Monstrosity

by Laura Diaz De Arce

  “I'm seeing a thicker deposit, looks like harder rock vein at those levels,” Etta said over the com.

  “That's impossible,” Pierce replied.

  Etta rolled her eyes, “I'm just telling you what I see. There's thicker material down here. Looks like strands of compact sheeting.”

  “And I'm telling you that the bot that surveyed this moon found no hard veining, it's the reason it was pushed up on the mining catalog. Easy access to materials and all that.”

  “I'm just telling you what I see.”

  “OK. Just program it to bring up samples,” Pierce said.

  “Already on it,” Etta had to work to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “Listen, it's going to take like an hour at least for these samples to come up -”

  “Do you want to come back?” Pierce interrupted.

  “No.” Etta shuddered at the thought of having him unwrap her only to have him wrap her back up an hour later. “I'm going to do some surveying, see if I find anything interesting.”

  “The previous team already did layouts of everything.”

  “Might not be a waste. I've got two hours, forty-three minutes in the air pack. I'm muting to concentrate and not break the suit,” she said and did just that before Pierce could respond. Etta looked at the counter and saw that it would be approximately an hour and a quarter before it had to be checked. Standing up, she looked at the landscape, drenched in the eerie, reflected light. Lost in that landscape, wanting more senses in on the moment, she drew in a deep breath…only to realize halfway through that it was just recycled oxygen from her suit. It was instinctual, the type of breath someone might make when they first got on holiday at the seaside. But there were no breaths to be had without the helmet. There was no air to smell.

  She pondered what the air might have smelt like, had the moon any sort of atmosphere. The color obviously begged for a hint of lavender. If the company had selected this moon for a tourist destination, she imagined that the tele-ads would reference the “Lavender Sky and Amethyst Sands.” But then, something reminded her of the plumeria plant her mother kept alive back home. The delicate smell of it, the very “purpleness” of it spoke to her. Like when she had been just a child screaming and running in the garden, looking at the flowers; pointing to the sky.

  Etta picked a direction to explore. The rock formations just to her left and about sixty meters off seemed interesting. Feeling the rhythm that pulsed beneath her, she danced her way to them. She hummed in along with the tune, her high voice matching the melody of the moon's low, quiet octave. Approaching a large mass, she tilted her head back. It reminded her of dried, dark calcified coral left on the beach, portions sculpted smooth by the endless movement of the tide, while other regions retained their pitted features.

  These were not like the formations of her home planet, which had been birthed by volcanic activity and eroded into existence. These were the remains of an asteroid shower that had bombarded the moons and the planets here a millennium ago. Once upon a time, they used to call objects like that shooting stars, but these were like bullets or arrows, embedding themselves into the flesh of this moon, projectiles that had flown through space only to explosively become lodged on a little forgotten rock.

  When Etta stepped away from the cluster of meteors, she noted that it resembled a hand. At very least, the five “rocks” looked like five fingers stretching, reaching out from beneath the ground. She took a photo with the lab-cam. She may as well have some memento from this assignment. At the click of the image she felt a quake. Nothing dangerous, just a quiver from beneath, as if the moon was settling itself.

  Etta got her bearings and moved slightly to her left. At this angle it looked as if the hand formation was reaching for the silvered sister moon. She took another photo and the moon quivered with more intensity. She fell and felt the deep rumbling. It was foreboding, but also seductive. She remained prone there until it finally stopped a moment later.

  She checked her suit and its stats: The urgency red light on the com was blinking and she turned it on.

  “Etta! Etta! Do you read? Are you there?” Pierce was panicked. A dead crewman could be a career end.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Suit is fine, pack is fine. I’m heading to check on the drill and the samples.”

  “Forget it. Come back to base. I’ll send Heath out later to collect the samples.” Pierce’s voice was more urgent than she’d ever heard. “You have to get Rebecca to look you over, it’s textbook regulation. Suit censor registered an impact.”

  From when I fell, but she omitted that tidbit. The last thing she wanted was to be docked from walks until an injury profile was done. She only glanced at the drill on her way back, it seemed fine. When she turned around for one last look at the formation, she could have sworn that the five clustered “fingers” seemed to have somehow bent at their “joints” to resemble a hand even more.

  * * *

  “Look at the light.” Rebecca had already measured anything there was to measure, and was still doing tests. Blood profiles, temperature, heart rate, bladder and stool samples. Etta was growing impatient with it, but she could also tell that Rebecca was being thorough as a distraction. The entire crew was quite literally trembling from the quake when she came back.

  “Stick out your tongue again.” Rebecca put the tongue depressor on Etta’s tongue and looked back at her notes. She’d done everything twice at this point and Etta was tired of being poked and prodded. “What’s the prognosis Doc?” Etta said in a forced jovial voice.

  “Oh,” Rebecca said, seeming to snap out of her stupor. “You’re fine but I want you on rest for one cycle just to be safe. And your temperature is a little low. Not enough to merit any meds, but I want you to wear this ring thermometer for the day. It’ll send me your updated temps wirelessly to keep track. Don’t take it off, not even when you shower.”

