“Is Tom there?”
“Yeah, Howard, I'm here. I don't like the look of this.”
“How do you mean, Tom?”
“The fact the station doesn't move suggests it has a very particular purpose. There's only a couple of things I can think of.”
“Go on.”
“One, it could be a way-marker - a permanent post for some alien race when their vessels travel through space.”
“An intergalactic truck stop?”
“I guess you could call it that. But I'm afraid it might be...”
“Tom, don't hold out on me. If you've got a theory, just hit me with it.”
“I think it's a defensive station.”
“A defensive station? What do you think it's defending?”
“I wouldn't like to guess. But the fact its unmanned makes me think it will set off some kind of automated routine when somebody arrives.”
“What?” I exclaim. “Well in that case we need to get the two of you out of there!”
Tom shakes his head, while the image projected from Howard's camera remains steady. Paul stands in front of him, checking out the computers that ring the room.
“Jenny, try and calm down, please. It's not helping anything. We have to try and assess this logically.”
“Logic? How can we apply any kind of logic to this? We're in the middle of deep space, exploring some alien ship that we know nothing about! You two have to get back here.”
“Jenny, please. Tom, do you have any idea what kind of defence this thing might put up?”
“I have an idea, although it doesn't make much sense.”
“None of this makes sense.' I reply.
“Tom, stop being so obscure and come to the point.”
“The stars are moving, Howard. The stars around us are moving.”
I shake my head, looking over at Tom, wondering if he is delivering some kind of badly-timed joke. But Tom wears a serious look on his face. Even Howard offers only radio silence in reply. “I'm sorry, Howard. I think Tom is getting a little... I think he's losing it.”
“Losing it?!”
“For god's sake, you two, get it together. The last thing I need is you guys at each other's throats. Jenny, we don't need you making comments like that. You're not a psychologist, and until Tom starts talking to the voices in his head I don't want to hear it. Tom, what you just said to me sounds ridiculous, but I'm sure you wouldn't have said it if you didn't have a good reason for it.”
“Captain...” I protest, but Tom speaks over me.
“I thought I was losing it when I first noticed it. Unfortunately, the ship doesn't take enough viewport images for me to confirm it, although the next one is due any time now. But I've been watching them, trying to keep track of them with sketches. They are moving, just gradually for now, but I can't help but think they'll start to move quicker.”
“What do you think they will do?”
“I don't know.”
“You're not seriously listening to this, are you, captain? This is crazy talk. Stars don't just move.”
“Jenny, I won't say it again. Calm down. Look, make sure when the next viewport image is taken you get a good look at it. I want it compared to the previous images. If this is happening, then we might just be witnessing something we've never seen before.”
“It might still be dangerous, Howard. I think you should get out of the bridge and be ready to go in a hurry.”
“I'll take it under advisement, Tom. How long until the next image comes through, Jenny?”
“It's probably about five minutes, maybe ten. I wish you would head back in the meantime, though. We're in a better position to judge things from here.”
“I'll take that under advisement as well, Jenny. Just let me know how that image looks.”
***
With the captain quiet, Tom and I lapse into an uneasy silence. Maybe I went too far, accusing him like that, and the atmosphere between us has become even more uncomfortable. I don't know how I can trust him – I'm still dubious of his sanity. He just looks out of the viewport, gesticulating with his hands as he studies the starscape in front of him.
“Watching them all move?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah.”
“The image should be coming through in a couple of minutes.”
“You'll see it then.”
“Let's just wait on that one.”
I head over to the main computer, which I figure will be running its shot of the star-marked horizon shortly. The screen flashes up with 'image captured', and I press a few buttons to draw up that image and the three previous to it.
“We've got it.”
Tom turns around, jogging over, keen to see the pictures. With another few presses, I run the comparison between the first picture and the last. The computer processes it for a few seconds before drawing up the comparative image, and Tom taps the screen knowingly. I can only look on in amazement.
“I knew it. I knew it!” he cries, running back to the viewport and looking out again. The images show that the stars have moved, and have moved towards the space station that we currently look at. The movement was barely perceptible to me, but in intergalactic terms they are racing towards their destination.
“Tom, what does it mean?”
He doesn't answer, but runs to his notebook again. He begins scrawling, and I move to look over his shoulder. The figures mean nothing to me, so I repeat my question.
“I don't know. But I think Howard and Paul are going to be finding out very soon.”
“We have to get them out of there.”
I dash back to the console, but Tom shouts, “You can't help them now, Jenny. If my calculations are correct, the first of the stars will be there in five minutes. It will take them the better part of an hour to get back to the Dionysus.”
“We've got to let them know. We've got to help them.'
“Let them know, sure. But I don't know what we can do to help. What are we supposed to do to the stars?”
I shrug helplessly before hailing the captain.
“Howard, are you there?”
“Right here, Jenny. What did you find out?”
