Stone (Volume 1, Issue 2)

Shonda watched the ship as it cut through the atmosphere in a burst of fire. Streams of exhaust led from the tail of the vessel down to the planet’s surface. Shonda had felt alone before – by herself in pre-flight quarantine, in a crowded press conference during which the reporters designated her the arbiter of diversity in STEM as she sat alongside her fellow astronauts, the only woman and the only person of color with a microphone – but this felt different.

This kind of alone, left behind on an alien planet with only her spacesuit and a cracked helmet held together with a bit of glue to protect her from the harsh, Martian environment filled her with a heaviness. By herself, surrounded by a violent local species with no human other than —Oh, right. This guy.

In the NASA scientists’ explosive departure, Shonda had almost forgotten about the other person her team had left behind. Who the heck was this guy and why did they leave him behind with her? Shonda turned to look at him more closely and halted at the sight of the stone creatures organized in a loose circle around the ring of shattered pods that had, until recently, formed arrangement similar to an eight-pointed star. Shonda glanced back at the security officer. The man still held his gun out in front of him, angled away from Shonda, but not at a particular target. He released it with one hand to gesture at her with an open palm. Stay still, she guessed he was saying. She nodded. Morbidly, she wondered if they were really prolonging their death in any meaningful way. Perhaps they were rabbits, whose instinct to freeze could not save them from the hunters.

The Martians rolled their jagged, rocky bodies and haphazardly traveled one direction and then the other, crisscrossing with one another and cutting through the wreckage at random intervals. Finally, they ceased, becoming still, one at a time until they looked like an oddly placed assortment of red-colored rocks.

A cramp formed in the arch of Shonda’s left foot. Oh, crud. Shonda fought her body’s instinctive response to plop onto her bottom, tear her boot off, and massage the stiffening muscle tissue. Without meaning to, she tilted sideways as her toes curled and her foot arched as much as it could in the tight boot. The security guard reached out slowly and grabbed her shoulder. The gloved hand stabilized her.

Shonda moaned as the cramp moved up her leg and she smacked a hand over her face, forgetting that fractured plastic separated her mouth from her fingers. This is it, she thought. I’ve given us away. She closed her eyes and waited for one of the stones to roll over her and flatten her body into the Martian dirt. Her heart beat fast, and she forgot about the cramp. Anticipation built in her for several long seconds, but nothing happened. Shonda cracked open an eye.

With a suddenness that Shonda would never have expected from rocks, a single, weathered stone summersaulted back up the small incline from which it had originated. Shonda and the security guard ducked behind a hunk of bent metal, helpless as a low rumble reached their ears. They huddled together, arms over their heads as if they could protect themselves by appearing smaller. Like rabbits, Shonda thought again.

Image Description: A simple acrylic painting of white shooting stars against a dark galaxy with faint whorls of burnt orange and red.

Credit: Laura Browne-Lambert

But rather than come for them, the remaining stones rolled up the hill after the weathered boulder, sometimes propelled by the limbs they would grow at random, other times driven forward by some unseen force. The rumble grew louder as boulders rolled over rubble, and one rock with an oddly off-kilter hexagonal structure thundered past the pair closely enough Shonda could have reached out to touch it. The most daring part of her wished she would do it, stretch out a hand – or even a finger – but survival instinct won, and she kept her hand close to her body.

When the last boulder settled into its spot on the hilltop, Shonda hazarded a look at the security guard. He appeared as frazzled and strung out as Shonda felt. She raised her eyebrows, hoping to convey the question, What now? She must have succeeded, because the man shrugged, then held up a hand to indicate that she should hold still. He peered over the edge of their hiding spot and, after a long moment, nodded. He sat down and indicated that Shonda should do the same.

Shonda slid down next to the only other human left alive on the alien planet and waited. The man started talking, but Shonda heard nothing. She waved her hands beside her ears questioningly. After a moment of confusion, the man held up two fingers. Go to two. Shonda tapped a button on her wrist to switch frequencies.

“—here me?” The man’s voice was gravelly and thick. “Do you co—”

“I copy,” Shonda cut in.

