Moonless by Nicky Martin
This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #5
When Lem’s ship landed on the swamp planet’s shifty soil, she heard a voice reverberate inside her head.
“Xrtz,” it said. The sounds were alien, yet the voice felt physical, like it was shifting her thoughts around, as though her brain was a messy drawer. She tried to ignore it while pressurizing her suit. Her ship’s hatch sprung upward; when she stepped down on the muck, the voice spoke again.
“Greetings,” it said in Lem’s tongue. The salutation sounded phonetically accurate, even though it didn’t actually “sound” at all—the word echoed through her mind. “This is Mogtow” the voice said, “Welcome to our home.”
The quickness that the beast learned her tongue scared Lem. The voice sounded almost exactly like Lem’s voice, but eerily deeper and hollow. She cleared her mind. She wouldn’t answer the voice until she knew who was speaking behind it. Lem focused on the murky, foggy swamp planet. It must be teaming with lifeforms but, according to her ship’s read outs, only microscopic lifeforms were present. She landed here hoping she wouldn’t need to collect much data; of course, the ghost voice negated this.
“Why are you visiting Mogtow,” the voice asked again.
This might be too complicated for single-cell organisms, Lem realized. Though, she held no reason to hide her motives; the last thing she wanted was to be considered hostile.
She focused her thoughts, “I’m an inter-galactic survey ship,” Lem explained, “I investigate the composition of worlds to see if they have life on them. I mean you no harm. I mean no creature any harm. I come as merely an Ensign Surveyor sent by the Milky Way Galactic Planetary Union.”
For the first time since her arrival, the voice wasn’t present. Lem looked up and saw the murky grey of the sky. In spite of the planet’s extraordinary mass, it had no satellites. Just a big, floating green mud-ball, no moons.
Then, she fell in surprise while watching her ship rise into the air. “What!?” Lem screamed, the force pinned her to the ground as she frantically pressed commands on her remote-control piloting device. It was useless, the ship wasn’t using its engine. Instead, it seemed like it was being lifted by an unseen force.
The creatures here had telepathy, why not telekinesis? Lem realized. Thankfully, the ship didn’t fly away, it hovered about 500 meters above Lem. Pushing herself to her feet, she struggled to run—the gravity here was more intense than earth’s, but her suit’s thrusters did a decent job adjusting. she gazed up at her suspended ship.
“Follow, please,” the voice startled Lem, booming within her mind.
The ship moved slowly northward. Lem bounded across the mushy ground, each footstep sinking her lower into the gloopy mixture. Once it was up to her waist, she didn’t sink anymore, instead walking across a precariously sticky ground. Lem saw no bodies of water around her, or rather, no familiar ones. Perhaps this was the planet’s water?
The sky shone dimly. It was “night,” according to her monitors, but a dim, grey glow lit the land around her.
As Lem outwardly observed the planet’s terrain, she subtly prepared for battle. Not overtly, knowing whatever creature lived on Mogtow could read her thoughts. Strategically, they were advanced, seeing how quickly the Mogtow creatures realized compromising her ship would put Lem at their advantage. To obscure her thoughts, Lem played a film through her suit’s media viewer. Lem chose a film randomly, settling on the most popular one. She was never a nostalgia buff.
The walk was long. Every 5 kilometers, the ship moved further north. The film provided adequate cover for her preparations. While looking at the bubbling swamp, she watched the main character navigate a strange and golden world with magical companions—a robot, a beast, a man made of plants.
Trying to pay the movie her full attention, Lem reflexively executed processes on her multi-tool. Mustn’t think about it that way. She hoped it was hard to understand the many noises in her head. After the film played three times, Lem noticed her ship stop moving. It idled above a mountain.
“Enter the cave,” the voice instructed her. She seemed to have little choice.
It was dark, but the flashlight on Lem’s spacesuit showed the way. After some walking, she saw four creatures floating a few meters off the ground. They were certainly humanoid, but freakish and…unborn? The four creatures intercepting Lem looked like oversized fetuses. All four were identical, which suggested they might bud from pods, or perhaps get produced in a factory from one mold. Either way, they disturbed her. Their huge heads rested atop thin bones, with wet, grey skin stretching painfully across their jutting, skeletal frames. Their heads made up most of their body mass.
