Andromeda Expedition

by Carlos Arroyo González

  He threw the stinger, but the creature dodged it with a twist. With the same momentum of its agile movement, it charged the ship again. This time the impact was stronger, and through the visor, Isaac saw some small fragment detach from the spacecraft and fall to the bottom in slow spirals. For an instant the creature seemed shocked by the impact. Isaac took the opportunity to launch the stinger once again, which this time stuck in the neck of its target. After a few moments in which the creature debated shaking itself, it finally stopped.

  “I'll get it on board,” Isaac shifted in his seat, and grabbed some controls that looked like the antennae of an ant. He immediately began maneuvering articulated limbs that caught the creature and pulled it closer to the spacecraft.

  Fox couldn't help but, like someone scratching an itch knowing it will hurt but still does it, put on the scope and focus on the depths of the ocean.

  He found a blackness so thick he turned away from the viewfinder as if it were burning him.

  The surface was a starry vault, colossal and unreachable.

  Fiodr Capablanca, The Emerald Sea

  Isaac stared at the screen of the central panel. Numbers and graphs reflected in his eyes.

  “There seems to be a problem,” he said. Fox swiveled his chair around and leaned over to look at what Isaac was pointing out. “A small leak in the fuel line. We should seal it up as soon as possible.”

  “It doesn't look serious,” Fox said, not having the slightest idea what those graphs meant.

  “Captain, you know that's not wise,” said Dr. Edelmann. He made that gesture in which he pursed his lips and his beard rose. “It is precisely for these situations that Mr. Norton has brought you here. I think you should be the one to come down.”

  “Listen,” Isaac said, “I'll protect you from here, nothing will happen. This thing, as you've seen, has more than one secret card.”

  Fox tried to imagine if it had a secret weapon to stop a creature the size of Madagascar. The truth was, he rather doubted it. He ran his hand over his forehead, looking at Edelmann, who was examining him with his lips pressed into that thin crack that turned his beard into a single clump of curly hair. He felt like finishing the job he had started on the beach. And for a moment he was sure he would. He would start by sinking his fist into that ball of hair. He tried to imagine what it would feel like. It would all start with a tingle in his knuckles.

  “Let's do this as soon as possible,” he said.

  Isaac turned around in his chair and put on his headphones. Fox stood still for a few moments, trying to digest it all. But of course there was nothing to digest. It was part of his job. He had to go down to make the repair under the Titan's hull, diving over the blackness of the ocean. “The muscle of the crew,” Viper had said. “There's always contingencies, you know, little things you'll have to take care of.”

  As he opened the hatch to the watertight compartment, the immense depth that glimmered beneath the dark water took his breath away. He still couldn't believe he was going to jump in there.

  “Go ahead, Stockton,” Isaac said over the intercom. A metallic, inhuman voice.

  Fox jumped.

  The bubbles from the respirator rose and latched under the Titan's abdomen like beads on an abacus. Then they trickled down its curvature until they ascended to the surface. Fox envied each of those bubbles reaching for the light, escaping that terrifying darkness that could harbor anything. As he tried to concentrate on finding the location of the malfunction, he couldn't help but feel the certainty of the miles of unknowing that loomed below.

  “I'm going to leave you in the water,” Edelmann's voice over the intercom. In a whisper.

  Fox froze.

  “What?” he said. His voice, a thin thread that ascended like those bubbles coming out of the respirator.

  “Right in front of you, Captain,” Isaac said. “It must be right there.”

  Fox looked, and sure enough he saw a thin thread of almost invisible bubbles crawling up the hull like a very thin worm.

  “I got it.”

  He moved over and brought the blowtorch closer. The duct lit up with a bluish glow.

  Out of the corner of his eye, it seemed to him that a huge shadow was moving down there. When he looked, all he found was the unchanging, endless blackness of the ocean.

  He increased the power of the blowtorch to the maximum.

  “Come on, come on.”

