Chapter 5 – A Blanket of Alien Stars
Though darkness filled her vision, Mary Lopez screamed as the roar in her ears informed her that the ground rushing upwards would quell her racing heart before she had the opportunity to draw another breath.
She woke with a gasp, trembling with fear. A pair of glowing suns filled the sky with a mild, bronze light. She gazed for several seconds at that sky until memories rushed all at once into her mind. Her hands shook to recall her harrowing descent, and she collapsed onto her knees before vomiting the adrenaline and fear that had turned sour in stomach.
“Gather yourself, Mary. You’re still breathing. You’ve got that going for you.”
How had she survived her descent to the planet’s surface? Mary remembered choosing a land site from the possibilities the settler rig’s computer had offered her, and she remembered staring through the windshield as the nose of her rig aligned itself with the proper entry angle. She remembered buckling her seatbelt before pressing back into her seat’s cushions so that her rig could softly set her upon the ground.
“There was a collision,” Mary righted herself back upon her feet. “There were so many rigs tumbling out of control. One of those rigs was tumbling toward me. I fired the emergency thrusters in time to dodge impact, but I ruined the trajectory and put my rig into the planet’s gravitational pull at the improper angle. How am I still alive?”
Mary lifted her right arm and winced as pain throbbed from her shoulder and prevented her hand from rubbing at her aching temple. When had she removed her helmet? Was her shoulder separated, or worse? Was a separated shoulder an injury that would heal on its own, or would she need to find medical attention?
Something fluttered upon Mary’s forearm, and she shivered as she looked upon a giant butterfly-like creature twice the size of her opened hand. She jerked her arm away from the wing, and it fluttered to the ground next to her feet, a pair of glowing, pearl eyes opening to regard her. Mary’s heart raced. Was the creature only curious? Was it harmless? Or was it some kind of hungry monster who regarded Mary in order to locate the best place to bury a barb or a fang?
“Beat it!” Mary kicked at the creature. “Go back to wherever you came from!”
Mary lifted her boot to stomp at the large, glowing butterfly when its wings refused to retreat, and she yelped when a thousand more pearl eyes suddenly winked open all about the ground. Mary turned to look behind her. She lifted her gaze into the bronze sky. The eyes were everywhere. Fluttering wings surrounded her. For as far she could see, the strange creatures blanketed the ground.
“What do you want?”
She thought it was silly to speak common Earth English at such an alien life form, but who was she to say what such flickering wings may or may not understand? Perhaps that field of wings shared a collective mind with telepathic powers capable of comprehension. All the old science fiction movies that flickered in the housing stacks suggested that the impossible often transformed into the probable once one lifted high enough into the heavens.
Still, that field of eyes only silently stared at Mary. Not a pair of those glowing orbs blinked, and that chilled Mary’s spine.
Mary closed her eyes, cringing to feel a wing set upon each of her shoulders. Something in her mind told her it was foolish to fear such aliens, that it was useless to recoil from them. Mary realized she would be powerless to deny any of those wings their curiosities or their appetites when so many of them appeared to cover the ground. Mary felt several more rest upon her head.
“Alright,” Mary said to herself. “Just think for a moment. You knew there would be challenges in settling this planet. The lottery offices never said anything to the contrary. You’re a capable person, a hard-working individual. You’re a prosperous young woman, and this planet is for you. You only need to keep calm and think.”
She needed to locate her settler’s rig and hope that it wasn’t damaged so badly that it could no longer serve as a shelter. She needed to locate her supplies. She was already thirsty, and though her stomach remained nauseous from fear, she knew it wouldn’t be long until her appetite returned. The rig held her water supply, food and equipment. The rig held her makeshift harpoon gun. Mary desperately needed to recover everything she could to plant her feet upon Wildberry.
A thick cloud of fluttering wings jumped from the ground to reveal a landscape of gray rock, and Mary winked as those creatures flashed through a spectrum of dazzling colors to attract her attention. The swarm picked up speed before falling back and folding upon itself, forming a kind of rainbow cyclone of wings, a twirling column of colorful light tracers that urged Mary to follow.
Mary thought it was incredible to watch a complete landscape fly off of the ground, as if the very green grass had leapt into flight. Was every mote of the planet’s color another individual wing? Those wings twinkled, and settled upon the ground so that a path of barren, hard rock spread before Mary’s feet. She followed the trail shaped by the wings and placed her faith that, somehow, they realized what she needed to find.
It was difficult for Mary to judge the passage of time beneath the bronze sky that remained strange to her, but she felt like a few hours passed before the wings directed her to her settler’s rig. The rig’s roof was missing, and Mary remembered how the wind had torn it off just as she had survived the push through the atmosphere. She remembered watching crates jump out of the depressurized rig, and she remembered how she too was jettisoned from her craft. Mary was amazed to discover her rig little worse for wear. Its damage remained cosmetic, and Mary remained confident the rig would provide an adequate shelter until she found the occasion to build anything stronger. Mary shook her head. She should’ve found that rig torn and mangled, a ball of twisted metal. Instead, it seemed as if some divine hand had gently set the rig upon the ground.
The heavier equipment remained secured within the rig, but Mary found no trace of her supplies of water and food as she paced about the craft.
“If only I could find some water,” Mary sighed. “I could sleep for a bit if I found some water, gather a little energy before I started searching for the other supplies.”
The swarm of wings again swirled into another column and winked through their rainbow colors. Mary followed the trail of rock those wings revealed, and she was amazed when creatures broke from that shimmering cloud to sit upon the very boxes of bottled water for which she searched. Did those wings understand so much of her language? Or did those creatures truly read her thoughts? Did they have more in common with the birds or with the bees that so long ago used to grace the pages of children’s books?
The water refreshed Mary, helping to settle the stomach made so uneasy during the day’s trauma. The wings continued to blink through their colors as they led Mary back to the waiting settler’s rig. They appeared calmer to Mary, blinking less quickly and no longer swirling in such a tight, cyclonic formation. Several wings rested upon her shoulders when she stepped into her rig, and many other wings invited themselves to the perches offered by the rig’s countertops.
Mary unfolded her rig’s cot and set her head upon a salvaged pillow. “I’ll have to inventory everything in the morning to know what I lost during the descent. I’ll have to find food. If I must, I can fidget with the rig’s radio until I find someone willing to help or trade, but I doubt that’s going to be easy during a planet-grab.”
The day’s adrenaline and terror left Mary exhausted, but she struggled to calm her mind so that she might drift into sleep as the bronze light of dual suns poured through her roofless rig. She would have to adjust to sleeping on a world without night. She would have to do the best she could to find what rest she may so that she could face the coming day’s tasks of survival.
Once more, those winged creatures sensed Mary’s troubles and gathered together above the sleeping settler, where they turned their color dark to emulate the night sky Mary had known on her original home world. There, those alien butterflies winked open their pearl eyes and
filled Mary’s view with twinkling stars. Mary required only a few more sighs before falling asleep, and she dreamed of soft wings catching her in the sky before gently setting her upon the ground of a new home.
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