Written for the Lunar Awards Season 10 | Round 5
In the darkness between the stars, a small white dot approached a planet that orbited a red dwarf. Two moons of different sizes orbited the planet. As it drew near, internal lights came on. Its computer systems came to life, and on a monitor that no one was viewing, black words flashed up on a white background:
Scientific survey ship UNSS Khepri 2434 May 21 14:25 EDT.
Mission: to survey and prepare the planet Aya for colonization.
Status: Hull intact, payload secure. Crew: deep sleep. Optimal proximity reached. Activating life support systems…
Day 1
Lights flicked on, illuminating the sparkling layer of frost that had formed on every surface. The heating system came online, raising the ambient temperature to eighteen degrees centigrade. Every one of the nine horizontal pods in the sterile white room lit up and opened.
At twenty one degrees, the people within began to move, tentatively stretching themselves and removing the white sticky patches that covered the electrodes that monitored their vital signs. They looked around, their eyes locking with each other as recognition began to dawn on them.
A brown-haired woman was the first to emerge, lifting a hairy leg over the side of her hibernation pod. The others soon followed, and she scampered across the freezing floor to her locker. Purvis, A. She opened it, took her wash bag out, and went to the washing chamber; a small closet that provided enough water to moisten a cloth with a drop of cleanser on it. She cleaned herself with it, wiping away the layer left by three years in the hibernation pod, then used the dry shampoo powder on her hair. After tying it back in a neat braid, she dressed in a clean uniform and left the chamber, encountering a Japanese woman who bowed, then went inside.
Purvis stretched her limbs out, then jogged to the command deck.
The screens were online, relaying information from a thousand sensors that scanned the sector—and the ship itself.
While her job was to ensure that the systems on the Khepri worked as intended, she couldn’t help wanting to get a first glimpse of Aya. Nonetheless, she sat down at her work station and accessed the systems status report. The hull’s Whipple shields were intact, life support systems optimal, comms in working order, and scanners fully functional. It was safe to expose the windshield.
Purvis looked upon her new home for the next three years. Before her lay a vast starscape, in the middle of which sat, like a jewel on a diadem, the planet Aya. It looked like an orange marble streaked with red and white. She smiled. They had made it. The sound of approaching footsteps turned her head; Captain Samut placed a mug on her work station. “Thank you, sir.”
He went in silence to his chair and started typing.
Crespo and Kambale soon joined them, the navigator and the geologist conferring on the best place to land the ship. Pereira arrived shortly afterwards to take the helm.
“Gentlemen,” said the Captain, “have you decided on a place for us to land?”
“The scanners indicate that the Plains of Amun are optimal, Captain,” Crespo replied.
“Pereira, take us down.”
“Grid reference PA 345 252,” said Kambale, in his sing-song Ugandan accent.
The Captain put his headset on and announced, “This is Captain Omar Al-Masri Samut. We have arrived at Aya. All personnel to their stations. Prepare for landing.”
The ship glided into the clouds and tilted as planetary gravity took hold. Everyone on the command deck fastened their seatbelts as the ship began to shudder in the high winds. Purvis put the shields back up as a precaution; Pereira could use the monitor to guide them down. She wouldn’t be able to see much through the clouds anyway. The ship shuddered and rocked until they’d cleared the upper atmosphere. Lower down, the going was smoother.
Purvis kept an eye on all three of her screens. Though the ship was taking a hammering from the choppy weather, and there was a fair amount of electrical interference, all systems were working well.
“Shields down, please,” said Pereira.
“I can’t,” said Purvis. “We’ve got golf ball-sized hailstones battering us. If the glass cracks…”
“I like to see where I’m going,” said Pereira.
“I get you,” Purvis replied, “but I’m putting safety first.” She could hear her colleague muttering about how she would rather see outside with her own eyes (which she sympathised with) but said nothing. They both knew why the shields had to stay up.
The ship, buffeted by the hailstorm and high winds, shuddered through the storm until Pereira brought it safely down, rolling along the jagged basalt field on its toughened wheels until it came to a halt by a spent lava tube near Mount Atum.
“This is Captain Omar Al-Masri Samut. We have arrived at our destination. All personnel to the main deck. Prepare to disembark.”
Purvis’s heart swelled within her. This is it. The moment we have trained for. All I have worked for.
