The Mist

By Vyoman Jain (11G) & Prarthana Vasanth (12K)

 

Light was streaming in through the window. Luke opened his eyes to be

greeted by the same view he saw every day: his desktop, his room and the oxygen

tanks. He sluggishly got out of bed, still sore from the previous day’s events. After

freshening up, he had a nutritious breakfast comprising freeze-dried fruits and the

best coffee within a million miles of him. He walked to his workstation and started

on repairs. Beside him was a porthole, which gave him a glimpse of the world or

more accurately, the galaxy outside.

Luke was the chief maintenance officer aboard the UNSF Surveyor – first of

the many ships travelling to different worlds throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.

They had set out a decade earlier to explore Earth’s galactic neighbourhood for life.

Luke looked just twenty years old; however, he was just over 120 years old – a

welcome side effect of faster-than-light travel.

The galaxy would always be a magnificent view that would’ve been hard for

someone to comprehend but for Luke, he was accustomed to it. He checked to see if there were any problems with the airlocks first. This would’ve been a routine check; however, this time it was different. Luke was still hazy in the head; the previous events were a crystalized memory, but it was his nebulous thinking that didn’t help very well with making sense of the moment. He continued examining the

thermostat, controls and the communication systems.

He jumped at the sound of Reid entering the workstation. His face was

drained, making him look like he hadn’t slept for a second the previous night.

“You need to fix your routine; you look like you had a makeover done by a

raccoon” was an unusual way to greet someone but Luke was pretty reciprocal in

his sense of banter.

“Don’t small talk me right now for goodness sake, I’ve been paranoid” he

replied to Luke, “Besides, why are you here right now? I tried waking you up an

hour ago to check the recordings with me.” Reid asked.

Luke ignored his question and continued scrutinizing everything in his

workstation until Reid physically and abruptly broke him away from the controls.

Luke yowled at the pull, “Give me a break, I know you are in shock from yesterday,

I am too. I just need to work some things out and it’s easier when I’m calm.” he

retorted. Reid struggled as he tried to sit across Luke, his lack of balance was the

result of the blow he had taken to his core. His hair was messy unlike every other

time, when it was crisply slicked back and his arm was still wrapped in a sling.

“How on Seyfert did we end up on the inside of the co-rotation radius?” Reid

asked, out of breath.

“Trust me, if I had any answers with me, we wouldn’t have been here in the

first place.” Luke mechanically answered.

Luke continued to analyse the data appearing on his workstation while Reid,

who had finally settled down next to Luke, closed his eyes for some much-awaited

relaxation. Luke found the damaged areas of their side of the ship and set off to

repair them while Reid caught some z’s. His mind was still trying to make sense of

the previous day’s events as he worked on the airlock. He regretted the decision to

check that anomaly yesterday. He had not been able to switch off the light the

previous night as the darkness reminded him of that same feeling of utter despair

and hopelessness, he had felt the day during the previous day’s encounter.

Once he had finally finished the repairs, he returned to his workstation, to

find Reid calmly asleep. While scrolling through the system notifications, he noticed

something which drained the colour from his face. His mind started to race as he

realised what was happening. He promptly woke up Reid and gravely said, “It’s

happening again.”

Reid turned pale. He shuddered at the thought of facing it again and

immediately said, “I am not going to face that again. I can’t...”

Luke responded by saying, “Reid, we don’t know what it is. We cannot risk

leaving it unchecked. We would not only be putting ourselves at risk but also all the

people in cryosleep. We must check it out and this time we will be prepared.” Reid

hesitantly agreed and Luke quickly gathered the halogen lamps, oxygen flares and

two exosuit housing units. They set out to the location of the anomaly in the outer

ring corridor. Here they found themselves facing it again, the object of their troubles

and fears – the ominous fog.

It was back. The thick, pure black, cloud-like mist was swirling in the middle

of the corridor, just like the previous time. It lashed out thick arm-like projections.

The same type that had injured Reid last time. The two had made the mistake of

entering the mist last time where they immediately felt cold and alone. Their lights

and oxygen had malfunctioned and suddenly, it seemed like their happiness was

being sucked out of them, leaving them shrouded in complete darkness and filling

them with despair. They lost consciousness after that and then awoke on the other

side of the craft, inside the co-rotation radius. Presently, they were cautiously

analysing the mist when it suddenly expanded, filling the entire room and

enveloping them completely.

