Strapped tight to his seat in the trembling space capsule, sweating, eyes clamped shut, Zill found himself thinking back to the midnight moment so many years ago when a squat, shadow-draped, inexplicable creature had crawled from his closet into his bedroom, dragging its belly across the floor. It had pawed slowly across the room, head swiveling, seeming to regard its surroundings – and within a second it had vanished. Zill, stirred halfway out of sleep by the intuition of a strange presence, had stared in bafflement at the apparition from his bed, feeling paralyzed in every muscle. He must have fallen asleep again just after the being had left, for he had no memory after it had paused in the center of the floor. The next morning, Zill had tried drawing a picture of the creature before heading to his lessons at the Children’s Lyceum. The man of Quormalon still had his old drawing: In a box somewhere in the storage closet at home, he thought.
“Three minutes to impact!” called out an ebullient Vergyns from his seat up front at the navigation displays and dials. The skin of that man’s face, ordinarily a faint indigo color, was now flushed with the blood of excitement to a deep purple. Zill looked at his own hands – his racing blood had turned them to a darker shade of green than usual. It was the same story with blue-skinned Gilitok seated to his left, and with the three other members of the crew.
“No worries,” boomed Vergyns. “We’re decelerating fine. The shock absorbers will take care of the rest.”
Another minute, and the capsule was hit with tremendous force, jostling all five members of the Cherub Expedition horribly. Unsecured odds and ends in the capsule flew up to the ceiling, bounced, tumbled, then settled. Zill felt himself pushed up toward the ceiling as well, prevented from knocking his head or back against the metal panels overhead only by his restraints. The sensation was like being suspended upside-down. He felt so ill from this, and from the sudden shaking of a moment ago, that he heaved, tasting bile trickling up his throat onto the roof of his mouth. With difficulty he kept from vomiting.
Cheers arose. Seat restraints unbuckled, flasks produced, whiskey and gin guzzled down. Zill choked again at the thought of drinking. Zill freed himself from his chair, stepped hesitantly across the capsule with the magnetic socks that kept him attached to the floor, then gathered his spacesuit and gear from his locker. Zill zipped open his thin, one-piece suit and wriggled himself into the leggings and sleeves. Focused intensely on his body, he could feel Cherub’s anti-gravity pressing up his two metal zara bracelets against the soft undersides of his wrists. The bracelets were reminders of his recently expired zaron, or temporary marriage, to the two husbands with whom he had conceived his twenty-four children, still in their pupal phase back at the incubation facility.
Zill breathed deeply as the memory struck. It had been his first zaron, and the dissolution of that union with Mei and Greni had been wrenching, however certain the conclusion had been. In another six years or so, his seed-eggs would again be mature enough to merge in triads with those of two new husbands, and it would be time for another hiatus from his astronautic work and training to complete a second mating communion – the production of at least three broods of pupae being his duty to the Conglomerate of Quormalon. But for now, and for a good while to come, Zill had his intellectual and physical explorations to occupy him, and the thought was constantly revivifying and heartening. Even as busy as he’d been in the weeks since Cherub came to Quormalon’s attention, Zill had found time for an hour or two of star-gazing most nights, lying in the grass behind his house, watching the meteor showers and wondering about all the strange planets out there in the immense beyond – their clouds and seas and mountains and plains and rivers – that he could never hope to glimpse or visit. The only other celestial worlds he had explored in his career had been eight or nine of the two-dozen-odd featureless asteroid-moons milling around Quormalon, the novelty of which had inevitably dissipated over the years. Now, as Zill stood on the threshold of seeing a world no Quormalonian, and perhaps no being whatsoever, had beheld, he felt the sudden, bracing squirt of awe-juice (as he privately termed it) splash his stomach. Zill strapped on his magnetic boots, adjusted his gloves, and sealed shut his helmet’s visor – he was the first crew member to finish preparing for the excursion ahead.
