Author: davidnbrooks

Door E3 it was, right down the middle. After he had sprinted most of the way down hallway, he glanced over his shoulder. Fear set in, as he realized the middle door would likely keep him toward the center of the station.

“I just hope I’m not stuck in some maze of labs and offices,” he said. “And now I’m talking to myself.”

There was no sign of anything behind him, but he dared not stop again. His mind was clearer than it had been. He reckoned it was the result of the increased distance from the creature.

At the end of the hallway, he peered through the tiny window at what appeared to be a laboratory. There was no sign of life, so he eased the door open and stepped inside.

“A botany lab,” he said, relieved.

He rationalized that a room for plants wasn’t suitable for studying the ore. If that thing had come from the ore, this wasn’t likely the lab where it all started. But for as much as he thought it unsuitable, he dared not make too many assumptions.

“Even here, I have to expect it to come for me.”

He paced back and forth around the lab, careful not to get any closer to the plants than he needed. His trust was gone.

“Oh! Wait! Where did these plants come from?”

The answer came to him with a smack of obviousness.

“Outside! There must be a door nearby. Nobody is going to haul a garden through this place.”

Behind a hedge of the garden, he spotted another door. An aggressive species of ivy had covered so much of it that he had overlooked it in a first glance. As he approached and cleared the surface of it he could see out into the jungle.

“E3, I misjudged you.”

And wake up he did. With a surge of adrenaline, he pointed his blaster at the creature and fired.

“Not happening.”

Over and over the bolts of energy ripped through the hazy shape until it lay on the floor in a mass.

When it lay motionless, he pulled at his legs in a feeble attempt to free himself. It was no use. The substance that held him to the ground was like an organic concrete.

He pulled his blaster again and fired into the mass that held him down, but the energy did little to move it.

With a twist of his back, he slid the pack down his left arm and then, reaching inside, produced a mobile torch. He shouldered it again with care and spun the knob on the device. with a click the flame sprung to life and he leaned down to where the sludge met the floor.

An hour later there was little progress, but the progress increased his hope. With the lessened tension on his right leg, he was able to work his arm down into the pocket at his hip where his knife rested.

He flicked it open and chiseled into the substance, removing it until the blade was dull. In a clumsy motion with too much force the blade passed through the material and found its way into his leg.

He could feel the blood moving down his leg inside his restraint.

The base of the sludge was still firm around his feet where he could not reach, and at first it frustrated him. But when he wiggled his feet, nervous from his newest injury, his boots held fast but his foot did not.

He leaned backwards against the hardened material and used it for leverage, prying off his shoes. Once he had broken the bond at his feet, he wriggled his way out of his pants. With a clumsy movement, found himself on the ground again, free.

With a limp to his step, he moved down the hallway to the medical bay. Inside he searched for bandages and wrapped his leg.

When the bleeding stopped, he eased his way from the medical table and returned to the decontamination chamber. With dread, he stepped inside.

The machine ignited with a whir, sending lasers back and forth across his body. Outside the door a red light shone.

“I hate this part,” he thought to himself.

With a loud noise the fans started, pushing gas into the room until he gasped for breath on the floor. When he thought that he might pass out, the second set of fans started, pushing the gas out and allowing a cool breeze into the chamber.

He gasped again, this time to pull the air into his lungs as fast as he could. His body ached, but he managed to pull himself up again by the side rail. When he had regained his footing, he stepped back into the main corridor of the outpost and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now just to wait out the storm, only a few more hours.” He said to himself.

“You don’t think it’ll be that easy,” the unfamiliar voice said, somewhere in the back of his mind.

He bolted down the hallway as fast as his tired legs could manage. A glance over his shoulder confirmed it wasn’t far behind. He skidded to a stop in front of the communication room door and, when he was inside, he sealed the door behind him.

“It’s liquid. The door is water-tight, right?” He said, looking for anything else to keep the creature at bay. Readying his pistol, he braced himself against the communication panel.

It wouldn’t take him without a fight.

With a quick glance over his shoulder, he flipped on the power to the communication equipment and waited. When the power-up cycle had completed, the static on the intercom stopped. He spun around and punched in the sequence for an outpost in distress and waited.

“Odd that they turned off the communication system but didn’t destroy it?” He thought, his eyes trained on the door. Without the extra white noise from the comms, the room felt as dead as a tomb.

“Mining Outpost Seven, what is your distress?” A voice called from just over his shoulder.

He did not want to turn his attention from the door. If the creature could slip around the seal, it would likely do so without making a sound. But he could not communicate with the rest of the sector if he did not.

Drawing in a deep breath, he spun around and tapped a small orange key on the control panel.

“This is currier…” he stopped for a moment. If he told them his name, he would be forever marked, perhaps even isolated for the rest of his life in a contamination room. If he did not, maybe he could avoid this on his record.

“I’m a carrier out of Oklahoma Six. I crash landed on Mining Outpost Seven while delivering a package. I’m requesting immediate evacuation for myself. There’s something here, it killed the crew.”

“A currier?” The man at the other end of the call said with an Earthly southern drawl. “What are your coordinates?”

He glanced over his shoulder, and when he did not see the creature he punched in the coordinates from his watch. After he had sent them, he turned his back to the screen and waited.

“We’re dispatching the rescue team from the local station, but the storm on that planet will delay extraction. Are you in a position to wait it out?”

“I’m holed up in the communication room,” he said. “I’m not even sure where the thing is, or if it knows where I am.”

