The moon didn’t look as mysterious or as dangerous now that its far side was bathed in waxing sunlight at the start of its new cycle. Even as they descended in the lander nearly three thousand feet, he could begin to see the outlines of Bertha, crashed in the desolate wasteland, in all its mammoth glory. With the sun on their side this time, the mission was at least a hundred times easier, from the landing to the impending re-exploration of the alien craft. Hollanbach and Pensk had the benefits of daylight.
They touched down onto the soft lunar surface surprisingly close to where the UNFORGIVEN once stood, less than a few hundred feet away, the commander guessed as the descent engine began to kick up the loose dust that clouded their landing.
Neither man wasted any time on post landing maintenance or checklists as they both strapped on their oxygen packs and gold plated visors, and walked, (crawling actually) out of the lander’s hatch, down the ladder and onto the surface.
A little over an hour had passed since they landed there. It was time to rescue Reese, if (Hollanbach began to dubiously think as he followed Pensk out of the hatch) he was even still alive. No. Stop thinking that way, Commander, he thought to himself. You know he’s alive, he has to be.
Stepping onto the dusty soil, Hollanbach unslung the AK-47 from around his neck, modified in the same ways that the M-16 had been, and cradled it carefully in his hands as Pensk stood frozen, staring straight ahead at the ship while the lander lowered the Soviet version of the American moon rover down onto the dirt. He could hear the major’s heavy breathing.
“It is much bigger, than it looks in the pictures,” he said turning around and getting the rover ready for travel. “Much bigger, yes?”
Hollanbach heard him but didn’t answer him right away; far too busy staring ahead at the downed vessel himself, seeing it in it’s entirely for the first time. It looked a lot like a giant slug, he thought as his eyes roved over the smoothness of the unevenly striped and splotched green, brown and black contours, giving off a dull shine in the sun’s light. To be honest, it didn’t really look like a ship at all, more so resembling twisted melted metal.
He’d only seen it briefly before but he knew to view only a spot at a time because of the restrictions of their lights. He thought he remembered it looking more…cubic…than this. Shrugging his shoulders in doubt (he was still very fatigued), the commander returned the major’s glance.
“Yeah,” he said, helping to unfurl the folded rover into its full operating position. “It is pretty big, isn’t it, Major?”
Getting the main joints aligned properly, Hollanbach watched as the cosmonaut shanked it in place with a large cotter pin and bolt.
“Please,” the Russian said almost pleadingly. “You may call me Boris,” he said as he smiled gently underneath the heavy gold shielding of his face plate. “We are not on Earth any longer, and quite far from the diplomatic jurisdiction of our countries’ natural distrust of one another. Here we are teammates, friends,” he said.
His weapon still slung over his shoulder, Pensk offered his gloved hand to Hollanbach. “What do you say, Commander Hollanbach?”
The astronaut took the cosmonaut’s hand and gave it a quick shake, all the while maintaining a tight grip on the handle of his weapon.
“The name is Jon,” he told the Russian. “And I say we get in this rover of yours and go get my other friend.”
* * *
They entered the ship, Hollanbach taking keen interest (the entire time) in his surroundings, keener that what he was perhaps used to, growing ever more certain that certain aspects of what he remembered seeing before and what he seeing now had somehow been changed. But as far as what…well, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
All the little alien bodies were still there, as far as he could tell anyway, relatively undisturbed and…still dead. But there were what looked like additional footprints around the bodies, leading up into that hollowed cavity of the crashed ship. And then he became certain of it, bending down to examine them more closely. Rather gruesome footprint-lots of them, bearing two front toes and a stubby rear one, much like a chicken’s but about a thousand times bigger…..both leading to and exiting from the ship.
Turning around to face behind him, Hollanbach could see the tracks disappearing under the rover, which was about twenty feet away from him and kept on going. As tempted as he was to follow to see where this discovery led, a disturbing thought entered his head and he faced front again, trying to run, bounding in giant leaps towards the inside of the ship, jumping by a surprised Boris, gun confidently out in front of him as he brazenly yelled out Reese’s name, realizing that if these tracks were indeed new, then his friend had visitors up here.
Hollanbach suddenly came to a dead stop, a chill shooting down his spine. Who was to say they weren’t still there? Pensk came bounding up behind him, the lantern he was holding bouncing its bright beam all along the corridor as he approached as quickly as he could, trying to figure out just what had happened.
As he got there, he watched as Hollanbach knelt down to the metal deck and picked something up, staying down for a few moments before standing backup, holding his rifle firmer and more menacing now, as his breathing heavy as he stood there, as if waiting for something.
“Jon,” he said as he reached the strangely behaving astronaut. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, Boris,” he said as he let go of the rifle for a split second and reached back to hand him something.
Pensk took it carefully and examined it. It was a piece of dirty white fabric.
“Comrade,” he asked Hollanbach slowly, not even wanting to ask the question, yet still feeling the need to. “What is it?”
