Something's Out There

It was dark that morning on Hoxes V. A deep, unnatural dark. The little ice planet circling around the massive gas-giant in a far-flung star system passed beneath the titan’s shadow once every few Earth years. About 82, give or take a few days. And although one would expect darkness to accompany passing into the shadow of a planetary body, humans were unaccustomed to the kind of darkness that the giant brought.

Sarrus dominated the sky of Hoxes. One massive shadow, concealing every star, every stray proton that would break the atmosphere of its tiny cousin. Star of the system, a weak and pallid thing burning with a low red radiance, had been swallowed by the gas giant without a second thought. Almost as if they were both alphas of different packs. Every now and again, Sarrus felt the need to prove its dominance to its satellites.

On the small planet, beneath the all-consuming darkness, there was a small mote of light. Part research station, part mining station, part refueling depot for the occasional scavenger. No military vessels came this way, past the fringes of galactic civilization. No grand cruise liners sailed to these malevolent shores for the pleasure of their passengers. Here there was only the cold. And the dark.

Samson stepped up to the window that looked out on the desolate, frozen vacuum beyond. For the last 12 years he’d been here, the planet had almost seemed beautiful in the morning. Light would refract and glitter through the frozen ground. Every day, every hour, brought new stratified rainbows for his viewing pleasure. His own personal planet-sized gemstone. Now… all he could see was the faint cone of illumination lancing out from the window. It seemed bitter and bleak outside, the hard white light intersecting roughly with the impenetrable wall of black. He shook his head and turned away, nursing a mug of hot coffee. Not real coffee, of course, getting genuine coffee beans shipped all the way out here would cost more that he would ever make, but a water-caffeine blend with coffee flavoring was good enough for him.

The interior of the station was a harsh white. Normally the sun they orbited would be enough to illuminate the complex, but the solar arrays, detecting the lack of photovoltaic reaction, had switched on the emergency LED’s. He sat on one of the sparsely decorated sofas and put down his mug, looking at his action report for the day. He sighed. They were his usual tasks. Approach the dig site, obtain the latest core sample that the driller had dug out of the crust deep beneath the ice, and analyze it. Except every other time he’d done it, he’d had light.

Harod walked into the room. A tall man with square shoulders and an unnaturally pretty face. Genomic modification practically steamed off of him. His gray eyes noted the much plumper Samson and he gave a nod of respect, “Engineer.”

“Officer,” Samson replied, sipping from his mug, “You know where Electrical is?”

Harod shook his head, “Sally should be up soon. Heard she was working on some kind of relay fritz until late in the evening.”

Saamson nodded absently. He was looking down at a slim square rectangle set into the table’s surface. The tablet was displaying station status, in case there was anything he needed to check out before he headed out to the drill.

“What the hell…” he muttered to himself, scrolling through the list of errors and warnings.

Harod quirked an eyebrow as he poured himself a bowl of oat-mix, “Something wrong?”

“Maybe…” Samson replied, rubbing his stubbled chin with his free hand, “Did you know this blackout thing was going to happen?”

Harod considered for a moment, then gave a shrug, “Not really. I think they mentioned it in the briefing before I got sent out here, but it only lasts a day, right?”

Samson looked up blankly, “Harod. That’s 32 hours of darkness. No sunlight, no starlight, no background radiation. We’re gonna run out of power.”

Harod sniffed. Something had gone bad in the fridge and probably needed to be thrown out, he turned back to Samson, “What? How?”

Samson leaned back in his seat, “The main batteries are only rated to last a little longer than a sleep cycle, 12 hours. Since the station is almost always in direct sunlight, there’s usually no need for even that much.”

Harod nodded slowly, “So… you’re saying that we’ll go dark for 20 hours in here?”

Samson nodded, back to prodding the tablet, “Maybe longer. We’ll need to shut down the drill, anything electrical that isn’t absolutely necessary.”

Harod thought for a moment, then spoke up, “Backup batteries?”

Before Samson could answer, a circular door hissed open, and a woman stepped into the room stretching. Her skin was a mottled pattern of dark brown and fleshy pink. She had dark brown hair that curled wildly and formed a small orb around her head.

“Morning gents,” she said with a yawn, “what’s happening today on our little ice ball?”

“We’re all going to die,” Harod said with a blank expression.

