A short story:
By Otto
PLACE: Titan
Mark Spies, Sub-Captain’s log: Solar date 25.5.15.4.2055:
I’m traveling with Captain Ward Skyhawk. We are traveling in the
Firebaul Eck-Sel-05, a class 6 solar cruiser that is designed to cross the
Solar System and take astronauts to space laboratory stations. Most of these
look for signs of life.
The Fireball is a large vessel, with a hull as long as an
aircraft carrier. It has large nuclear powered engines that allow this craft to
travel at nearly 1/32th the speed of light. The ship is designed to
spend months in space. That may be the tops speed, but it takes the ship a
while to reach that speed and a trip across the Solar System may actually take
several weeks. The ship has a space for growing food, a library, a science lab,
kitchen, bar and individual living quarters. Just about everything a person
needs is included in or on this spaceship.
The ship is cigar shaped. It had three separate engines, one on
each side and one on top. A landing craft is contained inside the craft. It is
designed to leave and make the short trip to the surface of a planet or moon
and then lift off for the ride back to the mother ship. It is airplane or jet
plane shaped for those few bodies that have a thick enough atmospheres to use
it. It didn’t need to be that big since it was just a lander.
Captain Skyhawk is a tall thin man with dark hair and a long
beak like nose. He is a very jovial man. But he looks to the technical and
mechanical side of things.
We have been in space for a month now, exploring various moons
and asteroids in search of various signs of life may not be limited to just the
earth. Our last destination was Saturn’s moon Titan. Of all the moons in space,
this one intrigues me the most.
I will never forget the first time I landed on that body. The
moon has a thick atmosphere, made up of hydrocarbons similar to gasoline. But
the smoggy sky was beautiful. When we first made out landing, the moon was
closes to the sun and I got to see a dawn, with all kinds of vibrant colors
visible in the thick air, While most was a dark orange color, the higher clouds
were blue as an earth sky and streaks of white.
It got darker as we moved closer to the ground. However, I could
see lots of mountain ranges, dry gullies, tinny lakes, river beds as we’ve seen
on earth.
We landed near a space station that sat on a hill over what
appeared to be a large dry lake bed. The orange looking ground looked almost
like mud with boulders and possible clogs of mud strewn all over the
ground.
Captain Skyhawk and I went down a narrow shaft to the lander and
entered through its door.
“Ready for Landing Mark?” he said.
“Yes,” I answered.
Our lander landed close enough to the station where I could go
straight in without having to go outside the ship and onto the planets ground
and atmosphere. However, we had space suites, similar to those used by
astronauts on the moon. They had to be well insulated to keep out the cold,
which was a brisk −179.2 °C or −290 °F. At that
temperature, all water is as solid as a rock. The air has no oxygen in it and
the cold temperature would burn me to death, without my suite. So my suite gave
me heat and oxygen to breathe. As with the moon, there is less gravity. The air
pressure is about twice that of Earth, which is not really all that bad.
“I sometimes wonder why we bother to land on such a godforsaken
places,” Captain Skyhawk said.
“This is a whole new world,” I protested. “I’ve never seen
anything like this—an alien world. To see this is a true
treat, a joy, for any explorer.”
“It’s OK,” Captain Skyhawk said. “I love technology and
traveling in space. Being able to maneuver this giant ship amazes me. I find
the sights her on Titan to be a little too strange and remote. But I love the
traveling—the space walks—the technology—that is what I like about space
travel.”
Still,
despite this poison environment, standing on a foreign world as this was
breathtaking. This was another world and it was beautiful. The scenery, the
sky, the strange rocks and the liquids in the small lakes and ponds, all
contribute to this strange new world.
The liquid in the lakes are actually made of hydrocarbons. The atmosphere of Titan is largely
composed of nitrogen with minor
amounts of methane and ethane clouds. The nitrogen atmosphere is
also rich with organic smog.
Standing on the surface of this world was a site to behold and I
would not have given it up for anything.
When I got there, there was already a space station/lab for me
to work in. It was sitting on the side of a hill to avoid rain that would flood
that institution. It was a round building, built with spokes. There was a
launch pad, where a traveler could come and go as pleased. As with the inside
of my traveling ship, there were all the amenities of home. There was a limited
amount of plant growth and some animals for food. There were lots of labs to
work in. Most had stainless steel walls, metal doors, blue tile floors, and a
small window to look at.
