Chapter Four

I slept fitfully, with nightmares in which I was still trapped outside and choking on empty Tantalus air. My mother was there sometimes and once I even had to face my father's disapproval. I was glad when my pad buzzed, telling me my sleep period was over. I opened my eyes to the gray metal walls of my bunk and everything came crashing back to my mind.

I trudged over to the shower, still stumbling around because of the gravity, squinting my eyes at the bright sunlight outside. It was a little past noon local time, of the same day as yesterday. It made me feel confused until I firmly told myself that two normal days made one full Tantalus day, give or take an hour or so. That meant that today I would see nighttime on the planet at last. It would be helpful to remember that, to help my body adjust to the new rhythm I would have to establish.

I stopped walking for a second. I had briefly forgotten that I would leave this place very soon. I resumed my way to the showers thinking how stupid I was, making plans to adapt to this planet when I would be gone in a week.

Jim was showering when I came in. He was in one of the stalls, hot water steaming as it splashed down over his body. He was shampooing his hair as I walked past, eyes closed. The stalls had no doors.

I couldn't help it. I stared.

Jim looked even better naked than I could have imagined. I had already guessed that he worked out regularly, but now that I had a good look at him in full I could see that he was serious about building up his body. He had thick, strong-looking legs that could have easily belonged to a power skater. They led up to a perfectly firm butt, round and smooth. Seeing the steamy water run down his broad back and between his butt cheeks was such a turn-on for me that I had the sudden and irrational desire to simply go up to him and touch his ass.

I didn't have a death wish, though. Besides, I was too busy ogling him. Jim's arms were big, his biceps bulging with the slight motions he made as he massaged the shampoo into his hair. I could see the muscles on his shoulders stand out clearly under the constant stream of the shower, and when he turned around to let the water rinse his head I was treated to the sight of his marble-hard pecs, both nipples standing out clearly against his pale skin. My eyes roamed down, passing over his flat, sculpted abs until they reached Jim's cock. It looked way bigger than mine, uncut, nestled between his balls as more water dripped down from it traversing its entire length.

Jim cleared his throat loudly at that exact second. I looked up immediately only to see him glaring at me from where he stood. Soapy water ran down his forehead and neck, ignored. I felt the blood rush to my face but there was no way to pretend that I hadn't been staring.

"Uh... Morning," I stammered. Then I fled.

I went right back out the way I had come and hid in my room for nearly an hour, mortified. When I finally dared to venture back into the bathroom, I was immensely relieved to see that it was empty now. I showered quickly, resisting the urge to jerk off over the memory of Jim standing naked in the same stall I was in. I did not want to chance him coming back in and finding me – I'd already had enough awkwardness for the day, and it was only just starting. When I was clean I changed into something comfortable and only then did I realize that I was starving.

I had no idea where Jim was, but thankfully he wasn't in the kitchen. I sat down and made myself some more bland oatmeal with milk. The kitchen had a single narrow window set high up, heavily reinforced from the looks of it. I had a moment of unreality as I contemplated the view: the planet Argos was clearly visible even in the noonday sky, and the color of the clouds seemed slightly wrong because of its orange reflected light.

I was on another planet. I was living the dream.

It only made it all the more bitter to know that very soon I would be shipped off because of my stupid mistake the day before. Back in Cora, the vast majority of people never even got to see alien planets firsthand. It was insanely expensive to travel, and the closest major worlds were so far apart that even with cryo it was a huge undertaking for anyone to visit them for something as frivolous as tourism. Sure, you wouldn't age frozen up aboard the transport ship, but those you left behind did, and when you came back everyone would be a couple of years older than you. Your entire world would have moved on without you, and I had seen enough TV dramas and movies to know that the shock of reintegrating your old life was sometimes too much to take.

Tantalus wasn't anywhere near as far away from Cora as other populated worlds, of course, but it amounted to the same thing: I was somewhere else. If I'd still had any friends left before coming here, they would all have been jealous of me. Even that backstabbing, lying sonofabitch Norbert would have squirmed with envy at the opportunity I'd gotten, which none of them would ever see.

And now this.

It wasn't fair. I hadn't wanted to come in the first place; I wasn't prepared for the rigid military discipline that Jim obviously wanted. Besides, it had only been one mistake. One. Nobody was perfect. Jim had to give me a second chance to stay here, to show him what I could do. He had said it himself: I was smart enough for the job if I only applied myself.

