason asked.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Hewson said. The door opened and Brandon’s aunt, Rana, appeared.

  ‘Ah, here’s my date,’ she said. ‘Good afternoon, Lieutenant. I’m glad you’re here. My brain was about to explode from calculating galactic navigation. You need a map that’s turned inside out, and a clock that goes backwards.’

  ‘Bring her back as soon as the film finishes,’ Brandon shouted from within. ‘I reckon I’ve almost solved it.’

  Rana pulled the door shut behind her. ‘I don’t care if he’s solved the Theory of Everything. It can wait until the morning.’

  What film are you going to see?’ Jason asked.

  ‘They’re showing a matinee double bill of Alien and Aliens,’ Hewson said. ‘Go grab Doo, and we’ll double date.’

  Jason was tempted. ‘Next time,’ he said at last. ‘I need to catch up with Brandon.’

  Hewson clapped him on the shoulder and walked off with Rana. Jason pushed on the door and walked through.

  Brandon’s room was piled high with papers and books from the ship’s library. A big map of the galaxy was rolled out on the floor, covered with coloured marker-pen lines and squiggles. Brandon lay on a leather couch, his hands behind his head. A pen and notebook hovered in the air above him, and the pen was scribbling away.

  ‘What is this?’ Jason said. ‘Harry Potter?’

  Brandon let the pen and pad drop to his chest. ‘Oh, hi, Jason. What’s up?’

  Before waiting for an answer, Brandon leaped to his feet. ‘I think I’ve worked where we can go,’ he said. ‘Somewhere safe we can start a new colony and secure the future for the human race! For the human, zelf and balak races!’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Jason said. ‘But what about Kat?’

  Brandon blinked. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Exactly! You’ve been virtually ignoring her since we left Corroza. You’ve hardly left your room in two weeks.’

  ‘This is important, Jason.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Well so was fighting the Arch Predicant. And I did that with Doo by my side. You could let Kat be part of all this.’

  Brandon sighed. ‘She wouldn’t be interested in all this. We’re just too different, really. She said liked me cos I’m a geek, but I don’t think she realised the depths of my geekery.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Jason said. ‘So are you going to grow a pair and actually break up with her?’

  Brandon looked more scared than Jason had ever seen him. ‘I … I can’t,’ he stammered. ‘Can you do it for me?’

  ‘No!’ Jason said. ‘But I can make sure you’re more scared of me than you are of Kat.’ He had a grin on his face as he stomped forwards, but Brandon’s eyes widened with fright nevertheless.

  Jason stopped when he realised he was walking over the map and tearing it. He looked down to where his foot had ripped a hole in a cluster of space that looked familiar. Several of Brandon’s felt-tip lines and arrows were pointing to it.

  ‘Is that where we are going?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Brandon said. ‘It’s the only place we can go. The only place in the entire galaxy.’

  Jason couldn’t believe it. He slumped down on the couch. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘Not there. It will all kick off again if we go there. I’d rather just float about in space forever.’

  ‘But look,’ Brandon said, grabbing a page of calculations. ‘Remember what I said about travelling through the universe at close to light speed. The distances contract around the ship, and journeys seem shorter. If we engage the superluminal drive for as long as possible until the fuel runs out, we can cover five thousand light years—but for us on board, the distance will only seem a twentieth of that. It’s funny, ha ha—they call it a superluminal drive but it’s actually only pushing maybe ninety-five percent of the speed of light. True superluminal speeds are impossible, because duh—the laws of physics. It’s only the point of view of the travellers—us—that makes it seem superluminal: faster than the speed of light.’

  Jason’s brain was about to fold in on itself. He tried to concentrate on what Brandon had said about journeys being shorter. ‘So you’re saying that if we flog the superluminal drive for all it’s worth, we can cover five thousand light years in, what … one hundred minutes?’

  ‘One hundred years, actually,’ Brandon said. ‘In fact, once we got up to speed, we could travel for as far as we wanted. Fuel wouldn’t be an issue, since we can maintain a constant velocity in space. No friction, see?’

