Four headlamps bobbing up and down lit the way as they scaled up the huge beam from a lower level of the enormous central room to the next one up. They stepped down the ramp and onto the floor, heading for the tunnel to the exit.
Panic overtook all of them. Now that they were close enough, Terri turned on her comm set and contacted the Novara. “SNTNL, prepare the medical bay! Get the temperature up in there. We’ll need oxygen tanks and lab equipment ready!” Her voice was relatively calm under the circumstances.
“Right away, Doctor Jones,” came the computer, SNTNL’s, calm reply.
Shauna’s head shook more loosely and wildly within her broken helmet as they dashed through the long hall of rippled columns and scattered debris. She was a pitiful figure lying there in her damaged spacesuit soaked with black gunk. Her eyes started shutting.
“She’s losing consciousness! Let’s move it!” shouted Rosalyn, eyes widening.
Moving past the columned section, they squeezed through the narrow caverns—nearly wide enough for four people across—with that great light at the end calling to them. They began to hear the sounds of distant wind, and their hearts were thundering in their chests.
Sam, to Rosalyn’s right, looked over his shoulder at Shauna. Guilt washed through him, but he tried to defend himself. He couldn’t have done anything more, could he?
At last they burst out of that claustrophobic hole and into the open. The winds seemed even stronger now, and they had to slow their speed to walk with more balance. The sky had darkened further, leaving them battling through swirling dust and ice in shadows, stumbling over rocks and cavities in the earth, unable to see anything beyond the cliffside they trod upon. The Novara stood there, nearer to the edge, on its five legs, a dark blue-gray haven with lights of white or yellow shining on its corners. The ramp began to open upon SNTNL’s request, and as per the programming, it was well timed; they reached it right as it touched down to the cold, stone ground. Clambering up and entering the loading deck, the crewmates waited for the ramp to shut behind them, and once it did, the ship’s systems began to depressurize and re-oxygenate the air. Everyone breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Shauna’s life was saved…at least, as far as needing oxygen went.
The large, cluttered loading deck of the ship seemed like more of a respite than it ever had before. To be out of those ruins was soul-freeing.
Randy cast his eyes on their captain on the stretcher. Her eyes were bloodshot and she stared upward in a silent stupor with pale skin, her short blonde hair darkened. He wanted to pat her shoulder and rouse her to wakefulness, but that black, liquid goop all over the surface of her suit did not look like something he ought to be touching.
They made their way to the door to the south hallways at the bow-ward end of the large loading deck. After a minute, they heard a loud beep signaling the “all clear” to open the door. Through the window pane of the door in front of them they could see Al and Mitchell approaching with great alarm, not wearing spacesuits.
Rosalyn waved them away as she tuned her comm set to be heard over the ship’s intercom. “Get out of the halls! Go to the dining room and wait for word from us! We’ve got possible contamination; everywhere we go might to need to be detoxed.”
They stopped, nodded, remembering the contamination protocols, and went back down the hallway to the far door, leaving it open, and stepped through two more doors and into the dining area, where they pushed a button shutting that door behind them. Cognizant of a potential airborne threat, SNTNL automatically took care of shutting the air vents. The vents and doors to the dining area would need to stay shut until they were certain there was no air contamination.
“SNTNL, run a test for airborne toxins,” said Terri.
“Right away,” it answered.
The door to the south hallways opened for the four suited crewmates and they hurried through the sectioned-off hallway, booted feet clanging against the floor. They passed through the common room and then turned right at the door to the north hallway. At the end of this hall, on the right, the door to the medical bay opened up for them, sliding in to the right, in two sections, automatically, allowing entrance to the large, multi-sectioned, and well-lit room fully equipped with all the latest medical technology. Cabinets stocked with a wide variety of drugs and medicines rounded out the place, and surgical supplies were abundant. They stopped in the surgical section of the medical bay where a long medical chair lay in its center, plenty of oxygen tanks beside a nearby operating table.
