Thus the Starfly Vanish

by Brian S. Wheeler

  “Are we approaching the starfly homeworld?” Wilson asked.

  Ray fidgeted in the small chair she claimed before the chamber’s projector dais. “Are we about to fire the big guns before riding the assault pods down into the battle?”

  Naomi stared at Wilson and Ray. Those movies filled their brains as much as they filled their eyes.

  Naomi took a breath. “What kind of ship do you think this is?”

  Wilson answered. “I’m supposing we’re surrounded by all the armor of one of the first-line, orbital gunships.”

  “Why would you think that?” Naomi asked.

  Ray jumped to respond. “Because Wilson and myself excelled in ordinance trajectories back at the academy. We figured we’d be among the first to fire the big guns once the fleet traced the source of the starfly swarm.”

  Naomi doubted it would do much good to explain to either Wilson or Ray that they would very likely never so much as look upon an alien, no matter how many lightyears they covered floating through folded space. She doubted the effort would be worth valuable oxygen.

  “Our ship is only a small scoutstar,” Naomi spoke.

  “Very good then,” none of Wilson’s enthusiasm diminished. “We’re likely quietly skimming the atmosphere of the starfly’s planet as we speak, with our sensors naming the first targets for our coming fleet.”

  “Ensign Wilson, I’m sure we’re no where near the starfly home,” and Naomi rolled her eyes.

  “Then why have we dropped out of folded space? Why have we been woken from our dreams?” inquired Ray.

  Naomi nodded towards the strange, glowing craft cast by the intelligence chamber’s projector. “The computer pulled me out of the snooze fridge after its sensors traced the shape of this thing floating in all the nothing.”

  “Is it a starfly ship?” Wilson pressed.

  “That’s a good question, but I’m afraid I know the answer to it no better than you.”

  A troubled look creased Wilson’s features. “Are you saying that you don’t know what a starfly spaceship looks like?”

  “Regardless what the movies might show, I caught hardly a peek of the starfly. I certainly never saw the shape of any starship hovering above the crystal the starfly weaved through the sky. You might know as much if you invested as much time into the archives as you gave to the movies.”

  “Then why bother to spend the energy needed to pull this ship out of folded travel?” Ray asked.

  Naomi turned her gray eyes onto Ray. “Because that ship’s a mystery, and mystery’s all we got to go on if we’re going to find a clue as to how to find any starfly base. More than even that, maybe the computer’s pulled us out of folded space because it thinks it’ a miracle that we’ve come across anything out here at all.”

  Naomi saw the disappointment coursing through her crew. They must’ve been heartbroken in their crisp, clean uniforms. She doubted Star Point shared the actual odds facing humanity in the search for the starfly. She doubted that Star Point told Wilson and Ray that they would very likely spend their lifetimes dreaming in cold sleeping pods while they floated to find an elusive, starfly trail.

  “Listen closely so I don’t have to spend any more breath than is necessary,” Naomi’s gray eyes dropped another degree colder. “Given the amount of time we might have to spend floating in these tight quarters before we get a sniff of the enemy, words are going to get real valuable for the amount of oxygen spent to shape them. So pay attention like you never did back at Star Point. We’re going to board that alien spaceship, and I’m going to tell you how we’re going to do it.”

  Naomi closely watched Wilson and Ray as she unfolded her designs to access what might, or might not, an alien starship of starfly construction. She explained why they needed to keep their wits if they hoped to spend no more oxygen then they could carry upon their backs. She told them what weapons and tools to prepare for the boarding, and she warned them to keep their exosuits pulled tight, so that some alien snag within that strange ship didn’t tear a seam and allow space’s deadly vacuum to compromise their survival. Neither Wilson nor Ray flinched when Naomi promised them that many, many things other than alien monsters might kill them when they attempted to enter that egg-shaped thing the holograph projector floated above the intelligence chamber’s dais.

  Wilson and Ray grinned at every stage of Naomi’s plan, no matter the dangers Naomi pledged to them, and those smiles made Naomi feel very afraid.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3 – A Realized Anchor

  Though they took to the stars to conquer, that species that humanity called the starfly had for much of their ancient civilization lived as artists.

  They were a race that held creation above destruction. They cherished the lines of a form and the curves of a shape. They found spirit in the carving of block. They forever built new temples so that they never fell into the dogma of a single one. For most of their history, they were creatures whose hearts desired the dance without ever craving the fight.

  And yet the history of their kind concluded at a moment when those beings with the turquois and indigo wings lifted into the stars with the intention of raiding another civilization’s world.

  Many ages before their exodus from their native world, a starfly steadied its wings to admire the skyline shaped by incredible crystal.

  “It’s lovely, Frequency Ang. It’s more beautiful than anything I imagined could be formed by the crystal.”

  The starfly employed no words to communicate with one another. They winked when the plane of their existence stabilized long enough to share company. Their wings would pulse and glow, new wavelengths would be exchanged, and thus the starfly would share their thoughts with whatever friends existed in the brief moments given them before their bodies would shift and twinkle them upon another strand of existence in the great, wrinkled knot that was creation.

