Dark Metamorphosis

by John Coon

  “Sergei Ivanov. Welcome to the Phobos Station.”

  Sam shook his hand and added a quick nod.

  “Sam Bono. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sergei.”

  His eyes darted around as Sam gave the interior of the service module a quick once-over. Those eyes settled on a series of open laptops mounted against the opposite module wall. Sam sauntered over to the nearest screen. Even with the presence of artificial gravity, his steps across the module bordered on bouncy hops. He tapped on the touchscreen and scrolled through aerial Martian landscape photos.

  “So where did you uncover this mysterious object?” Sam snapped his head back in Sergei’s direction. “The Earth Defense Bureau couldn’t wait to get out here once we were briefed on your report.”

  “A Martian rover first detected anomalous signals inside a cavern, 13 kilometers from base camp,” Sergei explained. “Rudra directed the rover to go inside. Sure enough, we found an object producing the signals.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows and shot a sideways glance at an aerial photo on the laptop screen.

  “Did you figure out what we’re dealing with yet?”

  “No. It is as we reported earlier. I have never seen anything matching this object.”

  Norah nodded.

  “That’s why Cliff and I were dispatched to bring you back to Mars.” She turned and glanced at Sam. “We were told you have valuable experience in dealing with aliens and alien technology.”

  Their confidence in him flattered Sam. He did not want to reveal he was the bureau’s second choice to go to Mars. Sam only left Earth when Paige Beck ended up being unavailable to take the assignment. He cursed his bad luck and wished she drew the short straw instead of him. Paige’s expertise made her more qualified to deal with this situation from the start. She had experience dealing with multiple alien races, while he had only been involved in one major extraterrestrial encounter.

  “We moved it from the cavern four days ago,” Sergei said. “Isolated it inside a manned habitat unit.”

  Sam answered him with an unblinking stare. He squared his shoulders in the cosmonaut’s direction.

  “You did what?”

  “We could not wait. A global dust storm covered the planet for many weeks. Once the storm cleared, we decided we must use that window for retrieval before it closed again.”

  A scowl formed on Sam’s lips.

  “I relayed specific instructions before I left Earth for you all to leave the object untouched until I arrived here.” He jabbed an index finger at Sergei. “How will we work together on this project if you won’t listen to me?”

  Sergei sighed and shook his head.

  “You Americans are too uptight. We did not break or ruin anything. We used a special robot to extract the object from the cavern and bring it back to base camp for further research.”

  Sam stood with one hand on his hip, the other clutching his helmet. His stare continued unbroken. This trip was not off to the best start. Russians routinely beat Americans to the punch in numerous space exploration and colonization endeavors. How did the Earth Defense Bureau expect him to come here and take charge if the cosmonauts were determined to do whatever they wanted to do anyway? Sergei’s eyes hardened into a fierce stare as the silence continued. Finally, after a few tense seconds, Sam pursed his lips.

  “Let’s hop in the climber and find out what we’ve got down there on the planet.”

  ***

  Taking a trip on a space elevator felt unlike anything else Sam ever experienced. He rode a bullet train when he visited Tokyo. Riding inside a climber to the Martian surface made any bullet train seem as fast as a puttering old tractor by comparison. Their pill-shaped climber zipped down the carbon cable at 300 kilometers per hour.

  Still, in astronautical terms, a one-way space elevator trip from the vicinity around Phobos to Mars took around 20 hours to complete. Sam ran out of discussion topics with Sergei and Norah near the halfway point of their trek. He passed time inside the climber studying photos stored on the laptop he took with him from the Phobos Station. Sam wanted to transfer the batch of images to a smaller device but that was not possible out here. His smartphone routinely dropped calls in his backyard back home in Houston. He jokingly asked Norah if she thought the Wi-Fi would be working in the colony. She laughed at his question and said nothing else.