Luke reached for two jackets at the back of his station immediately, he fixed

the shell onto his torso and shimmied his arms and legs in. The jackets were a

mechanism built to work the same way as the human body that wears them. Having

a potential force of 370 kilograms, a jacket could easily crush a rifle barrel. With

use of efficient technology, they were able to make the mass lacklustre when

required for portability. Just like the human body has a contraption to keep power

exertion in balance, in order to prevent accidents from such huge force when

activated, the jackets have an auto balancer to limit the force exerted on the body

inside it. These had almost no use in space travel, they were solely built for

bloodshed. The jackets were inventions that were constructed during a certain

momentous event that occurred about two centuries ago, when the Earth had an

‘unearthly’ encounter with a legion that was quite hostile. This gave birth to the

need for exploring space and hence came the emergence of a more diversified UNSF.

While trying to fight the mist that kept expanding, Luke somehow succeeded

in fitting his jacket down onto his torso and turned on the auto balancer. After the

previous run against the mist, Luke had figured that the jackets would be helpful

while handling a situation this hazardous. The problem now was to get the jacket

onto Reid. The condition of his body was at odds with withstanding the pressure of

the mist.

“Reid, listen.” Luke motioned at him, “I will need you to get into this jacket.”

Reid didn’t say a word, he only nodded at Luke and gestured at him for help. The

mist kept getting thicker, almost blinding their vision. Luke managed to fasten the

shell but before he could get Reid’s broken arm into the sleeve, the mist was too

thick for Luke to see.

“Luke, the auto balancer!” Reid was wailing in pain by now.

“Reid, I can’t turn it on if the whole suit is not on.” Luke’s trembling hands

weren’t helping the situation. There were those thin arm-like projections in the mist

again. They were not as big as before but enough to exert pressure that could cause damage. The weight of the jacket was making it worse without the auto balancer. When your lungs are crushed, you drown, not in water, but in air. Gasp as

hard as you want, but the oxygen will not be able to get into your bloodstream with

crushed lungs. Everyone else around would be able to do it involuntarily, without

a second thought while you drown alone in an ocean of air. Reid for a fact, hadn’t

made that up; he had been submerged, engulfed and saturated. The pressure of the .35 tonne jacket was all exerted on his upper body. The scene was eerily familiar to him as he felt a renewed sense of terror. Luke’s blood ran cold as he realised what was happening. Every bone in his body was petrified. He couldn’t comprehend that this was happening right now.

Before Luke could process Reid’s passing, there was a colossal explosion that

set the alarms off. Although Luke couldn’t see it properly, he felt it come from the

left of the spacecraft, where the cryosleep containment zone resided. He hurried

there, still shaky from what had just happened. The Containment Zone had less

mist, enabling him to see and analyse the explosion. The cover had blown up till

the protective RCC layer, but fortunately, the cryosleep containers had survived the

explosion untouched.

He rushed into the Containment Zone and performed a quick visual

inspection of the area. Much to his relief, there were no holes in the walls and no

alarms were blaring. He quickly made his way back to the area where the mist had

been. It had vanished without a trace immediately after the explosion. One thought

kept nagging Luke, on his way back, “If only I had been able to activate the suit,

Reid would not have...”. He was still unable to comprehend Reid’s untimely death

but upon reaching the area, his disbelief turned into shock. Reid’s body had

vanished. There was no sign of it. The mystery deepened. Luke was unable to make any sense of this development; he was overpowered with emotions. He was

overwhelmed with the sudden turn of events and broke down. Crying his lungs out,

he dropped to his knees and curled up on the floor.

The past two days’ events had pushed him to the ends of his sanity. His best

friend, who was also the only person he could talk to, was killed by a mysterious

and malevolent space mist. Now, he was totally and utterly alone. The thought of

travelling solo through space with the unexplained deadly mist lurking somewhere

was terrifying him. These fears and the emotional trauma he had been through led

to a panic attack and he passed out on the floor.

Luke woke up to the sound of a robotic voice blaring through the ship’s public

announcement system. He was feeling a bit better, but his mind was still wracked

with nervousness and unknown fear. He listened closely to the announcement and

was alerted to the fact that the ship had reduced its speed due to an object in its

path. Luke reached the nearest control panel and found that the ship was headed

towards a transit space station. He realised that the people on the station would

perhaps be able to make sense of the phenomena he had been experiencing and so he decided to dock.

He entered the station to be greeted by ominous silence. There was no

operator contacting him through the radio and none of the hustle bustle of a usual

transit point. He headed straight to the crew quarters to find out what had

happened and try to contact the UNSF. Upon reaching there, his befuddlement

grew manifold as the entire station seemed to be abandoned. None of the

communication facilities were working either. Luke decided to look through the

security footage and was horrified to realise that the same mist had ravaged this

station as well three days prior – just before it had first appeared on the UNSF

Surveyor. The mist had killed everyone on board the station however, just like Reid,

none of their corpses were to be found.

