By Paul Stansbury
“Captain McKennon, why don’t we land in the canyon?” Colvig asked. He looked at the science tech, Palmer, hoping to get her support. She shrugged, remaining silent. “Sure would save Palmer and me a lot of time and effort. I don’t look forward to lowering the equipment down the cliff walls.”
Captain McKennon eyed the equipment tech. “Because I don’t see a viable area where I can set this crate down. Look at the scans. The terrain at the bottom is too rough to attempt a landing.”
“Couldn’t we at least go down and look for a place to land?”
“No,” said McKennon, shaking his head. “We’ve got to conserve our fuel or else we may not be able to get off this rock.”
“But—”
McKennon held up his hand. “Cork it, Colvig. We’re landing on the plateau. I’ll try to drop her as close to the edge as I can. Now, put your helmets on and prepare for landing.”
Colvig frowned, shaking his head. “When I get to be captain—”
“You’ll understand the need for caution and following protocol,” said Palmer, pulling on her helmet. “Like putting on your helmet for a landing. Now be quiet and do what the Captain says.” She gave it a quarter turn, clicking it shut.
“First timer,” growled Colvig.
* * *
The lander touched down with a slight thud. “That went about as good as you could want,” said McKennon over the com. “You never know what’ll happen the first time you land on an alien world.” He opened the radio. “Prospector Six, this is Gold Bug. Do you read?”
The radio crackled. “Affirmative.”
“We have landed and are preparing to initiate our survey.”
“Copy. Good hunting.”
“Nice job, Cap,” said Palmer. She peered out of the observation port, surveying the rubble-strewn landscape. “Beautiful in a desolate sort of way, Colvig, you should be pleased. Looks like we’re only about fifteen meters from the edge.”
He unfastened his safety restraint and leaned in close to Palmer to see for himself, his helmet bumping hers. “All I see is fifteen meters of lugging equipment, and then I got to lower it down. What’s to be pleased about?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you,” she said.
“You coulda done that when I was trying to convince Captain McKennon to land at the bottom.”
“I happened to agree with him. Protocols are established to ensure missions go safely.”
“Alright you two; how about we do some work? Palmer, check the readings,” said McKennon.
“Activate sensor readings,” said Palmer. Data popped up on the view screen in her visor. “Pre-landing readings confirmed, Cap. Gravity is 1.3gEarth. Colvig, your equipment will feel extra heavy. Nothing toxic is present. Effective oxygen at our present location is 8.4% Earth sea level, which would prove fatal if you tried to breathe it as is. All in all, about what we expected. Oxygen concentration should increase toward the bottom of the canyon. Whether it would be sufficient to sustain non-assisted breathing or not is yet to be determined.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” asked Colvig, scrambling out of his seat. “I’ve been cooped up in this soup can with the two of you long enough. I’m ready to get out of here, even if it means lugging equipment.”
“We need to check biological readings first, it’s protocol,” McKennon said, examining the readings on the screen. “Gotta make sure we don’t pick up any beasties which could cause problems later.”
Palmer paused, scanning the readouts. “I’m not seeing anything of consequence up here. I suspect, if we are going to find something, it’ll be farther down.”
“Can you run a scan in the canyon?” asked McKennon.
“I can send a drone as soon as Colvig unloads the equipment.”
“So, can we go now?” asked Colvig, moving toward the rear hatch. Before anyone could answer, the lander shuddered, throwing him onto the cabin floor. Everything grew still.
“Everyone okay?” asked McKennon.
Colvig pushed himself to his knees. “What the—” was all he got out before he heard a low rumble and the floor dropped from under him. The ceiling of the lander battered his suspended body. Immediately, the floor raced back, striking his flailing body with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. A series of loud crashes mixed with the cries of his shipmates echoed through the lander. Its wild gyrating pinballed them around the cabin before knocking them unconscious.
* * *
Palmer awoke, crumpled on the floor of the lander. She activated her view screen. Sensor readings came up. Two hours had elapsed since they landed. Cabin pressure was low. She did not need the readings to tell her every inch of her body ached. She scanned her surroundings. The cabin was in shreds.
“Captain McKennon,” she called out over the com. “Colvig?” She pulled herself up on a cockpit seat, struggling to stand on the slanting cabin floor. She turned toward the observation port but found it was obscured. The cabin lights were on, allowing her to survey the damage. A pair of boots stuck out from the far side of McKennon’s seat. She worked her way around the debris until she found McKennon’s body sprawled against the hull.
“Display vital signs,” she whispered. Readings appeared on the view screen for her and Colvig, but none for McKennon. “Colvig, can you hear me?”