“Once we are inside that module, we won’t be able to see very
much outside,” Captain Skyhawk said. “But it will be comfortable—or as
comfortable as it is possible to be.”
“I can’t wait to wander around outside on the terrain,” I said.
For me there was nothing more exciting than scooping the ponds and
lakes for organic and pre-biotic molecules that may have held the key to
finding the origins of life on Earth. The real prize would be to find an actual
biological cell or life form.
We had a load of other experiments we preformed everywhere we
went. However my first personal love was to look for any organic molecules that
may give up clues as to any life that may survive in our solar system.
I may have found more than I bargained for on the frozen swampy
lake, not for from the station. We never expected to find any life there. But
we may have come across parasitic viruses.
“Wow,” I shouted out at my discovery. “This looks like a virus.
It is some kind of DNA molecule inside a shell. The shell reminds me of an
industrial vacuum cleaner. It has a tube that is ribbed like a vacuum cleaners
hose. It has some metallic looking feet. And a cylinder type shape.”
“Be careful with those,” Captain Skyhawk warned. “How do those
reproduce? How do they maintain themselves here without any animals or plants
to feed off of?”
“Maybe there are some other life forms on this world,” I
answered.
“Then we must test these
in the lab. We can see if these react with Earth life.”
I found a cage with a white mouse in it and exposed it to the
viruses. At first I could not see anything happen. I left the mouse overnight.
The next day I saw some tiny little moving specs. The next day there was only
one. But it appeared as if one of the specks were larger and had eaten the
other. A few days later I noticed what looked like a small baby mouse. This was
a male mouse so I had to wonder what it really was. It grew over the next few
days into a white mouse just like the one I exposed to the viruses. I soon
figured out that this mouse was a clone of the first mouse.
Unlike any virus I had
ever seen, this doesn’t just destroy cells they duplicate them one by one until
they have completely replaced their hosts. But how would that come from a male?
He has no uterus. So what did it come from?
Even stranger was that instead of growing larger, this mouse
developed into a tiny adult first. It reminded me of those Jesus pictures where
he is painted as being an adult with a beard, the size of an infant. But this
was real. Day by day the mouse grew until it was adult size. At first it
appeared to be the same as its original. But after a while, I noticed they were
not 100 percent the same. The new or clone mouse, showed less emotion to other
similar mice. He followed his instincts to eat, but was more likely to wait
until the proper moment than fight over food as other mice did.
I also did some DNA testing on this mouse and although the DNA
seemed to be a perfect match—it really wasn’t. There were slight variations,
about 0.1%.
“Captain Skyhawk come in here!” I yelled.
He rushed in and I showed him the mouse.
“That thing has to reproduce in some way,” he said. “This is
creepy. Be careful with that.”
Little did I know that Captain Skyhawk had dandruff. After
several flakes fell off around the mouse, the viruses attacked dandruff flakes
and used the DNA to create a really small human. As it grew larger it began to
steal food and ate some of the animals and plants on the station. I never knew
it was even there at first.
I
was done with my experiments and I didn’t want to bring the virus home to
Earth. After a few weeks our landing party went back to the ship and we began
our voyage home.
I
noticed changes in Captain Skyhawk. Could he really
be a duplicated alien?
Could
Captain Skyhawk have been duplicated, cell
by cell, until the alien completely replaced him? But I can’t do anything about
this until I can find proof of my theory.
Captain Skyhawk had been a very jovial man. But now he has
changed. He has a much more stoic personality. He
performs every function as he is supposed to. He just seems to lack a real
personality.
How
do I prove my own Captain is really a clone and the real Captain Skyhawk may be
dead? And was he dead? After all, the mouse never killed his clone off. Would a
fake Captain Skyhawk allow his duplicate clone to live? Or was this like that
old movie, The Pod People (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), where these pods
allowed a person to be completely replicated and the original was destroyed. As
in the movie, I was noticing a difference in the behavior of Captain Skyhawk.
He seemed less emotional. He seemed detached. It was like he was a completely
different person. So could he be a duplicate of the viruses. And if he were,
what became of the real Captain Skyhawk?
