On fiction: Rendezvous with NECA pt. 5
"Then lets begin," she says as she opens a sturdy cryogenic container with Hendrix' suit inside. A fog of frost lingers for a moment around its plastic surface.
A few paces beside her, Gubarev watches intently, his sullen expression easy to make out through the visor of his hazmat gear. "Cold stops the things, you say."
"You were the one guarding here," she answers. "Did you see anything suspicious?" A rhetorical question, as the logistics module is free of any crystalline invasion. She resumes her examination of the spacesuit, folding, stretching, exposing the various areas. "Nothing appears to have stuck to the urethane-nylon."
"So what are we looking for?"
"To see how the crystals snuck in. They seem to favor metallic parts, and I'm going to need you to dismantle the- yes, you will dismantle this."
"I ain't touching that."
"You know how these things work much better than I do. You could take them apart and back together in your sleep. And handling them with the hazmat on is safe. So please, Gubarev-"
"Fine." He growls. "You'd probably just bring the captain in to order me around anyway."
His hands work with practiced precision and in just a couple of minutes, the intricate machinery of the suit is disassembled. He then steps back, towards the door, in part to allow her better access to the various components, in part because he obviously would prefer to be elsewhere. There seem to be no suspicious needles, or shards, or any signs of infestation.
Gubarev fidgets behind her. "Well?"
"I'm not seeing anything yet ..." An idea. She searches inside the suit's cargo pockets. "His comm relays. I see he took five with him. Where are they?"
"Five? I'm only getting signals from four."
"And the fifth?"
"Check the logs if you want. There were only four installed. I get temperature, pressure, air composition data and occasionally a picture if motion is detected. Not much of that happened, that thing outside still plays dead."
"So he brought it back ... "
"You're welcome to look through the debris that used to be our long range radiotransmitter yourself. It's already broken, you don't need my help there."
"I might." She rummages through another container, this time for fresh comm relays.
"Going back in? Can't say I envy you. You know, the light has changed again inside NECA. Once it warmed itself, it's back to being dark again. Doesn't that worry you?"
"It does. A lot. But I'm here to find out what its purpose is. What about you?"
"Same. Just glad I'm not the one who has to rush in."
-:-:-
Inside NECA, the team of three walks along the passage following the airlock. She, captain Chahal, and doctor Ballard, each carrying a transporter pack with various climbing equipment. The air- not that anyone would want to breathe it for themselves- is warm and damp. Darkness has returned to NECA's corridors however, and the crew's torchlights create only small patches of clarity. In a way, it's better than to see the dizzying whole of the patterns of spires and ledges. On the other, it makes walking more treacherous, as the irregular floor seems too keen to have stumbling blocks for the unwary. Strange. NECA looks artificial, even in the dim illumination. Its surfaces smooth, machined to an irregular perfection of interlocking veins and bones of metal, and yet ...
"I wish there'd be more light," Ballard says.
Nothing happens.
"Well, I suppose it was worth a try."
She turns and sees him looking at the watch on his left arm. "Why do you keep staring at that thing? You'll misstep and break a bone or worse."
"Sorry." He smiles. "I am looking around. Have you seen this?" He points toward an opening between the ledges to his side. "Telemetry says it's a hundred meters deep, straight down. Looks fairly wide too."
"Have you been there before?" she asks.
"Of course not, none of us has, but that's the point. We press on in that direction, we're back where we were yesterday. Not much there."
"Apart from the wisps."
"Besides, this place is ideal to get a belaying rope. We can quickly go down, investigate, return if it's not promising. What do you think, captain?"
"I will defer to doctor Evans' opinion about how well suited this location is for a belay."
"I can set one up here, but I'm not-"
"I think we should try. It would only take a few minutes."
"All right," she says and lays down her transporter and looks for anchor points.
Moments later, she is on the belay rope. The slight squeeze at the start gives way to a cavernous space as she descends, which, at least, makes progress easy, if a bit difficult to ascertain. A floor becomes visible beneath, and a couple of coils of the belay rope lie on it- so then, she'll reach that before the safety stop knot at the end. The rope coils below give her a landmark to help control her speed, and she allows it to increase for a while under NECA's mock gravity. After a few seconds, she slows down again and prepares to land. Feet planted on terra firma, she looks around.
"Oh. Wow."
