“I guess,” said Amelia.
“I don’t think so. What’s wrong?”
Amelia continued looking outward. “I think I saw something.”
Claire looked outward now, took a step down the ramp. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Just… shadows, something moving…” she shrugged. “It’s gone now.”
Claire moved down beside her sister. “This place getting to you?”
“Maybe.” Amelia shrugged again. “Probably.”
Claire grew thoughtful. “How many more trips?”
“Three. Maybe four. Mostly cryo-juice canisters and the supplies in the cabinets.”
“How ‘bout I help you with that? Maybe shave off a trip. I can swap out the plates after.”
“Sure,” Amelia looked to Claire. “Let’s do that.”
§
The next two trips were uneventful. Amelia twice thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, but each time she turned, the shadow quickly vanished and there was only the stillness. Claire had seen nothing and had begun to believe that this world was in fact getting to her little sister.
On this third and final trip, Claire came into the main compartment from the hold carrying a container. Amelia was emptying the cabinets, tossing the few odds and ends she found into a plastic bin.
“This is it from the hold,” said Claire. She set the container on the table.
“And from here.” Amelia carried the bin over and set it next Claire’s container. “A few medical supplies, some galley stuff.”
“A nice haul, wouldn’t you say?” asked Claire. Looking around the room, the pod seemed strangely quiet. “Danny done good.”
“He certainly knew just what we could use.” Amelia sat at one of the chairs, then she too took a last look around the room. “It feels like we’re forgetting something.”
“We picked the place clean. You transferred the logs?”
“Danny’s message was all there was. Still, I uploaded everything, in case he hid something in there somewhere.”
“That would be Danny, all right.”
The quiet of the pod pushed in on them. Amelia’s expression grew solemn. At the time Danny had recorded the message, he had aged decades. He had spent a lot of time out of cryo.
And now… how old was their brother? And why had he said nothing of their uncle? Of their parents?
Amelia slid off the chair and stood before the systems control panel. It took a few moments to shut the environment down, then all systems. With that done, she picked up one of the containers and nodded in the direction of the hatch. Claire picked up the second container and led the way.
They made sure the hatch was closed and latched before starting across to the shuttle a final time. They had taken what supplies there were, but the pod itself could serve as an emergency shelter should anyone stumble across it and have need of it.
The world outside was as eerily quiet and still as the pod. As they worked their way toward the rock formation in the middle of the hollow, the late-afternoon sky began to grow steadily darker, a tint of brownish gray. As the moments passed and the darkness increased, it felt as though the sky overhead was pushing down on them. It was as a shell over the world.
“A storm’s coming,” said Claire.
“Not a good thing.”
And then they began to hear something. It started as a dull, hissing sound, hardly above a whisper. And they could feel something brushing on their faces; a breeze. With it, the sound became a gritty, scratching noise.
“Look,” said Amelia. She stopped. She was looking across the hollow to their right.
It was a little whirlwind, a spinning funnel of sand twelve feet high crawling slowly across the hollow like a tiny tornado.
“A dust devil,” said Claire. “Is that what you saw before?”
“I don’t know,” said Amelia. “I mean, if it was, they vanished as soon as I turned to look at them.”
Even as they watched, another one formed a few dozen yards from the first. Moments later, there was another.
It was getting busy in the hollow.
“C’mon.” Claire started forward again, sounding a bit anxious. She had no idea what these dust devils might portend, and she didn’t really care to find out.
They made their way around the rock formation, picked up the pace as they hurried across to the shuttle. Claire opened the hatch and went inside. Amelia stopped at the opening and turned to look back the way they had come.
There were dust devils creeping about all over the hollow, twisting and writhing, sand drawn up and forming the slithering funnels. One dust devil would wither away just as two others formed.
The gray sky overhead continued to grow darker.
§
Claire returned to the airlock with a pair of satellite panels just as Amelia closed the outer hatch.
“You need to open that back up, Sis,” she said. “I gotta get these plates installed.”
“We should leave now,” said Amelia.
“Give me five minutes. Ten tops,” said Claire. “I’d rather not do this EVA.”
Amelia stared coolly at her sister. She knew that replacing those plates would take at least twenty, probably longer. Still… doing it now would be easier, and EVAs had inherent risks.
She opened the hatch and left the airlock.
She had to open a narrow panel to expose foot holds in order to get atop the craft and work her way aft. Both of the damaged plates were near the rear of the shuttle. She wore her face mask, but could feel the bite of blowing sand on her exposed cheeks. Dropping to one knee, she quickly removed the first damaged plate using the tool attached to her utility belt.
Only after completing the first installation did she stand and take a look around her. From atop the shuttle, it looked as though the dozen or more dust devils were dancing around the rock formation in the center of the hollow, weaving their way in and around the massive stones. Across the way, the pod was now barely visible.
Claire worked her way quickly over to the second satellite plate. This one took a little longer. The wind was continuing to pick up, the blowing sand made the detail work more difficult.