Inside his helmet, the major heard Hollanbach sigh heavily. “Look at it closely and tell me what you see.”
Pensk looked at it again but could still not see any significance. Or at least not wanting to. “I’m sorry, Jon,” he said. “But I don’t understand-“
“Do you see the red there?” Hollanbach asked quickly, interrupting him. “Down there at the torn edge of the fabric. Do you see it?”
Pensk looked at it and almost said no again when suddenly, he did in fact see red, a very minute speck or two of it, at the edge of the cloth, and realized too late what he was actually holding in his hand.
“Boshe moi.” he whispered, in growing fear. “Is this blood?”
“Yes it is,” Hollanbach painfully, but sternly answered him, “And that’s Reese’s suit.”
“Jon…I am sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Hollanbach growled. “With any luck, Reese is probably just hurt. I’m quite sure he’s around here somewhere. Probably up in the other lander, nursing his wounds as we-”.
Just then, Pensk’s light hit a glint that caught the cosmonaut’s eye and riveted him still, demanding his attention. He knew instantly what it was when he discovered it.
“Jon. I think you should see this.”
Hollanbach turned and grew sick as he saw it for himself, for there up against the deck by the corridor’s bulkhead was Reese’s helmet, upside down and bloody. Both men were grotesquely silent as they stood there, and intense fright barreling through their veins as they stared straight ahead at the helmet.
Hollanbach was lost now; he had no idea what in the hell to do. They came for Reese, and Reese was, or at least his helmet anyway…a clear indication that whatever had come aboard the ship didn’t take pity on him being there. The commander was beginning to feel lightheaded as Pensk continued to advance, poking around in the growing darkness with his light. They had come all this way for nothing.
“I have found something,” Pensk hollered from in front of him. “I think it is Reese.”
The commander closed his eyes tightly and cursed to himself, frightened to see what it was that the major said that he thought it was Reese.
“Let me see,” Hollanbach whispered in a low voice as he began to walk.
“No,” the Russian said, swallowing hard. “I do not think it will help you any.” Pensk averted his eyes from the disorienting sight. “He is…was your friend, yes? Then I somehow doubt you will want to see him like this.”
But Pensk’s words meant nothing to Hollanbach at this point, fighting his very instinct to turn and run, and amazed at how much strength it took to simply place one foot before the other, both legs feeling as though they were cast iron weights. He caught his breath as he approached, seeing Pensk’s light illuminate the shredded carcass of his friend, what was left of him anyway, as he slung his own firearm and clicked on the lantern he had on his helmet, his own helmet from the first mission, complete with working camera and new film. He wasn’t scared of whatever did this to Reese finding them there and killing them like that. They were already long gone, he knew. He didn’t know how, he just knew.
And it wasn’t like he really cared anyway. But now, there were so many mixed feelings of self-quilt and remorse raging through his system that he felt he would welcome the chance to die so horribly. He thought it might justify the mistake they all made in leaving Reese there. But he knew right away….right after thinking such a thing that it wouldn’t, couldn’t. It simply was something that had come to pass, he thought, as much as he hated even thinking like that.
But it was the only way he knew to think that may help him overcome his grief for the death of his friend, a death he very much was responsible for and so he decided to continue to carry out the remainder of the mission at hand.
Sadly, Hollanbach remained there a few seconds longer as Pensk left, walking back to the helmet to retrieve it, knowing that they needed the film from the camera inside. As Hollanbach’s own camera recorded on relentlessly, the high beam of light came across something shiny-metallic-left half exposed inside the tattered remains of Reese’s leg pouch. Reaching down, Hollanbach carefully picked it up, holding in his hand now a baseball-sized silver sphere with a groove around its center and large-button-bump protruding on one side.
Quickly, he pocketed the find in a deft maneuver that would put most thieves to shame; all the while Pensk had been too preoccupied to notice. Reese had found something while he was up here, Hollanbach thought, something important enough to die with. The least he could do now was take it back home and see what it was, all the while keeping unknown tech out of enemy hands. He was almost glad now that he-
He whipped around as Pensk suddenly shouted in what sounded like mortal terror, and as he turned to see what happened, Hollanbach could see Reese’s helmet tumbling in mid-air towards him from where the crazed cosmonaut had evidently thrown it.
Instinctively, the commander reached out with both hands and caught it, instantly sorry and stifling his own scream as he did, staring at Reese’s severed head and the dead brown eyes (of their own) wide with fear that looked up at him through the jagged remains of the glass visor.
“Sonovabitch!” he instantly hollered, quickly letting go of the helmet, throwing it down and away from him in a fit of startled panic. As it hit the deck, Hollanbach turned, looking away and trying to keep himself from throwing up in his suit. “Oh, Christ!” he rasped, trying to regain control of his breathing and slowdown his rapid hyperventilation.
Turning back around, he shone his light on the helmet and then on Pensk who remained paralyzed against the wall on the corridor, looking on in disbelief, hardly able to understand what was going on around him.