-"Should we follow you, doctor Evans?"- the captain asks.
Her lips move, but it takes several seconds for any word to leave them. "Yes." With fumbling hands she unclips herself from the belay rope. "Clear".
In front of her, a couple of nine-foot tall, insectoid figures lie encased in a crystalline growth on the wall. Their robust legs bend like those of grasshoppers, and the limbs that might pass for arms have three links similar to those of preying mantises. Hard to discern through the distortion through the transparent crystal, but it seems as if the beings walked around almost bare, their exoskeletons their almost only protection. Rugged ribbed shells around their thoraces extend tubular masks towards the insectoids' heads- those, at least, appear to be some kind of space suit.
"My God," she says. "These must have been the previous visitors." Her light now shines between the figures upon a third box, somewhat similar to the ones they had found before. Each of the insectoids has what seem very human hands, five fingers of which two opposable, upon the box.
"Are you sure it was them?" the captain asks as he touches down.
"Wha-" Her jaw drops as she turns to look at what he examines. A group of three creatures resembling obese short millipedes make up another grim decoration. One sits broken in several pieces, revealing metallic, robotic insides meant to protect a tiny occupant the size and shape of a sea urchin, several of its myriad spikes still linked to pieces of machinery.
"They're everywhere." Ballard's footfalls echo as he arrives.
Where to look first? In each direction, new forms of life- or their remains- appear, each fascinating, each begging to be admired at length. A pain to look away, a joy of another discovery. An armored cephalopod- its bubble helmet and spacesuit a wonder of articulation. Two slender figures like stick insects. An amorphous collection of spikes that could have been the offsping of a hedgehog and a giant amoeba. Three creatures that maybe were more rotund in their prime but now resemble beached portugese man-o-wars. And the walls contain even more shapes, all different. All similar in some respects. They all seem to have been carrying technology with them.
Where were they from? What used to power their anatomy? Did they have a similar chemistry to humans? How did they talk to each other? Could they have talked with us? How did they think? What did they think of? Overload. So much to study here-
"No chance these are bass-reliefs?"
She blinks out of her reverie and tries to focus on the crystals, not their captives. "I don't think so, captain. Ballard, what do you think?"
"Oh? Sorry." He puts his left hand down and turns towards them. "While this concentration suggests deliberate effort, the details suggest we have the genuine article. These things were alive once."
"Couldn't they be alive still?" she asks.
"Little reason to assume the crystals would be any more friendlier to them than they were to poor Hendrix."
Her gaze returns to the baroquely decorated walls. So much to learn underneath those blasted crystals ... but the image of Hendrix, spread out on the floor in pieces, comes back to haunt her. He lay there, just a few spikes having ripped him apart. And here they are now, with masses of the stuff all around them, its apparent inert solidity in no way reassuring. Sure, there is a lot to learn in this chamber if they could get through its crystalline glaze, but her curiosity is replaced by visions of human flesh oozing bile where glass shards cut through it. She'd grab a wall to steady herself but there's no way she's getting near them.
"Hendrix had it backwards," she whispers.
"Sorry?"
"He said, we're fishing for aliens. He was wrong. NECA's the bait. We're the catch."
Ballard starts to smile, and chuckles as he averts his eyes. "A rather fantastic theory, isn't it?"
She stands, mouth agape for a second. "Well ... ok, it is. Can you explain these?" she says, and shines her torchlight on the various crystallized beings.
"At the moment, no." He turns to meet her gaze, and raises an eyebrow. "Your hypothesis though leaves a big thing unexplained. What would the NECAns want with them, or us, hmm?"
She shrugs and starts to speak, but he interrupts her.
"All this- all this mass, build it, accelerate it, wait for it to cross the spaces between stars who knows how many times to gather all this menagerie. Seems like a lot of wasted effort, just to get a few pets."
"... Ok. Then help us find out what's going on and pay attention to your surroundings."
Perhaps she should have controlled herself more, but his persistent smug smirk really makes his face a tempting target for a punch. How can he be so self-assured and know-it-all anyway? She has every right to be nervous. Hendrix died. All around her, countless corpses of who knows how many other expeditions lie trapped in the same crystalline substance that killed him. And Ballard just stands around smiling like he has no idea how grave the situation is.