The magnetically polarized Space Capsule B, shot like a bullet only seven hours earlier from the Millionaires’ Cannon on planet Quormalon, had safely crash-landed on the mysterious world of Cherub – stuck fast now to its lifeless, metal-rich surface, magnetically anchored to it so as not to be pushed back into space by the anti-gravitational virtue of this bizarre “repulsor” planet.
* * *
From out of deep space – interstellar or intergalactic, none could say – the little planet, unharnessed to any star, had shown up suddenly, an approaching dot of light in the telescopes of Quormalon’s astronomers. Calculations were quickly run, and to universal stupefaction it was found that this orphan world would soon pass very close to Quormalon – so close, in fact, that desperate panic had flared over the near-certainty that Quormalon would be gravitationally persuaded from her orbit by the interloper into the cold outlying regions of the Deneb system, killing all life on the temperate world. But as Cherub (as the rogue planet was dubbed) approached, no perturbations of the seas’ tides or Quormalon’s orbit were noticed. Little by little, cautious relief began to grow among the populace. Time passed, and all the expected effects of Cherub’s nearing remained absent. The sense of joy was phenomenal – but what could possibly account for the miraculous news?
Most were content to ignore the why and let well enough alone. But the astronomers and physicists were avid to solve this mystery – and to that end began construction of a massive cannon to fire an explosive shell at Cherub as it passed close by. The hope was that spectroscopic data provided by the explosion might reveal some of the planet’s molecular makeup. Could some unknown element or compound be responsible for the absence of gravitational influence?
The scheduled day came, and the shell was fired. Now a second wave of astonishment hit Quormalon – for the shell never hit Cherub at all, but instead slowed just before hitting its target, then began returning toward its departure point, as though an invisible tether had been stretched taut and was now snapping back. (Fortunately, the bomb landed in the vast Turquoise Ocean and never detonated anyway.) Now all of Quormalon, scientist and layperson alike, were scratching their heads indeed – for the question now was not merely missing gravity, but what seemed to be anti-gravity, of a kind that only exerted its force at close distances.
Within a few dozen days, Cherub would be passing on from its close proximity with Quormalon. The Quormalonians might never again have a chance to study this newly-discovered “repulsor planet” phenomenon. Quickly, a second scientific enterprise was organized: again, a projectile would be shot from the Millionaires’ Cannon – but this one would not be filled with explosives, but with explorers…
* * *
The team all suited up, Vergyns punched a button near the hatch, which separated into two parts, one turning upwards, the other downwards to provide a ramp. The air in the capsule quickly flew out into the vacuum, rushing around the team’s spacesuits. Revealed was a magnificent view of the star-flecked heavens and the barren, silver grandeur of the Cherubian landscape. All five crew members gasped – the telescope images reproduced back home in the periodicals hadn’t been nearly clear or magnified enough to prepare them for an up-close view of the wonders of this free-floating world.
The land was raked with innumerable narrow gullies and canyons, between which rose columns and ridges of distinct rock strata. Space Capsule B had apparently landed on a plateau, which the crew confirmed after they exited their craft and explored in all directions. They all stepped cautiously, flatfootedly – not quite trusting yet that their magnetic boots would keep them from flying off into space. Even after the team grew confident of their safety, walking was still laborious, since the magnetic attraction of the boots to the ground was so strong. Zill was put in mind of trying to wade through ankle-high caramel or honey.
He listened to his breath and the hiss of precious, life-sustaining nitrogen gas entering his suit from the tanks on his back. Heat radiated from patches spaced all over the interior of Zill’s suit, keeping the air at a comfortable 302 degrees Absolute. Speaking over the radio link, it was Jamisch who began the line of inquiry that was on everyone’s mind.
“Canyons? How? They’re always carved out by water, or some other liquid. Or sand storms or dust storms, anyway. And –”
“And a liquid or particles have to be secured to a planet by gravity,” finished Gilitok.
