Page 77 of Tempted by Celestial Bodies

Assuming, of course, the dead alien outside isn’t a sci-fi portent of doom.Yeah, one thing at a time, Anya.I have bigger problems than contemplating the lonesomeness of my pathetic existence or trying to figure out how to turn an outdated laboratory into luxury living accommodations.

Sighing, I turn on the main computer and key in my ID code. A symphony of grating beeps and clicks shatters the silence of the command pod, and I type out an urgent message to my team on the base. Just as I’m about to hit Send, I pause. I’ve seenAlien.What if they want me to bring the thing back for study or something? Or worse—what if they don’t believe me in the first place? What if they think I’ve gone nuts from too much solitude and solar radiation?

Unease twists my stomach into knots and stutters my pulse. I should get some kind of proof, but what if the thing isn’t really dead? What if it’s hibernating? Or gestating? The last thing I want to do is go outside, especially when I still have no idea where it came from. If something put it there, that something could still be hanging around using the dead tarantula alien as bait, maybe.

It sounds crazy. Ifeelcrazy. I feel like I’m going to look out my window again and there won’t be anything there. It will have been a trick of the light, or a fever dream from eating an expired ration, or something.Something.

The anxiety I’ve been brutalizing deep down in my gut rears its head and I delete my message one heavy keystroke at a time.

I scroll back through yesterday’s station data, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. A tide of worry laps at the fringes of my mind as I consider my next move. I don’t think I can handle all this alone. At some point, I’ll need to contact the ship and tell them, but I don’t want to risk everything I’ve worked for. If they think I’ve lost it, they’ll cart me back toEarth Novaand I’ll lose my chance to lead the engineering team on the next space station, which is the closest I’ll get to exploring the stars.

Earth Novahasto believe me. That leaves me with one nauseating option: finish searching the last remaining section—the garage and landing decks—then head outside and document the carcass.

Grabbing my wrench and plasma torch, I venture from the sterile sanctuary of the command pod and take the service elevator down six decks to the lowest level. This is the area I’ve been dreading—the biggest, most labyrinthine, and most likely to harbor some alien invader bent on terrorizing the station’s hapless human meatsicle.

I start in the garage by inspecting the rows of lunar rovers. The maintenance lockers, storage bunkers, and machining shop are all as they should be, with nary a swipe of grease or dusty footprint to be seen. By the time I finish searching, my stomach is rumbling and my bio-cuff beeps, reminding me that I haven’t eaten since my depressing breakfast eight hours ago. I’m exhausted, sweaty, famished, and my nerves feel as if they’ve been stretched into spun glass and shattered.

“Almost done,” I remind myself. “Then it’s a hot shower and a full ration for dinner.”

With leaden limbs, I pull on my heavy spacesuit and wait for it to pressurize in the garage’s outer chamber. When the preliminary tests indicate everything is copacetic, I smash my fist into the airlock release and step out onto the surface of the moon.

Without the assistance of the station’s artificial gravity, it takes me ages to leap and plod and shuffle toward the dreadful heap of ginger limbs outside the window near my berth. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I feel as if I’m being watched, but I can’t tell if it’s my proximity to the alien carcass or the odd sensation of standing on the chalky lunar regolith staring out at the boundlessness of space.

I toe the corpse, but the lifeless body is frozen solid. I want some kind of proof to show the base that I’mnotcrazy and yes, therearealiens knocking on the door of our brand-new home. As I study the corpse, something catches my eye—in the silty soil, strange slithery tracks I didn’t see earlier encircle the alien body. Like desert sand after the rain, there’s no real pattern to them and no evidence they move off in any singular direction. Perhaps they’re not tracks at all, and it’s a natural phenomenon. We’re growing an atmosphere; maybe this is where some water has condensed.

Grimacing, I bend down to grab one of the furry legs and tug it with me onto the lower loading bay that opens into the garage. In zero gravity, I can manage the weight, but as soon as I get inside, I’ll need a hover cart to help me transport it to the cryo-freezers in the lab. I figure keeping it frozen and entombed in the lab is my safest bet until I can convince everyone on theEarth Novaship, and then I’m going to fling this creepy bastard back out into space…or vaporize it with one of the plasma heaters. I’m not taking any chances.

The trek to the lab is uneventful—well, except for the fact that I’m lugging a dead alien through the hallways of a lunar station. But the moment I seal it inside the cryo-freezer, I exhale with a jittery kind of relief.

Despite the overall horror show of the day, I feel much better by the time I trudge back into my room. I take a twenty-minute volcanically hot shower, stuff a full dinner ration of rehydrated spaghetti into my face, and tenderly pull on my pajamas. My bio-cuff reads 2200Earth Novatime, which is a little earlier than I normally turn in, but I’m glad for the extra rest.

Tomorrow morning, everything will go back to normal. I’ll send in my reportwithevidence, get a security team here to help watch my back, and dive back into work. In another few months, I’ll have earned my own fancy suite onAlpha Lunisand then be right in line to lead my team on the next galactic adventure. Maybe the dilapidated Mars outpost. Nowtherewould be a fun challenge.

I snuggle into my covers, trying not to allow the emptiness of the station, my room, my life suffocate me. I refuse to let my mind wander to the mysterious dead thing stashed in the lab’s freezer or the unnerving marks in the dirt outside that don’t seem scientifically possible. I did my best today and tomorrow, everything will be fine.

I’ll be fine.

* * *

Just after Imanage to drift off, a nightmare sends adrenaline surging through my body and I leap out of bed, convinced there’s someone—something—here with me. I reach for my wrench, tucked safely beneath my pillow. Sweat beads on my skin and my bio-cuff beeps at my elevated heart rate and respiratory distress.

But once again, I’m alone.Always alone.Even so, it takes several minutes for me to calm down, and as the stress finally starts to ebb from my muscles, I make the mistake of opening my eyes and peering out my window.

There is another dead body outside.

chaptertwo

leo

I was beginningto doubt the quality of my sacrifice, but the strange physical aspect of My Most Horrifying and Sublime Goddess finally seems to have accepted my initial offering. Relief and satisfaction condense in my mind, but I must keep pride at bay. This is merely the first day of my honoring ritual, and she could still immolate me with a thought if she wished.

When my brethren and I left our watery home world and set out on this pilgrimage to find corporeal aspects of our most beloved divine being, I somehow knew slipping between realms would be my best course. Perhaps it was her sacred guidance that called me forth. Something had surely brought me here; some inward pull in the direction of this tiny backwater galaxy.

I turn my eyes to the desolate planet tangled with this moon’s orbit. There is no question in my mind that it suffered my death goddess’s wrath. This cold metal cocoon on a dead moon orbiting a devastated planet is the perfect place for her hibernation cycle, which leaves no doubt in my mind that I have found her.

I would never question her judgment, but the location does make my honoring ritual challenging. Collecting living sacrifices of unworthy males would be much more manageable if there were shreds of life on the slowly rotating brown rock below.

Honorable Sindaria obviously means to test my mettle for the next thirteen turns. Finding dishonorable flesh for her consumption is my duty and privilege. I am taken aback slightly by her choice of corporeal body, as it seems small and weak in comparison with mine, along with the rest of our devoted priests. I don’t find it altogether unpleasant to behold—this four-limbed aspect of meat and bone—but it does make me wonder:Where does my divine lady hide her monstrous, world-rending tentacles?

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