Last Day on Earth
First Officer William Felix
LOG: May 3, 2208
The atmosphere of Aventina was so bright against the dead dark of space that it hurt my eyes. Past the panoramic windows of Helius 9’s observation deck, a lilac-colored miasma swirled above the planet’s surface, only partially obscuring the pocked face beneath. The planet looked too empty and too foreign to support any type of recognizable life. From here, the stark white of Aventina’s dual continents rose like the bones of some lost civilization from seas the color of blood.
“Why would anything want to live here?” I asked incredulously. The deck was empty, and my voice echoed ever so slightly off the cold steel, dulling first to a whisper then nothing at all.
“11 hours to arrival,” a decidedly female robotic voice droned over the ship’s intercom. We should breach the planet’s atmosphere by the end of the day. Tomorrow, we would venture out into a new world, searching for signs of life, hoping to establish some sort of relationship with whatever indigenous people may or may not exist there. I’d never been on a mission like this before — never set foot on a newly discovered planet, outside of the Alliance’s usual jurisdiction. I felt apprehension coiling in my stomach. Absently, I scratched the back of my head, where the hair was short enough to feel prickly to the touch.
I stood there for a long time, pressing my nose against the poly-carbonate and watching the unknown loom all-consuming on the horizon. Eventually, others started shuffling past, most paying me no mind, some murmuring sleepy hellos. I glanced at the display on my watch, neon red numbers searing on a face as black as night. 18:04. Time for dinner. After that, the shifts would change. I would spend the next eight hours in the ship’s cockpit watching Aventina’s surface creep ever closer. Nothing made me feel as small as those hours spent watching some distant planet swell and lurch on the horizon while our ship grew smaller and smaller, until it was less than a speck, less than a flea on the back of some great beast.
I wandered to the cafeteria, a vast tank of a room filled with the mingled sounds of whirring machines and murmured conversations. It was my least favorite part of the ship. There were no windows, no screens, just blank metal walls. It gave the distinct impression of being in an underground bunker. Maybe for some that was more comforting than the fact that we were really hurtling through deep space, but for me it was just claustrophobic. I left a few minutes later, pack laden with Quik-meals and vitamin bars and a cup of inky black coffee, steaming hot and heavy with cream, warming my fingers.
Helius 9 was a fairly small ship, with only enough room to bunk 30, but the halls were long and plentiful and anyone unfamiliar with the metallic labyrinth could easily make a wrong turn. A lift went between the three floors: barracks and cafeteria on the top floor, observation deck, control room, and labs on the second, and engineering in the ship’s underbelly. Everything that wasn’t composed of tarnished metal was a glaring, artificial white. The only variation was the emblazoned blue logo on the crew’s jumpsuits. “AIS,” they read in thick, angled letters crowned with stylized laurel leaves. The Alliance for Interstellar Solidarity, fostering goodwill and free trade throughout the Stingray and Marais de Cygnes systems. It was a noble goal, and the main reason I had joined. The more planets we could bring into the fold, the safer all of them would be. But soon we would land on an uncharted planet, and I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if they didn’t want to be part of the Alliance. What if they wanted nothing to do with us? Or maybe we were wrong and the planet wasn’t able to support life at all.
I took the lift back down to the observation deck, trying to hush the storm of discontented thoughts. I started a mental list of all the things I would need when we disembarked: change of clothing, extra rations, canteen . . . It occurred to me that I had no idea what I might need in the event of an emergency. There were so many things that could go wrong that it was impossible to predict what said emergency would even look like.
“Everything will be fine,” I told myself, but the words did nothing to quiet my anxiety.
The control room was flanked by the medical bay and laboratories, quiet in the last days as most of the research team kept to their rooms, pouring over what little was known about Aventina to prepare for our descent. Now, though, the med-bay was aglow with dimmed lights and through the glass pane on the sliding door I could just make out a woman’s form draped over one of the cots. I peered into the dusky room, trying to see if it was just one of the crew on break, trying to enjoy a few moments of solitude, or someone shirking her obligations and hiding from a commanding officer. She was neither.
