Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue) (12 page)

I stood at the edge of the oasis, looking out onto the bare world beyond. The sky was stark, bare of clouds. The planet’s three suns, all different sizes, had begun to creep towards the horizon.

And light glittered off something to my left, hidden in the trees and covered with vines.

I turned—and stared.

Buried in vines and undergrowth was something metal. I crept closer and almost froze.

It was a part of a spaceship.

Chapter 18

The spaceship had been here a long time—it had even partially sunk into the ground, vegetation growing over much of the rest of it.

Guessing based on the style of the hatch, I pegged it as being several decades old.
 

The writing on the side had almost worn off, but I could still read it.

It said
Lifeblood
.

I read the name over and over, but it was unmistakable. It hit me with the shock of cold water.

The
Lifeblood
had vanished fifty years ago. And here I was, having found it.
 

The
Lifeblood
had been a famous ship, and not in a good way. It was a legend and a cautionary tale every child had been taught about in school.

It had been a deep space explorer ship, the first of its kind. It was also the first to use a new kind of hyperspace engine. The engine was supposed to have been lighter, faster, and better in every way. It was also supposed to have been thoroughly tested.

Except that it hadn’t been. The company that had manufactured the engines had been so sure they would work, that they had hurried through the testing phase, faking a few of the test results. Any of the engineers who protested this were fired and their claims dismissed as sour grapes.

So, with the public none the wiser, the
Lifeblood
had its new engine installed and prepared for its first deep space exploration mission. The crew was a small one, mostly scientists.

The launch was one of the most celebrated in history. No ship had ever dared to go as far into space as the
Lifeblood
would. There was even talk—unconfirmed, of course—that they were going to meet with aliens.
 

The
Lifeblood’s
celebrated launch went smoothly, the crew sending back videos of themselves popping champagne corks as they zoomed towards deep space.

But then they started to go too fast. Unable to slow down, they zoomed past all the then-known space and went further. The crew sent back panicked communiqués, saying they couldn’t stop the ship or even slow down. The ship was gaining speed at an alarming rate, going further into deep space than was originally planned.
 

Several rescue ships were sent out to try to catch the
Lifeblood
, but it was no use—they could never hope to catch up with the
Lifeblood’s
incredible speed.

Then the communiqués from the
Lifeblood
stopped. She had vanished only days after her launch, going too far into space for anyone to communicate with her. She was gone, lost to space.

In the past fifty years since then, technology advanced forward and so did humanity’s horizons. Explorers found new worlds and founded new colonies. Humans explored more and more of the galaxy. Every time some team of explorers set foot on a new world or a new moon, the news feeds blossomed with opinions on whether or not they would find the
Lifeblood
. She was the spacefarer’s Atlantis.

And I had found her.

I stood there for several minutes, simply staring at the name on the side of the ship. Leo sniffed the ship’s hull and then stood back, satisfied.

I walked around what I could of the ship’s perimeter, inspecting it. For a crash, it was not too bad. Perhaps the crew had found some way to slow the ship down a bit. The damage was concentrated on the nose of the ship; leaving the stern almost unscathed. The crew could have perhaps survived this crash, if they had been able to brace for impact properly and had not been in the bow of the ship when it had crashed.

Reaching the hatch, I pulled it open, revealing the darkened interior of the ship. Leo bounced inside and I followed, keeping the hatch flung open to let in light from outside.

Stepping inside the ship was like stepping back in time. All the ship’s hardware was, of course, from fifty years ago. To my modern eyes, it all looked horribly dangerous. Even the paneling on the inside of the cabins made me cringe: it was so unsafe and prone to bursting into flame compared to what was inside the
Dragontooth
or the
Indomitable
.
 

How had this ship crashed? Perhaps I could access the log to find out. Where would I find that? There were so many buttons and screens in this old ship! It was overwhelming. And wiring everywhere—it was a wonder the place didn’t simply explode the moment they turned it on.
 