Unlike humans, their skin was pallid, grey and reptilian. The babies reminded her of the long-extinct frog. Somehow, they were breathing on this planet, seeing their torso contract in and out, up and down, despite there being no atmosphere. Weirdest of all, the things were hairless and nude (a wardrobe choice that’s always jarring). Lem couldn’t help checking their bodies for mammary glands and exterior genitalia—neither to be found, so mammals these big babies were not.
“What are you?” Lem asked baldly, her voice trembling.
“We are Volcels,” the babies communicated to her telepathically. Even up close, they needed to use think-speak, since their strange heads lacked mouths. Just deep-set eye cavities protected by a protruding, bony forehead and two nostril-like ventilation holes in the middle.
“I am Lem,” she began, “…a wayward explorer from the Milky Way Galat—“
“We know,” the voice interrupted, “You said so already.” It wasn’t emanating from any particular one of the Volcels, rather the group collectively.
Lem decided to conserve energy and stop speaking, “Yes, my duty is simply to record evidence of life here on…” she looked at the dank, dark, drab cave, realizing that these weird babies lived here. “Here on Volcel,” she finished.
The oversized floating babies told her. “Quickly after your arrival we determined you mean us no harm,” the voice told her. “We are your envoy committee. The Volcels are eager to help the spread of our cultural knowledge, far and wide.”
Lem wanted to escape as soon as possible, “This is encouraging to hear, however, this is not my role in the Milky Way G—“
“A feast is being prepared in your honor,” the voice said. With that, the four big babies started floating through the cave, beckoning Lem to follow them.
Lem nodded. The oldest trick in the book, she thought but tried not to think. Ugh. Mind readers make everything too complicated. Whenever an alien proposes a feast, it means they’re eat you. No feast for her, thanks.
“Follow us to town,” said the voice.
At this moment, what other choice did she have with her ship held hostage? She didn’t want to follow the babies, but it felt like their psychic suggestion was being transmitted into action. Lem tromped through the small cave back to outside’s dim, grey light. She could hear the dull clattering of the Volcel village.
The Volcel buildings were tall, narrow and depressing. They looked like clay lazily rolled between two palms. The reptile-babies floated from the moist buildings shifting from the change in weight. Volcels poured out of windows throughout the building. They couldn’t fly, but they drifted down close to the ground safely, hovering just a few feet above it.
All the voices sounded identical, but they spoke over one another in a confusing, cerebral cacophony. She tried to focus in on some of the voices, absorbing the clattering chatter. As she did this, her hands worked to prepare her multi-tool.
“Are all Volcels alike?” Lem thought loudly.
“No,” the voice answered, “Our bodies are the same, but our minds burst with variation.”
“All your voices sound the same to me,” she replied, not believing the obvious hive mind. She looking around at the strange streets of the Volcel village—there was no pavement, just a delineated path for the creatures to float within.
“Your mind is unaccustomed to the rich variety,” the ominous talking explained, “Much like how humans think all insects make similar sounds.”
“You know about Earth’s species?” she asked. She assumed Mogtow had no interplanetary travel capabilities.
“We study many planets from the waveforms they project. We have seen much of Earth, it’s rigid hierarchies and brutal inhabitants,” the voice echoed.
“I take it you don’t look favorably upon us,” Lem offered.
“You are correct,” the Volcel voice said, “Vile beasts populate your planet: and not just humanity. All Earth’s creatures eating each other, devouring the old and weak, only the vulgar killers survive. The Volcels are a far more advanced, superior culture.”
“Is that so,” Lem replied absentmindedly. She never thought she’d be lectured by a bunch of baby-men who lurk around the universe behind a screen. She watched through a window to see a Volcel concentrating intently on a screen. The screen seemed to flicker from picture to picture at the baby-thing’s command.
