3zekiel (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  “Well, that brings their exploration to an abrupt end. It’ll take time for the cable to drift away. We’ll be off the elevator long before that happens.”

  Our talking wakes Garcia. How he sleeps with a metal head is beside me, and it’s not possible to see if his eyes are open or not, but he rolls onto his side and sits up, yawning.

  “Are we—”

  “Yes,” Pretzel replies, cutting him off. “We’re here.”

  “Um,” I say. “Have you thought about how we’re going to get down from here?”

  Garcia looks at me confused so I say, “We just lost our ride.”

  “The Russians, huh?”

  I nod, but he doesn’t seem bothered. I guess having an alien machine on your head changes your perspective on life.

  Sheepishly, Pretzel says, “Oh, yeah. About that.”

  “We’re not going to escape from up here, are we?” I ask.

  “We’re alive,” Pretzel says.

  Small consolation.

  “For now,” I reply.

  “Optimist,” Garcia says, which really doesn’t help. “Oh, wow,” he says, distracting himself with the novelty of being in low gravity. He bounces on his hands, rocking back onto his feet, struggling to get up. Pretzel and I have figured out it’s easiest to stay seated.

  Garcia adds, “This is pretty cool,” jumping and then drifting back to the platform like a leaf falling in a light breeze. As cool as it is, I notice he doesn’t really jump as such, rather just pushes off. Like us, he’s more cautious than he’d like to admit.

  “What if we’re wrong?” I ask, looking at the asteroid in the distance, looming above us. It feels as if we’re slowing, although with the meager pull of Earth beneath us, it’s hard to tell. “What if this isn’t a sample-return mission? What if they decide they don’t need us? What if they’ve already filled their quota?”

  “Then we’ll have to convince them,” Pretzel says.

  “How are we going to get back to Earth?”

  “Let’s tackle these problems one at a time.”

  That’s not really the answer I was looking for. Actually, it’s not an answer at all. Pretzel seems to realize that as he adds, “We’re going to make it.” I doubt I look convinced.

  The sun is stupidly bright. I can’t look anywhere even remotely near it, while the dark emptiness of space is awfully lonely and astonishingly vast, making even the sun appear small. On Earth, the sky is half of the picture. At any one time, there’s an entire planet literally keeping us grounded. In space, that illusion is shattered. Earth is small. Space is endless. The darkness seems to stretch on into eternity, which is scary. I feel like an ant. Back on Earth, the aliens were intruders. Up here, they’re all we have. It’s hard to imagine, but beyond the thin, transparent walls of our pod, there’s nothing. And it’s not just a nothing nothing. It’s the kind of nothing that’s instantly fatal. It’s not just that there’s no air, like when I’m swimming underwater, it’s that there’s negative air. Out there, any air I have would be sucked from me, ripped out of my lungs. I don’t know that I’ve ever sat so close to death.

  “Are you okay?” Pretzel asks, apparently recognizing the machinations of my tortured mind. I must look terrified. I am. Perhaps I’m a little pale. I feel sweaty even though it’s not hot.

  He ruffles my hair, which is more than a little patronizing, but right now, I don’t care. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

  “No, please,” I say. “Lie to me. Tell me everything’s going to be okay. Tell me we’re going to rescue Jana and Lady. Tell me we’ll make it home.”

  “I’m scared too.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Well, I am. I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.”

  Garcia’s quiet, listening intently. He’s standing, but he’s positioned himself at the back of the pod, near the broad ribbon. I understand why. It’s something other than nothing—even though it’s whipping by in a blur. The thin circular bands swirling around our pod every few seconds are slowing, giving us a visual indication that our speed is dropping.

  I ask, “What do you think we’ll find up there?”

  “I dunno. An ark, maybe. Machines preparing to ship specimens across the galaxy.”

  “Will we find her?”

  “I hope so.”

  Garcia crouches, trying not to bounce, before sitting beside Pretzel. I lie on my back, staring along the ribbon, watching as we approach Cruithne. The alien ship is docked alongside the asteroid, catching the sunlight. My mind casts back to Raka’s hut and the grainy black and white image we were looking at. The ribbon wasn’t visible in that shot, and I wonder if NASA has improved on that. Is anyone watching as we approach? What would they see? They wouldn’t see anything as grand as this.