  There was a distant noise, like a waterfall in the distance or an approaching storm. And that sound grew louder and louder, like a typhoon behind the window.

  The conduit finished welding. Fox dived as fast as he could, skirting the hull of the spacecraft. With only a few feet left to reach the hatch, the zipper of one of his boots caught on a protrusion of the Titan's hull.

  The thunder increased in intensity. And with it, Fox's heart rate. He tugged on the leg, but it was still caught. He folded in on himself and unhooked the buckle with his fingers. With two strong strokes he reached the trap door, stepped through and closed it behind him.

  He ran with long strides toward the cockpit.

  “Did you see that? It must have shown up on the radar.”

  “What?” Isaac said, taking off his headset. Dr. Edelmann watched with astonished eyes as Fox had entered the cockpit without taking off his suit, which was dripping like a wrung-out washcloth.

  “You haven't heard anything?”

  Edelmann made his everlasting gesture: lips pressed together, beard raised. He pulled the notebook out of his pocket. Fox slapped his hand and the notebook and pen flew into the corner of the cockpit.

  Edelmann sighed and shook his head.

  “You see, captain. I have many years of experience. I've known patients of all kinds. All kinds of disorders, some of them the strangest. But I must admit that I'm finding your case most interesting. Even exciting. From an academic point of view, of course.”

  Dr. Edelmann picked up his notebook and released the torrent of thoughts and suspicions he had accumulated over the past few seconds. The pen scratched the paper like a mollusk scratching the inside of its shell.

  “The leak seems to have been solved,” Isaac said, looking at the graphs. Like the buttons, they seemed somewhat decorative to Fox, unchanged from the last time he looked at them, as if they were backlit static images.

  “Really? Wow, I didn't notice that. Especially while I was down there welding the damn leak with a bug the size of an island moving under my feet.”

  “I need you to calm down,” said Dr. Edelmann. “I'll take whatever action is necessary for the good of the mission. As you have already seen.”

  It was clear to Fox then. It was him. He had put on a few pounds and grown a beard, but it was definitely Bruce, who had somehow managed to escape death and return from that shallow pit, and now he was there with him, on a dark nightmarish ocean twenty million light years from Earth to torment him. Hadn't he deliberately taken that strange alien mollusk and left it unattended in his bedroom, knowing full well what was inside it? And yet he had come to its aid when he heard the screams, as if he took more pleasure in a slow torture than in an abrupt end that would stop the fun.

  “I'm here, don't forget,” Dr. Edelmann said, squeezing Fox's hand firmly. “Everything will be all right.”

  That night the luminous creatures returned. Their glow flickered on the ceiling. Fox tried to imagine some figurative scene. A pinkish oblong light, changing size in rhythm with the undulations of the surface, zigzagged from one side of the ceiling to the other, and when it reached one end, it made its way back, as if it knew the dimensions of the cubicle. He imagined that it was looking for an emerald light gleaming on the wall, two feet below the ceiling. But the pink light couldn't find it, and never could, because it wasn't looking in the right place. A darkness broke through from one end, and advanced inexorably across the ceiling, extinguishing all the lights in its path, painting the ceiling black. The pinkish light seemed to speed up in its search, as if it knew its time
was running out.

  Finally the little light was also absorbed by that brutal blackness.

  It was a lovely little dance. He danced until his little feet ached. When the fairies disappeared, he understood that it was nightfall and that he had no idea how to get home.

  Martin S. Puncel, The Fairy Forest

  Dr. Edelmann was bent over the body of the creature they had fished out of the ocean. He had stretched it out along the laboratory table, and was currently examining the neck with the aid of a magnifying glass and a scalpel. Brahms' Symphony No. 4 was playing in the background. The fan was shaking the doctor's beard.

  “Do you see anything interesting?” Isaac said entering the room, sipping a soda.

  “Well... let's just say that everything about this creature is designed to kill. Check this out.”