“What do Volcels eat?” Lem asked, pretending to be curious. She had enough experience doing it to know that escaping from creeps is a delicate process—always keep them talking about themselves.
“How pleasant that you ask! A feeding ritual is about to begin,” the Volcel voice replied, “You may not participate, but you can watch. To the temple!”
The four babies and Lem marched to the middle of the town. The Volcel temple was peculiar. It wasn’t a formal structure; rather, it was a diamond-shaped scaffolding that had a hole in the middle. From the hole rose a gelatinous fat substance. Lem wondered what the Volcel word for it was, since temple was a rough translation.
“Feast!” the Volcel voices shouted in chorus. The babies floated close to the giant glob of greasy cellulite. Lem watched in horror as a spindly mouth erupted from the babies’ throats. The mouths were long ropes; springy, retractable organs resembling umbilical chords. The mouths burrowed their way into the fat glob, wagging like fierce snakes.
Lem couldn’t take anymore. She saw her ship floating above the city—too late for that. Against her better judgement, she ran back toward the cave.
“Stop her!” one of the floating babies echoes throughout the psychic-sphere. The babes didn’t bother turning around. Still sucking down nutrient fat, they used telekinetic energy to restrain Lem. She felt her muscles tighten into aching cramps. They possessed her body and marched her toward a hole in the middle of town. They tossed her down it gently. She fell, like a feather, feeling the danger creep toward her slowly and steadily.
“Move her to the processing facility,” the hive mind commanded. Lem tried to struggle, but the resistance on her muscles just made her feel tired. She slowly left consciousness…
#
This is certainly the cleanest dungeon I’ve ever been inside, was Lem’s first thought upon waking up.
“Thank you” a voice said in her head. She was finished paying attention to the hive-mind. She focused on keeping her own thoughts obscure.
The tile floors, green curtains, and plush vinyl interior of her cell was unbelievable in contrast with the dingy village above her. The solid emerald door had a small window for bringing in food. She saw a corridor of similar rooms, a floating baby-giant guarding the exit, and little else besides the spotless monochromatic green walls, floor and ceiling.
“We keep things nicest for our most special guests,” the voice explained. Great, they were definitely going to eat her. Thankfully, Galactic Cadet school trained for exactly these situations. The zest of survival took over, she acted entirely reflexively: no thought required. Finally, since landing on Mogtow, her motives were her again her own.
She took out her multi-tool and lit its flame. Shaped like a drill, the multi-tool did many things, and right now Lem used it to shoot a concentrated plasma beam to melt the door’s lock. A spasm jerked through her right arm as she tried to blast the lock.
“No, no, little girl,” the voice condescended, “That won’t work at all.”
Lem didn’t hear these words, however. She was busy thinking about a land of munchkins, reliant on the charity of fairies for survival. The multi-tool was her wand. Lem melted the lock adroitly, despite her arm cramp. She’s an escape fairy! The door opened.
She rolled out and found herself face to face with one of the giant babies. It floated at the end of the hall, using its tiny arms to direct its umbilical mouth. Lem changed the setting on her multi-tool to hyper-charged particle rounds. She fired an electron like a bullet, pulling the trigger and watching the donkey-sized fetus explode like a piñata of gore. A rotten green, it’s blood was an eerie refraction of the prison’s emerald interior.
Lem smiled at the explosion. Her confidence returned. She stormed down the corridor and melted the next door and entered a larger room with a horrifying egg perched in the center. This must be the feeding chamber.
Surrounding the eggs were pod-tubes—not for hatching, like she originally thought—but for harvest. Bodies of alien species from across the universe were trapped in the bio-tubes. A green creature with tentacle hair; an amoebas blue slime; a furious humanoid cow she-beast; an anthropomorphic paperclip; an endless litany of creatures turned into Volcel milk. Lem pitied them all, while striding across the harvest room.
But Lem stopped to a halt when she saw a human woman in a pod. It was another Galactic explorer, like her, but her body had shriveled to a husk. Without hair, her breasts were deflated, her bones poked from her skin. Lem never learned about this missing cadet, despite the academy’s dedication to never leaving a pilot behind. She must have been here for over a hundred years, long presumed dead.