They set Shauna down on the floor and knelt down beside her to pull her out of her damaged suit.
“Are you going to need to take your suit off before you can do anything?” Rosalyn asked Terri.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh, eyelids low. The necessity of waiting for the air pollution test results before working was a welcome chance to catch her breath.
Sam and Randy hefted Shauna, dressed in a slim-fitting black jumpsuit, up onto the medical chair. There was a clearly visible bruise on the back of her short-haired head, and the skin of her face and hands looked sickly and faded darker in spots, as if her veins and capillaries were filled with that dark liquid…
Oh, no, thought Rosalyn. She glanced at Terri, who was studying Shauna as well. All four of them seemed to be having the same thought as she. They kept their distance from the damaged, liquid-soaked spacesuit there on the stretcher.
A few minutes passed and everyone hardly moved, not wanting to touch anything and possibly contaminate it further.
Finally SNTNL’s voice came on. “Air quality test complete. Air quality is at normal levels. It is safe to remove your spacesuits.”
They each sighed in relief. “It’s not airborne,” Terri said thankfully, popping off her helmet and shaking her braided, tied-back hair free. She hated being unable to touch her own face for so long. After removing her spacesuit and storing it in a cleaning station, she started walking around the room looking for tools she would need and pressing buttons on the medical chair.
Pretty soon each of the crewmates was back in their everyday attire, Terri wearing a white lab coat and long, yellow, rubber gloves that reached almost past her elbows. They gratefully breathed in the less-stale air of the Novara.
“Randy, can you help me out here?” Terri said.
Rosalyn’s eyes lowered a bit, staring at Terri, who avoided her gaze. Rosalyn was just as qualified a medical assistant as Randy was, if not more. But she brushed off the slight.
Randy nodded to Terri and went to get a lab coat and rubber gloves. “Why don’t one of you go tell the others they’re safe to come in here,” he said to Sam and Rosalyn.
“Sure,” Terri snapped, “but, like, don’t actually bring them in here to take up space while we’re trying to work.”
Dressed again in his casual-looking, loosely-worn, thin blue jacket, Sam looked Rosalyn’s way with a blank frown on his face for a moment before he stood up straight and walked out. “I’ll go keep them company,” he said.
Rosalyn reluctantly followed after him.
“Watch your feet,” he said to her as they walked through the hallway, their shoes pinging against the metal floor. “There are droplets.”
Spots of that black liquid dotted the floor. It had washed off of their suits just fine and didn’t seem to be posing a problem for them, but it was always best to take precautions.
“SNTNL,” commanded Rosalyn, “can you clean that stuff up and find out what it is?”
“Absolutely, Doctor Pulman. I’ll set the floor cleaner on it right away.”
They opened the door to the dining area and approached Al and Mitchell sitting nervously at the hexagonal table, anxious to know what was going on in greater detail.
Sam spoke up. “Thanks for waiting here, guys.”
“No airborne issues, then?” Mitch said, one hand tight on his knee and the other petting the cat, Brady, with his other.
“It’s all clear.” He looked shaken still as he went to sit down, wide ey
es pinned onto his feet.
Al gritted his teeth and spoke. “So…is she gonna be okay? …What happened?”
Sam struggled to speak. “I-I don’t know. She nearly drowned in something. We’re having SNTNL study the substance and Doctor Jones examine Shauna.”
Rosalyn wanted to sit, but she couldn’t do it. An anxious trembling within her center—an unpleasant energy—kept her moving. She started for the computer room.
“Where are you going?” said Mitchell.
The door slid open for her and she strode single-mindedly into the darkened, small room, where, amid many smaller computers, a single, enormous computer console was set into the wall. The light turned on automatically and she sat down on a comfortable, leather chair before the big monitor. She started tapping at the keyboard in front of her.
Back in the dining area, Mitchell stood up, coercing Brady to leap off of his lap and scamper toward the hallway. Mitch followed Rosalyn, and the others trailed behind.