“Lieutenant Purvis,” said the Captain, “stop grinning and get down there. We have work to do.”
Although she was annoyed that he’d denied her the chance to savour the moment, Purvis knew he was right. She rose from her seat and hurried to her locker. Though the atmosphere was tolerable (a little low on oxygen), she’d still need PPE.
On the main deck, in front of the doors, the Captain stood, breathing in the moment. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have made history. The very first humans to set foot on another planet to prepare it for colonisation. We are the Ennead of this world.” Seeing the confused expressions on his crew members’ faces, he explained, “The Ennead were the first Egyptian gods. There were nine. There are nine of us. They created the world and made everything work, just as we are going to today.”
“Sir,” asked a sandy-haired, blue-eyed man, in a mocking tone, “do you think people will worship us in years to come?”
“Probably,” he replied. “Let us give them a reason to do so.” He turned with a theatrical flourish and opened the double doors. “Welcome to Aya!”
“Should we not be wearing hazmat suits?” Purvis asked.
Samut pressed the gangway button. A stepladder unfolded and deployed. He laughed. “We are going to colonize this planet. What have we to fear from it?”
The crew members took their first breaths of Aya’s air and disembarked, bringing boxes of equipment into the lava tube. One of the crewmen walked, dragging several boxes on a hand truck, to the beach.
Purvis watched him for a moment from the doorway until the sandy-haired man called to her. “Look!” he said, pointing at a patch of green in the distance. “Plant life.”
“We can look if you want to, Hauser,” said the Japanese woman, as she made her way down towards him, “but you’ll probably find it’s just verdigris. At this stage of evolutionary development…”
But his eyes were glazing over.
She waited till he had walked away.
“Rude!” Purvis remarked.
“I was only…”
“I didn’t mean…”
But she had already turned away.
“Purvis!”
She turned at the sound of her name.
“Get a drone up to look at those green patches over there,” the Captain ordered.
“But sir,” she answered, Omomoto said…”
“It’s ‘probably’ just verdigris,” he replied, with steel in his tone.
“Yes, sir.” Purvis went back inside to get the drone.
The Elite Harrier 1250 had four rotor blades, a twenty five kilometre flight radius, and a payload of one and a half kilos. Beneath each of the curved bars that held the rotors was a camera and transmitter. She took it out of its case, set up the monitor and controller, then went out in her hazmat suit and sent it up.
The telemetry report showed mostly basalt and granite rocks with a fair amount of silicates. The minerals were mainly feldspar and quartz. The heavy metals included iron and gold—large concentrations near the surface. Atmospheric composition on the surface mirrored the reports from the ship; the carbon dioxide levels were five times higher than on Earth. What caught her attention was the biochemical indicators. Oxygenic photosynthesis? Okay, she expected that; marine cyanobacteria had finally finished oxygenising the metals in the rocks—hence the redness. That’s why they could breathe outside without using respirators all the time. But when had they moved onto land? There were chlorophyll analogues on those rocks.
Purvis glared at the monitor as if it had stabbed her in the back. Oxygenic photosynthesis. Life. That prat Hauser was right. She moved the drone in closer. The chlorophyll analogues spiked as she moved in on the green patches. Some kind of moss? She deployed the sampler, which cut a piece and tucked it into a box where it was analysed. Some form of algal moss that science had no name for. Purvis grinned. She couldn’t wait to submit her report. Chlorophyliaceae Angela Omomoto sounded good in her mind. She returned to the Khepri and sent a message to the botanist, who arrived a few minutes later.
Omomoto seemed confused, as if she did not understand why she had come to the ship.
“You’re not wearing your respirator,” said Purvis. “We only have 18% atmospheric oxygen. Are you feeling sluggish? Tired? Difficulty concentrating?”
“I’m on the ship now,” Omomoto replied testily. “And I’m not a child. Stop telling me what to do.”
Purvis went quiet. There was no point in further antagonising her shipmate. She went to get the Acetazox, then put the box beside Omomoto, who was studying the telemetry report. She put a cup of coffee down as well. The Japanese woman looked up at her and smiled.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a grouch,” she said. “It’s this place! I can hardly breathe here and the captain says we need to become acclimatized in case our respirators stop working.”
“That should not mean you do without your respirator all the time,” said Purvis. “That’s unreasonable.”
