by Del Howison
As for tonight, I have to hope they’re not much interested in carrion, that’s all….
DAY THREE (MIDDAY):
I feel a lot better in myself, not so knocked about, no longer down. Well, down, naturally, but not all the way. I mean, hell, I’m alive! And just looking at the old Albert E., I really don’t know how. But the air is very good here; you can really suck it in. It’s fresh, sweet … unfiltered? Maybe it’s just that the air on the ship, always stale, is already starting to stink.
I got a generator working; got my habitat set up, electric perimeter and all. Now I’ll bring out all the ship’s rations I can find, and while I’m at it I may come across the two bodies I haven’t found yet. One of them is Daniel Geisler, a dear pal of mine. That will hit me hard. It’s all hitting hard, but I’m alive and that’s what matters. Where there’s life there’s hope, and all that shit….
I’ve been finding out something about the locals who I was listening to last night. I was in a makeshift hammock that I’d fixed up in an airlock; left the airlock open a crack, letting some of this good air in. Partway into the night I could hear movement out in the darkness. After an hour or so it got quiet, so it seems they sleep, too. Could be that night and sleep are universally synonymous. That would make sense … I think.
But how best to describe them? Now me, I’m not what you’d call an exobiologist, Jim, lad, just a grease monkey; but I’ll give it a try. From what I’ve seen so far, there appear to be three kinds of what is basically one and the same species. See what I mean about not being an exobiologist? Obviously they’re not the same species; and yet there’s this peculiar similarity about them that … well, they’re very odd, that’s all….
Anyway, let me get on.
There’s the flying kind: eight-foot wingspan, round-bodied and skinny-legged; like big, beakless, stupid-looking pale pink robins. They hang out in the topmost branches of the trees and eat what look like fist-sized yellow berries. Paradoxically and for all their size they appear to be pretty flimsy critters; no feathers, they’re more like bats of maybe flying squirrels than birds, and they leap and soar rather than fly. And when they’re floating between the sun and me, I see right through their wings. But they’re not the only flying things. There are others of approximately the same size and design, but more properly birdlike. And this other species—very definitely a separate, different species—they stay high in the sky, circling like buzzards. I kept an eye on these high-flyers because of what I was doing. I mean, I was laying out my dead shipmates, and buzzards and vultures are carnivores. On Earth they are, anyway …
Then there’s the landlubbers or earthbound variety. These are bipedal, anthropoid, perhaps even mammalian or this world’s equivalent, though as yet I’ve seen no sign of tits or marriage tackle. Whatever, I reckon it’s probably these manlike things—this world’s intelligentsia?—that I heard bumping around in the darkness. But since they’re the most interesting of the bunch I’ll leave them till last, get back to them in a minute.
And finally there’s the other land variety, the hogs. Well, I’ll call them hogs for now, if only for want of a better name. They’re some four or five feet long, pale pink like the soaring things and the bipeds, and they rustle about in the undergrowth at the fringes of the forest eating the golf-ball-sized seeds of the big yellow berries. But they, too, have their counterparts. Deeper in the woods, there are critters more properly like big, hairy black hogs that snort and keep well back in the shadows.
And there you have it. But the “Pinks”—as I’ve started to call all three varieties of these pale pink creatures: the quadrupeds, bipeds, and flyers—it’s as if they were all cut from the same cloth. Despite the diversity of their design, there’s a vague similarity about them; their drab, unappealing color, for one thing, and the same insubstantial sort of flimsiness or—I don’t know, wobbliness? jellyness?—for another.
Fascinating really … if I was an exobiologist. But since I’m not they’re just something I’ll need to watch out for until I know for sure what’s what. Actually, I don’t feel intimidated by any of these critters. Not so far. Not by the Pinks, anyway.
More about the manlikes:
When I opened up the airlock this morning, there was a bunch of them, maybe thirteen or fourteen, sitting in a circle around the remains of my shipmates. I’ve been laying my ex-friends out in their own little groups, their three main shipboard cliques, but all of them pretty close together with their feet in toward a common center. Ended up forming a sort of three-leafed clover shape with four or five bodies to a leaf.