“Great,” the man said. “Let’s get some shelter.”

“Copy,” Shonda nodded, distantly thinking that she ought to get the guy’s name before she started calling him Mr. Security or some other such nonsense. Mr. Security led the way toward the backside of the control center.

“Last I saw, part of the maintenance pod was still intact,” he said by way of explanation. They circled the building. Sure enough, one airlock had been left untouched. Shonda went straight to the control panel.

“It looks like the pod attached to this is still functional, but the generator is out,” Shonda summarized. “Just the airlock is running.”

“If there’s a working solar generator somewhere onsite, I can hook it up.”

Shonda punched in a search. “Looks like the generator in Sector Three is working,” She pointed to a highlighted dot on the monitor.

Mr. Security led the way, knees bent so that he could stay low behind broken walls and piles of debris until they came to a heavy-looking piece of black machinery attached to a group of solar panels. Half had cracks running through them, and the generator was covered with a thick layer of reddish dust.

“A hand truck would have been helpful, but if you take the panels, I can carry the generator.”

Shonda answered by disconnecting the panels, slinging the cords over her shoulder, and heaving the panels with the least amount of damage onto her back. Their return was slower, filled with stops to check on the pile of boulders in the distance, and Shonda breathed a sigh of relief when they set their burdens down beside the old generator.

The pair made quick work of setting it up. Shonda disconnected the broken solar panels and hooked up an assortment of panels with limited damage which she pillaged from nearby generators in addition to the ones she had carried from Sector Tree. Meanwhile, Mr. Security rerouted the power supply. Shonda took a quick lap around the maintenance pod as he finished, just to be certain that the computers were not missing an obvious outage. To her eye, the pod’s damage had been mostly superficial. She returned to Mr. Security. He flipped the switch and the generator turned on with a muffled hum. In the distance, a boulder shifted, and the pair paused, watching for an attack, but none came.

With a thumbs up from each of them, they returned to the airlock, and, after a few quick taps, the usual protocols began. The outer door slid shut, and the environment shifted. The temperature lowered, the air pressure changed, and oxygen filled the chamber. Finally, the door to the pod slid open.

Shonda pulled off her helmet as she walked into the chamber and inhaled deeply, feeling as if she could take a real breath for the first time in days. Mr. Security marched over to a small, porthole window, his helmet and gloves tucked under his arm.

“I think we’re in the clear,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like they can hear us, right now.”

Shonda stripped out of her suit, revealing the formfitting shirt and leggings she had been planning to wear underneath the coveralls she left in her lab. Most everyone kept a few changes of clothing in their work locker. She would have to break into the maintenance locker and commandeer a change or two.

“Actually, I wonder if they can hear us at all,” she replied. “I’m Shonda, by the way.”

“Martin,” Mr. Security said. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, think about it,” Shonda said. “So far as we can tell, they're sentient stones. They don’t exactly have ears.”

Martin shrugged. “So what? They have to see us?”

Shonda gave him a long, hard look. “They’re rocks, Martin.”

“That grow legs and throw themselves around like catapults. What’s your point?”

“I’m just saying, we’re on a completely alien planet that, until a few hours ago, we believed harbored no life whatsoever,” Shonda said, joining him at the porthole. “Who's to say they operate anything like life on Earth? Maybe they feel vibrations in the ground or changes in the wind. Maybe they communicate remotely with all other stones on Mars -- you know -- like mushrooms. This is uncharted territory for us.”

Martin turned to look at her. “So, did we just screw ourselves by turning on the generator?”

“How should I know?” Shonda shrugged. “Besides, we would have had to turn it on sooner or later. We couldn’t just live outside in our spacesuits indefinitely.”

“So, we’ll just have to wait, and see?” Martin asked. Their eyes swiveled back to the pile of stone. Still and unmoving, it could have been any other pile of rock found all over the Earth. But now – they knew better.

“Guess so.”

Image Description: Orange directional signs painted on the side of a stucco wall. The signs say "to be continued."

Credit: Reuben Juarez / Unsplash via Webador

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