Liquid dark pressed up against Jonz's eyes, inspiring a queer strength sucking panic. Blind and weightless in cold, alien water, disorientation numbed his mind and body instantly. He reckoned the impossibility of escaping if he couldn't find the door. The ship was probably already ten or twenty meters under water, maybe more. It wasn't even supposed to be submerged. It wasn't supposed to be planetside at all. The Fitzgerald was a space ship; a surveyor running map scans of the surface when Jonz went to bed just last night.
No alert ever sounded.
Fingers brushing something soft; the webbing of his sling, he grabbed it and gave it a hard tug. If he could figure out which wall it was attached to, he would know which direction to swim. His cabin door was opposite the sling wall. Jonz pulled it taut. By a small miracle, he happened to be pointed in the right direction, but he needed air again. Triangulating off the sling, he pushed off the floor and found his air pocket once more.
It was much smaller. Only his face fit in the surface of the pocket. Dark there, too. The only way Jonz knew he had surfaced was by the cold seam that rung his head, along the edges of his hair line, cheeks and chin. He took several breaths, hyperventilating, using up the last of the O-2. He was going to have to try to make the long swim out.
Puffing, half panicking, he knew he wasn't going to make it. There would more pitch black corridors and airlocks to negotiate. A few rational thoughts flaked off, mercifully spoiling his terror. Maybe the way the ship was flooding, there was a big hole some where. There had to be a big hole. Maybe he would get lucky and see it right away. If there was light. If it was day. He took his last breath and dove, pushing off the ceiling as he plunged for the door. He found the catch quickly, twisted it and pulled the door open. Weighted by the turbulence of the filling cabin, it resisted until he fumbled for the jam, managed to anchor himself with one hand and draw it open with the other. He found the other jam and pushed off with such force that he hit the opposite wall face first. He recoiled, nose blossoming with pain and released several fat-precious bubbles of air.
The corridor was another black wall of roaring nothing, but he was still oriented with his back to his cabin, so he reached out and found one of the zero-g rails. He turned toward the bow and began hand-over-handing, his own hands no more than faint smudges darting through thick, icy-black wool. Calmed by progress, encouraged by momentum, he began to think that he might make it. The first emergency airlock wasn't that far from his cabin. Maybe seven or eight meters. No more.
The ship began to list. The wall tipped toward Jonz. He clamped tight to the invisible rail, terrified of losing contact with it in the absolute dark. The ship swayed, then shuddered hard, beating him against the wall. Jonz lost more bubbles.
This time he glimpsed them. Giggling silver slivers wriggled passed his head up into the darkness. Straight up. His motion starved eyes followed them. Far above, he saw the faint golden shimmer of the surface burst through the orafice of the fractured hull. The entire bow section of the Fitz' was gone.
Jonz climbed like Hell, eyes on that blessed, murky golden dawn as it slowly filled the end of the corridor. The weight of the propulsion units aft must have been tipping the ship vertical. That meant Jonz had only seconds to get out. Once the Fitz' was perpendicular with the bottom, it would plunge straight down. Anything in its slipstream would be sucked down with it.
Jonz burst out of the hole like a missile, launching himself off the ragged steel of the hull hard with his bare feet, careless of whether they got cut or not. For seconds, momentum pushed him toward the surface, toward air that he hoped he could breathe. He glided up, letting his oxygen starved, aching thighs rest, letting the ballast of air in his lungs lift him toward golden salvation. As he rose, a shadow melted into focus on the surface. There was something in the waves.
A life raft? Others made it out, too.
He kicked for the surface, hoping Ames, or Michelle was in that boat. Although any of the crew would do. The only thing worse than dying on some barren alien world would have been being the sole survivor on a barren, alien world. They might have rescued the emergency transmitter. Maybe rations, too.
Still kicking, Jonz noticed that neither the shadow nor the surface were getting closer. Lungs beginning to burn, he kicked harder. The current shifted around him. The slipstream consumed the water column around him. Like great cold coils, it closed around his aching muscles and pulled him down. The Fitz got him and was dragging him down with it. He fought it, clawing strokes, kicking madly while his strength drained away and muscles began to burn, then cramped into knots of paralysis. Dark blotches passed over his vision. His lungs cramped and knotted. His heart pounded as he flailed, but made no progress.
The golden promise of air above remained out of reach. In those last seconds, lungs raging for air, trying to trick Jonz into inhaling water, he looked up at the shadow on the surface and knew he wasn't going to make it. Vision vibrating to the agonized beat of his heart, he refused to breathe, but his mouth opened regardless of his will. Water rushed in. As it filled his mouth, cold enough to hurt his teeth, he kept looking up. Vision filling with dark wads of cotton, he thought he saw the shadow on the surface suddenly elongate and dive toward him.
