An explorer makes the discovery of his lifetime…an alien ship. The explorer saves the ship, and the ship saves the explorer. As it should be.
The tiny moon was just a dark dot at the edge of the rings of a gas giant orbiting a star so remote, it had no name. Being a freelance scavenger was a losing proposition, but with this find, Karl felt his bad luck might finally be changing. Excitement coursed through him like sweet electricity and he allowed himself a dollop of hope. Moons had minerals and sometimes precious metals. Karl commanded his ship to match orbits.
Up close, it looked like an elongated jelly bean about twelve hundred meters long and half again as wide. It didn’t like radar, and it emitted nothing on the electromagnetic spectrum. Virtually undetectable. Intuition told him to scan it with the low frequency spectrometer. Inside it, there was heat where there should be none.
A jagged gash scarred the side of the moon. Karl had trained as a medic and spent many years on the battlefield before buying this little scavenger ship, and what he saw looked like a wound. The hair on the back of his neck rose. As his ship moved closer, he noted that the area around the gash was puckered and of a darker color. Then he saw the faint rectangular outline of what appeared to be a small door.
This was no moon. It had all the earmarks of an alien spaceship.
He suited up and went out to take a closer look. As he approached the surface, he switched on his boot magnets, but when he touched down, they did not stick. Karl was prepared for non-magnetic metal and shot boring pins at the surface. When they bounced off, he used his maneuvering jets to push himself down onto the object. He shut off the jets and stood still for several seconds, knowing that the tiniest movement could nudge him away. He cautiously lifted a foot and felt a slight resistance. His gravitometer, which had previously read zero, now registered ten percent standard gee. He headed toward the probable door. It was a two-meter by two-meter square with rounded corners. He tapped it with his hammer. Nothing. Holstering the hammer, he leaned down and put his gloved hand on the door.
It slid open. Darkness beckoned.
Karl took a deep breath, brushing away cobwebs of caution, and lowered himself in. As he cleared the edge, the door behind him slid shut. There was a crazy twist and he was standing on a smooth, grey floor in a small chamber. A cool blueish light came on. The gravitometer showed one half gee. He fought off rising panic.
Remain calm, the thought came. But the voice in his head was not his.
“Who’s there?” he said aloud, his voice flat in his helmet. “Show yourself.”
You are here. With me. The voice in his head was calm.
Karl put his hand on the wall to steady himself. The surface gave slightly to the small pressure. He felt a chill run up his spine and gather at his shoulders. Premonition nibbled at the back of his brain. “Show yourself,” he said again, softer this time.
A door dilated open and soft warm light flickered on, revealing a hallway. Several meters ahead, it curved away to the right. The walls and floor were the same grey as the airlock.
Come in, the voice in his head said.
Karl stepped into the hallway and the door shut behind him. “Where are you?” he asked, although he suspected that he already knew the answer.
I am here.
A tingling tide crept through Karl. “You’re the ship, aren’t you.”
Yes.
“How do you speak to me? Can you read my mind?”
Thought is electricity. I think to you and your brain translates. I cannot read your mind unless you bring it to me.
“I want to go back to my ship.”
You are here with me.
Karl scowled. “I need to be on my ship.”
Your ship is your home. A statement not a question.
“Yes, it’s my home.”
The voice in his head was stern. Touch me. Are you the enemy?
Karl was on high alert. “I am touching you. And I’m not your enemy.”
Touch me with your flesh. He heard the hiss of air spilling into vacuum. I read your ship and know what you breathe.
Karl’s readouts showed standard atmosphere and pressure. He removed his helmet, undid his left glove, and put his hand on the wall. It was warm and his hand tingled. His mind melted, and he was a warship hurtling through space, proud in the heat of battle, his death rays crushing enemy ships. He was effervescently alive, the other living ships of his brood group with him, his crew safely inside him, guiding the fight. The battle became even more intense, and he hid his beloved crew on a habitable planet, then went off to fight the enemy. The enemy and his brood-mates died in hails of immense energy. Many burned as they fell into stars. He felt himself pierced by the enemy’s weapon and sent spinning off into space, his drive inoperable. Time passed – unknown ages – and he fell into orbit around a lonely gas giant at the rim of the galaxy. More time passed, more millennia. A small metal vessel approached and a figure landed on his skin. He let him in.
