Authors: Wade Andrew Butcher
Elisa stopped as they looked over the flat water. It was again like a mirror, showing only the reflections of the stars.
“Elisa, we need to go, come on,” implored Nikolaj from ahead. The ones in front increased their separation. She stood and looked as if mesmerized by the still water while Enric started walking and urged her to catch up.
Something was rising from out of the depths. Water poured off of it as it stood. The others turned at the sound of her scream. A long projectile reached for her and wrapped itself around her waist, caring nothing for her cries of pain. It pulled her without hesitation and without mercy. There was nothing she could do to fight, no reasoning she could employ, no recourse whatsoever to the accosting arm. By the time the others had turned, the beast had drawn her under the murky water before Enric or others nearby could react.
Elisa could not see. She could only hear the sound of Enric and Nikolaj diving into the river. Then Elisa was gone, simply gone.
Chapter 35
While the main group went to Gambler, Webster went on an excursion of his own. He made a boat out of a mattress, and on his second attempt, he was able to propel it over the water along the cliffs toward the waterfall. He did not know exactly what he was seeking. Initially, he set out to have a look at the bottom of the falls to see if there was a way to collect the water.
When he was paddling over the water, his thoughts of a utilitarian jaunt vanished, and he just started to enjoy the peaceful surroundings. For the first time, for a few brief minutes, Webster was enjoying being on the planet. The water was still and the fog was milky, but he still looked upward and all around at the comforting absence of a ceiling above his head. He breathed in deeply and filled his lungs with the foreign air, which was somewhat deficient in oxygen but good enough for a satisfying breath after the rain had cleansed it of dust.
Feeling proud of the newly constructed version of his raft, Webster smiled for nobody to see and took another deep breath.
Maybe we have a chance
, he thought. Webster was overtaken with calm and started to believe that maybe they had a chance. He could hear the faint roar of the falls crashing down onto the lake surface in the distance. He stayed close to the cliffs for concern a second accident would plunge him into the cold, salty liquid.
He looked up and down the cliffs, rocky formations that went straight up and down. In some places, there was a thin section of ground in between the cliff and the water. An object in the ground was half buried, protruding from the sand. It looked like a simple rock of the same color as the cliffs. As Webster slowly passed and saw it from the other side, it looked different.
Thinking it could not possibly be what it resembled, Webster pushed himself over to the sand and stepped off the raft. He approached and leaned down to observe the object. He fell backwards when he saw it, the unmistakable remains of a humanoid, a skull, peering in his direction with eye sockets sticking out from the sand.
Webster kicked himself away with his rear end dragging in the sand before he could stand up. An involuntary noise came from his mouth as he expelled the air that felt refreshing moments before. At the sight of the skull, he reflexively felt no longer alone, and he looked around in all directions. Then he looked back just to make sure what he had seen was real. The skull seemed to speak to him as if his own demise was imminent, even though that predecessor had clearly been gone for a long time. He did not know what to make of the finding. His instinct was to run. With nowhere to go, the second choice was to get quietly back onto the raft and leave. As he did, he glanced again at the skull, which had a lattice of small grooves etched into the bone in a pattern that did not seem natural.
He did not continue to the falls. He retraced his path along the cliffs to make sure he would not drift off into the middle of the expansive lake. Webster was completely alone but nervous nonetheless that something was present, and that he would die in the same way as the one he saw. Webster could not propel the raft fast enough.
Back at the camp they postulated that charred remains of one of the voyagers was washed into the river and tossed over the falls. It floated and came to rest by the cliffs, but that did not fully explain why it was mostly buried. With no other explanation, the theory that the flesh was burned from the blackened bones in the Gambler crash prevailed.
Webster awaited the others, wanting to divulge what he saw. The group that hiked through the night arrived back to the lander. Cold and tired, they dropped their gear on the ground near the lander entrance. Webster was there as they approached, and by the time they got there, he had already counted one less person than the number that left.
“Elisa did not make it. Something took her into the water. I couldn’t get her out,” Nikolaj revealed the loss to Webster. “Where is the girl?”
“Asleep. She was stung. Quasar’s with her,” Webster told Nikolaj. “Shovels?”
“Here,” answered Enric, pointing to the tools on the ground.
The still, cold air of daybreak surrounded Webster, Nikolaj, and Enric as they left together. There were still two of the dead nearby out in the open, exposing their rotting flesh for all to see. As they toiled with their newly acquired tools hauled from the main ship, Webster spoke for a while about what he did while they were gone. He addressed the story primarily to Nikolaj rather than Enric, who seemed angry as he frantically dug out the alien dirt.
The air was warming quickly as they all labored. Webster saw Enric look through the corner of his eye at them. Webster and Nikolaj were sharing the task of digging the other hole while Enric stood in one of his own making. The lone digger removed his shirt to release the heat building up around him as he worked. The two fins on his back protruded out as his muscles worked. He scraped and stabbed at the hard ground, seeming to resent the doubled workload he bore while the other two conversed.
Webster rationalized that the notion Enric was different went back a long way. In their days in space, while Webster and Nikolaj were groomed to be a scientist and a mechanic, Enric struggled to find his place. There was little help from the Wardmaster. He was destined to be an enforcer, and the education that many found interesting was not offered. The role of enforcer, a vocation that no longer existed, was not recognized among the few survivors. It carried neither authority nor expectation. Enric was left to his own to ponder what he might offer.