The soft mew of gulls brought Jonz around. He stirred with a smile, realizing he must have dozed off on the beach. Race Point was peaceful this early in the season. No tourists cluttered up the beach. There was just the soft breath of the Atlantic and the June sun.
Sudden pain rolled him on his side. Jonz came around wetly hacking, cheek in the orange talc of a beach that was light years away from Cape Cod. By the time he finished sputtering and spitting, he remembered the Fitz', the water and, most of all, drowning. His water logged chest stung as he rolled onto his back.
The sky was muddy. The sun in this solar system hid coyly behind ruddy veils of iron dust and water vapor clouds. It reminded him of Mars, but with a more temperate climate and habitable levels of O-2. The bloody flavor of the air here lingered in Jonz's mouth as he sat up. Spitting did nothing to relieve him of the taste.
He found himself in the same T-shirt and boxers he went to bed in. They were dry, though caked with the russet colored sand of the beach. His thighs got scraped up; nicked and bleeding a bit. He inspected the dozens little punctures in his legs. They seemed deep. He couldn't remember how they happened, but worried vaguely about infection. He felt a little shaky and feverish.
Around him, he noticed pieces of the Fitz' washed up on the receding tide. Other than the debris from the ship, the was no sign of his crew mates. Except, someone else must have survived. Somebody pulled him out of the water.
The gulls mewed.
Gulls? Jonz looked into the sky. Sea gulls on this planet?
Then he felt the presence; the absolute sensation of surely and certainly being watched by something his mammalian brain could not possibly reckon. The feeling of Otherness that bore down on his tiny human proportions, penetrated his awareness on a cellular level. All the hairs on Jonz's body prickled erect. The terror he felt out in the water was nothing compared to the stuff that trickled through his brain like ice water as he turned his head slowly.
Just a few steps away, the thing crouched on a long shelf of rock behind Jonz.. He stared at it a long time over his shoulder. His shock stalled by a moment of curious bewilderment. He couldn't decide whether the thing was organic or mechanical or some weird amalgamation of the two. It resembled a giant, three ended slinky covered with loose, gray elephant's hide. It hunkered on two of its thick-baggy coiled stalks. At the top of the arch that joined its fat-springy legs, the third gray, baggy stalk poised in the air, curled into a tapered question mark. A whorl of thick spiny bristles festooned the blunted end.
The pattern on the creature's muzzle matched the pattern of punctures on Jonz's legs. He wondered if the thing attacked him out in the water. Maybe those bristles were poisonous. Maybe he was dinner. He didn't move, just stared at it.
After a moment, a tiny aperture opened in the center of the bristles. "Eeee-youu." It said, then, "Jonzzzz." Its stalk lolled to the left. It said in its high gull voice, "Do not be afraid," then lolled to the right. "I am tasting your language."
"Tasting -- you mean you can communicate with me?"
"Comm-Eeeeuuunicate. Yes. Better and better, Jonz. I taste your fear. Don't be afraid. I don't eat you. You're safe."
Jonz noticed his sore legs. "You pulled me out of the water."
"I pulled you out."
He rolled over onto his knees, moving slowly partly out of caution, partly out of weakness. He remembered his manners. "Thank you."
The mass of fat walrus bristles wriggled.
Jonz looked down the beach, then up into the orange dunes. If it saved him, maybe --
"I pulled no others out of the water, Jonz."
He squinted at the creature. Apparently it could taste his thoughts, too. He looked along the tide line. A long way down the beach, other things began to wash up. He noticed a crate in the shallows. Almost anything from the ship would be useful. He noticed the creature. It seemed content to squat on the out cropping. It told him in plain English that he was safe. He had no alternative but to believe it was sincere as well as intelligent, so he started cautiously away from it, heading up the beach to check out the crate. He glanced back a few times, but the creature remained on its rock.
When he reached the crate, he glanced back once more.
The creature swayed back and forth on its heavy, saggy trunks. Its bristled stalk craned in the air.
Jonz sloshed into the surf. The crate turned out to be food stuffs from the mess hold. Cases of instant potatoes. It might as well have been manna from Heaven. He grabbed the handle and gave it a tug, but the tide jammed it into the orange silt, so he knelt in the water to start digging the thing out with his bare hands. Lungs hypertensive from inhaling the alien sea water, the exertion brought on a near convulsive and very painful coughing fit.