  Cruithne isn’t black and white. Dark shadows hide the depths of various craters, with the night side of the asteroid disappearing entirely, but the surface is a mixture of colors.

  Living in the jungle, my dad encouraged me to take up a hobby. PlayStations and Xboxes were out of the question, so I tried my hand at painting. Acrylic paints are cheap in Africa, although I don’t know why. They come in tiny silver tubes that all look the same with a white label printed in French. First thing I did was paint the labels so I could tell them apart. Jana likes my paintings, but I think she’s being kind. I mostly paint trees and rocks. I tried painting a monkey once, but it ended up looking like something out of a horror movie. Being a painter, though, I understand the subtleties of similar colors. Most people visiting the jungle just see a wall of green. Me? I see sapphires and viridian greens, agate and jade.

  To me, the surface of Cruithne is a tapestry of muted browns like ochre, burnt umber and raw sienna. I could paint this. There’s even a fresh crater with lines of ruddy red spreading out in a splatter pattern. I’d use a little cadmium red mixed with a bit of charcoal black. A combination of sponge techniques and dry brush and I think I could pull it off.

  Pretzel and Garcia are talking, but I’m not really listening. I catch some of their comments, but try to block them out, wanting to lower the anxiety eating away at me. Thinking about painting the asteroid helps. Maybe one day I will, and that thought gives me something to hold on to, something to hope for.

  “This is a one-way ticket, right?” Garcia asks. “With the cable cut, there’s no way down.”

  I’m trying not to listen. I’m trying to shut them out, but I can’t and my heart races.

  Reluctantly, Pretzel says, “Yep.”

  “So what are we going to do? We’re gonna demand Jana and Lady are returned to us, and then what? Walk home?” He laughs at the thought.

  Pretzel whispers. “I don’t know.”

  I don’t think Garcia’s happy with that, but what else can Pretzel say? I get it. I don’t like it, but I get that he’s just one man. He’s doing all he can. It hurts to think we’ve lost before we’ve even begun, but I appreciate Pretzel giving this his all. Who are we against the might of beings from the other side of the galaxy?

  “Hey, look,” I say, still lying on my back and pointing up at the asteroid as it looms overhead, growing ever larger. The ribbon on the space elevator leads into some kind of cave, disappearing within Cruithne.

  “What can you see?” Pretzel asks Garcia.

  “Ah, well… oh, hey, I’ve got zoom. Damn, this model is fully spec’d. Mmm, they’ve hollowed out the asteroid. There’s some kind of bridge or tunnel leading to the ship. They’re taking animals out of the pods and transferring them to some kind of hold on the spaceship. It’s big, but far from full.”

  “They’re sedated?” Pretzel asks.

  “I guess. No one’s moving.”

  “Can you see anyone? Anything other than machines?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s like a factory in there. Everything’s automated.”

  We move into the shadow of Cruithne. Our pod slows, gliding past rock walls and into a cavern carved into the asteroid. The tunnel narrows. It’s as though
I could reach out and touch the sides. Our pace is leisurely, almost relaxed, slowly bringing us to a halt. Rather than sliding sideways into the asteroid, it feels as though we’re coming up from below, like a submarine surfacing.

  Garcia says, “The contents of the pods are opened up ahead and shifted to some kind of cold storage on the alien craft.”

  “Machines have no need for an atmosphere,” Pretzel says. “But living things do. Here’s hoping they’ve kept that hold pressurized.”

  “What are the odds?” Garcia asks.

  “Good.”

  Both of us reply, “Liar.”

  “No really,” Pretzel says, but I get the feeling he’s trying to talk himself into this. “Biology is fragile. They know that. Not understanding the precise limits of our particular biology, they’re going to handle us with care. There’s too much at stake. Blow this and you ruin the entire mission, so I think the chances are good. Our chemistry is only viable within a very narrow range of temperatures and pressures. They’re going to want to simulate that to some degree. They’ll have all kinds of fail-safes in place for a journey of this duration.”

