Another World

by Samuel Best

  The craft landed with a heavy thud, rocking side to side before settling. Tulliver quickly unbuckled his safety harness and climbed down the short ladder leading through the airlock. He slapped the hatch release at the base of the ladder and waited impatiently as the ramp slowly lowered to the ground.

  Its lip crunched down onto the charred remains of the warden’s admin tent.

  Tulliver descended the ramp casually, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his pants, a slight grin on his face. He squinted in the bright sunlight as he surveyed the scene before him.

  Those colonists who were near the landing site stood huddled in groups of two or three, faces aghast with horror. Several others turned tail and ran back to their farms. Even accounting for the cowards, there were enough there to receive his message.

  He walked around the side of the ramp, following the edge of the shallow black crater the shuttle’s engines had scorched into the ground.

  In the central heap of the charred admin tent, a clawed, bony hand protruded, grasping for the sky. Smoke curled around its twisted fingers.

  Tulliver barked laughter, then spun around to face the crowd.

  He spread his arms wide and bellowed, “I humbly accept the burden of administration bestowed upon me by the late Wardens Cohen and Ramirez.” He waved a grateful hand toward the blackened limb sticking up from the burnt tent, then placed his open palm over his heart. “And I thank you for your trust in these difficult times. If you need anything, the door to my office is always open.”

  The stunned colonists gaped at him like fish, and he laughed, shaking his head as he turned to ascend the ramp into the shuttle.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LEERA

  The nose of the shuttle peeked out from behind the base of a massive mineral lead sulfide boulder. Leera, Walter, Uda, and Corporal Turner progressed toward the shuttle slowly, leap-frogging their radio spikes to create a pathway through the field of gray crabs.

  They had been performing their exhausting task for nearly two hours. One person thrust a radio spike into the ground to create a small radius of open ground within the field of crabs while another person walked forward, to the edge of the tiny clearing, and drove another spike into the soil.

  As they moved slowly around the boulder, more of the shuttle became visible.

  A black starburst of char marks extended back from the nose. A large scar traced a deep line from one edge of the cockpit window to the back of the vessel, where a chunk of the hull had been ripped away.

  “We have to fly that thing?” asked Walter.

  “The last pilot managed to land it safely,” said Uda.

  “The hatch is open,” Turner pointed out.

  Between the three landing arms of the shuttle, a ramp extended down from the nose to disappear into the migrating mass of interlocked crabs below.

  “Do you think they’re inside?” Walter asked.

  “Doesn’t look like they’re interested,” said Leera, warily eyeing the ramp. “But that doesn’t mean nothing else crawled up there.”

  They passed the last twenty meters to the shuttle silently, until at last they stood below it, looking up into the darkness at the top of the ramp. Leera took all three spikes and drove them into the soft ground to form a triangle around the ramp, pushing the crabs back beyond the edges of the shuttle’s shadow.

  Turner unshouldered his rifle and checked its safety, then held it at the ready while he ascended the ramp, his jaw set, his eyes scanning the opening above.

  He disappeared into the shadows at the top of the ramp, leaving the other three down below, between the triangle of radio spikes.

  Leera watched as thousands of segmented legs beneath the moving gray sheet scrabbled at the ground for purchase. Their passage was almost completely silent but for a steady whisper as their legs continuously stabbed the ground like the needles of countless sewing machines.

  The red power switch on one of the radio spikes flickered, and the crabs beyond that spike lurched closer. Leera, Uda, and Walter turned toward it just as the red light blinked out and the line of crabs surged forward, swarming over the dead radio spike. It was pulled beneath the sheet of gray, disappearing without a sound.

  The crabs hit the invisible barrier generated by the remaining two radio spikes, peeling up like lifted carpet to avoid passing into it.

  “Clear!” Turner shouted from above.

  “Go!” said Leera.

  She pushed Uda and Walter up the ramp and grabbed the two remaining radio spikes. As soon as she pulled the second one from the ground, the crabs closed in, rushing to fill the empty space.

