Seclurm: Devolution

by Noah Gallagher

  About half the crew chuckled. Rosalyn turned to Randy as she adjusted the tie on her ponytail. “That’s a lot warmer than most planets out here. Tell FAER they can market this place as the prime vacation destination.” He laughed.

  “You’ve got a point. They must be pampering us, sending us to such lavish locales,” Terri said, sipping her drink.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, but I need a few more minutes, everyone,” said Shauna, standing up.

  She stepped through a door just to the right of the hallway leading to the Bridge. Through that door was the computer room, where she often went to pore over the data from the probe that had inspected their latest destination. While she was gone, the crew finished breakfast, put the trays and silverware in a dishwasher to be cleaned, and relaxed while awaiting the briefing. Before long, Randy broke out his deck of cards for a friendly game of poker. Rosalyn was standing and going through some reports from the ship on a screen attached to the nearby wall while he started handing out the shuffled cards.

  “Hey, Rosalyn! You playing?” he said.

  Mitchell grinned, scratching his scraggly hair, and said to the rest of them, “You sure about that? I kind of wanted a chance to win.”

  “What’cha doing there, Roz? You aren’t too good to play with us, are you?” He grinned broadly.

  Rosalyn didn’t respond, preoccupied with the screen, hiding her reciprocal grin.

  Al looked at her with discerning eyes in his square, stone-like face and joked, “You should have seen her equation for the world series. She’s like Biff Tannen.”

  Sam playfully added, “Ah, so that’s how she bought her seat on this ship from Traynor.”

  “Actually, I don’t watch baseball,” she said with a smirk, facing them, “and I haven’t talked to John in years. But I’ll play.”

  She sat back down in her spot between Mitchell and Terri, crossing her legs and picking up the deck.

  “Ehh, there’s gotta be some way you got on this program without training for more than, what, a year?” said Randy. “If that.”

  She took her deck and sized it up. “I trained for thirteen months. After I got my Ph.D.”

  “I got a Ph.D. too, but I don’t see y’all fawning over my intellect,” Terri pointed out sharply yet playfully.

  Randy smirked. “Oh, we fawn over you too, Terri. Just not your head.”

  The guys laughed. She just shook her head, playing down her smile.

  “Let’s play some poker already,” said Al, his steady eyes fixed on his hand. He relished whatever entertainment they got. Rosalyn had found out on one of their movie nights that Al had already watched nearly every single movie and TV show he’d brought with him on this trip alone. He didn’t sleep much.

  The game went fairly well. Sam folded, then Terri, and the others gave moderately confident bets, though nothing rose extremely high. Rosalyn was pretty sure she was going to win, but before the game ended, Shauna returned from the computer room and stood before them. It was just as well—all of their savings accounts had traded places many a time in the months they’d been blasting through space at unfathomable speeds.

  Shauna surveyed her crew, her bleached hair gleaming under the ceiling lights. “Alright folks, sorry to break up a good, clean, bankroll-crippling game of poker early, but I need to brief you on something before we prepare for landing.” Shauna Beele had an amusing talent for telling jokes without giving any tonal hints about them. She wasn’t even concerned about whether anyone would find it funny or not; she just kept on talking as if nothing unusual had been said. “You’ll remember that FAER’s old probe data showed us an area of the planetoid with a large cavernous underground with a decent chance of containing lots of rare minerals. Well, up until our updated probe data that just came in, we didn’t realize just how big this cavern actually is.”

  Everyone grew quiet, fixed on her and her crystal blue eyes.

  “This isn’t the kind of small, barren cave or two that we’ve been dealing with. There’s an entire network going on in this place’s underground. And it’s filled with stuff.”

  Al had a look on his face like he was pretty sure, but not completely, that that was a good thing. “Stuff?” he said.

  “It’s experiencing a sort of radar overload so we really can’t get any better data than we’ve already got, at least without getting the ship down there first, but we do know that what we have here is not your average cavern. There’s…well, take it to mean what you will, but there are signs of movement.”