Luke was starting to panic once again. He turned and rushed back to the

Surveyor to undock from the station. Upon reaching the docking platform, he saw

a shadow move in the corridor. The shadow was getting larger and larger in front

of him and Luke was dreading that this was another mist attack. He turned

around, ready to flee at the sight of the mist, but was stunned to find Reid standing

behind him.

Luke was perplexed at the sight of Reid. Every detail of the circumstance was

disconcerting and the questions running through Luke’s head made him giddy.

Nothing could explain the smoke or the relocating to an entirely different radius.

Nothing could explain Reid either. “Reid, how are you still alive?” Luke barely

managed to get the words out of his mouth.

Reid's voice remained unvaried when he replied, “That’s an answer for

another day.” He stood erect like his body was unharmed and balanced as if his

core was only wounded more than 7 years ago and his arm seemed mended. The

mist around them started to change colour, there were flares of electric red from the

thick grey smoke. He looked around, visually analysing it. Luke had a flashback.

Stellar smoke.

When he looked back, Reid was gone. He wanted to take time to think this

through and make everything make sense, but at least some parts of it was

coming together. Reid was right, he was an answer for another day. Right now,

Luke had to figure out what was going on and find a solution to keep the people in

the cryosleep safe. He made a hurried beeline to the inside of the station. Most of it

was disintegrated and broken down. He wondered how there was a space station

in the inner part of the co-rotation radius since the space stations were always

placed on a further radius or somewhere close to the brink to avoid damage from

gravitational fields. He scurried to the admin room of the station. It was the only

room that could have possibly survived the destruction. The door was sealed tight,

but the jacket could provide enough force to propel the door open.

When he entered, he immediately reached for the monitor. Just his luck, it

was still working. He waited for what seemed like hours for it to finish its

reading. On the screen, was a reading made by waves that scanned the

surroundings. The colours on the screen were forming shapes that had not been

witnessed till now, it represented a replication fork. He then looked at the gas

analytics. The hydrogen levels were extremely high, along with a concentration of

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. He was right, the combustion in the smoke was

from stellar particles.

Suddenly, everything made sense. Luke theorised that the fork formation

was two galaxies, What he was seeing was a collision. While it was happening, the

hydrogen compression would have triggered multiple gravitational forces throwing

them to the other side of the co-rotational radius. The other galaxy was most

probably Messier 82, which had a superfluity of stellar smoke. The mixing of that

with the compressed hydrogen had made something that they had never recognised, something that hadn’t been inferred before.

This was an occurrence that was almost impossible to circumvent. Luke

could just give up; he was on his ‘last leg’, but he had to do something about the

people in the cryosleep. He couldn't just let them be unfortunate collateral damage

for the mess that could have been avoided if only there was more vigilance. Right

now, he had to figure a way to keep them safe and get them out of here.

Luke navigated his way back to the Surveyor’s bridge where he could take

manual control of the ship and undock from the station. He switched on the ship’s

infrared scanners which gave him a comprehensive view of the stellar smoke in the

ship’s trajectory on the holographic display. He went through the navigation logs

and found that the ‘mist attacks’ coincided with the ship passing through a huge

patch of stellar smoke. He also found that the space station had been situated in a

particularly big hotspot of stellar smoke which had subsided a few hours ago. This

led him to theorise that all these attacks had in fact been large concentrations of

stellar smoke permeating throughout the ship and causing hallucinations or brief

lapses in memory.

Armed with this knowledge, Luke looked through the infrared map of the

area surrounding the ship. He found areas where the smoke was in low

concentrations, these places could be ideal for the ship to jump to faster-than-light

speeds and pull the ship and its passengers out of harm’s way. The closest such

area was a mere ten minutes away. Luke immediately plotted a course and set off.

There was only one thing that was still bothering Luke with his hypothesis, the

location of Reid’s body. The body had disappeared from the outer ring corridor

where the mist or the smoke had collected. Luke left the bridge and headed to the

corridor to see if the idea that was formulating in his brain was correct.

The first attack and the corridor attack had only one common access point

and that was the airlock he had tried to repair after the first attack. He reached the

airlock and found his theory to be true. The smoke had entered the ship through the

faulty airlock and exited the same way as well. After the second attack, the smoke

had dragged Reid back to the airlock due to its pressure while Luke had been

checking the cryosleep chambers. Luke took Reid and temporarily interned his body in a cryosleep pod till they would reach their destination planet.

After doing this, he headed back to the bridge and found that they were

almost at the point where they could escape from. He quickly rescanned the area

and found that the smoke was collecting around the ship once again. He had to

leave as soon as possible before the smoke seeped through the airlock again. He sped up the ship and brought it to the area and quickly jumped to the faster-than-light speed, reaching their destination a decade later where Reid was respectfully buried, and Luke’s voyage became a tale of caution taught to every new UNSF space cadet.

The End.