  Leera ran up the ramp and tripped, falling on her elbows with a shout of pain. One of the radio spikes popped from her grip and rolled toward the edge of the ramp. Uda lunged and caught it just as it rolled off. She pulled Leera to her feet and gently took the other radio spike from her shaking hand.

  “Thank you,” said Leera.

  Uda smiled and gestured up the ramp. “You first.”

  The top of the ramp led to a small cargo hold filled with empty transport crates. Bright green mildew streaked the walls and ceiling, giving off a wet, earthy odor. Leera followed Walter up a short ladder and into the cockpit, where Turner was already sitting strapped into the pilot chair, working the controls.

  “Still has power,” he said, flipping a switch. A bank of red lights flicked on over his head. “And fuel. Everyone inside?”

  Uda entered the cockpit and buckled herself into one of the two seats bolted to the back wall.

  “We’re all here.”

  “Closing the hatch,” said Turner.

  He tapped a command into his console screen and a mechanical whir sounded from beneath the shuttle, followed by a loud metal clunk.

  “Barbecued crab for dinner?” he asked, flipping another switch.

  The shuttle shook on its landing arms as the engines roared to life, rattling the inner walls. Leera sat next to Uda while Walter crouched down next to her, searching for a way to secure himself to the floor.

  “I’m picking up a nav beacon,” said Turner over the noise. He pointed at a narrow rectangular screen on his console filled with a faint grid of green lines. “East, beyond a mountain range. Hey, wait a minute.” He tapped the screen. “I lost the signal!”

  “Did we lose power?” asked Leera.

  Turner shook his head. “The signal just blinked out, like someone turned it off at the colony.” He swiped the screen to toggle through known nav beacon frequencies. “Luckily, I got a heading before it disappeared. We should be okay. Fuel reserves are…”

  He paused as he cycled rapidly through menu screens on his console. Then he turned to look at the others.

  “Fuel reserves are at five percent,” he told them. “Enough for about ten minutes of flight time.”

  The buckle of Leera’s safety harness rattled as she tightened her straps.

  “Then let’s not waste any more fuel,” she said.

  Turner nodded and gripped the flight controls. The shuttle lurched upward and the nose dipped, giving them all a good view of the blackened patch of crabs that had been directly under the engine wash. Burnt, segmented legs twitched at the sky from those that had flipped onto their backs. Smoke curled up from the crispy shells of others, and already the dead were being overrun by the living, scrambled over by a fresh sheet of gray, interlocked stone-like carapaces.

  Turner pulled back on the controls and the shuttle’s nose pitched skyward. Leera sank back into her seat as the vessel accelerated, heading toward the two green-peaked mountains in the distance.

  The shuttle vibrated more harshly as Turner increased speed.

  “If we can make it through the pass,” said Uda, her voice quavering, “we’ll find the colony.”

  Walter sat next to Leera’s chair, holding tight to a support strut in the wall. She held out her hand and he took it, squeezing it for comfort.

  “Fuel reserves at three percent,” said Turner.

&nbs
p; Leera sat up in her seat, straining against her harness to look out the cockpit window.

  The corporal had wasted no time. The twin mountain peaks loomed over either side of the shuttle, their jagged green peaks sharply outlined against the clear blue sky.

  Turner frowned and tapped on his control screen.

  “I’m picking up a signal on the ground,” he said loudly.

  “A nav beacon?” Uda asked.

  He shook his head. “Passengers. Three of them, in the mountain pass.”

  Leera and Uda shared a quick glance.

  “Hang on,” said Turner.

  He gripped the controls and banked sideways, dropping one side of the ship until he could see the ground through the cockpit window.

  “There!” he shouted.

  “That’s Niku!” said Leera, shaking Walter’s shoulder excitedly.

  He climbed up the side of her seat to look.

  They only saw their fellow team member for a brief moment before the shuttle overtook him, but there was no mistaking Niku’s black ponytail, even at that distance. He walked with two other men, one of whom seemed to be gravely injured, as they traversed a narrow valley pass between the two enormous mountains.

