Below The Earth

by Lucas Pederson

  Hawk had always wanted to be an action star, growing up watching Rambo, Predator, and Platoon, and playing war with the most elaborate collection of plastic guns and knives any kid would’ve envied. He also loved the sea, and those two things drove him to the Navy, where he’d become a pilot and then a SEAL. He’d given most of his life to the service, and it had given him adventures few had experienced.

  But the cost had been great. Floating in the ISS, everyone he loved and cared about on Earth, doubt gnawed at him, as it always did. A worm burrowing through his flesh and soul, always asking if he was being selfish, or if his sacrifice had been worth it, giving up the time with his family? He barely knew his two children, and Andrea stayed with him because they loved each other, and she’d known what she was getting into. They’d had their first date, and Hawk had been deployed the next day and they didn’t see each other or speak for a year before he’d shown up unannounced when he’d gotten leave.

  “Prepare for passage in 10, 9, 8...” said the voice of mission control.

  Hawk resolved in that moment that this would be it. He was only forty-seven, he wasn’t dead. He still had time. He could turn everything around. What would he do? What could he do? Desk job? Pilot? Would he be happy? Would his family even want him around if he wasn’t?

  “...7, 6...”

  It all came down to what was important. He’d wanted to go to the stars, and he’d done it, multiple times. He couldn’t let the fear of the unknown imprison him. His mind spun, and he almost laughed. He floated two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth with nothing but a thin layer of metal between himself and the chilling vacuum of space, and he worried about the unknown. Hawk decided this would be his last mission, and he’d announce it live after the cloud passed. A little surprise to Andrea. He was coming home, for good.

  “...4, 3, 2—”

  A sharp burst of static tore through Hawk’s headset. “Mcfly, turn down the amp,” he said. Svet and Michel chuckled, but Max ignored him. The Russian and Frenchman had seen more American movies than he had. The only American entertainment Max knew was Friends and Star Trek.

  The screens showing the external cameras were obscured in gray. Miniscule lights twinkled like rainbow colored stars in the cloud, and they reminded Hawk of how sun rays caught dirt and sand particles as they floated in clear water. There was no sound, no vibration, and the spacefarers looked to each other, as if to say, “Anything?”

  The ache started in the tips of Hawk’s toes and fingers, a dull throbbing that grew to a stabbing pain that spread up his arms and down his legs. Hawk’s station mates felt it too, because Max rubbed his feet and Michel jerked and shook like his limbs had fallen asleep. Svet’s hands were clamped to her head.

  Hawk once had a minor case of the bends, and that pain was nothing compared to the agony that pushed into every corner of his body. He squeaked, and Max yelled as he spun across the lab and slammed into a rack of equipment.

  Svet grabbed handholds, head down, but didn’t make a sound.

  Like a receding flood the pain eased, but lingered in the extremities where it began. Hawk was winded, and he pulled for air, his chest heaving.

  Svet grabbed an oxygen mask and tossed it in Michel’s direction, then slipped one over her face. Svet’s instrument panel flashed red with warning lights. The station’s power went out and Destiny lab fell into darkness.

  Hawk took shallow breaths, conserving the oxygen in his body, preserving the air still available in the compartment. He’d never felt more alone, closer to death, as he floated in the blackness.

  Snap. The control panel came on, then the lighting.

  Svet’s head glided up, and she went back to her station. “The system appears to be rebooting. We should be up and running in ninety seconds,” she said.

  Hawk waited as the blank monitor laughed at him. He had to see what was happening. He tapped his headset and said, “Let me know when the system comes up.”

  “Aye,” Svet said.

  Hawk pulled himself along the bulkhead out of Destiny lab, flying like Superman into Unity node one.

  “Hawk, you copy?” Max said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “The chronometer is…”

  “What?”

  “Malfunctioning,” the German said.

  Hawk made a right into Tranquility node three, twisted around, and braced himself against the bulkhead.