A pause. “So – the planet must once have had normal gravity,” said Zill. Everyone murmured an assent. But the puzzle could be explored no further – not without more investigating. Vergyns and Yon began setting up their camera on a tripod. The three others selected small hammers and chisels from among the tools they kept in pouches near their waists, then started chipping away at the planet’s surface, gathering samples for examination back home. Most of the team’s equipment – suits, camera, tripod, utensils, tins – were lined with powerful magnets, so as not to shoot off into the vast void; and the crew all wore magnetic gloves and kneepads so that one could secure oneself to the ground on all fours when need be. Zill, Jamisch, and Gilitok carried special bags with wide-open mouths that hovered above them, attached by wires to their wrists; these caught the upward-flying flakes of rock broken loose by the chisels. High above, both Deneb A and B shone, spreading intense light across the landscape and illuminating every detail, every crack and dimple in the ground.
Zill could feel a tingling in his feet growing little by little, as well as a blood-rich wooziness in his head – now that his pumping heart and life-liquid were suddenly confronted by anti-gravity (of a strength slightly greater than that of the normal gravity back on Quormalon), Zill’s circulation was off-kilter and inefficient. The team’s plan was to return to the capsule within a few hours to rest or sleep on the ceiling, giving their circulatory systems a break from what was effectively like being suspended upside-down. Because of the health danger, the team planned on spending no more than thirty to forty hours in total on Cherub before strapping on parachute packs, dialing off the magnetism of their boots, and letting themselves hurtle back towards Quormalon, leaving the capsule behind forever. The anti-gravity of Cherub would give them an initial boost before their own planet’s gravity took over, drawing them in; once in the atmosphere, the parachutes would open and let them return home with their lives.
As the five worked, Gilitok busied himself composing a little poem out loud to amuse himself. The others smirked and muttered, tolerating grudgingly the stream-of-consciousness chatter they heard over their radio links. What Gilitok eventually came up with was:
*
* *On Quormalon the atmosphere’s a sea:
* *The fish are birds, and sea-weeds are the trees.
* *And on the floor, like crabs do scuttle we –
* *But here, we’re fish that have no sea to breathe.
*
Zill kept gazing back at Quormalon as Gilitok prattled – the planet was a palm-long crescent from this distance, covered about equally by the blue-green oceans and the white-tan islands of sandstone, chalk, and marble. On a world with no air at all, the atmosphere of Zill’s home planet did indeed suddenly seem as thick as an ocean of water.
Minutes later, the team had found a steep slope leading down from the plateau, and was making its way into a canyon carefully. Zill, Jamisch, and Giliotk chiseled off samples from the various rock strata as they descended. From the open, overhanging bags they gathered the flakes and stuffed them in tins; and they stuffed the tins, as they were filled, into closed bags tied to both sides of their waists. The magnetic coatings of the closed bags were so thick that they easily overpowered Cherub’s reverse gravity, causing them to dangle downwards rather than up. Yon and Vergyns, meanwhile, were struggling to keep their camera level and steady, the former often holding two of the tripods’ legs while the other snapped a photograph.
The descent was steep and arduous on the legs, but not dangerous – the true danger, as always, was that one might find oneself with both legs unconnected to the ground. Gradually the slope leveled out, and the team soon found themselves at the bottom of a deep canyon. Samples were chiseled from what must once have been – eons ago? centuries? years? – the bed of the stream that had carved out the two declivities.
Feeling achy and tired from the descent, the team agreed to take a break. Kneeling down with effort against the anti-gravity, Zill and the others rolled onto their backs and secured their suits to the metal-rich ground. Zill pushed a button on his forearm, and little tubes extended from the inside of his suit’s collar towards his mouth. He sucked greedily on the water and nutrient juices they dispensed.
Yon, who was lying beside Zill, nudged him, making the juice dribble up across his face, stinging his eyes. “Hey, over there,” Yon said over the radio link, pointing. “Caves.”
The team turned their heads. Far down the canyon, a number of dark crevices could be seen near the bottom of the slopes. Most looked too small for a person to climb through, but others might admit entry, at least if one stooped down. How deep did they go? Murmuring with enthusiasm, the five astronauts forgot their break and roused themselves, and with plodding steps made their way to the shadowy mouths.
