Earthfall - (A Short Sci-fi Story)

[BenJohnson]

Knowing that he was going to die suddenly put everything into perspective Lieutenant Hollister suddenly felt like his thoughts had achieved a clarity that he had never thought possible. He looked down at the bank of instruments before him then up to the Earth now filling the whole screen and realised he had made one last error in a series of terrible errors.

The first error had taken place three days before Earthfall when Doctor Adrian Langley entered his small laboratory. Various events during the trip had prevented him from examining the specimen he had collected during the a brief stop off on dwarf planet Pluto IV named after the planet in our own solar system. One of several bodies that had been discovered to contain life this was one that had fascinated Langley since he had read an article about during his college days. As life bearing planets went this one had little to put it on the map a small number of bacteria, lichens, primitive insects and one very unusual organism. It was this last that caught Langley’s imagination. Discovered during the second and last exploratory mission to Pluto IV this single celled organism was first spotted by a cluster of insects that appeared to be hovering in mid air totally frozen several of them in states of decay. Under normal light conditions the cause was totally invisible, however under ultra violet light a gelatinous shimmering outline was revealed. No specimens were returned to Earth and very little else was recorded about this organism. Langley had managed to persuade the captain to put in a brief stop to Pluto IV during the return from their mission to resupply the Gateway 7 research station in low orbit around Calypso VI. Langley turned down the laboratory lighting and switched on the ultraviolet light before opening the sealed glass jar. He tilted the jar over his worktable and watched as the purple shimmering mass slide out onto the stainless steel surface.

He remembered the difficulties of locating this specimen, the captain had allowed him two hours stop off time. Hampered by wearing a full spacesuit it took him 30 minutes to travel each way from the site identified by the earlier research trip. Once there he had the difficult task of searching for an invisible creature, with five minutes to spare he noticed a group of insects about 10mm long feeding on a patch of grey lichen. In his frustration he almost missed the scattering of the same insects that appeared to be floating a few millimetres in the air. Doing a double take he realised that none were moving and that several seemed severally decomposed. Lighting the area with his ultraviolet wand revealed a shimmering mass about the size of a large orange connecting the insects. He noticed that almost all of the insects had been digested now, their translucent carapaces being all that was left. Langley reached out his latex gloved hand and touched the organism with the tips of his fingers. Expecting to sink into a jelly he was surprised by the firmness that resisted his touch, he was equally surprised when he withdrew his touch, his gloves appeared welded to the surface of the creature. He watched how the whole mass lifted still attached to his gloves and stopped to consider the best way to disentangle his specimen without damaging it. After a few seconds of thought he felt a tingling on the tips of his fingers, abandoning his current line of thinking he stripped off his glove to examine the cause. On each tip was a small red circle which looked like tiny burns. Cursing his stupidity Langley ran his hands under water, then putting on a fresh glove he pulled a litmus strip out of one of his cabinets. Touching it to the mass he watched the blue strip turning red in the presence of acid. Not strong enough to cause any damage to his desk or the glass jar it was strong enough to dissolve the latex of his gloves and over time the insects this creature lived on. Langley noted that the glove he had been puzzling over freeing was already half dissolved, hoping it wouldn’t kill his specimen he maneuvered it back into the glass jar. He considered replacing the lid but as the creature seemed to lack any method of locomotion he left it open. This proved to be the second in the long chain of mistakes.

Langley made a few notes about his findings on his tablet before switching off the UV lighting and leaving the lab. He contemplated heading to the mess for a chess game with Chief Engineer Willis but then dismissed idea in favour of heading to his bunk and continuing reading ‘The Last Dreamchaser’ the third book in the fantasy series his son had gotten him into reading. He smiled to remember how he had made disparaging comments about his son’s choice of reading matter only to have to admit that he didn’t actually know what they were about. He had accepted his son’s challenge for him to read the first book in the series and then criticise with fuller knowledge. He didn’t criticise again but intend became hooked on the series.

Langley read until he found himself struggling to keep awake then reluctantly set a bookmark and powered down the book. His dreams, when they arrived, were full of caverns and monsters.