The aliens (yeah, it’s a cliché, I know, but what are these things if not aliens? They’re alien to me, anyway—though it’s true that on this world I’m the only real alien—but anyway): the locals were sitting there nestling the heads of the dead in their laps. And I thought what the hell, maybe they’d spent the whole night like that! Well, whatever, that’s how it struck me.
So then, what were they doing? Wondering if these dead creatures were edible, maybe? Or were they simply trying to figure out what these things who fell from the sky were; these vaguely familiar beings, whose like they’d never known before? They did seem briefly, particularly, almost childishly interested in the difference between the Albert E.’s lone female crew member’s genitalia and the rest of the gang’s tackle, but that didn’t last. That was fine because she—a disillusioned crew-cut exobiologist dyke called Emma Schneider—wouldn’t have much liked it.
Anyway, there they were, these guys, like a bunch of solemn mourners with my old shipmates….
After I tossed down a spade and lowered a rope ladder, however, they stood up, backed off, and watched me from a distance as I came down and began to dig graves in this loamy soil. With so many holes to dig, even shallow ones, I knew to pace myself, take breaks, get things done in easy stages: a little preparatory digging, then search for usables in the ship, more digging, fix up my habitat, make another attempt at finding my two missing buddies, set up my generator—and so on. And that’s pretty much how it’s been working out….
But as yet I haven’t actually described the manlikes.
Well, Jim, lad, here’s me recording this under my habitat’s awning, and while I speak I’m watching the locals do their peculiar thing. Or perhaps it’s not so peculiar and they’re not so very alien. Well, not as alien as I thought. Because it appears they understand death and revere the dead—even my dead—or so it would seem. But how can it be otherwise? I mean, how else to explain this?
They’ve brought these instruments from somewhere—“musical” instruments, if you can call them that—from wherever they dwell, I suppose. And if this isn’t some kind of lament they’re singing, some kind of dirge I’m hearing from their drums, bang-stones, rattle-pods, and bamboo flutes, then I really don’t know what it is. And I think that the only thing that’s keeping them at a respectable distance from my dead ones … is me.
I’m looking at them through binoculars. Can’t tell the male of the species from the female; hell, I don’t even know if they have sexes as such! Ameboid? I shouldn’t think so; that wobbly they’re not! But humanlike? They are. Emphasis on “like.” They have two each of the things we have two of, er, with the exception of testicles, if they have males and if their balls aren’t on the inside. Oh, and also with the exception of breasts—if and et cetera, as previously conjectured.
Their eyes are watery-looking; not fishy, no, but uninspiringly pale, limpid and uniformly gray, large in their faces and forming triangles with their noses. As for those noses: they’re just paired black dots in approximately the right places. Their mouths are thin-lipped; their dull white teeth look fairly normal; their ears are ears; and their shining black hair falls on their thin shoulders. Their hair is the most attractive—maybe even the only attractive—thing about them. They’re about five foot five inches tall, with slender, roughly pear-shaped bodies thick end down. They’ve got three fingers to a hand, three toes to a foot. But while their legs
seem strong, giving them a flowing, gliding, maybe even graceful mobility, their arms are much too thin and look sort of boneless.
So then, that’s them, and I’m guessing they’re the dominant species. Certainly they’re head and shoulders above the rest of the fauna. And while I’m on about the rest of them:
Today I’ve seen several pink hogs doing their thing in the shrubbery at the forest’s edge. Totally harmless, I’d say, and I’m not at all worried by them. From back in the deeper undergrowth, however, I’ve heard the occasional snuffling, grunting, and growling of the pink hogs’ cousins; their big, hairy black shapes trundling to and fro, but yet keeping a safe distance. Well good! And likewise the flying Pinks in the treetops: I’ve seen them looking down at me, but it doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand their cousins, the actual high-flying buzzards—if that’s what they are—well, there’s something really ominous about their unending circling. But so far, since I haven’t seen a one of them come down and land, I’m not too concerned.