Back to ground on the sand, she closed the footholds panel and worked her way back to the hatch. One last look out across the hollow… the dust devils seemed almost alive.
Returning inside, she found Amelia sitting at the computer station in the main compartment. She was listening to Danny’s message, probably for the fifth time.
“Gleaning anything new?” she asked.
Amelia reached over and turned off the message. She leaned back and stared at the now blank monitor.
“How old d’you figure he was there, Claire? Fifty? Older?”
“Fifty is about right,” said Claire softly. “He’s spent some time in cryo.”
“Some.” Amelia spoke without turning from the monitor. “And since then? Since he recorded that?”
“I hope so. I like to think so.”
Amelia nodded slowly. Everyone they had known was probably long dead. She desperately hoped Danny had gone into cryo after posting the message and sending the pod on its way.
“I guess we ought to get out of here.” She hadn’t yet brought herself back to the here-and-now, but knew that she needed to.
“Yep.” Claire waited for her sister to stand, to make a move toward the cockpit.
“Yeah,” sighed Amelia. It took her another few moments to come completely out of her reverie. More determined then, she slid back in her chair and stood up. “Yes. Yes. Get your butt into the driver’s seat and get us off this planet.”
Once in the cockpit, Claire buckled herself into the pilot’s chair, Amelia the co-pilot. Claire had already entered the take-off sequence into the nav system, so it was simply a matter of bringing it online.
Amelia brought the internal systems up. “Good to go when you are,” she said.
Claire said nothing, continued swiping displays and pressing ke
ypads.
Amelia leaned back, kept an eye on the monitors while looking out the forward viewport. The air in the hollow was growing heavy with grit; the wind was growing stronger and increasingly erratic. A dust devil appeared to walk past the front of the shuttle.
She tried to ignore the quickly building storm. “Old Earth,” she said calmly. “I always wanted to go there. Always planned on it, one day.”
“You would,” said Claire. “Old books and dusty history.”
Amelia smiled thinly. “Much more than that, Claire. Forests and oceans, mountains and rivers and snow and sun.”
They both knew that Old Earth’s environment had mostly recovered from a manmade climate disaster. They had pulled back from the brink soon enough that over time they had been able to bring the planet back.
The planet of humanity’s birth, buried now deep within this Labyrinth Sphere that Danny had described.
“Okay, Sis… next stop, palm trees and quiet lagoons,” said Claire. She completed processing the liftoff sequence, swiped the panel and initiated the procedure.
Amelia felt herself pushed into her seat as the shuttle lifted from the surface. The scene outside, rock formation and shallow hollow, fell quickly away, and the world suddenly spread out for miles in all directions. The gray sky overhead crept down to the distant horizon in a great curving shell. Massive, rolling clouds of brown were sweeping across the landscape in enormous sandstorms.
Claire felt the landing struts retracting. She watched the indicator light, waiting for it to signal the gear successfully locking and the doors closing.
“Landing struts retracted,” she stated then, and continued to monitor their ascent trajectory. “On path, on course.”
Amelia noted that the highest of the storms was now below them. The horizon was far off and falling away as they continued to climb upward. Above them, the gray was quickly growing to dark. As the backdrop grew increasingly black, stars began to appear.
Just as Amelia began to feel weightless and her safety harness pulling at her, the shuttle’s gravity plating engaged. A few moments later, Claire calmly stated that they were in orbit. She was already initiating the sequence to take them out of orbit.
“Twelve minutes to departure,” she said. Claire had entered the navigation calculations to take them from Planet X to a safe position outside the Sol system light years distant. This had been timed to the orbit departure sequence and would initiate immediately after they left orbit.
“Twelve minutes,” repeated Amelia. She began checking all internal systems, verifying they were good to go. If anything was seriously wrong, better to stay in orbit and resolve it here, or, if absolutely necessary, return to the planet’s surface.
The interior of the cabin suddenly grew bright, it took several seconds for the viewport glass to auto-dim.
The shuttle’s orbit had brought them around the planet, its sun born now on the horizon, the bright rays were streaking across the globe, the star aglow against the black of space.
Claire finished her preparations, sat back and took in the scene. It was soothing, serene. It always affected her this way.
Amelia finished her di-ogs half a minute later.
“All green,” she said. She glanced over at Claire when there was no reply. She looked then out the forward viewport. Despite the slight scouring the glass had taken on the planet, it was indeed a beautiful sight. “We’re good to go.”
Claire managed a quick check of her panels.
“Two minutes,” she said, rested her head against the seatback.
“Ready in two,” said Amelia distractedly.
One last sunrise before the long journey to Old Earth.
Episode Six
“Labyrinth”
Occasional faint beeps and tweets were the only sounds that broke the blanket silence in the shuttle’s cockpit. There was no sound of human activity, there was no muffled rumble of engines; nothing but the quiet existence of the shuttle’s computer system going about its solitary business.
The only illumination came from tiny indicator lights on the front panel set below the forward viewport and those in the console between the two empty seats; that and what little light managed to reach into the cockpit through the narrow opening leading down to the main cabin.
