Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue)

by Void, Stephanie

  Having said her good-byes to the aliens, Samantha climbed aboard, strapping herself into one of the seats. Leo took up position next to her.

  I lingered by the hatch, staring at the aliens, trying to find the right words. But before I could speak, Maura spoke first.

  “Alan, we’ve got something to tell you. We’ve made a decision.”

  “We’re going with you,” said Genesis firmly.

  “But we don’t know how leaving the planet will affect you,” said Samantha from inside the ship. “You could die.”

  “Or we could be just fine,” said Jennifer. “It’s a risk we are all willing to take.”

  “But why? You have a life here. You’re perfectly healthy and you live in a paradise!” I exclaimed. “This has been your home for fifty years.”

  “We lived here in blissful ignorance, yes,” agreed Genesis. “But we could have families that we don’t know about back home. Maybe some of our friends could still be alive, too.”

  “I was young when the mission began. My wife had just found out she was pregnant with our first child,” said Bruce. “She could still be alive. And I want a chance to meet my child.”

  “I could have grandchildren I don’t know about,” said Eleanor.

  “If we stay here, what is left for us? Two hundred more years of making pottery while this place erases our memories? That is no life.”

  “You were happy with it before,” I remarked.

  “We didn’t know any better before,” said Eleanor. “We want to go with you. We all do. No matter what the risk.”

  “All of you?” I looked around at the ten faces before me. They all nodded, resolute.

  “All right, then. It’s your decision to make, and I won’t stop you. Have you all packed your things?”

  “We each brought a few mementos from this place, if that’s what you mean,” said Genesis. “And we’ve got an additional stockpile of nuts, dried fruit, and water. for the journey.”

  “All right, then. Welcome aboard.”

  The aliens, each armed with several sacks, boarded the Freedom. Reaching for the controls, I started up the silent engines. The lights on the console sprang to life. Everything looked good. It was time to go.

  “Is everyone strapped in?” I asked, and received for an answer a murmur of assents.

  “Good.” Grasping the controls, I began to raise the ship.

  The ship responded well to the controls, sliding up towards the upper atmosphere. Realizing I was holding my breath, I tried to breathe, my heart pounding.

  This had to work. It was our only chance.

  The ship moved higher in the atmosphere, the only sound around us the air whistling as it moved past the ship. Everyone else was silent, probably as nervous as I was.

  Everything on the instruments read normal.

  We were in a thick cloud layer with only the instruments to guide me. I angled the ship up further.

  Then, abruptly, the clouds fell away and we were in the blackness of space, Coriolanus below us.

  I heard several sighs of relief behind me.

  We were safe.

  The journey continued for some hours without incident. The aliens were rapt with fascination, staring out at the star-studded cosmos. Maura in particular asked endless questions, which I tried to answer, Samantha helping.

  As soon as I could, I used the ship’s comm. system to broadcast a message through hyperspace. I warned ships to stay away from the planet Coriolanus, and announced that my ship was carrying survivors from the Indomitable’s mission.

  The alien ship had an autopilot, which I set for Iron Horn Base.

  After a few hours, the novelty of space travel had worn off for the aliens. I noticed a few of them yawning.

  “You should get some sleep,” I suggested. “It’s night time for your internal clocks. You aren’t used to it yet, but space looks the same whether it is day or night.”

  “Good idea,” said Maura.

  “What about you?” asked Jennifer. “Aren’t you sleepy, too?”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “And I’ve got the ship on autopilot, which means I could fall asleep right now and we won’t drift off course.”

  Something was buzzing somewhere.

  Buzz, buzz. Why wouldn’t it stop?

  I opened my eyes and realized I had been dozing in the pilot’s chair. More importantly, I saw that another ship was hailing us. I could see the ship off our port side, but she was too far away for me to identify her markings.

  “Y—yes?” I sat up quickly, answering the hail. “Yes? Who is there?”

  “Unidentified craft, this is the Stellar Intrepid Ship Siren Song. Please announce yourself.”

  I broke into a grin so wide it made my face hurt. “With pleasure. This is Alan Michael Wolf of the ship Indomitable. If you are our rescue ship, come alongside. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Our story must have seemed beyond incredible, but the captain of the rescue ship, a bald man in his forties, did an excellent job of listening with a serious face. Samantha and I met him first, then after we had told our story, informed him that there were ten alien-looking humans waiting aboard the Freedom.

  Neither Samantha or I needed much time in the medical bays. The medics deemed us both incredibly healthy, even more so than when we had started the journey. The doctors informed Samantha that she was pregnant with twins, which caused her to cry with joy. Both babies were growing nicely and had remained fully human, despite our exposure to the alien obelisk. I could tell Samantha was relieved to hear that.

  We transferred the aliens over to the rescue ship so that the doctors onboard could monitor them more closely. I was still worried that they could die, but the doctors deemed them perfectly healthy. I hoped the effects of the obelisk on their health would stay with them for years to come.

  Before we set off for Iron Horn Base, the captain of the Siren Song placed markers in hyperspace to warn the other ships of the dangers of getting too close to Coriolanus.

