Chapter 10: My pet Alien loves big chests.

After the three of them made it back to the ship. Pip began jumping all over the place, obviously excited and curious about the ship, sniffing the seats and bumping into the computer screens. Both Noah and Gaia stood and watched before saying in unison, “Cute!” Gaia sent Noah a smirk and he looked away in embarrassment, checking his watch. After Gaia closed the hatch, Noah deactivated his shield, noting it had only deteriorated to 99%. Dwarf technology was serious stuff, being able to hold up against such extreme cold. They had spent a little over an hour outside exploring Pluto, so he still had plenty of oxygen left.

Noah walked over to the locker where they found the gadgets. He was about to put the plasma knife away before placing it back into his pocket, it was too cool to put away in Noah’s eyes. Taking the oxygen battery out of the watch, he put it back where Gaia had found it. A row of about 50 were sitting on a plate all connected to something via a small cable. After placing it down, a cable came out and connected to the battery, apparently re charging it with oxygen, however that worked.

After returning to the captain’s quarters, Noah took off his new jacket and boots, switching into some more comfortable, yet plain clothing from the cupboard. Gaia entered the room and said, “hey, I’m going to play with pip and then take us back up into orbit, so you should get some sleep.”

Noah nodded and replied, “yeah that was my plan, it’s been a very, very long day.” Gaia left with pip on her shoulder, the automatic door closing behind her. Noah flopped down on the double bed and flipped the light switch to the side. The room went dark, except for a thin red light moving along the floor, some sort of emergency navigation light in the case of a power failure. It actually made it more relaxing for Noah and he quickly fell asleep.

Six hours later, at a computer desk at NASA’s Johnson space centre in Houston Texas. A junior astrophysicist was analysing data from the Hubble space telescope which had just sent through some recent pictures of Pluto. The Hubble telescope took both normal pictures as well as infrared of the Dwarf planet. The physicist looked at the heat signatures and suddenly came across an odd temperature spike in the outer atmosphere. Something like this was extremely irregular and initially he only thought it was some sort of data anomaly. But doing his due diligence and investigating further, he switched over the optical data. To his surprise he saw something different. A small bright spec, too small and out of focus to see anything definitive without actively attempting to photograph the anomaly.

“Huh that’s weird, maybe it’s an error with the image processing? But that wouldn’t explain that heat signature. It could be a meteor, but if so, it’d have to be either massive or moving extremely fast to generate that heat signature in Pluto’s thin atmosphere… I’ll send this to the boss. Haha, maybe I should post it on 4chan and claim it’s an alien… or not, those sticks in HR would get up my ass again.” After sending an email about the strange finding, the man was oblivious he had made an extraordinary discovery in that moment, something that would later send shockwaves throughout the whole world.

Gaia sat on the lounge in the common area of the ship with pip on her lap. The little alien was laying down comfortably. With its eyes closed, she purred every time Gaia’s hand brushed over her fur, a quiet wheeze coming out of her mouth. Despite Pip having no identifiable sex, Gaia had already started referring to Pip as a girl. If someone asked why, she’d claim it’s for gender equality in the workplace, despite already being equal between Noah and her.

Looking down with a smile, Gaia momentarily stopped patting pip to wave her hand. The ship came to life and the engines fired up. A few seconds later, there was a brief jolt as the ship gently ascended through the atmosphere. She was tempted to blast off at full speed, inevitably sending Noah flying through the cabin where he would crash into the wall. It would be really funny, but Gaia gave him a break today knowing that he had been through a lot recently.

Noticing the ships movement, Pip woke up, its eyes opening and closing before it turned to the window, her home world getting smaller and smaller. Quickly jumping off Gaia’s lap, it pressed its face against the front window, peering out. Gaia sat up and floated over, the ship now having escaped Pluto’s gravitational pull.

“Oh, I guess we never asked whether you wanted to leave huh. I-I’m sorry.” Pip turned around; noticing Gaia’s sad expression she jumped over with an excited “Squee!” and nestled herself into Gaia’s bosom again, wiggling until she was comfortable, her eyes poking out. Gaia was momentarily stunned, before letting out a sigh of relief, followed by a chuckle as she grabbed the wiggling alien. “Hey! Quit it! That tickles! Hahaha! Naughty girl!”

“Squee!” The two continued to play with each other as the ship moved further and further away from the dwarf planet, before turning to face a small, yet bright white dot in the distance, the sun.

