Luna

by Rick Chesler

  Silence, as the group huddled in the tunnel.

  “Or was that effort?”

  Still nothing.

  “Because if I’m not mistaken, that wasn’t really good enough, now was it?”

  “Past mistakes shouldn’t lower the bar, should they Blake?” Kennedy’s voice reminded them all that there was a complex dynamic here. This was no longer Outer Limits’ problem alone.

  They all heard Blake take a deep breath. “If you would all just allow me to concentrate on my path, I’m confident that I can find what we’re looking for.”

  “Blake, I will say this for you,” Kennedy said. “Back during our first startup—that early web transaction thing—you always had a knack for getting people to keep forging ahead, even when there was no clear path. Especially when there was no clear path, I think. You kept us all moving, when it meant death to stand still. The only thing, though, Blake? You weren’t always right, either. Sometimes you were. I just hope this is one of those times, Mr. Garner. Carry on.”

  They did just that, creeping through the eerie system of underground passages, periodically checking their suit systems to catch a malfunction as early as possible, to monitor the supply of oxygen keeping them alive in this hostile environment. Blake stayed at the front of the pack and a couple of times, after they turned down a tunnel, he would suddenly step back around, hand outstretched, telling them to turn back because he’d led them down what he could see was a dead end. But after a while, Caitlin and Asami agreed they were definitely in new territory. They encountered no footprints on these new paths.

  Still wary of every ceiling and floor lest they be alive, the group forged on. The grumblings about whether Blake would be able to find his stash location were starting up again when they passed into an open cave. A pile of equipment sat in the middle of it, so foreign in this otherwise completely natural environment. A spacesuit stained with bluish brown splotches minus a body lay nearby. The spacewalkers piled into each other as those first into the cavern stopped in their tracks to take in the unusual scene.

  “Is that blood on that suit... Is that Suzette?” Caitlin managed after some time.

  “It looks like it could be deoxygenated blood,” Asami observed.

  Blake took a couple of tentative steps toward the blood-caked mess. “First of all, there’s no one in that suit. It’s just a suit. Second of all, it’s missing the helmet, which could mean that whoever was using it somehow switched suits after incurring damage...”

  “It says KNOWLES,” Caitlin said, glaring at Blake through their faceplates. No one said anything until Kennedy asked, “Who’s Knowles?”

  “Care to answer that, Blake?” Caitlin fumed.

  “Strat Knowles was a former employee of Outer Limits. He quit to work as a consultant,” he returned flatly.

  “And?” Caitlin prompted at the silence ensuing when he added nothing further. The group spread out in order to afford each of them a better look at the interior of the cave while Caitlin continued.

  “Look, Blake. You’ve been awfully secretive about Strat, and now here’s his bloody suit up here with a pile of gear! What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably just a spare suit.”

  Kennedy made a spitting noise. “With blood on it? What do you mean you don’t know? You said he quit Outer Limits to work as a consultant. What’s going on, Blake? If you knew something about what was going on up here that posed a danger to others, you could be held liable for Suzette’s death. You know that, right?”

  “She wasn’t dead yet the last we saw her.”

  Caitlin made a sound of indignation. “Oh, right, excuse me. How could I forget? You’re right, Blake, she’s not dead, she’s just part of a fucking worm monster being dragged around while her body is being used for...used for oxygen or something...”

  At this, Kennedy stepped between the arguing Outer Limits astronauts. “Look, you two. You’re talking about a serious situation, and one that, I’m sorry to say, I wouldn’t put past Blake. In fact, my spacesuit has the capability to contact our Mission Control in New Mexico directly, but the signal won’t penetrate underground. But know this, Blake: if there is some serious wrongdoing on your part, it’s up to you how much you want me to use it against you when we get back. You help us out here with this equipment—and so far, at least you’ve led us to some equipment—but you see this through and get us all back home, and that would go a long, long way to me not using this kind of juicy morsel against you. But right now we don’t have the time to get into it, okay? We need to start sorting through that equipment over there and figure out what we can use, what we can take back with us.”