“What the hell happened?” he rasped.
“Where are you?”
“Near the hatch.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Banged up pretty good.”
“Me too, can you move?”
“Yeah, I think so. Is Captain McKennon with you?”
“Captain McKennon is dead. Stay there. I’ll be with you in a moment.” Palmer squeezed into McKennon’s seat. She pressed the transmit icon on the console screen. “Prospector Six, this is Gold Bug. Prospector Six, this is Gold Bug. Do you read?” Silence. “Prospector Six, this is Gold Bug. Do you read?” More silence. She closed her eyes, sucking in a deep breath.
“Palmer, what are you doing?” asked Colvig.
“Trying to radio Prospector.”
“What’d they say?”
“I got no answer,” she said.
“But they should know something is wrong.”
“Not if they’re on the backside of their orbit and certainly not if our radio was damaged. I’m going to try to launch a distress beacon. Maybe they’ll pick up its signal.”
“And if they don’t?”
Palmer flipped up the orange cover of the beacon launch button.
“Beacon armed,” crackled the com.
“We’ll have to think of something else. Stay there,” she said, pressing the button.
“Beacon launched.”
She rolled over the side of the seat and scudded to the rear hatch where Colvig waited.
“You get it launched?” he asked.
“I think so. If I did, and if it works, Prospector should send a rescue team. In the meantime, I think we need to get out of the lander.”
“Agreed.” Colvig pulled on the hatch lever and pushed the door open. Red light from the planet’s sun seeped in. He stuck his head out of the opening. “Holy hell!”
“What do you see?” asked Palmer.
“We’re freakin’ halfway down the side of the cliff.”
“The weight of the lander must have caused a landslide, carrying us with it,” said Palmer. “We don’t dare risk staying here; this rubble is far too unstable. I’m not sure we could stand another tumble like we just experienced. We can’t go up, so we’ve got to go down. Go out and see how the footing is while I grab my gear.”
* * *
Colvig and Palmer struggled down the slope through the loose rock to the bottom of the canyon. “How much oxygen do you think we have left?” Colvig asked.
“We’ve been in our suits for about five and a half hours. At most, our suits have about 10 hours’ worth. You can do the math.”
“When can we take off our helmets?”
“If everything checks out, when we reach an effective oxygen percentage of 10%.”
“What the hell do you mean by if everything checks out?” asked Colvig.
“Protocol three two seven.”
“What the hell is that?
“In short,” said Palmer, “it requires visitors to unexplored planets to assess whether complex organic molecules sustaining metabolism are present before operating without full environmental protection. It’s to protect alien life forms from contamination. If you remember your history, European explorers brought deadly viruses and bacteria, such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and cholera, to the new world for which Native Americans had no immunity. The results were devastating. We don’t want something similar to occur as a result of our explorations.”
“It was a simple question; I don’t need a history lesson.”
“And, just in case you have aspirations of removing your helmet, the presence of oxygen is presumptive of metabolic activity. That means, most likely, we will be required to keep our helmets on.”
Colvig threw his arms in the air. “We had to bring a damn astroenvironmentalist on this job. I thought we were looking for minerals to mine, not bugs.”
“I’m an astrogeologist.”
“Who gives a rat’s ass? What about us? Don’t we count when it comes to running out of oxygen?”
Palmer held a hand up, “Whoa there, all I am saying is we need to run the appropriate scans. On the off chance we do not detect anything alive, we can remove our gear.”
“What if you do?”
“We ride it out in our suits till we are rescued or—”
“Just run the goddamn scans,” Colvig yelled.
“We’re still too far away from the bottom. Be patient. I’ll run the scans when we get close enough. And it doesn’t do any good to yell over the com.”
“Screw you. Are you sure you can’t run them sooner?”
“Yes,” said Palmer. “We must reach a point low enough for the scans to pick up any metabolic activity.”
Colvig surveyed the rubble-strewn landscape. He looked over his shoulder. The plateau loomed far above. “Well, at least I don’t have to lug all the equipment down here.”
“This would have been a good place for samples,” Palmer said, grabbing a handful of pebbles and grit. She examined them in the thin light of the alien planet. “Since we’re still on the clock, we might as well,” she said, opening her sample pouch.
Colvig grabbed her arm. “You’re crazy. We’re running out of oxygen with every breath we take, and you want to stop and collect rocks.”
“You’re right. What was I thinking?” Palmer tossed the pouch aside. She glanced at the large red sun sinking in the sky. “How long do you think before it gets dark?”
Colvig looked up. “I don’t know, but I don’t want to be on this slope when it happens.”