-

Langley reached into the chest and ran his fingers through the gold coins and gleaming jewels. He was just turning to his wife to explain how this would solve all the issues of university fees when the two tone buzz of the alarm woke him. He had set it thirty minutes early so he could check on his specimen before heading for breakfast.

As soon as Langley opened the door to his lab he could tell something was wrong, the glass jar had moved from where he had left it on the desk and hung suspended between desk and floor. His brain was beginning to piece the mystery together and a message was forming between synapses to tell him to stop, however before the message completed instinct caused him to rush forward. As he collided face first with a resistance the message completed. Langley felt the skin on his face begin to prickle and tried to draw back but it was no use he was stuck. His first thoughts where how much damage the acid would do to his face, this was pushed aside by the fact he couldn’t breath. It felt like he had a plastic bag stretched over his mouth and nose. As the pain grew in his convulsing lungs Langley felt consciousness slipping away, his last thought being to wonder how on earth this thing had gotten so big over night.

-

Chief Engineer Willis was the first to discover the body, missing Langley at breakfast he had headed to the lab to berate his friend over missing out on a game of chess. The lab door was open when he got there. To his surprise he saw Langley stood in the middle of the room motionless his hands either side of his head. Willis called out, hearing no responses he reached out towards his friend, puzzled his hands seemed to meet a forcefield before he could touch Langley. He was more puzzled when he tried to withdraw and found himself stuck. Slowly his skin started to prickle, the more he struggled the more firmly he seemed to get stuck, though what was holding him he couldn’t see. Willis began to shout for help.

First Mate John Parr was first to hear the shouting and came running, as he entered the lab Willis yelled at him not to come any closer. Parr stood trying to make sense of what he was seeing Dr Langley seemed to be hovering above the floor in a strange position and Willis also was standing awkwardly moving just his head. With teeth gritted as if he was in a great deal of pain the Chief Engineer explained how he had found Langley and and what had happened to him when he tried to reach him. Parr offered to try to tug him free and placing his hands around Willis’ shoulders began to pull. Willis cried out in agony and begged him to stop before he tore his flesh from his arms. Realising that he didn’t have an easy answer Parr activated the comms panel by the door and paged the Captain. At first he was greeted by laughter, then silence as the Captain realised this wasn’t a joke. Behind him Parr was aware that Willis’ breathing had become louder and more uneven. Even as he turned it suddenly stopped. Parr turned back to the comms panel ‘Captain’ he said ‘Willis has just stopped breathing’. A brief silence during which he could imagine the Captain running his hand through his hair as he did when trying to make a difficult decision, then the Captain’s voice returned, ‘John just leave the lab and locked the door behind you, We will work out what is best to do about whatever is in there and if we can’t then it can remain in there until we reach Earthfall’. Parr took a last look at Langley and Willis. Gently touching Willis’ back he muttered ‘Sorry’ before turning and leaving the room. Once out he entered the lock code into the keypad on the door and head off to meet with the Captain.

The meeting between the chief staff members got nowhere fast as Parr had little information to share beyond the little Willis had told him until Hollister recommend searching the staff server to see if Langley had anything stored on there that might explain what was going on. Opening the newest document on there instantly revealed some of the mysteries to them. Langley had recorded his interest in bringing back a specimen of an organism he had read about several years ago, a brief excerpt for the article followed. Langley had made some notes about Sundews and other carnivorous plants after the article. Then followed a log detailing his excursion on Pluto IV and his sub-consequent discoveries in the laboratory.