  Etta fingered the plain silver band that encircled her middle finger. For what looked like plain metal it felt oddly warm. She left the exam room and headed toward the kitchens and dining area. Taking a sweetened fruit drink cocktail from the snack stores, she spotted Karen bent over some tablets at the open kitchen table. Etta peered over her shoulder at the various equations and formulas, then sat down next to her.

  Karen just nodded in acknowledgment of her new company. After a few moments and calculations, she finally addressed Etta. “You’re awfully calm there E.T., even though you were out there.”

  “I guess I wasn’t near anything that was shaking or falling off walls to get scared by.”

  “Or maybe that isn’t the only thing to be afraid of,” Karen said under her breath. Realizing Etta had probably heard it, she turned to her with wide eyes.

  Etta answered her with a quizzical look. Karen shook her head at the tablets in front of her. “It's just... it doesn’t make sense. None of these stats match to the projections and calculations the first team did. I haven’t seen unpredictability like this since I did predator migrations in my internship, and those things were alive! I just...”

  Etta put a hand on Karen’s shoulder. It was a tentative gesture, and for all their familiarity, one that felt forced. The buzzing of the station seemed too still while Etta pondered what had changed, how this woman whom she had been attracted to seemed like a stranger to her suddenly. “I’m sorry it’s frustrating. What do you think it could be?”

  “I… I don’t know. I mean, this isn’t normal. These tremors aren’t normal for a moon like this. These readings make no sense and it's the one thing that should make sense out of any of it. I keep running through them and all I hear is my mom’s old ghost stories in my head!” Karen slammed one hand on the table and ran the other across her shorn hair.

  “Ghost stories?”

  “Yeah, I... my mother believed in ghosts and hauntings and I… I’ve never grown out of it.”

  Etta forced a chuckle, but it was hollow. That feeling of a presence had also been in the back of her mind. She didn't feel haunted, just
not alone. Etta looked away, but saw nothing there.

  “I know! I know! It's just,” Karen’s breath was quickening “No one has been able to prove whether ghosts are real or not and I just-I don't know what to make of this. I don't know what to make of the change in the air and the weird stuff.”

  “I know it's scary, but it's probably just old equipment,” Etta said, trying to sound logical in the face of her own blooming unease.

  Karen rubbed her shoulder, “Remember what happened on Helofax29? The investigation found that the crew ignored warning signs. Like, strange happenings and all that? What if that's happening here?”

  “We aren't ignoring the weird stuff though, I mean you're here checking the math,” Etta said.

  “It's this feeling I have though. Like something else. It's – well – alien. Ghostly.”

  “Alien? Do you mean?”

  Before Etta could finish, they were interrupted by the emergency alarm. The siren's screeching reflected in Karen's eyes, wide with fear. She looked at Etta as if to say “told you so”. Instead they heard Pierce's voice over the intercom, telling the entire crew to head to the Exit Chamber, and they both rushed out of their seats.

  The scene was chaos. Heath was in a walking suit screaming and kicking on the floor. Goldie had gotten to the area before them, and she was holding him down on the ground by his shoulders. Rebecca had the med kit open on the floor, searching for something inside. Pierce was at Heath's side, undoing the straps to loosen the suit. Rebecca looked up to see Karen and Etta and screamed at them to help hold him down. Karen launched herself to Heath's left arm and sat on it. Etta headed towards his kicking legs and held them down. Then she saw it, on his right calf: Something had pierced the suit. Karen located the needle she had been looking for and Pierce had unlatched a portion of the breast of the suit. Karen stuck the needle in and Heath stopped fidgeting, put to sleep by the sedative.

  “What in the hell happened?” Karen screeched.

  Rebecca licked her lips and took a breath. She was taking another look through the med case. “Heath was out there retrieving the samples: On his way back a foreign object, debris probably, went through the suit. Didn't get to his skin, but through about most of the layers by the look. He was still able to get back in but he started going into shock the minute we closed the doors.”

  She took a small pair of scissors and cut away at the layers of fabric, but before she had finished Etta could see that there was a small cut, barely the size of a fingernail, deep in the skin. It had impacted him, and now there was risk of exposure. The area around the cut was bluish-black. Rebecca injected the site with her other needle and brushed herself off. “We need to get him to the med sector.”

  Goldie, Pierce and Karen lifted Heath and hauled his limp form out. Rebecca grabbed the case and followed. Etta looked after them, rooted in place by the strange feeling that had come over her: She felt as though she was watching the scene with two sets of eyes. One set was wholly hers, horrified at the possibility of Heath losing a limb. The other set watched the scene with detachment of watching an experiment play out. It was a set of eyes that felt alien.

  ---

  Etta couldn't remember how she had gotten to Heath's room or why she was there. She looked around, noting the pictures he had taped to the walls of his small enclosure. The collected set of creature cards and decks that he kept on a small shelf. He was always trying to get someone to play, but so far hadn't fully convinced any of the crew members to play. She zeroed in on the picture of Heath as a child above the entrance to his bunk. In the photo, his eyes were still alight with innocent glee. His mother's out-of-fashion haircut framed a warm and welcoming face. His sister, the spitting image of him, had the same sweet smile. He must have been around seven in the picture. How old was he now? She had never had the occasion to ask.