Gaia contemplated sending the ship towards Earth, as that was their goal, but stopped herself knowing Noah still wanted to travel the solar system a bit. This was supposed to be a holiday before they started trading after all. “Well Pip, there’s not much to do until Noah wakes up, so how about we get some rest too?” Taking that as a cue, Pip’s eyes closed, and soon she fell asleep directly in Gaia’s chest.

“Well… I didn’t mean there, but whatever.” Gaia said with a smile, walking into one of the spare rooms and lying down on her back. After closing her eyes for a few minutes, she suddenly realised. “Oh wait, I don’t even know how to sleep, I don’t even get tired...”

The next morning, according to Noah’s own body clock, arrived. Having rested well in a low stress zero G environment, he felt excellent. Though he did find himself upside down on the roof, floating naked. His loose sleepwear having floated off as he slept.

“note to self, use a sleeping bag when in zero G.” Noah said as he hastily put on his clothes in mid-air.

“Oh no, it was quite hilarious watching you bump into the walls asleep and naked through the night. Like cursed pong.” Gaia commented, her body resting against the door to the room.

Awkwardly turning around by flapping his arms Noah yelled, “what the fuck Gaia?! What’re you doing in my room?”

Gaia shrugged nonchalantly. “I found out I don’t need to sleep, so I decided to entertain myself by watching your stupid face bounce around in zero G. I even filmed it, something to show the kids aye?”

“What kids?! Also delete that!” Noah, eventually floating close enough to a wall, kicked off with his legs towards Gaia, only for Pip to squeeze out of her top, jumping towards Noah’s face, her fluffy body pressing against him as Gaia stepped aside, causing Noah and Pip to fly out the door.

As the two flew out into the main room of the ship, pip used Noahs face as a jumping board, cheerfully letting out a “squee!” flying effortlessly back into Gaia’s arms. Noah however, continued before smacking directly into the ship’s computer.

“Good one Pip, 10/10 for style!” Gaia said as she pet the small alien.

“Ouch.” Noah groaned as he got up. He had such a nice sleep only to wake up to this circus.

“Hey Gaia, any chance this ship has some sort of artificial gravity?” Gaia tilted her head, responding, “yeah of course it does, but that’s way less fun right? Also it uses more fuel, I’m trying to be environmentally friendly you know? Have to set a good example for Pip right?”

Noah slapped his head, before pinching his nose. After letting out a long an exhausted sigh, he instructed Gaia to activate it, at least when they were working. Waving her hand, a sound like a jet engine cooling down filled the room. Noah felt his body become heavier as he fell to the floor. The Gravity wasn’t strong, maybe half that of Earths, but it was more than enough for their purposes.

“Gaia, is there any instruction manual to learn how to pilot this thing, I also want to know how to fly it, I figured I’d put that brain capacity boost to work.” As he said that, a file appeared above the holographic display on the ship’s computer.

“Great, while I’m studying, set a course for… the International space station, I figure the best way to make peaceful contact is through the ISS, considering everyone aboard are scientists. But I want to give Earth some time to prepare, so let’s make sure to fly by each of the planets, maybe some satellites will see us.” Gaia and Pip nodded in unison, though Noah wasn’t sure Pip knew what she was doing, it was still cute nonetheless.

As Noah read through the ship’s information, the group began to fly through the vast expanses of space. At the maximum cruising speed of 20% the speed of light, it would take about 25 hours to get from Pluto to Earth in a direct line. Though, as they were planning on passing by all the planets in the solar system, according to the current planetary orbits, the trip will take another 2 days, for a total of just over three days.

…

A day has passed since they left Pluto, and they had already passed Neptune and Uranus. Gaia went out of her way to spend a good 20 minutes making butt jokes, so Noah was happy to move on. The boost Noah had purchased from the Void had come in handy, it took him less time to understand the ship’s information and he didn’t have to revise things too often, bar some more complex processes.

Despite the joking around, the two still marvelled at the beauty of the gas giant. Though when Noah said gas giant, Gaia couldn’t help but make her 600th fart joke for the day.

While they were in Uranus’s orbit, Noah had taken over the ships controls and practiced some basic movements, happy with his progress but nowhere near as smooth as Gaia. He stopped when he realised Pip was getting agitated and started bumping into him every time he attempted another practice manoeuvre. Gaia watched this with a thoughtful expression, before frowning.

After she took back control and they were back on track towards the ISS, Gaia brought up something important that had gone over both of their heads before now.

“So, Noah… what does Pip eat?”

“Ah, shit.”

“Squee!”