The main compartment was lit only by the soft glow of the panels set beneath the pair of sleeper canisters that were recessed into the port wall, set behind clear plastic panels. Claire lay in the upper canister, her sister Amelia in the lower. They were dressed in their beige coveralls, the monitoring and bio tubes attached to the synthetic sleeves and at the waist. They lay comfortably asleep on thick cryo-support sleeper pads.
In the cockpit, several alert lights flashed. A series of soft beeping sounds broke the silence and a small, square panel that had lain dormant for years began to glow. Back in the main cabin, the overhead lighting turned on, set to low and providing minimal illumination. The panel below the sleeper canisters came to life and changes were made to the fluids that fed the occupants through the bio tubes. Adjustments to cabin life support were made in preparation of the passengers’ awakening.
§
Each canister’s clear wall panel slid aside. A few moments later, Claire and Amelia opened their eyes. They lay unmoving, blinking, staring uncertainly above them. Amelia finally rolled onto her side and sat up, brought her bare feet down onto the floor. She took in several long breaths as she looked about the main compartment, absently detached the support tubes from her coveralls. She looked side-glance at a pair of feet that appeared suddenly beside her, attached to legs dangling from the upper bed.
“Why do those feet have to be the first thing I see every time I come out of cryo?” asked Amelia.
“One of life’s little quirks, little sister.” Claire looked about the cabin, then up at the alert light. It wasn’t flashing. Good sign; so this was likely the scheduled awakening, then. This was their third since leaving Planet X. Only once had they been awakened due to an issue the ship couldn’t resolve on its own.
Claire slid down from the upper cryo-bed, steadied herself as she leaned on the panel. “I feel older,” she growled. She looked down at her sister. “Do I look older?”
“You are so not a morning person,” said Amelia, a jibe usually directed to her. She leaned forward and stood up. Giving herself a moment to gain her balance, she shuffled over to the water dispenser. “One of us should see where we are.”
If this was in fact the scheduled wake-up call, they should be several weeks outside the Solar System, still well outside the Labyrinth Sphere that was protecting Old Earth.
“Yeah, you go do that,” said Claire, not yet ready to push off from the cryo-beds.
“I’m thirsty,” said Amelia, filling a cup with water. “And I gotta pee.”
That was of course totally not true. The cryo-system took care of all that, so there was no way she needed to take care of business immediately coming out of cryo. Yet this was always Amelia’s first item of business upon waking. Claire had long ago given up arguing with her about it. It wasn’t worth it. Amelia had it in her head and it didn’t really matter.
“Fine. I’ll see you up front,” said Claire. She headed for the cockpit as Amelia went aft.
The view beyond the cockpit was a splash of stars, Old Earth’s sun being just one more at this distance. There was nothing out there to indicate the Labyrinth Sphere.
Claire first brought up the nav systems. The monitor came alive, detailing current location, course and other data. Nothing scary there; she brought up sensors next.
Amelia came in and sat in the seat opposite as Claire began reviewing the data. “So?” she asked.
“Right on course,” said Claire. “Exactly where we’re supposed to be; give or take.”
“Give or take?” Amelia smiled. She began activating internal sensors.
“A light year here or there.”
“Right…” A light year here or there could have been dan
gerous.
“Twelve days from the coordinates Danny gave us.”
“So, right where we’re supposed to be,” said Amelia.
“I think I just said that.”
They had planned to come out of cryo twelve days from Danny’s coordinates, giving themselves a significant buffer when approaching the labyrinth. They certainly didn’t want to hit the labyrinth while still in cryo.
Amelia leaned back and looked up from her monitors. If she didn’t know to look for it, she would have been hard-pressed to point out which of those stars was Old Earth’s sun.
She brought her attention back to the monitors. This latest period in cryo had lasted fourteen and a half years. The few systems issues that had arisen during that time had been easily resolved by the shuttle’s primary system.
This was a good ship.
“Internal systems all look good.”
“External systems good; navigation good,” said Claire. “We’re good.”
“I like it,” said Amelia.
Claire swung around in her seat. “Let’s go have lunch.”
§
They had been out of cryo for three and a half days, and all had been quiet. Amelia set her cup on the counter and settled again at the computer station in the main cabin. She spent most of her time in the main cabin.
“Oh boy,” she mumbled. She moved back from the station and looked forward. “Oh, sister…”
“Yeah?” came faintly from the cockpit.
“Message coming in.” Amelia stood and headed for the cockpit. Dropping into the copilot’s seat, she transferred the communications station forward and brought it up. “Both audio and text.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Claire.
Amelia tapped at the keypad. An unfamiliar voice came through the speaker, the words dry and emotionless.
“You have been targeted. If you do not have prior authorization, do not approach. Turn back now. This is the only warning you will receive. If you do not have prior authorization, you will be destroyed. There will be no further communication.”
Amelia pressed the key a second time. “That’s all there be. A recorded message, triggered by our approach.”
Sisters in Space: The Complete Series Page 9