  Isaac approached from a safe distance. Fox watched from the door. Edelmann picked up a piece of cracker and dropped it inside the creature's throat. And it turned out that this was a tube full of barbs or teeth that seemed to have a life of its own, since even once the animal was dead, rings around the tube contracted rhythmically to crush the cracker as it descended into the creature.

  Fox imagined himself diving into the darkness of the Great Ocean and encountering one of those blind nightmares. And then he couldn't help but imagine something similar but the size of Koi City.

  “This will do,” said Edelmann, pulling away the animal's musculature and exposing a bone about forty inches long.

  He took a saw and removed the bone. Then he washed it with a product that made it as white as the marble table on which the animal was lying.

  “What do you want that for?” Isaac said.

  “Now you'll see.”

  Then he sawed off the ends of the bone and made seven holes: six on one side and one on the back. He looked through to make sure the air was going all the way through. He put it to his mouth and began to play.

  “Wow, doesn't sound bad at all, huh?” Stood up and went out into the hallway. “To the common room! Isaac, don't forget a glass of wine!”

  Like a pied piper, Dr. Edelmann was playing a happy melody from that improvised piccolo, moving to the beat as he advanced down the hallway, leading Isaac behind him, who was holding the bottle with both hands, as if at any moment it could escape from that wreck.

  In the common room, Isaac filled three glasses until they overflowed, and then with a teaspoon he tapped the bottle to the beat of the melody as he danced around the table like an Indian around the great fire, while his frayed bathrobe fluttered around him. Through the window, the black sky of Erebus loomed over the darkness of the ocean.

  Fox had come to watch the scene, more out of masochistic curiosity than real interest.

  “Come on, Fox,” said Edelmann, pulling the flute away from his lips, “Not in the mood?”

  At that moment Fox thought he would do it again. At that moment, if he had the chance, he would stick the cheap steel knife in his neck again.

  But the truth was that he was in the mood for wine. So he drank half of his glass and began to move to the rhythm of the melody. He tried to pour all his sarcasm into that dance, with his eyes locked on Edelmann's. Despite the luminous signals of pain that his leg sent him every time he leaned on it, he tried to convey in those movements all the raw violence he would like to unleash on his face. He swayed his hips and arms, letting himself be carried away by that cheerful tune, as he watched Edelmann mentally flooding the pages of his notebook.

  A mechanical centipede traversing the dark ocean, whose only propelling force seemed to be that joyful and demented melody.

  They went hunting. They were hungry.

  Martin S. Puncel, The Fairy Forest

  On the Titan at all times they could hear the creaking and rattling of its parts always on the verge of giving up, but somehow always faithful to its passengers. There, in the middle of that gigantic extraterrestrial ocean, every creak of that chaotic structure was chilling. Walking through the central corridor (which did not follow a precise straight line, but at the end was slightly curved to the right, as when writing the space available has been miscalculated and the last letters end up squeezed in the margin, or twisted downwards to finish the sentence), Fox had seen a couple of fixes that he preferred not to look at again, and in defense of his sanity, let his unconscious pile them up where it keeps the dreams whose memory it considers useless. These fixes consisted of a couple of bitten rather than cut slats, which seemed to support the entire structure of the central arch of the corridor, like the arms of a puny Atlas. Despite having inhabited the Titan for more than three days, he still took every step in fear that the whole structural aberration would collapse.

  He had come to imagine the Titan as a materialization of Isaac's mind: a jumble of pieces arranged in chaotic perfection.

  What he saw through the cockpit viewfinder stunned him.

  “Land,” he said.

  “That's not an island,” Isaac said.