  “I’m honored that you believe so, Frequency El. It would’ve been impossible to build such a skyline before you learned how to fashion such crystal. Your crystal is little heavier than our wings, and yet it stands strong enough to resist shifting in and out of the phase.”

  “Your work teaches me the potential of the crystal.”

  Frequency El shimmered as it watched Frequency Ang’s wings pulsate and blur as the phase already tugged at the friend’s wings. Frequency Ang’s long tendrils, emanating from a slender core located in the center of the thin wings, swayed in and out of vision. Frequency El wondered what other beautiful things had been shaped by Frequency Ang’s delicate tendrils. It was so difficult to remain in any single phase for more than a few moments. Frequency El wondered how Frequency Ang managed to navigate the phases in order to return to his skyline of crystal, wondered how Frequency Ang found the means of navigation to return to that strand of existence where he had set the first piece of the whole.

  “How did you achieve it? How did you return so often to this phase?”

  Frequency Ang’s wings chimed. “I’ve no more magic than any other of our kind. The shift pulls me wherever it must, but the crystal occupies all such phases. I find the crystal wherever I go, and so I can add to its form whenever and however I might. And it’s a delight to see how others of our kind contribute to the skyline.”

  Frequency El’s wings beat rapidly while resisting another tug onto another plane. It was so difficult to share a place long enough with any other starfly to experience much intimacy. Thus the starfly had always striven to shape something capable of surviving in a single reality, so that others might have the chance to admire what might be shaped by another’s mind.

  “That’s incredible,” Frequency El’s wavelength brightened.

  Frequency Ang’s illumination matched that of its friend’s. “Your crystal is rooted. Your crystal will bind us together as nothing else has.”

  “How long will it stand?”

  Frequency Ang’s wings beat. “None of the crystal has vanished yet.”

  Frequency El’s wings blurred
as the phase continued to pull at him. Its sight blurred as it resisted the calling. Frequency El fought against the energies that ruled his kind so that he might share the sight of that skyline with Frequency Ang for a bit longer. Such splendor best sparkled when shared.

  Golden spires rose like slender horns from their world’s flat horizon, shimmering in the sparkle of indigo and turquoise lights that winked to admire the shape of those many towers. The spires were built from that honeycomb of molecules that made Frequency El honored among the starfly, of that wonderful, light substance that refused the calling of the phase and instead stood rooted across a near infinity of planes. The skyline would serve as a kind of monument for the starfly, whose natures knew so little of permanence. The stubborn phases continued to pull at the spires, but the crystal constructs transformed such influence into a song of chimes, of notes that pushed the admiring starfly into the most intense of glow. The great skyline of crystal horns would provide a location that would never drift. The starfly would know a place to gather, an anchored home where vision might be shared. The starfly would finally know a marker that would remind them that they were parts of a greater whole, no matter how the phase tugged their bodies into loneliness.

  The phase gripped Frequency El and pulled him onto another strand of the knotted cosmos, and a sudden, discordant sound stumbled out what were otherwise the pleasant chimes of the crystalline skyline.

  “What was that sound?”

  But Frequency Ang was gone before the question might be answered. Frequency El blinked and found itself upon another phase. Its friend was gone, but that skyline remained. And that filled Frequency El with a hope he never knew, though his thoughts seemed to ache from that strange note of discord that washed through Frequency El’s tendrils the moment its wings accepted the summons of the phase.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 4 – A Gallery in the Stars

  The egg-shaped hull of that strange craft eventually fell to the brilliant, blue flame of Naomi’s cutting torch. She knew the instant she set her flame to that ship that somehow, against all odds, her scoutstar had located a starfly vessel. Her cutting torch told her in a moment that the same substance of crystal the starfly employed to choke the Earth composed the contours of that strange shape found floating in the abyss.

  “Wilson, you better wiggle into your exosuit and float on over here.”

  Ray’s voice snapped in Naomi’s inner ear. “You need me as well?”

  “Stay where you are. Someone’s going to have to take the ‘Retribution’ home should something dreadful happen to the two of us.”

  “Is that a starfly craft?” Ray asked.

  “It is.”

  “How do you know?” Wilson’s voice entered Naomi’s ear.

  “I know.”

  Naomi continued slicing with the torch while she waited for Wilson to float across the expanse of vacuum lurking between her ship and the strange, starfly egg. She hoped Star Point took no shortcuts in Wilson’s training, for the briefest excursion beyond any spaceship into the void brimmed with danger. Naomi forced herself to think optimistically. Wilson could grip the tubing that supplied her atmospheric, work-bubble with the proper gas mixture required to feed her cutting torch. Such a cable would, surely, prevent fear from swamping Wilson’s mind. Star Point, surely, wouldn’t have launched Wilson into space without enough training to make that short float between from the scoutstar to the strange, egg-like form found drifting in space.

