Elementary Dietetics on the Fifth Moon of Septhauser by Karl Lykken

Autumn knew she would touch down in ninety seconds, though she still couldn’t see the moon’s surface through the swirling yellow clouds, let alone her closed eyelids. She felt her pace, the same steady pace at which she’d descended the cable from their ship through the atmosphere all the way to her present point, and marked time. Sixty. Thirty. Twenty.

Ten. She opened her eyes, earlier than strictly necessary. Pink sand stretched out beneath her, marred by the landings of her three crew mates, who huddled together a few meters from the cable’s base. Autumn refrained from looking farther out; distant views could be deceiving.

Five. The enormity of the moment threatened to break her concentration. The fifth moon of Septhauser: a massive celestial body, untouched by humans (well, until Alek landed a few minutes before), and uncharted even by machines. Intense electromagnetic fields like the one surrounding this moon provided the few opportunities left for people to explore the truly unknown, and Autumn intended to remember every second of the experience–and only partially because that was her job.

One. She detached from the cable and crumpled into the surprisingly foamy sand, right on time. After climbing to her feet, she slowly spun around, noting the view in all directions, before making her way over to her team. She counted her steps, and upon reaching the others, turned to see how her short path would look coming from the opposite direction.

Much like anywhere else in the area, save for the cable, she thought. The cherry blossom hue to the heavy winds suggested their tracks might be unrecognizable by the time they returned, and even prior to her guide training she knew better than to rely on distant landmarks on a misty moon. “Seventeen paces,” she whispered to herself.

She turned and joined her teammates, receiving three scowls as greeting. She guessed only one was meant for her, as Klussmen typically reserved his displeasure for their leader, and Alek simply lacked an alternative expression.

“Can you remember the path to the drop zone from here, Breadcrumbs?” Sobel signed. “Or are we lost?”

“Ready for orders, sir,” Autumn signed back, amazed as ever by how a minimalist 9-year-old language created to facilitate communication in electronic-free space suits in low-visibility environments already evolved to allow for sarcasm and derogatory nicknames.

“Good. We head towards the red cliffs,” Sobel replied, looking at Klussmen. “That is an order. Ready or not. I’ll take point.”

Autumn may have joined the conversation late, but she doubted she missed much. Klussmen, the engineer and expert on the behavior of the malfunctioning and presumed-crashed explorer drone they were tasked with tracking down, wanted to find the drone directly. Sobel, the team leader who knew that a man whose crowning achievement was an uneventful mission to retrieve a black box could only expect a biography of the ‘auto’ variety, recognized that the shortest distance between two points provided the least opportunity. A difference of opinion about where to start their search seemed inevitable, particularly in retrospect.

The team lined up single file–Sobel, Klussmen, Autumn, then Alek–and departed for the burgundy cliffs. Sobel weaved more than required by the largely flat terrain, and Autumn committed the angle of every twist and turn to memory.

3,117 paces in, they came upon a green swell in the sand. They stopped, and Sobel motioned for Alek to investigate. Alek moved cautiously, his weapon raised. He got within a meter of the substance, then looked back at Sobel. “Fungus,” he signed.

Sobel and Klussmen moved in for a closer look, but Autumn stayed put. Less movements made, less to forget. She watched as Sobel pulled out a small tube, then ordered Alek to collect a sample. Autumn looked away as Alek leaned in towards the green mass. Most extraterrestrial life discovered to date proved harmless, but her stomach wasn’t versed on the statistics.

She gazed back at her path through the sand, and observed a second green patch she hadn’t noticed before. She frowned. A landscape that changed with the light or viewer’s angle offered little comfort to a guide on her first real mission.

After a few minutes, Alek entered her line of sight, seemingly unharmed. “Alright?” Autumn inquired.

“Yes.”

Autumn smiled, but spared Alek from further conversation–he didn’t find himself in the lonely frontiers of space by accident. Sobel, fungus-filled tube in hand, pressed onwards (after yet another change in direction), and his crew followed.

At length, small rocks started cropping up, with new formations every hundred meters, then every dozen. Autumn studied their details, making sure she could distinguish one from another. The length and width of every crack, the slope of every surface, the distance between the rock and her path, the–

“Whoa!” She stopped suddenly, half an inch from Klussmen’s back. Between the rocks and her pace counts, she hadn’t enough attention left to pay for the party coming to an unexpected halt. She took one measured step back, then looked forward. Something returned her gaze.

Or at least, it appeared to. It had no discernible eyes, or head. But its front pointed right at her, then at Sobel, who waved frantically to get Alek’s attention. “Capture it,” he ordered.

Autumn chewed her tongue. The organism was only half a meter in length, and from where they stood it had no visible means of defending itself, but the fact remained that it stood its ground when approached by four alien organisms, at least one of whom meant it harm. Either it was being foolish, or they were.

Sobel waved hard enough to pull Autumn’s focus from the egg-shaped slug. “Capture it. That is an order.”