  The white, undulating, harmonic shapes of the luminarian ship were merged with the vegetation and the remains of algae and parasites attached to its structure of an unknown, pearly metal, forming a unique geological conglomerate that seemed to have a biome of its own. It had even grown a deep purple vegetation that they had not seen on the dry continent. Only a hole in its structure denoted the attack suffered millions of years ago. A gigantic opening in one side, which seemed to watch them like an enormous eye trying to judge if they were worthy of being received. Through this hole, lots of strange flying creatures flew in and out. It was an opening more than a mile long and one thousand feet wide. Harmoniously linked ovoid shapes were the general tone of the spacecraft's design. At the bottom of the gaps resulting from their interlacing were green-tinted windows, and behind them, command panels, observatories, and guard posts. The only counterpart to those voluptuousnesses was the tip of the vehicle, a spur that Fox had at first assumed to be a rocky protuberance. Numerous creatures like those flying through the hole pecked at the slime that had accumulated on the deck over the centuries.

  They stopped gently at one of the spacecraft's edges and put on their suits. They disembarked on one of the wings, covered almost entirely with a layer of dead mollusks, algae, and a sediment of something that looked like parched excrement. The wing was the size of a soccer stadium. Conifer-like trees grew clinging to the thicker layers of the humus that had been building up for decades. A small animal in a shape reminiscent of a kettledrum with little hairs and ribbons dangling over the edges looked at them with what Fox guessed were eyes: little black buttons that circled its entire perimeter. When Fox stumbled over a rock, the creature scurried away and slipped through a hole in one of the thrusters. They advanced cautiously as the place was very slippery in many areas.

  “I think it would be best if we went straight through the hole,” Fox said.

  They climbed up some vines on the side of the central body of the spacecraft. Fox was amazed that they were stepping on that place that had been there for millions of years. For a few moments he managed to forget the heat and humidity. Even his burden seemed less heavy. When they reached the top, the spacecraft was almost indistinguishable from an island. An island of purple vegetation, dotted with bioluminescent bugs that crisscrossed their flights among the plants, emitting chirps very similar to those of cicadas. Isaac and Fox advanced on the soft but firm mud. A gentle wind whipped their suits and splashed water on their visors. At one point the vegetation became so thick that it obscured Pharex's light. In that haven of coolness Fox felt a great relief.

  They peered over the edge of the hole. Down there was moss-covered machinery, crumbling walls of corridors and rooms, low trees protruding from the ruins. The ground was about forty feet away.

  “These guys knew how to build spacecrafts,” Fox said.

  They hooked the ropes to some ledges of the spacecraft's structure and swung down into the void. As they descended, Fox looked around, appreciating the beauty of the p
lace. Technology millions of years old, far superior to anything he had ever seen in his life, covered in alien nature. He tried to take as many mental pictures as possible. Intertwined with those impenetrable technology gadgets were more clusters of that purple vegetation they had seen from the Titan. When they reached the bottom they unhooked the ropes. It was much darker down there, barely reaching the light from Pharex. They turned on their helmet flashlights. It seemed to Fox that there was something unnatural about the silence.

  They entered one of the corridors that remained open. Isaac, at the front, walked with one eye on the sensor and the other on the ground covered with silt and roots. Under the vegetation they could see white walls covered with chaotic maps of something similar to silver and gold circuits. From time to time they found a small leakage of water falling from the top, watering the floor of the corridor. There was the constant echo of the rumble of hundreds of jets falling on the hallway floor or scurrying through the vegetation and circuits (which may have been just ornaments, after all) on the walls. Every few feet there were doors on both sides through which soberly furnished rooms could be glimpsed. Some had been so overgrown with vegetation that it was impossible to make out anything. The high ceiling was lined with elegantly arranged tubes, which may have once provided a pleasant light in those passages, but were now full of leaves and insects.

  They passed through several intersections. They came to a ramp that descended into complete darkness. A dull rumbling sound came from there, like a hoarse breathing accompanied by a clacking sound.

  They pointed their flashlights. The ceiling down there seemed much lower. It was all covered with much denser vegetation. They descended the ramp, their feet clattering in the gaps the vegetation had left on the titanium. When they reached the bottom, the water was up to their ankles. Isaac's face was enveloped in the violet halo cast by the sensor. The halo was also reflected in the still water, and it moved with them, like a sentinel ghost. The clacking grew louder. It echoed in the narrow hallway with a wet echo. Fox drew his gun.