A Walk Between Stars

by Tyler Parsons

  The Manti reappeared in the port window.

  “Could I get you to refill this canister for me?” I started. “Or any chance I could get a few more for the road? The bigger the better.”

  “No,” It said.

  What?

  “The more I could get, the longer I survive.”

  “Our Engineer has determined that we are able to carry you to your people,” It said.

  Oh sweet. “That’s great news,” I beamed. “What’s the plan, seal off a cargo bay or something?”

  “I have been instructed to tell you to use your harness to tie yourself to the ship’s hull,” it said. “The inertial negation field expands far enough around the exterior of the ship to account for your safety.“

  Again, he’s got to be kidding. But these bugs don’t seem to have a sense of humor. “So your plan is to strap me to the hood of the ship like an animal carcass?”

  I took some convincing, but in the end I found myself pulling on my safety line, and reeling in the big metal door that had been my life raft for nearly a week. I untied Quinn, and pushed the metal door back out into space away from the ship. I found a spot where several large external ducts came together forming a deep recess that offered protection on three sides. I placed Quinn’s body in this protected little alcove, and tied him in with his safety harness.

  Most aspects of the ship appeared to be symmetrical, so I pulled myself along the surface to the opposite side and found a matching alcove. I tied myself down and signaled the Manti that I was ready.

  The stars started to drift towards the stern of the ship. The closer and brighter the stars were, the faster they moved. The more distant and dim stars showed little to no signs of movement. We were on our way.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next several days in the alcove felt oddly identical to the previous days spent strapped to the big door. But at least now, there was hope.

  The threat of starving, dehydrating, or suffocating had been lifted. Only to be replaced with the knowledge that the only way to assuage my growling belly was to risk the vacuum of space. Every time I ate, it took hours to overcome the headache.

  The Manti refused any requests for conversation, and insisted I only contact them for provisions.

  The boredom continued. At least that was the same. I found myself playing a lot of craps with my fabricated dice.

  That first week on the Manti ship came and went. I spent it safely fastened in my alcove. I had plenty of ration bars still, but my water levels had dipped below thirty percent. I opened a channel to the Manti, requesting more water. About an hour later, one of them ordered me to the port. I watched the stars. They showed no signs of slowing.

  “The ship doesn’t seem to be stopping,” I said.

  “There is no intention to stop the ship,” the voice said.

  “I’m okay to traverse the ship at these speeds?” I asked.

  “Yes,” was the only response.

  “So, you’re saying I’ve sequestered myself to this spot for the past week for no reason? I’ve been free to move about this whole time?”

  “Yes,” it said again. “As was instructed, the ships inertial negation field extends beyond the ship.”

  Great! That would have been nice to have clarified a week ago.

  As I pulled myself to the port, my arms quivered. My muscles were atrophying. I needed to figure out some sort of exercise regimen to combat the long-term lack of gravity. Now that I knew I was free to move about, I didn’t think it would be too difficult.

  When I got to the port there was a Manti at the window and the canister was already in the airlock with the interior door sealed. I tried the latch, and it opened freely. I connected my suit and topped off my reserves.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The Manti nodded his head. I nodded back, then, “Hey, did you just nod at me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” it said.

  “Ok… And does that mean the same for you as it does for me?”

  “In this instance, it was a form of acknowledging another’s gratitude,” it said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought.” Interesting.

  The Manti just looked at me in its unblinking stare, then, “Will that be all?”

  “Yes,” I said. I guess.

  When I left the port, I decided to explore the ship—maybe get some exercise. I pulled myself along the length of the ship; there were plenty of areas to attach my safety strap as I glided along.

  When I was younger I remember going for a ride in an old car my uncle had restored—a Chevy I think. As we idled, a small spider crawled across the hood of the car. We pulled out onto the road. It stopped its crawl, and stood still. We stopped at an intersection, and the spider started crawling once more. When we started moving, it froze, as it had before. We started picking up speed and I thought surely any moment now it would be blown off—but it wasn’t. It just hunkered down, pulling its body close to the hood of the car. Eventually, we merged onto the freeway and headed south at top speeds. The drive took almost an hour, and that little spider clung tight the entire trip, never budging. When we pulled into our destination, it simply stood up and continued its journey, eventually reaching the edge of the hood and darting under and out of sight.

  I felt like that spider now.

  I slowly pulled myself along, gliding down the entire length of the ship, avoiding any windows or ports, then pulled myself around the ship a few meters before heading back along the length again. In doing this, I was able to cover the entire ship, wedge by wedge in about forty-five minutes. I repeated my trek, but decided to stop and inspect things along the way.

  I came to a large array of panels. I recognized them right away as a power collector; either solar, or maybe a broader electromagnetic collector. The individual solar cells making up the panel started in the center, and were daisy chained, cell-to-cell, wrapping around the center, spiraling out. The configuration wasn’t that odd—just different from the back and forth chaining of cells on Terran panels. I inspected every inch of the panel, postulating reasons for the differences. For fun, I started making up mad assumptions.