  “All Earth-side communications are dead, and I’m getting no signal from any of the comm satellites,” Svet said.

  Hawk floated down into the cupola, a seven-window observatory that resembled the turret on the Millennium Falcon. When Hawk looked down at Earth his mouth fell open a crack, then he said, “I might know why that is.”

  The planet below was nothing but blue ocean from horizon to horizon, no land masses visible.

  There had been a moment in Hawk’s first flight test as a cadet when he believed he’d lost control of his plane. A panic filled him that was so all encompassing he froze, unable to react. Sometimes Hawk believed the paralysis had saved his life, stopped him from making some knee-jerk reaction that would have made things worse, but that wasn’t how he felt now.

  There were no brown mountain peaks on Earth’s surface, no massive swathes of green life or tan deserts. No continental shapes outlined the globe, and the streams of white clouds covered only water. His house had been on one of those continents. Everything and everyone he loved.

  All of it was gone.

  2

  Hawk found Michel’s corpse floating in Columbus lab, tongue hanging out, eyes cloudy pools. There was no blood, no note. Hawk blamed himself for leaving the man alone. He’d seen the signs of space dementia, and he should have sat with him, never left him alone, but Hawk was lost in his own grief and couldn’t remember what he’d done for the last half-hour.

  None of the astronauts spoke of it, but each space hound had a way out, a last resort death pill for when no other option was available. The French poison of choice was a cocktail of cyanide and cloglestrial, a new acid that destroyed living tissue and replicated. Hawk had considered taking his pill, but he was just too scared, his grief and worry for his family consuming him, the shock of their situation still too new. That same shock that had pushed Michel over the edge made him focus.

  The spacefarers sealed Michel’s body in an airlock, out of sight. Hawk said a short prayer and looked at each of his shipmates and saw fear and doubt. What had kept them from taking their pills?

  The station passed the terminator into night, and the outlines of several large landmasses bunched together stood out in the blackness below. It was as if Earth had been tipped over and all the continents ran to one side. At the sight of land, Hawk breathed a sigh of relief, but his thunderous nerves returned as the reality of the situation broke through his cocoon of denial.

  Hawk tried to push Michel from his mind and went about his business in stunned shock as the International Space Station moved through space at 17,000 MPH, with the Earth, or what had once been the Earth, slipping by below. The stars looked the same, but the station’s instrumentation was showing something different. According to the onboard computer the star map had changed, and the chronometer showed numbers that were so far off the chart Hawk assumed it was broken. No satellites responded to their pings, and there’d been no signs of life.

  Daylight revealed the problem in full color. Swathes of green, brown, and white filled the surface of the planet, but the land masses were bunched together and didn’t look much like Earth.

  “Looks like a broken Pangaea,” Max said. “Or something like it.” When Max wasn’t flying around in space, or pressing the limits of the known universe at the large Hadron Collider at CERN, he was a professor at Oxford, and his areas of expertise extended well beyond physics.

  “When everything on Earth was together? That was long time ago, nyet?” Svet said.

  “Very long.”

  “You think the planet below is Earth? How could it be? You
’re saying we traveled back in time?” Hawk said.

  “I’m saying the landmasses below resemble what scientists think Pangaea looked like fifty million years ago as it broke apart into the continents we know now. We were orbiting Earth, and the current configuration of land masses is somewhat recognizable. What are you suggesting? The station was transported to another point in the galaxy and placed in orbit around a different planet that just happens to resemble Earth of the past?” Max said.

  “Govnó,” Svet spat. “Délo drjan'.” Svet lapsed into Russian when she got excited.

  “Shit is right. And “things don’t look good” is an understatement,” Max said.

  “Is there another option?” Hawk was pleading, because he couldn’t get his noddle wrapped around the other possibilities.

  Svet and Max said nothing.

