by Marc Everitt
Sara tore her eyes from the incredible scenes being played out in the small amounts of fluid left behind the transparent screen and worked on the wall mounted com-unit. It should be able to record the message she wanted to send, but she would have no way of knowing if it would find its way through the communications net of the colonies successfully and reach the man she need it to. After recording her message, she uploaded it into the network and sent it on its way to Earth, feeling better for doing so.
The West fellow could go to hell as could most of the others but not Eli. She turned back to the screen and watched in awe as vast tendrils moved in the depths of the planet, testing their strength. “My Gods, I await your return. I have done what my faith has dictated. I am your servant, take me into your care,” she remembered the prayer from her childhood and voiced, not knowing if it was being understood, or even noticed. After tens of thousands of years, the creatures she called her Gods were alive again; and almost loose on the galaxy.
***
It had not been easy for Eli to persuade Cameron to give up his hover-pak, or to talk Kyle into letting him leave the ship and go to look for Taylor, but he had managed it. He skimmed over the terrain, keeping his eyes open for anything that looked vaguely like a person. He had passed Pope going in the other direction seconds ago and had been amused by the startled look on the old man’s face. He had to find Taylor, simply had to. He slowed as his keen eyes noticed the remains of what looked like an exploded missile lying strewn over the shaking plains.
All around him, the ground shook and moved menacingly. He could see vast stretches of crust lift themselves up and sink down again as the movement beneath the mantle of the planet continued to create vast shock waves through the crust. Eli hovered as low as he dared, looking for anything that could give him a clue as to the location of his friend. He seemed to have simply disappeared into thin air, but that was something he was used to from Taylor. He was about to move on and look in a different area when he noticed the shrapnel and remains of the missile again. Eli thought that looked as if there had been some trouble and he knew well-enough that if there was trouble then you could be sure Taylor West was somewhere nearby. He moved in closer and slowed his speed, glancing at his watch. He thought he was about a minute behind the schedule in his mind, a small amount but one that could prove deadly and decisive.
***
Taylor was about to sink into the depths of despair when he caught a glimpse of something passing over the crevice he was trapped in. He couldn’t be sure but it looked like Eli. Part of him cursed his friend for risking his life to try and find him, but an equal part of him was not surprised that he had done so. He knew he needed to attract Eli’s attention, but how?
***
Eli was about to turn and head away, seeing nothing near to the destroyed missile to indicate where his friend was, when he was almost hit by something passing by his left ear. He spun to the right and dropped to the ground to try and find the source of the projectile, and finding nothing on the surface but a large canyon running across the plains as far as he could see. If he was not mistaken the thing that had whistled past him had come from in there. He walked to the edge and was astonished to see Taylor smiling up at him. “Couldn’t get a lift off you, could I?” his friend smiled.
Eli was startled to see that Taylor had found himself on a small ledge several metres below the surface, it was tight but he thought he could just manage to hover down and collect his friend. He knew he would have to be quick and used the thrusters of the hover-pak to lower himself until he was level with Taylor. “Hold on.”
“Don’t worry, I intend to,” Taylor replied as he grabbed Eli’s arm. In seconds, they were out of the canyon and on their way back to the ‘Cavalry’, desperately trying to make up some time.
“It’s good to see you, I thought you were going to leave me in that hole as well.”
“I would have done, but you threw something at me,”
Eli responded, “What was it and how did you manage to get it so far.” Taylor grinned and told Eli that he really didn’t want to know. Eli replied that he most certainly did, bearing in mind he was nearly brained as it passed him, and Taylor finally relented.
“OK. It was the buckle of my belt.”
“And how did you get it so high?” Eli persisted.
Taylor tried his best to change the subject. “How long do you think it will take us to get to the ship?”
“Taylor, tell me or I swear I’ll drop you.” Eli was pushing the subject as hard as he was pushing the thrusters of the hover-pak. Taylor rolled his eyes as the plains passed below him. He could hear the already loud roar that he knew was the accompaniment for the end of the world getting even louder. “It was all the elastic I had,” he explained and for a second, Eli did not understand. When he did, he laughed in spite of their perilous predicament.
***
“We have to go and we have to go now!” yelled Cameron. He had already seen the clock roll two minutes past the safety mark and still his cousin seemed unwilling to fire the engines. Kyle was worried, he didn’t want to endanger his crew any more than he had to, but he felt he couldn’t give up on the two men still outside the ship.
Pope laid his hand on the shoulder of his captain. “He wasn’t anywhere to be seen. His friend will never find him.”
“I should never have let him go looking for him,” Kyle blamed himself. Instead of the death of one man, they were now contemplating the untimely end of two.
In the corner of the flight deck, Lana paced nervously and added, “Chris is still out there too. We have to wait for him.”
Kyle did not know how to tell the woman her husband was dead, it was not a subject he often had to broach. He made a decision. “OK. Fire up the engines, if we burn all excess fuel we may be able to break orbit in time to avoid too much damage to the ship.”
Fenchurch had been waiting for that order and began the process. In his opinion, they should have done so a long time ago, he was only sorry they never found anything they could sell on the planet. A wasted trip, he thought.