And he was back in the corridor, his naked hand against a warm wall. Karl pulled his hand away and took a deep breath. The air was a little humid and smelled ever so slightly of freshly baked bread. “Is it just you out here?”
My brood mates are gone. I am alone.
“I know how you feel,” Karl muttered. Then louder, “How long has it been?”
I cannot say the time.
A silence fell upon them and Karl felt the alien ship’s mind nestled with his, like a cat curled into his lap or a comforting hand on his arm. He did his best to ignore the connection, wary of the alien. “What are you going to do with me?”
I have seen your mind as you have seen mine. You are a healer. I need to be healed.
But I’m just a medic, he thought. There was no reply inside his head. So this thing actually cannot read my mind unless I touch it, he said to himself. Aloud, he said, “I’m just a medic. I used to tend to the wounded, but that was a long time ago. I only know how to work on living things, not ships.”
I am a living thing. I need to be healed.
“And you won’t let me go until I do it, right?”
I do not make threats. My drive is damaged. I cannot move.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
As I trust you, so must you trust me.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. And after I fix you, assuming I can, what then?”
Then I will go.
“Go where?”
Everywhere.
Karl thought about how trapped he was in this unfriendly star system, low on fuel and food and out on the edge of nowhere. “If I heal you, can I catch a ride to the next star system?”
The ship’s thoughts were like a warm spring breeze. You are my healer. I will enjoy your company.
“OK then, I’ll see what I can do.” Karl put his left glove on and snapped his helmet into place. “I’ll need gravity on your surface.”
Of course.
“What should I call you?”
Call me whatever you wish.
Karl’s mouth lifted into a slight smile. “I hereby dub thee ‘Moon’.”
#
Karl went to his ship and brought it down to Moon’s surface, landing next to the gash. Resting on its thin legs, his one-man ship looked like an insect, its flat glass eyes reflecting the stars. The massive gas giant filled the sky above. He walked the length of the gaping wound, inspecting it with a medic’s eye. The cut showed withering and discoloration along the edges, but no obvious signs of infection. It measured one hundred forty-three meters long by just under two meters wide by about fifteen meters deep. Down in the gash, a long, lance-like object, an ominous splinter black as interstellar space, was embedded at steep angle deep into Moon’s flesh. Karl remotely walked the ship on its insectile legs over to the edge of the wound, and used the crane to lower himself onto the end of the alien object.
As he touched down, he could feel it pulse in response. Cold crept up through his boots and his feet began to numb. A deep sense of foreboding tugged at his mind. Karl had the crane pull him up at double speed, his boots feeling like they were stuck in thick mud as they came loose. He half-expected the thing to leap up and grab him. Once out, he unspooled some cable from the crane and tied it into a noose. He looped the noose around the end of the weapon, then engaged the crane. As the cable grew taut, it began to dissolve into the pitch black surface. Karl scrambled to release the line from its spindle and watched the thick strand of metal get pulled from the crane and into the object’s stygian surface.
So much for plan A.
He let himself through the airlock and into Moon’s interior, angrily removing his helmet. “That thing ate my ten-point hardened steel cable. What the hell is it? How can I pull it out if it dissolves my cable?”
I will make you a cable it cannot destroy.
“You get me a decent cable, and I’ll pull that thing like a rotten tooth.”
The weapon is not a tooth.
“It’s a metaphor. Just to be sure, once I get this thing out, you’ll give me a ride to another star system, right?”
When I am healed, we will travel.
#
Karl mounted the cable Moon had made onto the crane and tied the end into a loop. He climbed into the cramped control room of his ship, guiding its legs to straddle the cut and positioning the crane over the splinter weapon. He carefully maneuvered the loop onto the end of the black splinter. Pulling it tight, he watched through the crane’s camera to see what would happen. The black surface rippled up against the cable, but the cable produced a dull shimmer and the ripples subsided to angry vibrations.