  The earthlings sat bunched together in the cupola, watching the oncoming twilight zone cut across the horizon like a dark blade. Svet pressed her face against the thick glass, and Max rubbed something from his eye. Wherever or whenever they were, what wasn’t in dispute was they were alone. Michel’s suicide had driven home they only had each other, and it might be that way for a long time. Hawk smiled ruefully. Might be that way forever, and that burned his chest as he thought of his family. Were they OK? What had happened to the Earth he’d known?

  The space station crossed the terminator and the planet surface went dark save for moon glow, a giant erupting volcano, and… something else. Hawk leaned forward, his heart pounding. Toward the center of the largest land mass, a bright multi-colored light blinked in a rhythmic pattern.

  “You see that?” he said.

  “Da.” Svet pulled back from the glass, her hair floating around her head like Medusa’s snakes.

  “What could it be?” Hawk said.

  “My first thought is it looks like a beacon,” Max said.

  “Me also. I thought of Morse code,” Hawk said.

  “This changes things. Someone—”

  “Or something,” Hawk interrupted. “Humans aren’t due to hang around these parts for millions of years if we have our location and time period right.”

  “It got here somehow. It’s not a natural formation, and that’s the only clue we have. Whether the planet below is Earth or not doesn’t matter,” Max said.

  Svet said, “How you know the light isn’t natural?”

  Max said nothing, but looked to Hawk.

  “We don’t, but we only have so much food, so staying up here isn’t possible long term. Why wait? If we make it to the surface it would be nice to have some food to get started,” Hawk said.

  “What if it is trap?” Svet said.

  “Set by who?”

  “Or just some cosmic rock?” Max said.

  “Or we can’t breathe air?” Svet said.

  “Possible, but unless one of you can see something I can’t, we have but one option. We need to put on our spacesuits, abandon the station, and go planet side.”

  Hawk let that idea sit out there like a fart in church. Both Svet and Max were military trained space veterans, and giving up just wasn’t in their DNA, so the debate didn’t last long. After they rested they’d begin preparations to abandon the space station, the place they’d called home for almost a year. Using the Soyuz capsule docked at the station as a lifeboat, the two astronauts and one cosmonaut would fall to an Earth they no longer recognized as their home, leaving the remains of their friend behind in his orbiting grave.

  As Svet pointed out, they weren’t certain what the air composition was on the planet’s surface, and thankfully the space station was equipped with spacesuits that had been designed for the Mars mission and were much more advanced than the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacefarers had used for many years. The new suits were much lighter, had a sleeker life support backpack, and could provide air into perpetuity via advanced oxygen scrubbers. Everything was powered by a new top-secret high-tech battery locked into the life support backpack so it couldn’t be examined.

  As he waited, Hawk felt the stars looking at him like millions of dead eyes. He peered down through the thick glass and saw the giant volcano spewing orange lava. About fifty clicks to the east the light beacon sparkled like a diamond.

  Hawk would figure out what it was, or die in the attempt. He had nothing left to lose.

  “Brace for impact!” Hawk said.

  Their morning had started with an early scare when the electronic docking claw wouldn’t work. After two hours of rerouting systems they finally managed to free themselves and begin their voyage. They had breathed pure oxygen while Svet played with the landing claw, so Hawk had ordered them to put on their spacesuit helmets and life-support backpacks as a precaution.

  Hawk’s fear that the landing parachutes that would allow the capsule to soft land had been damaged, or were covered in ice, proved unwarranted. When they had opened, and he felt the pull of tension on his harness, Hawk forgot, for a couple of minutes, what might await them upon landing.

  All space station modules had been closed off, and all systems turned over to the computer, so Michel’s tomb could theoretically remain in orbit for years due to the large solar arrays that captured the sun's energy above the horizon. With the station modules sealed from one another, it could sustain damage in one part but still not be destroyed.

  Hawk shifted in his harness. His spacesuit was uncomfortable and he hated wearing it, but the precaution was worth the inconvenience. The capsule shook and vibrated until it thumped upon impact with the Earth. For an instant, the ship teetered and Hawk thought the capsule was going to tip over. After a few tense seconds the ship settled itself, but on a fifteen-degree incline. They had landed on something.

