***
Kat slowly peeled open an eye, and she sensed right away that something was amiss. She adjusted her position and rubbed both eyes clear, then looked over at the captain. He was sleeping soundly, a long line of drool extending from his open mouth to the floor. She scanned around and noticed that Alex's cocoon was empty, and while that was alarming enough, his suit was also gone.
Her eyes widened, and she wrestled to free herself and alert Conner, but something about the scene nagged at her. After several seconds of intense scrutiny, she noticed the oxygen mask dangling lazily next to Alex's sleeping bag. Then the faint odor of cinnamon tickled her nostrils, and she knew right away. “Conner! Conner, get up. He activated the hibernation gasses!”
The captain slowly came to and clumsily wiped his mouth. His voice sounded as if he had been drugged, “Wha?”
“Alex turned on the hibernation system, well, just the gasses, while he was wearing that,” Kat pointed up at the mask and its trailing tube gently swaying in the low gravity. “He's gone outside.”
The captain looked from Kat to the mask, then back at her again, as he put the pieces together in his head. He sprang into action, quickly freed himself from his bedding and went straight to the control panel. A series of repeating messages screamed at his eyes from the display. Mission Control: Abort. Abort. Abort. Confirm.
The captain tapped the keyboard and changed screens. After several minutes of inspection and rapid typing, he verified Alex's steps and the fact that he didn't tamper with anything else. “We've been out for over sixteen hours,” he stated.
“Oh, no,” Kat whimpered.
Conner turned to see her looking out the circular window nearest to him. She turned to meet his eyes, and he saw that hers were spilling over with fear. The captain pulled himself to the window and gasped as he beheld Alex standing about a dozen feet away from the ship, staring up at his moon. He wasn't wearing his suit, and he was completely naked.
Conner looked at Kat, and both stared at the other for several seconds, then the captain let his gaze return to the outside. Alex had turned to face the ship and was now looking directly at them. His body had an aura of blue and milky-white moving around and within it, and his skin, bones and even his organs had become translucent.
As they both tried to peer out of the tiny window at once, the captain took notice of the fact that the man's heart was not beating. He could see it as clear as day, and it was as still as the haunting landscape surrounding him. He stared on and learned that Alex was not breathing either. The glowing, blue man raised a hand, and the words, “It's alright,” echoed inside both of their heads, but Alex's lips never moved.
Again, Kat and Conner stared at each other, then Kat begin to pull herself around the shelter to reach her suit. Conner realized her intent, “Wait! You can't go out there. You don't know what's wrong with him. It could be contagious. It could be some kind of parasite, like I said.”
“I don't care,” was her only reply.
He wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, but the determination in her movements convinced him to stay put, “We have to leave him, Kat.”
“What is wrong with you?” she muttered.
“You don't understand. He put us all at risk by going back out there, and now look at him. Do you want to end up the same way?”
“I told you, I don't care.”
“Kat, listen to me. He used up too much of the gasses. There's not enough for all of us to make it back.” She paused, and the captain took advantage of the opportunity to continue, “Stay here. Stay inside with me. He made his choice, but we can still get out of this.”
“No,” Kat responded and continued her efforts. Once ready to go, she gave one final look to Conner before donning her helmet.
“I'm not going back out there,” Conner declared.
“I never thought you would.”
Captain Conner physically recoiled at the words, and Kat attempted to clarify, “I mean, because you never really liked him. Not that...” she trailed off, then activated the inner door and moved into the sally port.
Kat activated the outer door and stood staring at the new Alex in all of his glowing glory. “You will be alright. There is nothing to fear anymore,” she heard in her head, though the captain heard nothing.
Kat stepped out of the sally port and noticed that Alex held the collection rod in his hand, and it was no longer glowing. He released it and gave it a gentle nudge to send it floating to the ground. “You see? It's not a parasite. It's not a hostile organism. We were sampling it, and it merely to tried to sample the rod. You have to want it, and it must want you.”
“What is it?” Kat asked inside of her helmet, assuming that if he could speak inside of her head, he could also hear inside of her helmet.
“Something amazing,” he offered with a strange, yet soothing, blue smile. “There's so much more, Kat. I can see it, and there will be even more to see. It's endless.”
The lights of the outer door snatched her attention back to the habitat. The door opened, and the captain emerged, “Kat, stay away from him. You don't know what it is,” came through the speakers inside of her helmet.
“I'm Alex, that's what it is. I'm just a more evolved version,” drifted across the captain's mental ear.
“Bullshit! I don't know what you are, but you're not getting back into that ship with us,” the captain said, trying hard to maintain an authoritative voice.
“You're right, I'm not.”
Conner was confused, but before he could mount a response, Kat's voice swirled around inside of his helmet, “I want to go with you,” she said to Alex, tears began to stream down her cheeks and around a large smile.