  That's about when she remembered that she was there to check his preferred bed settings. According to Rebecca, they were to make Heath as comfortable as possible while he recovered. And he would recover, she assured everyone, despite the graze and the exposure. But for all that, Etta had a strange feeling of foreboding.

  After taking the preference readings, Etta headed back to the med center. The space was little more than a slightly larger crew quarter, with every single inch devoted to medical equipment. The quarter had been reconfigured to have the bed in the center, and fully stripped of everything, Heath lay asleep and sedated there. Rebecca was typing notes on a pad to the right when Etta entered. Etta typed in and re-set the bed settings, but when she turned to go Rebecca stopped her.

  “I want to thank you, Etta.” Rebecca's face was drained and pallid. Her voice came out pained, as if it were sliding over shards of glass.

  “For what?” Etta replied.

  “For not, well, not calling me out on my little white lie. I know you could see the injury, but I really didn't want anyone else to panic. We already had Heath in shock, I was trying to keep everyone calm.” She could not look directly at Etta.

  She took her index and middle fingers and rubbed her right eye. The slowness of movement spoke for itself: Rebecca was breaking.

  Etta nodded while those alien eyes she now felt she had overlooked Heath. A voice that was hers made its way out. “Do you think he is going to be okay? Really?”

  “I don't know. I think so. I hope so. But he was three meters away from the entrance when he was struck. I honestly don't know how he made it back before he froze or suffocated or both. Whatever hit him was small, thankfully.” She leaned back and rubbed her neck. Her eyes slid to Heath, and Etta could sense it, the burden that Rebecca took on being their doctor on these trips. The terrible thought that no matter the cause, no matter the issue, you could never remain blameless.

  “We're pulling shifts to monitor Heath. Yours will start in two hours, please be back here,” Rebecca said with finality. Etta replied with a nod.

  * * *

  Goldie had brought in the samples Heath had dropped near the entrance, and Pierce had locked himself away to analyze them. Karen worked in her quarters, poring over the figures with more maddening precision. A perpetual anxiety had draped over the base, such that it was filled with an unusual and eerie silence. Etta tuned the silence out, and concentrated on the low hum she still seemed to hear as she walked back into the med center in time for her watch.

  Rebecca looked up from her screen at hearing Etta's footsteps and showed her a wounded expression and she heavily lifted herself from her seat.

  Etta broke the silence that ensued. “How's he doing?”

  “No change, except he seems to have an... I'll call it an infection. It's best to keep him sedated. I've sent the results to our nearest med team at Oraxis satellite and they are going over what I've found.”

  “Infection?”

  Rebecca pursed her lips and looked at Heath's body, a slow breathing corpselike thing. “Yes. But it's best not to make much of this. I think he'll keep his leg but his body needs rest. Alert me of any changes. I'm gonna get something to eat. Need anything before I go?” The offer's sincerity didn't reach her face.

  Etta shook her head, and with that Rebecca dragged herself out of the room.

  They were alone. Or more properly, with Heath sedated in the bed, his leg restrained by an old frayed seat belt that had been re-purposed into a tourniquet, Etta was alone. The monitors and machines Heath was hooked up to punctuated the silence with the steady beats of his stats. Unable to resist her curiosity, she went over hoping to get a look at his wounded leg, but it was tightly bound and bandaged.

  Etta noted that Rebecca had lowered the light settings, probably to create a more soothing mood, but all it did was begin to lull her to sleep. She suspected that may have been why Heath's fair complexion was taking on a bluish-purple tone.

  Sitting down, Etta tried to kill time by reading an old book on her tablet, but found her mind too eager to concentrate. She settled on her old hobby, and clarified the window settings to look out at the landscape.
The Plum Moon currently happened to be at just the right angle with respect to the system’s star such that the view she was seeing mimicked a sunset. The light was crawling down the horizon. Etta daydreamed about walking out in that sand, free of everything that held her. Soon her eyes had closed and the machines hummed to Heath's heartbeat.

  It wants you.

  Etta woke, but was paralyzed. She hadn't even realized that she had fallen asleep at the small desk.

  It wants you.

  Her mind was awake, but her body was plastered to itself. That voice came from her side, from Heath's body. But it was not him.

  It wants you.

  She finally moved, each limb as heavy as stone, and stood straight up. Heath's body was the same, plastered, unmoving. But his eyes and mouth were open. Etta approached him, and saw that his machines were the same as they had been, his stats normal for sedated patient.

  It wants you.

  The voice croaked. It was Heath, his lips moving in a slow, disjointed spasms. As she came closer, she could see his eyes. But they were not his eyes. Those eyes had lost all their luster and gone milky. She had only seen eyes like that a handful of times before. They were the eyes of a corpse.

  It wants you.

  Drool escaped his mouth.

  “Heath?” Etta put a hand gingerly on his. She wanted to calm him in case this was a symptom of shock. Or if the infection had blinded him.

  His head turned, slowly. Etta swore she heard a creak at the movement. Etta... it wants you. Gone was that voice with the boyish lift. What came out was rocky, gravel on steel.