I checked to see if anything was still working. No luck—it had all gone dark.

I explored the entirety of the ship, finding nothing but more non-working technology and a non-working science lab of some sort. What I did not find were the bodies of the crew. The ship was empty of them.

As I stopped to consider this, Leo began sniffing at something on the other side of the cabin. I noticed that next to him, sitting atop a surface covered with switches and buttons, lay several slips of some sort of plastic.

I picked the first one up. It was about half the size of my hand and had some material coating one side that made it almost stick to my hand.

I flipped it over and saw that it was some sort of nametag or ID badge. The name on it was Maura Meriwether, and above the name was a picture of a dark-haired woman. I picked up another of the nametags and read it: this one belonged to the fair-haired Nikolai Williamson.

Scooping the nametags up, I carried them over to the hatch so I could get a better look at them in the light.

Once I was again in the light of day, I held up Maura Merriwether’s card.

And nearly dropped it in shock.

Maura Merriwether was the human version of M.

Chapter 19

I stared at the tiny picture on the nametag.

Sure, Maura’s hair was much shorter than M’s and her features were absolutely human. But if Maura’s features had been sharpened, her skin tinged ashy blue, and her hair allowed to grow, she would look exactly like M.

Quickly, I held up Nikolai Williamson’s nametag. He looked exactly like the human version of N.
 

It was uncanny.
 

I looked through the other nametags. A man named Thomas Quinn looked like T; a man named Dorolian Norsopian looked like D; a woman named Eleanor Liefwig looked like E, a woman named Claudia Svenson looked like C; a woman named Karen Gardener looked like K; a woman named Jennifer Zoros looked like J; a man named Bruce Rambert looked like B; and a man named Genesis Ulik looked like G.

Five men and five women, same as the aliens.

Some of them were young in their name badge pictures; some were old enough to be the parents of the others. But their alien lookalikes were all the same age. Also, some of the human men had beards or other facial hair; none of the aliens did.

These humans and the aliens living in the oasis had some sort of connection. I knew it.

Pocketing all the name badges, I left the ship, motioning for Leo to follow me.

The walk back to the village was a blur. My mind was far, far too full of questions for me to even pay attention to my surroundings.
 

Leo was oblivious to this. He frolicked about happily, sniffing everything along the way.
 

Inside my pocket lay the ten badges, half maddening mystery and half clue as to what could be happening to me—and what had happened to the aliens.

Or were they even aliens? Were they humans who had instead changed somehow?

Or had they somehow taken the humans’ bodies and changed them? The possibilities and explanations piled up in my head, each freakier than the last.

I couldn’t appreciate the whisper of the trees as the breeze blew among them or the cool squeak of sand under my feet. The scent of the flowers and fruits made no impact on me. I kept walking, my head buzzing with too many thoughts.

Perhaps I should have just stayed aboard the
Dragontooth
with Katelyn. We had been happy there. It had been a simple life, and true enough, there had been the occasional murderous stalker, but for the most part we had been very happy. We had had late nights of stargazing and long, relaxing days of just letting the ship take us places. We had explored several planets and watched Leo wolf down the weirdest of foods. It had been our life.

And now she was half a galaxy away, probably worried sick about me. And she would be right to—I was marooned among strange aliens who clearly had a secret.

I should have known this paradise was too good to last.

As I neared the village, I heard the aliens bustling about in the food hut, getting ready for their evening meal. I cringed inwardly. Though I was hungry and happy they were so keen on keeping us fed, I dreaded having to paste on a smile and pretend I was ignorant of what I had just found in the
Lifeblood
.

What if they were just fattening us up to do to us whatever they had done to the crew of the
Lifeblood
?

Heading past the food hut, I found Samantha inside her thatch hut, lying on a pile of multicolored pillows. In front of her was a wooden platter heaped high with different fruit.

She was dictating notes into her pocket computer as she tasted each one.
 

