Landing

“Man I hope you come to before we hit the ground.”

I snapped awake.

Daniel was pretending to be seated next to me. What was happening? We were… falling. About to hit the ground?

Right. Right!

Events came back to me in a rush. This was all too much. For the first few days after Daniel and I had been abducted, we’d been scared out of our minds. But those terrified days had stretched into a week, then two and more, onboard the empty automated ship. There hadn’t been any change or stimuli to prevent boredom. Trouble was, boredom didn’t really negate fear. It just made you numb to it after a while. But once something changed, and the boredom was chased away, the fear remained, and it hit you all over again now that it wasn’t competing with anything else.

Both of us going insane and Daniel weaving materials out of thin air had renewed the terror on the spaceship. Waking up in otter custody had renewed it some more. But even inside the few days I’d spent in otter-controlled captivity, I’d gotten used to some of the normalcy of it. But the fear remained, if relegated.

Now I was out, and everything was changing. And for the first time, there was some excitement alongside the fear. I was still terrified, liable to die at any moment. But this was the first improvement I’d experienced since leaving Earth.

For a moment I couldn’t believe it. Not only was I out of the otter’s cell, and it seems like I might stay that way. Our escape attempt had been ill conceived from the start. Even with it technically still in progress, I was already noticing how badly some of my decisions could have and did turn out.

For now though, I was content with the results.

“You’re going to have to be. I think we hit the ground in a minute or two.”

“How long was I out?”

I remembered losing consciousness shortly after liftoff. Actually, would Daniel even be able to tell? He relied on my senses after all.

“It’s been about two hours. You seemed to wake up there for a minute, you were cogent, but you’ve been in and out while this thing flew.”

I clapped my face a few times trying to wake myself up a little more.

“You okay? Your head feel on right?” Daniel asked.

“Kinda pointless to ask that isn’t it?”

“I meant with falling unconscious like that. It’s super bad for you.”

I knew the science. All the blood had pooled in my legs from the inertia of the escape pod’s liftoff. That was bad. My head needed the blood and oxygen a lot more than my legs did. Depending on how long we’d accelerated… I might have been lucky to wake up at all. High G maneuvers could be lethal to anyone untrained, couldn’t they?

“I think I’m fine, but I don’t know of any way to check if I wasn’t.” I said, winded. Why was I winded? I was breathing hard, like I’d just tried to sprint a dozen laps. I’d done a lot of running, but not that much. Apparently, that was two hours ago.

“Wait, how do you know it’s been two hours?”

Daniel held up a wristwatch. “This.”

I reached for it out of habit only for my hand to pass straight through it. Right. It was all just in my head.

“Wait, it works?”

Daniel nodded. “Just like the journal.”

I could tell what was in the journal without actually needing him to open it, I just had to imagine the page in my head. Did the clock work the same way? I shut my eyes just to check, and sure enough, when I went looking, there it was.

“Wait, but how does it work? I don’t know how the circuitry of a watch is put together.”

“Me neither. I don’t know exactly how a ballpoint pen moves the ink, but I can still write in the journal. Look, if you pop the watch open, there’s nothing actually in it. It’s just the display.”

That… actually made sense. Neither the watch nor the journal was real. They were just easy ways to imagine what I wanted my brain to do. My brain didn’t know the finer details of a digital watch’s construction, but it did know what the watch was supposed to do. It just needed to track time at regular intervals. The journal was even simpler. It was just recording the image of text. Brains could do that. Just not very well. At least, not this well.

If it was just the case of knowing what it was supposed to do, and not the thing itself, did I even need to imagine the item?

“We can revisit this later. You think we’re a few minutes from the ground? What ground?”

“Pretty sure it’s a planet. You only got a glimpse earlier, but it sure looked like a planet.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Not surprised, you were really out of it.”

“How much could you actually see then?”

“Not much, but I can actually hear what’s going on even when you’re unconscious. I tried to pick up some of these aliens words.”

I could feel his attention go to the corresponding journal pages. He’d updated his first page and labeled it ‘otter words’. There was a new page next to it labeled ‘turtlehead’. Next to that, and in much smaller words ‘& fire alien’ was written.