"I am paying attention. I see what you see- all these things gathered, mostly intact, in the same place. There does appear to be purpose here. I can't say I know, but I do have an idea about what the purpose is. I do not think you will like it."
A few paces beside her, Gubarev watches intently, his sullen expression easy to make out through the visor of his hazmat gear. "Cold stops the things, you say."
"You were the one guarding here," she answers. "Did you see anything suspicious?" A rhetorical question, as the logistics module is free of any crystalline invasion. She resumes her examination of the spacesuit, folding, stretching, exposing the various areas. "Nothing appears to have stuck to the urethane-nylon."
"So what are we looking for?"
"To see how the crystals snuck in. They seem to favor metallic parts, and I'm going to need you to dismantle the- yes, you will dismantle this."
"I ain't touching that."
"You know how these things work much better than I do. You could take them apart and back together in your sleep. And handling them with the hazmat on is safe. So please, Gubarev-"
"Fine." He growls. "You'd probably just bring the captain in to order me around anyway."
His hands work with practiced precision and in just a couple of minutes, the intricate machinery of the suit is disassembled. He then steps back, towards the door, in part to allow her better access to the various components, in part because he obviously would prefer to be elsewhere. There seem to be no suspicious needles, or shards, or any signs of infestation.
Gubarev fidgets behind her. "Well?"
"I'm not seeing anything yet ..." An idea. She searches inside the suit's cargo pockets. "His comm relays. I see he took five with him. Where are they?"
"Five? I'm only getting signals from four."
"And the fifth?"
"Check the logs if you want. There were only four installed. I get temperature, pressure, air composition data and occasionally a picture if motion is detected. Not much of that happened, that thing outside still plays dead."
"So he brought it back ... "
"You're welcome to look through the debris that used to be our long range radiotransmitter yourself. It's already broken, you don't need my help there."
"I might." She rummages through another container, this time for fresh comm relays.
"Going back in? Can't say I envy you. You know, the light has changed again inside NECA. Once it warmed itself, it's back to being dark again. Doesn't that worry you?"
"It does. A lot. But I'm here to find out what its purpose is. What about you?"
"Same. Just glad I'm not the one who has to rush in."
-:-:-
Inside NECA, the team of three walks along the passage following the airlock. She, captain Chahal, and doctor Ballard, each carrying a transporter pack with various climbing equipment. The air- not that anyone would want to breathe it for themselves- is warm and damp. Darkness has returned to NECA's corridors however, and the crew's torchlights create only small patches of clarity. In a way, it's better than to see the dizzying whole of the patterns of spires and ledges. On the other, it makes walking more treacherous, as the irregular floor seems too keen to have stumbling blocks for the unwary. Strange. NECA looks artificial, even in the dim illumination. Its surfaces smooth, machined to an irregular perfection of interlocking veins and bones of metal, and yet ...
"I wish there'd be more light," Ballard says.
Nothing happens.
"Well, I suppose it was worth a try."
She turns and sees him looking at the watch on his left arm. "Why do you keep staring at that thing? You'll misstep and break a bone or worse."
"Sorry." He smiles. "I am looking around. Have you seen this?" He points toward an opening between the ledges to his side. "Telemetry says it's a hundred meters deep, straight down. Looks fairly wide too."
"Have you been there before?" she asks.
"Of course not, none of us has, but that's the point. We press on in that direction, we're back where we were yesterday. Not much there."
"Apart from the wisps."
"Besides, this place is ideal to get a belaying rope. We can quickly go down, investigate, return if it's not promising. What do you think, captain?"
"I will defer to doctor Evans' opinion about how well suited this location is for a belay."
"I can set one up here, but I'm not-"
"I think we should try. It would only take a few minutes."
"All right," she says and lays down her transporter and looks for anchor points.
Moments later, she is on the belay rope. The slight squeeze at the start gives way to a cavernous space as she descends, which, at least, makes progress easy, if a bit difficult to ascertain. A floor becomes visible beneath, and a couple of coils of the belay rope lie on it- so then, she'll reach that before the safety stop knot at the end. The rope coils below give her a landmark to help control her speed, and she allows it to increase for a while under NECA's mock gravity. After a few seconds, she slows down again and prepares to land. Feet planted on terra firma, she looks around.
"Oh. Wow."
-"Should we follow you, doctor Evans?"- the captain asks.