“He will probably take credit for this,” Omomoto replied. She took a sip of her coffee and smiled as she savoured it. “Just the way I like it.” Her eyebrows rose. “Purvis, look at these readings. I have never seen anything like this before. The nearest thing we have to compare it to is plankton. But this is much bigger. It has vascular plant-like qualities but it also responds to stimuli. Watch this.” She picked up a biro and poked the sample with it. The sample turned away.
“It feels pain?” Purvis’s eyebrows shot up.
“That is what it looks like,” said Omomoto.
“We should be careful around this stuff,” said Purvis, worry wrinkling her brow.
“I think so,” Omomoto replied.
“Well, that’s interesting,” said Hauser, who had come up behind them unnoticed. “What does that mean for the mission?”
“That depends,” said Omomoto, “on what impact we have upon them. We did not evolve together. We do not know what effect contact with this stuff will have on us. Or us on it.”
“We have to tell the captain,” said Hauser.
“We have to find out more about it,” said Purvis, giving Hauser a worried look. “I mean, what does it eat?”
“I will continue to observe it,” Omomoto said, her brown eyes glued to the screen.
Hauser left the science pod.
Purvis continued to look over her colleague’s shoulder as she observed the creature they had taken from the rock. It was greenish-brown with tiny tendrils that flailed frantically around, scooping up small particles of matter.
“Organic matter?” asked Purvis, reading the report as it flashed up on the screen. “What was that stuff before it started eating it?”
“Cyanobacterium of some description,” Omomoto replied. “Look! Asexual reproduction by fragmentation. Fascinating.”
“How quickly does it reproduce?” Purvis asked.
“That depends on the availability of its food source,” Omomoto replied. “You look worried.”
“We’re full of bacteria,” said Purvis. “Besides, bacteria is all there is for it to eat here. Now we’ve come along. What if it decides that we’re lunch?”
The botanist burst out laughing. “We have a weapon,” she replied. “Soapy water.”
“They should be wearing hazmat suits out there,” said Purvis. “They’re not.”
Omomoto turned around. “You’re right,” she replied soberly. “In the excitement of arriving here, we all forgot basic safety protocols.”
“I did too,” Purvis replied. “Scan me.”
Omomoto turned her field scanner onto Purvis. “You’d better decontaminate,” she said quietly.
Purvis did not need telling twice. When she emerged, she saw three of her crewmates laughing and joking, without a care in the world. “Hauser, Kambale, and Crespo, you three need to go and decontaminate right now,” she warned. “Then go and take a look in the science pod. The readings from that organism we picked up are alarming.”
The three men just laughed at her. “We’re fine,” they said.
“Never felt better,” added Hauser, with a smirk.
“You worry too much, love,” said Kambale. “We should be feeling tired from being outside, but we do not.”
“Aya wants us to be here,” said Crespo. “She has welcomed us with open arms.”
“With some kind of pathogen,” Purvis replied. “I’ll get Hareton to take your bloods. You should have been wearing hazmat suits. And so should I, when the captain opened the door.”
Half an hour later, Dr. Hareton, who had not left the ship and was wearing a hazmat suit, was checking their blood samples. “I’d like to take some samples from your nasal passages and mouths,” he said calmly. He took them to his workstation and examined them under a microscope. “Purvis is right,” he said firmly, “there is an airborne pathogen. It doesn’t seem to be doing you any harm right now, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t. I’ll be keeping the four of you in here for the time being. If I see no changes in the next twenty four hours, and no increase in the number of these microorganisms in your systems, I’ll release you.”
“What if we don’t want to stay?” Hauser asked in a belligerent tone. “I don’t feel ill.”
“Have you forgotten all of your training?” asked Hareton.
Hauser just grunted.
Day 2
“We are not sending any reports back to earth yet, that’s final,” the captain insisted. “We don’t even know what we’re telling them, why should we say anything?”
“Well they would have received the ship’s telemetry reports by now,” Hareton replied.
“That is enough,” said Samut. “And if they’re not showing any signs of illness, can you let me and my crew out, please? There is work to be done.”
“Regulations clearly state…”
Samut sighed. “I don’t see much point in quarantining the crew when all of us have been exposed to this alleged pathogen. And why are you even calling it a pathogen if none of us are sick? I feel fine. I’m not even dizzy from the lack of oxygen. What if this so-called pathogen is actually doing us some good? Has that not occurred to you?”