“So,” I said, “what do you think of these guys?”

“Well Prometheus here still looks like it wants to barbecue you.”

“The feeling is mutual. Can you feel that? Even when it’s not doing anything…”

The odd alien out had wrapped the scraps of its black poncho around its mangled hand and currently had its eyes closed. Was it asleep?

It hardly mattered. Even with it stock still and essentially bolted into one of the escape pod harnesses, being this close to it made me feel like a rabbit next to a hawk. There was such a raw feeling of unapologetic danger coming off it.

“It’s how I imagine sitting next to uranium would feel like.” Daniel said.

That was a really good analogy for the feeling. Dangerous but in an invisible ominous way. You couldn’t forget about it as long as you were near it, but there would always be a disconnect between what it appeared to be and what you knew it could do to you.

“At least the rest of them seem pretty calm.” I muttered, a bit more conscious of speaking aloud.

None of the turtleheads seemed to react to my voice, but they were all awake. As far as my time with aliens went, these awkwardly shaped ones had instantly become my most preferred. How could they not? They were the only ones that hadn’t tried to kill me yet.

“Listen to that. We’re hitting the atmosphere now.”

I could still hear Daniel, but every other sound in the pod was quickly overwhelmed. In just a few seconds it went from dead quiet to another hellish roar as we plunged into the atmosphere.

An ominous orange glow filled the inside of the pod through the window as the exterior heated up.

Would we feel it heat up inside? A million other questions went through my head.

I was probably going to pass out again. The inertia problem was opposite from liftoff. Instead of getting my blood to accelerate with the rest of me, now my body was slowing down but the blood’s momentum would shove it all toward my toes.

Daniel seemed to follow my concerns. “Try tensing everything below your heart. Breathe really fast too. Whatever you can do to hike your blood pressure.”

I tried remembering what little my mom had told me about high G flight maneuvers, but that had been so long ago.

“I just have to stay awake until we hit terminal velocity right?”

Daniel nodded. “Once we’re in a constant freefall you should be fine.”

Freefall. That couldn’t take too long right? The atmosphere would get thicker with every second we fell, and that would slow us down faster and faster right?

Even as I tried to talk myself through the science, I could see the color at the edge of my vision drain. Lightheadedness overcame me and my skull felt a bit like jelly.

“Caleb, breathe!”

Hearing Daniel’s voice crystal clear despite the roar of the atmosphere gave me a jolt. I had been holding my breath! I hadn’t even realized it.

In. Out. In. Out.

My lungs burned trying to move the air in and out of my body, and my vision went blurry.

But I didn’t pass out this time.

Daniel’s newly created watch said the whole descent took less than ten minutes from when I woke up. The fiery glow faded as the air friction tapered off, and the pod lurched from below.

Once again, our descent slowed, but the difference in force only jostled us in the pod seats. I wasn’t recovered from the reentry force, and I was unprepared for my head to smack against the back of the seat.

It was padded, it had even contoured partially to the shape of my head, but it wasn’t perfect. My skull and neck would be throbbing for a while.

“That was probably the parachute.” Daniel said, trying to peek out the window. I knew he couldn’t actually see anything, but still I was eager to look out the window too.

More than anything else though, I was preoccupied. I wasn’t dead. And I’d gotten away from the otters. Just the thought of not being confined made me giddy. It had been weeks since I’d first been cooped up on the empty ship with Daniel.

I couldn’t stop the fit of shaky laughter that came over me. I wasn’t dead. I’d given up there. Right when we’d been about to fail, all the reasons our escape had been a terrible idea had spilled forth.

I must have still been delirious, because I started to worry about my luck getting me killed. What if I took that fluke to heart without realizing it? I might just keep taking terrible risks because one of them once paid off on the first try.

“Caleb, quit it. Cackling like that is giving a bad impression.” Daniel said.

The five aliens sitting across from me in the pod were all staring at me. They were all awake and no longer just ignoring me.

The alien closest to me was the only one to respond. It was the only one I recognized individually. Its chin was a little narrower than the others.

