by S. T. Joshi
“Good God,” came Kathryn’s voice, and I glanced back to see her studying my panel with bright, bulging eyes. “Whatever that is, it’s damned impossible.” She hesitated for a second and then pointed to the display. “Did you see that?”
I nodded. For a fleeting moment, something had appeared on the viewer, moving far too quickly to identify. I zoomed out to try to find it again, but without success. Theoretically, Tarec should have detected the target, locked on it, analyzed it, and displayed a tactical image, yet the computer told me no more than my eyes had: only that an unidentified something had passed in and out of view, possibly guided by intelligence, no further details available. I allowed myself to indulge in a moment of frustration, barely holding at bay the rising dread that the system on which our lives most depended had suffered a catastrophic malfunction.
I felt the captain’s presence before he said a word. When I glanced up, his eyes were glued to my panels, the hand that clutched the arm of my chair an ivory claw. “Tell me you’re having more success than we are, Mr. Sykes.”
I shook my head. “Scans all inconclusive. I picked up at least one moving target, but I can’t even get a manual fix.”
“Not your job. We’re on that. What I need from you is an analysis of that behemoth down there. I want to know what it’s made of and whether it has anything to do with the … difficulty … we’ve run into.”
“But what the hell could cause this?” Kathryn asked, more to the air than anyone in particular.
Captain Tupper gave her a searching stare and said, “That’s what I need you to tell me.”
“I think we’ve reached the limit of the data that shipboard systems are going to provide. How about a manual probe, Skipper? Permission to launch?”
“Do it,” he said. “And link directly to its sensors. Bypass Tarec altogether.”
I nodded, already planning to do just that, despite knowing I’d get a hell of a headache as my dataclip received more streams of unfiltered data than my brain was accustomed to. Well, they made Cortedrine specifically to alleviate that problem, so I logged into an OE90 probe, made sure all the ports were clear, and sent the launch command. A few seconds later, the carrier signal vibrated through my skull, and then the data started coming in so fast and hard that it jolted my entire body. But I managed to process it without faltering, and within a few moments, in my field of vision, I could see exactly what the probe was seeing in three dimensions, along with an analytic readout that I could narrow-track at my discretion.
The craggy, blue-gray surface of Pluto whirled toward my eyes like a silent cyclone until the probe reached a point about twenty miles above the apex of the monolithic structure. I commenced an automated contour scan, and the figures that came through described a roughly cone-shaped object about twenty miles in diameter at its base, rising to a height of over a hundred miles. From this central trunk, dozens of translucent domes bulged like grotesque, oily blisters, and from many of these sprouted countless clusters of the tendril-like stalks I had viewed on my holo. So far, so good. I selected a few random sections of the base and hit them with the probe’s lasers to determine its composition. I should have been floored, but was only mildly surprised when the primary component came back as eganinium.
Surely, then, this thing contained Pluto’s entire supply of the unstable element. The tower appeared oddly organic, almost as if it had been birthed by the planet itself—or by some monstrous, unimaginable god concealed within. I knew, however, that this was no natural formation; someone or something had constructed it, for purposes yet unknown to us. It stood to reason that it would be intensely radioactive, yet my instruments detected nothing beyond the range that would normally register from the subsurface deposit.
I directed the probe to orbit the columnar axis at a range of twenty miles, and focused its viewers on the red veins that spiderwebbed the long, black protrusions. Eganinium typically appeared as a translucent, blue-violet crystal; nothing like the devilish-looking thing that rose from the surface of Pluto. Perhaps the black substance was a shield of some sort, which might explain the relatively low radiation count. I fired an analyzer beam into the nearest vein, but it reflected no data back to the probe. It simply swallowed the beam.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. But a second later, in the area where the beam struck, I discerned something moving along the tar-black trunk of the monolith. It was too small and distant to identify, so I broke the probe out of orbit and sent it in close, hoping to get a solid fix on the object. It remained indistinct until I tweaked the spectrograph sensors, which finally allowed me my first good look at one of the things that so far had defied analysis.