“No, wait!” shouted Dr Skandia. He pointed at the bank of instruments in front of Kyle, “Here they come!” Kyle snapped his head to the external port and could see what the readings on the banks had told Skandia, an object moving closer to ‘Cavalry’. As the ship began to lift off the ground, Kyle began to give orders and move controls frantically, attempting a particularly fancy piece of flying.
“We’re too late!” Eli cried over the noise of the air rushing around their ears and the low rumble that was coming up from the ground. Taylor strained his eyes at the ship, it was definitely moving but he was not so sure it was taking off and leaving.
“Come on, Eli, as quick as you can,” he urged. Eli squeezed the last piece of speed out of the weary hover-pak. He was not doing it any good at all, but that was not something he was worried about at that moment. They neared the ship, which hung in the air uncomfortably. “Head for the cargo bay!” Taylor pointed at the opening that he could see starting to appear in the shell of the ship and Eli glided towards it, swaying and trying desperately to keep himself heading for the doorway.
Taylor closed his eyes and trusted in the piloting skills of whoever was flying the ‘Cavalry’ and Eli’s judgement. He felt himself slam into something and so he cautiously opened his eyes and looked around. He was in the cargo bay of the ‘Cavalry’ and had never been so glad to see empty packing cases in his life. Eli lay beside him and seemed to have been dazed by their haphazard entrance. “Are you all right?” Taylor asked.
Eli paused before replying, “Just don’t ever fire things at me with your underwear again. That’s all I ask.”
In the flight deck, Cameron checked the internal monitors. “We’ve got them. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Kyle did not need to be told twice and did not even wait to close the cargo bay doors before firing the ‘Cavalry’ skywards as fast as he could. It had not been easy to hold the ship stable and
he was glad that the two men had seen the cargo bay door open and had managed to aim themselves into it. Now all he needed to do was burn fuel far above the recommended amount and hope it didn’t blow his engines in the process. In the corner, Dr Skandia looked at his wrist indicator, which read 00:05:43. He knew they were not going to make it.
“The fuel consumption is at max!” said Cameron gravely.
Kyle gunned the engines further and harder, breaking through the barriers of safe acceleration and blowing parts of his engines as he did so. “Dump everything in both cargo bays, we need to be as light as we can,” Kyle ordered through gritted teeth as the acceleration pushed him back into his seat. Taylor and Eli entered the flight deck, never wanting to miss the action and sat on the floor, leaning against the bulkhead and hoping the captain was a good a pilot as he looked.
Fenchurch moved to the cargo bay venting controls, paused, then replied, “But I’ve got some good stuff in there!”
Pope threw the switch for him. “No much use if you’re dead, you idiot.” The cargo bay doors, that had only recently closed themselves, opened again and the contents spilled out into the thinning air.
“We could trigger the Stellar Jump,” offered Cameron tamely. He couldn’t think of any other way of getting away from the dying world.
Kyle dismissed the idea. “We have no way of preparing the Stellar matter needed in time. We haven’t had the matter collector on for long enough.”
“What would happen if you switched the Jump on without the matter collector being full?” wondered Taylor.
Eli thought about it. The matter collector drew in the energy from the local stars and used it to propel the ship interstellar by shooting it out like a rocket jet. Eli could only speculate as to what would happen if the collector were not full when the Jump was switched on. “If we fill the rest of the collector with standard rocket fuel, what will happen?” he asked.
Taylor guessed quickly, trying to sound confident in his answer, “You would get a big explosion.”
“Bigger than the normal rockets?” Kyle queried.
Taylor nodded but he was worried. There was no way of knowing if the explosion caused by mixing the interstellar propulsion system with the standard propulsion used for intersystem travel would destroy the ship or be controlled and push it forward faster. He had always been one to live on the edge and decided he would rather die in a glorious explosion then be crushed to death in the shockwave that was coming because he hadn’t had the guts to try.
“Trust me, it will work. Won’t do your engines any good, though.”
That was all Kyle wanted to hear. If the engineers thought it would work, he was not going to argue. He had a slight suspicion the enigmatic West was bluffing, because that was what he would have done, but threw the lever to activate the Stellar Jump anyway. “Hold on to your hats, here we go!” he shouted over the din of sparking machinery and overworked engines. The Stellar Jump activated and they were thrown to the deck.
The ‘Cavalry’ broke through the layers of cloud and strained to put as much distance between itself and the planet as it could. Several parts of the engine room were on fire and the servo-motor would never be the same again, but Kyle could get those things repaired or replaced, if he lived to get to a spaceport.
***
In the shattered remains of Dr Skandia’s laboratory, Sara could see what she had been waiting her whole life for. She had about a second to enjoy it before the eruption of matter and energy killed her instantly. The lab was swept away in seconds as the insides of the planet burst out from under the crust.
***
As Taylor looked around the flight deck, he could see the four members of the ‘Cavalry’ crew working feverishly to get their ship to rise as quickly as possible. A glance out of the front view screen told him that the end of Graves’ World was imminent. Eli stood beside him. “I can see the planet is tearing itself apart,” he said.
