The Infant

Credit: Mikael Kristenson

“Approaching AS-497A. Break thrusters on standby.”

I floated up to the tiny observatory, marveling at the crimson-kissed asteroid basking in the light of the red giant. Our 3-year mission had reached its penultimate milestone. This was the African Union’s second contribution to the Global Space Effort in half as many decades, and nothing so far – not the launch, not the great burn into the void, not the grueling 3-year voyage – had taken an ounce of the weight of it all off my shoulders. I doubted Lila was doing much better.

“Break thrusters engaged,” came Tosin’s voice again. He was the ship’s protocol management AI, and the best third Lila and I could have hoped for. “How do you ladies like your landings? Smooth or fun?”

“Don’t even joke right now,” said Lila, rising from a hatch in the floor and gliding towards me.

Her hand found mine, and we watched the asteroid close in together. Planets were sparse in this system, not a single one capable of supporting life. But there was something interesting about this asteroid, a one-in-a-billion-billion fluke in its properties that made it light up in the sensors of our Hunters – briefcase-sized voyagers sent out into the cosmos to take a closer look at exoplanets and whatever other interesting stuff they could find. The asteroid was nearly big enough to be considered a celestial dwarf, with a gravitational pull slightly weaker than Earth’s, and a cozy spot in the aging star’s habitable zone. It had a thin but rich atmosphere, which, like Earth’s, was a lot of nitrogen, but unlike Earth’s, was a lot lot of hydrogen too. But beneath this unbreathable aura, beneath the crust, was what made this asteroid so fascinating. Its soil was full of organic compounds that were the perfect combo for life as we knew it on Earth, albeit in all the wrong proportions – as far as our current models could tell, at least. Our mission was a hound sent snapping at the heels of the Hunter that had detected AS-497A, launching as soon as the data proved promising. And now, here we were.

“It’s so... red,” said Lila.

“We’ll be breaching the atmosphere soon,” said Tosin. “Options are still on the table about the landing.”

I giggled my appreciation of his humor as we floated to our chairs, strapping in. In a few moments, gravity took effect, and familiar tremors announced our swift but steady descent. The hue of the star’s light shifted slightly as the vacuum of space gave way to ammonia-suffused air, and the brief phase of air friction cast a warm glow through the window.

“You people are boring,” said Tosin, a second before the landing burn passed its peak, and the ship roared to a stop above a cloud of dust. We hovered for a moment, systems performing a series of redundant checks, then landed with a dull crunch on the soil beneath.

Recon was quick, a unit of mini-rovers detaching themselves from their compartments in the ship’s hull, scanning the environs on every spectrum, while we watched from within. Anticipation found my feet tapping as I hunched over the monitor, the gesture demanding a unique effort in this gravitational field. We had landed in a plain, but the asteroid’s caves – another interesting quirk – lay not far away. They led beneath the crust. They were where we were headed.

“Incoming from mission control,” said Tosin.

I opened the line, and Amadi’s face filled the call window, resolution slightly dulled by the great distance. The cast channels that transmitted information in near-real time across the 1000 light-year radius humanity had stretched its ambitious tendrils through – like the gravity engines that helped us cover that radius in such a short time span – were still a work in progress. In the Global Space Effort, safety was enough for a green light, speed and efficiency a bridge best crossed when it was reached.

“Hi, Alae,” said Amadi, wrinkling his long nose in a signature tick. “Hi, Lila.”

“Hi, Amadi,” we both said, excitement bare in our tone.

“How are things looking over there?”

“Well,” said Lila. “Asteroid is quiet. Tosin is not. We’ll be headed out to the caves in 15 minutes.”

“Great,” said Amadi, then shrugged. “Not much I can do about Tosin. He’s his own person.”

“All I did was offer a fun landing,” said Tosin, and a mischievous smile merged with the disembodied voice in my mind’s eye.

“Well,” said Amadi. “On behalf of the AU Space Agency and the AU... blah, blah, blah, you know the rest.” We grinned our acknowledgement. “But seriously, I couldn’t be more proud of you two. 3 years is a long time to wait to stare at some rocks. Good luck. We’ll be syncing up with your body cams and gear when you’re out.”

“Sure,” I said. “Give everyone a wave for me, will you?”

“Can do,” said Amadi, with a chuckle, and the call ended.