  Samantha, Leo, and I were tasked with piloting the alien ship, the rescue ship our escort. Or, more accurately, I did the piloting. Samantha, being a laboratory scientist, had little experience behind the controls of a spaceship. She kept watch over Leo and made sure we all had regular meals and sleep. I had forgotten how easy it was to lose track of those things in the unchanging blackness of space.

  In five weeks, we would be back at Iron Horn Base. I would see Katelyn again.

  Chapter 26

  For weeks, we traveled through hyperspace.

  We were finally again in inhabited space. It felt so good to know that the planets we passed were inhabited, at least on a sparse level. We were not alone anymore.

  Two days from reaching our destination of Iron Horn Base, the ship encountered trouble in the form of worrying imminent power failure messages that popped up on the display. I relayed this over to the captain, who decided that we should set the ship down on the nearest colony world—a short two hour trip from where we were—rather than risk continuing on towards Iron Horn Base.

  We did this uneventfully. The colony world was a sparsely populated but notoriously rough place called Heartbreak.

  In a strange twist of fate, its climate was as mild as its populace was rough. I set the alien ship down mere yards from the shores of a clear sea, but at a safe distance from any settlements.

  The captain set his ship down nearby, then sent out a message to Iron Horn Base, informing them of our predicament.

  Within the hour, he received a reply, which he sent to me. The captain—and the rest of us—were ordered by Standing Admiral Northe to remain with the Freedom until a carrier ship arrived to scoop the alien ship up and sail away with it back to Iron Horn Base. We were forbidden to abandon the ship, for fear it could fall into the wrong hands.

  So I settled in to wait, with everyone else. Perhaps I could catch a few naps.

  Our stay on the colony world ended up being longer than I had expected. We waited
patiently for the carrier ship to arrive each day. But, as I discovered later, all the carrier barges were in use in other parts of the galaxy at the moment; the soonest one could come to our rescue would be a few weeks. So, until then, we had to sit quietly on our little colony world.

  Everyone settled into a routine during this time of waiting. Samantha, Leo, the aliens, and I rarely went aboard the Freedom after the first few days. The alien ship sat empty, guarded by the watchful sensors of the rescue ship.

  Leo was the first one to take a dive in the water of the sea. Samantha took a sample of the water, placed it into some sort of analysis machine, and deemed it safe. After her announcement, the rest of us, including the rescue ship’s crew, were more than happy to spend afternoons swimming.

  We saw few of the planet’s populace, for which I was grateful.

  The aliens, for their part, stayed aboard the rescue ship. They were nervous about entering human society again, I could tell. They spent most of their time asking questions, researching their families or friends, and reading. They had a lot of history to catch up on, so I tried to help them wherever I could. Samantha and I owed them our lives.

  After a few weeks, the captain was happy to announce that the carrier ship Titan was on its way to us and would be arriving tomorrow. Everyone cheered, including me. Though the colony planet was wonderful, I was tired of being there. I had had my fill of paradises for a little while.

  After lunch that day, I realized I had left my knife aboard the Freedom, and headed over to the ship to retrieve it.

  The ship was dark and empty, reminding me of the first time I had seen it. I found my knife and, before leaving, took a moment to gaze at the ship’s alien interior.

  “If it had not been for you, we would still be stuck on that planet,” I whispered. “Thank you, ancient aliens.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I turned around.

  Someone was standing there, behind me in the shadows. Instantly on guard, I moved backwards. The intruder moved forward into the light of one of the windows.

  My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open.

  It was Useia. The love of my life, whom I had given up on as lost to me. She was alive and standing before me.

  “Hi, Alan,” she said softly. “I’m back.”

  Chapter 27

  “I’m back,” she repeated as I continued to stare.

  “Useia!” Somehow, I had discovered my voice. “You’re here! It has been so long!”

  She moved forward, nodding. “Too long. I’ve missed you. I—I still—I mean, I hope you still…”

  “I still love you,” I said firmly. “As much as before, if not more.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” she said. “I’m coming with you. I’m back for good, I promise.”

  I gazed at her as she stood before me. Her short hair had grown longer, and had started to curl at the ends. She had pulled it back in a haphazard way that suggested that she either didn’t care or that she was still learning how to live with longer hair. Either way, I knew that if she was still sporting that style when we returned to Iron Horn Base, Katelyn would pull her aside at the earliest opportunity and give her beauty lessons whether she wanted them or not.

  She had changed her top, too. She had swapped the utilitarian tank top she had worn as an assassin for something with a pattern on it—swirls of some kind. Perhaps her mother had given it to her, saying she had liked such things when she was younger. Useia still wore the same cargo pants and heavy boots she had worn before, and I could tell from a slight bulge in a few of the pants pockets that she was probably carrying her usual complement of knives, her weapon of choice.

  I reached out to touch her arm. “You’re really here. You’re real. You’re not dead.”

  She came forward, sinking into my arms. I held her, drinking in the scent I had missed for the year we were apart. This, holding her, made all I had endured worth it.