  She leaned forward and gripped the back of her chair. The already deep silence deepened further, and many a pair of eyes bulged.

  She kept speaking. “Just to play devil’s advocate, this tech isn’t really meant to detect movement, and I’m not saying I think it’s alien life. Considering the planet’s atmosphere it’s unlikely anything would survive here; it’s all rock and ice. If there is alien life, we can assume it isn’t intelligent considering we’ve gotten no responses from signals we’ve sent out, as per usual. All we know is there’s definitely some kind of small amount of activity happening—maybe volcanic, maybe tectonic, or maybe something else. The point is, our mining prospects are looking extremely good. We can’t know for sure until we actually touch down and check it out, but I’m very optimistic. Only problem is what looks like a pretty narrow passage into these caves, so let’s hope our mining rover can fit through there without having to drill or blast.”

  “Considering this new development, how long are we gonna be staying?” asked Al. “We’ve got enough fuel to justify staying at least a week, right?”

  “Yeah, but if we find what we’re searching for we’ll probably reach our weight capacity fairly quickly,” Shauna explained. “Unless it proves pretty tough to dig out something we find, I don’t anticipate us staying for longer than three or four days. Enough to do all the testing we need to do and pick up some useful stuff. Any other questions?”

  The perked-up crew seemed satisfied. “Seems like a good haul ahead,” Terri said with eyes wide, content.

  “I think you’re right. But even better than that, this could very well be the kind of mining station that FAER is looking for. We can’t be one hundred percent sure, but there’s a good chance they’ll be getting us everything we request after this.” She smiled proudly and got excited laughs from everyone. Then she turned and started for the Bridge. “Alright, crew, let’s do what we do.”

  Shauna turned and went to the large hexagonal-shaped door covering the hallway to the Bridge. It opened before her automatically and she walked down it alone. The rest of the crew cleaned up after themselves and chatted about the excitement of an entire labyrinth to potentially explore. The words “alien life” and “big bonus” were thrown around more than once, and for once Rosalyn didn’t think those things were out of the question. Well, more so the latter than the former, but who knew for sure? Whatever happened, this place was looking to be very unique.

  Shauna announced over the ship’s intercom that she needed everybody at their stations in about thirty minutes, allowing everyone time to do whatever they wanted to do in the meantime. The crewmates went out the door of the dining area and into the north hallway. Terri turned left to go check on something in the medical bay while the others went through the door directly opposite the dining room, into the common room. Rosalyn trailed behind Sam as they made their way in. It was a warmly-lit place with exercise equipment, televisions, couches, sofa chairs, a home-style (albeit fake) fireplace and every comfort of home an astronaut would tend to miss during their long journeys. Al had removed his shirt—exposing a very muscular, fit chest—and was laying on the bench-press for some extra exercise lifting something over two hundred pounds while Mitchell was sitting on one of the comfortable leather couches next to his meowing cat reading something on his smart device. Sam went to a couch facing the TV and turned it on. It was showing what would at this point be a slightly old broadcast from back home, sent to them via radio transmission co
urtesy of FAER.

  With interaction somewhat sparse between them all, Rosalyn was a little surprised how close the crew had become in their time together. Most of them had seen each other before around FAER headquarters from time to time—Al and Mitchell had gone through engineering training together, in fact—but in many ways most of them had been strangers at the start of the voyage. Rosalyn had never worked on the Novara before now, and only Captain Beele and Dr. Jones had been with it from its commissioning. The three engineers had been moved to the Novara from less profitable ventures a couple journeys prior, and Randy had been with the ship since a few trips before that, each of a shorter duration than this rather atypical eighteen to twenty-four-month trip.

  Sam turned the TV to an on-site news report.

  “—Flooding and high winds have caused numerous disasters. The local zoo has been reduced to shambles and many animals have died or escaped. You can see here that the lakes Mendota and Monona have sort of merged together into one big lake, causing untold millions of dollars in damage to hundreds of homes… We don’t yet have a body count…”

  Sam grimaced. “Ugh, that’s awful.”