The team pulled out flashlights from their supply pouches and shone the beams into caves large and small. Many of the entrances were too high up on the slopes to investigate, but the team found more than enough intriguing possibilities that were accessible. No interior wall could be seen by the flashlights in any of the crevices – the caves were deep enough to swallow the light and reveal nothing.
The first entrance the team came across that was large enough to admit them, they entered, having only to stoop occasionally where the ceiling bulged down. They made their way slowly, sticking tight together. Each man carried a flashlight, and the five beams together revealed all the features of the surroundings. After a brief narrow tunnel, the cave opened into an irregular chamber, with a floor that sloped down slightly and a ceiling that stayed relatively level. All over the cavern, stalagmites and stalactites strained towards each other – each pair stymied for eternity in their ambition to unite. More evidence of liquid, thought Zill, but no one spoke. Is there frozen water here somewhere – locked in the stones, the floor, the ceiling? The narrow tunnel seemed to resume at the other end of the chamber, leading into more shadow. Scattered across the ceiling were stones and pebbles – the first the team had seen on Cherub. Zill halted and looked above him, trying to imagine the moment in the indefinite past when – somehow – gravity had flipped, and those rocks had tumbled from the floor to the ceiling. Or perhaps the process had been gradual, and during some period of time this rubble had hovered and drifted listlessly, while outside the water, atmosphere, stones, and everything else had wandered into the immense nothingness.
More photographs and samples were taken. Following the tunnel at the back of the chamber, the team stumbled on, tired but curious to see more, free hands steadying themselves against the close walls. At the threshold of a new chamber, found within two or three minutes, Jamisch, who happened to be leading, abruptly stopped.
A pause. “Hey! Can we keep going?” called Yon from the back.
Jamisch waved frantically and hustled into the chamber, not taking his eyes from the ceiling. Soon the rest of the team was beside him, staring up in amazement.
Ten or twelve feet above the crews’ heads, at the center of the ceiling, rested a long, simply-fashioned table of dark red, varnished wood – upside-down, of course. Along its two sides, at regular intervals – like dishes served to guests, though there were no chairs present – rested, on plates and servers, a variety of colorful pies, glistening tortes, exquisitely-crafted cakes and tarts, and even what looked like a tall croquembouche. Atop the multi-layered desserts, some dribbled with chocolate sauce, sat artful arrays of pecans, almonds, walnuts, strawberries, candied peach slices and cherries, and frosting flowers. It was a banquet of sweets expertly baked and decorated – as fresh-looking as if it had been placed on the table only hours ago. Of course, there were no micro-organisms on Cherub that would cause the cakes to deteriorate: so who knew how long they’d been sitting there?
Nobody spoke for a long while. “Guess we’re in time for the wedding,” Gilitok finally said.
A strange, seizing thrill – half panic, half what felt almost like rapture – had run up Zill’s spine, and every hair of his body stood on end. Nothing more unaccountable could have presented itself on this dead world (or supposedly dead world); nothing more improbable could have struck the team’s senses: not a fourth dimension of space, not a fourth primary color, not a second gender.
“I’m not hallucinating, right?” said Jamisch. “You all see the cakes, right? It’s not just all the blood in my brain?”
They all saw the cakes.
“A trick? A trap?” said Vergyns, snatching at half-formed thoughts.
“A joke!” proclaimed Yon. “It’s got to be.” Zill noticed just then that the tunnel continued at a corner at the other end of the chamber, farther into the recesses of the cave. He kept staring there, trying to shake the eerie sense that someone was about to walk into the cavern from the shadows, like a proprietor welcoming the crew to his bakery.
“How?” said Vergyns. “You mean, someone from Quormalon got here just before us?” Yon nodded.
“That still makes no sense,” said Jamisch. “An undetected trip, all the way to Cherub, just to pull a joke like this? Let’s load up our secret capsule with baked goods and a table?”