“Kat, no! You can't. Stay with me, please. Think about your family, your friends, all the people back home waiting for you!”
Kat turned to look at Captain Conner, his eyes were large and full of uncertainty, “I want to know what else is out there, Adam.”
“Don't you want to know what's right here?” the captain pleaded.
“I know what's here, and I'm sorry, Adam, but I don't love you.” A small patch of condensation appeared on the inside of the captain's visor as his suit tried to compensate for his rapid succession of breaths. “I also know what's back home. And they wouldn't expect anything else.”
“I can't, I'm afraid,” the captain revealed as he fought back tears, “But I want to be with you.”
“I know,” Kat cooed back to him, “But we have different destinies, and mine is out there,” she motioned to the starlit, black sky. She turned and walked up to Alex, who opened his arms wide. She hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward and embraced him as his glowing arms closed around her.
The captain watched in horrified wonder as the iridescent blue and white crept up and around the arms of her suit, then her torso, helmet, head and finally, her legs and boots. Her suit began to glow intensely and started separating into its component parts as if all the adhesives, connections and joints had simply melted away. He braced himself for the screams that would surely blast into his helmet at any moment, but they never came.
The individual parts of the suit lethargically fell away as she turned, revealing the splendor of her lithe body to the captain for the first time, and it only strengthened his longing for her. He mapped her form with his eyes; her plump lips, the gentle curves of her shoulders and the mass of her breasts, the darker skin of her nipples, the alluring triangle nestled between her curvaceous hips and her long, muscular legs. All of it was completely translucent and glowing a blueish-white.
He could clearly see her inner workings, and through them, yet he found that it only made him want her more. A change in the ambient light distracted his attention to the ground, where the suit parts were returning to their original colors. He looked back up to see the azure couple now staring at each other, and the knife blade of jealousy stabbed at his heart.
The captain skipped forward and cried, “I want to go too!” as he gr
asped Kat's shoulders from behind. He clinched his eyes shut for several seconds and awaited the transformation with dread. When he didn't feel anything for several seconds, he opened his eyes to see that nothing about himself or his suit had changed. Kat continued to stare at Alex, while Captain Conner, overcome with emotion and unable to speak, pleaded to him with his eyes.
“You have to want it, and it must want you,” sounded in the captain's head.
“I do, I do want it!”
“No, you want her.”
The captain stepped around Kat and whispered, “Please.”
“You can't. You must go back. You must tell the others. Let them know that all of the answers are here. You must go, now.”
Kat turned to face him, and the captain could no longer contain his tears, “Go back, Adam. That is your destiny,” reverberated through his head.
“I don't want to go back alone. I don't want to be alone anymore,” the captain sobbed.
He heard Kat's gentle, lyrical voice in his head, “You're not alone, and you never will be again.”
The captain turned and skipped back to the outer door, took one last look at the couple now holding hands and staring up into the black sky, then opened it and disappeared inside. Alex and Kat remained in their respective positions and never once looked back as Captain Conner sent his report and prepared himself and the ship for departure.
Hours passed as he carried out the duties normally performed by three people. As he worked, he continually stole glances out of the portholes, hoping against reality that he would see Kat returning, no longer see-through and glowing.
After a final peek at the motionless duo, the captain strapped himself in and began the launch sequence. A violent vibration shuddered through the craft as explosive bolts detonated and separated the vehicle from its landing gear. A second, lasting shudder denoted the main engine firing, and then nothing but profound silence.
After a few minutes had passed, Captain Conner unstrapped and made the preparations needed to put himself into hibernation for the long trip home. Each switch flipped, every button pushed, every keystroke slammed into his ear drums and echoed through his head.
As he settled into his cocoon and waited for the anesthetizing gasses to do their work, something outside commanded his attention. He squinted to peer out one of the porthole windows and beheld two forms rising up above the surface of the diminutive world. The blobs of light trailed long, blue and white tails of luminescence in their wakes as they ascended into the star-studded sky, moving away in the opposite direction.
He could tell by their proximity to one another that they were still holding hands. They were heading towards the outer solar system and, he presumed, beyond. He leaned back and took in a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then loudly exhaled. Just as the anesthetizing gasses were about to take him, a warm and gentle whisper floated through his head, “Let them know...”
Captain Adam Conner made the decision to avoid cluttering his mind with exactly how he would do that, or how that revelation would be received, as the faint scent of cinnamon filled his nasal cavities. He was more interested in letting her voice swim through him for as long as possible. The captain's eyelids began to flutter; his head bobbed and then lulled to the side, and the last, fleeting thought to escape his conscious mind was, would he ever hear it again?
The End
*****
“I write because I'm terribly unhappy if I don't...” - W.P.
Visit William Online At:
Facebook: Author William Petersen
Twitter: @WideWorldOfWill
Blog: TheInwardSpiral.Wordpress.com
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends