Pet Rocks

• 2 •

An alarm is going off up in the command station, four flights away from the airlock wing. I’ve truly crawled into a hole. Now I climb out to see what in the world is beeping. With the walk suit on, the ladder is a bitch. I climb with one hand, my helmet in the other, which thumps up the rungs by my hip. This is me losing my shit. This is NASA’s investment in me gone to waste.

I crawl through the power and life support pod, through my old living quarters, and up into what I like to think of as my office. One of the scanners is flashing. I’m lumbering that way when the QT beeps with a message. I decide to check that first, knowing it’ll be a message from NASA, probably asking me to check whatever’s beeping on the scanner. These little messages from Houston are the only company I have. The contact is nice. Too bad Houston is full of assholes and taskmasters. Maybe prisoners in isolation feel what I feel: they hate their guards, but a beating now and then is at least some human contact.

I check the readout. I am their trained monkey.

This seems so unlikely that I assume the station is still glitching from the reboot. A second message beeps through before I can even turn to check the scanner:

“I am,” I say. “Jeez.”

Sometimes I wish the QT weren’t quite so instantaneous.

Letting out a sigh, I cross the command room to check the bio scanner. It’s one of the more sensitive instruments on the beacon, and that’s saying something. If lichen or viruses start collecting on the outside of the hull, the scanner sounds an alarm, like it’s doing right now. I acknowledge the alarm to shut it off, but the light keeps flashing to let me know the reading is still active.

The eggheads in Houston joke that the bio scanner can hear a protein folding in the vacuum of space five hundred klicks away. They think that’s funny, because sound doesn’t travel through space. At least, I think that’s the joke. NASA is weird about the things they fear. They get really nervous about unknown life forms, and yet it’s all they talk about. They’re like teenage boys with sex in this way.

I study the blip, wishing it would vanish. It’s been a week since the crash. Is there any chance one of the crew survived the impact in a stasis pod? Or did a load of produce just now break open when its case smashed into something else?

The signal is definitely out there amid the debris. And a solid target, not a dispersal blip like you might see if a container was leaking biofuels. Something is alive. Or the beacon’s scanners are wrecked. I reckon the latter is more likely. I watch the blip and count to ten, waiting for whatever it is to die in the vacuum of space. If the thing were sealed in a suit or a ship, the scanner wouldn’t pick up jack. Even with all the activity in the sector lately, the scanner has only gone off briefly, when someone pumps their shitter, and that’s just for a flash.

Go away, I tell the blip. I don’t need you.

…

I bite my nails. It’s a habit I’ve mostly given up.

…

Mostly.

…

Damn. Okay. Back to the QT, where I type: I see it. 32K

In other words: Confirmed. And it’s thirty-two klicks away, so can we please pretend it isn’t there?

In other words, go out into the vacuum of space, see what’s alive out there, and report back if it doesn’t kill you first.

Fucking NASA. In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, “Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight!”