by T. J. Land
“Oh, did they? Excellent. Captain…”
“Rux can carry two people,” Khurshed said to the crew. “One of them will be me. Who else?”
Every hand in the room went up.
“You’re going hunting for aliens. I’m the only qualified astrobiologist here. If you’re serious about this ludicrous stunt, I’m the obvious choice to accompany you,” said Antoine.
Rick piped up, “Captain, I weigh the least. If I go with you, it’ll be easier for Rux to get out of there in a hurry if something goes wrong.”
“I worked on Europa for a few years in my twenties,” said Irene. “I know what it’s like to move around in that sort of environment.”
“Captain, may I suggest taking Thomas? He is, after all, the best shot,” said Rux.
“Good point,” said Khurshed as Thomas punched the air and went to fetch his rifle. “Prepare the equipment. We leave in two hours.”
When he and Thomas were sitting atop Rux’s back, strapped to the makeshift saddle Zachery had cobbled together, Antoine’s words returned to him. It was true; he couldn’t ride a horse. The one time he’d tried, he’d fallen off and broken a rib.
“Good luck, Cap,” said Rick as he and Echo checked their suits and their breathing equipment one more time.
“Rux, you bring them both back in good condition or I’ll take a blowtorch to your balls,” said Zachery.
“I am impervious to fire, both in this shape and all my others,” said Rux. “I do find your threats charming, though. We should engage in coitus upon my return.”
“Let’s go,” said Khurshed, putting on his helmet before the conversation could degenerate further.
The last face he looked at before the cargo bay doors slid shut was Antoine’s. His first officer had his stoical expression on, the one he always wore when he thought Khurshed was being staggeringly stupid but knew there was no talking him out of it.
Am I doing this to show off? Khurshed wondered. There had been a time in his youth when he’d been in the habit of doing stupid things to win Antoine’s admiration. He wasn’t sure that time had ever actually ended.
His musings were cut short when the hatch opened and Rux reared up like a horse before lunging out into the open air.
✩✩✩
The less said about the journey downwards the better. They survived, didn’t break anything, and landed roughly where they had planned to. That, Khurshed told himself, was what counted.
“Don’t worry, Captain, I won’t tell anyone,” said Thomas, kneeling beside him and patting his back as the last of the dry heaves faded. Had his suit not been equipped for such eventualities, he would have drowned by now.
It was another ten minutes before Khurshed could get to his feet, leaning on Thomas’s shoulder, by which point Rux had returned from his preliminary scouting mission. He had taken on his lion form and left huge paw prints in the snow.
“Captain, this area appears to be uninhabited,” he said. “I should point out that though I cannot discern evidence of my people’s presence, they may well be here. Their technology could be shielding them from our senses.”
“Whoever sent out that distress signal wanted us to come here. Why would they hide themselves?”
“Maybe whoever sent it was the last one alive,” said Thomas. “Maybe he died before we got here. Cap, what do we do if no one shows up? It’s fucking freezing.”
His arms were wrapped tight around his chest. Even though their suits protected them from the worst of the cold, it still felt as though they were in a meat locker.
Khurshed surveyed their surroundings. No wind, no clouds, only flat white ice and clear blue sky in all directions. He looked down, hoping in vain to see a shadow of the crashed space ship through the ice.
“Hey, what’s that?” said Thomas. He was also looking downward—not at the ice, but at a thumbnail-sized black speck visible in a nearby clump of snow. Rux pushed the snow away while the two of them stepped back. Khurshed would have felt more guilty about using his newest crewmate as a bomb disposal unit had Rux not previously admitted to being nigh-invulnerable.
What he uncovered was a cylinder. Stood up straight, it was level with Rux’s knee, and almost as wide as it was tall. It was black, shiny, seemingly made of some sort of metal, and had no markings on it whatsoever. The only thing marring its smooth surface was a white button.
“Intriguing,” said Rux, and he pressed it before Khurshed could stop him.
