Clouds. Atmosphere.
We’ve crashed. We’ve crashed and the ship has opened like a nutshell.
A breeze whistles through jagged edges. A speaker crackles.
Is OS trying to talk to me? I look toward the sound.
OS isn’t trying to talk to me. The crackling is a fire.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen outside of a laboratory. A low green glow dances on the walls of the ship. It’s a faerie fire, but even so I can feel the heat wafting up from it. When the night breeze hits the flames, they rise to greet it, rippling up like a sheet unfurled over a bed. The composition of gases in this atmosphere must be different than Earth’s, to produce fire that looks like this.
The alien moss is flaming. The flaming is spreading.
Move, Ambrose!
My hands flutter over the restraining belt, struggle to release the buckle. I frantically jab at the release, but it’s jammed. I yank at both stretches of polycarb, hoping to rip them. But if the restraint held during a crash landing, it’s not going to part under my puny arms. I force myself to pause.
Think, Ambrose!
I rest against the bunk. Now that the pressure against it is off, the release clicks open.
Oh.
I roll off, try to get to my feet and fail, instead tumbling across the floor. I get two hands onto the bunk’s surface and pull, managing to drag myself into a kneeling position.
I’m already light-headed. My blood pressure must still be low. I’d better give up on standing.
Instead I scramble toward the stars, the hallway bending in my vision and then straightening as I reach the ship’s torn lip. The orange portal dangles in the night air. Its edges are frayed, ringed in polycarbonate spikes. I gird myself, then leap between those teeth, into the night sky.
My legs buckle, rolling me down a slick slope. I come to a stop, half in water—or not water, I soon realize, something goopier than water. I lie back, staring into the chill night sky and its unfamiliar stars.I will not pass out. Not on this unknown planet with its unknown dangers.
There’s something like a smiling cat face in the sky, pointed ears and open mouth and teeth. It’s a constellation of stars, of new stars. The first myth of this new world.Hello, Sky Cat.I wrap my arms around my suit. It’s cold here—not instant-cell-damage cold, but I’ll need to get into warm clothing quickly.
I soon discover the source of the light. It looks like a full moon, but it’s both too small and too bright. It’s a distant sun.
At that pale distance it can’t be the sun this planet is orbiting, or I’d be frozen solid by now. The main sun must be on the other side of the planet, in its nighttime. We’ve landed on a binary solar system. Sagittarion Bb, the second “b” for its second sun. The myth grows.Sky Cat and its Two Star Pets.
I rattle my head. “Kodiak?” I risk calling into the night.
When there is no answer, I imagine alien predators lurking toward me, all the horror reels I’ve ever seen mashing together in my imagination. Tentacles and fangs and slimy embraces.
But there’s only the breeze. No other sounds of life. I might be alone here. We might be alone here, if Kodiak survived the crash.
The only other human in the universe. “Kodiak!”
How big is this planet? Does it have anything we can eat on it? How long will this night last? Will the breeze kick up into a superstorm? I wasn’t trained in any of the answers, because I was sent on a false mission. Given what I’m seeing, I can only assume that what my recorded voice told me is true.
I won’t let this planet master me. I’ll find a way forward.
Think, Ambrose.Unless they sent me here just to die, which would make this the most expensive execution in history, mission control must have provided the information I’ll need to survive this exoplanet somewhere within the ship. “OS,” I call. No answer.
I pick myself out of the puddle and, flailing like a new surfer, manage to get to my feet. The landscape is low and almost flat, heathered in soft moist growths that I can’t quite distinguish in this dimness. In the scant starlight, I can see the devastation that the ship’s crash wreaked on this unsuspecting planet. Two giant skid marks shine, litup from within by some sort of phosphorescence riled up by the friction—I assume from a microorganism that lives in the soil. More evidence of life. The shining strips point far into the distance; the ship skidded a long way before coming to rest here.
“Kodiak?” I call again. I have a suspicion where he is, though. One skid mark leads to the broken piece of ship I woke up in. The other disappears into a dark pond before reappearing on the far side. The ship must have broken into two. Kodiak is in the other half. If he’s alive at all.
Though all my mind tells me ispain, pain, pain, I try to bully it into logic. Priority one is to get warm clothing, preferably a spacesuit, since who knows what foreign organisms or spores might already be making their way into my body. I have to find a way to hydrate. And I have to track down Kodiak.
Well, well, Minerva. Looks like I’m mounting an extraterrestrial base camp rescue after all.