  The robot took many photos of the object it retrieved from the cavern. Those images did not reveal much. To Sam, the object resembled a long box with each corner cut off to form diagonal edges. Reddish-brown dust and soil caked the outer surface. No doubt countless dust storms battered it over an indefinite period. This object only drew their attention when a rover exploring around the cave detected an artificial power source emanating from inside the cave.

  When the Earth Defense Bureau received a report on the rover’s findings, it was enough to entice bureau authorities to send Sam to Mars and learn firsthand exactly what the colonists discovered. They were convinced they stumbled upon an extraterrestrial artifact. Sam took a more skeptical approach before heading to the lifeless husk of a planet.

  The rover’s sensors collected inaccurate data, he told himself. This will only turn out to be a huge waste of time and money.

  A Martian colonist stood on the mobile docking platform when the space elevator finally arrived at its destination. They waved at the climber as it touched down on the platform. The climber door opened. Sam, Norah, and Sergei all filed out.

  “Sam Bono.”

  Sam extended his hand. The waiting colonist stared down at the hand and hesitated for a moment before finally shaking it.

  “Dr. Bao Mei. Does this mean we can do some real research at last?”

  Sam’s eyes widened. He backpedaled a couple of steps. Her icy tone caught him off guard.

  “The Earth Defense Bureau has direct oversight on this colonizing mission.” Norah jumped to his defense before Sam even said a word. “You already know it. Furthermore, our discovery is in their wheelhouse.”

  Mei glanced over at their base camp before turning and facing him again a moment later. A protective visor kept Sam from seeing her eyes, but he still sensed a hidden, hardened stare digging down into his soul.

  “Fine. Let’s get on with this.”

  She turned toward base camp again. Before Mei stepped off the docking platform, she jerked her head around and faced him a second time.

  “Let’s be clear on one thing. This colony is a global partnership. Mars is not an American territory.”

  Sam threw up his hands.

  “I’m not looking to start a pissing match. We all have the same goal here—to learn exactly what you folks found inside that cavern.”

  Mei answered with an abrupt nod and continued her walk from the platform back to the colony’s base camp. Sam sighed and snagged the laptop before closing the climber door. He hoped this did not foreshadow endless arguments ahead with the scientist.

  A series of interconnected manned habitat units formed the base camp. Each unit resembled a cylindrical drum rising three stories from the ground like a tower. Four spindly legs jutted out from individual drums. Each leg stood an equal distance apart to supply stability amid rocky terrain. Small polycarbonate windows peppered exterior walls on each unit. An outer layer composed of regolith and an inner layer composed of polyethylene formed the outer walls. These dual layers combined to protect colonists from intense ultraviolet radiation. Specialized robots constructed all building materials on site using 3-D printers.

  Sam followed Mei and the others into the unit nearest to the mobile docking platform. It housed the colony’s main laboratory. Once inside, he got his first close-up peek at what the colonists extracted from the cavern. The mysterious object rested against an interior lab wall on a white tarp. Small piles of dust and soil covered the tarp around the bottom end of the object. A curly haired man in a dark
sweatshirt crouched down in front, sweeping away dust with a broad brush.

  “Rudra,” Norah said. “Our liaison from the Earth Defense Bureau is here.”

  He straightened up and turned to face Sam. Safety glasses covered his brown eyes. Rudra set his brush down, smoothed out his rumpled sweatpants, and extended a hand.

  “Welcome to Mars. I’m Dr. Rudra Adarsh.”

  Sam shook his hand and nodded.

  “Sam Bono.” His eyes drifted back over to the object. “So, what have you learned so far?”

  Rudra cracked an eager grin.

  “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think we may have uncovered an extraterrestrial object.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows.

  “Extraterrestrial object?”

  Rudra pointed to a laptop resting on a nearby white desk built into a matching lab wall. Sam glanced down at the battery depleted laptop resting in the crook of his other arm. A sheepish feeling washed over him for grabbing it from the Phobos Station when he realized the exact same information was down here. Sam set down the laptop on a nearby shelf and walked over to the other computer. He hunched over the keyboard and brought up data culled from the retrieval robot’s sensors.