We made our way to the changing room, happy to be able to get dressed standing on our own two feet again. Zero-G was fun, but every novelty gets old after a while. I watched with amusement as Lila went through the frustrating ritual of getting her curly shrub of hair in one place to don her helmet. My short dreads offered no such inconveniences. Syncing our environment suits to the ship, and the ship, via cast channel, to Earth, we headed out, pioneers on this new celestial body in an age that ate pioneers for every meal of the day.

“A little windy for this kind of atmosphere, no?” said Lila, as we hopped into our main rover – it had since slid out of its garage at the base of the ship and parked in wait.

“Yes,” I said. “Amadi, are you guys getting this?”

“Mhm,” came Amadi’s voice through the comms in our helmets. “We’re getting everything. Pretty landscape too.”

The mini-rovers were ordered to strategic coordinates across the plain, most of them by the caves. The red sun had just begun to kiss the horizon as we followed the directions to our cave of choice. It didn’t take long. The terrain was quite level, and I made quick work of getting around the occasional obstacle – goodness it felt awesome to drive something on dirt again! We ground to a halt at the cave mouth, a 10-foot-wide portal leading into darkness. The mini-rovers stood waiting for us like loyal puppies, their camera-mounted heads turning and angling up to regard us as we disembarked, doing little to dispel this illusion.

“Nubia,” said Lila, addressing mission control. “We’re going in.”

The light panels on our suits pulsed to life in response to the darkness. We switched to manual control for the hell of it. The cave walls had all the expected patterns and grooves, but there seemed to be a glossiness about them, a moisture...

“Water?” said Lila, over our private channel.

“Mmm,” I said. “Underground bodies maybe? There certainly isn’t anything on the surface.”

We walked on for nearly half an hour, the path so smooth that the steepness of our descent was only made clear when we looked back to see that the cave mouth had completely vanished. The weak gravity made for an easy journey too. I could have walked for another hour at least without so much as a fatigued breath. We monitored everything, scanning for organics, assessing the atmosphere as we ventured deeper, our pups following close behind, illuminating our path with their own flashlights. Most of the readings matched up well with predictions, and if there was an underground water body up ahead, we definitely wanted to start there.

“Wait...” said Lila.

“Mm?” I said. Then I took another look at the feed on my visor, and my jaw fell open.

“Ummm...” said Lila. “Nubia, are you...”

“Yes,” said Amadi. “It’s... What the actual fuck? There’s –”

“Oxygen...” I said. “My goodness, there’s oxygen here!”

I looked at the concentration levels, then looked at them again, and then again.

“This is...” said Lila.

“Almost Earth-like,” I said. “Almost. It’s so close! And it’s getting stronger.”

“Call the other rovers in,” said Amadi. “If this asteroid has an Earth-like atmosphere under its surface...”

“Got it,” I said. “Summoning the rovers now. Defense systems on standby. I’ll leave some at the entrance. The rest will meet us down here.”

We waited for the rovers to come, then carried on. The readings were frighteningly consistent. The further down we ventured, the more Earth-like the atmosphere became. A dangerous curiosity crossed my mind, but I dared not give in to it right now.

“With these readings...” said Lila, as I suspected she was about to echo my own thoughts. “There’s no reason we should have these helmets on. No pollutants, no toxins. It’s... pure.”

“I’d err on the side of caution,” said Amadi.

“Oh, I know,” said Lila. “It’s just... weird.”

Then it got weirder. A faint, cyan luminance began to grow in the distance ahead of us, brighter the further we walked. Our scanners detected no motion, no external light sources, certainly nothing that could produce this color. My brain ran a billion calculations.

“Bioluminescence?” said Lila.

“Organic life...” I said. “Could it be?”

Even across the incomprehensible distance, I could feel the tension in the Agency building, as it looked on through our eyes. If this was what we thought it was, humanity, barely with its toes in the waters of the cosmos, was about to make first contact with an alien species.

“I don’t know about you, babes,” I said to Lila. “But my helmet stays the fuck on.”

We proceeded, as the light grew brighter still, the details of the walls illuminated before our torches even reached them. Then, an opening, an exit into a cavern, and we stood staring in bewilderment at what was producing this light...

Covering the cave walls, spreading out from just before the opening, was a dense constellation of glowing objects. Our mini-rovers armed in anticipation of danger, we drew closer, and the features of these objects became clearer. They were plants, of a sort, glowing roots dug into solid rock, fleshy, orange-sized orbs that emitted most of the light dazzling within a halo of purple petals. There were hundreds of them, evenly spaced, with the gaps smaller nearer the opening. Our torches were still on, but at this point, they were useless.