  The capsule rocked like it was hit with a battering ram. The space ship fell on its side leaving Max and Svet looking down at Hawk as they hung in their seat harnesses. “What the hell…” said Max. The interior of their vessel echoed as something pounded on the hull. Hawk strained to see through the tiny porthole in the hatch, but saw only blue sky and white clouds.

  An eye filled the porthole, and Hawk yelled. A red pupil rolled against a black cornea and settled on him, then narrowed. The capsule shook, and the eye splattered against the window, pieces of red skin and black eyeball sticking to the glass. They were jerked in their harnesses as the ship was lifted from the ground, and then they were free falling. Hawk and Max realized what was happening before Svet and they held tight to their restraints.

  The capsule landed on its side and Svet shrieked when metal crunched. Silence fell, and they waited for several long minutes, expecting at any moment to be tossed like a pebble. Red light from the warning klaxon spilled across the cabin, painting everything in a ghostly red glow.

  The capsule vibrated and the sound of thunder echoed through the cabin and Hawk jumped. The sound was unmistakable. A huge beast had just cried out in anger or pain or fear. Blood and blue sky filled the porthole, but it darkened as it fell into shadow. Another roar, and this time it was much closer. Hawk held his breath. Svet had her eyes squeezed closed and Max looked like he was praying, though Hawk knew the scientist wasn’t religious.

  The vibration eased, the thunder faded. The red alarm klaxon and rays of sunlight sent daggers through the capsule. Several minutes passed. Hawk said, “Check yourself out before you climb out of your harness. Make sure all the seals on your suits are tip-top.” He snapped free of his harness.

  Static filled Hawk’s headset, then “Yup,” from Max, and “10-4,” from Svet. Hawk pulled a key from the pocket of his spacesuit using a short tether, and unlocked the storage container bolted under his seat. Within were two Ash 12 machine guns and an MP-446C Viking handgun, a spare magazine, related holster and shoulder straps, ammunition, a knife, and a bottle of Russian vodka. Hawk smiled at the thought of the anonymous soldier at Roscosmos that had put the vodka in their last shipment of food and supplies.

  The guns had been a different matter. Firearms in space were frowne
d upon and the International Space Station didn’t stock weapons. Svet had found the machine guns and pistol hidden in her personal locker with a note from her husband. The cloud had everyone on edge, and Vladimir wanted her to have protection because he couldn’t be there. Svet informed Hawk as soon as she’d found the guns, and they’d told Max and Michel.

  Hawk strapped on a leg holster he’d modified to fit over his spacesuit and slipped the loaded Viking into its cradle. Then he slammed a magazine containing lightweight supersonic bullets with aluminum cores into one of the Ash 12s and pulled back the bolt, loading a round into the chamber. They would load all the weapons, but they would be fired only when necessary. They needed to conserve ammo and reloading would be difficult while wearing spacesuit gloves. They’d wrapped their trigger fingers tightly with duct-tape, which made it possible to fire the weapons with their gloves on, but it was a challenge.

  “Are we where we want to be?” Hawk asked. They had plotted a course to touch down as close to the light anomaly as possible. Their plan was to utilize the capsule as a base, and search the area.

  “Think so. We were tossed pretty good, but we should be pretty close to our mark,” Max said.

  “We’re dead here, Hawk, nothing but a trickle. Going short range suit-to-suit,” said Svet, static filling the comm channel. “We got nothing left. All systems are down. The batteries must have been damaged. We’ve used up what little juice we had, so we’re gonna have to pop the hatch manually.”

  Hawk nodded. Svet and Max collected their weapons and the three spacefarers fumbled around the cabin and each other. The spacesuits were difficult to maneuver in, especially in tight spaces, but thankfully their years of training had made functioning in them like riding a bike.

  “Everyone ready?” Hawk asked.

  Svet popped the hatch, and air rushed into the capsule.

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