Yes, he was a soldier and had seen death in its various poses, many, many times…but never in a picture as gruesome as this. No man ever deserved such a grisly demise. He blinked his brown eyes a few times, feeling his breathing slowly return to normal as his thoughts wondered, into another direction, realizing that, in fact, the cosmonauts Hollanbach and Reese had discovered on their mission up here had more or less experienced the same fate by their descriptions. His sullen eyes drifted up and he could see Hollanbach’s still form and hear his heavy, but considerably slowed breathing in his headset, as he stood eerily calm, looking down at the bloodied and broken helmet.
“What could do such a thing?” Pensk heard himself wonder out loud. “What kind of creature could do this to a man?”
Almost without hesitation, Hollanbach knew.
The commander stood looking, noticing the heavy abundance of spent castings lying scattered all around close to what little remained of his friend, seeing, too, the scattered metal of the rifle that had been used to discharge the rounds; all forty-five times and it still was alive enough to destroy the gun before killing Reese?
Instantly his mind flashed to the image of the dead giants they’d discovered on the bridge and that moment when Reese found the claws they had retracted up in their fingertips, he remembered the sheer size of their muscular bodies and knew right away that who and what the killer was. Which explains all the fresh tracks outside on the moon’s soil. His blue eyes widened when he realized it fully for the first time.
They’d come back.
The aliens came back.
Moving the light away from Reese, Hollanbach slowly approached Pensk. “You still want to know what did this, Major?”
“I am not too certain, my friend,” he heard Pensk say, a little hesitant now. “Knowing is one thing. Seeing is always another.”
He watched as Hollanbach walked defiantly into the darkness away from him, light shining all around with every step the American astronaut took.
“Yes it is,” Hollanbach said, agreeing. “Follow me.”
Pensk looked back at the tattered crimson stained suit lying strewn across the deck a few feet away and then back at the helmet before taking a small uncertain step in the commander’s direction. “And where is it you want me to follow you to, Jon?”
But there was no answer from the disappearing Hollanbach, who was steadily moving away from him and deeper into the dark of the ship’s interior.
“Jon?” he asked again, a little louder this time, and still with no answer. “Dammit,” Pensk sighed and began moving in Hollanbach’s direction, trying to move as fast as he could-a difficult task in the bulkiness of the spacesuit. He had to catch up with the commander before he was left alone to face whatever it was that lurked in the shadows of the crashed alien ships.
* * *
He blinked once, and looked, then blinked twice more and looked again. It wasn’t there. Hollanbach shined his light all around the compartment that he and Reese had been standing in just days earlier where they made the discovery of the Vostok test module and prototype lunar lander belonging to the Soviet Union, as well as the fate of its crew.
But now the compartment was empty. Devoid of any sign that the space-craft had been there or the, wait a minute! The light caught hold of something a few feet to his left and he began to walk towards it.
“Commander Hollanbach,” he heard an exasperated Slovak voice say over the wire as another beam of light began to fill the area, an exasperated and angry Slovak voice. “What the hell are you doing? This is not time to be John Wayne American cowboy!” the Russian screamed.
“Shut up,” Hollanbach said quickly. “And come here.”
“What?” Pensk asked. “Where are the ships you said would be here?”
“I don’t know,” the commander answered, still standing and staring down at the deck where his light illuminated in one spot. “They must have come back and taken the crafts with them, which led to them discovering Reese. As a matter of fact, it looks to me like the bastards came back and stripped the ship of all discernible tech as much as they could. But they left something anyway. Come here and look at this.”
In a few seconds, the major was standing beside him, looking down as well at the shiny metal object, tiny and insignificant when compared to their massive surroundings, lying next to sparkling mounds of icy blood. Hollanbach glanced at Pensk as he knelt down and picked up the object.
The commander handed his find to the cosmonaut, allowing him to examine it for himself. “I believe you’ll recognize this, Boris.”
Inside his suit, Pensk nodded, cradling a tarnished metal star and torn ribbon in his gloves. “Da,” he gravely acknowledged. “This is Star of Lenin, the Soviet equivalent of your American Medal of Honor, awarded to those who served the Motherland with undisputed loyalty and bravery,” he said as he opened up one of his pouches, placing it delicately within. I am afraid it is not the first time I have seen this exact one.”
“How do you mean?” Hollanbach wanted to know.
“The man it was awarded to, Visili Ramanov…,” he said, pausing slightly, swallowing hard. “Was the commander of this mission and my best friend in the entire world. A brother even,” Pensk said as he looked up at Hollanbach. “I, myself put this medal on his chest, I should know,” he said as he smiled weakly underneath his helmet. “So you see, Jon…you are not the only one to lose a friend to the monsters we have yet to see. It would seem I have as well.”
“My condolences, Boris,” the commander said sympathetically.
The cosmonaut was quiet for a few moments before replying.