“Well you are showing signs of elevated mood, possibly even euphoria,” Hareton argued.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” the captain retorted.
Scientific survey ship UNSS Khepri 2434 May 23 14:25 EDT. Medical officer’s log:
Captain Samut is behaving erratically, showing signs of euphoria and aggression. He has ordered that no report be sent back to Earth yet, presumably because he broke every single regulation about exposure to the biosphere of this planet.
Every member of the crew has been exposed to it, apart from myself, because when I realized that the others had gone out without their hazmat suits, I put mine on. I have refused to be around my colleagues without its protection. Some crew members have had more exposure than others. Lieutenant Angela Purvis put on her hazmat suit after breathing in the air when the captain opened the door of the Khepri.
Science officer Chiyoko Omomoto reports that the captain ordered her and the other members of the crew not to use their respirators or to wear suits because they need to become acclimatized to living here. If this is true it is a massive breach of health and safety protocols.
Second officer Kurt Hauser has advised that the captain seems to be obsessed with ancient Egyptian mythology, and that he keeps comparing himself and the members of this crew to Egyptian gods.
I am very concerned about the well-being of the crew and the viability of this mission.
Day 3
“Dr. Hareton,” Hauser asked, with a worried expression on his stubbled face, “I found some lumps on my chest and back. Could you take a look at them, please?”
“Lie down here, please.”
The German lay down on his back on the examination table. Hareton palpated his chest, then turned him over to examine his back. He picked up a handheld scanner and swept it up and down his back, then turned him over and scanned his chest.
“They appear to be cysts,” he replied. “I’ll have to take a biopsy.” He administered a local anaesthetic, then cut into one of the cysts and scratched its contents into a petri dish. He sealed the wound with a clear plaster. “Off you go back to the observation room. I’ll call you back in when I’ve checked this out. Do they hurt?”
“No.”
Scientific survey ship UNSS Khepri 2434 May 24 18:36 EDT. Medical officer’s log:
Second officer Kurt Hauser has complained of small lumps on his chest and back. A biopsy has revealed cells dividing and subdividing. The fluid that surrounds them is comparable to amniotic fluid in a pregnant woman. Blood samples show elevated white cell count. Apart from this he has no ill effects. I will continue to keep him under observation.
The other crew members who were outside without hazmat suits are experiencing the same thing.
Day 5
“Chiyoko, are you okay?” Purvis asked.
The Japanese woman looked up at her through the window of the observation room, misery carved into her features. A lump the size of a quail egg had formed on the side of her face. “Is this a joke?” she asked. “Look at me!”
The other crew members lay curled on their bunks, suffering in silence.
Day 7
Scientific survey ship UNSS Khepri 2434 May 26 12:15 EDT. Medical officer’s log:
There can no longer be any doubt about what is contained within the cysts of my fellow crew members’ bodies; embryonic creatures are growing inside them. What form these will take remains to be seen. I am considering terminating these growths, but keeping one or two for research purposes. The question is, how?
Each of the subjects is absolutely terrified. None of them want to continue as they are to see how this pans out. Kurt Hauser has asked me to try removing one of these creatures from his body.
Since he has not eaten for the last two days I should not have any problems with anaesthesising him.
***
Purvis was on her way to the washing chamber when she felt a prickling sensation break out all over her body. She peeled back the sleeve of her jumpsuit. A set of small bumps was forming on her forearm. She turned around and raised her t-shirt. There on her belly were a dozen more. She opened her mouth to scream but only a muffled gasp came out.
Day 8
Hauser sat at the mess table, eating, his healing incisions showing through his transparent plasters. He looked up as Purvis entered the room.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I was not ready to become a parent,” he replied with a bitter laugh.
“I’m told you’re free of the parasites,” she said.
He grunted non-committally. “There’s just the captain, Crespo, and Kambale to be done.”
“Why is he leaving the captain till last?” Purvis asked.
“He wants to keep the babies,” Hauser replied.
Purvis stared at him, disbelief freezing her expression. “You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“Go see for yourself,” he replied, shoving another spoonful of pasta into his mouth.
Day 12
Scientific survey ship UNSS Khepri 2434 May 31 19:43 EDT. Medical officer’s log:
There is nothing I can do to stop it. The organism is taking over my crewmates’ bodies at DNA level, reorganising every cell, keeping what it wants and discarding the rest. They still look human, for the most part, turning into the same greenish brown colour as most of the plant life here.