It was a bug. A huge, three-winged, multi-legged bug, with a bulbous head and numerous stalk-like, crab-clawed appendages. The thing was half scuttling, half drifting along the onyx surface, periodically pausing to manipulate what appeared to be some sort of metallic device it carried in one grasping arm. I tried to run a series of measurements, but now the image on the viewer began to warp strangely, becoming a shifting, kaleidoscopic mosaic, and my virtual readouts simultaneously went dead. This might have been an effect of radiation on the probe, I thought, but my gut told me it was something else entirely.
A few moments later, the image returned to clarity, although the readouts remained dark. Then I saw, in the black sea beyond the pillar-like appendage, at least a dozen of the insect-like things drifting toward the first, their angular, triple wings spread wide, as if to catch a swell of solar wind. A few of them settled on the polished black surface and began energetically working with the curious-looking metal rods they carried, while the others continued on to another section of the protuberance.
It was these creatures. They had built the gigantic structure from the eganinium deposit many miles beneath the Plutonian ice. The prospect nearly floored me. Beyond the fact that these things existed out here, the technical ability they must possess, the sheer stamina to have done such a thing—it all seemed quite unthinkable. Apparently immune to millions of roentgens passing through their bodies, unfazed by the lack of atmosphere, they worked merrily on as I watched them via the probe, their tools cutting deeply into the strange black rock, their wings gleaming faintly as if either absorbing or giving off energy. I soon saw that the creatures were actually etching the bright red veins, for where the tips of the tools cut into the surface, pools of hot crimson welled up like blood from deep lacerations.
I felt rather than saw Kathryn hovering anxiously behind me, so I directed her to log in with her dataclip. She had less experience with unfiltered data transfers, but under the circumstances I knew she would prefer suffering the unpleasant physical effects to missing the momentous event I was witnessing.
She had just established contact with the probe when I felt something lurch in my head, and my field of vision flashed alarmingly. I attempted to regain control with my instruments, but something had happened, and now the probe was moving rapidly toward the huge black limb, as though of its own volition. I heard Kathryn gasp as she saw the creatures for the first time, and again when she realized I had lost control of the probe. We could only watch helplessly as the red-veined surface hurtled toward our eyes, and just before the probe impacted, I saw the bulbous head of the first insect turn to regard it for the first time, its great globular eyes ever so briefly meeting my gaze.
As if it had actually seen me.
I expected my viewer to go dead when the probe smashed into the stone, but another surprise awaited me: rather than blanking, my view simply changed—as if the probe had passed through the solid surface material and continued on its way on the other side. But now, just as when viewing the structure via Tarec’s scanners, I realized I was seeing a portion of the alien structure as if it had been turned inside out. Every convexity was now a concavity, and the long, spindly protrusions that extended from the trunk appeared as deep crevasses in the planet below, and even in the empty backdrop of space. This was no trick of the eye or brain, yet
it had to be illusion of some kind, produced at the electronic level.
A few moments later, the probe, still out of control, began spiraling toward Pluto, and my retinal display went completely awry. Rather than suffer through the terrible vertigo, I severed the connection and backed away from the geostation, as weak and burned out as if lightning had arced through my skull. Kathryn and I simply stared at each other for countless ages, our bodies and emotions too shaken to attempt coherent speech. Everything we had seen had been logged to the captain’s console, so he could view it for himself when he had an opportunity, but I knew he would want an immediate report.
I didn’t have to go to him. Less than a minute later, Tupper was at my station. “What do you have for me, Sykes?”
“Just enough to add to the confusion.” I gave him the rundown on the structure’s composition and the repeat instance of what I was coming to think of as the inversion effect. I saved the revelation of the insect-like creatures till the end; but by now, the captain appeared nonplussed.
