I couldn’t just leave James on the rogue planet. I clawed my way out of my stupor to come to my senses. The ship’s log kept data on not only its position, but also the position of objects within 10,000 kilometers. I searched through them checking two days prior somewhere between Uranus and Saturn, and there it was in the logs: the rogue planet.
The massive object we had encountered; the logs had kept records of its mass as well as the speed and direction it had been moving, and knowing how much time had passed I was able to determine that the planet should be somewhere around Mercury. I charted a course to its calculated position and fired up the gravity drive. I was near Mars already, so it would take about 45-50 minutes to get there. I jiggled my leg nervously as the sun drew closer through the front windshield. I passed Venus, and Mercury was approaching quickly.
I didn’t see it, at first, but then a warning flashed on my screen. Oh, yeah, there it is - an object three times larger than Earth flying 9,000 kilometers in the x-plane away from me. It was on course to move past the sun to the rest of the solar system by the end of the day, and then in a few days time back into deep space. I had to get James before then; this spacecraft’s manufacturers specifically mentioned that it isn’t designed for interstellar travel and whatever cosmic debris waits outside our heliosphere may prove to be the end of it.
I had no reason to believe James was still alive but for a gut feeling; he disappeared in a manner that looked violent but he disappeared. I’d known him since childhood. I had to at least try.
My nerves prickled as I approached the rogue planet for the second time, creeping up from the back of it to see the dull glow of the sun bleeding around its edges. I got as close as I could without getting pulled into its gravitational well, and with my ship’s thermal sensor I scanned the dark surface of the icy planet below. A gentle beeping rung in the air as it searched, but after five minutes it found there was nothing warm enough to be a human. Even the core of this planet had cooled long ago; there was a system of caves under the surface, however, that were warmer than the surface itself, although it wasn’t clear why. Anyway, it seemed James was not on this side of the planet.
I couldn’t help but notice there were no runes on this side of the planet, either; I’ll have to go back to the light side, I thought to myself, nervously putting the ship back into drive. Once was enough for me to learn that there was something not right about those runes, though, and I programmed a contingency plan into the ship if, for whatever reason, I took my hands off the wheel. If the ship detected another life form on board, I programmed it to return to earth immediately and at top speed.
I manoeuvred around to the front of the rogue planet and through the cameras gazed down upon those same familiar strange runes curved into the planet’s surface. I booted up the sequence to search for heat signatures, but already I could feel that same feeling of dysphasia creeping into my mind. This time it was less intense and somehow more pleasant; I could feel the corners of my mouth rising. I could feel that the fervent one was leaving his caves. It wouldn’t be long before he was here. I was looking forward to his arrival; he was coming for me, and I wanted to go with him. Any second, now… any second, and my old friend would be here on my ship with me. It felt like I’d known him longer than the universe had existed. I had nothing to fear.
Oh, there he is! I turned around to see the same long-armed, ape-like creature standing at the back of the cabin. Looking back on it now, its face was still a blur but at the moment I felt like I could see it. I can’t really describe it - it just looked like an old friend or maybe was mimicking something that appeared that way. My ship’s alarm was blaring, but I didn’t notice it. I was walking across the cabin toward the fervent one when the ship violently changed directions and launched me into the wall.
I must have hit my head pretty hard because when next I was lucid we were back by Venus, barreling towards earth. My contingency plan had saved my life. I couldn’t believe how strong the pull was. I don’t know why; I just thought I would be able to resist it. I had a splitting headache but I had to push forward. I sat back down in the pilot’s seat and reviewed the data I had collected just under the rogue planet’s surface. I had detected a few heat signatures that could have been human.
That data actually didn’t matter now; somehow I knew exactly where James was and he was in fact alive in the process of trying to lure me. The fervent one must have transferred some of its own information knowledge into my brain; it had a whole network of caves to itself under the ruined side of the planet’s surface, but for whatever reason it avoided the dark side. Well, I suppose it would be the bright side, now, a thought interjected.
The rogue planet had indeed passed the sun and was now heading out of the solar system. Once again, it was the ruined side of the planet that would now be lying in darkness. I calculated the planet’s trajectory and made my way back to where it should be. Sure enough, I could see its dark side now illuminated on the far side of the sun.
Hmm… I had a hypothesis, but I programmed the same contingency plan into my ship just in case it turned out to be wrong. Tentatively, I circled around to the far side of the rogue planet, now lying in darkness. With an infrared camera I could see the runes and caves of this side of the planet, but gazing at them was not affecting me. Just as I thought I identified an entry point to the cave’s system closest to where I believed James to be and began the landing sequence in a space suit and into the non-breathable thin atmosphere, I walked onto the frigid world.
The mouth of an ice cave was before me; it was beautiful and haunting. Even in the gloom my heart was beating fast, but somehow I knew my theory was correct. I made my way into the mouth of the cave and into the network of tunnels. For the most part, they were quite open but there were a few narrow passages here and there that gave me claustrophobia.
After what felt like an hour of wandering through meandering tunnels, I came upon a large cavern its ceilings of ice were vaulted like a cathedral. I must have descended pretty deep or been beneath a mountain. In the center of the large room stood the fervent one; it appeared frozen in place or at the very least it wasn’t moving. My heart beat a little harder, but my curiosity couldn’t help itself. I crept closer and closer right up to it. I wanted to see what its face truly looked like when it wasn’t moving near the speed of light. Its long, hairy arms kept it propped upright and a dull smile rested upon its face. The creature had no nose and only eye sockets, no eyes. Several of these strange, dark eye socket patches covered its forehead. There were about seven or eight of them, a bit like a spider. I’m pretty sure they were primitive eyes able to detect light and its direction but not much else. Sure enough, just as I had hypothesized, the creature was in a period of stasis. It sat alone on this rogue planet adrift in the sea of stars, and when it came upon one, its energy brought it to life.
But how did the fervent one sustain itself when its sight of the planet was not bathed in light? I gazed down at its torso where six umbilical cords trailed off into separate sub-caverns. I took a left and followed three of the umbilical cords across the ice floor using them as my guide in the darkness. The cavern was a room littered with creatures also in a kind of stasis. Countless aliens so strange that I couldn’t describe them, and there, toward the back of the room, lay my friend James, he same look of glee on his face as when I had last seen him, an umbilical cord implanted in his abdomen draining away at his life essence. He looked as though he had aged 20 or 30 years.
I pulled the knife from my spacesuit and cut him free with great effort and the mechanical help of my spacesuit. I hoisted him over my shoulder in this planet’s massive gravity and made my way back out to the great hall. The fervent remained in stasis; this was not enough to awake him. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would die if I cut all of its umbilical cords, but I didn’t want to find out.
Once we were a few kilometers away from the rogue planet, James came to; he had lived several lifetimes within his own mind and while connected to it he had learned a great deal about the fervent one. It’s hard for me to understand this, but he claims it wasn’t sentient, just an extremely powerful animal that acts purely on instinct and evolved to influence creatures with brains. James believes the creature is 10 billion years old, 3 billion shy of the age of the universe and, for most of that time it’s just been floating through space collecting and feeding upon all sorts of creatures in its icy menagerie.
The thought that a creature evolved to prey upon creatures with brains 10 billion years ago is staggering. Just how long has conscious thought existed in our universe?