Enric dug ferociously for a brief time then stood inside the finished hole as if waiting for commendation. It had a depth that covered half his body, and he stood admiring his work. After a short delay, he stepped out and dragged the body of the former Wardmaster Fedora into the hole, and covered the decomposed face with the excavated dirt. He completed his task without the acknowledgement of the other two. He stood for a short time over the mound that covered the Wardmaster and then turned to walk back with his shirt in one hand and the shovel in the other.
When Webster returned with Nikolaj a little later, Enric was in the shade with his back flat on the ground staring up at the bottom side of the lander. He tossed his newly acquired knife into the air above his head and caught it before it hit his face. He performed the act over and over again, unconcerned that it might pierce him if he missed, occupying his time away from any company for hours into the day.
Chapter 36
That night came with a different and dark appearance because the evening star was not visible and had hidden itself beneath the southern shore. To everyone except Quasar, the night was black. She stood at the rock’s edge overlooking the lake. The beach beneath her was not far. Eva, if she were awake and not sick, might have taken the jump just a few feet down to the soft ground below. Quasar worried about the younger clone.
She stood at the edge and looked out at the backdrop of forest, water, mountains, and sky. Vibrant with infrared hotspots and ultraviolet colors visible only to her, she just watched in silence and marveled at the beauty of their new home. For a few minutes she ignored the illness, the peril, and the uncertain future that lay before them on the planet. The course that brought them there was set two centuries before she was born by people she did not know. It should have perhaps seemed unfair that the forty-five remaining survivors had no say in the journey, but the concept of fairness held little consideration in their group.
“Quasar!” yelled Webster’s voice as he approached the edge a few paces behind where she stood.
“Stop!” she yelled before he almost walked over the lakeside rim in the darkness. Using the voice as a focal point, he slowly stepped in her direction.
“The seasons are changing like I thought. I think it’s going to get colder,” he said as he stood beside her. He put his arm on Quasar’s shoulder to find her and then wrapped it around to her opposite shoulder. She knew he would not be able to see her expression in the dark as she reacted in surprise to his more than friendly advance.
Quasar twisted, walked away a few steps, and looked out over the water. There was a disturbance in the shallows, and she recognized pretty quickly that a Dawdler was emerging from the lake. She did not immediately alert Webster, who was already walking back toward Taurus.
The creature stood high on six of its legs and walked up onto the shore. It was not the slithering shuffle they had seen before. It had agility and strength not previously demonstrated on land. Quasar watched with great trepidation, believing she could outrun the sea animal, but she recalled the unexplained incident with Elisa by the river and stayed put. The Dawdler settled down onto the sand into a submissive position with its arms flaccidly resting on the ground extending away from its body.
She did not know if it could see her, or sense her, or how it detected its surroundings. She crouched down. She knew the others would want to know that the potential meal had made an appearance. She started to turn to alert Webster what she saw, but before shouting, she glimpsed a light in the corner of her eye. She looked back at the Dawdler to see it was glowing in a fascinating sequence of colors far brighter than anything else in the night, colors in spectrums that only she could see. The sighting prompted her to delay no further, and she shouted back at Webster before he had walked too far.
Webster returned, but his unremarkable eyes could not detect the strange illuminations.
“What?” Webster tried to engage, not seeing the Dawdler at all much less any of the invisible lights.
“There’s a Dawdler,” Quasar revealed. Webster turned to run to get a weapon, but Quasar held him back by his wrist and urged him to wait. “It’s emitting light,” she said.
“I don’t see anything,” Webster replied and squinted.
“It’s not in your visible spectrum, apparently, but I can see it.”
Quasar realized this was a potential scientific opportunity beyond the mere acquisition of the next several meals. If Nikolaj had not mentioned that a member of their expedition had been accosted and seemingly murdered for an unknown reason, she might have urged Webster to get closer and observe with more scrutiny.
They stood at a safe distance on top of the rocks looking down at the alien being. The radiation emanating from its body stopped momentarily. They were about to leave. When they moved, it lit up again. Quasar immediately suspected a correlation.
“Wait,” she said, “don’t move.” They stood still. Quasar watched, while Webster faced in the same direction. The light stopped again.
Quasar raised her hand, and immediately several flashes came from the Dawdler before it darkened again. She lowered her hand, and it discharged another sequence of ultraviolet light. She repeated it over and over gain with the same result.
“I think it can see us,” she deduced. “Not only that, but it’s trying to communicate.”
The simple but obvious observation did not go unheard. Webster ran at a quick pace through the darkness, tripping more than once on his way back. Quasar did not stay there alone. She followed him but did not catch up despite her lack of falls aided by her clear vision.
Webster rummaged through an assortment of supplies they had acquired from Gambler. Imagers, used for recording planets and stars, were abundant on the old spaceship. Webster gathered two devices and started back toward the lake. Quasar urged him to control his haste, lest he drop the equipment and break it on the rocks. They returned together, and Quasar guided him over the rocks back to the beach edge. Still cautious of the creature, they stayed on top of the rocks and did not take the passageway down to the beach.
Webster looked through the cameras at the Dawdler. It had not budged from its spot in the sand. Seeing what Quasar had described with his own supplemented vision, Webster performed the previous experiment with the same results. The alien was reacting to his movements.
“I wonder why we never noticed this before,” he mused.
“It’s never been this dark before. The secondary star is below the horizon.” Quasar stated.
The creature was not killed on that night. The discovery resulted in a temporary moratorium on the slaughter of that Dawdler for its meat. Webster continued to watch it intently through the lenses of radiation sensitive cameras. He became obsessed, doing little else other than observing the creatures.