“We’re seeing them now too,” he said, nodding toward the executive stations. “Not so sure what to make of these beasts, but there are hundreds of them. Hard to keep track. Something about their properties, we can’t maintain visual locks on them.”
“Like the ‘illusions’ we’re seeing,” Kathryn said. “It’s as if they’re phasing in and out of our material universe. Crossing dimensions, or something.”
“Skipper,” I said, “something knocked that probe down. It wasn’t an effect of radiation, I’m certain of it. Given what’s happened to Tarec … it’s my opinion that our ship systems may be at serious risk.”
“You’re recommending we break orbit?”
“Immediately, sir.”
“Are you in agreement, Rhodes?”
She glanced at me and then nodded. “Yes, sir. This situation needs investigating, but it should be done by a ship and crew outfitted specifically for that purpose.”
Tupper’s customary scowl grew more intense. “You realize that if we break orbit, fourteen months from now every soul aboard this ship will be unemployed?”
“I’m guessing that’s better than the alternative,” I said, my sense of misgiving deepening even as we spoke.
The captain glared at nothing for half a minute before speaking again. “I agree,” he said. “This is an untenable situation.”
With that, he returned to his command station, and I felt an ounce of relief that I had not had to argue to persuade him. In a disagreement, Tupper was beyond formidable. He was also not easily spooked, and I gathered from his manner that he was just as rattled by these events as Kathryn and I. It occurred to me that, while I had shared our findings with him, he had told me nothing that the sci crew had learned.
“Captain Tupper to Audit One, zero-nine-zero,” called a sharp, disembodied voice. “Captain Tupper to Audit One, zero-nine-zero.”
An emergency call. He broke from his console, transferred command to Ellis, and before leaving Navcom pointed to Kathryn and me. “Come on,” he said. “That’s your crew in there.”
We made haste, Tupper with his hand pressed to his dataclip, his scowl becoming a dark, ominous thing as he received bulletins from the Tactical OD. When we entered Audit One, I saw several of the geo crew gathered around the circular view port in the floor, each face whiter than bone, all eyes fastened on something on the other side of the armorglass. Tupper dispersed them with a wave of his hand. We approached the viewport holding our collective breath, and when we gazed down into the black well of outer space and the gemstone stars slipping endlessly by, I’m quite certain each of our hearts stopped. Even the captain’s.
One of the insect-things was clinging locust-like to the armorglass viewport, its splayed legs somehow gripping the smooth, transparent surface, its bulbous head cocked so that one of its globular, green-gray eyes peered in at us with the distinct air of curiosity. The cylindrical body was about five feet long and tapered to a sharp tip that might have possessed a stinger, and its wings, now folded behind it, were leathery and bat-like, rather than translucent like an insect’s. While its body appeared to be encased by an exoskeleton, its texture appeared knotted and scaly, rather like an alligator’s hide. The lower portion of the abdomen undulated as if it were breathing, even in the void.
“By all the gods,” Tupper rumbled, placing his hands on his hips and squinting thoughtfully, as if sizing up a potential adversary. “Foul-looking, isn’t she?”
Kathryn bent close to the glass to peer at the thing, her eyes no more than a yard or so from the creature’s. My breath caught in my throat, and even with ten inches of virtually unbreakable glass between them, I could not suppress a keen fear that the thing might somehow do her harm, its one scrutinizing eye unmistakably as curious about her as she was about it. Though we had no evidence that it might actually be hostile, the creature’s fearsome appearance amplified my sense of misgiving a hundred times.
We had no biologist on board, so the captain summoned Mr. Kochi, the executive science officer. When the young man arrived and stepped into the disconcerting gaze of the thing beyond the glass, he froze in obvious horror, which gripped him for a full minute before his objective, scientific mind took over to pull him out of it.
“No way,” he said somewhat shakily, “is that thing indigenous to Pluto. Or anywhere in this solar system.”
“A geo could have told me that,” Tupper snapped.