  “I hope you’re right, doc,” Garcia says. “Here it comes.”

  It’s dark within the chamber, but I can feel the capsule being lifted from the space elevator and turned to one side.

  “You can still see, right?” Pretzel asks.

  “Yep… Get ready.”

  I want to ask for what. Garcia drags me to my feet, which given I weigh almost nothing up here is easy. Toughest part is feeling for the floor of the pod with my boots. Just the slightest motion has me drifting sideways, but Garcia keeps his hand on my shoulder, crunching up my shirt in his clenched fist. I reach for the floor with my boots and end up on tiptoes.

  “And it’s open. Jump.”

  I go to jump, but Pretzel and Garcia have already jumped, springing off from the pod and dragging me with them. Unlike Earth, where I’d stay upright, my legs trail behind me and I can feel myself toppling forward. Garcia’s got a good grip. I feel as though I’m going to go splat—landing face first on the asteroid. I have no idea which way is up. One of my boots scrapes against the ground and I scramble with the other, only that motion has me drift away from the surface and I have to wait to come down again, which is crazy bizarre.

  “Slow and easy,” Garcia says.

  I’m hating this. Back on Earth, he was blind. Up here, Pretzel and I are blinded by the pitch-black darkness surrounding us. Garcia switches his grip, scrunching up the shirt in the center of my back as he guides me on. I have my arms out, expecting to bump into things. I keep losing my balance and toppling forward, but Garcia rights me.

  “Small movements,” he says. “Bunny hop. Better yet, skip.”

  I take my sense of direction from him, trusting I’m not about to go plowing into some wall in the darkness, but we skip at different times. The result is we seem to undulate, bouncing as we move along.

  Gradually, light appears. It’s faint, but stars break through the darkness. They’re fine, nothing like the stars as seen from Earth. There’s no shimmer, almost no size to them at all. They’re like the fine splatter of paint on a black canvas, barely pinpricks in the night, all except for directly in front of us where the alien starship looms as a dark shadow.

  The air is cold. Vapor forms on my breath. Pretzel and Garcia come to a halt in the tunnel. In the half-light of ten thousand stars, all I can see is silhouettes.

  “What can we expect?” Pretzel asks.

  “It’s hard to know for sure, but there’s movement up ahead.”

  We inch forward, leaning on an angle that would have us perform a face-plant on Earth. Up here, my boots barely touch the surface of the clear tunnel. I feel as though I’m tiptoeing through water. I’m getting used to the low-gravity, though. Garcia was right. Less is more. Try too hard and it’s a bit like a car spinning its wheels in the mud.

  The outside of the alien spaceship is covered in more pipes than I’ve ever seen in my life. To my mind, it looks like an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. I was expecting a smooth, curved hull, but there’s no surface as such. Most of the ship is just support struts and pipes. Like the laboratory we saw on Earth, there are no right-angles and very few straight sections.

  “Welcome aboard the Medusa,” Garcia says, and he’s right. It’s as though a million metallic snakes have been tangled together to form this spacecraft.

  “Look,” Pretzel says as we pass beneath the superstructure of the vessel. The same spider-like robots we saw on Earth clamber over the outside of the craft in the vacuum of space. No abdomen or head, just a bunch of legs spreading out like silver-coated starfish flexing as they drape themselves over silver corals.

  We enter a dark antechamber. The tube we’re bouncing through bends over a series of rings set into the hull.

  “Airlock?” Garcia asks.

  Pretzel’s guessing, but he says, “Yep.”

  Beyond the antechamber is a vast open cavern.

  “This is the cargo hold,” Garcia says.

  “It’s probably the only pressurized compartment on the ship,” Pretzel says.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask. “How are we just waltzing in here?”

  “Feels wrong,” Garcia says.

  “And you’re only just arriving at that conclusion now?” Pretzel asks.

  A dim red light casts an eerie glow over the chamber. Spider robots tend to thousands of custom pods. Unlike those used to transport plants and animals from the surface, these differ in size and shape depending on the occupants, being much smaller, barely larger than the specimens they contain. They’re arranged in rows with most of the vast chamber being empty.