In anger, Lem smashed the woman’s pod, pulling her free from the life-sucking wires of the tube, attached down her mouth, up her nose, through her ears, everywhere… She clutched her sister closely, but sadly, the woman disintegrated to dust without the life support device. Lem refused to let despair reign as she was covered in people dust. She realized the hopelessness of freeing the other prisoners.
An alarm blared throughout the harvest room. The green walls turned red with an ominous light.
Giant babies floated down the egg-fat shaft, umbilical mouths snapping, a frenzy of fetuses ready to kill the creature upsetting their food source.
Lem ran. She found the nearest door and ran inside it, already trying to forget the horror of the egg harvest, while a gaggle of floating babies chased in hot pursuit. The babies had a mostly uniform speed, but they seemed immune to fatigue. She saw a door and slammed her hand against the switch. She welded faster than she’d ever weld before or since, melting the door shut, and pausing for a moment of freedom from the killer babies. She realized this was probably her end. There was no way out, but she’d rather die slow then give the babies the satisfaction of making her goo.
She felt the babies trying to bombard her mind with psychic commands, the Volcels desperately tried to invade her, craving the fluids to be drained from her orifices. Perhaps she should just blast a particle through her skull to avoid it? The thought creeped into her mind. Lem took comfort knowing the thought was her own—the fetal freaks wanted her alive.
But Lem’s instincts wouldn’t let her make finalizing preparations just yet. She explored the room, a cavernous space with a large, metal device. It looked like an antique tabulation computer, one she remembered from a photograph all the way back in the indoctrination school of childhood.
Perhaps smashing the computer would provide a moment of respite? Lem resisted the urge, walking further to find a fetus sitting at a more advanced console. The baby stared at the display, showing a variety of waveforms and interstellar data. Lem realized this must be the way the Volcels analyze other planets.
She walked behind the sage fetus, ignorant to her presence as it contemplated the vast mysteries of the universe, and melted its head into a green goo, spraying the console’s display. Wiping off the diodes, she put the device on her head.
A rush of information sent her in a vertiginous swirl. The over-arching oneness, connecting her to the data of the universe, felt like a synthetic hallucination. She could also hear the thoughts and rhythms of her pursuers outside the room’s door. She sensed the thoughts of the fetal creatures not chasing her. In fact, she could see inside the mind’s eye of every Volcel on Mogtow.
Every Volcel alive was still.
This machine had influence over the creatures. It seemed to magnify psychic ability—so Lem allowed her thoughts to be magnified. She couldn’t avoid thinking about the horrors of the egg room, the confinement and claustrophobia of the tubes, but her thoughts shifted toward eggs in general, their protein-rich goo, their shell, the synthetic egg machine she witnessed in childhood, crafting a “farm-fresh” egg out of the requisite elements, the mountain of eggs inside the factory, propelled down a conveyor belt by water.
Water: clean, pure, flowing water. The Earth’s acid oceans, the oceans synthesized on Mars and Europa’s melted seas. The cool, claiming, completeness of water. All encompassing, the blue liquid flows through everything, drowning it all and suffocating it, washing away the stragglers and scrubbing the world clean with its coarse salt.
Lem dreamed of the ocean; the Volcels fell to the ground, unable to process the new sensory information. They imagined themselves drowning, though no creature died outside of its mind.
Sensing the change, Lem took off the device. She re-melted the door and walked outside to find the floating babies no longer floating. Instead, they writhed helplessly on the ground. The Volcels were trapped inside a cerebral prison, defenseless against their cherished weapon.
After much searching, Lem found the way out of the dungeon. Her ship crashed from the sky, smashing some Volcel buildings in the process. Her multi-tool would be able to repair the damage, but it would take another day’s worth of work. As she repaired her ship, she watched the babies continue to suffer. Their cries an uncomfortable gurgling, like clogged sinuses.
It took weeks for the Volcels to wake from their nightmare, and by this time, Lem was long gone.