“I'm afraid Tom was right. The stars have been moving.”
Tom says, “It was subtle at first, Howard. But it's accelerating all the time. I think you'll be surrounded within ten or fifteen minutes at this speed.”
“So we can't get off?”
“Not until what is about to happen has happened, no.”
“I think you should just run to the Aphrodite.' I cut back into the conversation. 'Don't stop for anything. Whatever the stars are moving there for, maybe it'll take some time to happen. Just go for it, both of you.”
“That makes sense, Jenny. At least we have this recording, if nothing else.”
I don't like his tone, but can't think of a response to lift his mood.
“Keep radio silence for now. We'll focus on getting off. If you guys think of anything, anything that might help, just do it. Don't even ask.”
“OK, captain.”
***
Tom and I stand looking out of the viewport of the Dionysus. There's nothing we can do, of course. We don't have any information to go on, so all we can do is watch. Tom paces around intermittently, but I remain transfixed on the starscape. It seems amazing that I wouldn't notice the movement. It's getting quicker all the time, until you can imagine the stars tracing a line behind them as they zero in on their target.
“There are hundreds of them, Tom.”
“I know. I know.”
“We should never have let them go on board.”
“It's done now. We can't change it, no matter how much we might want to.”
It's a pretty final statement, so I go back to watching the firework stars descend on the station. Their pace is still increasing, and Tom rejoins me as the first of the stars comes to a halt. The others continue on implacably until
they have all gathered. The sight takes my breath away, filling me with equal awe and horror.
“I'm scared, Tom. Scared for them.”
“We should let them know what's happening.”
“The captain said not to.”
“It won't take a second. I'll do it.”
Tom gets up and goes to the console. He starts to speak, but my attention is entirely elsewhere. A net of lights has begun to link the stars, cosmic webbing forming the points of light into a brilliant globe. New connections emerge each moment, linking one to the next with threads of pure illumination.
“Oh my god, Tom, something's happening...”
I leave the intertwining stars and dash to the console, where the pictures jolt dangerously as the captain rushes back towards the Aphrodite. I can see Paul ahead of him, younger legs driven on by the same survival instinct. Howard is shouting breathlessly into his mic.
“It's death, Tom, Jenny. It's pure death. But it's made of pure life... please, get us out of here.”
“Howard, just keep running!” I cry, while Tom watches the screen, ashen-faced. Ahead there is a flare of light, and Paul is lifted from his feet. The camera stills as Howard abruptly stops.
“Can you see this? The beauty...”
Howard begins sobbing, and I can barely choke back my own tears. On camera Paul is being held up by a figure, a figure constructed of pure light. The glare in the camera makes it almost impossible to see.
“I can't take my eyes off it...” Howard whispers.
Ahead, Paul's body is convulsing with an unknown sensation. Then, just as suddenly as it flared to life, the light is gone, replaced by an abject and utter darkness.
“What just happened? Howard?”
“Paul's life signs are gone. They're gone!”
“He's dead?”
“He's dead. He's dead. Oh god, I'm next... Wait... It's still there.”
I look at the live pictures, and realise with a rising horror that Howard is right. I can make out a figure, the same shape as the luminescent form that had stood there moments ago. But somehow it is imprinted in the darkness, a black made clear within the black. I look carefully and the figure seems to be ripping at something, tearing downwards with its arms, pulling sharply. Then it lowers its head, and I have a horrible impression of what is happening to Paul.
“I think it has him, Jenny. Tom, it's got him. I need to get out of here.”
“Just go, Howard. Run, it doesn't matter where!”
“It's too late. It's coming...”
The view on the camera shows the impossible shadow stalking forward, moving with the certainty of a predator stalking wounded prey. Each sinuous movement, each determined step fills me with a terror that makes me want to look away, to vomit, to curl myself into a ball and hide from the reality. As the shape comes towards him, Howard doesn't run, but stands tall and gives us his final words.
“You have to get these pictures back to Earth somehow. I don't know what we've seen today, but if we can warn others, if we can somehow understand...”
“Howard, just run!”
My tears have finally started to come, while Tom just looks on implacably. Once Howard is done speaking, the camera fills with the face of the shadow, so close it must be pressed to Howard's helmet. It's then that he screams, a cry that implies an unfathomable nightmare made flesh.
What we see in the picture only confirms that.
It is an utterly inhuman face, a face seemingly constructed of pure nothing but still somehow existing. It twists perpetually, adopting one shape after another, each impossible to comprehend. But each of them is made up somehow of the geometric forms found throughout the ship, pushed together in formations that simply should not be.
There is a blast of static, a long, keening cry of white noise, then the picture is gone. The screen has gone black, although I look away in case the dark abomination still inhabits it somehow. Tom and I look at one another, both shaking. I have tears in my eyes, and my hands have inadvertently balled into fists. I try to speak, but a voice comes over the speakers. It uses Howard's voice, but it has another grotesque layer beneath it.