  I continued along the ship. If I didn’t recognize a device, I would inspect it and try to determine what it could hypothetically be used for. If I did recognize something, I would scrutinize it to find the differences, then speculate the reasons for them.

  I read the exterior of the ship like an ancient shaman might read the bumps on a sick man’s skull.

  This became my new favorite activity—exercise for body and mind. I coupled my curious inspections with aerobic exercise. Investigate a sensor array, take a lap; examine a power panel, take a lap; study a set of intriguing couplings, take a lap—and so it went.

  On one particularly eventful afternoon, while inspecting the ship, I noticed a very thin antenna (at least that’s what I thought it was) at the end of a large stabilization fin. The fin stretched out away from the ship at least four meters.

  When I climbed out far enough to look it over carefully, I determined it was a gravitational sensor.

  I looked around, this was the furthest out away from the ship I had been. I had the sudden urge to reach out as though to touch the stars zipping by. I vaguely remembered a cartoon of a rabbit riding a rocket and reaching up to run a hand through a cloud of stardust.

  I slowly reached out. My fingers started to prickle with the needle-like tingling of a numb extremity. I froze. There was a slight pull on my fingers; a pressure, like flowing water passing over my hand.

  “Terran! Terran!” blared into my headset. It was the Manti.

  “Pull back to the ship immediately,” it said.

  I pulled my hand back and climbed down towards the ship.

  “Am I ok?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the voice said. “You were about to breach the inertial negation field.”

  Oh, I thought. Not good.

  Mental note: no more mountain climbing on this expedition.

 
I fell into a routine over the next five days: sleep, laps around the ship, inspect the ship interspersed with more laps, lunch followed by a nap to sleep off the affects of the vacuum, more laps, more inspection, then settle down for the night with a game of craps.

  It was time to renew my water reserves. I contacted the Manti and before long was at the port filling my suit.

  The Manti informed me that from now on it would be solely responsible for my needs, and I would not interact with the other crew members further.

  Up until that point I assumed I had spoken with the same Manti each time I’d visited the port. Now that I thought of it, it seemed silly to make such an assumption since they all looked so similar.

  “So it’ll just be you and me, huh?”

  “Yes,” it said.

  “Well maybe we should get to know each other a bit then, don’t ya think?” I pasted on a smile, not even knowing if the Manti could read human facial expressions.

  “Very well,” it said.

  “Really? Well okay,” I said, a little off guard. I assumed I’d be brushed aside quickly as before. “How ‘bout we start out with introductions. I’m Roman Briggs,” I said as I pressed the palm of my hand to my chest. “Everyone calls me Briggs.” I rolled my palm face up and extended it toward the Manti.

  “That does not translate,” it said. “What is your title and rank?”

  “Oh, well, I don’t really have a rank or title. I’m just an electrical technician.” I said, then, “Oh, but my pay grade is Tech-4 if that works.”

  “That translates. Tech Four,” it said.

  “And you? What can I call you?” I asked.

  “Steward One,” it said.

  “Your name is Steward?” I asked.

  “No,” it said, “My title and rank. I am the personal steward to the first officer, making me steward one.”

  I found out that Steward was a male, although he admitted their sexes shared very similar outward appearances, making it difficult for an outsider to determine. One of the subtle differences he pointed out to me was the addition of an extra digit at the top of their forearms, on the inside of the elbow. He held his arm up for me and wiggled the pint sized little digit. He pointed out the main physical characteristics of the Manti that might allow me to tell them apart. Primarily it had to do with patterns created with slightly different shades of brown and various textures along their thorax and abdomens.

  Our conversation was cut short at that point—he was called back to work. I made a mental note to start doing my water top offs at fifty percent instead of thirty, now that Steward showed an interest in talking.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next day was a big day for me. When I awoke from my after lunch nap, I invented a new game.

  I would roll the dice, and then had ten minutes to find a grouping of objects on the ship’s hull that matched the dice roll. My first roll was a three. Easy. I went straight to the solar panels and one at a time tapped the three large panels, as though the scoring wasn’t complete until I made contact with them. My next roll was an eight. Four minutes later I found a small area with eight conduits running bundled together. On my third turn I rolled an eleven, which I wasn’t able to find in the ten-minute time limit. I decided to be lenient on myself, since I was still learning the game, and gave myself a second go. I eventually found a section of plating with twelve bolt heads, but one was obscured by a vent flap that was currently open. I sent it to the judges in my head for a ruling, and it was determined that it did in fact count.