  Sam’s eyes grew as large as plates while he studied the data. He gave a low whistle.

  “Am I reading this right? You detected organic matter inside the object?”

  “That’s what the scans revealed,” Mei said. She popped off her helmet, revealing short and flat black hair, and set it down. “We’re cleaning it up to see if we can safely open the object and find out what’s inside.”

  On cue, Rudra snatched up his brush and resumed cleaning. Sam removed his helmet. His eyes trailed the brush up and down as it crisscrossed the object’s surface.

  A mere mention of organic matter sparked his curiosity. Did the object house an alien? Such an idea seemed so far-fetched only a few years ago. After meeting extraterrestrial visitors in Utah, though, Sam had no difficulty believing this thing housed alien DNA or even a living alien. The prospect of making such a discovery thrilled him. It turned a trip into Mars a more worthwhile pursuit than he first imagined.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  Sam snapped his head in Norah’s direction. Her helmet was off now, and she knelt by the side of the object. Sam squinted at the same spot. A blue button-sized dot blinked where Mei dislodged a patch of soil.

  “Is that a light?” Sam asked.

  A puzzled look adorned his face. Sam drew a few steps closer. As he gazed at the light, an unexpected thought struck him. The colonists uncovered a piece of advanced alien technology. One question remained.

  If this was an alien gadget, what purpose did it serve?

  Sam removed his thick glove and grabbed another brush. He raised his arm and started cleaning near the top end of the device. Along with Rudra and Mei, Sam worked feverishly to clear away Martian dust and soil. Each brushstroke revealed more surface details.

  At once, Norah gasped.

  Her left hand clamped down on his shoulder.

  “That looks like a window.”

  Sam followed her finger and cast his eyes to the same spot where she pointed. A hint of glass peeked out on the surface. He concentrated his brush in that area. More glass rose from beneath the dust shroud. Sam parroted Norah’s surprised reaction once he laid eyes on what the uncovered window revealed.

  An alien lifeform.

  9

  From the moment he laid eyes on the alien lifeform, Sam’s heart pounded with a steady drumbeat. Dirty glass partially obscured whatever alien species lay inside the object. Still, the few visible details were enough to make fresh goosebumps pop up all over his arms and legs. This lifeform resembled nothing Sam had ever seen outside of a nightmare buried in a dark hidden corner of his subconscious mind.

  Their face owned some humanoid features, and their body matched an adult human in size. Whatever lay inside did not resemble any human in other key aspects. Odd bony ridges trailed along brows and cheekbones. Sharp ends belonging to massive fangs protruded from underneath the creature’s upper lip. Waxy reptilian scales melded with ordinary pale human-like flesh around each bony growth.

  “Why in God’s name does it look like that?”

  Palpable fear permeated each word in Sergei’s question. No satisfying answer popped into Sam’s mind. He doubted anyone else inside the habitat unit could produce one.

  This creature—whatever the hell it was—embodied the scariest connotation of the term ‘alien.’

  “Is it alive?” Sam asked.

  Mei’s eyes darted between him and the humanoid creature. She swallowed hard.

  “God, I hope not.”

  Rudra continued brushing away dust and dirt from the glass and both sides of the object. More blinking lights grew visible in newly cleaned areas. It resembled a high-tech isolation tank. Sam wondered if the alien inside had been cryogenically frozen. No signs of freezing were present on its visible flesh. Did the device preserve the alien in suspended animation or deep hibernation? He could not imagine why any alien species would go to all the trouble of sealing this odd-looking alien in a futuristic coffin and dropping it inside a random cavern on Mars.

  Digital symbols became visible in clear panels above some lights. Sam knelt in front of a panel and squinted at a string of symbols. They bore an eerie familiarity. He recalled seeing similar symbols two years earlier, inside a crashed alien vessel salvaged from a ravine in Utah.

  An alien vessel from a planet called Lathos.

  Did this mean this creature hailed from the same planet? Sam closed his eyes and shook his head as he chased that theory from his mind. The odds against such a scenario were astronomically high. A more plausible explanation for the symbols must exist.