Enough for now. I’ve had my break, eaten, brewed and drank a pot of coffee; now I’ll go back into the Albert E., see if I can find poor Daniel …
LATER (LATE AFTERNOON, EARLY EVENING):
This is really amazing! It’s so hard to believe I’m not sure if even seeing is believing! It started when I was in the ship.
I’d found Scot Gentry’s body in his lab, crushed flat under everything that wasn’t tied down. Then, while I was digging him out, I thought to hear movement elsewhere in the vessel. I told myself it was just loose wreckage shifting, settling down. When it happened a second time, however, the short hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight! What the—? After all this time, three days or more, could it be that I wasn’t the only survivor after all, that someone else had lived through the wreck of the Albert Ε.? But there was only one someone else: my buddy Daniel Geisler! What would Dan’s condition be?
Hell, he could be dying even now!
The way I went scrambling then, I could have broken my neck a dozen and more times on those sloping, often buckled, crazily angled decks; skidding and sliding, shouting myself hoarse, and pausing every now and then to hold my breath and listen, see if I was being answered. Finally I did hear something, coming from the direction of the airlock that I was using.
It was four of the manlike Pinks. They must have followed me up the ladder I’d left dangling, and … and they’d found my good buddy Daniel. But he wasn’t alive, not with his head stove in and his back bent all the wrong way. And there they were, in the airlock, these four guys, easing Daniel into the sling that I’d fixed up and preparing to lower him to the ground.
Oh, really? And after they got him down, what else did they have planned for him? Advancing on them, I glared at them where they stood blinking back at me, with their skinny arms dangling and, as far as I could tell, no expressions whatsoever on their pale pink faces.
“All right, you weird fucks!” I yelled, lunging at them and waving my sidearm. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—”
But one of them was pointing one of three skinny fingers at his own eyes, then at mine, finally out the airlock and down at the ground. It was like he was saying, “See for yourself.” They backed off as I came forward and looked out. And down there … well, even now it’s difficult to believe. Or maybe not. I mean, alien they may be—hell, they are—but that doesn’t mean they don’t have humanlike emotions, routines, rituals, ceremonials. Like their cradling the dead, their dirges, and now this.
But now what—eh, Jim lad? Now the shallow graves that the other Pinks were digging down there, that’s now what! The whole group, using my spade, scoops made from half-gourds, even their bare three-digit hands, to dig as neat a set of graves as you’d never wish to see right there in the soft, loose loam!
Well, what could I say or do after that? Nothing that they’d understand, for sure. So letting the four Pinks get on with it, I went back for Gentry’s body. By the time I returned, the sling was back in position, and the four volunteers were out of there. They’d gone below and were working with the rest of the tribe, digging for all they were worth.
I might have liked to find a way to express my gratitude—to this quartet, at least—but couldn’t see how to do it. These creatures looked so much of a muchness to me, there was no sure way to tell my four apart from the rest of them. Ah, well …
DAY FOUR (MIDDAY):
I slept well last night; I suppose I was sort of exhausted. But I was also easier in my mind after letting the manlikes finish off burying the dead … well, except for Scot and Daniel. They wouldn’t bury those last two until they’d sat with them through the night, their heads in their laps. A kind of ritual—a wake of sorts, a vigil—that they go through with their dead. Also with mine, apparently. It isn’t a job I would have cared to do. After four or more days dead, Scot and Dan weren’t looking very pretty. They weren’t smelling too good, either. Could be the manlike Pinks do it to keep the buzzards and hogs from scavenging, which is something else I don’t much care to think about.
This morning, their yelping, rattling, and piping woke me up just as they were finishing with filling in the last two graves. As I put up my awning I saw—just outside my habitat, outside the electric perimeter—one of the Pinks sitting there watching me. Now I know I’ve said they don’t have much in the way of facial expressions, but this one was cocking its head first one way and then the other, and if anything, looked curious as hell. I mean curious about me. He, she, or it kept watching me while I boiled water, shaved, made and drank coffee, and ate a ship’s-rations facsimile homeworld breakfast.