  Later that day while I was searching for a grouping of seven in the ninth wedge of the ship, I passed one of the ship’s larger windows. The lights were on in the room and the window glowed as I approached it. Normally I would skirt around the windows with obvious occupants inside—just something about being caught peeping in on my liberators sat uneasy with me. But after my conversation with Steward, I was curious to see if I could spot the subtle things he had pointed out to me.

  This was a large gathering room, so it lowered my internal barriers regarding privacy.

  I settled in behind a communications dish, hoping to hide amongst the shadow it cast. It was unlikely they would be able to see me from within such a bright room looking out; but something about the shadows gave me the added comfort I needed. I was stepping over a line, but it seemed harmless at the time, so I pushed the feeling to the back of my mind.

  It looked like a rec-room for the crew. There were several tables with Manti standing around—apparently they did not use chairs. A table of five was engaged in a tile-based game. In a corner of the room there was a pile of large pillows, or maybe beanbags. A pair of Manti reclined there watching something on a shared tablet. In an adjoining room I could see what looked like a large gaming table.

  I watched them closely, trying to see the variations Steward had mentioned. But they all still looked alike to me. Not only could I not see any fluctuation in the shade of brown from one to another, but the patterns Steward had mentioned weren’t visible to me either. Essentially, they all just looked brown.

  I tapped my arm pad and pulled up the visor menu, initiated the zoom feature, and zoomed in. I could easily see the extra digit on several of them, indicating their sex, so that felt like an accomplishment. I could see a hint of a pattern on a few of them, but only if they were holding very still.

  I rarely had a need to adjust the visor’s filters, but I knew my way around them. I setup a targeted contrast filter, and set the color to a brown that matched the Manti’s color. I manipulated the contrast setting using a curve line on the pad, watching the room as I did. The Manti got darker while the surroundings remained the same. I reset it, and tried again until only parts of their skin turned darker while other parts lightened. The patterns emerged. A few more tweaks and the patterns stood out easily.

  They were unique. The patterns varied greatly, from tiger stripes to leopard spots; from complex starburst, to random chaos. There was even one that resembled a tie-died design.

  I watched the aliens for hours, well into my sleep period.

  The following morning I found it difficult to focus as I ran through my daily exercise; three laps, four laps, five. It was amazing how watching the Manti had affected me. I knew it was due to my isolation—they did so very little while I watched, yet I found myself uncontrollably drawn to their world.

  I decided that watching them couldn’t hurt, as long as I steered away from anything resembling private quarters. So large windows only for now. I headed to the closest of these, and strapped myself down.

  I peered through the window; a portal into their world. Several Manti stood at tables lining the perimeter. A pair stood in the center with tablet computers and hovered over the others. Each table had a multi-colored glowing orb in its center that the workers focused on. On either side of the orbs were elongated keyboard devices that fit their forearms.

  After several hours, I was no closer to discovering the nature of what was happening in this room than when I first started. Were they flying the ship, working the communications systems, or just a bunch of alien secretaries?

  Later that evening, I found the ship’s mess hall. The manner in which they prepared and consumed food was quite ritualistic. It felt more to me like an ancient tea ceremony than a common meal.

  I moved to another room. There were piles of beanbags in the corners, and beanbags in a semi-circle, culminating in a single beanbag at the center of the room.

  A single female reclined on the center bag. She blew bubbles into a big pot of water—or actually liquid methane most likely. She had a mask with a tube running to the pot. She held the tube under the liquid with one hand submerged. On her every exhale the pot would boil with bubbles.

  “Stop it.” I said out loud to myself. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to blow bubbles in your milk?” I continued in a mocking tone.

  Why the hell not? Like blowing bubbles in milk ever hurt anyone.

  In the end, I retired for the eve
ning, with no idea what Bubbles was up to. No idea at all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day I was halfway through my morning laps when my comms lit up.

  “Tech Four,” sounded the robotic voice of Steward’s translator.

  “I’m here.” I acknowledged. “What’s up Steward?”

  I wasn’t due for another top-off for several more days.

  “Do you know the location of the crew’s recreation area?” Steward asked. “It’s the large gathering room. I understand you were seen monitoring the crew there a couple cycles ago.”

  Oh, he knew about that? Someone must have spotted me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Am I in trouble?”

  “No. Can you meet me there?”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Now,” he said.

  I pulled myself around the ship, and back along the hull until I was just outside the large rec-room window. Steward was standing at a table near the window, facing out. I pulled up, just opposite of where he stood, and strapped myself to the ship.

  “So, I’m not in trouble?” I asked again, a little guarded.

  “No,” he said. “Why?”

  “Just concerned someone might be upset at me peeping in on them,” I confessed. “I’ve only peeped at the public spaces though—I swear.”

  “Peeping?” Steward said questioningly. “That does not translate.”

  “Looking in,” I amended. “Spying.” I added with reluctance.

  Steward paused for a moment. Then, “No. That is not a problem for my people.”

  “It’s not?” I smiled with a bit of relief.