“Of course. Thank you, Jon. I have to be honest with you, my friend. So far, this mission is turning out to be a huge failure, the exception, of course, being the alien ship itself…but it seems everything else we had originally hoped to either find or bring home with us has been made unavailable to us, no?”
“Yeah,” the commander reluctantly agreed.
“It sure as hell appears that way, doesn’t it, Boris,” he said as he turned around to face the exit, looking at his watch as he did so. “We still have plenty of air before we run out of time on the EVA, Major…and I’m willing to bet, despite the disappointment of the mission so far, that you’re just as eager as I am to check out the bridge so you can get a gander at what took our friends out.”
Pensk gripped his rifle tightly.
“Lead the way, Jon.”
“Okay, then,” Hollanbach said walking towards the way out with the major close behind him. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
Reaching the bridge, it seemed that the surprises weren’t just contained to Reese’s death and the still hard to swallow disappearance of the Russian space-craft. The bridge was nothing but a hollowed out shell of a compartment. All the wreckage that had been there before, with the stark exception of the gray’s, were gone. In fact, the entire area looked as though it had been melted over, the hard-edged contours that Hollanbach had remembered seeing before were eerily replaced by the smooth rippling of alien metal all around them. It didn’t even look to him like the same thing that he remembered, as if it had been a dream.
No…a nightmare.
Even the massive bodies of the giants were mysteriously gone, without a shred of evidence as to how or where. But the commander didn’t need the evidence to tell him, he already knew. He couldn’t help but think it extremely strange that these beings would come back, clean house so thoroughly, and still leave behind all the bodies of the little gray aliens. It was like they didn’t matter. It seemed strange that they were discarded and left behind without another thought. Even the compartment that held Sternenko’s son was gone. Again, gone without a trace. Hollanbach’s thoughts were interrupted by Pensk’s voice.
“And what is it we were looking for here?”
The commander shined the light all around, always coming across the same thing. Sighing heavily, he turned back around to face the Russian. “Apparently nothing, Major. When I was here with Reese, this area was filled with debris and damaged alien technology. Hard metallic protrusions and things that resembled instrument panels,” he said taking the light and shining it in a semicircle across the bare bulkhead in front of him. All along this wall,” Hollanbach half-turned and pointed to where the giant alien body had been enveloped inside some wreckage.
“And over there…,” he said. “Reese and I encountered another species of alien being…a beast about eight to ten feet tall with claws, and air, and blue skin,” he said as he sighed again. It was even impaled on a piece of jutting wreckage that came up from under it,” he said as his light fell onto the smooth, undamaged metallic floor that was there now.
“Like I said before, who or whatever it was that came back here, the same bastards that killed Reese, came back here to clean up after themselves.”
“Clean up after themselves?” Pensk inquired. “I do not understand.”
“Well, think about it,” Hollanbach told him. “The ship crashed…obviously on foreign terrain as far as these creatures were concerned. Let’s say they’re not unlike us in some ways, activating a homing beacon when they crashed, that would contact the nearest of their people and tell them their location. Like we do,” he said, taking his finger and pointing at himself and then at Pensk. “Like we’re trained to do, anyway, in the event of a crash, right?”
“Of, course,” the major said. “I think I am beginning to understand you now. Someone answered the call, yes?”
“Exactly.” Hollanbach said. “And that’s when they discovered Reese, and attacked him. If these things are capable of space travel on the level they’ve achieved…then I’m pretty sure they’ve seen the spacecraft and satellites we’ve left behind up here on the moon, and put two and two together with the big, blue and white planet not all that faraway, leading them to do what any one of us would do if we were to crash-land one our airplanes near enemy or uncertain territory. Destroy technology to prevent it from being found.”
Both men fell silent for a few minutes, shining their lanterns about the room. Pensk walked over to one of the dead grays, staring intently at its still form, not even realizing that, in fact, he was only the third human to ever en-counter another life such as this.
“I must say, Jon,” he said suddenly, breaking the awkward silence that had begun to surround the both of them. “You pose a most interesting theory. But I have to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“I must take your word about these large alien giants you have claimed to have seen on your earlier mission. And while I, myself have yet to see evidence of one, I do not entirely doubt their existence,” he said, referring to Reese. “So I must ask you. If these creatures are capable of such carnage on one of our own, heavily armed as he was, what do you think these monsters would do should they decide to come back again?” he asked. “Only this time, instead of coming here they decide to land at that blue and white planet we both call home.”
The commander swallowed, feeling his drying throat ache with thirst.
“What do you think, Jon?”
He wanted to see he didn’t know, looking at the Russian’s face, visible behind the glass of his visor, the thick gold-shield long since pushed upwards once they were out of the direct sunlight. He wasn’t even sure that he would want to know…judging by the gruesomeness he’d already seen, the only result of an encounter with those things would be devastating for a lone human, not to mention the entirety of the human race.
“Well, what do you think, Commander?”