My
worst fears were confirmed when we got a distress call from the Titan Station
12, we just left a day ago. Captain Skyhawk refused to go at first.
“We
accounted for every member of this space team,” he insisted. “That signal has
to be a mechanical error.”
“I
don’t think we can take that chance,” I insisted. “Protocol is that we always
check a distress signal just to be safe. After all, if there was someone stuck
there, they could be there for months and they could run out of food or energy
and that would allow them to freeze to death. We can’t take that chance.”
If
it were just me, I’m sure he would have over-ride my objections and just went
on. I was sure the real Captain Skyhawk was the one making that distress
signal. Lucky for me—and him, we had five other crewmen who all insisted we go
back. There was nothing the Captain could do. He had to go back.
We
turned the ship around and went back. Sure enough, when we got there,
everything in the station was turned on. When we entered the station, sure
enough there was the real Captain Skyhawk.
“Look—I’m
just trying to survive,” said the fake Captain. “I meant no harm. I left him
with enough rations to last until the next mission! You—Mark! You brought me to
life. I could have stayed a germ in a pond if you had just left me there. I
can’t help that you’re noisy.”
He
had a point. He was a product of our curiosity. Who knows if any other aliens
had visited this world in the last few million years, and allowed the viruses
to replicate others? But we were here now and we had done just that.
“Look
you are the first intelligent life form we have encountered in space and this
is in our own solar system,” I explained to fake Captain Skyhawk. “I’m sure
this is a real breakthrough discovery and no one will try to harm you. You
haven’t killed anyone yet. I will defend you and your rights. You are an
intelligent alien.”
When
we got to Titan and entered the station the real Captain Skyhawk was furious.
“This
man is a criminal, if he even is a man,” said the real Captain Skyhawk. “He
should be quarantined and kept sedated to prevent him from causing any more
harm to the crew. He’s obviously dangerous, maybe even deadly. Maybe he should
be killed?”
“Wait
a minute,” I said. “So far he has caused no one else any harm. I did bring him
to life. In a way, he is the very first intelligent life form ever found in
this solar system. He is a unique specimen. We need to study him. We can leave
him on Mars to prevent any kind of germ contamination on the Earth.”
"He
almost got me killed," thundered Captain Skyhawk.
"But
he didn't," I responded.
"I
left plenty of provisions," said the clone of Captain Skyhawk. "You
could have lived there for months. I was sure you would get loose, as you
did."
"We
could just as easily study this guy dead in a lab!" Captain Skyhawk
shouted.
"Come
on!" I said. "He seems to be an actual a sentient being. He even
talks. He can think. By biological definition he is human."
“If
you feel so strong about this guy, you will take full responsibility for
anything that he does,” said Captain Skyhawk. “Is that clear to you?!”
Yes
sir!” I replied.
"Also,
he is not to call himself captain or Skyhawk. I will not tolerate a clone like
character pretending to be me. Get him a private’s uniform and a different name
immediately!”
“Yes
sir.”
I
got the fake man a new uniform.
"Why
don't we call him Number Two," I said.
"That's
not a real name," said the fake Captain Skyhawk.
"OK,"
I said. "How about Titus Virus?"
"What,"
said fake Captain Skyhawk? I need a real name—like James Kirk or Albert Einstein."
"Those
names are taken. I got an idea. How about we call you Albert Kirk—you
know--combine names you know?"
"OK,"
Albert said. "I'll take that name. I am now Albert Kirk."
I
was fascinated by this guy. I had to question him and learn all about him.
"You
can talk and yet you have no education," I said.
"I
know everything Captain Skyhawk knows," Kirk said. "When my brain
duplicated all his knowledge was passed from his head to mine. I'm an exact
replica of him."
"Actually
you have a .01 difference in your DNA."
"True.
I believe that Captain Skyhawk is actually a dullard and a bore. With this
knowledge I would not curb my ambitions and desires as he has."
"So
you are different."
Kirk
agreed to go with us to Mars. Yet I was suspicious that he is lying about
something. He seemed like a monkey trying to get into a boat of bananas. But as
long as he agreed to behave we let him walk around as he pleased.
We
all loaded the lander back up and we took off for our mother ship. Then it was
off to Mars, our next destination.
To be continued.......
Pix from quizlet.com.
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