  Jason may as well have been having a conversation with a banana for all the sense Brandon was making. ‘One hundred years of flying through space? Why so long? It only took us a few minutes to get here in the first place. Well, I guess it will be our kids’ kids who we’re going to be sending into who knows what danger. I don’t like it, Bran.’

  But Brandon wouldn’t be discouraged. He was dancing around his map, pointing at the arrows and lines he had drawn. ‘No, don’t you see: it will take a hundred years because we will be taking the long way round. I can use the bionoids to put us in suspended animation the whole time, so it won’t even seem like a day has passed to us … but when we land, over five thousand years will have gone by.’

  Jason suddenly started to make sense of it all. ‘The thanamorphs will all be dead by then,’ he said, sitting up straight on the couch.

  ‘Right!’ Brandon said. ‘And not only that, but the planet will have had chance to recover from the devastation caused by the moon’s destruction. The atmosphere will be dust-free: plants and animals will have had a chance to return.’

  He flashed Jason a ridiculous cheesy grin. ‘We’re going back to Earth, Jase. We’re going home!’

  21—HOLES

  Jason dreamed: crazy, frightening vivid dreams that seemed to last forever. He was running through London while buildings exploded all around him. To escape the chaos, he ran to Hyde Park and dived into the Serpentine, but the lake was stuffed with floating skeletons that grabbed at his feet as he kicked. He tried to surface, but a vast alien saucer splashed down on the lake, blocking his escape. He kept swimming, and found a tunnel. The water was getting hotter and hotter, and he had to dodge currents of boiling lava that spewed forth from underground vents.

  When he eventually made it back to dry land, he found himself in a dark jungle. But a thick layer of dust covered every tree and leaf, and an oppressive silence smothered all life. Then he heard a low growl; something was moving through the trees: a large creature … a catron! But this one’s flesh had fallen away, revealing a metallic monster underneath, with jaws like knives that clack-clack-clacked as they gnashed away …

  Jason felt a hand take his. Doo was standing next to him. ‘It’s going to be alright,’ she said.

  The jungle blurred and faded around them. The thanacatron was padding closer to them, but as it did so it seems to be slowing down, like it was moving through water. Jason had that curious sensation of realising he was waking up, but being unable to move his head or arms.

  He panicked slightly, and felt a cold sweat break out all over his body. Then the dream faded, and with a twist of his body he rolled out of bed and onto the floor.

  The room was pitch black, but a glow from the corridor filtered through under the door. The LCD numerals on the bedside clock said it was 04:21 …

  … 14th September 2065.

  Jason fr
eaked out and ran to the light switch. Under the bright glow, he checked his reflection in the mirror. It was okay, he hadn’t aged fifty years. Brandon’s plan to put them all in a kind of hibernation for the duration of the journey must have worked.

  He looked back at the bed. Doo was sleeping peacefully, making cute grunting and gurgling sounds. The rolled up duvet she had put between them, to stop Jason groping her over the next ten decades, was still in place.

  He smiled at the memory of them all retiring to bed, and Brandon coming round with hot milk and cookies to tuck them all up.

  The smile froze on his face. He listened, and the smile gradually became a frown. They were supposed to all sleep for a hundred years. He had woken up too early!

  The panic started to return. Would he be able to get back into the deep sleep if he returned to bed now? Or was the spell broken? Was he now doomed to wander the ship on his own for fifty years until everyone else woke up? Until he really was sixty-five?!

  He took a few deep breaths and tried to think. Thinking wasn’t his best skill, though—he could have done with the help of some of his friends, but if he woke them up too, then he might be adding to everyone’s problems if they couldn’t find a way to get back to sleep again.

  He was snapped out of his thoughts by a nearby growl.

  Oh no! The catrons! I wasn’t dreaming! We should never have brought them aboard. Some species just don’t deserve to be saved from extinction, no matter how magnificent.