Hollanbach looked at the dead alien. “I think we came up here for a body. So we should at least take one back with us, perhaps helping us to answer such a question. Along with the tape reel from Reese’s helmet and his…” The commander hesitated, feeling a chocking sensation overtake him as his eyes began to water. “His…” he tried again, wanting to say the words, but couldn’t find the strength to. He felt the cosmonaut put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, resting just above the patch of the American flag where there had been the deep crimson of the Soviet flag only days earlier.
“Christ,” Hollanbach said with a solemn laugh. “I can’t say it.”
“You don’t have to, Comrade. The captain’s honor is evident, even stronger with his passing.”
The commander smiled beneath his helmet. “You talk like you knew him.”
“No,” Pensk answered. “I did not know your Captain Reese. But I have known those like him. His actions…like that which he did for you, allowing you to return home to your wife while he stayed alone up here.”
“He didn’t actually volunteer, Boris. Well, I mean he did, but a presidential order had been made as well. So I guess he didn’t really have a choice,” Hollanbach said as he let go a heavy breath. “But what bothers me most is that he never knew we were coming back for him. He might have still been alive, if he’d known.”
“You really think that?”
Hollanbach aimed his light down the corridor that led away from the bridge and back the way they came. “Damned if I know. It’s what I’d like to think, anyway. Maybe if Reese had knowledge of this rescue attempt, he wouldn’t have wasted what little air he had on an EVA.”
“Perhaps…but who can say for certain, yes?”
“What do you mean, Major?”
Pensk sighed, walking back towards the dead alien bodies. “I mean that we are explorers, Comrade. Explorers whose main purpose is to hopefully find extraterrestrial life…or at least evidence of it, within our lifetime. And Reese was here, Comrade. Here in the midst of everything all of our dreams are made of!”
The cosmonaut stopped, shining his light all around the emptiness of the bridge they stood in. “How could any man, regardless of his condition, I think, whether he knew he would live or die…how could any man deny himself the knowledge of what lie around us, knowing very well that never again would such an opportunity present itself for his eyes to gaze upon it,” he said as he dropped his arms down to his side, and looked up the short incline at the commander. “Could you?”
Hollanbach was quiet, looking around at…yes, an alien spacecraft. Something born of another world countless billions, hell, trillion of miles away from here. And here he was standing, yet for a second time, looking at things no other man will ever see or imagine to see in his lifetime. But here he was…seeing it, living it… Christ, Pensk was right, he thought. It didn’t make him feel any better about Reese’s death and the needlessness of it, but he quickly realized that he would have done the same thing. He would have chanced death a hundred times to see this. Hell, he already had.
“Could you?” Pensk repeated himself.
Underneath the glass of his visor, the astronaut smiled knowingly.
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
* * *
She eyed the dark-haired woman suspiciously as she inhaled the last of her waning cigarette, reducing it quickly to a stubby stem of ash before stabbing it out in the blackened ceramic ashtray on the scarred wooden table where they both sat.
“You sure you’re not a double agent, Ms. Olekshova? You speak very convincing Russian…for an American intelligence agent.”
Reaching up as she sipped a bit of her steaming coffee, the young woman that was Alexa Olekshova smiled as she moved some of the black hair out of the way, looking up at her superior with intriguing brown eyes.
“It’s like I told you before, Mary Ellen. My parents relocated in the early fifties, about a year before I was born, to escape the stranglehold of the then Communist economy. I was born in New York. That makes me an American as baseball and apple pie. I just speak the language, that’s all.”
“Take it easy, Alex. I was only kidding around with you. I’ve known you since college and have no doubt as to how American you can be.”
The ebony-haired woman grinned in remembrance. “Those were good days, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” Coley said as she raised her paper cup, filled also with coffee, and brought it up to her full lips. “They were. To college,” she said in a mock toast. “And the friends you make there.”
“To college,” Olekshova repeated, taking another sip. “Still…I can’t believe you got me out of the field to help you with this assignment. My eternal thanks.”
Just then, the door to the little room they were in opened, and a Russian soldier popped his head in, looking directly at Olekshova and speaking rapidly in his native tongue. She replied and he left, leaving the door opened after him as the junior agent stood up from her seat, tying her long hair back in an impromptu ponytail. Coley standing up as well, taking another sip of her coffee.
“Well…,” she wanted to know. “What did he say? What’s going on?”
Olekshova slipped her jacket back on from its resting place on the back of her chair. “The Soyuz module has moved back into contact with Earth,” she said as reached for her coffee and gulped down what was left of it. “Leonov is about to send a taped transmission from the crew on the moon but it’s mostly in English so they need you there.”
“That’s all he said?”
“No,” the Russian beauty answered. “They found your Captain Reese, Mary Ellen.”
“And?”
Olekshova turned and reached for the door, opening it the rest of the way as she stepped into the hall.
“And now you know as much as I do.”