  “Wait, d-did that say Lake Monona? By—by Madison?” sputtered Mitchell, looking up from his cat and smart device at the broadcast.

  Rosalyn stood with her arms crossed just beside the couch and checked the headline listed below the newscaster. “Yeah.”

  “My sister lives in Monona. Holy crap—I’d better make sure she’s okay!”

  He looked back at his device and started typing. The message he wrote out would have to be relayed over the ship’s powerful communication systems through the vast distance of outer space to FAER, which would relay it to the intended recipient—Mitchell’s sister, in this case—many hours later. The impossibility of instantaneous communication was almost like living in the days before the Internet, something only the crew’s great-grandparents would know anything about. Funny, thought Rosalyn, how progress sometimes cycled back on itself, in small ways.

  Sam pulled something out of his coat pocket and stared at it. With his slightly long black hair and kind-looking face he was usually a comforting presence, but he displayed now a look of melancholy. The man on the news network kept talking while standing in a scene of devastation, and Al was grunting with sweaty, bare muscles gleaming as he lifted the barbell. The air here was pleasantly tempered and cycled through the vents regularly.

  “What’s that you’ve got, Sam?” Rosalyn asked, leaning closer to him after she noticed something shiny in his hands.

  He looked up at her and opened his hand wide to show a small, sparkling, polished-looking gem of a striking lime green color fading into burnished red. “Just something I picked up on Lucius. I’m gonna give it to my girlfriend when I see her again.”

  She stooped down to look at it. “Wow. That’s pretty nice. Ammolite?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Something like that.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you’re gonna keep a souvenir, I’d run it by FAER first if I were you.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Ahh, they’ll be okay with one missing rock. They’ll probably be so mad about the missing beer that they won’t even notice.”

  Rosalyn shook her head, but she couldn’t help but smile. “Well, whatever. …It’s nice, though. She’s gonna love it, Sam.”

  He beamed at her.

  Shortly, Rosalyn turned and threw off her coat as she used an exercise bike to keep up her health. Sam got bored of the TV and went to throw darts on a dartboard, leaving Mitchell to watch the news with great interest. Each of Sam’s darts landed true; he’d gotten much practice over the months.

  Before long it was time for everyone to get to their stations. The TV went off, and Rosalyn, Randy, and Terri went to the Bridge to join Shauna while Sam, Al, and Mitchell headed to the lower floor to attend to their engineering duties.

  The hallways they walked through to reach the Bridge were all aesthetically pleasing, conforming the many unseen cords and pipes, covered behind metal or plastic sheets, into the shape of the walls so that the hallway itself stretched onward in a tall, vaguely hexagonal shape. The other halls on the ship were like this as well, and most doorways similarly hexagonal and automatic.

  The Bridge was large but simple and practical, with an upper level containing four main seats in two rows of two, each one with a large panel of keys in front of it. Railings blocked off the edge of the upper level, and small ramps led to the lower level where numerous buttons and switches were set along the walls, as well as screens set into stations. Dominating the room of course was the large pane of thick, reinforced glass out in front, where the void of starry space opened up before them, never lacking in splendor, majesty, and wonder. In the distance was 730-X Zacuali, a shining orb where they would spend the next few days of their lives. This was the clearest they had ever seen it; the night before, it had looked the size of a pin, but now it was roughly that of a basketball.

  It was a grayish-white sphere, one quarter of it shrouded in darkness, the rest of it showing signs of thinner, polluted atmosphere and somewhat turbulent weather. Though it was clearly not a friendly place, it was beautiful in a way that only extraterrestrial objects could be.

  “That’s a big rock,” said Terri as they took their seats.

  “A big rock hopefully stuffed with lots of smaller rocks,” remarked Randy.

  “That is the one FAER picked, right?” Terri smirked. “We’re not gonna find some much tinier planetoid hidden behind it?”

  Shauna shook her head. “No, ma’am. She’s the one.”