“You think it was someone else – someone who used to live here?” Vergyns asked Jamisch.
“Or still does,” said Jamisch, unable to peel his eyes from the baffling sight.
“Why are still waiting here?” said Gilitok. “We can stand on the ceiling and take a closer look – take some samples!”
“And give our blood-systems a rest,” said Zill.
Gilitok approached the cave wall nearest to him. “Take it at a run,” said Vergyns. “Or you’ll fall upwards once the anti-gravity hits your back… Oh, and dial down your boots’ magnetism, you won’t be able to run otherwise!”
“Right, I was just thinking of that,” said Gilitok. He stepped back a few paces, then kneeled to open some small panels in his footwear, and adjusted some minute dials. Prepared at last, he steadied himself, then ran at the wall… and kept going at a suddenly bounding, galloping pace until he reached the ceiling – at which point he quickly lost his balance, stumbled, and then rolled comically across the rocky upper surface, coming to a halt just beside one of the table legs.
“Oof!” said Gilitok. “Why’d they make these spacesuits so thin?”
“Getting back down to the floor’s going to be a chore,” said Zill.
Gilitok stood up. “Here, catch,” said Yon, positioning himself just beneath his co-adventurer. “I’m not running with this thing.” He dropped the camera, attached to its tripod, upwards, and Gilitok caught them with another “Oof!” One of the sample bags, with empty tins inside, followed – this required a strong upward heave.
“I’m coming up too,” said Yon, adjusting his boots. He ran faster than Gilitok did, but succeeded in keeping upright. The rest then joined the other two in their upside-down congregation around the spread of desserts. Only Zill, just like Yon, lost his balance and rolled comically, “oof”ing and groaning, while the others poorly restrained their snickering.
At least it’s good to feel gravity in the normal way for a bit, thought Zill as he stood. The crew all leaned on the table and inspected the cakes and pies closely. “Needless to say, nobody’s eating anything,” said Vergyns.
“How could we, through our helmets?” said Gilitok.
“I mean the samples we take, once we’re back in the capsule,” said Vergyns.
“We’ll have to use our hammers and chisels – they all must be frozen rock-hard,” said Zill.
Jamisch touched a frosting flower very delicately. “Um, no – it’s soft, Zill.”
“What?”
“See for yourself,” said Jamisch. Everyone poked at the cakes and pies delicately. It was true: they were all as soft and yielding as if the room were at a moderate temperature.
The team shook their heads. “Well, good Celestial Lord,” said Yon.
He and Vergyns set up their camera on its tripod and began taking careful photos of each cake, pie, and torte. Zill was fascinated by the beautiful treats – they featured patterns of decoration that were even more intricate, precise, and beautiful than he’d been able to gather from the floor. The icing, fondant, marzipan flakes, nut crumbs, and fruit slices described tessellations of diamonds, squares, pentagons, ovals, and circles, as well as more complex interlocking shapes, that put Zill in mind of mosaics or tile flooring.
Jamisch, Gilitok, and Zill selected small knives from their pouches, flipped them open, and began taking samples from the already-photographed desserts and sealing them in tins. It felt a shame to Zill to destroy such beautiful works of art – which had lain untouched in their painstakingly-crafted perfection for who knows how long – but he reminded himself that slicing them was for the sake of science; and anyway, the crew had the photos.
Some of the smaller tortes fit into the tins without having to be mutilated. The insides of the cakes were of various colors and consistencies – mostly what looked to be chocolate, vanilla, and perhaps some fruit-flavored batters, often combined in layered or swirled patterns just as precise and almost as artistic as the frosting and toppings’ designs. Zill looked around: it was certainly not a crew of restauranteurs or servers he had joined for this expedition, for they were making a horribly mangled mess of the desserts with their slicing work.
Jamisch said: “Hey – the plates won’t budge. They’re glued to the table or something.”
Zill tried nudging a pie by the plate, and then another – it was true, they wouldn’t move. He leant down and looked closely at the plates. “I think they’re made of wood, too.”