Yeah. I would go talk to him.

I left my half-finished breakfast on the table and resolutely headed in the direction of Jim's main laboratory on the upper level. I threaded my way through the slightly claustrophobic corridors with their chrome-and-glass interiors until I came to one of the ladders that led upwards. I climbed that and headed left, retracing my steps from yesterday. My footsteps echoed on the metal floor.

I came to the laboratory door and it was locked. Since it was a huge metal hatch similar to the one leading outside, there was no point even in knocking. I tried the buzzer on the outside but got no response. I kept trying for a while, but either Jim wasn't hearing me or he had decided to ignore me. It was probably the latter. Feeling slightly angry, I trudged back to the lower level and looked around for something to occupy myself for the rest of the day.

I found a gym and an entertainment room, both of them unlocked. Everything else was shut down tight and obviously meant to keep me away from all the nonessential areas in the compound. My anger at the situation increased.

I spent a very boring day working out and watching nature documentaries, which were the only videos Jim had on file which weren't password-protected. Around late afternoon Tantalus time, lunchtime according to my body, I heard Jim moving around in the kitchen but I refused to go see him. If he wanted to ignore me, then so would I. It was probably better that way. He had already decided to send me off to be a glorified slave and I doubted that he had anything more to say to me.

Hours passed. I grew steadily more bored and I was starting to feel as if I were in a prison already. I fixed myself some dinner as the light outside started to wane with impending night, but it didn't keep me occupied for long. I took another shower even though I didn't need one. Finally, just to keep from going insane, I climbed back up to the laboratory level. That door and all others on the level were still closed, but when I got to the ladder leading up to the observation deck I was thrilled to discover that the access was still open to me.

I climbed and stepped onto the deck, which I had only briefly visited yesterday. As before, the huge transparent dome overhead made me feel as if I had actually stepped out onto the surface of the planet from the spectacular view that it offered. The boredom disappeared and for a while I simply stared.

Nightfall on Tantalus was unbelievable. I had arrived right as the sun began to disappear over the horizon, a few rolling clouds obscuring its last crimson rays every now and then. The sky itself was a melange of reds, oranges and indigo shadows that swirled about along with a few wispy tendrils of clouds overhead and the ever-present fog carpeting the ground. As the shadows deepened, I realized I could no longer see anything on the surface except that the darkening fog, and it felt as if I were suspended afloat on an island of darkness, surrounded by the shifting light of sunset that was over much too soon.

Twilight was nonexistent. One instant the sun was there, the next it wasn't. Night fell… But there was still light.

As if somebody had lit a giant candle in the heavens, a soft orange glow began to make itself apparent the instant the sun disappeared. It was coming from Argos, of course, now looming so large that nearly the entire sky was covered by its bulk. Without sunlight in the way, the impossibly intricate details of Argos's ever-raging storms were clearly visible even to the naked eye. I saw vortices of swirling gases flowing like ink over milk, and huge bands of striated lines ringing the planet that hinted at unspeakably ferocious wind patterns that would tear solid rock apart as if it were tissue paper. There were areas of unstable storm regions like small circles on the giant canvas of Argos's atmosphere. The smallest of those was probably larger than my entire home planet.

And the rings. Argos had three coplanar rings around it, so slim and fine that it was not possible to see them with sunlight in the way. Now that night had fallen, though, I could see them clearly on the portion of the planet that covered the night sky. They were almost white, the stellar debris in them appearing almost translucent in the light of the far-off sun. Beyond them, in the sliver of space that could be seen beyond Argos, a great number of stars twinkled in the blackest backdrop I had ever seen.

By the time I looked away my neck hurt and my mouth felt a bit dry from holding it open for so long. Not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that nightfall on an alien planet could be so beautiful. I felt something then, something I hadn't felt in a very long time. Not since my father had died.

I felt happy.

I lay down right there on the floor so I would be looking straight up at the gas giant that was visible beyond the clouds of Tantalus. I knew I would be leaving this place soon, and maybe because of that I felt the sudden urge to stay. I wanted to stay. There was so much I could learn here, an entire career to be made simply by exploring and discovering things nobody had ever seen before. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and for the first time I actually understood why my mother had made it seem like such a big deal to send me here. Why Jim was so strict, all alone in here, and yet appeared so dedicated his work.

Clouds drifted and moved, both over this planet and the other one. The warm orange glow of Argos bathed everything in sight.

I slept.