  “What is it? You’re starting to look like someone who’s seen a ghost.”

  Norah’s question pierced his thoughts. Sam’s eyes snapped open again. He paused for a moment and drew in a deep breath before glancing at her over his shoulder.

  “I recognize these symbols.” Sam tapped on a transparent panel displaying a few symbols. “We found similar ones on a small alien craft we recovered near Salt Lake City two years ago.”

  Norah’s eyes grew wider. They darted between the glass exposing the alien’s face and Sam.

  “You’ve encountered this alien species before?” Annoyance and concern blended into her question. “When did you plan on sharing this news? This isn’t a detail you keep to yourself.”

  Sam tossed up his hands in protest.

  “Whoa. Wait a minute. I never said I encountered a creature like this one. The aliens I met resembled humans, apart from some minor differences. They looked nothing like … well, whatever this species is.”

  Rudra rose to his feet a second time and brushed Martian dust off his pant legs. His eyes drifted over to the same digital symbols and his lips pressed into a perplexed frown.

  “Can you translate the symbols?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “I never actually learned what any of them meant.”

  Rudra pursed his lips and let out a sigh. Sam started to regret bringing up his earlier experiences with aliens. His revelation only fostered a lingering annoyance inside the room.

  “Conducting a thorough set of thermal imaging scans will tell us if the alien here is dead or alive,” Rudra said.

  Mei cocked her head toward him. She remained in a kneeling position while carefully cleaning off dust around buttons, lights, and panels.

  “And what if it is alive? Do we try to wake the alien and talk to it?”

  Sam’s eyes drifted back to the alien’s face. It showed closed lids. This simple fact splashed relief over him like a cool spray from a waterfall. Forget about seeing the alien’s eyes. Sam did not want those eyes to see him. A nagging feeling told
him someone sealed this being inside this tank for a wise reason. Until the bureau opened the device under safe and controlled conditions on Earth, he had no desire to revive the alien from a deep slumber if it truly remained alive.

  “We’re not waking it.” Sam finally said, casting a glance down at Mei. “Not here. Not on Mars. If that alien is alive, we’re transporting it back to a secure facility on Earth before we do anything else.”

  ***

  Waiting for the lab computers to complete detailed scans took much longer than Sam expected. He eventually left the lab and walked through a covered tunnel into a neighboring habitat unit. Standing around in the lab and staring at the alien only made his heart race faster than a stock car circling an oval track. It did no good to work himself up over an odd-looking alien in stasis before they recovered any firm data.

  Sam fished out a deck of cards and some poker chips from an overhead bin inside a small activity lounge. He tossed cards and chips on a round white table circled by orange hardback chairs. Norah peeked her head inside the room just as Sam settled down on a chair. Once her eyes fell on the cards, she cracked a broad smile and brushed back a short strawberry-blonde lock of hair.

  “Deal me in.”

  Sam waved her forward and tossed five cards on the table. Sergei also joined them after the first hand. Neither were a match for Sam. The cosmonaut shook his head in disbelief after losing a fourth straight hand.

  “I did not realize we were tangling with a poker genius here.” Sergei flashed a disbelieving smirk. “You’re trying to take every last ruble to my name.”

  Sam leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. He cracked a satisfied smile of his own while Norah dealt a new hand.

  “What can I say? When you grow up in Vegas, knowing how to gamble becomes second nature.”

  Norah rolled her eyes and laughed.

  “Enlighten us, oh wise one.”

  Sam soon found himself sharing a story of how he sneaked into a casino with his best friend Simon back in high school. They used phony ID cards to get inside but drew unwanted attention after Simon won $500 on a slot machine. He and Sam did an impromptu celebration dance near the winning machine. A pair of burly security guards showed up a few minutes later and asked to see their IDs. Soon enough, a large hand wrapped around Sam’s arm and marched him off the casino floor. The guards shoved both him and Simon outside the main doors and told them not to come back.