Impact

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Understood. Yes, this is going to work. I’ll get Jenna out of there, and then we’ll talk to them.”

  “Or something like that. Good luck, little brother.”

  “Thanks, Anna.”

  Together they tensioned the rubber cable as much as their combined strength would allow. If Anna let go now, he would no longer be able to hold it back and would be propelled in the direction of the asteroid. The main thing was to go through the opening and not hit the frame above or below. Now, from maybe 20 meters, the opening suddenly looked a lot narrower than before. They needed to make sure the rubber cable didn’t impart any upward or downward motion.

  “Hold on,” Anna said.

  “You don’t let go, either.”

  “Of course not.”

  She held onto the cable with one hand, and with her other she placed a level on the taut cable.

  “You’re lucky we’re following the asteroid with the engine on. Otherwise this wouldn’t work,” she said. “But it looks good. You’re aimed straight through the opening. You ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “On three. One... two... three!”

  At the same instant, Anna let go of both his safety line and the rubber cable. Boris felt an intense burst of thrust in his back. He was expecting it and had tensed his muscles. With his head bent down and his feet raised up, he flew toward the opening. Just don’t bang into the frame, he thought. He could picture himself missing the opening, his head cracking on the hard edges. He wasn’t necessarily scared for himself, but then he wouldn’t be able to rescue Jenna, and he didn’t want that to happen.

  Quicker than the thought, he’d already passed through the opening. He flew over the short overhang and plunged into the blackness of space like into a deep body of water.

  He knew his flight was at a frenzied pace, and yet it felt to him like he wasn’t moving at all. The asteroid menacingly took up half the sky. Boris pushed his goggles in front of his eyes.

  They had aimed at the front third of Santa, but due to the asteroid’s motion, the spot his trajectory intersected the asteroid was slowly moving toward the asteroid’s middle section. At the same time, the celestial body was rotating in front of him. If their calculations had been correct, he would land at a position approximately directly opposite the bunker where he had lost Jenna. If the Earthlings were hiding anywhere, then it had to be there.

  He would have like to use the radar in the goggles, but that would give away his presence. So he had to wait and hope that the Earthlings would reveal themselves—or at least leave some trace—so he continued to observe the asteroid in the infrared the entire time. Technology produced heat, and heat was something he could see.

  But there was nothing. The display in his goggles showed that he would impact the asteroid in 20 seconds. He moved into a landing position, legs down. Jenna, where are you? Where have they taken you? Ten seconds. There was a shimmer! A flash of dark gray, where before there had been only blackness. He registered the coordinates into his goggle’s navigation system. The goggles vibrated.

  The surface was coming toward him frighteningly fast. Right below him he saw a rock, about the size of his arm, with a ridge along the top that looked very sharp. He twisted his body forward. His outer skin better not hit that ridge, but he had brought along repair spray, just in case.

  And then his right foot contacted the surface, causing a sharp pain in his thigh. His left foot hit the rock and pushed it to the side. Boris fell and impacted the relatively flat surface on his left side. A layer of dust dampened his collision.

  Why is there so much more dust here than on the other side? he wondered as he activated the suction cups on his hands. Somehow they worked, in spite of the dust! This time he was not going to have a rebound-landing. His inertial momentum put quite a strain on his arms, but he was able to withstand it. His body came to a stop.

  Ugh. He groaned, but nobody could hear him. Slowly he sat up. His right thigh hurt, but it wasn’t seriously injured. Probably just a muscle strain, and he could live with that. He stood up and got his bearings. The flash of gray had to be about one kilometer in front of him. Carefully he started walking. Walking was much more difficult without a jet pack, but he needed to stay as low as possible and not hop around.

  He quickly determined that the easiest and fastest way to move forward was on all fours. He hoped nobody was watching. He took the suction cup off his left hand and fastened it to his right foot. Now all he needed to do was make sure that either his right hand or right foot was always in contact with the surface. It was exhausting to crawl for so long, but he had a goal, and that made the exhaustion bearable.

  The layer of dust kept thinning the closer he got to his goal. Finally, he was crawling on bare rock. He had to have reached one of the oldest parts of the asteroid, formed in the chaos and fire of the first years of the solar system. With a little luck, it could’ve become a planet.

  His goggles vibrated again. He had reached the coordinates where the flash of gray had occurred. Boris crouched down and straightened his back. There was nothing to see. The bare rock in front of him wasn’t any different from any of its surroundings, but it was slightly warmer here than in other places. Maybe that meant that a spaceship had launched from this spot a short time ago. The infrared glow might then be the residual heat of the engine, and Jenna would now be on her way to Mars or Earth.

  But, the intensity of the infrared radiation hadn’t changed since he had landed. Thirty minutes of dissipating energy into the interplanetary vacuum—he should’ve been able to detect a decrease in thermal energy a long time ago. Therefore the heat source still had to be located on the asteroid somewhere. It was well insulated, no doubt, but not well enough. Consequently, the surface close to it had warmed by about two degrees. It was lucky that the sun was currently on Santa’s other side. Otherwise he might not have even noticed the small temperature difference.

