Rillas and Other Science Fiction Stories. A. R. Morlan
on the star-charts and considering that we’ve lost most of the engines, there’s no way we can try getting our bearings by changing course...might as well let ’er stay on this course, see what we drift into—”
The navigator said more, to both Neil and the others, but it was a silent conversation...and even Reba was too distracted to fill me in on things.
And even after tasks were delegated, distress signals sent out, stock taken of our remaining rations, and the like, Reba still found herself unable to share the mutual horror she and her fellow espers had experienced after the accident—thus leaving me to wallow in my own unexpressed fear.
Day 136:
Been a long time, where have I been? Can’t think straight, like gun-cotton stuffed in my head ready to explode if I think. What am I supposed to be doing here? Writing, yeah, I’m doing that. But writing what?
All I can remember now are the last days—how many? It hurts to think. Wandering in the rain, yeah, looking for shelter. Many images, feelings, just emotions. Scared I wouldn’t find a safe place to rest. Wandering along looking for something, anything alive. I found and I lost the ’lopes, or they lost me. I don’t know if they like me....
I remember finding a ’loper nest, empty, but the signs of habitation were unmistakable...as was their scent. During the lucid (or what passed for lucid) times, when I wasn’t smelling phantom odors which originated in my brain, I realized that the ’lopes, especially the females—had a piquant, musky odor not unlike the husk fruits on which they constantly dined.
I’d previously dismissed the slight rises in the ground, tiny hillocks, as simply part of the environment, until I was walking past one and simultaneously saw and smelled something. There was a hole leading into the hillock, shored up with stones placed so artfully, in so ostensibly a careless pattern, that a casual glance might not reveal anything but a tumbling of stones near a dark spot on a hillock. But I saw how light shone partway into the hole, revealing depth. And the smell of the female ’lopes was strong, almost cloying in its richness. No wonder I never found a sleeping ’lope. They never slept above ground.
Curious, not wanting to simply barge in should there be some trap set—the ’lopes had reason to fear me, since some of my kind stole their dead—I climbed the hillock, searching for an air-hole. That, too, was artfully constructed as to appear unconstructed. Just an irregular hole in the Earth, shadowed by a tuber tree and artless tumbles of loose pebbles. But it was a deliberate hole, nonetheless. I stretched prone, my ear to the hole. No sound. I looked in, but there was no light visible...not until the sun set a little more, sending a narrow beam into the hole at the base of the hillock. There. Packed dirt, and a barely visible rough bed of dried and matted-down limp-grass.
My desperation got the best of my fears and I crawled inside the dry, debris-lined chamber and fell asleep on the soft floor. I woke up once or twice; thinking Reba was in there with me, warming herself at my side, her wet clothes strewn about us. I don’t think she really was. I seem to remember, Reba’s dead....
Day 139:
Things are going better today! The headache is nearly gone! Well, not gone, but at least subsided to the point that I can ignore it. I’m still getting those extra twinges I think. But I’d better take advantage of this time to think of the harder, intellectual things I still need to get down....
By the end of our third month on the planet of the burnt-umber sun and the pulp-fruit trees, we were all more active; our lungs now used to the thin air. And our potbellies vanished, as we explored our new, albeit reluctant, home. Aside from some cooler areas to the north, where the dull tan-green flat-grass grew stubby and coarse, and the tuber trees were stunted, and a slightly warmer band along the middle that Neil guessed was the equator, the ’lope’s planet was remarkably uniform. Irregular ponds—home of the only other native life-form we found—creatures we dubbed “crushers,” which were easily as big as ancient double-decker busses, and vaguely resembled earth rhinos—and a few languid rivulets...but no oceans. Just lots of arid land, and pulpy trees that drew deeply on the hidden groundwater. Occasional warm rains and weak winds. And every damned seed or sprouting plant Reba and Huoy planted withered and drooped, finally curling into themselves in dry spirals of death.
It didn’t help to mix fertilizers (including human waste) with the plant’s soil; it simply couldn’t sustain the samples which were brought along on the ship, right-handed sugars or not. And as every sample died, a little bit of hope died in each of us. Reba said that she and the espers felt it worst; the pain of one was the pain of all. It didn’t faze her that my anguish was un-shareable, private. The only bright spot was that none of the lab animals died when they were fed little bits of the indigenous plant life. I don’t know if it was in the back of the minds of the others, but I know that I often thought about the inevitable—what will we do when our food is gone?
I suppose it might’ve been magical thinking on the part of the others: If we don’t make ourselves too much at home, this will never be home. Surely the loss of the ship had been noticed. I certainly didn’t show up on Harcourt’s Planet on time. And even though radio messages had been sent out, there was no guarantee that they’d be received in time to save us—if whoever received them could find us at all. It’s a damned big universe....
But even though Reba and her crewmates were trained scientists, it was pathetic how they whimpered like children when we found ourselves opening up the last box of spacer ’slop. Perhaps their distress was sensed by the ’lopers, and that was why they massed in the trees that afternoon. To watch us, and maybe wonder at us. Not much else brought them all so close to us, in such numbers; in all the months we’d been here, none of us had found the places where they slept. No ’loper villages, no ’loper buildings. Just buried ’lope dung, and discarded husks close to the trunks of the fruit trees.
Once we started eating their food, though, the ’lopers made themselves less scarce; seeing one or two of them each hour wasn’t uncommon. As always, they kept a screen of foliage between themselves and us, not enough to actually hide behind, but something there, nonetheless. For Reba, the ’lopes weren’t hidden enough.
A few days after we began eating husk-fruit, and the bulbous, pale yellow things that resembled apples but tasted more like a blend of carob and mushrooms (morels, to be precise), with a hint of bitter coffee thrown in, Reba and I were walking down the gentle slope that led away from the ship down to the pond. When we arrived, Reba edged into the scummy water; her feet and legs were submerged to the middle of her calves. I moved closer, my feet sucking mud with each labored step. I almost had my hand on her arm when she began moaning, and dropped to her knees in the tangle of limp-vines and mucky water. Her face crumpled, the freckles darkening and clumping together, and her eyes were scrunched tight, as if even this diffuse light hurt them.
And when I came closer, I could see the trigeminal artery in her left temple throbbing, a delicate pulsing under the fine skin. Migraine, I thought, bending over and almost losing my footing in the muddy waters as I scooped her up and carried her away from the pond. But before I turned around, and faced away from the pond, I caught a glimpse of Heidi and Baby Boy—they were watching us intently, no longer moving and grunting, as if what I was doing was terribly important—
Or Reba’s illness was.
Reba vomited on me as I carried her back to the ship; the sight, and the sickly-sweet odor sickened me, made me dizzy, but I kept on walking. The others were waiting for us, and I noticed that Huoy was holding her head, eyes half shut, and her skin even paler than usual. None of them looked very good. When Jimmie came forward to take Reba from me, I noticed that his hands were icy. Migraines, classic ones...and when I entered the ship, the dull white lights made my eyes burn and throb, but the pain was still bearable....
For once, the esper crew of the Sagittarius IV was too sick to indulge in esper-speak; I heard their stories of sudden pain and blinding insensitivity to sounds and light first hand:
“It came so fast...then I sicked up on everything, right on the scope—”
“Something...anything...please cut my head off, anything—”
“Just