  He opened the door of his room and looked up and down the corridor. The service lights were on, casting a dim bluish glow, but there was nobody and nothing around.

  He heard the growl again, nearer this time. Then he realised …

  It was his stomach rumbling.

  ‘Well, that figures,’ he said to himself. ‘I haven’t eaten anything in half a century.’

  Jason put all of his worries behind him and concentrated on more immediate concerns: breaking his fast. He wandered down to the canteen, and discovered that it was occupied.

  Brandon and Kat were sitting at the end of one of the long Formica tables, eating cereal. Their heads were close in conversation. Kat looked up when Jason walked in. She wiped a tear out of her eye and put on a smile.

  ‘Hey, come and join us. We defrosted some milk.’

  Jason filled a bowl up with Lucky Charms. He would have preferred Frosties or Coco Pops, but the options were all American.

  ‘Good sleep?’ Brandon asked him.

  ‘Not bad,’ Jason said. ‘I could do with another few months lie in, though. I take it you woke us up. Everything alright?’

  ‘Um …’ Brandon began. ‘Well, no, to be honest.’

  ‘We broke up,’ Kat said, patting Brandon on the arm.

  ‘Good!’ Jason said. ‘Er, I mean, it’s good that you can both finally move on with your lives and everything. But … couldn’t all this wait until we got to back to Earth. I was enjoying hypersleep, or whatever you call it.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Brandon said darkly. ‘Something I haven’t told Kat yet. In fact, when you hear what it is, you’ll realise why we had to break up.’

  Jason felt a sudden surge of apprehension. ‘Well, come on, man. What is it?’

  Brandon looked awkward. ‘The plan,’ he said, ‘to get back to Earth; I didn’t tell you the whole of it.’

  Jason held up a hand. ‘You don’t need to tell us all the technical details. We trust you to science your way out this mess we’ve got ourselves in. We get the gist of it, right, Kat? We zoom round the galaxy for five thousand years, and by the time we get home it will all be bird, bees and daisies.’

  ‘Right!’ Kat said.

  Brandon screwed up his face. ‘That’s the problem. Five thousand years won’t be long enough. Forever won’t be long enough. When the thanamorphs spread throughout Earth, they infected every living organism … from the largest mammals and trees, to the smallest insects and bacteria …’

  ‘So what you’re saying,’ Kat said after a pause, ‘is that there’s no life left to mount a comeback.’

  Brandon nodded. ‘Earth is sterile … inert … bereft of life. There’s a pretty good chance that the only living things in the entire universe right now are on this ship.’

  They all sat in silence for a few moments. Jason stirred his Lucky Charms with his spoon. He had left them too long and they had gone soggy. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?’ he asked Brandon.

  Brandon shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to worry everyone. If things don’t work out, then it’s probably best if everyone just …’

  ‘Just never wakes up,’ Jason stated flatly. ‘Hell, Brandon, this is some hole we’re in.’

  ‘You’ve got a plan, though. Right, Bran?’ Kat said, ever the optimist.

  ‘Yes. I think so. It’s … well, it’s probably best if I just show you. Come on!’

  They abandoned breakfast and followed Brandon to the elevator. The ship was eerie and quiet—like walking around school at night in the middle of the holidays. They rode the lift in silence. Jason couldn’t even begin to imagine what Brandon’s plan could be, so he didn’t waste any breath trying to guess.

  The control room at the top of the Majestic was lit only by the endless starfield outside the giant triangular windows. Brandon led them to one of the windows, and they all stood looking out.

  Stars, stars and more stars. Each one represented a solar system and a cluster of planets, but even Jason knew that the chances of any one of them being habitable was infinitesimally small.

  The stars seemed to blur as he stared out at them. Jason rubbed his eyes; he was still feeling sleepy.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Kat said.

  ‘Is what what you think it is?’ Jason said, confused.

  ‘That depends,’ Brandon said to Kat, ‘on if what you think it is, is an Einstein-Rosen Bridge.’