“They’re part of the table,” said Jamisch. “I can’t even see a gap between table and plate.”
Zill came to one of the last untouched cakes, a smaller one: round, cyan-blue, with white circles of fondant surrounding its sides and cherry halves set all around its rim on the top. Zill hardly noticed any of those details, however – his eyes went right to the exquisite decoration, the white fondant-drawing, in the cake’s center. Executed in remarkable detail, it portrayed an odd creature resting on its stomach – something like a big cat, a leopard or lion, but having the head of a man. From the creature’s back spread upward four wings like those of a dragonfly, and from its stomach bulged sideways several round pouches of flesh – squashed, perhaps, against the presumed surface on which the creature was resting. Zill’s mind couldn’t help but race back to the night in his childhood when he had seen, or thought he had seen, a shadowy, four-legged creature crawl from his closet.
Zill paused before the cake for over a minute, knife in hand. He must have been the first to see it – someone else would have said something about the strange depiction. So a photo of the item hadn’t been taken yet – but for some reason, Zill found he didn’t care. He set a tin beside the cake – unfortunately, the dessert looked just barely too large to fit inside. He’d have to take a sample – and cut into the beautiful rendering of the creature. Zill hesitated over which section of the image to take; then, reluctantly, he cut down as neatly as he could, knife point at the cake’s center, then cut again, and with fingertips and blade lifted the thick slice into the tin. With him would go the hybrid creature’s head.
Zill yet lingered over the cake. For some reason, he didn’t want any of the other crew members to see the drawing. Zill eyed them – at the moment, it looked like all four were fully distracted with their photo- and sample-taking. As surreptitiously as he could, Zill brought his knife above the cake, poising it there for a second. Then, swiftly, he scraped and swirled and erased the fondant-drawing of the creature, spreading an even layer of white paste over the formerly cyan-blue top of the cake. Zill wiped the fondant from his knife and moved on.
* * *
Back in Space Capsule B, out of his spacesuit, lying on the ceiling with the rest of the crew and listening to them snoring, letting his circulatory system rest, Zill couldn’t stop thinking about the creature on the cake – and about his childhood vision. He’d along ago decided that it must have been a dream – no matter how awake he remembered feeling, no matter how sharp the memory of being paralyzed in bed, watching the dark shape crawling gradually and fluidly across the carpet like a slow-moving wave slipping towards a beach.
Zill kept closing his eyes, turning his head on his pillow, and breathing in deeply the nitrogen that had been pumped into the capsule from tanks after the crew had exited about a dozen hours earlier. He knew he kept nearing the edge of sleep, but no matter how tired he felt, rest kept eluding him. He eyes popped open again and again, returning to the magnet-lined bags, crammed full of tins of rock flakes and cake and pie slices, resting above him on the floor of the capsule. He’d numbered and initialed all his samples; the slice with the creature’s head wouldn’t be hard to find.
What sense could be made of all this? To Zill’s surprise, since first encountering the table, the crew had speculated very little about their impossible discovery. Maybe everyone was too exhausted – hiking around with magnetic boots became murder on the legs after only a couple of hours. But as Zill lay and pondered, the feeling grew in him, though he couldn’t be sure, that the other crew members had been slowly, mutely accepting the possibility – no, the likelihood – that some beings or people lived beneath the surface of this world. And it occurred to Zill that the table of cakes may have been their form of a welcome… But how could the style of food offered to them be so similar to that found on Quormalon? Did the denizens of Cherub somehow already know far more about those of Quormalon than vice versa? If only the crew could find them, get in contact with them: perhaps to learn the secret of the planet’s anti-gravity, and the meaning of the table set with inexplicably-unfrozen desserts…
Zill wavered on the boundary of sleep and waking. After a while he realized he was hungry. The nutrient juices and rations he’d consumed less than an hour ago seemed non-existent in his stomach. Groaning softly, with a woozy head and exhausted muscles, he stirred and lifted his upper body. Zill squinted and scrutinized each crew member. Once satisfied by the slow and even rising and falling of their chests that they were all asleep, Zill rummaged through his pack, took out his magnetic socks and gloves, and slipped them on. He crawled down the side of the capsule on all fours, then reached the floor, his body tugged upwards by the anti-gravity. With one hand he searched through the bag of tins and located the one with his initial and the number he remembered. He unscrewed the lid – inside was the slice of blue cake with the man’s head drawn in fondant. It looked wonderfully delicious – and Zill had absolutely no appetite any longer for bland rations and sickly-sweet nutrient juice.