Her lips move, but it takes several seconds for any word to leave them. "Yes." With fumbling hands she unclips herself from the belay rope. "Clear".
In front of her, a couple of nine-foot tall, insectoid figures lie encased in a crystalline growth on the wall. Their robust legs bend like those of grasshoppers, and the limbs that might pass for arms have three links similar to those of preying mantises. Hard to discern through the distortion through the transparent crystal, but it seems as if the beings walked around almost bare, their exoskeletons their almost only protection. Rugged ribbed shells around their thoraces extend tubular masks towards the insectoids' heads- those, at least, appear to be some kind of space suit.
"My God," she says. "These must have been the previous visitors." Her light now shines between the figures upon a third box, somewhat similar to the ones they had found before. Each of the insectoids has what seem very human hands, five fingers of which two opposable, upon the box.
"Are you sure it was them?" the captain asks as he touches down.
"Wha-" Her jaw drops as she turns to look at what he examines. A group of three creatures resembling obese short millipedes make up another grim decoration. One sits broken in several pieces, revealing metallic, robotic insides meant to protect a tiny occupant the size and shape of a sea urchin, several of its myriad spikes still linked to pieces of machinery.
"They're everywhere." Ballard's footfalls echo as he arrives.
Where to look first? In each direction, new forms of life- or their remains- appear, each fascinating, each begging to be admired at length. A pain to look away, a joy of another discovery. An armored cephalopod- its bubble helmet and spacesuit a wonder of articulation. Two slender figures like stick insects. An amorphous collection of spikes that could have been the offsping of a hedgehog and a giant amoeba. Three creatures that maybe were more rotund in their prime but now resemble beached portugese man-o-wars. And the walls contain even more shapes, all different. All similar in some respects. They all seem to have been carrying technology with them.
Where were they from? What used to power their anatomy? Did they have a similar chemistry to humans? How did they talk to each other? Could they have talked with us? How did they think? What did they think of? Overload. So much to study here-
"No chance these are bass-reliefs?"
She blinks out of her reverie and tries to focus on the crystals, not their captives. "I don't think so, captain. Ballard, what do you think?"
"Oh? Sorry." He puts his left hand down and turns towards them. "While this concentration suggests deliberate effort, the details suggest we have the genuine article. These things were alive once."
"Couldn't they be alive still?" she asks.
"Little reason to assume the crystals would be any more friendlier to them than they were to poor Hendrix."
Her gaze returns to the baroquely decorated walls. So much to learn underneath those blasted crystals ... but the image of Hendrix, spread out on the floor in pieces, comes back to haunt her. He lay there, just a few spikes having ripped him apart. And here they are now, with masses of the stuff all around them, its apparent inert solidity in no way reassuring. Sure, there is a lot to learn in this chamber if they could get through its crystalline glaze, but her curiosity is replaced by visions of human flesh oozing bile where glass shards cut through it. She'd grab a wall to steady herself but there's no way she's getting near them.
"Hendrix had it backwards," she whispers.
"Sorry?"
"He said, we're fishing for aliens. He was wrong. NECA's the bait. We're the catch."
Ballard starts to smile, and chuckles as he averts his eyes. "A rather fantastic theory, isn't it?"
She stands, mouth agape for a second. "Well ... ok, it is. Can you explain these?" she says, and shines her torchlight on the various crystallized beings.
"At the moment, no." He turns to meet her gaze, and raises an eyebrow. "Your hypothesis though leaves a big thing unexplained. What would the NECAns want with them, or us, hmm?"
She shrugs and starts to speak, but he interrupts her.
"All this- all this mass, build it, accelerate it, wait for it to cross the spaces between stars who knows how many times to gather all this menagerie. Seems like a lot of wasted effort, just to get a few pets."
"... Ok. Then help us find out what's going on and pay attention to your surroundings."
Perhaps she should have controlled herself more, but his persistent smug smirk really makes his face a tempting target for a punch. How can he be so self-assured and know-it-all anyway? She has every right to be nervous. Hendrix died. All around her, countless corpses of who knows how many other expeditions lie trapped in the same crystalline substance that killed him. And Ballard just stands around smiling like he has no idea how grave the situation is.
"I am paying attention. I see what you see- all these things gathered, mostly intact, in the same place. There does appear to be purpose here. I can't say I know, but I do have an idea about what the purpose is. I do not think you will like it."
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