  He moved on all fours into the area. Even with the residual-light amplifier in his goggles, the visibility range at optical frequencies was only around two or three meters. He felt like he was in a labyrinth without visible walls. But he didn’t want to switch on his headlamp and alert anyone who might be watching for his presence.

  He systematically searched the area. Once he saw the center, however, he realized that hadn’t been necessary. The center had a recess that looked just like the one on the other side of the asteroid, where they had found the airlock. Just like before, he found a rectangular metal plate in front of him that opened without a problem. Underneath was another airlock door with a handwheel.

  Boris took a deep breath and got lost in thought. It was too bad that he couldn’t ask Anna and Geralt for advice. Should he try to open the airlock? That was how he’d already lost Jenna. What if the same fate awaited him now? Maybe they’d set a second trap meant for him this time. But there weren’t any other clues or tracks that he could follow, so he didn’t have any other choice. Even if someone had intentionally set all this up, he had to take that chance. He climbed into the recess, grabbed the handwheel, set his feet against the provided footrests, and turned the wheel.

  He slipped into the airlock chamber and closed the door. Everything was the same as the first time, except Jenna wasn’t waiting on the other side. The lever that controlled the airlock was mounted in the same position on the wall. He pulled it down and the chamber quickly turned warm, then hot. Finally, the red blinking light turned to a steady green. He pushed the inner door to the side.

  Then he drew his weapon, only for safety, he told himself. But the room he entered was just as empty as its counterpart on the other side of the asteroid. But what had he been expecting? That Jenna would be behind the door, waiting to wrap her arms around him? Yes, that would have probably described his idea of a happy ending. But that was nonsense. Jenna would have freed herself from the bunker a long time ago, climbed out through the open airlock, and called the ship.

  He was so dumb. He’d built a sandcastle
solely out of hope, and now the first wave had flattened it. He wasn’t going to find Jenna here. Carefully he looked around the corner into the second room. It was also brightly lit and, unfortunately, also empty.

  But then he noticed something different—one of the second room’s walls had an opening. It had the shape of a narrow, vertical rhombus, about as tall as a human. Its edges were so smooth that it clearly hadn’t been made by natural causes, and it was dark. It was apparently connected to a corridor with the same cross-section as the opening. Who had built such a thing?

  This time Boris didn’t take much time to think about what to do. There was nothing else here, so he climbed into the corridor with his arms out in front. The asteroid’s minimal gravity was a benefit in this situation. It wouldn’t have been so easy to force his way through the narrow corridor under Titan’s gravity. He felt his way forward. The corridor curved to the right. It was pitch-black beyond the bend.

  Did the bunker he had just come through connect to the one on the other side? If that was the case, then there should be a draft, because they had shot a hole in the other airlock. Or was the pressure difference spread out over the long distance? The corridor would have to be almost 30 kilometers long if that was the case. It was lucky that he wasn’t claustrophobic. If only it wasn’t so hot! But the heat didn’t appear to be harming his outer skin yet. It was just uncomfortably itchy.

  But the corridor didn’t lead to the other side. It ended at another room with just enough light to see that it was a little bigger than the one from which he had just come. Boris wriggled out of the corridor and stood up. This room wasn’t empty. Cables and hoses of different sizes came out of the walls, reminding him of worms and snakes. They all had the same destination. It looked like some kind of workshop table made from solid metal in the middle of the room. There, they were angled and wrapped around a luminous white container that looked like a coffin.

  Boris touched one end of the box. It was pleasantly cold. Maybe he could escape the heat in there for a while. It was definitely below 260 degrees, but his outer skin was still itchy. Slowly he moved around the coffin, which wasn’t a simple task, because he had to worm his way through all the cables and hoses.

  The other end was different from the rest of the box. It was a glass plate and was fogged over. He wiped the glass, but the condensed moisture was on the inside, where it had to be warmer than here on the outside. He took out his flashlight and turned it on. The device produced heat, and he placed it against the top of the glass. It took a little while, but the condensation finally started to dissipate.

  Boris looked around at the room. The cables almost seemed as if they had grown here naturally, not placed by humans. Had Earthlings’ technology changed so much? The glass had to be warm enough now. He removed the flashlight and jumped back in shock. There was a human in the box with clearly feminine facial features.

  But it wasn’t Jenna.

  He needed half an hour to clear the area around the coffin so that he’d be able to open it. Luckily, Anna had packed him a handy universal tool. He had been afraid that the hoses were somehow connected to the woman’s body, but he could now tell they only went up to the coffin. The hoses were probably transporting breathable air. A thin tube, almost certainly a food line, led into the woman’s mouth. Two other tubes, perhaps taking away waste, disappeared under the white cloth that covered her.

  The woman was breathing slowly and calmly. Her eyes were closed, her blonde hair stringy and damp. Boris estimated her age to be in her mid-30s. He felt slightly embarrassed to think about lifting the cloth. She was probably otherwise naked.

  But he couldn’t wait long. Without the coffin’s protection, it would now be too cold for the woman. He had to remove the lines from her and then bring her into the front room as quickly as possible. It was much warmer there, uncomfortably warm for himself, but probably warm enough for a naked female human.