“Leave ... this space. Do not return.”
I shake my head in disbelief, Tom reaches for the microphone.
“Who is this?”
“Want you ... to leave. All will die.”
“You killed them already.”
“All who come ... die. This space ... must not be ... seen.”
“Why not?”
“I am ... like them. They ... worse. Seek...”
“What do they seek?”
“Seek ... passage. You ... must go. No more to die.”
“Yes, no more. We'll go.”
With this promise, there is only silence again, a noiselessness to match the imageless screens.
“Come on, let's get the engines going.”
I nod, too shocked to do anything else.
***
Within five minutes we are moving away, the Dionysus pulling away from the strange space station where Howard and Paul just died. As I watch, the stars have already begun to rearrange themselves, disconnecting from one another before sliding back towards their places.
Tom emerges from the engine room, and does something he has never done before. He reaches out and holds me, and I surprise myself by relaxing into his arms. We will always have this; a common nightmare, the sight of the stars that can bring complete light and total dark, the stars that can live, or create life. The stars that can bring fear and death to those that intrude upon them.
I stay in his arms for a long time, silent until he tightens his grip to the point of discomfort.
“Tom, you're hurting me.”
He pushes me away, heading towards the viewport.
“Do you see that?” he asks.
“The stars again?”
“No, not the stars. Look.”
He points, and now I see what caused him to release his grip.
Slowly, but very clearly, the Aphrodite has begun to pull away from the space station.
Gods of the Ice Planet
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
We were not prepared for the coming of the gods. How could we be? In the space between thoughts they erupted onto our world, killing hundreds of our people. But they were gods: one cannot blame the gods as if they were normal creatures like ourselves. They seared us away with their heat, destroyed every living thing around themselves. When the survivors –those too far from them to be obliterated– understood what had happened, they looked and saw the great mountain that the gods had made. It was dark and angular, reaching high towards the sky, and yet like nothing of our world, made of shapes and substances we had no name for.
Had they fallen from the sky? Had they thrust themselves from the killing heat deep within the earth? They were gods. Such questions have no meaning. They were not bound by the laws that trammel feeble creatures such as we, any more than we could hold them to account for the deaths their coming had caused.
But we had gods now, incarnate and in the world: gods of terrible power, therefore surely of infinite wisdom and understanding. We could not know them, but they were of a different order. We knew that they could lean down to our level, if we could only entreat them. What might the gods not tell us, of the world?
***
The Pioneer
I came off a shift that had stretched on three hours too long, not that time is what it should be stuck out on this rock. I never regretted my life more than after they sent me here. Construction of the base is proceeding so slowly. All this machinery is specially designed to work in these temperatures, and still it breaks down for a pastime. Everyone says it. Each time we wake there’s another list of problems to be fixed, longer and longer. It’s as though we’re actually losing ground on the project – the more we build it up, the more goes wrong. We’re supposed to go live with the first geological bores next week, but I’ve t
old them, we’re way off. We won’t break ground and start testing for a month, at the least. Yes, yes, central office is spitting fire about it, but let them come over here. Let them work where you can never get properly warm, no matter all the sealed compartments and high-power heaters and regulated suits. Let them work where it’s always dark outside because the ‘sun’ isn’t much more than another star in the sky. Let them work on a planet where the years run to decades and the days run to months. And let them do it constantly short of materials and entertainment and drink and food because shipping stuff out here is so expensive.
I have been on this frozen hell for eight months now, trying to get the base fit to receive all those more important science and corporate and mining types who are expecting to live here in the lap of luxury. I am sick of this place, and I’m only glad my shift is up in just a few weeks and then I can go back to Earth. Not that I’ve got anything to go back to. Not that the Earth I go back to will look anything like the one I left. But at least it’ll be warm.
***
Of course we spoke, we elders. The gods could not be ignored. We cast our voices through the earth to one another. Every quarter was heard from. There had never been such a gathering of minds.
Debate raged back and forth as to what the gods wanted from us. It was obvious to all that they must have come here for a purpose. Had we displeased them? Were they testing us? Everyone had an idea. Nobody could agree.
Then I spoke up, and because I am one of the oldest, and have seen our people through many travails, they listened.
We cannot know, I told them. They are here for a reason, but they are gods: we cannot guess at it. We can only present ourselves to them, in all humility, and submit to their judgment.
By this time it was plain that there were gods, and not just god. Smaller mountains had appeared in many places, killing any who were present. Some suggested that we should read meaning into the pattern of their appearance, saying that the gods sprang up wherever certain flaws and structures within the earth could be found, but they were appearing and disappearing too fast to know. Only that first great mountain, the largest of them all, was constant.
Aliens - The Truth is Coming (Book of Aliens 1) Page 3