I woke up suddenly, startled awake as if somebody had hit me. For an instant I was completely confused, unable to understand where I was or why I was so cold and sore.

It was dark. As I stood up slowly, looking around, I realized I had fallen asleep on the observation deck. I looked up at the sky but I was greeted only by murky dimness; no stars were visible anymore, and dark clouds covered everything. For the first time since I had come here it felt like true night.

A quick look at my watch told me that I had been out for about six hours – I was slightly shocked at the length of my nap, but it might have simply been delayed exhaustion from the trip. As before, I was alone, no sign of Jim anywhere. The deck was a maze of dark shapes and even darker shadows I couldn't quite make out. Everything was quiet and peaceful.

Yet somehow, I knew I wasn't alone.

On my feet now, my eyes darted every which way, seeking. I felt something, like the fixed stare of a pair of eyes on the back of my head, but no matter where I looked I could see nothing. I forced myself to overcome the irrational resistance to making any noise and started walking around the deck, searching for the source of the nagging sensation. There weren't many places to hide and I checked them all finding nothing. And yet…

The hint of a suggestion. I should probably head downstairs.

The laboratory level was even darker, the only lights intermittent emergency LED's lining the way to the nearest exit, set along the floor. Their green glow wasn't bright enough to see anything, only the outline of the corridor. For whatever reason, the motion sensors didn't turn on the main lights when I started walking along the narrow path. It was slightly eerie, actually. I had the distinct impression that this compound had originally been built for ten people or more, but now only Jim lived here. The result was that the spaces were oppressive and yet too empty; the additional bunk rooms, offices and even showers a constant reminder of how alone we were. This corridor I was traversing should have been alive with the sound of scientists at their posts, even behind the secure laboratory doors. Instead there was nothing.

Jim had never said whether he had always been alone in here or whether something else had happened. I wondered, as I walked way more quietly than was strictly necessary, just how he managed to stay sane. This place was extremely isolated despite the fact that there was Net access. Tantalus was big, and the nearest inhabited outpost was almost three thousand kilometers away. The one regular transport service that visited was the plane I myself had taken, but it ran once a day and only when there were actual passengers needing to come here, which I would guess was almost never.

Jim was alone in here, all the time, working. With the aliens.

I was walking past the sealed main laboratory door right then, moving cautiously, invisible in the gloom. Something told me that I didn't want to make any noise which would call attention to myself, and I felt a strange and foreign shadow of fear that spiked into momentary panic when one of my footsteps landed a bit more forcefully than I had intended.

Pat.

I winced, freezing in midstride, the faint echo of my step fading away already.

Too late. Something inside the laboratory had heard me.

Maybe I should check it out inside. Just to make sure I hadn't disturbed the alien in the tank. Jim would probably be really angry at me if I had… My hand was already moving, fumbling with the access panel. I tried the fingerprint scan but of course that failed. Then I tried a manual opening and, surprisingly, the door clicked open. I looked both ways before entering the lab but nothing was moving among the deep shadows tinged with the faint green of the emergency lighting. Quietly, I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

The laboratory was bigger than I remembered, a cavernous space filled with machines and cables dangling from the ceiling. Only a couple of maintenance lights were on, set on the wall to either side of me. They weren't very bright and they threw strange shadows everywhere as I walked closer to the center of the space. A few of the computers were still on, a fact I scarcely paid attention to at first. I was distracted looking at the alien.

It was there, motionless in its tank, alert. It was watching me, I could feel it, even though I could not make out much of its body in the shadows of the lab. I wanted to get closer and have a good look at it. Something about…

The computers were still on. I should go check them out. See if there's anything useful in there.

I turned aside from the alien even though I could still feel its eyes upon me, and headed for the nearest workstation. Incredibly, it was unlocked. Maybe Jim had no use for passwords since he worked here all alone. Although that didn't explain why he'd left the lab unlocked when he knew I was here.

As soon as I accessed the main drive I ran into a warning from Planetary Government stating that the information I was about to read was classified. It did not ask for authentication of any kind, though. Strange. I ignored the warning and I quickly found a relevant directory under the research folder. I started skimming through the files, looking for information on the aliens. What did we know about them?

How can I free the one in the tank?

How can I…? But right then I found something. A journal directory, which I quickly opened. I tapped the appropriate commands to begin a weighted counter-chronological search of information regarding the aliens according to relevance. Several monitors around me sprang to life and my eyes skimmed the steady stream of search term matches until something caught my attention. It was a fragment of a file, with text that immediately jumped out at me.