  He looked around, but there wasn’t anything here he could use to keep her warm. Hopefully she would wake up when he removed the lines. What if he was killing her right now? What if the hoses and cables were the only things keeping her alive? But he needed her awake. He needed someone who could tell him what was going on here, someone who could tell him how to find Jenna. Who could say whether she, too, was in a coffin somewhere, her lips slowly turning as blue as this woman’s were?

  He opened the coffin and reached for the cloth lying over the woman. He hesitated briefly—after all, he wasn’t a doctor. But then he pulled the cloth away. The woman was thin, appearing almost emaciated. How long had she been lying here? One of the lines ended in her thick pubic hair. How was he supposed to remove that? He gripped it and slowly pulled it out. It took a surprising amount of force.

  The line in her mouth was taped to her upper lip, so he had to rip off the tape to remove it. That also suggested that she’d been in the coffin for a long time. A third line ended in the crook of one arm. He didn’t hesitate and pulled that one out, too. A few drops of blood appeared, but nothing more. The woman’s circulation had to be very weak.

  And now? The woman’s eyes were still closed. He lifted her up. It sounded as if he were ripping off multiple Band-Aids. He turned her over. She had sizeable red pressure marks on her back, bottoms, and thighs. When she woke up, she wasn’t going to be able to lie on her back for a long time, but at least pressure marks and indentations wouldn’t kill her.

  He put the woman over his shoulder and noted that her limbs were very stiff. She had to have been lying in the coffin for months, possibly even longer. He carried her to the opening in the wall until he heard a rustling sound.

  Startled, he turned around. The woman’s hair was pulled out straight. Just beyond her hair was a thin mesh netting floating in the air, connected by a cable to the coffin, which must’ve been around the woman’s skull. He grabbed the mesh, pulling it and the cable to himself and putting them into his tool pocket. Maybe it would somehow help him find whoever was kidnapping women and putting them in coffins like Snow White. Boris imagined Jenna lying in a coffin somewhere. In his mind, her eyes were wide open.

  The rhombus-shaped corridor was still there. He pushed the woman in first and then climbed in behind her. Her head banged against the wall somewhat hard at the two bends, but he couldn’t prevent it, and she didn’t complain. With the rising temperature, he noticed that they had finally arrived at the entrance room.

  “Anna, Geralt, can you hear me?” No answer. Of course not. The airlock hatches had blocked the radio transmissions last time, too.

  He pushed the unconscious woman out of the corridor, wriggled out after her, and placed her down on the floor of the second room.

  He needed to go outside to talk to Anna. The woman required a spacesuit and clothes. If she didn’t regain consciousness, maybe their tank could help. Wnutri could also rejuvenate and recuperate in it. This woman seemed to be an Earthling, but the differences weren’t all that great. Too bad they didn’t have a doctor on the ship.

  He had to wait for the airlock again. Finally, he was outside. His outer skin enjoyed the cold. The sun was even visible, giving him hope. The woman was a promising discovery. Surely she would know something that would help them.

  “Anna, Geralt, please respond.”

  “What is it, little brother? Did you find her?”

  “No, but I did find a naked woman lying in something that looked like a coffin and hooked up to a bunch of tubes.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “Of course not. I need you to come to my coordinates as quickly as possible. Bring a jet pack, clothes, and a spare spacesuit. And bring some food and water, too.”

  “Understood. I’ll hurry.”

  “I’m sending you the coordinates where I am right now. I’ll be on the other side of the airlock. It’s like the one we found before.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Boris went into the airlock and started the process to reenter the bunker. When h
e finally opened the inner airlock door, a wild creature jumped on him and tried to bite him. He grabbed the woman and held her arms tightly. It required almost no effort because she didn’t have much strength.

  “Stay calm,” he said. “I’m here to help you.”

  Carefully he put her on the floor and let go of her arms. He could see the terror in her eyes. She tried to cover her nakedness.

  Boris turned around and looked at the airlock. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find any clothes for you,” he said.

  She started sobbing.

  “Someone is coming with clothes and a spacesuit. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  She said something, but he couldn’t understand any of it. Was that Old English? Another obstacle! Maybe the woman knew something that could help them, but would they be able to understand her?

  Finally! A red light on the airlock’s inner door showed that someone had just entered the airlock from the outside. Anna—if it was Anna—had really hurried. At most, ten minutes had passed since he talked to her, and she would have also had to collect clothes and a spacesuit before leaving the ship. Or were they getting some other visitor? The Earthlings might’ve intercepted his radio activity. Maybe they had found that the woman was gone and now apparently his prisoner. He would be unable to explain to them that he was trying to rescue her, not to kidnap her.

  Boris stood up and moved to a part of the wall that couldn’t be seen from the doorway when the airlock door opened. Then he drew his gun. The woman screamed in panic, even though he didn’t aim it at her.

  “Shh!” He put a finger over his mouth. She seemed to understand that gesture, at least. He pointed to the rear room and she disappeared into it. Shit, that was a mistake! he realized. The rhombus-shaped corridor was also in there.