Jonz staggered back in the wash, hacking wetly until his chest cramped. If that wasn't bad enough, the commotion brought the creature running … sort of. Out of the corner of his eye, Jonz spotted it launch itself from the out cropping. To his horror, it came end over ending just like a giant, enraged slinky. In spite of its girth, its big, round peds made a soft mmmf-mmmf sound as it came up the beach at him.
Still gurgling and wheezing, Jonz scrambled from the surf to get out of the way of the creature as it mmmf-mmfed along the sand, stirring up clouds of orange talc. It moved slinkied pretty damned fast.
It made a straight line for the crate.
Helpless to defend his only food, Jonz stumbled up the sand and fell there, weak and chest cramping from the coughing fit. He watched the creature as it slinkied into the wash. It squatted in the water, wrapped its long stalk around the box and began rocking it loose. At last, it pulled the crate free, then rolled it out of the tide up onto the beach.
Dizzy, Jonz wheezed. Now his legs were rubbery. Vague knotting pain settled in his joints. He wondered if he could have the bends or something worse. This was an alien world. He could have inhaled any thing out there in the water or in the air for that matter. He felt like puking. He let his head fall back on the sand and closed his eyes.
Mmmf-mmmf. Mmmf-mmmf.
Though a panic reflex urged him to get to his feet, Jonz didn't twitch a muscle. A fresh blush of fever burned the strength out of him.
"Jonzzz."
He opened his eyes, swallowing an unpleasant urge. The creature blocked out the muddy sky. Gently, it set the crate down beside him and said, "You are very sick from the water."
Lying at its tree trunk sized feet, Jonz wasn't inclined to respond. The orange world dipped and rolled like the Fitz' did just before it went down. Unholy nausea rolled around in his belly solid and heavy as a bowling ball. The first lurch caught him by surprise. He rolled onto his hand and knees just in time for the second.
As that bowling ball inched up his esophagus with each fresh heave, the creature said very softly, "You'll be all right," as it wrapped the end of its trunk around his brow, "I'll take care of you."
It held his head while he finished throwing up.
"Jonzy, are you sure you are strong enough to go down to the beach today?"
"Yes, Gull. Stop worrying." Jonz said, knocking orange dust off his boots. Gull, that's what he named the creature, shuffled closer, extended its trunk so that its bristled momentarily tickled his cheek.
"Yes. Your fever is down and you feel well, but why do you have to go down to the beach? I brought many boxes of food from the ship. You should rest more."
Jonz noticed the stacks of crates resting against the cave wall. While he recuperated, Gull made several dives on the Fitzgerald to retrieve food, clothing, even the navigator's console chair so that Jonz had some where other than rocks and sand to sleep on. He had never seen Gull swim … except for the first time when it saved him, but watched it enough over the passed week to realize that its coiled skeleton and musculature were incredibly dynamic. It could flatten, twist and elongate itself into almost any shape. It was remarkably strong and, he discovered, a habitual doter. Of the later, Jonz couldn't complain. If Gull hadn't pulled him out of the water, resuscitated him, then took care of him for the passed seven days while he fought off whatever native microbe make him so damned sick, he would be as dead as the rest of his crew. He owed Gull his life. "You said that you brought up several boxes that weren't food, right?"
"I placed them in the sea caves."
Jonz got to his feet and started from the cave. "Well, one of them might be the emergency transmitter."
Gull shuffled after him like a giant caterpillar, its bristled trunk hung over Jonz's shoulder. "You mean that others will come to find you?"
"Gull, we've got surveyors mapping out this entire sector. If I can find the transmitter and activate it, someone will hear it and coordinate a rescue."
They stepped out into dirty ochre light of morning.
"More humans," Gull cooed, "Jonzy, that would be wonderful."
Jonz chuckled, "You bet your ass it would be wonderful." He noticed the wreckage of Gull's ship against a distant hill side. Fractured, pitted and heavily weathered, russet dunes swallowed two thirds of the hull. There was no telling how long Gull had been stranded here. Intuition told Jonz that his gentle alien friend had been planet wrecked for a long time, maybe hundreds or even thousands of years. "When they come, we'll both get off this rock. Maybe we can send you home, too."
"Home. I have been here so long, Jonzy, this is home." Gull clucked. "But I am eager to meet more humans."
Jonz shrugged his brows. "Have it your way."
"Yes. Of course."
Jonz chuckled.
They made their way to the sea caves.