  “We have to pick them up!” said Walter.

  “Not enough fuel to stop!” shouted Turner over the constant rattle in the cockpit. “If we land, we can’t take off again.” He turned the flight controls, leveling out the shuttle. “Hold on, we gotta get closer to the ground!”

  The nose dipped toward the ground just as a shadow shot past, blotting out the sun for a fraction of a second. Turner leaned forward in his chair and looked up, then he looked back at Leera, his eyes wide with terror.

  Something slammed into the top of the ship, pushing it down. Metal screeched from above. Loud impacts thudded against the hull, as if the shuttle were being pelted by large rocks.

  “We’re too heavy!” Turner shouted.

  He yelled with exertion as he struggled with the controls. The shuttle dipped lower, its port side dropping steadily.

  Walter grabbed on to the base of Leera’s chair as the ship turned sideways, flying with its port side aimed at the ground, its starboard toward the sky.

  With a metal scream, a chunk of the roof ripped away. Sunlight poured in and wind tore through the cockpit. Leera’s hair whipped around her face, stinging her eyes.

  Thud, thud, thud, from above.

  Something was walking on the roof of the shuttle.

  It moved over the hole in the roof, blocking the sunlight. A shadow. Through the hair fluttering over face, Leera saw a single, massive eye, staring down at her.

  Turner shouted from the pilot seat just before the shuttle crashed through a tree, snapping the trunk in two. There was an inhuman scream from the hole in the roof as the top half of the tree scraped over the hull, and the shadow was gone.

  Leera’s stomach flipped over with the ship as it rolled upside-down. Looking up, she saw the ground whipping past — a green and brown blur with the occasional streak of lead-colored rock.

  Walter’s legs suddenly dropped into view from above as he lost his grip and fell. Leera grabbed for his arms and caught a fistful of body suit. She jerked forward against her harness and screamed when something popped in her shoulder as she took the full weight of his body.

  He looked down at the blur of ground below, then up at Leera.

  The shuttle bucked as it crashed through another tree. Walter slipped from her grasp and fell through the open hole in the roof. He was gone in an instant, vanishing before she had time to realize what happened.

  Leera yelled for him, but her voice was drowned in the roar of the shuttle’s engines.

  Another tree impact sent the vessel into a sideways spin, slicing over the ground like a circular saw blade.

  The shuttle hit the ground.

  Leera’s safety harness cut into her shoulders as she hung upside-down in her seat while the hull scraped over dirt and rock.

  She clenched her eyes shut as debris sprayed into the cockpit, pelting her face.

  The front of the craft slammed into a large boulder. The momentum lifted the back off the ground until the shuttle was resting vertically on its nose, teetering between falling against the boulder on its belly or to the ground on its back.

  Next to Leera, Uda was breathing like she’d just run a marathon, her sweaty, bloodied face smeared with dirt. She clutched her safety harness with white hands.

  Turner worked the controls on his dead console, trying to restore power to the shuttle.

  The vessel groaned as it rocked gently on its nose.

  “Hang on!” Turner shouted as the shuttle began to tilt.

  It fell backward on its roof, sending a burst of fresh dirt into the cockpit. Leera coughed and used a dirty hand to try to rub grit from her eyes.

  She fumbled with her safety harness, searching for the release.

  “Wait,” Uda said weakly.

  Leera found the release and pushed it, then fell a meter to the floor, landing on her shoulder with a scream. She flopped onto her back in the dirt, breathing hard, staring up at her chair. Tears streamed down her temples from the corners of her eyes.

  Uda unbuckled her own harness and kept a grip on it, flipping over gracefully and jumping down to land on her feet next to Leera. Turner held on to the armrest of his chair and lowered himself down to the roof.

  “Well,” he said, wiping off his hands. “We’re past the mountains.” He looked at Leera and Uda. “Where’s Walter?”

  “He fell,” said Uda, nodding down toward the hole in the hull. She knelt next to Leera and squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll go back for him.”