“Nubia...” said Lila.

“Woah...” said Amadi.

We might as well have been under a light drizzle with the humidity readings now, and stepping, finally, into the cavern, our suspicions were confirmed. A river... flowing into darkness to our left, its current fierce and primal. On the other side, just a few meters from the bank, were entrances into several other tunnels, their edges aglow. The structure seemed almost artificial – was it? – and the plants were literally everywhere.

“Proceeding to collect samples, Nubia,” I said, reason finally quelling my awe.

“Be careful, Alae,” said Amadi.

On unspoken command, a mini rover unfurled its collection chamber, and I fetched a blade from my utility pouch. The roots were tender, coming apart easily, and making me doubly curious as to how they manged to grow through what was very clearly stone. Their stumps still glowed as we collected 9 samples for good measure, then proceeded to explore.

The cavern’s roof loomed 20 feet above our heads, the plants spreading out from each tunnel exit to cover it – there were none on the ground. The mini-rovers still had their torches on, but we’d since turned ours off. These things were living light bulbs!

Lila stepped forward along the bank to the edge of the river, a container and testing rod in hand.

“It’s pretty cold,” she said, taking a knee and regarding the readings. “Little acidic. But otherwise... Earth-like, just like the atmosphere.”

“We’ve already greenlighted the next mission,” said Amadi. “This is unbelievable! Collect what you can, find out what you can, and come on home.”

“Copy,” I said, squatting beside Lila, and reaching out to feel the wild current, as the water seemed to glow of its own accord. “Like a dream...”

She placed the container inside another mini-rover that had rolled by, and we rose to continue our exploration. That was when I saw it, glistening in the cavern light on a mound further along the bank, some 50 feet east of where we had emerged. The object was only slightly larger than the mini-rovers, a dark, nightly blue, shaped like a flattened bun, with straight grooves running up its sides and converging at the top.

I ordered a full-spectral scan, and once again, my jaw fell wide open.

“Is that...” Lila’s words were cut short by her own astonishment.

Hidden beneath the object’s glossy exterior, a pulsing amber ghost in the infrared feed, curled in innocent serenity, was a small organism, roughly humanoid in shape. It was so humanoid that for a moment, I thought I was looking at an actual baby. UV revealed a bit more about the amnion the organism was suspended in, as well as a thin tube connected to the base of what I could only conclude now was a gestation pod. The tube ran down through the mound and into the soil, farther down than we cared to determine at the moment. Its energy readings were remarkable. For many minutes, we just stood and stared.

“That’s...” said Amadi. “Is that a baby?”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Lila. “The rovers have been scanning this place since we went in. No signs of animation, no life besides these plants. This thing can’t be alone here.”

I could almost hear the murmurs behind Amadi, the hundreds of team members with their eyes glued to the main monitor, very much sharing our disbelief.

“Is that thing feeding it?” said Lila, as we dared to venture closer, stepping forward until we stood over the pod, and saw it pulsing ever so slightly. “This is it! This is an alien life form! It looks so human. Look at the hands...”

The organism’s fingers were a little longer than the typical human fetus. It had 3 fingers, and what could only be a thumb. Its toes were numbered the same, curled at the ends of long feet. Whatever its species was, I was pretty sure they grew to be a lot taller than humans. The chest was broader, the ears tiny, and the gonads betrayed no gender. Curiosity found me reaching out, texture sensors giving me a near-real feel of the pod’s surface. It was smooth, and alive, a disembodied womb nurturing its occupant beneath a barren asteroid. Lila reached out to touch it too.

“It’s so...” she said, astonishment cutting her off again. “But there’s nothing else here!”

I widened the infrared feed, marveling at the fetus’s gentle, innocent movements, then slapped all the spectrals together in a rendering algorithm to create a better approximation of its true appearance. Features gained richness, color was filled in, and when the program ran its course, a pale, bluish-white alien child floated in the middle of my visual field. I forwarded the feed to Lila, and she gasped.

“We’re definitely coming back for this one,” I said. “Let’s get these specimens to the ship.”

We left the pod alone, and made towards our tunnel, the mini-rovers following. Our footfalls were drowned out by the roar of the river. There were no plants illuminating the crevice it flowed into. They stopped just short of it. I wondered at this, wondered what mysteries lay there, at the end of the river’s path, and dreaded every answer I imagined. Then, a few feet from our shimmering exit, I felt my head spin, saw the cavern blur, and the universe go black.