The transmitter was there among the things which Gull pulled from the sunken ship. Jonz carried it up to the top of the sea cliff. Gull followed, protesting all the way, complaining that he was exerting himself too much, but Jonz ignored it and pushed on. He wanted as much elevation as possible so that the transmitter had a clear path with no geology to block the signal. A little winded, he set the pivot anchors, the geomagnetic driver, mounted the dish, then said a little prayer and flipped the switch to the tiny breaker. The battery light flickered and lit. The red bar on the charging meter began to fill with a green column. When it peaked, the dish began to whir, moving into position to begin its transmitting routine.
"Thank God," Jonz said, so relieved to see the transmitter working that he didn't take much notice of the peculiar tingling in his toes.
"You're not well, Jonzy."
"I'm fine." He shirked off Gull's doting bristles and looked out over the ocean. Dirty slivers of light flickered across the brown waters. The bloody smelling wind keened across the cliff face. It was the first truly quiet moment Jonz experienced since the crash. He had been too ill since waking up on the beach to think of much else but survival. Now though, he thought of his crew mates down in the water, melting away in the red silt. Out of hundred and nineteen people on board, he couldn't believe he was the only one who made it out alive. Shit. He was just a data stream tech. He still had no idea what happened, why the ship came down. If he had the black box... "Gull?"
"Yes, Jonzy?"
He swallowed a fresh wave of nausea. "Could you dive on the Fitz' one more time for me."
"Of course, Jonzy."
They went out the beach several days in a row together. It took Gull a few dives to locate the black box, dig out it and bring it to the surface. Each morning, Jonz watched his alien friend wade out into the surf. Gull elongated into a long, nearly flat ribbon of gray flesh, then undulated effortlessly over the yellow crests of the waves and disappeared without any splash beneath the wash. Jonz continued onto the sea cliff to maintenance the dish and see if any messages bounced in from another surveyor. Gull didn't like him making the climb to the transmitter. Somehow, it sensed that he wasn't well. He hadn't said anything, but his fever seemed to come and go, and the tingling in his feet grew intense in the evenings. Even worse, most of the puncture wounds on his thighs, though they had scabbed over, were swollen and red mottled. He couldn't bear to tell Gull that the cuts were infected. He had a feeling that it would have felt guilty.
Stretched out in the navigator's console, Jonz played the disc from the flight recorder over and over until Gull took it away from him. "It's not good for you to listen to them."
It was right, of course. Although the sound of human voices, however frantic and terror riven, was a comfort, it was also the sound of his crew mates and his friends dying.
Jonz shook his head. The best he could figure from the bridge audio was that the ship had been pelted by micro-meteors. Crippled, they decided to try to make a landing on the planet. It was no wonder the alert never sounded. A lot of systems failed almost instantly by the sounds of the bridge crew. They had planned a landing once they finished the preliminary mapping and scanning. Apparently, they managed to belly into the atmosphere and glide in. They almost made it, tried to ditch, but must have hit the water at to steep an angle and broke up.
Jonz knew how they died. Most of them died when the ship struck the water, but a lot of the men and women in the crew's quarters aft probably survived the ditch like him. They must have drowned. It was terrifying down there in the cold in the darkness. It was terrifying to take that last aching breath of icy water and know what was happening, to be utterly helpless, strangling alone and light years from home in an alien yellow sea.
Jonz noticed Gull shuffling around near the food stuffs, bristles flicking over the crates, maybe inventorying them. He huffed at his luck. He lived because the ship broke in half just a few meters in front of his cabin. He lived because Gull was there to pull his water logged carcass out of the sea. He lived because that thing took care of him, salvaging food and water from the sunken ship.
Jonz began to cry. He didn't know why. Maybe it was gratitude, or regret, or the unrelenting pain in his feet. Gull came at once and curled around him, rocking him, console and all in its giant baggy, gray folds until he fell asleep.
In the morning Jonz pulled back his covers. His legs were worse. The mottling turned into thick maroon bruises. Some of the wounds were raised and hard as walnuts. Still, he didn't feel too bad, so he eased out of his chair. His legs felt a little shaky at first, but they steadied under him.
Gull saw them and told him, "You shouldn't go to the transmitter today."
Jonz went anyway. He was damned glad he did.
The receiver captured a transmission over night.
Legs aching, fever sweat running down his brow, Jon sat down next to the transmitter, kissed it, and played the incoming message. "This is the USS Kaslovsky. We copy your distress signal, USS Surveyor Fitzgerald, and are relaying your coordinates to the USS Surveyor Mifflin-Ulysses to alter course to your location and initiate recovery operation. ETA two solar weeks. Please acknowledge."