Rosalyn was watching the footage that had been uploaded and saved to the computer from their helmet cameras. It was grainy, but revelatory. Presently, Rosalyn and the other three sat or stood watching footage from Sam’s helmet (it being the least damaged) of he and Shauna going through a multi-floored, squarish room with strange, raised pods set into the walls in rows. Everything looked foreign and old, with a sheen of dust to it.
Al stared at it with his trademark stone-faced look, more uncomfortable than usual. “This place is unbelievable. Something was here. Something we missed.”
“We are talking about an actual alien society of some kind, here, right guys?” Mitchell said, gaze shifting between the other three. “There’s nothing else it could be?”
Sam shrugged as he leaned against the wall. “Your guess is as good as ours.”
Mitchell spoke again. “So what are they? Why does everything look dead?”
He responded softly. “It wasn’t all dead, I don’t think. There were these tiny shell creatures. Scores of them. Maybe hundreds.”
“What? We didn’t see that,” said Mitchell, leaning forward to Rosalyn. “Show us!”
“Where is it in the footage, Sam?” asked Rosalyn.
“Before this. Go back.”
She pressed a button and the footage rewound. They watched until they saw pile after shallow pile of shells back when Sam and Shauna were by the rover. Sam had gotten a few good close-up looks at their fleshy interiors.
“Damn! Little alien things…” said Al.
Mitchell shook his head and exhaled, amazed. “We need to get some of those for FAER.”
“We are not bringing those things home,” Sam objected softly.
“Why the heck not? Gonna be worth way more than some rocks!”
“Skip forward a little, Rosalyn.”
On screen they saw the explorers discover the purple liquid on the ground, and that it had been secreted by the shell-aliens. Then Sam and Shauna realized it was acid and scrambled to get away, failing to rescue the rover.
“Holy cow… I-I’m sorry, man,” Mitchell said, adjusting his posture to compose himself. “I can’t believe we lost the rover.”
Sam shook his head, frowning.
“Just what are we dealing with on this planetoid?” Rosalyn questioned as she stared at the screen, not expecting any of them to be able to answer. It was something they would need to figure out quickly.
She skipped ahead to watch Shauna from Sam’s perspective as she approached, lifted, and then set down the strange orb object. Right as she set it down, something clicked and moments later the rushing torrents of black liquid came down. Rosalyn replayed that moment a couple times and then froze the footage right as Shauna had set the orb down.
“It’s like…she activated it when she replaced it,” she said.
An unspoken question hung over them. What exactly did she activate?
Suddenly an alert rang out, a slight but sharp electronic pinging noise.
“Oh, good. Another problem. We’d better get down there,” said Al, looking to Mitchell and Sam.
“You guys go,” said Sam, barely moving his body. “I’m gonna need some time to recoup.”
Mitchel and Al nodded to him understandingly. They left the computer room, entered the hallway, and turned right toward the stairwell to the lower level of the ship where they could attend to the engine systems.
Sam decided to exit the computer room too, looking disturbed. Rosalyn stared at the footage for a little while longer and then felt a nagging desire to make sure he was okay. She found him leaning against the wall at the end of the north hallway beside the medical bay, where a slim, tall window allowed vision into the outside, dark and windswept. A sullen look had overtaken his face.
Rosalyn went up to him and sighed, looking out the window. She put her hand on his arm. “It’s not your fault, Sam.”
He turned to her and mustered a faint smile. “I know. Don’t be worried. …It’s just that Shauna and I screwed up. Big time.”
She thought for a moment and met his eyes. “Well, I understand that. I’m worried about what we should do. What do we tell FAER?”
He chuckled. “You have a pragmatic mind to be worried about that. Then again, I guess…I guess with Shauna incapacitated…you’re the second-in-command, aren’t you?”
She nodded slowly as her eyes drifted out the window again, looking up at the stars through those heavy, darkened clouds. She hadn’t wanted to think of it, but he was right. She was captain now until Shauna was well enough to lead again. “What do you make of all this?”