To his relief, the cylinder didn’t explode. With a soft hissing sound, its top section detached, revealing itself to be a lid. After a moment’s hesitation, the three of them looked inside.
Then the captain spoke into his com. “Antoine? I need Rick to look at something.”
He sent a picture of the cylinder’s contents up to The Prayer and waited.
“Holy shit,” came Rick’s voice.
“Language,” snapped Khurshed. “Can you identify these objects?”
“Captain, that’s fucking grain.”
✩✩✩
Antoine refused to allow the cylinder onto the ship without it first being scanned for explosive devices or dangerous toxins, so Khurshed sent Rux back up to retrieve the necessary tools with which to do so. Thomas and Khurshed had nothing to do but stand around shivering while they waited for him to return.
“Captain, this doesn’t make sense,” said Thomas.
“Thomas, there are a great many aspects of this situation that make no sense. You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“Okay, good point. Right now I’m focusing on the obvious one; how the hell does grain from Earth end up here? And how did Rux’s alien buddies get their hands on it? And why are they giving it to us?”
“Let’s not make any assumptions. We haven’t encountered any of Rux’s progenitors. We don’t know what their motives are. We can’t say for certain that they are giving us the grain. Maybe they just wanted us to see it.”
“Why?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
“Look on the bright side. It now seems considerably less likely that they lured us here to kill us. If they wanted us dead, there are far less convoluted ways of going about it.”
“Guess so.” His rifle slung over one shoulder, Thomas circled the cylinder for the fourth time, trying to make out any marks that might indicate how long it had been there or how it had been made. “If…”
Something moved in his peripheral vision. He glanced towards it, and then he screamed louder than he ever had in his life and opened fire.
✩✩✩
Captain Khurshed Amirmoez was not a man accustomed to taking orders.
But he hadn’t hired Thomas for his good looks. Even at the tender age of twenty-five, Mister Meléndez had an impressive CV. He’d won a dozen trophies in various shooting championships. He’d spent two years working as a police officer and two years working as a security guard on other merchant vessels. He’d received a medal for bravery after facing down three heavily armed smugglers, two of whom he’d shot dead.
So when he bellowed, “Captain, get the fuck down!” the captain got the fuck down. He ducked behind the cylinder; there wasn’t any other cover available. He heard Thomas fire three times, and then silence.
Then Thomas said, “Captain, contact the ship. Tell them to send Rux back right now. We need to leave.”
Khurshed did so, ignoring Antoine’s demand for details. Barely a minute later, Rux descended to the ground, landing gracefully with the requested equipment held in his beak. Thomas kept his eye on the horizon and his rifle at the ready while Khurshed scanned the cylinder and found that it neither contained nor was comprised of hazardous materials.
As they strapped themselves and their cargo to Rux’s back, Khurshed tried to spot what it was that Thomas had seen. But no matter which way he looked, the landscape seemed as empty and untrammelled as it had been when they’d arrived, save for their own footprints.
Flying back
up to The Prayer was even worse than coming down had been. At least this time there was nothing left in his stomach to be thrown up. They arrived at the cargo bay to find it empty, save for one of the large sealable crates they used to transport dangerous goods.
Antoine’s voice came over the coms. “Captain, the crew are on the bridge with me. For safety reasons, I’d advise you to put the cylinder in the crate and then proceed to the decontamination room.”
Though Khurshed threw him many questioning looks, Thomas remained silent while they stored the cylinder and cleansed their bodies.
A round of applause greeted them upon entering the bridge. Zachery swooped down to hug Thomas and ruffle his hair, while Khurshed brushed off greetings and went to his chair.
“Antoine, take us into orbit at once,” he said.
When they were clear of the planet’s atmosphere, he turned to Thomas. “What did you see?”
Thomas sat at his station, his gaze fixed on the middle distance. He shook himself and took a deep breath. “I think I saw one of them. No— I know I did. Nothing else moves like that. I only saw it for a second, but I’m sure. It was one of them.”