No one would suspect him – he’d clean up every smudge of frosting and every last crumb, then hide the tin in his personal sack. If someone brought up the discrepancy between the number of photos and the number of samples, the crew would probably just put it down to a lost tin.
Zill pulled off a glove and picked up the slice: it felt wonderfully cool and soft, a bit spongy, but with some heft and weight that promised a satisfying snack. He studied the man’s head. It was nondescript: some hair, two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth. The Cherub-people must look like us, thought Zill. We must share the same epochs-dead ancestors of Gaia. Or perhaps not – perhaps they don’t look like us, but they do know what we look like.
Slowly, wanting to savor the pleasure, Zill brought the slice to his lips and bit into the moist, flesh-like cake.
* * *
They explored more caves, but never found any more signs of intelligent beings. They rested again in the capsule, and soon the hour approached when the crew had to head back to Quormalon. Cherub was passing on now, away from its close approach to the planet, and if the crew delayed very long, they would be castaways on Cherub, cut off from their home planet forever.
They hiked to a pre-determined point – at the top of another plateau, as it turned out – where they knew the center of Quormalon would be directly overhead at this hour. With parachute packs strapped over their nitrogen tanks, and bags full of photos, samples, and supplies tied to their wrists and slung over their shoulders, the crew took a last look across the barren planet that had presented them with such unyielding enigmas. Left behind them in the capsule, protected by a glass case, was a recording of greetings, music, and spoken literature for any race of beings that might come across the abandoned spacecraft in the future.
“Maybe they’ll be able to make some sense of this place back home, after taking a look at what we’re bringing,” said Vergyns to the others. He sighed. “But I doubt it.”
“Just a shame this place won’t stick around for us to learn more,” said Yon.
All together, the crew dialed off the magnetism of their boots. Abruptly they flew upwards towards home…
…all except Zill.
Zill watched his fellows disappear into specks against the half-circle of Quormalon. He kept turning the dials on his boots back and forth, to no effect. Figuring the dials must have malfunctioned, he stripped off his boots entirely – but he still remained on the ground. Indeed, he no longer felt as if he were hanging upside-down, but rather as if gravity had reversed direction, back to normal.
Zill looked around, stunned. He breathed deeply, feeling the brim of panic edging into his heart.
He kept spinning, hoping to find something, anything, that would explain why he was not hurtling homeward. Then he paused, noticing something. Over a mountaintop, Deneb A was rising. Zill squinted and cupped a palm over the top of his visor. At that moment, his heart seemed to throw itself against his chest.
Against the white disc of the flaring star, perhaps half a mile away, Zill could just make out the form of a four-legged creature resting on the ridge line. Somehow, even at that distance, he could see that the creature was turning its head towards him slowly.
And what am I to think? ran through Zill’s mind, as though the words were intruding in his brain by some outside force. That there are pockets and corners of this universe where the laws of reality no longer run true – are no longer neutral, no longer indifferent to the dreads and desires, joys and agonies of conscious beings?
To live in such a place, forever – has that been my deepest wish all along?
Zill could feel his muscles weakening. He knew that he was losing consciousness gradually, and that the being on the bright ridge seemed to be hovering ever closer to him, minute by minute. Something, or someone, that had drawn many souls to it before, from eon to eon, was now drawing his, irresistibly – and Zill knew, past doubt, that he could never again hope to leave the wandering planet of Cherub.