“Vecua,” it said.

“Is that your name? ‘Vecua’?” I asked, pointing at it. “Vecua?”

It’s face twitched. All I could do was stare blankly at it.

I was suddenly overcome with awareness of how much facial expressions and other small nonverbal cues influenced conversation. Even intonation. I put a bit of an enunciation on the end of a sentence to mean a question, but this creature might have something entirely different.

Daniel wrote down the word along with the others, but it didn’t seem to be a name. The aliens conferred with themselves, at least, the turtleheads did. The dusty blue one just quietly stared at me. There was a non-zero chance it was waiting for me to simply burst into teal flames.

No, the pale triangular headed aliens were a much more appealing bet for me.

“Maybe they were asking a question about you?” Daniel said, “They might have been asking what your name was.”

I turned back to the closest alien and pointed at myself.

“Caleb.” I said.

I couldn’t decipher it’s expression, but it definitely reacted.

“Caleb.” I repeated.

The alien slowly pointed a thick tapered finger at me, “Cay…liv.”

“Kay… leb.” I said slower, pointing at myself more.

“Calev” it said with more certainty.

“Cale-B.” I corrected, emphasizing the last letter.

It couldn’t quite get a handle on the ‘b’ sound in my name, but it got close enough. And more importantly, it seemed to understand just what I meant.

I turned my attention to a different alien and pointed at myself again, trying to prompt it.

It gave a glance at its comrade and received a short nod.

“Calev,” it ventured. I smiled and nodded.

Then I pointed at the alien I recognized. It was the one that had tackled me to the ground when I’d been hiding from the otters.

It didn’t get it right away, so I pointed back to myself and repeated my name.

“Caleb.”

I pointed back to it again. It mimicked the gesture and pointed at itself.

“…Tasser.”

“Tosser?” I asked.

“Tasser.”

Okay, cool. Learning by copying. The most primitive form of learning still worked with aliens.

“Tasser.” I said, pointing at the alien with more confidence. It gave a nod.

“The question now; is ‘Tasser’ its name or its species?” Daniel said.

A very good question. I pointed to two other aliens like it asking, “Tasser?”

“Alala,” it said.

“Tasser,” pointing to itself, “Casti.” It said, pointing it itself and the others like it.

“Casti.” I repeated, pointing to each one, including ‘Tasser’.

“Su.”

“Not Casti.” I said, pointing at the dusty blue one furthest from me.

“La Casti.” Tasser confirmed.

I pointed again at the dusty blue alien.

Tasser visibly hesitated, glancing between us.

“Nai.” It said.

I gave a shiver upon hearing its voice. What the hell was its deal? Every single little thing it did made some primitive corner of my brain scared for my life. It was easy to think it was just because I knew it could torch me alive, but both it and the halberd-otter had given off the same vibe even before they’d started pulling fire and spears from thin air.

“Tasser.” I said, double checking and pointing back to it.

“Su.” Tasser said, nodding.

“Daniel, holy crap I think I just learned an alien name.”

“’Casti’ seems to be the turtleheads species, and Tasser is this one’s name. Congratulations, you’ve made a friend.”

His tone was a bit sarcastic, but I could tell that he was just as ecstatic as I was. Compared to the otter’s treatment, this was an awesome breakthrough.

“Nice to meet you, Tasser.”

The alien in question muttered something and kept staring at me like I was, well, an alien. That was going to be a trend, I could feel it.

“’Su’ and ‘Alala’ seem to be yes and no, respectively. The odd part is, I already had those ones down, but on the otter page. I got ‘Nai’ earlier too. The turtleheads—I mean Casti—said that earlier.”

I was glad Daniel was staying proactive with the journal. There would be more time to dig into communication later. Even just ‘yes’ and ‘no’ was huge for now.

Tasser gave me another odd look. This time I think I correctly interpreted it as confusion. It probably seemed like I was talking to myself. For good reason too, I was talking to myself.

All I could do was shrug and tap my head.

“I’ve got company.” I said.