“‘One of them’? You mean one of Rux’s people?” said Antoine.
“I mean one of them.”
“What are you…”
Antoine fell silent as realization dawned. Slowly, the others caught on. Mehtab made a whimpering sound while Cecelia clutched the crucifix she wore round her neck. The captain exhaled and sat back in his chair.
“Forgive me,” said Rux. “I don’t understand. Who is Thomas referring to?”
“An old acquaintance,” said Khurshed. “I can’t pronounce their name. You need mandibles for it. We called them ‘the enemy’.”
He ran a hand across the nearest console, bringing up a holographic image of one of the aliens responsible for The Prayer’s being teleported into a different galaxy four years ago. “They look like this.”
Rux tilted his head as he scrutinized the image and then nodded. “Yes. Those are my people.”
Chapter Five
In the ensuing shitstorm, Rick watched from the sidelines as Khurshed did his best to maintain order, Antoine shouted questions at Rux, Mehtab sobbed into Irene’s chest, and Cecelia mumbled the Lord’s Prayer. Rick probably would have joined her if he hadn’t noticed Thomas wandering out of the room. After a moment’s hesitation, he followed him.
He found him in the mess hall, having activated their hologram projector. The scene he’d chosen was of a leafy wood in early autumn. It was about midday, and the only noises were birdsong and the breeze. Rick walked over, his shoes crunching on red-gold leaves that weren’t there, and crawled into Thomas’s lap.
“Hey, loser. What’s up?”
Thomas stared ahead as though he hadn’t heard him.
Rick chewed his lower lip and then said, “I’m really scared.”
At that, Thomas looked down at him, then nodded, and rested his head on his scalp. “Yeah, me too.”
Heavy footsteps heralded Zachery’s arrival. He sat down behind Thomas without a word and dragged them both back against his chest like a kid clutching his stuffed toys. After a long while, he rumbled, “You guys scared?”
“Yeah,” they said together.
“Me too.” He looked up at the surrounding trees as though noticing them for the first time. “Where’s this?”
“Yellowstone,” said Thomas. “My family used to come here on holiday when I was a kid. It’s where I got into bird watching.”
The door to the mess hall slid open again, and all three of them looked up to see Echo lingering at the threshold, as though he wasn’t sure whether he had the right to intrude.
“Hey there,” Thomas said, managing a weak smile.
While Rick couldn’t completely understand what Echo signed, he picked up the word “scared”. Thomas nodded, and Echo made his way over to sit cross-legged on a pile of autumn leaves beside them, managing to press one of his knees up against Thomas’s side without any part of his body touching Rick or Zachery. Fascinated, Rick watched him reach out and press the tip of his index finger against Thomas’s lips.
Thomas exhaled slowly. “Whatever happens, we’re going to be together. Right?”
“Right,” said Rick, reaching up to stroke his cheek.
✩✩✩
While the rest of the crew ate dinner that evening, an affair characterized by brief moments of excited speculation followed by long, anxious silences, Echo put four bowls on a tray and carried them to the captain’s office.
Khurshed, Antoine, and Rux were there, talking in low voices. Echo placed their cabbage soup before them and then settled into a corner to eat his own dinner: a pile of white mush with steam rising off it. Although the crew had lived off of vegetables cooked by Echo’s hand for four years, Echo himself could only occasionally stand to force down a mouthful of spinach or beetroot. He was a picky eater and despised most vegetables—a trait he shared with his newest lover. (He had a suspicion that might have been what first attracted him to Thomas.) It was little short of a miracle that among the many crates of supplies they’d been transporting in their cargo hold at the time of their encounter with the enemy, there had been one containing two thousand packets of dehydrated mashed potatoes.