Parr cleared his throat ‘There is only one issue here, Langley describes the thing as being the size of an orange, the thing in the lab must be huge to kill two men and judging from their positions it virtually filled the whole lab’. A discussion broke out with various theories to explain the growth rate. The first was that having started devouring two men it had enough food to expand rapidly, although this seemed to have an element of truth Parr pointed out that it had to be big enough to kill Langley quickly and up to that point had eaten nothing but one latex glove. Gravity was considered, although the ship had an artificial gravity field it was nothing like as strong as that on a planet, even a dwarf one. Again this was dismissed since the organism had been on-board stored in the jar for sometime without growing until Langley had found the time to examine it. The theory that seemed to withstand being discounted was the change in atmosphere on-board. Hollister had been the first to note that the jar had remained sealed since Langley had brought it on-board and therefore had contained Pluto IV’s atmosphere, a mix of gases that contained far too little oxygen to support human life. Hollister put forward the idea that the vastly increased oxygen levels was force feeding the organism and causing it to expand at an unnatural rate, the lower gravity might also help explain it’s ability to expand. The discussion then moved on to discussing venting of oxygen to see if that would help, as part of the ships fire fighting equipment it was possible to pump the oxygen from the living quarters. The downside was that this was an all or nothing action which required the whole crew to don breathing equipment and oversight that had been a frequent complaint among space captains, the impracticalities of waiting for everyone to suit up before venting oxygen was a time constraint that seemed unnecessary in a life and death situation. Most captains knew that it they ever had to resort to this method they would in all likelihood condemn several crew members to death by asphyxiation. Requests for the ability to vent areas separately was always turned down on the grounds of cost, also it was pointed out that the need to vent oxygen had never arisen. The discussion ended with the Captain deciding against venting, in his words ‘the bastard thing is trapped inside the lab now and can remain there until we land’. As another error played it’s part in the whole disaster the meeting broke up with everyone returning to their normal daily duties.

The route to the sleeping quarters lay at the far end of the main corridor which required Parr passing its door on his way to turn it. He paused briefly outside and thought of the events of the morning and the two men trapped inside. A involuntary shiver ran down his back at the thought of the way they had died and what was surely happening to them now. He turned and headed off to his bunk where he lay awake far into the night his mind spinning with the impossibility of it all. As sleep finally overcame him the smaller night crew were busy with their watch duties, checking instruments and carrying out minor repairs that couldn’t be attempted during the day. Hollister had the short straw tonight and sat on the observation deck surrounded by screens feeding him with information about the void surrounding the outer skin of the ship and feedback from the system that ran the ship itself. In the early hours of the morning a yellow alert ran across the main screen a four digit code indicating the problem followed by another four digit code indicating the location. Hollister checked the first code which indicated an electrical fault, being a yellow alert he didn’t bother checking the location and merely moved the alert into the engineering log for the maintenance crew to check out in the morning. Thus another error passed by unnoticed.

-

Engineer Ian Rawlings picked up the alert at 6 a.m. checking the the location code he noticed that the alert was for the laboratory. Like most of the crew he had been told there had been an incident in the laboratory which had left two dead and that the area was remaining locked until Earthfall, details of the incident had not been revealed beyond the fact that a dangerous substance had been released in there. His first thought was to alert the Hollister as the head of night watch to check what action he should take. Then he checked the name attached to the log and seeing it was from Hollister concluded that he intended Rawlings to go ahead and sort the issue out. Presumably whatever had been released in the laboratory wasn’t a hazard anymore and the lab had just been locked to preserve the scene for inspection back home. That explanation fitted perfectly with why Rawlings was being asked to go an fix the electronic door lock which had shorted out during the night. Like most electronic door locks it was designed to fail safe and open the door in the event of fire or electrical faults. Rawlings gathered up his tool kit and set off towards the laborary. He would never reach the bundle of wires that had touched as their plastic coverings were stripped away by the acid that surrounded them behind the plastic access panel that had suffered the same fate.

-

Parr emerged from his sleeping quarters and headed along the corridor towards the mess hall, turning the corner he almost ran into the back of the Captain who was standing open mouthed staring at the vivid red face of Rawlings who stared back at him with lifeless eyes. ‘How the hell did that get out?’ asked Parr as if the Captain should know any more than him. The corridor was started to fill as the day crew emerged to start the day. As it dawned on the Captain that the only route to the bridge was blocked he turned and ordered the crew to return to quarters until they had figured out how to bypass the problem. He kept Parr with him as the corridor emptied.

It was Parr who first noticed that Rawlings appeared to be retreating from them at a slow but steady pace and made the connection that the invisible wall of death must be approaching them at half of that rate. The speed of growth was incredible and between them they estimated that they would be forced back into their cabins within another two hours. The way this thing had managed to defeat the lab’s door didn’t inspire them with confidence that they could lock themselves in there in safety. They both headed back to the nearest comms panel and contacted Hollister to alert him to the situation. Again the three of them found themselves discussing options to deal with containing the problem. Once again venting was considered but flatly turned down by the Captain, none of the crew members had access to oxygen supplies in their sleeping quarters and the Captain wasn’t going to be responsible for the deaths of them all. The bright side was that they would be approaching Earthfall in 12 hours time, the dark side was that if doors didn’t hold it at the current rate of growth this thing would have overcome them in considerably less time.