“How can it survive in vacuum, unprotected?” Kathryn asked.
Kochi shrugged. “Maybe it’s not. What looks like an exoskeleton may be a kind of environmental shell. The actual creature might look different than what we’re seeing here. Assuming it’s even organic. None of our scanners will touch the thing.”
“Where do you suppose it comes from?”
“Damn good question,” he said. “And just as important, how did it get here? And when?”
“You think these things were in any way responsible for what happened to the Mehitobel?”
Kochi might have been formulating some theory when a collective gasp shook him from his thoughts. He stumbled backward just as the creature began to pass through the viewport, breaching the armorglass as if it were no more substantial than a layer of vapor, its body rising to hover above the portal like a living dirigible, its wings outstretched yet motionless, their purpose evidently something other than aerodynamic. The oversized skull swiveled back and forth as if mounted on a rotor, its malevolent-looking eyes surveying the chamber, though whether it was enraged or merely curious, I could hardly speculate. I heard thudding footsteps as many of my crew hastily vacated the auditorium, and someone called for a fire extinguisher, presumably to use as a weapon.
I held up a hand and shouted for my remaining crew to stay calm and make no move against the creature. It could pass through solid matter; who knew what else it might be able to do, or what its intentions were? I saw Captain Tupper standing brazenly before it, his body a defiant bulwark, his eyes glaring at it so fiercely that I found myself as awed by his courage as by our incredible visitor. The insect-thing drifted slowly toward him, its eyes meeting his and briefly flashing, as if photographing him and storing his image to its memory. Then, for a moment, by the way the creature paused and lowered its head, almost like a bull preparing to charge, I fully expected it to attack. But Captain Tupper puffed out his chest, clenched his fists, and unleashed a stare so withering that even the airborne horror appeared to diminish before him.
It was Kathryn who stepped forward then, her face pale and drawn but intensely curious, and the bony skull-head swiveled slowly toward her, its eyes again flashing significantly. As if sensing in her something other than fear or anger, the thing glided toward her and stopped, its huge, glistening eyes only a few inches from hers. I heard the clatter of footsteps behind me as several of the geo crew came running, obviously intent on protecting one of their own, but I again waved them back, adamant that no one take any action that might provoke the creature�
��s rage.
“What are you?” Kathryn whispered, as if the thing could possibly understand. “Where do you come from?”
To my surprise, something about the insect’s aspect seemed to change—a vague softening of its revolting features, perhaps—as if it were absorbing her thoughts and attempting to formulate a response. Its huge eyes peered deeply into Kathryn’s, and I realized then that her gaze was now fixed, her facial muscles slack, her mind seemingly in the creature’s thrall. Vulnerable, I thought, with mounting alarm.
“Damn if it doesn’t understand her,” I said to Captain Tupper. “I think it’s actually reaching into her mind.”
The big man nodded and took a step toward it, which drew the beast’s attention, and Kathryn’s body wavered unsteadily. I placed one hand behind her back to make sure she didn’t fall, but she gave no indication that she was aware of me. The captain continued to move toward the thing, which alarmed me more and more, for the creature’s aspect had now reverted to malevolent.
Tupper growled, “What the hell are you? And what is that?” He pointed to the circular portal and the black and red stone tendrils that were just beginning to inch into view with the rotation of the fuselage.
The gray-green eyes swiveled toward Kathryn again, and without warning it darted forward, not simply striking Kathryn but plunging into her body, penetrating her flesh and bone the way it had penetrated the armorglass portal. However, instead of passing through her, it appeared to merge with her, dissolving into her body and vanishing altogether. Kathryn gasped and gurgled thickly in her throat, her body going ramrod straight before stiffly lurching a few steps away from me. She turned to face the captain, her eyes revealing themselves to be huge and gray-green like the insect’s. Her jaw dropped, and with a grunting, grumbling preface, she said merely, “Yahh.”