  Blake stayed silent but the others agreed and Caitlin dropped her line of inquiry, promising Blake she’d revisit the subject later. The double team made their way cautiously to the center of the cave, spreading out around the pile of space gear. They began picking through it to figure out what they had at their disposal, to separate the junk from potentially useful items. After a couple of minutes, Takeo pointed to a metal canister. “Oxygen tank, here. Gauge reads full.”

  “Another over here,” Kennedy called from the other side of the pile, bending down to pick up another cylinder.

  “Let’s set everything we’re going to want right over here, together.” Kennedy pointed to a patch of ground a little ways away from the center of the cave and the gear. The astronauts began carrying objects there and depositing them.

  “Still looking for that parts box,” Blake said, rooting around the stuff. The implication was clear: Black Sky had the most valuable components of what they wanted, in the form of the oxygen cylinders, but what Outer Limits most needed was the electronic part likely to be in that box. Not a minute later, Asami called out. “Got something here, Blake.”

  She held up a gray metal container.

  “Don’t open it,” Blake cautioned. “We don’t want anything to float away.” The reminder that there was limited gravity here wasn’t likely needed, and yet the image of a critical part floating up and getting caught in some narrow crevice in the cave ceiling or wall was a grim one, indeed.

  Kennedy agreed. “Let’s just take the whole box back to the lander and open it there. What else can we use?”

  The team looked around and scavenged a few more odds and ends, but clearly the big prizes were the full oxygen canisters and the large box of electrical parts. Blake eyeballed his suit’s oxygen gauge. “How about we get going, people? I doubt we can carry too much more, anyway.”

  No objections were voiced. The team rounded up the gear in the center of the cave. They split the burden as equally as possible. Here on the moon, weight was not the issue, simply the bulkiness and unwieldy nature of some of the items. But they managed to grab all of the gear and exit the cave back into the tunnels.

  Blake led the way, free of gear so that he could scout ahead to navigate if necessary, with Kennedy behind him, carrying one of the oxygen tanks. Once they got into a hiking rhythm, moving through the trails, things went smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that Kennedy and Blake got to talking, which was okay for a while, but then, after noticing Blake craning his head around to check the walls and ceilings so frequently, the subject of the creatures came up.

  “So, Blake, let me ask you...when exactly did you plan to unveil your discovery of life on the moon? At some opportune moment timed to inflict maximum damage to Black Sky, I suppose, right?”

  Blake was indignant. “Believe it or not, Kennedy, but your operation is not the only thing on my mind at all times. I—”

  Kennedy whirled around from where he’d been standing to get a closer look at the tunnel wall, concerned that, as he had heard, it wasn’t really a wall, to literally point a finger at Blake. As he spun, the valve of the oxygen tank knocked against the wall.

  “Blake, the problem with you has always been—” He cut himself off mid-sentence as he felt the tank hit. He stopped to stare at the valve. It was marked with a red line that was visible
when in the OFF position, but now the line was green, meaning the valve was open. Behind him, Asami pointed to it.

  “Kennedy! Valve’s open. Close it!”

  The Black Sky CEO reached out and twisted the valve shut, but not before a gush of pure oxygen was released into the airless passage.

  33| The Consultant

  “Asami, did that valve open?” Blake’s voice rung with concern.

  “It did,” Kennedy responded.

  “I don’t trust you to tell me the truth, Kennedy. Sort of like that time you told me we were getting quality chips from that company in Mongolia. That worked out real well, as I recall—”

  “It opened, Blake! I saw it.” Asami’s shrill words cut Blake off.

  “We need to get out of here very fast then, people,” Blake said. “Our lab scientist says the creatures are attracted to pure oxygen.”

  “How does he know that?” Kennedy asked.

  “We need to move now!” was Blake’s only response. The group took off down the tunnel at a loping, bouncing moonwalk, the top of their helmets occasionally scraping against the ceiling.

  “Blake, how does your scientist know that the creatures are attracted to oxygen? It’s dangerous for us to move this fast through here,” Kennedy said, panting, “so I think we have a right to know your reasoning.”