“Samantha, I need to talk to you,” I announced in a tone of voice that conveyed how important this was.

She looked up, unperturbed, and set the computer aside. “Very well. Care for a slice of fruit? I’m categorizing them.”

“No, thank you.” After my discovery, I suddenly didn’t trust anything here. Which, I realized, was ridiculous of me: I still had to survive some way until the rescue ships came.

She raised her eyebrows. “Suit yourself. These are the best varieties I have found, with the sweetest and boldest flavors.”

I lowered my voice. “I found the
Lifeblood
.”

Her expression changed as my words sunk in. “The
Lifeblood
? As in, that legendary ship that disappeared all those years ago?”

“The same. I found it, Samantha. It’s here.”

“Where?”

“West, at the edge of the oasis. It’s just a wrecked ruin, but it is definitely the
Lifeblood
.”

“Well. They made it all the way out here, then, didn’t they? When the ships come for us, you’ll become a very famous man. The man who found the space Altantis.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. The idea did hold a small amount of appeal, admittedly.

“There’s more, though. I found the crew’s badges.” I slid them out of my pocket and arranged them in front of her.
 

She stared at them.

“Look familiar?” I urged.

Her brows furrowed as she studied them, then her expression turned to one of shock. “These pictures! The aliens! The resemblance is uncanny.”

“Yes, it is. Somehow, these aliens have some connection to the crew of the
Lifeblood
.”

“But their ages…”

“I know.”

She bit her lower lip. “Should we ask them about it? Or will they turn into murderous cannibals if they discover we know their secret?”

Sometimes it felt nice to know I wasn’t the only one with the occasional paranoid dark thought.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, if you will allow me time to think it over, I will ponder our options.”

I nodded. It seemed like a good plan.
 

During the evening meal that night, I did an excellent job of keeping up appearances as an oblivious and happy guest. But it was difficult especially since every time I spoke to M, the name Maura Merriweather rang in my head. Maura Merriweather, Nikolai Williamson, Thomas Quinn, Dorolian Norsopian, Eleanor Liefwig, Claudia Svenson, Karen Gardener, Jennifer Zoros, Bruce Rambert, and Genesis Ulik. Were they all sitting with me? Or were their killers? Or their ghosts?

Leo, of course, enjoyed his meal heartily, to the entertainment of the aliens.

After dinner and music, everyone retired to their huts for the night. Samantha quietly motioned for me to follow her to her hut.

Once inside, she shut the bamboo door. “Alan, I’ve got something to show you.” She pulled out her tiny pocket computer. “I borrowed this from one of the scientists hours before the crash. It can do all kinds of analyses. I was going to use it for some training-related activities, then give it back to him, of course. But I didn’t get a chance.” She pressed something on the computer’s tiny screen. “I fed all the data from the obelisk into its analysis system. It was able to translate the runes into language.”

“It can understand what is written on the obelisk?”

“Yes. There’s more.”

“I’m listening.”

“The translation wasn’t exact, of course, but it gave me an approximation. According to the runes, this place is an alien healing center.”

I blinked.

“Remember how we heard humming inside the obelisk? It emits some sort of frequency that encourages the re-growth of tissue. This whole oasis was some sort of healing place for trauma victims. But of course, it is set to re-grow alien tissue, not human tissue,” she explained.

“That explains why I have blue marks where scars should be.” A small chill ran up my spine. I had known it, but it was a little unsettling to hear it confirmed that I had alien skin growing on me.

“In addition, the obelisk has another feature, a unique feature. This place was meant to heal trauma victims both physically and mentally.”

“What does that mean?”

“It slowly replaces the memory of your trauma with happier memories, or makes it fade away completely.”

“So if we stay here, we will forget everything?”

“Not if the rescue ships come and get us. By then, we will probably just have calmer memories of the crash. We’d have to stay for much longer than that for our memories to be completely replaced to the point where we forgot who we were.”