I bought one of the first commercially available space shuttles for 29 million dollars. It runs using a new development in physics called a gravity drive. Don’t ask me to try to explain how it works, but it makes the vessel believe it’s accelerating towards a massive object that isn’t really there but that it thinks exists nearby in the direction you steer.
I was on my longest voyage yet, journeying to Saturn. That was always my mom’s favorite planet before she passed away. The vessel’s top speed is about 20 percent of the speed of light, and Saturn is about 80 light minutes away from the sun; so from earth, the ringed planet is 4 to 6 hours away depending on where the planets are in their orbits. Once the course is set, the ship pretty much drives itself.
The cockpit is spacious and has room for 12 to 16 people, but as usual I was alone, so I had the lights off to stare at the big front bay window of the ship at the distant flickering stars, one of which I knew was actually the sun reflecting off Saturn. I felt both nervous and excited, completely enveloped in darkness inside the cabin and outside the window. But after two hours of traveling, the excitement and terror wore off and I dozed to the peaceful whirring of the gravity drive and the gentle flickering of lights on the dash.
An alarm was blaring as I awoke. I opened my eyes to nothingness, then realized I was looking out the front window. I whirled around to where a siren light was flashing at the back of the cabin. The dash was user-friendly and immediately my eye caught the root of the problem: there had been a change in the cabin pressure - it had increased. Another warning suggested that the seal around the door had weakened and that gas exchange had been taking place between the cabin’s interior and outer space - this didn’t make any sense to me. Even if I’d hit a small cloud of hydrogen or helium in the darkness, how is it possible that the pressure in space was so great as to push it inside the cabin, and if the seal was broken, why was I not now losing cabin pressure?
My heart was pounding as I looked back to the front window trying to get a sense of my surroundings. Again, there was only darkness. Not even the stars that had been visible as I was falling asleep. The navigation panel showed I was still on course and the gravity drive was still carrying me there. About 3 hours and 40 minutes into the trip - nearly to Saturn - we had slowed down a bit. Though traveling at only 75 percent of the top speed, something caught my eye as a shadow cast over the siren light. On the far side of the cabin a black fog was rolling into the room. I wondered if it was smoke at first, but smoke would look gray or white in this light. This gas maintained its blackness, allowing very little light to pass through it. Whatever it was, I must have hit a cloud of it. It must have been why I couldn’t see the stars at the front either. I fumbled through the emergency bag looking for a face mask and oxygen, terrified of what sort of alien toxins the fog might carry within it. I took too long as it flooded the room and a metallic taste rolled over my tongue moments before I managed to get my mask on and oxygen into my lungs.
I looked down at my hands to see the fog crossing over my fingers. It wasn’t corrosive, could have been worse - I guess I may have gotten lucky. I still had a hole to get out there and patch up, though, but just as I was leaving the cabin, the alarm stopped. I stood frozen in place for a moment, looking back at the warning on the dashboard which now read “Hull breach all clear.”
“What? Since when does a problem like that fix itself?” I walked down a narrow hallway to the door of the ship, but after a thorough investigation I realized that I couldn’t detect where the breach might have been.
The air was stagnant, not moving in or out of the hall around the door. I still had my respirator on, but I could tell the fog was dissipating, precipitating out of the air and falling onto the ground as a fine ash. A technology similar to what powered the engine was used to generate a small gravitational field on the floor of the ship, to make it feel a little more like you were on earth as you sailed through the void.
As I arrived back in the cockpit and looked out the front bay window, I realized that we had finished passing through the black cloud. Saturn was more luminous than ever. I was close enough now that I could see its ring. It was hauntingly beautiful as it just floated there; it was my whole world, the only other thing in my purview besides my own consciousness and beating of my heart. My heart was beating hard and slow. Slower every moment it seemed. I was lightheaded and I began to break out in a sweat. My hands were trembling, and I stared down at them to see that the blue veins on the backs of them had become black. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The ship has a small med bay just outside the cockpit on the left and I hobbled to it in my panic. Most of its diagnostics were run by an AI which, produced an analysis and interim treatment suggestions until an actual hospital could be reached back on earth.
I made it into the med bay and hit the emergency button, which automatically set the gravity drive’s course back to earth. It was a shame to waste those four hours of travel but in that moment I was sure I was going to die and wanted at least my body to make it back to my family. I removed my shirt and sat down facing the mirror on the examination chair. The blue veins all over my body had blackened, even the one in the well of my eye. The machine was measuring my pulse: 13, 14, 13, 12 beats per minute. It pricked my finger and took a blood sample. “Foreign bodies detected” appeared on the screen as I awaited further analysis. It wasn’t bare elements or small molecules - the sample contained foreign biomolecules and invasive life. Not any bacterial species known on earth, not a bacterium at all.
My breathing was more ragged than ever and I coughed spastically and often, choking for air, it felt like something was completely flooding my left lung, or like a tree was growing in it. I passed this information onto the AI, which took a long ultrasound. For a moment I thought I had hard enlarged pulmonary veins. There was indeed something dense writhing around in my left lung. It looked like a large worm long and rounded on both ends. I wretched both from disgust and out of the feeling. I nearly fainted as it turned its head toward the scanner. This worm had a face that somewhat resembled an angler fish - eyes far apart and long, sharp, needle-like teeth. It was wriggling harder now.
I collapsed out of the chair onto all fours, heaving, trying to vomit it out of my lung. What had been in that bit of gas I inhaled? Some sort of egg? And how was it maturing this quickly? It felt as though my bronchial passage was stretched to capacity as it slithered out of me. It nearly broke my jaw as it passed through my mouth, and once it hit the deck of the med bay, it slithered into a vent. It moved very quickly for being only a few minutes old. I was relieved to have it out of my lung but terrified to think that I might encounter it again on the ship, however, I think it must have slipped out before I got back to earth because after a week of searching and scanning I still haven’t detected it.
I don’t know how it crosses the hull’s boundary so easily either way, but I definitely feel unsettled as I go into my next voyage. I don’t think it took anything from me besides my warmth and I think it was an accident that it grew in my lung, specifically. There was no evidence that it had bitten me from the inside, drunk my blood, or eaten any part of me. Maybe it just needs warmth for that initial stage of its life. I wonder what it will eat now… perhaps just the gases floating in space?
I can’t help but wonder if it was still in its embryonic stage when it left my vessel. If so, I can only imagine how large it might be when it reaches adulthood.