“I agree. Let’s pick up the pace.” The loose rubble scrunched under Palmer’s boots. They still had a fair distance to go. Her knees ached from bracing her legs against the slope as they descended. “My knees are killing me.”
“Same here. Do you think Prospector got our signal?”
“There is a good chance,” said Palmer. She paused. “At least I hope.”
* * *
They stumbled down the landslide rubble for another three hours. The jagged rocks eventually gave way to a slender band of ocher grit. Beyond that, a series of fissures filled with bubbling milky-green liquid stretched across the narrow canyon bottom.
Colvig stumbled out of the rubble and slumped to the ground. “McKennon was right. No place to land down here.” He checked his view screen. “We’ve been out here almost seven hours,” he said. “My oxygen is almost gone. I thought you said we had about 10 hours’ worth.”
Palmer checked hers. “Same here.” She knelt down next to Colvig. The soft brown surface crunched, and her knees sank in. “We used a lot of energy getting down here, which caused us to consume more oxygen than normal activities would.”
“Can you run the goddamn scans now and see if there is oxygen down here?”
Palmer nodded. “Run environmental scan.” She waited for the results to appear on her view screen. “There is water in the fissures and that’s pure oxygen bubbling up.” Her voice trembled. “There must be something like stromatolites under the surface—definitely evidence of complex organic molecules sustaining metabolism.”
“So, is there enough to breathe?”
“Yes,” she said, continuing to analyze the data. The scan also shows other life forms present.” She looked around. “But I’ll be damned if I can see them. All the more reason to remember Protocol Three Two Seven. We can’t remove our helmets.”
“If we can’t remove our helmets, we won’t make it, will we?”
“There’s still a chance Prospector received the distress signal and sent a rescue party to find us.”
“Bet you didn’t think this would happen to you on your first mission,” said Colvig. “Life’s a bitch. I don’t think it matters much anyway if the distress signal went out or not.”
“Why is that?” asked Palmer. “If the signal went out and they sent a rescue team, they might still get here in time.”
Colvig shook his head. “Sure, if the signal went out. If they sent a team immediately. I hate to break the news to you, but that’s not the way it’s going to play out. You see, we’re expendable. Always were. That old scow they sent us out in is evidence enough. Once Wooton Outlands Exploration realizes we crashed, they aren’t likely to send a rescue ship.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Look, before they do anything, they will have the accountant run an analysis of the cost of a rescue mission versus writing off the equipment loss and paying out our contract to our next of kin. Guess what? You can bet the numbers won’t be in our favor. We won’t account for anything more than a footnote in the report. It’s happened before.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” said Palmer. “This planet seems like a good bet. From what little I have seen, there is a good chance it contains exportable minerals. Couple that with the potential of a breathable atmosphere that can be tapped, and you’d think Wooton would jump at the opportunity. Why would they give up so easily?”
“Oh, they won’t give up on the planet. Just us. They’ll let things cool down for a while, then find three more suckers to explore this rock.”
“Surely not.”
“The one thing I know for sure is,” sneered Colvig, “they don’t give a crap about us. That being the case, screw their stupid protocols. I don’t care if I kill everything on this goddamn planet.” He grabbed his helmet with both hands and gave it a quarter turn.
“No,” cried Palmer, lurching toward him.
He rolled away to avoid her reach, landing on his back. He pulled the helmet from his head, drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “Oh my god,” he said. “It’s so damn good. You got to try it.”
Palmer watched as Colvig lay on his back laughing and sucking in great gulps of the alien atmosphere. He swept his arms and legs along the surface scooping a dark angel in the alien grit, which began to undulate—slowly at first, then rapidly as it flowed toward Colvig.
She scooped up a handful and examined it. She gasped. “Colvig, the other life forms are bugs. They were dormant. You must have triggered them. Put your helmet back on.” She then realized without his helmet; he couldn’t hear her. She shook the tiny creatures off her hand. They floated to the ground, joining the others bearing down on Colvig.
He was still laughing when the dark swarm engulfed him, his laughs turning into screams as he disappeared.
Paul Stansbury is a lifelong native of Kentucky. He is the author of Inversion – Not Your Ordinary Stories; Inversion II – Creatures, Fairies, and Haints, Oh My!; Inversion III – The Lighter Shades of Greys; Inversion IV – Another Infusion of Speculative Fiction; and Down By the Creek – Ripples and Reflections. His speculative fiction stories have appeared in a number of print anthologies as well as a variety of online publications. Now retired, he lives in Danville, Kentucky. www.paulstansbury.com www.facebook.com/paulstansbury/