  She gave a pleased sigh. “Wow. I’m really proud of them. They chose something promising for once.”

  Rosalyn laughed. “Yeah, I agree. You can actually thank them and not me, because if it were up to me, we wouldn’t have even come this far.”

  Shauna turned to her with eyebrows raised. “You tried to change their minds before we left, didn’t you?”

  She gave a mock-nervous laugh and scratched her chin. “Well, funny you should jump to that conclusion, Shauna, because I didn’t, uh, admit to that…”

  The other three laughed.

  Shauna grinned as she said, “I love you, Rosalyn. I don’t know if they appreciate you, but I certainly do. Anytime you think I’m being an idiot, you go ahead and let me know so I can explain to you in full detail why you’re incorrect.”

  “Will do,” said Rosalyn with a wink.

  Rosalyn began to feel excitement about seeing 730-X Zacuali up close, but she framed it in context of the financial importance of their mission. FAER didn’t pay them to be excited explorers, as fun as that was to imagine. They got paid to do the work and haul the minerals. That was what she lived for.

  Still, this was clearly bigger and grander than anyplace they’d been before. It was hard to remember her doubt of FAER’s decision close to a year ago when first reviewing the possible routes they could take on this journey. “We’ll see how this compares to the asteroid belt,” Rosalyn said as she took her seat and strapped on her headset.

  “Those were small fries compared to this beast,” said Shauna with hungry eyes. “We need to step up our game for FAER. I want this ship stuffed to the rafters for dramatic effect.”

  Randy started typing at his station. “We should have gone here on the first stop, not the last. We’re gonna find a sea of minerals and gems and leave it all there to be pirated by some other company.”

  “We got the first probe data about this place just before we left,” Shauna answered. “Nobody could have reached here before us.”

  Rosalyn smiled. “And there are laws, Randy. Despite what Sam says, this isn’t the wild west. We’ll stake a claim here, assuming there is something to find.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Still, if I were one of the suits at FAER I might not announce this abroad until they get more ships out to this part of space. Or maybe a freighter carrying an entire mining operation settled on the planetoid. I do
n’t trust any of the other companies for a second.”

  The minor planet was growing larger and larger. Shauna scanned the screen on her station intently. “Set engines at seventy-five percent.” She then turned to Randy and said, “I hope I didn’t get everyone’s hopes up too high. The data’s promising, but there’s always a chance that the stuff the radar picked up is just traces.”

  “Even space dust goes for a decent sum,” said Terri.

  Randy retorted, “Not as much as platinum and rhodium.”

  “We’ll be there pretty soon to see for ourselves,” Shauna said.

  A few minutes passed by. Terri got up and went down the starboard ramp to attend to something near that wall, and Rosalyn went to check a screen station beside her.

  “Hey, the landing cams are off,” Rosalyn noted with puzzlement after a moment.

  Hands on a digital keyboard, Terri looked at her with brown eyes, dressed in her lighter-tan FAER doctor’s uniform, her braided hair tied back in a bun. “I know, I just turned them off. I always turn them off when we land. I don’t want FAER to see some little dent and dock us any pay.”

  Rosalyn stepped back and raised an eyebrow. She realized what Terri meant: FAER did not dock pay for dents that the Novara received during space travel, but they did penalize for dents if they were received through less-than-perfect landings.

  “We can’t do that,” Rosalyn objected.

  “Okay, then pretend we never had this conversation,” Terri said with an irritated smile.

  “Foundation policy is spelled out very clearly that every part of the ship’s travels is to be recorded, Doctor.”

  “Stop worrying about it. They can’t penalize us if the cams happen to go out for a short period. I’m just saving us some money, Roz. Are you really gonna be concerned about that?”

  After a pause of silent stares, Rosalyn rolled her eyes before turning away; this wasn’t worth her time. She went up the ramp and sat back down to focus on the screen and the ship’s exterior before her. Terri eyed her with resentment and a bit of victory before she turned back to finish programming the cameras to come back online once they touched down completely.