“Sit tight, the storm should be away from you in about six hours. If you don’t signal from the ground, we’ll send in the evacuation team.”

That meant trouble.

“Send a shuttle, not a team,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

“We have our protocols to follow.”

“I’ll be in the canyon, or I’ll be dead. Just bring the ship.”

“Good luck. This completes transmission,” the man said. And then he was gone.

In the intensity of the conversation, he had forgotten to watch the door. With a quick motion, he turned around wiht his pistol ready. A sigh of relief and a quick smile escaped his mouth when it was still sealed.

As the cover for the ventilation system clanged to the floor, his relief died a quick death.

The sweat rolled from his brows, almost as if he were still under the sun. It was a single drop of sweat in his eye that brought him out of shock.

His hand dropped to where his pistol rested, and with a quick motion it was up and ready. His thumb racked against the safety and the gun whirred with charge.

Looking up into their eyes again, he stepped backward and then spun toward the door. The light in the hallway beckoned him like a moth to a flame.

His hands quivered as he crept down the hallway. Though he had not noticed it when he entered the cafeteria, the difference in the temperatures was drastic. The cooling system poured cold air onto him, making him shiver as it chilled the sweat that still clung to him for dear life.

The sound of a slamming door echoed past him, and he shivered again.

At the end of the hallway, by the decontamination room, he peered out the window to survey his options. The rainwater ran off the edge of the roof, flooding this side of the canyon. The wind was downing trees and even tossing around a pair of cycles.

He closed his eyes. Leaving shelter would be the death of him. If he was to stay inside, he needed a place to hide.

The first door down the hallway opened into the communication room. The light inside was on, which gave him hope.

“It’s as good of a place as any, and it’s right by the main door.” he thought.

From inside, he noticed a small walkway between the communication and the medical room. With as much stealth as he could manage, he entered the medical room and sealed the door to the hallway in a feeble attempt at security. Then he closed off the door between the medical and the communication room for good measure. The last door to seal was the door to the communication room.

He dared not change any details about the room that would be noticeable from outside. Whoever, or whatever, had killed the miners likely knew this place better than he did.

In a corner of the room away from the door he crouched against the wall and wept.

For as hard as he tried, he could not shake the image of their eyes from his thoughts. And then a terrible thought occurred to him. The heat in the cafeteria, the use of anti-gravity bands to keep them suspended, the lack of decay… Those men were hanging to cure.

A large beast stood, silhouetted against the dawn. It rose far above the first rung of branches and it devoured the leaves from the top tiers of the trees with its long neck.

“An herbivore,” he said under his breath.

It was good news. He would be no match for an animal of that size, especially one that might hunt him. With his rife he might have been able to down it, but that belonged to the swamp now. It was only him and his sidearm, a repeater with a fuzzy sense of accuracy.

He stopped still in his tracks and waited. The creature ate for another few minutes and then moved on to the next grove where it found a large orange fruit.

When it was safe he moved forward, toward the mountains. From where he stood, they stretched upwards like a jagged row of teeth. A scar marked the side of the range, in a way that let his imagination believe some ship had crashed against it.

But falling from the sky had been on his mind for the last two days.

He stopped at a small brook to fill his water packs. The nozzle at the end of each pack filtered the luke-warm liquid as quick as ever, but the heat of it did nothing to relieve him from the sun. He dared not stand around near the stream, though he wished he could take time to clean off. On the outer worlds, creatures more dangerous than the plant-eater thrived. They dwelt in the forests, unknown by and unafraid of humans.

His pace livened with his new supply of water, but his blood sugar soon fell, leaving him weak. His sugar tablets helped some, but the grumbling in his stomach was worse after the spike of insulin.

He pushed on, his eyes fixed on the mountains ahead. For as much as he scanned them, he could see no sign of the outpost. And then, as if they had built it between blinks, it was there. In the distance, it seemed motionless, devoid of life. But it was too far away to know for sure.

Mud sloshed in his face, breaking his focus on his footing. The suction of the mire pulled at his feet and he stumbled again under the weight of his pack.

“Eight hours of walking on this cursed planet and nothing to show for it,” he said.

He used the last clean square of his shirt to wipe the ore-laden mud from his eyes.

High above, the alien sun shone like a hot day in Nevada. He had only seen Nevada once, and only in a simulator. When he was younger, he met a man who claimed to have visited Earth.

But he knew the man was a liar.

Taking a few more steps, he grabbed a rare hanging vine and pulled himself against the sludge. As soon as the vine left his grip, his hand began to burn and swell. Grumbling to himself, he hung his backpack on a tree. Reaching into the largest pocket, he produced a medical kit. With his good hand, he unzipped the old canvas bag and removed the anti-allergen spray.

The cap popped off and fell into the mud, now lost to the unsanitary conditions of the rotting pool of water.

With a quick spray, his hand began to tingle. The medicine would not be in full-effect for some time, but at least the coolness of the spray would take the edge off.

When he had returned the can and medical kit to his backpack, he soldiered on. Two hours later, his feet landed on the solid ground at the edge of the swamp. With a smile, he bid it farewell and moved onward. When the trees grew farther apart, he could see the mountains. Years ago the men from one of the colonies had gathered there to mine, but what became of them he could not say.

The map showed him to be another day from their last outpost, but that couldn’t be right. With the heat of the sun and the ruggedness of the terrain, it would be another two. But his water would be gone by morning.