Journal.entry – 07.34.'75

BRIEF SUMMARY OF RECENT FINDINGS

USER: Dr. James O'Brien

'After extensive study, it is my clear conclusion that Vannadiis lyraxis tantalosi is the first alien life form we have encountered that exhibits indisputable indicators of psionic capabilities in an operant state. When I was first assigned to this project, my work was mostly to classify the aliens, learning about their lifecycle and their place in the planetary ecology. I still do those things, obviously, but as of last month my first priority is to discover how to communicate with them. All my colleagues have received similar orders. It is imperative that we learn how to do this as soon as possible, although no definite reason has been given for this.

'The aliens are social animals, living in communities of ten to fifty individual members. They give birth to live young and their bodies are covered with something resembling fur, so for all intents and purposes they are mammalian analogues on this planet. They nurture their young until they are able to fend for themselves, at which point they are banished from the family group and encouraged to join another one. Radio tracking has recorded them traveling vast distances over the planet surface doing this.

'They appear to be sentient, but at a very rudimentary level. They are exceedingly resourceful when moving in packs, but every time we have isolated one specimen for study it has immediately reverted to a much more primitive behavioral paradigm. Some speculate that this may be due to some kind of a hive mentality, but we have no evidence for this. They feed almost exclusively on the moss that covers much of the surface of the valleys that ring the planetary equator. They are not hostile, and the claws that ring the underside of their bodies are used only to grind moss into a fine paste which they then ingest.

'They exhibit radial symmetry and a distributed nervous system, unlike us. Their neural ganglia are very well developed and specialized for each part of the body. The dissections we have carried out have revealed that they possess the potential for mild regeneration given the distribution and redundancy of their most important organs. They are the most developed life form on Tantalus, and given enough time they are sure to evolve into full sentiency.'

There was a link on the file at that point, which I tapped immediately. It opened a very high-resolution image that I could not make sense of at first. I had to distribute it throughout all the monitors and take a couple of steps back from the workstation in order to see what it really was.

The image was fractured, made up of thousands of smaller little squares. It looked like one of those photo collages that are created by putting together lots of smaller photographs, but when seen from afar they make the face of a person or something like that. In this case, however, the larger image showed me a structure.

It looked like a temple. It was vaguely pyramidal in shape, although something about the perspective in the image made it look twisted in on itself, like an M.C. Escher drawing. Its walls were completely covered in moss and they looked ancient, crumbling. The structure itself looked as if it had caved in, but at the very center of it there was a triangular depression in the ground from which a bright tetrahedron beckoned. It was blue and appeared to be made of pure light.

The holographic display was very bright in the dimness of the laboratory, and as soon as the image was displayed the alien became agitated its tank. I looked over and saw it pressing its body right up against the glass as if it were trying to escape in order to get at the image. Looking away from it, I spent several minutes analyzing the structure but there was no additional information on the file. I finally closed it and went back to the journal entry.

'This image is the only instance of communication with the aliens we have ever gotten. It happened by accident: an automated terraformer was deployed on one of the poles of the planet for surveying and evaluation purposes. However, based on its logs, it appears to have landed right in the middle of a very large gathering of Vannadiis lyraxis tantalosi. Forensic evidence has confirmed this. Unfortunately for the aliens, the terraformer is a very large, unwieldy machine. It cannot alter its course easily, and it ended up crushing nearly a hundred aliens beneath it. Something must have happened then, because this image you see here was imprinted onto the Central Processing Crystal (CPC) at the heart of the machine's computer. Dozens of individual psionic bursts were responsible for the fragmentation you see, but the amalgamation and permanence of the imprint can only be attributed to a much larger and powerful energy beam.

'After this incident, which was at first hidden from the scientific community, Planetary Government quickly reclassified the work we do here on Tantalus. No explanation was given, but there is a clear consensus among my peers working in the other research stations on the surface that the reason for the sudden secrecy is this image. At first it made no sense to us – yes, the discovery of an ancient structure such as the one that was found is an incredible and unexpected breakthrough, but it hardly merits what amounts now to a military takeover of the research on the entire planet. However, a few days ago we were given the complete log captured by the CPC inside the terraformer and now we realize why the government is so anxious regarding this entire situation.