I was trying to decipher its expression when another impact came up beneath us, jostling the whole pod again.

Had that been…?

Daniel nodded to me. We’d landed.

I craned my neck to try and see more out the tiny window high on the pod’s hatch. The aliens were already going into action. They were all pulling at the straps that bound them to the seats. It was time to go.

I couldn’t get mine though. Nothing loosened no matter which way I tugged. In all likelihood, I’d fastened them incorrectly. I didn’t exactly have a manual.

But time must have been of the essence, because Tasser only let me fumble with them for a few seconds before grabbing a knife from under its poncho and sawed away at them. I sat very still, trusting it to not cut into my leg.

The moment I was free and got to my feet, an overwhelming feeling of sluggishness washed over my body. Moving felt… off. I did my best to shake it off. I was probably still reeling from the reentry G’s. Passing out like that seemed like it would take a while to recover from.

I could only hope I didn’t get permanent brain damage from it. But even if I did, how would I tell with everything else that was going on? What a wonderfully terrifying problem I could only ignore right now.

Once we were all standing, I grabbed the backpack from the floor between my knees and slung it over my back. I’d expected us to land in water, like NASA capsules did. But since we were on solid ground, it seemed like we were going to be moving on foot.

“Thank you for making sure I took the time to get my shoes back.” I told Daniel.

“Truly my foresight is brilliant, isn’t it?” He said grinning. It was more than just the shoes and praise though. The excitement coming off him was electric. I felt it too. Another planet. It was a shame we were ending up here under the circumstances. But the wear of the day’s events could only dampen our spirits so much. At the end of the day, we were about to be on a different planet.

One of the turtleheads—no, one of the ‘Casti’—pulled open the hatch and poked its head out. A moment later it beckoned the dusty blue alien to follow, and we all climbed out.

I paused at the threshold and looked up at the sky.

A dark purple sky was littered with patchy pale-yellow clouds.

“How far do you think we are from home?”

“I… don’t care.” I said. That was surprising: I really meant it. But truth was? The distance was irrelevant. I didn’t care if Earth was on the other end of the galaxy or the whole universe. Somehow, I’d gotten here. Somehow, I could get back.

I refused to imagine otherwise.

“Caleb” Tasser said behind me. Oh. Just standing there in the hatch to the pod, I was blocking the way.

Stepping onto the soil gave me the same feeling I’d gotten when I’d stood up. It was like I was moving through fluid somehow, a bit like being underwater. Every time I moved at all, it felt off.

But the Casti and the ‘Nai’ were all eager to move. My limbs were still sore from everything involved in breaking out, but there was no way I was letting myself get left behind.

I took three steps and fell over.

Embarrassed, I jumped back to my feet only to miss and keel all the way backward. A big cloud of angry orange dust swirled up from where I landed. The same airy-sluggish feeling reared up every time I tried to move.

“Daniel, what the hell is going on with me?”

He knelt next to me with a frown while I struggled to pick myself up.

“Hah!” he laughed. He looked like he was watching me, but I knew he could only see what I did, so what was he looking at. “Look at the dust Caleb, or pick up a rock.”

I slowly put my feet under me again and grabbed a rock. Other than seeming a bit lighter than expected, it was an ordinary rock.

“It doesn’t just seem lighter. It is lighter. The gravity is lower here and it’s messing your your coordination.”

That didn’t seem right when he first said it. I didn’t feel weightless. I wasn’t. But I noticed what he meant when I tossed the rock a few times. It tumbled down through the air just a hair slower than it should have.

It wasn’t bouncy and floaty like the moon, but it definitely wasn’t the standard Earth 1G I was used to. That was odd. I hadn’t noticed anything like this on the otter’s moonbase. Why would the gravity there have been lower than what it was on the planet below?

“I don’t think it’s a huge difference, maybe two thirds of Earth?” Daniel watched me as I tossed the rock experimentally.

To me, the gap seemed even smaller; a bit over three quarters of Earth’s gravity. But the closeness actually made it worse. It was similar enough to what I was used to that I kept trying to move by instinct. The difference was tripping me up enough that I needed to take painstaking care with each step.