He gradually increased the pull of crane until it was at maximum. The embedded weapon did not budge. He gave it a tug, pushing the crane up to the edge of its limits. The weapon still would not move. Hoping to fatigue the splinter’s hold, he relaxed the cable, then pulled it taut again and again. After many tries and still no hint of release, Karl brought the cable tension up to maximum again and gave it an extra jolt. Nothing. He clenched his teeth and did it again and was rewarded with a crack and a short screech from amidship. The crane.
Cursing himself for his recklessness, he went outside and carefully crawled across the top of his ship to the crane. The base plate was coming away from the ship’s hull and the arm of the crane was warped. This was beyond repair; the crane would have to be replaced. He moved the ship away from the wound, unspooling the cable as he went, then trudged to the airlock.
#
Karl removed his helmet and gloves and squatted uncomfortably in his spacesuit until Moon extruded a seat from the wall. He sat on the offered chair and leaned back against the wall. “The damn thing wouldn’t move a centimeter. It’s like it has a mind of its own.”
It does. The weapon is alive, but is not sentient.
Karl sighed, looking down at the floor. “I broke the crane on my ship.”
You can stay as long as you need to fix your ship. I will make accommodations.
“The crane’s too big a job. I’ll have to find a professional shipyard.”
We can travel only when I am healed.
Karl gave a rueful little laugh. “That thing doesn’t want to be pulled out, my crane’s busted, and you can’t move. Looks like we’ve hit a dead end.”
Moon said nothing.
Karl got a faraway look in his eyes. “But… I could tie the cable directly to the ship and use it to pull that thing out. Like pulling a splinter.”
The increased force and variable angle of attack would be advantageous.
Karl stood, invigorated by hope. “Then I can slingshot it into the planet’s gravity well and it’ll burn up in the atmosphere.”
No.
“No?”
The weapon is still alive. It will escape the pull of the planet below and return to attack again.
The medic turned scavenger stood still for a long minute. A thought rose out of the back of his head; an uncomfortable thought, a brave thought. “I think I have a solution, Moon,” he said. “But I’m not sure I like it.”
Touch me and we will work together.
He put both hands on the warm and yielding wall.
#
Karl moved everything out of the little ship and into a room Moon had created in itself. Afterwards, he stood in his ship’s empty cabin, calculating how much more thrust there would be due to the mass he had removed. This ship had been his home for years, but now, it was empty and cold, everything gone except the cramped little galley and the narrow bed. Outside, he unspooled Moon’s cable from the crane and wrapped it around his ship, then laboriously welded it to the ship’s hull in several places.
He stood back and surveyed his work. It would hold. Karl put a gloved hand on the pitted metal of his little spaceship and looked up at the blank windows. “Thank you,” he whispered in his helmet.
He went to the footholds the living ship had made and slipped his boots into place. “Now, Moon,” he radioed. To make sure the message got through, he pounded three times on the pebbled surface. The gravity went to zero. The scavenger ship floated free, the bulky cable undulating like a massive snake. Using the remote, he fired his ship’s maneuvering thrusters and the cable pulled taut against the embedded weapon. He gradually increased the thrust and kept it at half-power until he saw the cable quiver, then slowly increased the power to full. The pitch black shaft reluctantly emerged from the cut, squirming like a worm on a hook, gobbets of Moon’s flesh clinging to barbs that ran the length of the its underside.
Karl fired the main engines. The ship shuddered with sudden energy and leaped forward, the captive weapon writhing at the end of the cable. He aimed it toward the gravity well of the massive gas planet and turned the engines to maximum. The rapidly receding ship and its captive alien splinter stood out against the dim glow of the gas planet. He watched them grow smaller and smaller, until they became a tiny bright flare in the planet’s upper atmosphere. His ship, his home for so many years of wandering, was gone.
Karl stood silently for a long time, looking at the spot where all his yesterdays had vanished in a flash of light. Then he walked to the airlock.
He had a new home now, and a new friend.
END
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