'The information inside the CPC leaves no doubt. Immediately after the terraformer crushed the aliens, there was a sudden energy spike centered at the heart of the temple-like structure. The CPC registers an increase in environmental temperature of several hundred degrees in an interval of 2.6 seconds. Moments later, the entire terraformer exploded as its fuel reserves ignited and their safety containment was breached.

'Planetary Government is suddenly giving top priority to this because we have discovered that the aliens have a weapon. If it was capable of destroying a heavily-armored terraformer in just a few seconds, then that energy spike is also capable of blasting orbital stations in space. The full capabilities of the weapon are unknown, but supposing it can move and shift targets, or if there is more than one –

I heard something. Not coming from the tank, but from the door. I quickly closed all the open windows and was just getting up from my seat when the door to the lab swung open. I felt a sudden, piercing stab of terror that I was certain was not my own, but I used it to fuel my desperate dash behind the nearest server cabinet.

Jim came in right as I hit the floor. I held my breath and prayed that he would not find me.

I heard his heavy footsteps getting closer and I froze, but the sound passed me by. I peeked around the corner carefully and saw that Jim had come to stand in front of the tank with the alien. He was looking down at it, motionless.

He stood like that for a long time. His broad back was illuminated by the light from a nearby console and his shadow fell on the tank, obscuring the alien from view.

From the alien itself I felt… disquiet. Fear. Threat.

I had no idea why or how I could receive those faint emotions in my mind, but by now it was obvious that they were coming from the creature. They had been the reason I had come to the lab in the first place; that slight urging that I come here and explore had not really been my own curiosity.

And my stupid sortie outside the compound yesterday. That hadn't been me either.

I felt a slight chill as I realized that I hadn't been in full control of my actions from the moment I had set foot inside this place. The subconscious suggestions had been impossible to ignore with only one of the aliens nearby. The file I had found suggested that their psionic capabilities increased the more aliens there were together in one place. And who knew how many of the things were outside even now? Why had they made me go out? Why had they almost killed me?

The alien moved slightly in its tank. I could sense, even though I could not really see it, that some of its eyes were now focused on me. He knew that I was watching it, and as I stared in the direction I heard it make that sound again, the haunting mixture of keen and whine. It sent a shiver down my spine.

Jim stirred at the sound. He did not look in my direction as I was afraid he would do, but instead simply shook his head silently and turned around. I hid, but I heard his footsteps receding as he walked back to the lab door. I heard it open and then slam closed. After that there was only silence.

Jim must have pressed something on the outside, because a few seconds later every single console in the lab turned off. I was plunged into sudden darkness, with not even the faint emergency lighting to guide me out. I stood up carefully, hands reaching blindly until I felt the edge of the server shelf I had hidden behind. I stepped around it, one arm stretched out to avoid crashing into something, and tried to remember which way the door was.

It was strange. I knew the way Jim had left, but in the total darkness I became completely disoriented. I took a step and banged my knee against the edge of something. I grunted in pain, but quietly, in case Jim was still within earshot.

He obviously didn't hear anything, but the thing in the tank did.

I heard faint rustling coming from behind me. I knew the alien was confined, but I was seized by the sudden notion that it was out, loose, following me. I took a hesitant step in the dark and there was a thunk in the tank. A new sound accompanied it, like ragged breathing I could barely hear.

I realized I was locked in this lab with the alien, in the total dark, and it was about to get out –

I stumbled forward, picking a direction at random. I ran face-first into something hard and cried out in surprise and pain. I forced myself to stay still and think. The strange noises were coming from the left, where the tank was. Therefore, the exit door would be to my right almost in a straight line. I turned and headed that way.

Get out. Get out.

I needed to get out. I wanted to get out. Please, we need to be outside in the fog, with the rocks and the others and –

I banged my hand against the heavy latch of the door. Escape. Insanely grateful for something so small, I yanked it open and found to my immense relief that it turned easily. I pulled the door wide enough to allow me to get out. As I was stepping through the threshold, I felt something like a stab of pain in my mind that wasn't coming from me.

Betrayal. Longing.

I left that place. I didn't even care if Jim found me – I headed straight for my bunk as fast as my legs could carry me and slammed the door shut. Then I dragged the bed to wedge it against the door and the wall so nothing could get in without me knowing and finally, panting, I plopped down on the mattress.

It took me a long time to fall asleep since I wasn't really tired. When I finally did doze off my dreams were strange. I was looking at something from too many places at once, moving low to the ground, hiding from gigantic shadows.