  “They were expecting to be able to gather a lot more than they got,” Pretzel says.

  “Where’s Jana?” I ask. “Lady?”

  “Let’s split up,” Pretzel says.

  “Split up?” Garcia asks. “You’re not serious, right? That never ends well in the movies.”

  Pretzel can’t bring himself to reply. The look he gives Garcia is priceless. With his forehead furrowed and his eyebrows raised, his body language speaks for him. A slight shake of his head in disbelief and he sails off to examine a bunch of irregular shapes sealed in what looks like frosted plastic at the rear of the compartment. I know we’re supposed to split up, but I follow him. If Pretzel’s curious about this section, so am I.

  “This is going to take hours,” I say.

  “No rush,” Garcia replies, starting on the other side. “We’ll start at the back and work forward. Hopefully, they’re stored chronologically.”

  “Nope,” Pretzel replies. “All I’ve got over here is branches. Dozens of pods with branches and vines in them.”

  Gravity is so low the easiest way to move around is using our hands, pulling ourselves along like scuba divers working their way over some sunken wreck. Only occasionally do my feet swing back to the deck, and only if I linger. The more I move, the more it is like the weightlessness I’ve seen on YouTube where astronauts drift around within a spacecraft.

  We brush away ice crystals, peering through the thick milky white plastic from a couple of nearby pods.

  “What have you got?” Pretzel asks.

  “A motorcycle,” I say.

  He replies with, “Tractor. I’ve found a bright red tractor with huge wheels covered in thick mud. What are they going to make of that?”

  We drift between pods, calling out the items stored within them.

  “Hut,” I say, scrubbing the freezing cold plastic with the flat of my hand. “An entire mud hut, complete with thatched roof. There’s a bird’s nest on one side.”

  “I think I’ve found one of the Russian spy satellites,” Pretzel replies.

  Garcia doesn’t stray more than a couple of aisles from us. “Does a Cessna count?”

  “A Cessna counts,” Pretzel says. Looking at Garcia, I’d never guess the vast blob he’s working around was an airplane. Unlike us, he doesn
’t need to rub at the surface to see beneath the cloudy plastic. To me, that’s cheating, and I’m tempted to joke with him about it, but he’s turned his back on us and is examining some other pod. I’m surprised the alien machines didn’t snatch our helicopter, but they seem to prefer machines and people in working order.

  “Oh, there’s a bunch of rifles, guns and grenades in this one,” Pretzel says, peering in a pod no bigger than a desk. “And a helluva lot of ammo. I sure hope these guys handle this stuff with care.”

  “I’ve got an old metal water tank,” I say. “I think it’s empty.”

  To me, such an artifact is meaningless. Why would anyone want an empty water tank? And yet, having been to museums in London and Paris while on our way from Boston to Africa, taking a few extra days with my dad to see the sights, I know even the smallest, most insignificant archeological find can be revealing. Dad tried to push me along from the Denisovan tooth on display in the British Museum—he only wanted to see the Greek, Roman and Egyptian displays, go figure—but I was fascinated by it. I remember marveling how scientists could learn so much from a single tooth. I’ve forgotten what was written on the sign beneath the carefully sealed tooth mounted on a pedestal beneath a soft light, but they treated it as though it were a crown full of jewels. There were blurbs about what the person ate, how old they were, the kind of interactions they had with humans. That was the point that got my attention—there were people that weren’t human. To me, it was like something out of an episode of Star Trek, and yet here it was in a museum describing life as it existed tens of thousands of years ago. I wonder if this battered, rusted water tank will be revered in the same way on the alien home world.

  “Oh, I think I’ve found our ride home,” Garcia says. That gets our attention. Pretzel and I both abandon our current pods, pushing off and drifting through the micro-gravity toward him. I’m loving low gravity. It’s akin to being in a celestial playground. Fun doesn’t describe it well enough. If it weren’t for the nerves I feel searching for Jana and the uncertainty around how we’re going to get out of here, I’d be hollering with delight. Now, though, it seems Garcia’s found a way out of the alien vessel. It’s surprising how quickly I’ve adjusted to moving through the alien hold, and the slight push brings me down within a few feet of him—like a pro.