by M. G. Herron
Well, Griv knew he was old. But he was not yet daft.
One thing at a time. First, he had to verify his new assumptions. “Were you responsible for the Canadian mine that collapsed two years ago?” he asked the air.
The gold snow returned to a nearby monitor and formed a hard circle. The circle collapsed in upon itself.
Griv nodded. That was verification enough for him. He didn’t know how the thing understood his questions. Perhaps it had learned to understand their language by watching the miners on Mars over the years. Or perhaps it was using his ship’s systems to interpret for it.
“And now Raul’s men are infringing upon your space again. Your…city?”
The gold snow made a pantomime on the screen. It showed a circle, colored red like copper—Griv realized that was meant to represent Mars. The image zoomed in upon the planet, made a hole in its surface, and showed several dozen man-shaped specks diving down a long tunnel. The tunnel extended toward a bright, hard gold knot. As the pantomime went on, the knot got bigger and brighter. And then when they got close again, the tunnel collapsed, and the gold knot sparkled.
“How many of you are there?”
The bright gold knot scattered into a million tiny pinpricks of light that filled the screen—filled all three large displays in the cargo hold.
Griv gasped. “A whole civilization,” he breathed softly.
The mining bots began to dance, gyrating back and forth.
“I want to help. What can I do?”
The pantomime on the monitor reformed the hard speck of gold in the center of the copper-red circle, and drew a hard square perimeter around the speck.
Griv nodded. It wanted to protect its people—of course. Who wouldn’t?
“I can help you, but not with my ship stranded out here. With the EM drive down, we’re just drifting through space.” Of course, Griv could radio for help. The next freighter on its way back to Earth’s space stations could tow him along. But that could take days, even weeks before someone could come for him.
The copper-red circle that represented Mars pulsed hard in the screen.
Griv shook his head. “The mining companies own the land now. I can’t stand up to them on my own. Besides,” he said, not trying to contain the hard edge that crept into his voice, “even if I could, you took my EM drive offline. I can’t get back to Mars.”
The perimeter of Mars on the screen wilted and fell. The gold specks settled at the bottom of the screen. He couldn’t be certain, but Griv thought it meant the creature was disappointed in him.
“Fine,” Griv said. “I’ll try.”
Picking up a comms unit embedded into a wall of the cargo ship, Griv dialed Oro Dawn on Mars. He asked for Raul, and the line connected.
“Yeah?” Raul said.
“It’s me,” said Griv. “Raul, listen, you have to stop operations in the low mines immediately.”
“Are you serious?” Raul said.
“What your men have been saying is true. The mining bots I sent you will be destroyed just like the others. And the mine will collapse.”
“I’ve never had a collapse in ten years.”
“Remember what happened in the Canadian mine? It happened because they got too close to some aliens who live down there.”
“Jesus,” Raul scoffed. “Aliens? I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. You, of all people, should know there’s no life on Mars. It’s a dead planet!”
“Not aliens like you’re thinking. They’re…it’s hard to explain. But I can show you!”
“You just can’t stand the idea that you never found life on Mars.”
“No, it’s not that at all. Raul, you’ve got to believe me. Those stories really are true. Your men aren’t just being superstitious—”
“I told you that in confidence!” Raul said, outraged.
“I know, but—”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Raul said, a hard edge in his voice. The line disconnected.
Griv tried to reconnect several times, but his calls were ignored. He hung the comms unit back on the wall, sighed wearily, and rubbed a hand across his eyes.
Griv reflected on what had transpired in the last couple weeks. The breach in the hull, the glitchy monitors—it seemed the being had been trying to get through to him all along. It had probably crept onto the ship during his last visit, when he took the busted mining bots from Oro Dawn back to Earth’s space station for recycling.
“Can you restore the EM drive?”
The gold specks swirled aimlessly, forming no shapes. He took that as a no.
“Then we have to figure out a way to get to Earth. There are people there who can help us.” If I can convince them you’re not just a figment of my imagination.
The gold specks pulsed an angry red color.
“I understand that you’re upset. But you heard him. And I’m only one man.”
A man who all of Earth consider a failure, Griv thought. All except one: Deirdre. Unlike Raul, she would believe him…if he could get back to her, and talk to her in person. He wouldn’t make the mistake of trying to convince her over the comms unit like he had with Raul. He would show her in person, so there was no room for doubt.
The outline of Mars pulsed in the screen again.
“I told you,” Griv said, the frustration evident in his voice, “if you can’t repair the EM drive then I can’t get back to Mars to help you.” It had probably broken the engine because it thought that Griv was its best chance to get through to the humans, and it didn’t want him to get too far away again.
Griv took a deep breath, and spoke slowly, careful to keep the anger out of his voice. “If you want my help, you have to trust me. We need to get back to the space stations orbiting Earth. I can find the help I need there.”
The gold specks on the screen swirled for a moment, then vanished off the screen.
Griv pursed his lips. Did the being give up that easily? After it had camped out on his ship, trying to get through to him for so long? With its entire civilization under attack?