  “You were gone for so long,” I murmured into her hair. “I thought you were dead, or had changed your mind.”

  She pulled back. “Never,” she said, her eyes lighting up with passion. “Never. I just had to tie up a few loose ends, that’s all.”

  “I got cornered by one of the assassins who was loyal to Trilloque and thought maybe one had found you too.”

  She shifted her gaze away. “Well the loose ends I tied up were related to that, partially. It seems there was something of an underground bounty on your head for the few assassins left free who had been Trilloque’s loyal peons.” Her gaze met mine again, as sharp as a dagger. “They won’t be a problem anymore. I took care of it.”

  I thought it best not to ask.

  “How did you find me here?” I asked instead.

  “After I had handled my affairs, I went to come find you, only to find out that you had just left on some deep space mission. I went back to my family, thinking I’d just find you again when you returned from your mission. But when I heard you were on your way back, I jumped on the nearest transport to get to you. Then you were stuck here, so it was easy enough to find you.” She said it easily, as if tracking down one person in a whole galaxy was a simple thing she did every day. Though, for all I knew, she had done such things daily when she had been an assassin.

  “Impressive,” I said. “The best Katelyn and I were able to do was a call to your family’s farm right before I left.”

  “You have your specialties; I have mine,” she said.

  “Will you come back to Iron Horn Base with me?” I asked. “I have to see this mission through to the end.”

  She nodded. “I will come with you.”

  The carrier arrived the next day. It was enormous, its bulk blocking out the sun as it got into position over us. It remained high in the atmosphere, like a bloated fly overhead, the noise from its engines deafening.

  I couldn’t wait to see it up close.

  The captain had decided that Samantha and I should go aboard the carrier for the remainder of the journey, just to be on hand if any issues should arise with the Freedom during the two-day journey to Iron Horn Base. We were the resident alien technology experts now, after all.

  I had no objections to this plan.

  From its position above us, the carrier fixed its powerful grav clamp onto the Freedom and began to draw the alien ship up from the planet’s surface and towards one of the carrier’s onboard bays. Fascinated, I watched.

  After the Freedom was safely stowed aboard the carrier, the carrier’s crew sent a shuttle down to pick us up. Samantha, Leo, Useia, and I climbed aboard, ignoring the astonished looks of the shuttle’s crew, who had clearly been told to expect only two people, not three and a kyvat.

  “They’re with me,” I offered as explanation.

  After a nod from the pilot, the shuttle left the planet’s surface and flew up towards the carrier. I tried not to stare. The carrier was even more majestic up close. Everything about it made the other ships I was familiar with, even the Indomitable, seem comically tiny and dainty in comparison. It was at least twenty times the size of the Indomitable, its hull studded with openings—bays where average-sized ships had been docked. As we drew near, I spotted the Freedom parked safely in one of those bays.

  After our shuttle docked, a young woman met us in the bay. “Alan Michael Wolf? Dr. Samantha Selburn? Welcome aboard the carrier ship Titan. I’m to show you to your quarters for the remainder of this voyage.” She handed me a data chip. “We received a communiqué that was meant for you, Mr. Wolf. It’s from your sister. You can look at it in your quarters.”

  I took the chip from her, fingering it and smiling. I couldn’t wait to see Katelyn’s smiling face again. Part of me was still in shock that I would even get to see her again. But somehow, with alien help, Samantha and I had done it. The aliens had a whole new world to see, and perhaps some old and new faces to meet. We had made it home.

  Samantha and I stood together in the viewing room aboard the carrier, Leo at our feet, looking
bored. Useia was down the hall, taking a shower.

  The viewing room was large, with a huge window that spanned the length of one of the walls. The window looked out into space, where the colony world we had just left grew smaller and smaller as we left it behind. The darkness of space, sparkling with stars, filled the rest of our view.

  “Do you know which direction Coriolanus is?” I asked Samantha.

  She nodded, the fingers of one hand drumming on her pregnant belly. “Of course.” She nodded to my right. “That way. Is it the same for you?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “Still a Space Reader, just like you.”

  “Maybe they’ll find some use for our kind eventually.”

  My lip curved in a half smile. “They sent us out there to get field experience. I’d say they succeeded in that.” The colony world was nearly a speck now, hardly discernible from the rest of the heavenly bodies.

  “So,” said Samantha sadly, “we still haven’t found any aliens. We know about the wonderful creatures who made the oasis on that planet long ago, but now we will never get to meet them. We’ll never get to talk to them.” She looked out the window at the universe around us, her hand still on her rounded abdomen.

  “Maybe they are still out there, Samantha. Somewhere among the stars. We just haven’t found them yet.”

  She nodded. “Maybe someday we will.”

  Moving so I stood next to her, I stared out at the stars with her. She was right and I knew it. The odds of us finding the beautiful aliens who created the healing planet were slim. The galaxy was a big place, and we were only at the edge of the small part of it that humans had explored and colonized. There would be more exploration, sure, but it was unlikely that we would discover aliens in our lifetimes.