The Soviet version of Mission Control was not really all that much different from our own back in the States, she thought. The only real exception was that nearly everyone was of military influence, wearing either the green or brown drab uniforms of their respective branches as they sat at the controls. Coley could see Sternenko’s hulking frame standing out from the rest, up a flight of stairs at a control station where he stood next to the operator. She and Olekshova followed their escort up to the general, where he left them, quickly exiting the scene like a scared rabbit.
Coley watched as Sternenko and the operator talked for a few more minutes in Russian before he noticed her arrival, looking up at her with a pleasant smile.
“Agent Coley,” he said almost belittling her. “How nice to see you again,” he said as he nodded to her partner.
“Agent Olekshova.”
“What’s the word, General?” Coley asked him hurriedly. “How’s Reese?”
Reaching up he took off the headphones he wore and handed them to her.
“Why don’t you listen for yourself, hmm?”
He watched closely as she took the gear and placed it over her own ears, sort of giving him an odd look. Then he turned to the nameless operator and placed his big hand on his shoulder.
“Play it,” he ordered softly.
Pressing the earphones closer to her, Coley listened as the static hiss of the tape played for a few seconds before Hollanbach’s words began to speak.
“This is Commander Hollanbach for Agent Coley. Major Pensk and I have just returned from our excursion and it is my sad….duty…to report that we have found Captain Reese’s remains…” the commander paused momentarily and Coley could hear him cough a few times, clearing his throat before he continued. “Uh…aboard the alien craft. It seems that he met the same…same fate as the Vostok cosmonauts. The evidence shows that he was mauled to death and perhaps eaten…”
Another pause came that was a little bit longer this time, giving Coley’s mind a chance to think about what she just learned. The man she had risked so much to save was dead. A man whom she was responsible for placing up there in the first place.
“Also,” she heard Hollanbach’s voice continue. “The Major and I have not yet been able to locate any sign of the Soviet spacecraft I had sighted earlier…not have we seen any exposed technology or alien bodies other than the small grays who appear to be untouched. Aside from them, everything else we have encountered appears to have strangely disappeared…the vessel wiped completely clean of all wreckage and debris.
“Pensk and I intend to use our last day here tomorrow exploring the second half of the ship that was separated in the crash, it’s about a quarter mile aft of the site we noticed, as we descended in the full brilliance of the sun’s light.”
Coley heard the commander sigh before finally concluding.
“Uh…other than that, everything is fine. So far, the mission has met without much incident and we are both in good health. I believe that’s it…Hollanbach out.”
The message over, Coley took off the headphones with a slow, almost lazy movement, handing them to the operator and looking over at Sternenko with a tired glance.
“I am sorry,” he said sincerely. “It appears we both failed in our mission. My condolences.”
She shook her head. “Save the sentiments for later, General. Is there still time to relay a message to the Soyuz?”
“Yes, another ten, eleven minutes,” he said.
Coley looked at him urgently. “I need to get something to Hollanbach immediately,” she said as she motioned towards the relay station. “May I?”
“Help yourself.”
She began to walk in the direction of the comm. station when Sternenko grabbed gently at her arm, surprising her to a sudden stop.
“When you are finished there, I would like to speak with you in private about these strange occurrences on the moon,” he said to her in a hushed voice.
“Of course.” Coley said to him as he let go of her, stepping back to begin walking away. “This will only take a minute, and then I’ll be right with you.”
She watched as the general called over another soldier, said something quickly to him and then looked back up at her.
“Corporal Putin will see you to my office when you are done.”
* * *
Stepping inside the room, she thanked the corporal with a polite nod and closed the door silently behind her. Turning around, she let go of the worn brass knob and faced the general, who sat behind his desk, openly drinking a bottle of whiskey when their eyes met. As if he’d been caught, Sternenko quickly swallowed what he’d already imbibed smiling apologetically as he did so, placing the bottle back down on the scratched and old wooden desk, picking the top up from its resting place and slowly twisting it back on.
“Ah,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Agent Coley,” he said as he held a shot glass up in the air. “Would you care for a drink?”
“No, thanks,” she said, carefully walking over and sitting in one of the chairs in front of her. “I believe you wanted to talk about the mission?”
Sternenko opened one of the desk drawers and tucked the glass and bottle inside, sliding it shut. “The mission, yes. Very strange what is happening up there, wouldn’t you say…with the disappearances of the ships and alien bodies?” he said as he glanced at her. “So what do you make of this? Why do you suppose these creatures came back to the moon and reclaimed their technology and dead, but leave the little aliens behind?”
Coley shrugged.
“Who’s to say, General? Your guess is as good as mine.”
“So what do we do?”
The agent rubbed tenderly at her neck.
“Hollanbach and Pensk will have a day and a half up there. They will be investigating the newly found second half of the ship, to see what they can recover from it. But aside from that, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Well,” the general said as he stood and turned to look out his window. “I will tell you this. I have ordered my major to bring back one of the little alien bodies and whatever metal or devices he can for us to study. I trust we will have your commander’s full support on this?”