The aliens gave a couple worried glances around us and back to me. They were getting impatient.

“I’m coming, I’m coming…” I said, “I’ll figure it out, just give me a second.”

At first, I was too slow on my feet. Walking was unwieldy and clumsy at best. Each step took a bit too long and I couldn’t get into a comfortable rhythm. I kept tripping and scrambling back up to keep pace with the aliens. I fell so many times and jogged to catch up, I realized that a faster jog was actually easier than trying to walk.

The group got into a good pace, and I remembered that I’d been able to run faster than all of these aliens up on the moonbase. Or the asteroid base… wherever we’d just come from. It had either been a space station, or some kind of moon. But the gravity there had been so similar to Earth’s I hadn’t even noticed.

The aliens were moving much more comfortably in this lower gravity, the Casti especially. Their big wide heads were bobbing funnily as they jogged across the flat terrain, but their speed was markedly improved. I was having trouble keeping pace though—it was getting hard to breathe. It might have been the dust.

We’d landed in what might have been comparable to an African savannah, except what little plant life there was didn’t have much green to it. Short tufts of pink and dark yellow grassy shrubs poked through the soil, but it was hard to tell if they were actually colored that way or if the reddish dust of the ground was clinging to the leaves. In the distance there were some trees with what looked like coppery orange leaves atop white trunks. They were gnarled and twisting, very unlike the ramrod lengths of Earth’s largest trees.

Surveilling the surroundings revealed another important detail: ours was not the only pod falling from the sky.

I counted two more drifting down from the sky with parachutes and a hazy air distortion forming a ring underneath each one. Looking backward, I could see a pod that had landed before ours in the distance.

We were not the only ones to bail out, apparently. But since they were all landing in roughly the same area, was this some sort of predetermined drop point? It wasn’t impossible for the pods to be preset to follow a precalculated descent to always land within a certain area.

If that were the case… there would probably be people on the ground waiting. The ride had been multiple hours after all.

We seemed to be moving toward the pod that would land next. There were also some ground vehicles grouping in the same direction. They even looked like actual cars, a bit like SUVs. Four big wheels, windows, they even had a hood and bumper sticking out the front end.

“Huh. I kinda expected some more hovercraft or speeders from alien transport.”

“It’s probably simpler to do maintenance on wheels.”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”

“I think—” I huffed, “that we’re—” Good grief it was embarrassing getting this winded. “going to borrow one.” First the gravity, now I couldn’t breathe properly. Walking on an alien planet was exciting, but events seemed to be conspiring to ensure I had a rough time of it.

“Borrow?” Daniel said, raising an eyebrow.

If this was a predetermined landing point for the pods, and the pods had come from an otter moonbase of some kind. The ones waiting for us on the ground were probably more otters. And I didn’t imagine the otters would just let us walk away.

Even from a ways off their profiles were recognizable moving around the cars, clearing away the space that the pod was drifting down toward. The Casti looked ready to fight, if need be, but as we drew close enough none of the otters around the car were visibly armed. They wore different jumpsuits and a few patchy scarves, but no weapons. As far as I could tell, they didn’t have any real uniform.

“I don’t think they’re military otters. These might be emergency crews of some kind.”

They were visibly alarmed when they noticed us. One of them started to dart behind the vehicle, but one of the Casti shouted something at the same time one of the otters did. The otter that had tried to flee stopped in its tracks and turned reluctantly back toward us. They all raised their hands as they saw the Casti’s weapons.

The otter that had shouted took a step forward and traded words with the Casti that seemed to be the leader. It had been the first one out of the pod.

I couldn’t tell what the conversation was, but I could see the results easily enough. The otter handed over a thick white plastic card key with small teeth on one of the ends. The otters all backed away from the vehicle and the Casti pulled open the doors.

The otters protested some more but the Casti were armed, and the otters weren’t. A few plastic crates and boxes were tossed out onto the ground to make room for us, or maybe because the otters had asked for them.

We were quickly all inside the ride. The Nai and the Casti leader were in the front two seats while the four of us piled into the back.