Taylor nodded and turned to Dr Skandia. “I suppose this is where we find out its intentions.” Eli frowned and looked from one to the other. He looked around the room to see if anyone else knew what they were talking about. He could see Lana talking with the guard and the crew all busy inverting engine manifolds and firing adjustment thrusters to gain extra height. It looked like he was on his own.
“OK, I give up. What are you talking about?” he said. “I think we can be sure that the planet doesn’t have any intentions at all. It’s not blowing up out of spite.”
Taylor looked blank for a moment as if not realising what Eli was talking about, then understanding, said, “Eli, Graves’ World isn’t a planet, it’s an egg.”
In spite of all that was going on in the flight deck, there was a sudden and disquieting silence.
Eli smiled weakly, “Would you like to repeat what you just said? I think I must have misheard you.”
***
All over the surface of Graves’ World, cast chunks of crust were tearing apart from each other and flying out into the atmosphere. Nothing on the ground was left standing. The remains of the research station disappeared as if it had never existed and the bunker vanished into the depths of the ground. The creature within the core of Graves’ World had been fully sentient for several days now and had drawn enough strength from the nutrient rich fluid that had surrounded and maintained it for so long, to finally break free and live.
***
Light years away on Alpha Prime, Father Cassius awoke from a deep state of meditation and did something he had not done for hundreds of years, he shouted, “Our God has come! I felt our Lord’s passage to this existence. My Brothers, we have waited long enough and now the wait is over.” All over the monastery the brethren of the Worshippers of T’suk knelt and gave thanks for the miracle.
***
The people assembled on the flight deck of the ‘Cavalry’ were not so much in awe of the wonder of creation as astounded at the insanity of Taylor West. Cameron and Pope were still glued to the controls of the ship, trying their best to keep the ‘Cavalry’ flying up through the atmosphere as quickly as the engines would take them. Kyle and Fenchurch joined a disbelieving Eli, Lana and guard in haranguing Taylor. The questions were flying thick and fast, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I knew it, the man’s insane.”
“Why does he act like this? Was he starved of attention as a child?”
After a couple of seconds of varied reactions around the flight deck, Taylor was finally able to answer coherent responses. The first to come up with one was Kyle. “So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that,” Taylor pointed out of the view screen to where they could see Graves’ World getting farther and farther away as they successfully left the atmosphere, with two of the ‘Cavalry’s engines burnt out, “is not a planet at all.”
“It’s an egg!!?” said Lana.
Taylor looked to the Doctor for support. “Dr Skandia, would you help me out here.”
The old man rose to his feet and joined Taylor facing down the unbelieving throng in front of him. “Taylor is right. I know it sounds crazy. It took me a while to get used to the idea.”
“Really?” said Fenchurch sarcastically.
The old man continued regardless. “My research showed the fluid under the surface to be extraordinarily nutrient rich.”
“We know that. It’s why we came here. It’s the cure for just about anything,” Kyle interrupted.
Taylor took over the role of explaining what they knew. “The fluid was created to act as a kind of amniotic fluid, but on a far larger scale. The creature grew in the core of the planet over thousands of years until its gestation period was over.”
“How can you know all this?” Kyle asked suspiciously, sneaking a look over his shoulders at the view screen, as if expecting to see a baby floating in space at any moment.
Taylor shrugged his shoulders. “The fluid was a big clue, that sort of thing does not occur naturally. When the doctor showed me the rate
of growth of the core of the planet, it made me think. That sort of growth is unnatural unless it is one of the signs of life. I have also felt the presence of the creature on a couple of occasions.”
“So how did it get there? Who laid an egg like that?” Eli pointed out the unfeasibility of the theory.
Taylor set him straight. “No one laid it. I imagine it was a normal planet that they hollowed out and implanted the embryo in the core of.”
“Who?” Kyle persisted. Taylor looked blankly at him, he thought it was obvious.
“Our friend Sara was a worshipper of T’suk, apparently. So there’s your first clue.”
Eli blinked hard. “The T’suk are a myth. Even if they did exist they have been dead for thousands and thousands of years.”
“I would think that creature has taken that long to gestate,” Taylor said thoughtfully.
Lana did not understand any of this. “Why would those people bother doing all this?” she asked.
“I think they were dying out, it was the only way to preserve anything about them.”
Kyle snorted in laughter, “So we can expect a baby T’suk to pop out any second?” Graves’ World was now far enough behind them for the crew to see it fully, and they could see it shake and move as it tore apart.
Cameron had not been paying much attention to the conversation and walked over, safe in the knowledge that they had managed to get far enough away from the planet to avoid the blast when it came, “Don’t everybody thank us,” he muttered.
Kyle patted him on the back. “See if you can get the two burnt out cylinders fixed. I don’t like the ‘Cavalry’ limping like this.”
Cameron was eager to please and was gone through the door before Taylor could answer Kyle’s earlier question. “I think that whatever comes out of there will be unlike anything that has ever existed before.”