Autumn turned to Alek, who met her eyes. He signed, low and fast, “My role is combat. Your role is leading the team to the cable. Remember.”

With that, he walked towards the creature, pausing when he came within five meters of it. He pulled out his net, then stepped sideways, circling his target. This time, Autumn forced herself to watch.

The slug didn’t look at Alek (as far as Autumn could tell). It just slid forward and to the right, heading away from him. Alek changed course, heading directly towards it. He stepped carefully, moving only slightly faster than his quarry. He lifted his net, slowly, and closed in.

Four meters.

Three.

Two.

“Alek!” Autumn screamed, staring at the spot where her friend had stood but a moment before. He fell–or started to fall–she was sure of it. But then, what? He vanished. A flash of light and he was nowhere to be seen.

“But he must be there,” Autumn muttered to herself. “He must be.”

The ground was firmer here, and he’d left no footprints, but she remembered the exact path he took, and where it ended. She lifted her foot to follow, then set it back down where it was. Where was the slug?

Sobel motioned to her. “It’s quicksand. Follow his steps and try to pull him out.”

“What happened to the slug?” Autumn asked in reply.

“Sank,” Sobel signed.

Klussmen shook his head. “Not sank. Disappeared. At the same time. Exactly.”

Autumn looked back at the spot where she last saw her friend. She freely admitted that the quicksand on this moon might live up to its name, might even pull a man down faster than the human eye could see. But Alek and the slug both falling victim to it at the exact same moment?

“Trap,” she signed. “Can’t trust the path. Need to go back to the cable.”

Sobel fumed. “Pull him out. That is an order.”

Autumn pictured Alek’s ever-scowling face. She knew if their places were reversed, he’d try to find her. Hell, he’d try to find Sobel. But their places weren’t reversed. Something got Alek, despite all his experience, all his instinct. And she was still here, with two-thirds of a tank of oxygen and two-thirds of her crew mates left and the route back to the cable stored solely inside her head. “No. We need to go back.”

Sobel drew his sidearm, aiming it squarely at Autumn’s chest. He lifted his other hand to sign, “Leave no man behind.”

Autumn didn’t reply. She turned around and took the first step back towards home, then the second. She kept her pace steady, though she felt like running. She knew Sobel and Klussmen would follow, and Alek wouldn’t.

7,638 paces to go. She tried to keep her focus on the path. When that failed, she tried other relatively light topics, like whether Sobel would have her court-martialled.

3,125. Only one of the green fungus patches remained visible. Still, a better ratio than their footprints in the sand.

2,218. The dust picked up, reducing visibility. Autumn could still see Alek falling quite clearly, though.

152. The cable came within view, about 40 paces to their left.

Autumn stopped abruptly. She looked from the cable to the remnants of her crew. “That’s not where the cable was. Something’s wrong,” she signed.

Sobel took a step forward. “You’re what is wrong. You disobeyed a direct order. You left your teammate to die. You forgot the path. But I won’t forget.”

With that, he marched towards the cable, not looking back at Autumn’s frantic warnings. Klussmen stayed behind, observing alongside Autumn the momentary flash before Sobel reached the cable and came to a halt. “Why isn’t he moving?” Klussmen asked. “Did he realize no one on the ship likes him?”

Sobel turned to face them as if to reply, but no reply came. He just stood there, motionless. At length, Autumn inquired, “Alright, sir?”

“You’re what is wrong. You disobeyed a direct order. You left your teammate to die. You forgot the path. But I won’t forget.”

Autumn glanced at Klussmen, who for once seemed concerned about, if not necessarily for, his commander. “What is your name, sir?” he asked.

“Forget. You disobeyed. Your teammate.”

“He’s insane,” Klussmen concluded. “We’ll have to hook him to the cables ourselves.”

He stepped forward, but Autumn grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face her. “He’s not insane. He’s not real.”

“What do you mean?”

The pieces fit together in Autumn’s mind more easily than she could come up with the astrosigns to explain them. “Illusion. Something reflecting light to look like him. Something reflecting light to look like the cable. But that is not the cable. The cable is 152 paces away. Invisible in the dust clouds. What we can see is a trap. Bait. Like the slug.”

Klussmen took a moment to evaluate what she said, then took another. Finally, he nodded. “He’s dead? The real one?”

Autumn shrugged, then nodded. “We should go to the cable. Real cable. We can’t trust our eyes.”

“Lead the way.”

Autumn followed orders. 151. 150.

149. A cloud burst upwards from the sand about ten meters ahead of them, but its explosive force wasn’t what froze Autumn in her tracks. That honor went to the–what? Descriptors didn’t come readily to Autumn’s mind, even in her native tongue. She might have likened it to a stubby jellyfish, minus the grace, were she not quite so preoccupied with its size–and the gaping vacuums she assumed served as mouths.

Klussmen came into her field of vision, and Autumn took full advantage of the opportunity to stop staring at the creature. “Run,” he signed.