“The stuff we’ve found? …I know I should probably be more filled with wonder, but I’m not. Something was off about that whole place.” He didn’t meet her gaze.
She looked at him and spoke softly. “I felt that too. I don’t know what to do. For the first time in my life I have…no idea what to do.”
They stood in silence for a minute. “You get used to it,” said Sam. “Not knowing what to do. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I mean, situations we don’t know how to deal with are kind of an occupational hazard for us. Should it surprise us?”
“No. You’re right. But I just can’t feel at ease when there are lives at stake. I can make mistakes, sure, but what do I do when those mistakes might cost people’s lives? How can I make a decision with a risk like that?”
He smirked. “FAER does it all the time.”
“That may be true, but at least they spend money to make sure our ships function properly. They provide services like SNTNL. Out here, on the forefront, we have to make the decisions that have real causes and effects. I mean, all because we explored something new, we almost lost Shauna.”
She said “almost”, but it was a hopeful usage of the word. What with that unknown factor, they couldn’t be certain that what had affected her wouldn’t kill her in due time. In fact, if she were honest with herself, that was more likely than not, statistically speaking. Even if the substance wasn’t toxic in and of itself, who could know if it carried some germ with it that no human had ever been exposed to and they had no clue how to treat? All they could do was hope it was all benign.
“Well, none of us signed up believing nothing like this could happen.”
She exhaled calmly. “We’ll see if you’ll all be feeling that way when things get worse.” Terri’s already starting to bristle under the pressure, she thought.
He laughed softly and said, “I know you’re doing your best. Whatever happens to us, and whatever decisions you make, I, at least, will remember that.”
With that, Sam smiled and walked down the hallway. Rosalyn stood up straight, staring after him with lifted spirits.
♦♦♦
The medical bay was filled with the smell of chemicals and heavily filtered air. Working feverishly with tubes and sticky patches and oxygen mask, Terri and Randy managed to stabilize Shauna. Although she was unconscious, her figure was looking less pale, she was breathing normally, and her heart rate and vitals all l
ooked good. Displayed on a large screen, the unknown substance could be found all within her bloodstream. However, it wasn’t affecting any of her life-sustaining systems, so Terri wasn’t overly worried about it at present. At least the woman would live.
After asking SNTNL to start testing the black substance, Terri discovered that Rosalyn had already asked it to start on that.
Of course she did. Terri had never met anyone so desperate for a promotion. At least she would be forced to sit quietly while Terri and Randy took care of Shauna. Besides, Terri would rather have Randy with her.
Sets of robotic arms in a closed-off chamber cleaned off Shauna’s filthy suit and collected all the black substance in a capsule, which Terri then sent into a chemical station to run more tests on it to see what it was and what it did. Randy took a seat on a wheeled stool, using a rag to wipe off his face, which was red with stress.
“Any clue what the liquid is?” he said.
“No.”
“Well…what do we know?”
“I’m gonna need you to ask more specific questions, honey.”
He shrugged and smirked. “Is it acid rainfall? Muddy water? Chocolate milk?”
She eyed him and responded, “The substance isn’t acidic. I’m sure it contains some water. And it isn’t organic-looking to me.”
“Good answers. But it isn’t killing her?”
She looked at the screen in front of her, which displayed a complex array of text and three-dimensional visuals of Shauna’s vitals. “No. She’s stable as can be.”
The beeping of the heart monitor was the only sound they heard for a few moments.
“Alright. Good work, Doctor. Should we go let everybody know?” Randy asked.
“We can let the suspense grow a little bit more.” She smiled at him before removing her lab coat and gloves to go wash her hands. “Not the most patient guy, are you?”
He shrugged again. “Not particularly.”
The faucet squeaked as she turned it on. “Well, I sure hope your girlfriend back home is patient.”
Seclurm: Devolution Page 6
