by Keith LaFountaine
(1000 words)
LaToya stared at her fellow crewmates, lilting in zero gravity as the burning sun broke the void outside their ship. She hated weightlessness. The queasiness in her guts, lacking control, the fact that she couldn’t even drink a glass of water—it had to be squirted from a tube like a carnival candy. Staring out into the void, orbiting the cloudy terror of Venus, made up for it, though. It reminded her what all the schooling, all the training, and all the tribulations were for.
Jeff turned, his blue eyes piercing and fretful. “Another probe is away,” he said. “Not sure what the hell good it’s gonna do.”
LaToya sighed. “It’ll be fine.”
“Wild fucking goose chase if you ask me,” Hazel muttered. She squinted at the metallic walls, no thicker than a sheet of tinfoil. “Gonna be twenty-five minutes of silence again.”
“What, afraid we’re gonna run into some little green men?” LaToya teased. “We’ll send out our probes, we’ll head back to the station, we’ll tell Jason the void is still a void.”
“Yeah, and then he’ll hear some warbling transmissions from Polaris and swear up and down we need to go investigate it,” Hazel said. She pressed a hand to the ship’s foil wall.
“Where are the protein tubes?” Jeff asked, turning. “Need something to take my mind off things.”
On the TV screen next to the ship’s window, they watched and waited as the probe shifted into Venus’s atmosphere, burning through the chaos and fire that defined the planet. An odd truth, considering how featureless and plain its exterior was. From a casual glance, it looked like a pool cue that had been scuffed in too many hustled games.
Twelve minutes later, the transmission began to play: a series of beeps. Morse code. Jeff sucked on a protein tube, pushing globby spots of mealy mixture into his mouth while he watched the TV. The screen displayed burning streaks of white and orange and red, melding together in a furious storm.
Fifteen minutes. The probe continued to emit its beeps. It was specially made, able to withstand the brutal pressure and heat of the planet for longer. When they’d first started noticing odd transmissions from the planet, their probes lasted for ten minutes max. Most of them burned up before reaching the surface. But this new stuff—whatever metal NASA used—was damn good.
Jeff finished off his protein tube and pushed it into the ship’s trash chute. He crossed his arms, his body shifting as he tried to get comfortable.
The probe stopped beeping.
Hazel turned, and she raised an eyebrow. The TV went dark. Jeff opened his mouth to say something, and as the words bubbled in his throat, a flurry of beeps began to wail.
“What is that?” Jeff demanded. “Is that the comms?”
LaToya nodded. She grabbed one of the ship’s red handholds and pushed her way toward the front, where the comms station was. She grabbed a pencil and did her best to write while listening to the beeps. The response was also in Morse code, which confused her, but she didn’t have time to question it.
… – — .–.
“Uh, Toya?” Hazel whispered.
LaToya couldn’t look up. The pencil moved like a slug in a sea of salt, and while the message was repeating, transcribing it was a Herculean feat.
“What the fuck is that?” Jeff gasped.
-.– — ..- .-.-.-
Sweat beaded on LaToya’s brow. The pencil scratched, and the comms continued to wail. Only now, there was something else joining the frenetic sound. An uneasy shadow, blotting out the fury of the sun. Noise couldn’t travel in a vacuum, but something crept up LaToya’s spine: some spidery fingers with icy barbs, stabbing and raking and prodding.
“Toya, stop,” Hazel whispered. “We need to get out of here.”
LaToya put down the pencil, and as she did the flurry of beeps winked out of existence. Replacing it was a disquieting hum. Not a sound, per se, but not the absence of one, either. She looked down at the message.
“What does it say?” Jeff whispered.
LaToya looked through the window, and as she did, her heart crept into her throat. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Toya, what did it say?”
“I’m calling Jason,” Hazel said.
“Don’t!” LaToya stabbed out and grabbed Hazel’s wrist. “Don’t.”
Drifting by the front window was what had to be a ship. But with the naked eye, Hazel couldn’t deny that it looked like a human hand. The exterior was not plate metal and glass and foil, but rather knobby skin. Trails of ligaments and spewing muscle spread out behind it like tentacles. Black, chipped nails glinted in the cowering sun’s glow.
It was coming for them.
“Toya, what did the message say?” Jeff asked again. Fear slathered his tone like a thick oil. LaToya realized it was the only thing he could hold on to in that moment.
With shaking hands, she grabbed the paper with her pencil scratches. She licked her lips and sucked down the saliva that burrowed in the back of her throat. As she read back the words, the hand drifted closer, those nails jagged, the skin a putrescent, pale hue.
“Be silent, or they will take you, too.”
The hand closed around their ship. The metal hull groaned, and the black nails spiked through, sealing the holes they created. Over the comms, LaToya heard a new sound. Not a frenzy of beeps, nor a message from Jason. It was as if they were they only ones seeing this monstrous limb. Them and whoever was on Venus.
No, what emanated from the comm station were screams.
“Where is that transmission coming from?” Hazel asked as the ship croaked under the hand’s grip.
“Mission control,” Jeff said. “Earth.”
One of the fingers split open, and crimson eyes peered through, glowing in the darkness.
END
Keith LaFountaine is a writer from Vermont. His short fiction has appeared in various literary magazines, most recently including Not Deer Magazine, Literally Stories, and Five on the Fifth.