  She focused on the task of slicing into the starfly hull. She would’ve preferred if Ray had pumped a little more oxygen into her work-bubble, for her torch seemed often to choke and sputter for breath, and the starfly crystal required a very hot flame. But she understood Ray’s caution. Naomi might’ve exploded the instant she ignited her torch had Ray pumped too much oxygen into the confined bubble. Naomi would have to operate the torch slowly, and she would have to hope that no living starfly remained within to ambush her while she burned into their craft.

  A trill of panic warbled Wilson’s voice into Naomi’s ear. “Captain Parks? I can’t see you. Where are you, Captain Parks?”

  “Don’t let go of the cable, Wilson. The work bubble hides me from you. Just grip the cable. Let it guide you the rest of the way over.”

  Naomi looked back towards the “Retribution” to check Wilson’s progress. Wilson perched midway between the human and starfly ships, where the stars felt most daunting, dizzying and dangerous. Naomi’s curiosity urged her to hurry into the darkness within the starfly craft. Inwardly, she snarled at Wilson for forcing her to pause to talk him onward, for forcing her to take the time to shore up his courage, when Naomi’s curiosity told her that it would be wiser for her to enter that egg before Wilson arrived, when Naomi’s curiosity told her that a seasoned veteran like herself could surely handle whatever danger waited within. Yet Naomi’s discipline still knew better, and it recognized how vital Wilson’s company would be the moment she drifted into the alien craft. So she gripped the sides of that egg’s hull long enough for Wilson to finally float through the membrane of her work bubble before pushing herself into the starfly vessel.

  Though the sensitive instruments sewn into her exosuit perceived no trace of any internal environment seeping out from the alien craft, Naomi quickly realized the starfly vessel wasn’t empty. Strange lights winked at her from within the craft’s inner dark, pulsating in colors of red, pearl, gold and green. A light that appeared in one second disappeared in the next, replaced by another odd glow that disorientated Naomi as her legs and arms vainly reached for a perch from which she could launch herself towards a sudden, new lantern. She found nothing for her grip, and she strained to control her breath, and her fear, as she uncontrollably floated through that vessel’s interior space.

  “Captain? Can you hear me? Is anything wrong? Your suit’s readings show your heart’s racing.”

  “I’m fine,” Naomi took a breath after barking a return. “I’m only drifting through the craft. The inside seems filled with twinkling stars, as if I’m drifting through another, smaller galaxy. I have to wait until I float against something that will allow me to change my momentum. Are you listening, Wilson?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Perch on the edge of that hole I sliced into the hull, and don’t pull yourself inside. Having you tumbling aimlessly through the space like I am isn’t going to be of any help.”

  “Are there any starflies?” Wilson whispered in Naomi’s ear.

  “They haven’t decided to show themselves. I don’t think there would be anything I could do if they did.”

  “What do you see?” Ray asked.

  “Hang on. I’m going to see if I can find out.”

  Naomi watched the blinking lights in an attempt to discern some kind of pattern to their flashing. She feared she’d spent too much time dreaming in the cold sleeping pods, for her sense of timing was dulled, and she struggled to gauge how many seconds, or minutes, may have passed while a light blinked before vanishing to be replaced by another.

  She could see the lantern of Wilson’s helmet on the craft’s far side. “Watch my lantern, Wilson. You might need to guide me back to that hole, and I need your lantern to provide a fixed position while I try to push closer to one of these blinking lights.”

  “What if you float into a starfly?”

  “Then you’re going to have to float back to the ‘Retribution’ on your own.”

  She stared at the lights until she anticipated where a new light might shine, and then kicked herself away from the wall. She aimed well, and her arms embraced a pulsating object glowing in silver light as her momentum floated her passed. It was a finely shaped form, with sweeping and graceful lines that reminded Naomi of the vases she watched glassblowers shape on autumn afternoons accompanying her parents to village apple festivals. She held the vase closer to her helmet and discerned strands of pearl and white orbiting like clouds within the glass. She drew a breath as its light intensified and bathed her b
efore vanishing in an instant to leave her gloved hands again empty.

  Ray’s voice raced through Naomi’s ear. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I captured a dozen images from your helmet camera. The thing was incredible.”

  “Hold on, Ray. Let me find another wall. I’m going for more.”

  She failed to float close to anything on several more tries before managing to grab a flowering shape that burned in crimson and orange light that made Naomi imagine a snowflake of fire. She dared a handful more floats through the open, inner space of the starfly vessel, clasping a blue teardrop filled with golden molts that danced to an unheard song. Everything she gripped pulsed in her hand for only a moment before vanishing into nothing, immediately supplanted by a new light that tempted Naomi’s consideration. Naomi thought every object she touched was beautiful. She thought them nothing like the tools, or weapons, carried aboard the “Retribution,” nothing like the things created by her human kind. Naomi was surprised when a she felt a small bit of shame squeeze upon her heart.