  Jason could see it now: what he thought was a product of his sleep-befuddled brain was actually a rippling circle somewhere out in the blackness of space. Only the surrounding stars delineated its shape, softening and stretching slightly, as if they were being pulled into a—

  ‘Wormhole,’ Kat said. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s just the layman’s term for it,’ Brandon said. ‘The Einstein-Rosen Bridge is the, er 3D tube that connects two 2D locations in space. If this was a film we were in, I’d do the trick with the folded paper to demonstrate.’

  Jason gave his sister a perplexed look.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘Where you fold a sheet of paper in half and then jab a pen through it, to demonstrate the wormhole that joins two spots in space that are otherwise light years apart!’

  ‘She’s right,’ Brandon said. ‘Although it’s more like burning a hole through the paper with a blow torch. Wormholes are caused by massive surges of radiation—the deep space equivalent of forest fires.’

  ‘Alright,’ Jason said. ‘This is all very awe-inspiring and everything, but the question is: if I jumped down that wormtube, where would I end up?’

  ‘Earth,’ Brandon said.

  Jason almost fell over. ‘Earth?’

  ‘Earth, huh? Kat parroted. ‘Well, that’s … convenient.’

  ‘It’s not really that unlikely,’ Brandon explained. ‘There are countless wormholes opening up and closing naturally all over space. The starmap built into the superluminal drive has an exotic energy scanner that can detect them. I set it to wake me up when—’

  Jason slammed his palm hard against the window, cutting off Brandon mid-sentence.

  ‘Enough of the technobabble!’ Jason said. ‘It’s a beautiful wormhole, I’m sure, but what difference does it all make, anyway? If we wanted to go back to Earth, we could have just gone and flown there fifty years ago. And now it seems no matter when we go back, there’s going to be nothing for us when we get there except dust and bones.’

  ‘You’re not going back,’ Brandon said. ‘You’re going to go back to s
leep in a bit and carry on trekking through space for another fifty years … for another two-thousand-five-hundred years in real time.’

  He gave Jason and Kat an apologetic look. ‘I’m going through the wormhole. I’m going to go and get things ready for when you arrive …

  ‘I’m going to use the bionoids to terraform the Earth.’

  22—WORMS

  Brandon spread his arms out wide while Jason buckled up the straps on the oxygen tank of his IEVA spacesuit. Intra/extravehicular activity—Brandon wasn’t going to be taking any chances while entering the wormhole. The suit had to be able to withstand the unpredictable effects of exotic radiation—the kind of cosmic fairy dust that, in comic books, turned dweeby scientists into superheroes.

  ‘But in real life is more likely to mutate you, turn your body cells inside out, and then vaporise you,’ Brandon said as he pulled on his Spandex and Kevlar gloves.

  ‘This whole plan of yours is just crazy,’ Jason said. ‘Never mind jumping into wormholes, what about all the plot holes?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Brandon laughed.

  ‘I mean, are you sure this is only option? It all seems a bit dramatic. What about just flying the Majestic to Earth, dropping you off, then the rest of us continue our round trip of the galaxy afterwards?’

  ‘Not enough fuel to fire up the superluminal drive more than once,’ Brandon shrugged, as if this was patently obvious.

  ‘Alright then,’ Jason said, ‘so why don’t we all go to Earth and just wait there in orbit while you’re fixing up the planet?’

  ‘Because then you’ll be waiting almost three thousand years, rather than fifty. I’m confident I can put you back to sleep for another fifty years before I leave, but I don’t know if I’d be able to do it for three thousand. I don’t know if I’ll be around that long for a start.’

  There was an awkward silence. ‘I’m going to try to terraform the Earth—seed new life with the bionoids, and try and accelerate its growth—and I’m going to try and keep myself alive by sustaining myself with the bionoids, too. Maybe after I’ve kick-started the regeneration I can build a little hut and sleep the years away myself until you guys arrive. Or maybe by the time you get there, I’ll be—’