Page 14 of Crash Landing
Across from me, Mr. Hemburg was putting a piece of gum in his mouth, watching me. I gave him a half smile and folded my sketch up, stuffing it in my pocket for safekeeping.
After a few hours in FTL, one of the valerians announced that we were approaching Phesah. Everyone started to get a little anxious. Some people looked excited and some were sweating nervously. I wondered how many people had ever even been to the Nexus let alone an exoplanet. I’d been to Sylos, but even I was dreading setting foot on an alien moon.
The captain, who also appeared to be the pilot, eased us out of FTL just in time for us all to get a glimpse of the moon from the giant front windows. It looked nothing like what I imagined it to look like. It was a beautiful black and purple color with tufts of white and gray scattered along its surface. Clouds, I gathered. It was a rocky moon from the looks of it and I could see what looked like patches of water winding through it like deep blue veins.
It was beautiful.
The same valerian warned of turbulence as we neared the moon’s atmosphere. I braced for something dramatic only to find that the trip was far smoother than any trip I’d taken so far. The pilot was good… or the ship was good. Either way, I didn’t feel like I was going to hurl. I did feel the need to shut my eyes though when I saw the familiar, fiery rush of burning gases wafting over the ship’s nose and over the windows. I hated that part. Even if I closed my eyes, all I could see were explosions and people being thrown across a cargo hold of that freighter.
When the worst of it was over and I felt the ship level out, I still didn’t want to look up. It wasn’t until I heard the childish gasps of the people around me that I finally pried my eyes open and peered out the window to see the first glimpse of Phesah’s surface.
And nothing could ever compare.
At first, we hovered over a flat cloud layer, but there were holes in the clouds through which I could see an array of dark colors. When the pilot dipped the ship’s nose and we started to soar toward the ground, it was like being on a ride in the wildest theme park in the world. I gripped my restraints and watched the ground grow closer. I saw black rocks, cliffs, and high, thin waterfalls flowing into winding rivers. Giant, umbrella-shaped canopies covered the span of a football field, skewing our view from high up, but the captain took us down into what looked like a giant, rocky clearing near a river.
My heart started to race knowing I was going to be stepping onto yet another alien world. For all I knew, I was allergic to everything there, but the breathing masks we were all provided were more than simple mouth covers. Once active, an entire transparent face cover conformed like a shell to the front of the face.
The moment I felt the ship touch down and stop moving, I was one of the first to undo my restraints and walk to the storage compartment. I wanted my OxyMask on my face as soon as possible.
My bag was marked with my initials on the strap and easy to find. I pulled it out and quickly grabbed my mask from the front pocket. It was a simple-looking black contraption that fit over the head to cover the mouth and nose. The button on the side activated the protective shell and was even equipped with readings on the glass for the wearer to see. If my heart rate started to go off the charts, I could tell. If my blood oxygen waslow, I could tell that, too. Learning to wear the mask was part of our pre-trip training.
It would have been nice to have one when I was practically sneezing my guts out on Sylos a year ago.
“Alright, everyone. Listen up,” the captain spoke from the top of the steps.
All eyes turned in his direction. The rest of the valerian crew stood around casually, each of them a head taller than even the tallest person in our group. Two of them were females I gathered, judging from the slightly more slender, feminine shape of their bodies in the skin-tight suits. They were only an inch or two shorter than their three male companions and just as intimidating.
The captain gestured toward one of the females, who appeared to be the only one wearing a strange silver wristband with multiple little instruments magnetically fastened all around it like some kind of utility belt for the arm.
“This is Dr. Ilisa,” the captain continued. “She’ll need to measure your baseline vitals before we lower the ramp. We’re aware some of you might be under a bit of stress right now after entering the atmosphere of an alien moon. If you need a moment to breathe before heading to the base camp, take it.”
I took a couple of deep breaths as I watched Dr. Ilisa slowly make her way around to every human on the ship. She pulled off one of the slender, pen-shaped instruments from her utility bracer and pressed it to the underside of the first intern’s wrist for four seconds. At first, I thought she might be drawing blood, but when she drew back, there was nothing and she seemed to be reading something on a tiny screen also fastened to her bracer.
I didn’t understand alien tech, but if that was all she had to do to get my vitals, that was fine by me. I watched as she went from one person to the next until she finally reached me. My heart was still racing, but that was just excitement. When shepressed her little device against my wrist, I bit my lip, trying to slow my pulse a little. When the doctor looked at my readings, there was a very slight tilt in her head that made my paranoia scream inside me.
But then she moved on from me and walked to the next person, who apparently was Mr. Hemburg. He was barely a step to my left. I didn’t even notice him there. He offered his wrist, smacking his gum between his teeth like he’d done the procedure a hundred times.
Once the doctor had made her rounds, she gave the captain an approving nod, which the captain relayed to a man standing by the ramp controls.
“Masks on,” he ordered.
Nervously, everyone started sliding their masks onto their faces. On the side was a little knob that clicked in two directions. I turned it once and the transparent face shell emerged rapidly from the breather and covered my whole face. My hair was tied tightly into a low ponytail and the collar of my jumpsuit was zipped up under my chin. I also had a pair of gloves in my pack that I slid over my hands, telling myself that I wasn’t going to be touching anything with my bare fingers until we knew what it was.
When the ramp started to lower, there was a hydraulic hiss that echoed through the cabin. Then there was wind. A humid gust flew through the ship from outside, briefly fogging my visor. When the fog dissipated, little droplets of water were already sliding down my face shell.
When the captain said it was humid on Phesah, he wasn’t lying. Our suits were designed to filter out humidity and expel heat to keep us cool, so the full force of the moon’s climate was still a bit of a mystery to me.
Once the ramp touched the ground, the captain came marching down the steps and through the group of internstoward the exit. I turned toward him as he passed and when I did, his head snapped toward me. I couldn’t see his face, but I just knew his eyes were watching me through that black, tinted visor. We regarded each other for a moment before he reached the ramp and started to descend onto the flat, rocky clearing where he landed.
Slowly, people started to follow him outside.
Everyone was hesitant and cautious. Though many aspects of the alien moon looked Earthy, plenty of it didn’t. The colors were strange and the plants didn’t quite look real. Nothing on Phesah was green, which was not uncommon for planets orbiting dwarf stars. The plants needed to absorb much more light to thrive, which meant they came in dark shades from deep purple to wine to black. It was brilliant and surreal to see. Even the moss on the rocks where we were standing was a dark, bruise-purple.
To the left was a sheer drop about thirty feet from the ship where the rocks broke off into what seemed to be a river. The top of a waterfall plummeted from the cliff even further up from the clearing which sent a constant mist in our direction. Through my mask, I couldn’t smell anything, but a part of me wished I could. Despite my reactions to Sylos, there were still things about alien worlds that fascinated me beyond reason. I was a little caught up in it until I heard the captain’s voice again.
“Just through those trees is the base camp where you’ll all be staying for the next couple of days,” he explained. “Sleeping will be done on the ship to regulate your temperatures and protect you from nocturnal wildlife or weather conditions. You have about four hours to do your research before night falls.”
He turned and started heading toward the tree line and everyone followed, walking like they were drunk on the sights. So was I. It was hard to see where I was stepping when all I wanted to do was explore. The moon was a dream. It was likenothing I ever thought I’d see and yet there I was, walking on its surface. Me. A girl who practically grew up on the streets. Who didn’t think she’d make it to her twenty-fifth birthday. Who thought she’d be rotting in jail before she would be exploring alien worlds.