Coley nodded. “Without the captain’s body weight to worry about, bringing back whatever we can seems to be the next logical step. Although, General…you do realize that whatever our astronauts bring home for us to study will have to be shared between our respective countries?”
Sternenko smiled pleasantly at her.
“It’s already been taken care of. The Soviet Union will work with the United States without prejudice as far as this project is concerned.”
“The Premier has already agreed to it.”
A few moments of silence passed between them. Sternenko remained standing looking out the window at the mountains in the background while Coley busied herself digging a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it. “You realize this changes everything, don’t you?” he suddenly said.
Coley looked up at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
The big man exhaled as he turned around to face her.
“Your man will no longer have to dispose of my cosmonauts upon their return to the earth, yes? It would seem with the absence of the alien technology, you will no longer have to worry about my people deriving a super weapon to conquer the world.”
Mary Ellen’s face froze in surprise.
Sternenko laughed like a drunken old bear. “Is nothing to worry about, hmm? We had similar plans for your man as well. But things, they have changed. So these politic games we play, your people and mine…they no longer matter in the scheme of these things. Together, we have discovered a threat to our people that extends from boundaries beyond the stars.”
“These creatures think nothing of killing us, of clawing the very flesh off us, and eating our bodies like some kind of damned meal,” he said, sitting back down at his desk. “So naturally our ways…our attitudes and general mistrust towards each other must begin to change. For if these beasts come back here, to Earth, they should face a united force ready to stop them from tearing into us all like they did to your Captain Reese and our cosmonauts.”
The general paused a second, taking a last gulp of his liquor (that he took out and pour a shot more), gladly feeling it burn going down his throat. When he set the now empty glass down and looked back at her, she was smiling gently at him.
“I like the sound of that, General…a united force..,” she said as his smile began to grow a bit wider as she began to envision it. “Do you really believe it’s possible?”
Slowly, Sternenko began to nod.
“Over time,” he said, looking down into his glass, seeing that there was still a sliver of drink pooling at the bottom. “Once key figures are made aware of what you and I already know.”
Her thin eyebrow rose curiously.
“Oh, yeah?” she teased somewhat. “And what would that be?”
Holding the shot glass to his lips, the Russian lapped at the remaining whiskey like a bear trying to get that lick of honey. Opening his desk drawer, he again retrieved the bottle, unscrewed the top, and happily poured himself another glass, feeling the need to drown his mind in the swills of such sweet sorrow.
“It’s only a matter of time now, before the same thing happens to us.”
Coley looked at the man with a hint of worry in her green eyes. “You sound like it’s already too late, General.”
Closing his eyes, the Cossack sighed as he leaned further back in his seat, seeing the video from Hollanbach’s helmet play the scene over and over again in his aching head, the scene where the Americans found his son’s body lying crushed and half-mutilated under the frozen carcass of the beast they all assumed to be his killer. The general coughed a few times, sitting up to reach for his drink and killing it quickly with one big swallow, smacking his lips together and wiping them clean with the back of his big hand.
“In many ways,” he said slowly. “It is.”
* * *
Walking into the latter half of the alien spacecraft was hardly much different than walking into the first, the second time around. There was nothing there to see…even less to gain. Outside, both men observed what they thought to have been the engines, but only witnessed swirling patterns of green, black and brown metal that began a trend that seemed to follow all although the rest of their exploration of the vessel’s melted over remains.
That was Hollanbach’s initial impression as he and Pensk looked in vain for something, anything to perhaps pick up and take back home with them. But there was nothing it seemed clear to them that whatever kind race (or races) of alien life they were dealing with, they were not about to chance anything else stumbling onto their achievements of space travel and incorporate its benefits for themselves. The commander, still reeling from the experience of finding his friend slaughtered at his very feet and then being denied proof that anything he had seen before ever really existed, could only stand there beside the Russian and look ahead as they entered into what was perhaps the engineering section…a massive compartment obviously hollowed out, with the exception of a pedestal that rose a few feet from the smooth deck, a monument of nothing, Hollanbach could barely speak, choking on the disbelief of it all.
The major seemed to be reading his mind.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Mankind’s chance to jump into the next stage of space travel and technology…gone. It is almost like someone is playing a joke on us, yes?”
“A joke?” The commander walked closer to the smooth bulkhead, running his gloved fingers along its surface. “A nightmare seems more appropriate,” he said. “Who knows?” he said with a breath. “This could all be a blessing in disguise.
Pensk turned and looked at the astronaut oddly. “What does that mean, Comrade?”
Hollanbach stopped, letting his hand drop back down to his side, slowly turning around to face his fellow explorer. “Think of the possibilities this alien technology would eventually bring to whoever wielded it.”
The major smiled under his glass visor. “I have, Commander. Perhaps it is you who has not.”
He shook his head. “But I am,” he told the cosmonaut. “I’m thinking real clearly about it and I’m realizing that if you and I do find something up here, Major, it could very well ignite the cold war between our two countries into something far much worse than we could imagine.”