  But Blake hurried on in silence, pausing at a Y-fork to look left, then spot their footprints and move right. They heard Caitlin’s voice next over the comm link.

  “He knows because he and Martin Hughes captured a small, live specimen earlier and brought it back to our lander’s lab.”

  At this, Kennedy actually stopped in his tracks despite the well-known urgency for haste. “What?”

  Takeo bumped into him with his sudden halt.

  “Yes, we brought back a specimen to the lab, that’s how we know. Can we get going now, please?” Blake came back.

  “Sure we can,” Kennedy said, putting one foot in front of the other again, “but tell me this, Blake. How many more secrets are you hiding from us? I mean c’mon, it’s been one thing after another. Reminds me of the time when you misled our investors into thinking our home security software would be first to market even though you knew a Chinese competitor would beat us. Remember that, Blake? Remember Tsing Mao?”

  “I remember it all too well, Kennedy. I also recall that—”

  Suddenly, the tunnel wall opened up on their right side. A cavernous, dark space appeared there for a moment but was then filled in as an enormous one of the creatures filed its body past the opening.

  “That one is huge!” Takeo said. He sounded genuinely scared.

  “What do we do?” Kennedy looked over at Caitlin and Blake.

  “Stay calm,” Blake told him. “It’s very large, it won’t be able to enter the tunnel just anywhere. Hopefully it keeps going.”

  But no sooner had he finished his sentence than the great beast halted its forward movement, sliding to a stop next to the group. Its gray, scaly body quivered in unpredictable spasms.

  “It stopped,” Caitlin said.

  “Maybe we should go,” Kennedy suggested.

  “Wait, what’s that?” Asami pointed to a section of the worm’s body, near the underbelly. “There’s some kind of discoloration.”

  Blake stared at it, too. “Does everyone have everything they’re supposed to be carrying? Because it looks like this thing may be sitting on something manmade.”

  Everyone accounted for what they were carrying; nothing was missing. Then the worm moved, rotated inside the rock wall, so that what they had been thinking of as its “belly” now rode up higher within the rock opening.

  “Is that—” someone started.

  “It’s a helmet,” Asami said. “Wait...”

  “It’s a face!” Kennedy suddenly screamed. “Oh my God, it’s a face? What is going on here? Blake! Let’s go!”

  But no one moved. They were too entranced by the horror of what they were witnessing, like a group of motorists rubbernecking at a bad car accident, they couldn’t look away.

  “It’s—is...it?— a helmet with a face in it!” Takeo stammered.

  Caitlin dared take a step toward the monstrosity for a better look. She leaned in closer. “It’s just a helmet...Wait...Strat? Oh my God, I see his face!” They heard her retching over the comm channel. Blake reached out and thumped her on the back. “Get a grip on yourself, don’t throw up. Come on.”

  Instead, she broke down crying. “What the fuck am I seeing, Blake? Is that... is that Strat?”

  Kennedy spoke for Black Sky. “We don’t know what he looks like, not that whoever that is, or was, still looks like they used to.”

  Blake stared into the helmeted face that was sewn into the side of the creature. Through the scratched faceplate, he recognized those green eyes, the shape of the mouth...and...there: the scar on the right cheek, fish hook shaped. In New Mexico, Strat had told him the story of how he had gotten it once, as a boy, playing with fireworks one New Year’s Eve. Jesus...

  “Strat!” Caitlin wailed.

  They all saw it: the eyes widened in recognition.

  “Good lord!” Kennedy gasped. “Where...what happened to his body?”

  It was a good question. All they could see was his face.

  “It’s...it’s in there somewhere!” Takeo couldn’t hide the incredulity in his voice. “It must be, he’s alive! His eyes are open, blinking!”

  “But his spacesuit was bloody and shredded back there.” Kennedy looked behind them back toward the cave, as if he would see the discarded space garment walking on its own toward them on bloody legs.

  “This is like what happened to Suzette,” Asami said. A flash of regret coursed through her in an instant as she recalled the uncomfortable incident with the camera. I’m sorry, Suzette.