Giggling, Jonz flicked the mike switch, gave the Fitz' call and told the Kaslovsky, "Got your message loud and clear. Have supplies to hold me until you arrive. Can't wait to see the Mifflin-Ulysses drop into orbit. Over."
He punched the send pad. It would be a few hours before they received it, but they would know for certain that someone was alive and waiting for rescue.
Jonz told Gull, "They're coming."
"That is good, Jonzy. That is very, very good."
He nodded, giggling like a giddy little kid, then tried to get up. His thighs spasmed violently and he went down with a wail, clutching at the bone crushing cramps in his quadriceps. Gull carried him back to the cave.
Jonz spent the rest of the day in the navigators' console watching the lumps on his thighs swell and pucker like grapefruits. His feet went numb. He began to perspire heavily and vomited until his stomach muscles cramped. He began to think that he wouldn't make it through the night, let alone two weeks until the rescue ship came.
Gull kept bringing him water from the ship stores. It was the only thing he could keep down. Long after dark, may be passed midnight, the throbbing in his legs began to knock his consciousness back and forth like a frenetic ping-pong ball. He sensed himself slipping under, felt a faint pang of panic and tried to calm himself, tried move his mind away from the pain, away from those oddly distant, terrifying thoughts of death. In the dark, above him, the air twinkled like bubbles trapped against the cave ceiling. They glittered like stars. Then, staring at them long enough, Jonz began to think he was outside. He saw stars overhead. As he watched, he noticed one moving across the sky. Was it the rescue ship? He raised his arms and called to it.
Someone shook him.
The touch sling shotted Jonz back into the center of the muscle shearing pain in his legs. He howled.
Gull was there, stuffing something in his mouth.
He choked and fought for a second.
"Pain killers," it said frantically.
Jonz gulped down all he could. Not long after, he grew fuzzy and comfortable. Sleep crept over the top of him for a few merciful hours before dawn.
Light against his lids brought Jonz fluttering to consciousness. Pretty ochre beams of light shown through the mouth of the cave. The red dust whirled and cavorted in them like the happy specters of his dead crew mates. He stared at them a while, gratefully mindless and painless.
Then he realized that he was numb from the waist down. Jonz pushed back his covers. His thighs were a mass of bloated yellow nodules. From his knees down, his legs were black and withered. He screamed, "Gull!"
It came to his side at once. "It's all right, Jonzy."
"Do something!" Too weak to shout again, he rasped, "my legs!"
"Yes, it's splendid, isn't it?"
"What?" He looked at his legs again. Thick shadows squirmed in some of the nodules. "God! What are they!"
"My children, Jonzy."
"God! What did you do to me!"
"Jonzy, don't be upset. Look how fat and vigorous they are. I've never seen them pupate so quickly." Gull began to shuffled away. "It's that iron rich blood of yours. Oh, splendid. Thank you, Jonzy. Thank you. I will make sure that the children always taste your gracious sacrifice."
"Gull!" A queer tickle in his thighes made Jonz look down at them.
The first one erupted, chewing through Jonz' skin, bristles first, then wriggled out until It rolled out of its bloody cocoon to plop onto the sand. It slinkied quickly out of reach, crying, "Eee-yoou, eee-youuu."
Jonz screamed and wrenched around, trying to escape the dead, heaving-wriggling half of his body.
Inspired by the cries of their siblings, all the others began biting through his skin. Hatching out in twos and threes, they dropped to the cave floor and slinkied quickly away, their mews chorusing.
Gull paused at the mouth of the cave, "Now there are more humans coming. My family will grow quickly."
"Gull..." Jonz uttered, too weak to draw the blanket over his bloody, dead, black-shrunken legs.
"I'll maintenance the transmitter today. I don't want the others to lose their way. You make such fine mothers. Oh thank you, Jonzy. Thank you."
E.A. Gundlach a professional webmaster/writer/illustrator happily living in upstate New York, raising medicinal herbs, heirloom roses and Rotweilers. Her science fiction and fantasy short stories have appeared most recently in Beyond the Borderline and in Alternate Realities. This is her second publication in Aphelion! Her SF webnovel RAVISHING THE SUPERVOX is currently in e-print on www.mortonvischer.50megs.com and has received over 2100 hits so far. Visit her website www.eagundlach.50megs.com to see her fiction, illustration and webmedia galleries.
E-mail: egundlach@yahoo.com
URL: http://www.eagundlach.50megs.com
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