The Russian laughed quite suddenly. “You are overreaching, my friend. I’m sure our countries would each find a way to share such discoveries between them, towards the betterment of our civilization.”
“You give the human race too much credit, Boris. There are governments down there who can’t even decide how or if they can share their land and natural resources with their neighbor. How can you expect them to hack out a deal concerning joint custody of something no one else in the…galaxy, would have? Do you honestly believe either one of our ‘motherlands’ would simply sit around and wait while the other unlocked the secrets of this stuff, creating advanced weaponry and super-intelligent computers that could propel one country hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ahead of the other?” Hollanbach laughed now, stepping back towards the center of the empty chamber.
“We’re talking eventual power on a worldwide level. In a word, we’re speaking global domination.”
“That is two words, Jon…but I understand your meaning. What you are saying is, even if we find something up here, we should not, yes?”
The commander had reached the pedestal now, bringing his hands up to place them on top of it. It reminded him of a control station of some sort, but, like everything else he and Pensk had thus far encountered that day, it appeared to be wiped clean of all indications of whatever it may have truly been.
“I was instructed…before I even left to come to Baikonur…when rescuing Reese still seemed to be a possibility…to take you and Leonov out after we got back and were safely landed, to prevent your country of ever knowing about what was really up here, to keep you away from the technology.”
The wire was quiet and the commander was about to turn to see if Pensk was alright when he finally answered.
“Take out?” he asked, not quite understanding the full meaning of Hollanbach’s slang.
He faced the major. “Kill you, Boris. You and the lieutenant, both. My country was willing to go that far to keep what you saw a secret. Imagine what they would do if something material was even in the picture?”
Pensk was stunned. It was true that America was supposed to be his enemy. He’d been taught that, as did countless others like them, that it was the American’s goal to destroy their way of life…cruel oppressors of the communists dream. But he was never the radical Soviet that most in his profession was. He’d always believed America to be the place where a man’s dream could come true. Always believe that Russia could have been America, had certain circumstances been different in their history. A place where the streets were filled with James Deans and Marilyn Monroe’s and every skyline had the Empire State Building bursting through its center. Could he be wrong? It seemed that’s what Hollanbach was telling him, anyway.
“Why?” he asked the astronaut. “Why are you telling me this?”
Hollanbach’s answer came fast.
“To show you,” he said. “To illustrate how deadly and serious the situation has already become at just the promise of such things.”
Pensk began to walk over to him. “Would you? Would you have killed us?” he asked him point blank, feeling stray anger violate its way into his voice. “After risking our lives to bring you here and save your friend’s life….would you have gone through with your order, Jon…and killed us if he had been alive?”
The answer did not come as swiftly as the previous one did. For the commander, it was all he could do to look away from the man’s face, to stare down at the deck, feeling the truth bubble up, unwanted as it was, and knowing how ashamed he was of it.
“Answer me,” Pensk ordered him. “NOW.”
“Yes,” the commander said finally. “The captain and I would have carried out the order as planned.” His words were followed by his own heavy breathing as Pensk watched Hollanbach’s blue eyes slowly lift upwards to meet his steely gaze. “Christ…I’m sorry.”
“Nyet,” the cosmonaut said painfully. “It is I who am sorry, Commander Hollanbach. You were not the only man with orders to kill.”
As he watched, Pensk hoisted his rifle up and leveled it evenly with Hollanbach’s chest, and his eyes widened in terror as the cosmonaut’s finger rested on the trigger-guard.
“You and your friend were never to leave here alive, making more room for whatever samples of technology we could find here,” he said as he looked around the chamber and smiled sickly. “The nonexistent technology.”
To Hollanbach’s relief, the Russian lowered his rifle as he approached him.
“Perhaps you are correct, in what you said before, Comrade,” he said as he put his hand on the astronaut’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Perhaps this is a blessing…for both of us.”
Hollanbach laughed nervously. “Well, I’m glad you agree,” he said as the man tool his hand away and remained looking at him. “So, what now?”
Pensk brought his watch up to view.
“We have three hours until liftoff. I suggest we hurry back to the other half and collect the captain’s…the captain and an alien and be on our way. But we must leave now, if we are to maintain our window and get home as scheduled. Despite it all,” he heard the major say. “It’s a pity we really did not find anything up here to help us understand these, creature’s advancement, yes?”
“Yeah,” Hollanbach said as he bounded after the cosmonaut, reaching down to feel the metal sphere concealed within the thick fabrics of his Velcro sealed pocket.
Lockenshire grunted again, and gripped the edge of the podium with his strong hands. “To keep the risk of detection to a minimum-assuming these beasts are still unaware of our location, we all here today vow never again to venture manned spacecraft beyond the limits of our planetary orbit. Not to the moon. Not to Mars. We stay home, and keep watch over our own cosmic backyard.”
With that, Sternenko looked down at Brezhnev who only nodded slightly, and the big Russian looked back up at Lockenshire, his eyes set.
THE ANSWER? 