I woke on my bed in the ship’s quarters, Lila beside me, hand in mine. Her doe eyes lit up as I stirred.

“Hey,” she said.

“What...” I said, sitting up, surprised at the exhaustion in my own voice.

“You fainted,” she said. “Nearly gave me a heart attack. Had to improvise with the mini-rovers to get you on ours. You’re lucky they’re so smart.”

I smirked my gratitude.

“I’ve started proper analysis on the plants,” she said. “The team’s already making good with the data. How are you feeling?”

“Headache,” I said, frowning as I massaged my forehead in utter futility. “Bad.”

“Just rest some more, okay?” she said, and planting a kiss on my temples, headed out, back to the lab.

I took a few minutes to think. Why in the hell had I passed out like that? Perhaps the excitement took more than its fair toll. Or perhaps... No, it couldn’t be that. It simply wasn’t possible. Not a single red flag had been raised on a single scanner. Atmosphere was fine. It was too fine. No unidentified particulates, nothing strange besides those plants and that pod, that... infant.

Shaking off worry, I summoned the strength to get up, and proceeded to make myself some coffee.

“Oh, bless you, physics,” I thought aloud, as the hot brew poured pleasantly downwards into a cup for the first time in 3 years. I sat and sipped, calm, thoughtful, gazing out the window by the table, gazing out at the silent landscape of red shades.

“This one has stronger will.”

The voice made me drop the cup. It seemed to fall to the floor and shatter in slow motion. Then the wooziness returned. I gripped the edge of the table for dear life, my hands threatening to fail me. The room began to blur, the universe darkening again, then brightening, then darkening again. A concussion? My own heavy eyes? I did not know. But soon the darkness was all there was.

“Lila!” I said, calling out into a black void.

Then light, blinding light, like waking up from a long dream to undrawn curtains... No... It was more like being born. I tried to move my arms, but they would not obey me, nor would my legs. But where were they? Where were my limbs? My skin felt cool, my body weightless, like I was back in Zero-G... No... I was floating... in... something... I tried to speak. I couldn’t. I tried to scream. No luck. It was like I was hammering at a barrier holding a flood of sensations at bay, sensations that would bring meaning and reassurance, that would unite me again with the familiar.

There was no describing what I felt the moment that barrier came crashing down, letting sight, sound and smells in. And pain. The pain! The indescribable pain! I was floating, bare as a newborn, in a clear, viscous fluid, my mouth bound to some sort of breather. Its edges felt like they were merged with my skin. My arms and legs were bound too, fists and feet limp within gel-filled tubes that were latched around my upper arms and legs like the breather around my mouth, leading out of... whatever this thing was.

The pain subsided as suddenly as it came, leaving only a sickening afterglow in its wake, and as my vision cleared, I could see through the fluid, through the cylindrical, glass-like walls of my prison, through the glare of the light source above me, inside this... container?... see the figures moving in the dimness beyond. Tall and menacing were these figures, but their poise graceful. My vision adjusted again, till I could just make out facial features, placid, bloodless expressions. The beings regarded me with a cold curiosity that I recognized all too well, for it was with this same cold curiosity that I and the rest of my species had regarded millions of lesser organisms through generations of studies and experiments since the dawn of modern science. Terror overcame any rationality, any need to actually understand what was going on, to even care where I was, what any of this meant, except to the extent that it served to get me out, to save me. I thought of home. I thought of Earth, my office, my gym sessions, my research, my little brother... I thought of Lila.

Lila!

Eyes frantically scanned the world around me, hoping beyond hope that none of this was so, that I would awake right back in my bed on the ship, or better yet, back home, knowing this entire mission had all just been one fucked up dream. A glow in the eastern end of the room caught my eye, a bright, yellow-green light like the one above me, shining on a table over which a few of the beings loomed. They had moved enough now for me to see what lay on the table, to see... who lay on it... still and motionless, torso split down the middle, ribs sticking out like the teeth of a fly trap, organs laid out across the table, mouth agape and eyes wide in a final horrified stare that spelled the moment of her death.

I tugged against the unyielding tubes, my screams muffled and tears washed away in the fluid. I screamed regardless, wailed at the loss, wailed at the injustice, wailed at the horror of my own fate.

The pain came again...

***

© 2020 Barra Hart. All rights reserved.

Download this story