  Turner stood on the patch of ground where the chunk of roof had been ripped off.

  He shook his head. “Moving at that speed…”

  Leera groaned as she sat up, holding her throbbing shoulder.

  “There was a…” she said, searching for the right word. “There was an animal on the ship. Did you see it?”

  “No,” said Turner, “but I felt it.”

  “I saw it,” Uda said.

  “What did it look like?”

  Uda hesitated, then said, “It was a monster.”

  MERRITT

  He awoke in darkness, to the sound of coughing.

  Merritt sat up slowly, loose dirt spilling from his face and chest. Smothered light crept around the edges of the Halcyon’s wreckage above. A chunk of the ship had slid to a stop against a wall of the chasm into which Merritt had fallen.

  More coughing in the darkness.

  Merritt got to his feet slowly. His head throbbed and his muscles ached, but nothing was broken. He tested his footing and fell forward, landing face-first and getting a mouthful of dirt for his trouble.

  He spat it out and croaked, “Ivan?”

  Cough, cough.

  Merritt crawled through the dim underground cavern, following the noise. In the shadows, a pale hand protruded from the dirt. Merritt grabbed the outstretched hand and pushed aside loose soil to reveal Ivan beneath, white as a ghost. Each cough shook his thin body. Red, swollen blisters covered his face and arms.

  His rolling eyes found Merritt’s, and he smiled.

  “Alive,” he whispered.

  “Yes, we’re alive. You lied about not feeling radiation on the ship.”

  Ivan tried to shrug. “We needed beacon.”

  Merritt sighed and looked around the dark cavern.

  “For all the good it does us now.”

  “We climb,” said Ivan, straining to sit up.

  Merritt pushed him gently back down. “Neither of us can climb that,” he said, pointing up. “The soil is too loose and the ship could fall the rest of the way. We need to get clear.”

  Ivan nodded, and Merritt helped him to his feet.

  Ivan spoke softly in Russian. When Merritt didn’t respond, he said, “Wash clothes. Radiation.”

  “First things first,” said Merritt.

  They stumb
led through the darkness, into a low opening in the wall of the cavern. The opening led to a tunnel that disappeared into darkness.

  “This cave was already here,” said Merritt as he helped Ivan sit against the wall. “If we’re lucky, there’s a network of them we can follow until it’s easier to break surface again.”

  “There,” said Ivan, pointing a shaky finger farther down the tunnel. “You hear it?”

  Merritt focused until he heard the faint dripping of water into a puddle.

  “Your clothes will be soaked if I wash them,” said Merritt.

  “Better soaked with water than radiation.”

  He grimaced as he peeled off his torn jacket and threw it aside. “No, wait,” he said suddenly, grasping at the air for the jacket. Merritt pinched a corner of the fabric and tossed it back to him. Ivan’s eyes rolled back and his head lolled on his shoulders. A moment later he snapped awake and dug through his jacket pockets. He pulled out a small plastic snap-case and handed it to Merritt.

  “What’s this?”

  Merritt opened the case to find a row of syringe-like needles and a small electronic meter.

  “For diabetes,” said Ivan. He fumbled for the case and pulled out a two-page instruction booklet from behind the electronic meter. “You know compass?” he asked. “Needle on paper is north.”

  “Compass?” Merritt said, feeling clueless.

  “Rub needle on hair,” Ivan told him weakly. “Magnet.”

  He slouched back on the wall, his eyes closed, breathing deeply.

  “Ivan?” said Merritt.

  He stood and followed the sound of dripping water deeper into the darkening tunnel. The passage narrowed, forcing him to crawl on a hard rock floor until his hands splashed into a cool puddle of water. A droplet fell from a wet gray rock above his head and plinked into the puddle.

  Merritt folded up the edges of the two-page instruction guide and gently set it on the surface of the puddle, away from where the droplet had fallen. Next he took one of the small needles from the plastic container and rubbed it flat against the top of his head. He silently counted to thirty, then held his breath as he carefully dropped the needle onto the floating paper.