Dr. Cynthia Glenn stared back at me, watching her through the glass, with a gaze made dark and indecipherable under the low lights. I must’ve made a face, because her laughter echoed low off the walls as I strode into the room. She was sitting on the edge of the cot, bare feet dangling a few inches from the ground, looking at me the way she often looked at people: like an insect under a microscope, insignificant and somehow immensely interesting.
“Will,” she said. Not William, not Officer Felix, just Will. We had only spoken a few times, and only briefly, but my name flowed off her lips easily, like we were old friends.
“Dr. Glenn,” I murmured back. “I’m sorry to interrupt, I didn’t realize it was you.” Except I did, and I still came in here, I thought.
“You didn’t.”
She must have read the uncertainty on my face — is she just being polite? — because she reiterated, more firmly this time, “You didn’t. I was just thinking about what will happen, once we’re down there.”
Dr. Glenn had earned a reputation among the crew, and not a good one. The word “bitch” was often thrown around, only once loudly enough for her to hear and then only in hushed whispers. She had formed no attachments since she’d first marched onto the ship, months and months ago. The crew was intimidated by her sharp intellect and even sharper tongue, and most of the other researchers were nearly as reclusive as she was. But she was beautiful and aloof, intelligent and strange. Whatever it was that drove others from her had compelled me toward her, my stomach twisting with the sudden, fantastical notion that maybe Dr. Cynthia Glenn wasn’t so untouchable after all.
“Are you worried?” I asked, stepping further into the room. The med-bay had never held any comfort for me. It always smelled faintly of sickness and chemicals. The walls were so white and bare that just sitting there waiting for someone to bring you some painkillers made you feel like you’d been quarantined. Now, inky shadows arched across the floor and all those sharp, prodding instruments that littered counter-tops and stainless steel surgical trays seemed suddenly less frightening, gleaming softly under the yellow light. And Dr. Glenn, too, looked a little more harmless. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her limbs were slack; the line of her mouth wasn’t as hard as it usually was.
“Are you?” she asked. Are you worried? For a moment, I feared she could see right into my mind, see all the doubts that had swirled there just minutes before.
“I am,” I answered, surprising myself. “What if we find something we’re not expecting?”
“Such as?”
“Hostiles? Not everyone wants to be part of the alliance.”
Dr. Glenn made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “I was worried about the exact opposite. What if Aventina isn’t habitable at all? Or maybe it has the potential for life, but . . . you know, these things are unpredictable. Even under all the right conditions . . .” She had been staring right past me, but now her eyes swerved to meet to mine again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m rambling.”
“You’re not.”
“I guess what I mean is if there’s no life down there, then I came all this way for nothing. The rest of them will just study rocks and minerals and shit, and I . . .” Her voice had started to quake, and I stepped forward automatically, instinct telling me to comfort her and reason forcing me not to. For the first time, I noticed the faint, tangy aroma wafting off her. Tequila.
Dr. Glenn was a biologist, and the only one aboard Helius 9. I suddenly realized that she must be suspended precariously between wonder at what we might discover and fear that we may find nothing at all. I wanted to say something, let her know that she would be needed no matter what might await us on the planet’s surface, but she was right. If there was no life, she would have traveled all this way, months and months, for nothing. I chewed the inside of my cheek, searching for the words that might reassure her, but it seemed the Tequila was already doing that job for me. When she put the bottle to her lips, a small bead of clear liquid escaped and trickled down her lips.
She held the bottle out to me, pale contents sloshing noisily in the otherwise still room.
“You should have some.”
“My shift starts soon,” I said halfheartedly. This might be my last chance to speak with Dr. Glenn. It would no doubt be my last chance to speak with her like this.
“Come on!” She insisted. Her voice was husky from the heat of the liquor. “It might be your last day on earth.” She gestured around the room with the bottle, then laughed, bitterly, at her own joke. My last day on earth. I smiled a little sadly. When I took the bottle from her, her fingers were warm, and I forgot all about Aventina, and about the god-forsaken mission, for just a few moments.