What I thought at first was a parasitic invasion of their skin has turned out to be a trial run for the complete transformation of their bodies. The specimens I took from Hauser are unmistakably humanoid. They are growing much faster than human embryos. Already I have had to rehouse them in larger containers. Soon I will have to make the decision as to whether or not to keep them alive.
For those of my colleagues who were not as heavily exposed to the pathogen as the captain, Hauser, Kambale, and Crespo, the process is much slower, but it is inexorable. I alone am fully human; the others are transforming.
Day 15
“Where is Hauser?” Dr. Hareton asked, as Purvis came in for her checkup.
“He said something about getting something from the hold,” she replied.
“Can you go and get him, please?” the doctor asked.
Purvis complied, though she found moving about very painful. The lumps in which the embryonic hybrids were growing had stretched her uniform to the point where she had to leave the grey jumpsuit unzipped at the front. Her tan t-shirt was grotesquely stretched, clinging around the near-translucent blobs that grew on her torso like leathery eggs.
As one of the few crew members who could still walk, she felt obliged to help in some way. The sensation of her unborn foetuses writhing against her muscle tissue made her nauseous. On one level she was growing used to the idea of becoming a part of this new world. She accepted it as a price to pay for living here. On the other hand she was angry and resentful that the planet had exacted such a toll. The fact that there was nothing she could do about it—that anyone could do about it—made her feel helpless. Nobody knew what would happen next. Would her own offspring devour her like some of the spiders back on Earth? Or would she survive the experience only to go through it over and over and over again? It did no good to dwell on it. The only way to keep a lid on her mounting terror was to help out in any way she could. To distract herself from the horror of both knowing and not knowing what was happening to her.
A slight bump led her deep into storage bay 4.
Bump.
Something was moving down there.
Bump-bump.
“Hauser?”
Bump-bump.
There he was, twisting this way and that, suspended by a cable he had wrapped around his neck and fastened to one of the shelving brackets. His face was a deep purple, almost black, his hands hanging limply at his sides jolting as something moved inside him. His limp body shuddered, then his feet flipped outwards, swinging his body where it hung. Blood poured from a spot halfway down the legs of his jumpsuit, then something flopped onto the floor. A gnarled blasphemy; a mockery of humanity—like a child’s crayon drawing of a baby—rose slowly to its clawed feet and opened two blue eyes.
Purvis turned and ran, giving full voice to her abject revulsion.
Day 25
Scientific survey ship UNSS Khepri 2434 June 11 08:12 EDT. Medical officer’s log:
The last member of the crew, Lieutenant Angela Purvis, died six days ago. I have stored her body with the others in the frozen samples room. I have tracked down and killed the last of the hybrids that emerged from my fellow crew members’ bodies. I found some of them lying dead in storage bay 4. They had turned to cannibalism in an effort to survive, unable to reach Hauser’s body after we took it down.
Captain Samut’s refusal to allow me to terminate the organisms growing within him gave me the perfect opportunity to study the life cycle of this creature. The pathogen is a parasitic amoeba-like creature that can group together to form a larger organism that exists on its own, free-floating in water or in air where it attaches to dust particles until it finds a host to colonize. It mimics its host’s biology, using it as a scaffold on which to build itself until it is ready to reproduce by asexual fragmentation. This pathogen has colonized most of the plants and other organisms in this area. I am not yet aware of the extent of its range. Whether it is a local phenomenon or it’s planet-wide, I have yet to discover, though its chemical signature makes it possible to track it. The captain remains in the observation room, having given his life to feed his children, as he requested. Each of them is now about the size of a five-year-old child. There are thirty of them. I am running out of food, and considering releasing them into the open to fend for themselves.
I propose that we call them Atumites, after the first Egyptian god, and as a tribute to the captain. I’m sure that would please him.
It is my considered recommendation that this planet be quarantined and taken out of consideration for possible colonization due to the risks to potential colonists.
Despite my best efforts to protect myself, I too have become infected with the Atum pathogen, and am in the end stages of infection. As my cognitive abilities are now impaired I have elected to take an overdose of morphine and end my life before it is taken from me.
I have released the Atumites.
End transmission.
Never explore, let alone colonise, another planet without quantum-AI controlled nanobots to enhance your immune system.
Them's the rules.