“Har har. But really, what’s up? Fozzie looks upset.”

Samson bristled a bit at the moniker, “There’s a blackout, the station’s going to run out of power in 12 hours max.”

“Backup batteries?” Sally asked immediately, reaching for her portable device to check the statuses Samson was going over.

“They’re in cold storage,” Samson replied, chewing on a nail, “we’ll need to go out and get them.”

Sally looked out of the window and immediately curled her lip in disgust, “Ugh. Out there? When it’s dark? You could fall into a chasm two miles deep. Or discover space’s first vacuum-based ice shark. Pass.”

“Nobody was saying you had to do it, Sally,” Samson sighed, “Harod and I have the most EVA experience, we’ll go out and get the batteries. Our suit flashlights will last us a few hours, more than enough time to grab them and get back.”

“Can I finish my oat first?” Harod asked with a mouth full of cereal.

Samson just sighed.

Twenty minutes later they were getting suited up. The smooth, ruffled interior of the suit felt clammy on his skin, but he knew it would warm up soon. It was odd going from the clean, sterile scent of the habitation unit to the cramped confines of the suit which quickly filled with the smell of his breath. For some reason the suit seemed extra tight as he gazed out of the airlock into the night. 

“Ready for exit,” he called over the radio.

“Gotcha Sam, stay safe. You too Harry.”

Samson heard Harod sniff at that.

The airlock door opened.

A wind whipped at him, strong enough to nearly knock him off his feet. Hoxes had almost no atmosphere, but what little it did have was constantly yanked by the tidal pull of Sarrus above. The silence was eerie as the wind blasted him nearly backwards. His breathing was loud and heavy in his ears as the tiny tinks of ice chips hitting his suit reverberated through him. The metal teeth of his boots made a satisfying crunch as he stepped out onto the ice.

He swallowed thickly, the wet noise pumping uncomfortably in his ears. It was so odd for it to be dark. He hadn’t known true dark in over a decade. And now it was here. All around him.

He turned, taking in the absolute void that surrounded him. No stars, no sun, no light. Just a little station in an endless ocean. He shivered.

“Come on Harod, this is giving me the creeps,” he said in a muffled tone.

His radio gave a squeal of feedback that made him jump, and something he didn’t catch shorted out inside his suit. He felt a flash of heat near his ribs and swore, slapping at it.

“Yeah, I agree Sam. You alright?” Sam heard Harod’s voice a second later, sounding completely normal.

“Did you hear that?” Samson asked.

“Hear what?”

Samson looked around for a second longer. Into the darkness. Into the black.

He shook his head, “Nothing, it’s… it’s nothing. Just some feedback. Something on my suit shorted out though.”

“Yeah, mine too.” He heard over the radio. For some reason it sounded a little static-y, somewhat garbled.

“Should we get new suits?” Samson asked, almost wishing the other man would say yes so he had an excuse to go back inside.

“Nah. I’m checking my vitals and everything’s green. Must have been one of the auxiliary or backup systems.”

Samson nodded, turning back towards the emptiness. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and stepped in, following the beacon towards the storage unit.

He turned on his suit flashlight, illuminating a small circle in front of him about ten feet in diameter. He tried to keep his eyes on that circle. Standing out here in the dark… unnerved him.

“Woah…” he heard Harod say softly.

“Huh? What Harod?” Samson asked, turning his whole body so he could keep an eye on the stark white patch of ice in front of him.

“Look up.”

Samson wondered what the man was talking about, and looked upwards. He knew, logically, that Sarrus was up there. A stellar mass many times larger than Jupiter which bound hundreds of moons in its gravity well. But what he knew and what he saw were two very different things.

Lights danced and shifted above him. A gigantic Aurora so unimaginably far away that the mind could not truly comprehend the distance. It dominated the majority of the sky directly above him, and although it cast no light on the little planet below, the performance was mesmerizing. Long tendrils of blue, teal, and violet wove and coiled across the void. They danced in time with a universal melody that he could not hear, but that he caught a glimpse of through this beauty.

“Wow…” Samson said, completely entranced.

“I gotta get Sally out here,” Harod said.

Dust pinged off of Samson’s suit. He glanced down at the noise, and saw something that made his heart freeze. It was the station. The lights spearing from its square windows nearly blinding him.