But Autumn didn’t. She just stood there, as still as the illusory Sobel, at least until Klussmen grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Forgoing the signs, he pressed his helmet against hers and shouted, “We need to run! Now!”

“No, it’s not real! It’s trying to chase…herd us. Herd us into it’s trap.”

Klussmen sucked in his lips, looking from Autumn to the creature and back. Autumn couldn’t fault him for his doubts. She wondered herself whether she was right, or if she just couldn’t face the possibility of that thing being real.

And charging at them.

Autumn’s legs gave out. She collapsed to the ground, and Klussmen instinctively tried to break her fall, only to realize his chance to flee had passed. The creature was closing in on them fast. The two humans covered their helmets with their arms and braced for–

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. After briefly contemplating the possibility that death consisted of being frozen in the last moment of one’s life, Autumn opened her eyes and saw the harsh yellow light shining between her crossed arms. She pushed herself up into a sitting position and found the creature vanished, along with its tracks.

“You were right,” Klussmen signed upon rising to his feet. “And I was wrong. When I complained about getting catheterized for the mission, I mean.”

“Let’s keep moving.” Autumn stepped back into her own footprints before resuming counting her paces. 148. 147.

128. She turned slightly to the left, reversing one of Sobel’s unnecessary course changes that drove her–“No!” she screamed, diving to the ground while she swatted at the pulsating orange mass that appeared out of nowhere at the side of her helmet.

She spotted dozens more on the ground, approaching fast, but she regained her composure. She took a deep breath. They weren’t real; they couldn’t touch–

Something grabbed her shoulder, and she wasted no time reformulating her theories. She sprang to her feet and darted forward, only looking back to find Klussmen…Klussmen, who was right behind her signing, “Stop! Stop!”

Autumn obliged. “You touched my shoulder?”

“Yes.”

Autumn couldn’t think of an astrosign that could fully convey her displeasure, so she directed her focus to a more pressing matter. “Our footprints are gone.”

Klussmen followed her gaze to their tracks, which stopped a few steps from their current position, far from where they first diverged from their previous path. “Do you remember the way?”

She closed her eyes. How many steps did she take? She tried to replay it in her mind. She could picture the blobs, recall the sensation in her shoulder. But the exact direction she took when running for her life? “No. I don’t remember. We’re lost. Less than 100 meters from the cable.”

Klussmen tried his best to appear calm. “We’ll find it. We’ll hold out our arms, touch fingertips, and walk back and forth until we find it.”

“No. Too dangerous.”

“Do you have a different plan?”

She didn’t. Sobel, or his facsimile, was no longer visible. In every direction, there was nothing to be seen but open desert. Aside from their few remaining footsteps…

“Our tracks. Either the creature erased them, or it is blocking them. Either way, it has a physical form which was right at the end of our tracks. We should find it and grab it.”

“What? I’m an engineer. You’re a guide. We don’t fight. We run.”

“It wants us to run. It wants to trap us. But it hasn’t touched us. If it uses its strengths, this must be a weakness.”

Klussmen studied Autumn carefully. She wondered if he could tell she hoped that he would say she was crazy, that he would recommend some third option that didn’t involve wandering about blindly or trying to fight something that had presumably killed the two members of their crew with actual combat training.

He let her down. “Agreed. We should surprise it, so it can’t move away. We charge on the count of three.”

Autumn nodded, then signed, “One.”

She closed her eyes once more, the better to see her family.

“Two.”

A flood of memories poured forth, and she felt tears forming.

“Three.” She opened her eyes just in time to watch Klussmen shove her to the ground.

“Sorry,” he signed hurriedly as Autumn pulled her feet into kicking-position. “You weren’t looking. You couldn’t see. The creature… Look at it.”

Autumn looked, though the brilliant white light bouncing off of the creature was blinding. She managed to make out wide, fleshy tentacles–vines?–writhing all around them. They seemed to stem from a giant pit a few meters behind Klussmen. The organism’s limbs began to vibrate increasingly fast, until the pit suddenly spewed a viscous gray fluid. Then, all fell still.

With effort, Autumn managed not to vomit. Klussman signed something to her, but she didn’t recognize the words. He tried to convey his message a few more times in vain before putting his helmet against Autumn’s and shouting, “A Venus flytrap! Well, a Septhauser humantrap. A big carnivorous plant, luring us in.”

“But what happened to it?”

Klussmen’s smile broadened. “Exactly what we should have expected to happen after it ate an organism from a foreign planet, complete with his spacesuit and oxygen tank. I mean, Sobel’s hard to stomach under the best of circumstances.”

Autumn gathered her thoughts. While Klussmen’s explanation seemed plausible, he was making a lot of assumptions. It occurred to her that they couldn’t be sure Sobel was dead, not without checking on him. That is, not without walking over and looking into the humantrap’s big mouth. The same mouth they believed it had been attempting through increasingly inventive means to lure them into. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They spotted the cable, out past the farthest vine, and made their way to it. Autumn counted her steps as they went. She wasn’t sure why she bothered; she was only sure of the count.