Knowing that he was still stranded alone out here, gold-speck non-corporeal being of energy sabotaging his ship or not, Griv climbed back up the ladder to the cockpit with vague plans to radio for help.
The gold specks were once again arranged on the cockpit windows, this time into thick rope-like strands.
At least, that’s what he initially thought. Griv’s jaw dropped when he realized that the gold strands, like ropes of light, were arranged outside the windows now, attached to the front of his ship like a giant parachute.
Griv checked the ship’s speed on the control panel—the velocity gradually increased from two hundred miles per hour upward. Griv slowly lowered himself into the pilot’s chair, eyes wide. In another five minutes, they had passed three hundred miles per hour and were still accelerating.
“Just like a solar sail,” Griv whispered.
The being collected the sun’s particles and used the energy to carry Griv’s freighter toward Earth. Together, they hurtled through the void.
And, for a change, the familiar darkness outside Griv’s cockpit windows, now glowing with a golden light, didn’t seem quite so empty.
6
Journey Home
OVER THE NEXT day, Griv spent some time trying to fix the EM drive, but he was a poor substitute for a real spacecraft engineer and gave up when he opened the egg-shaped casing and found char marks climbing up the inside of the curved white wall. Like the mining bot and his repair drone, the alien had fried the EM drive to complete inoperability.
Griv sighed wearily, thinking of the funds he would need to replace the drive, and how those funds were permanently out of his reach without an operable ship.
If this was to be his last mission, Griv decided, he could at least make the most of it.
It took seven days to reach Earth—seven glorious days where Griv got to study the strange alien being in close proximity.
Its ability to shapeshift wa
s mesmerizing—Griv couldn’t look away. After the ship had reached a significant speed, the being retreated back inside the ship and balled up in a corner of the cockpit, its light significantly diminished. After a moment of shivering, it dissolved itself back into the electrical system. The ship’s lights dimmed momentarily as the being seemed to draw power from the system to replenish itself.
“Remarkable,” Griv said.
He tried to ask the being about its eating habits, its history, its culture. But the on-screen pantomime it used to communicate was a poor substitute for language, and no real concrete details could be conveyed in a way that Griv could understand them.
Griv did learn, however, that there was another good reason the alien beings lived deep in the heart of the red planet. Like it fed off the electrical power of the ship, the beings used the heat of the planet’s molten core to sustain themselves.
The heat, and the gold deposits, it turned out. At least that was Griv’s best guess at the pantomime that showed thick veins of gold alongside the molten core of the planet. He didn’t know if gold was food or water to them, or just a cultural treasure, but one thing was clear: it was not happy that the mining companies had made it their mission to steal it.
The cockpit screen showed the little human-shaped figures excavating and carting out gold by the handful. The vein where the gold was located oozed and bled like an open wound on the screen. It pulsed an angry red.
“Don’t look at me,” Griv said. “It wasn’t my idea. Besides, I’m as mad about it as you are.”
As mad, perhaps, but not as hurt. The being’s pain was palpable, and despite his words, Griv felt the creeping guilt of responsibility for his species’ harmful actions.
At the end of the week, they finally reached the space station where Deirdre worked. Griv called ahead.
“Deirdre,” he said, unable to keep the relief out of his voice when she came on the line.
“Dad? Did something happen?”
“I’m about to dock at the space station. Can you come meet me?”
She let out a shaky breath, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m at work, Dad. Can’t you just tell me over the phone?”
“Please, sweetheart. It’s important.”
A sigh. “Fine.”
“And Deirdre?”
“What?”
“Bring Sinclair.”
A stunned silence. “Really?”
“Yes.” Griv ended the call before she could recover her balance.
Then he activated the thrusters, and guided his freighter toward the open maw of the space station hangar.
7
A Worthwhile Investment
AFTER HE PARKED in the hangar, Griv lowered the ramp to the cargo hold and paced in the empty space while he waited for Deirdre and Sinclair to arrive.
Deirdre strode up the ramp alone, her shoulder-length auburn curls swinging in sync with her gait. Her freckled face was set in a stern look that reminded him so much of her mother that it brought back unpleasant memories of their divorce.
Griv frowned. “Where’s Sinclair?”
She rolled her eyes like only a daughter can do. “So nice to see you, Deirdre. Sorry I didn’t send a message to tell you my trip was delayed by several days, I’m sure you must have been worried.”
A flush crawled up his thick neck. “Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me!”
“I…” Griv should have realized she would be worried about him. He hadn’t contacted her because he wanted to wait to talk to her in person about the alien hiding on his ship, but realized after he thought it how selfish this was. He hung his head. “Really, I’m sorry.”
She crossed her arms and bit her upper lip momentarily before speaking. “Well? Why did you need to see me so urgently?”
“Let’s wait till Sinclair gets here so I don’t have to explain it twice.”
“Why this insistence on seeing Sinclair all of a sudden? I know you don’t like him.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Sinclair said as he walked up the ramp and into Griv’s cargo hold. “Which made me doubly curious why he asked for me by name.”