  No one replied, and then the worm moved. The face of Strat Knowles was ground into the tunnel floor, the faceplate of his helmet recessed just enough into the creature’s flesh to keep it from breaking. A tear ran down Caitlin’s face inside her helmet, before the worm righted itself and again Stat’s imprisoned head came into view.

  This time they saw his lips move. Saw them move and then heard his voice, as if in a nightmare, over the comm channel. Like Suzette’s had been, it was bubbly, the words nearly indistinguishable from each other, but barely recognizable.

  “Blake...I’m a consultant now...”

  Then the worm moved off down the rock fissure it inhabited, carrying Strat with it. They could no longer see him but still they heard his mangled voice. “...moon...I know more about the moon than anyone...moon...”

  “Switch channels!” Kennedy demanded. They did, and then they started walking. But soon Strat found them on this new frequency. “...consultant. Need my help. It hurts...pain. I know everything now though.”

  “He’s not making any sense!” Blake yelled. “Let’s go!” He and Kennedy led the way through the tunnel, with Caitlin bringing up the rear, constantly looking back to watch for the massive worm—Strat’s worm.

  Then Asami’s shriek pierced their earpieces.

  34| They’re Baaaaack

  Asami was second to last in line in the procession of moonwalkers. Takeo was behind her and Caitlin immediately in front of her. A yawning gulf appeared to their right and a massive worm-like animal jutted into the passage. At first, it slammed its humongous proboscis, if those earthly zoological terms had any meaning here, to and fro, whipping up a highly localized maelstrom of lunar dust and knocking Takeo backwards to land on his side.

  Then the worm reared its head up again and an aperture at the end of it dilated, the “mouth” not so much as unhinging on a set of jaws as it was unfolding like an old camera lens. The body of the animal tracked across the tunnel floor while the head bent at an ungodly angle, bringing the aperture down on Asami’s helmeted head. It seemed to inhale the spacewoman into its gullet, her feet leaving the ground, flailing ineffectively in the airless void.

  “Ge
t me out, get me...Caitlin! Blake...anybody!”

  The only part of Asami not yet ingested was from the knees down. Caitlin was closest to her and the first to grab hold of her feet. She crossed Asami’s ankles and clutched them together so as to get a better grip, but the sheer force of the monster was overwhelming, and Caitlin was shipped into the tunnel ceiling as the worm-creature twisted spasmodically about. From her awkward position lying pressed up against the tunnel roof, Caitlin lashed out with a booted foot and kicked the creature in its...underside, she guessed it was. The flesh was soft and spongy, though, absorbing most of her impact as if she had booted a half-deflated rubber ball. Even so, the animal gyrated even more with her efforts, twisting and cavorting recklessly as the comm channel filled with panicky shouts.

  By the time Caitlin hit the ground in that slow motion moon gravity and looked up again, the other astronauts were doing battle with the thing, lashing out at it with small hand tools, coordinating their efforts to attack different parts of the beast. But what captured her attention was Asami. Somehow she had inverted herself within the beasts’ mouth so that her head was now visible. Caitlin made eye contact with her through their faceplates, and in that ephemeral burst of wordless human communication, she stared into depths of terror that had been unknown to her only moments before, for the alien being’s jaws or mouth or whatever the hell it had began to close around Asami’s head.

  “Need help, people!” Caitlin pleaded. The group was already circled tightly around the worm-thing, poking and prodding at it to little effect. And then the animal’s fleshy outer lip-like appendages sloshed over Asami’s helmet, the astronaut looking out as they swiped back and forth over the glass, like a scared kid in a carwash. Then the sea of swampy flesh inside the animal’s mouth circulated, moved, parted, revealing a set of teeth in multiple rows. Not sharp teeth like fangs or even incisors, but more like big molars with flat, grinding surfaces.

  Those teeth closed around Asami’s helmet with ferocious speed and force, cutting off the astronaut’s scream as the helmet shattered, instantly exposing her head to the zero-pressure environment. Her head imploded, caving in on itself in a microsecond. The creature reared back and gyrated with the influx of bio-fluids down its open maw while the faceplates of Kennedy and Blake were splattered with gore to the point it obscured their vision.