I tossed the Pink a cookie that it sniffed at, then bit into carefully, then got up, went unsteadily to the side of the clearing, leaned on a tree, and threw up. Credit where credit’s due for perseverance, though, if for nothing else, because when it was done throwing up it came right on back and sat down again, watching me like before but just a shade less pink. Then when I set out to have a look around, explore the place, damned if he, she, it didn’t come gliding after, albeit at a discreet, respectful distance.
As for why I wanted to go walkabout: long before we discovered that the galaxy was a pretty empty place, someone wrote in the survival handbook that if you get stuck on a world and want to know if there are any higher civilizations, just take a walk along a coastline. Because if there is intelligent life, that’s where you’ll find its flotsam and jetsam. Doesn’t say a hell of a lot for intelligence, now, does it? Anyway, ever since I clambered from the wreckage of the Albert E. I’ve been hearing this near-distant murmur. And no matter where you are, the sound of small waves breaking on a beach is unmistakable.
I followed a manlike track through the woods until I came across a freshwater stream, then followed the stream and track both for maybe a quarter mile … and there it was, this beautiful ocean: blue under an azure sky, turning turquoise where it lapped the white, sandy beach; gentle as a pond and smelling of salt and seaweed. All that was missing was the cry of seagulls. Well, no, that’s not all that was missing; there was no flotsam and jetsam, either. No ships on the horizon, no smoke rising in any direction, and no footprints in the sand except my own. But I did have my Man, Woman, Thing Friday, following dutifully behind me.
Sitting on a rock looking at all the emptiness, I told him, her, it: “You know something, you’re sort of indecent? Well you would be, if you had a dick or tits or something!” There was no answer, just those huge limpid eyes watching me, and that small pink head cocked on one side, displaying—or so I thought—a certain willingness to at least try to understand what I’d said … maybe. And because of that, on impulse, I took off my shirt and put it on Friday, who just stood there and let me. The Pink being small, that big shirt would have covered its naughty bits easily—if there had been any to cover! Anyway, it made Friday look just that little bit more acceptable.
We walked perhaps half a mile along the beach, then turned and walked back. But as we approached the stream
and the forest track, that was when I discovered that there was a fourth variety of Pinks. And as if to complement the others—the bipeds, the quadruped grubbers in the woods, and the soaring aerials in the treetops—this time it was the swimmers, where else but in the sea?
These two dolphinlike Pinks were hauling a third animal—for all the world a real dolphin, or this world’s equivalent—up from the deeper water into the shallows. The “real” dolphin was in a bad way, in fact on its way out; something big and, I have to assume, highly unpleasant had taken a very large chunk out of it. Almost cut in half, its plump body was gaping open, leaving a long string of guts trailing in the water behind it. I suppose that no matter where you are, if you have oceans you have sharks or things much like them. It did away with an idea I’d been tossing around that maybe later I would go for a swim. Reality was closing in on me again, and it was all pretty sick-making.
I moved closer, and Friday, oddly excited, came with me.
The oceangoing Pinks didn’t seem concerned about our nearness; preoccupied with pushing the “real” dolphin up out of the water, they more or less ignored us and I was able to get close up and take a good look at them. First the fishy dolphin:
Even as I watched it, the poor thing expired. It just lifted its bottle nose out of the water once, gave a choked little cry, and flopped over on its side. It was mammalian, a female, slate gray on its back, white on what was left of its belly. If I had seen it in a SeaWorld on homeworld I would have thought to myself: dolphin, probably of a rare species.
As for the sea-Pinks: if I had seen them in a SeaWorld I’d have thought to myself, weird! From the waist up they were much the same as the bipeds, even to the extent of having their thin rubbery arms. Maybe in their upper bodies they were more streamlined than the land-dwelling variety, but that seemed to be the only difference. Oh, wait; they also had blowholes, in the back of their necks. From their middles down, however, they were all dolphin, the pink merging into gray. And I could see just looking at them that they weren’t stupid.