The conversation was cut short by the comms panel going dead up in the bridge Hollister received another yellow alert indicating a short in the communications circuitry. It was at this point that he realised the greater threat of losing control of the ship and logged into the automatic flight system. The automatic flight control computer was separated from living quarters and contained in a reinforced chamber to protect it from most disasters and allow the ship the best chance of returning no matter what had happened to the crew. Hollister double checked the flight details were correct before handing over control to the computer. He had just made the final and worst error of the trip.

Hollister then set off to visually check up on the Captain and Parr. The body of Rawlings was a lot closer than he expected, there was no sign of either of the others. Either they had been driven back around the bend in the corridor or returned to their cabins. Hollister next went to collect together the rest of the night crew who were accessible from this end of the ship and take them back to the bridge. The five of them spent the next few hours watching the ball of the Earth slowly filling the forward screen. At the same time a steady stream of yellow and increasingly red alerts were being logged on other screens.

Just the Earth totally filled the screen Hollister heard the click from the lock on the bridge door and watched it slide open. There was nothing to see in the doorway but every man in the room knew death had just entered. On the screens a final red alert appeared 9999 - 0001, 0001 was the bridge and before the screens faded Hollister knew that 9999 was the code to indicate that they had just lost complete control of the computer systems. It was at that moment that it dawned on Hollister that he had set up the system which would carry this threat back to Earth and not one of them would be alive to warn of its arrival.

[David]

Ooh. Sci-fi. So hard to resist.

put everything into perspective Lieutenant Hollister

Full stop?

Lieutenant Hollister suddenly felt like his thoughts had achieved

I'm sure "like" is probably regarded - rightly - as sloppy here.

He looked down at the bank of instruments before him then up to the Earth now filling the whole screen and realised he had made one last error in a series of terrible errors.

A little more punctuation?

I think the next two paragraphs are way too long.

There are a few commas missing at the end of clauses, e.g.

One of several bodies that had been discovered to contain life

and

As life bearing planets went

and

Discovered during the second and last exploratory mission to Pluto IV

and sometimes -

this one had little to put it on the map

you need a colon.

I'll stop all that tiresome punctuating now and concentrate on the story. It reminds me of The Andromeda Strain, with a few bits of classic Star Trek crew interaction, and unfolds entertainingly. There may be too many moments of prolepsis, e.g.

As another error played it’s part in the whole disaster

and

Thus another error passed by unnoticed.

This is stacking the odds against the reader too much. It is a very gloomy ending, though. They all didn't live happily ever after, then?

It's a while since I've read any sci-fi, and this seemed like classic old-fashioned sci-fi.

Cheers

David

[OwenEdwards]

I liked the story and theme - good hard sci-fi with an enjoyable, dark arc. However, the prose was a little laboured at times, and as David points out, punctuation is needed. A good first draft - I recommend going over it again carefully to make sure the prose scans. If you want any specific comments, do ask.

[JohnLott]

Hi BenJohnson

The downsides have been mentioned: The punctuation, missed opportunities for dramatic moments because of laboured sentences. Sometimes some punchier vocabulary would have been good.

The upsides have been mentioned: Good plot with the story moving along. Mystery unfolding. Definitely SciFi - some of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles chill.

My conclusion: I know the good guys don't always win but it's sad that you've made inevitability so inevitable. Can't you have just a little crack that could open into salvation? Then you could follow in the footsteps of Asimov and Herbert.

A revision is needed.



J.

[David]

I agree with Owen and John - hardly surprisingly, as they agree with me - but the one thing that struck me now, coming back to this again, is that the paragraphs are all very long. Very very long. I think you need to let more light in there.

[Macavity]

The narrative had me hooked. The inevitable outcome driven by the catalogue of errors didn't detract because I felt the story could/would enfold on earth. Really like the way the beastie trapped and absorbed the life from its victims.

cheers

mac