Daniel was awkwardly shuffling around, trying to find a place to sit that didn’t overlap his illusory form with any of the tangible bodies in the truck. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but gunfire interrupted him.

Windows cracked, but didn’t shatter, as a dozen bullet holes suddenly appeared in them. There was a spray of orange next to us and one of the Casti soldiers keeled over.

I should have taken cover immediately, but out of shock I whirled toward the sound of the gunshots. The pod this group had been approaching had landed, only emerging from it now were otter soldiers dressed identically to the enemies back on the space station.

I cursed at myself for not paying more attention, because now that I was looking right at one, I was reminded of the inaudible buzz at least two of these otters were giving off. Being close to the dusty blue alien, the Nai, had desensitized me. I hadn’t even realized that anything else had drawn close enough to sense.

The vehicle lurched forward, kicking up a cloud of red dust behind us. Fewer gunshots sounded against the metal of the car as we made distance. We were too far away a few seconds later.

In one of the front seats, the Nai slumped forward, a seatbelt harness catching their torso. Since the car didn’t immediately start swerving, I assumed the other alien was the one driving. The more interesting part was I sensed the radiation it gave off just cease. The moment it fell unconscious, it just seemed to briefly flicker before snuffing out.

It was oddly similar to how Daniel would just disappear on me.

He took note of it too, muttering not quite to himself, “Interesting…”

But right now, I needed to get out of the way. Tasser and the other Casti tried to attend to the wounded one, but from the angle I had…

The wound was obviously fatal. There was a small entry wound less than an inch beneath the Casti’s eye, but a fist size chunk was missing from the back of its skull. Bright metallic orange blood oozed from the wound. It was splattered the interior of the car.

All I could do was sit there, shocked. My breath still raced out of control, and I tried to hope that I wouldn’t be the next one to get a bullet. My chest didn’t stop heaving. It was just one thing after another.

This question was getting tiring to ask, but what the hell was wrong with me?

The urge to lie down struck, if only because it felt like it might be easier to breathe. I’d been breathing okay up until now. I’d just seen an alien die. Could this be a panic attack?

It felt like a panic attack.

“Your brain’s not getting enough oxygen.” Daniel asserted. “You could breathe when we landed. What changed?”

None of that exactly ruled out panic attack, but I literally didn’t have the breath to argue with him. It was all I could do to stay upright and stare desperately at my hallucination.

“Not enough air… I don’t think the air changed. It must have been your body’s consumption rate: we ran to get to the truck. Heart rate jumps, your breathing picks up, you need air that your surroundings can’t provide. Still though, you were fine when we landed.”

It was oddly fascinating to hear him ramble without talking to me.

It must be what I seem like, I realized. Talking to Daniel, with no one else around to hear; I would seem insane.

“You were fine up in space… So, the air up there must have had more oxygen. Oh!” Daniel’s face lit up, and he dropped his illusory image partway through the floor of the truck to meet my eye level while I lay down. “Good news, I figured out why you can’t breathe–you have altitude sickness.”

That was impossible though. We weren’t at sea level, but water was visible near the horizon. We couldn’t be that high up. “It’s the gravity. The air doesn’t weigh as much here, it doesn’t reach the same pressures we’re used to. Sea level here might be equivalent to a mile-high back home. Bad news is, we can’t really do anything about it. You need to try not to move, stay hydrated, keep your heart rate relaxed.”

Funny thing was, I’d gotten altitude sickness before. My family like to go skiing at least once each winter. Every time, for the first two days or so, I’d be a wreck. Vomiting, headaches, dizziness; everything I was experiencing now.

Except when we drove to the mountains in the past, the change in air pressure would happen slowly. Not only that, but if a few days at altitude could acclimate you to the oxygen scarcity, would breathing oxygen rich spaceship air for a few weeks do the opposite?

“Everyone hates…” I rasped, “Everyone hates pitching in Denver…”

“Just hang in there. Breathe long and slow.”

I might have imagined the next thing he said, but he leaned back and I thought I heard him… And pray these new aliens don’t shoot us after all.