“What the… Harod, are you seeing this?” He asked, confused and worried.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”

“Not the sky, you idiot,” Samson growled, whirling to where he knew the other man would be, “I’m talking about the-”

Harod wasn’t there. The beam of his flashlight was gone, swallowed whole by the abyss beyond.

Samson gasped and clutched at his helmet, it felt like he’d just been slammed in the brain with a forklift.

“Whoa, Samson, you good there buddy?”

Samson whirled, panicking slightly as something touched him. Then he blinked in confusion. He was in the airlock. He was… he was going to get the backup batteries. They hadn’t left yet. But didn’t-

“You boys ready yet or you want to make it a race against the clock?” asked Sally’s voice over the comms.

“We’re ready Sal, Sam’s just getting a little skittish,” Harod said, sounding worried.

Samson gulped, the wet noise pumping uncomfortably in his ears, and said, “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Go ahead and let us out.”

The airlock opened, and his boots made a satisfying crunch as he stepped out onto the ice.

“Woah…” Harod said, “Look at that…”

Samson doubled over, his head throbbing. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

“What- where are we?” He gulped air down. It felt like a truck was parked on his lungs.

“Look up dude!” He heard Harod say, and he did.

He saw the white ceiling of the station, LED lights blinding him. He cried out as he squeezed his hands shut over his eyes.

“Are you seeing this?” Sally was saying, “Gravitational readings are off the- woah, hey! Easy there, buddy, easy!”

She rushed over to Samson, who was groaning and shaking. He felt his stomach lurch and twist, roiling like he needed to vomit.

“Don’t go outside!” he yelled, startling his two co-workers who backed away from him.

“Don’t go outside,” he panted, slumping into a ball on the couch. His whole body ached, his head felt like a steel spike had been pounded into it.

“What the hell, dude?” Harod asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Something,” Samson gasped, trying to get his breathing under control, “something is happening on Sarrus. There are lights in the sky and- I don’t know, they’re temporal somehow! I keep getting jerked around through time!”

The other two looked at each other skeptically.

“Samson?” Sally said in a too-calm voice, “maybe this whole thing has got you a little riled up. Do you want to go lay down? Me and Harod can-”

“No!” he shouted, “Don’t go outside! Not until the sun comes back!”

“Okay, now you definitely sound crazy. You know that the sun isn’t coming back for 82 hours. We can’t last in here that long,” Harod said, folding his arms.

Samson had mostly gotten a hold of himself, and he sat upright on the couch cradling his chest and head. The air smelled sharply of ozone to him.

“Maybe there’s a way,” he said, trying not to sound manic, “we might be able to last on the power we have as long as we-”

He stopped. He looked up at Harod, brown eyes locking with gray.

“What did you say?” Samson asked shakily.

Harod cocked his head and replied, “The sun isn’t coming back for 82 hours?”

Samson blinked, “82 hours… it’s 32. Hoxes has a 32 hour day cycle, Harod.”

Harod looked at him strangely, “No, it’s 82 years, same as it always has been.”

Samson’s eyes bulged, “82- what are you talking about Harod?”

Harod shrugged, Samson could almost swear he heard the crinkling of the man’s spacesuit as they stood together alone in the darkness of Hoxes’ long night.

“I’ll be born in 82 years,” Harod said, voice sounding strange and garbled.

Samson was looking up at the sky, the Aurora rippled and danced.

And moved.

“Thank you,” it said, “thank you for the light.”

The scrapper ship Hard Dimes drifted through the dirtball of a system that it had found, passing by asteroids and debris.

“Hey boss, take a look at what we found in the cargo loader.”

The captain of the vessel, one Hox Nelgrin, turned and grabbed the object his crewman handed him. It was an odd thing, blasted and burnt, scorched beyond belief. But it appeared to be nothing more than a simple time-keeping device.

“What’s this?” he asked.

The crewman shrugged, “Some kind of chronometer. It was just drifting out there. You think somebody else beat us here?”

Hox shook his head, “This place doesn’t have any official designation. Looks like a waste of scrap from the scans. Oh well, we can hand the mapping data over to the United Science Commission. Those wackos are always looking for out-of-the-way places to put research stations.”

The ship turned around, and left the silent system behind.