“The facts as they stand are as follows,” Khurshed was saying. “The enemy revealed themselves to humanity seventy years ago. Since that time, they have hovered at the outer edges of our solar system, resisting all attempts to make contact and opening fire on any ships that came too close. No one could ever work out what they wanted or what they were planning. When we ran into them, they teleported us to this galaxy for reasons unknown. We have now learned that the enemy are the same beings responsible for Rux’s creation, the same beings who inhabited Yusra two thousand years ago. And now that we have settled on what used to be their world, they have provided us with what seems to be grain.”
Antoine nodded. “I’ve finished examining the contents of the cylinder. Rick’s initial assessment was correct. We now have the means to grow wheat, barley, and maize.”
The captain rubbed his chin. “Is it a gesture of apology?”
“If they’re sorry for what they did to us, why not simply teleport us home?” said Antoine.
“Do you have a more logical explanation?” Khurshed returned.
Rux, who still struggled to grasp the nuances of wielding a spoon, was lapping up the soup with his tongue. “I should mention that when I last knew my people, they were unable to teleport. More’s the pity. Evacuating our home planet to escape the plague would have been much easier if they’d had such a skill.”
Antoine stretched and rubbed the back of his neck. “All right, here’s my best theory. Rux’s progenitors are almost driven to extinction by a plague. A small number of them manage to escape Yusra in an experimental space craft. At some point after that, they develop the ability to teleport. They arrive in our solar system and observe that Earth is remarkably similar to their home world in terms of size, climate, and distance from its sun. After a period of time spent studying us from a distance, they decide to teleport a small number of humans to their home world to see if we thrive there. And since we arrived on Yusra they’ve been watching us—assessing our progress. They’ve given us the grain because they’ve seen us start to farm and want to supply us with some of Earth’s staple crops to better our chances of survival and of repopulating their world.”
After a long silence, Khurshed said, “I see two large question marks hanging over this theory. The first is why they haven’t repopulated their world themselves. It’s been two thousand years. The plague is no longer a factor. The second is why they didn’t simply bring the grain to Yusra for us to find.”
“Perhaps there’s some cultural explanation,” said Antoine, his left eyebrow twitching in annoyance as Rux noisily slurped down the last of his soup. “Rux has implied in the past that his people had a range of complex religious beliefs and practices. I
f their god or gods forbids their coming home… But we’re into the realm of wild speculation. Returning to what we know, we have wheat, maize, and barley, and a planet to grow them on. We also have one sighting of a species we have always perceived to be hostile living in close proximity. So, do we leave?”
Aren’t you afraid? Echo thought. Must you all sound so collected? Honestly, they say I behave like a robot…
“It would sadden me to leave my home world behind. But I do not want to be alone again. If you choose to leave, I will go with you,” said Rux.
“We’ll have to put it to a vote,” said Antoine.
“First Officer, I confess to finding your voting system perplexing. Why should the majority be trusted with important decisions? This is the captain’s vessel, is it not? Surely he should be the one to decide.”
“We’ll add ‘democracy’ to the ever-growing list of things your allegedly superior species didn’t develop, along with roads and basic biomedical ethics.”
“Antoine! That’s unnecessary,” Khurshed snapped. “Rux, you are correct in that the ship is legally my property. That doesn’t give me the right to decide the fates of everyone on board. We’ll communicate all the available facts as well as our theories to the crew, and then we will have a vote.”
As Khurshed and Antoine went off to the mess hall to speak to the others, Rux lingered behind.
What’s wrong? Echo asked, collecting up the bowls.
“I am ashamed to learn that my people are the ones responsible for your predicament. Those who left Yusra to escape the plague must know how painful it is to lose one’s home. That they would inflict the same pain upon you… I would not have thought them capable of such cruelty.”
Really? They used you as a test subject.
“Yes. But they had a right to treat me as they did. They made me.”
Echo put the bowls aside and shook his head. No. That isn’t how it works. You’re a person. No one should treat a person like a thing.
Rux transformed into his feline form and rolled onto his back so that Echo could rub his belly. “I don’t think the others realize it, but you’re a very kind man. Tell me, Echo; how will you vote?”