Deirdre’s light skin instantly turned bright pink, and she pointedly averted her face.
“It’s okay,” Griv said. “Better, really, that it’s all out in the open. Thank you for coming, Sinclair. I know we’ve had our differences, but I’m hoping we can set those aside for a moment.”
Both of them were gazing at Griv with skeptical expressions.
“It has come to my attention,” Griv said, “that there is, in fact, life on Mars.”
“Oh, Dad…” Deirdre said. She flushed an even deeper red.
“Now hear me out, eh?”
“Go on,” Sinclair said, in the tone a bemused father might use to humor an obstinate child.
“I recently delivered a shipment of mining bots to Oro Dawn. While I was there, Raul, the site manager, told me about some of his workers’ superstitions. Apparently the mining bots had been getting inexplicably fried while exploring the lower mines.” Griv paced while he spoke. “The miners were saying that they were seeing ghosts. Except, they weren’t seeing ghosts at all. They were seeing—well, they were seeing aliens.”
“Dad, this is going too far,” Deirdre said. “Everyone knows there’s no life on Mars. And don’t you think if there was life there we would have found it by now? You yourself spent several years of my childhood—years when I barely saw you at all—searching for signs of life, only to come up empty handed.”
“Indeed,” Sinclair added pointlessly.
“You don’t need to remind me, dear,” Griv said, gritting his teeth. “I am abundantly aware of my own failures. But now I have proof.”
He stopped pacing, and gestured to the nearest monitor. The alien being extracted itself from the monitor to stand—or rather, to float, in a puddle of shining lights near the floor of the cargo hold. Griv noted with some nervous concern that the artificial atmosphere and gravity in the space station seemed to weigh the being down.
Deirdre gasped as her hands shot to her mouth.
“Holy hell!” Sinclair said, staggering back a step.
Deirdre was the first to recover. “How’d you get her to come with you?”
Griv cocked his head. “How do you know it’s a her?”
“How do you know it’s not?”
He nodded. “Point taken. I have no idea if they even have genders, as I’ve only seen this one. And to answer your question, I didn’t get her to come back with me. She snuck aboard my ship, and fried my EM drive to keep me from getting too far away from Mars…because her people are in danger, and she thought I could help.”
“In danger, how?” Sinclair asked. If he had eyebrows, they would have been raised in questioning surprise. His face was pale, but he seemed to have recovered his poise.
“The mining companies are drilling toward their home deep underground.”
“And what do you think we can do about it?” Sinclair asked.
“Since my EM drive is fried, I can’t take my freighter back to Mars. And even if I could, I won’t be able to convince Oro Dawn to stop drilling for gold. That task requires the help of someone with considerably more…clout.”
“With more money, you mean,” Sinclair said.
Griv shrugged. “One of your more admirable qualities.”
“That was rude,” Deirdre pointed out.
“Of all my considerable flaws, I have never been accused of sugarcoating the truth.”
“And what do I get in return?” Sinclair asked. He had approached the alien and squatted down next to it. The being stretched its lights away from Sinclair as he approached. When the man straightened, the being returned to its previous position.
“The opportunity to be in charge of the first and only mission to study alien life forms. This incredible being has evolved to survive without atmosphere. I even saw it survive in the vacuum of space for an extended period of time. Imagine
what an understanding of that discovery might be worth one day?”
“That sounds like it would cost me more than it would earn,” Sinclair said.
“Maybe in the short term. ”
“Hmmm,” Sinclair mused. “You’d sell these creatures out that quickly?”
“Absolutely not,” Griv said. “But I don’t see another option. The only way to stop Oro Dawn from mining is to buy them out. Once you own the mines, you can stop the drilling and eliminate the threat to their species. At least for now.”
“Why would they sell it if they knew there were alien beings there?” Sinclair asked.
Griv snorted. “I didn’t say anything about telling them what was there first. Also, Oro Dawn is a public company. You can buy it right out from under them.”
Sinclair smirked. “Fair enough. But it still doesn’t sound like a worthwhile investment.”
“How much do you think a space tourist would pay to see the ancient home world of the only aliens we’ve ever encountered?”
Over the course of the next week, Sinclair quietly bought up thousands of shares of Oro Dawn’s stock, and in an unprecedented deal with the founders of the company, traded a space station plus fifty million dollars in exchange for ownership of the company.
Once Sinclair was in charge, the mining operation was immediately halted, but not before a tunnel collapse killed six of Oro Dawn’s miners.
Although it saddened him, Griv sold his freighter to a shipping company who could afford to replace the EM drive, and with the extra money rented a private room on the space station so that he could be closer to Deirdre. Giving up his home saddened him, but now that Griv’s mission in life had been vindicated by the discovery of the alien being, it was easier to let go.
Seeing the alien itself depart on the day after Sinclair effectively shut down mining operations was harder. Deirdre met him in an empty hangar at night. The runner lights set into the floor were dim in comparison to the being’s ever-present glow.
“Sinclair has already approved plans to build the first space station orbiting Mars,” Deirdre said.
