Surya has not returned for us. We packed all the equipment into loaders in the allotted time and radioed we’re ready. They confirmed a two-day window after orbit, but they did not arrive and have not responded to our hails. Three months of silence.

We unpacked the growers and reestablished domes, but this planet is not meant to be a home. It may have been beautiful once, with metallic peaks veined by moraines of sparkling white, but it’s a wreckage now. A decade of extractor beetles boring out craters and building interconnected tailings dams has turned it into a wasteland that does not suit the human mind.

Sharma and I are doing our best. She comes out of her dome regularly to eat with me and stays on comms. If something has happened to the Surya, I do not think Pentax will mount an auxiliary rescue mission for three indentured workers, but she’s convinced the value of all the equipment we’ve packed is reason enough for them to return.

I don’t know if Gunner agrees. He hasn’t joined us for a meal in months. He’s never been super friendly, but when we had our prescribed schedule, he stayed in sync with us. But when we no longer had that structure, he began to get off rhythm. The last time he came to the canteen he sat but did not eat. Interrupted Sharma to say, “The water here is dark.”

Sharma and I exchanged glances. He stared, with his giant unblinking eyes like some deep-sea fish. Sharma finally conceded, “The beetles created a lot of really deep tarns, and the mafic composition of—”

He huffed, a derisive dismissal of us both. He went to the door, pausing to fire back at us, “you’re both too thick to see what’s right in front of you,” then stomped out. 

He’s been a ghost ever since, haunting the periphery of camp at all hours in his enviro suit that swishes as he scuttles about. Sometimes I think I hear him cackling out somewhere in the wastelands. The truth is, I’m not any more fond of him than Sharma is, but if we’re stuck here abandoned to this uncaring cosmos, unlike her, (“don’t talk to me about that lunatic,” she’d said) I want to hold on to every possible thread. 

When the light on his dome stays dark for a full diurnal, I go to check on him.

I find him shivering in his skivvies, hoarfrost fuzzing every surface. Disrobed, it’s clear he’s devolved, bearded, wild-maned, and creased with dirt. His eyes, always prominent, bulge more noticeably as his frame has winnowed down.

I’m alarmed and consider getting Sharma, but he’s too fragile to leave. I switch all his systems back on. With warmth building, I pull blankets from his bed to bundle him up.

His teeth chatter a storm. He stutters, “Came … from … the water.”

I sit on his cot and loop my arm around his shoulders to contribute some body heat. He’s ice cold.

“The … sky opened.”  His voice is raw, hard to understand with all the croaking and clattering of teeth.

“What sky? This place has no sun, it’s just earth and space.”

“We can see the … stars.”

It’s true that all of the darkness is glittering sharp with lights, the Nanuq Galaxy spirals neon pink and amethyst on the horizon. It’s undoubtedly beautiful, but we’ve been here too long for it to be rapturous.

He’s clearly delirious. We unpacked the standard med kits, but could they actually help with this … space madness?  

He clamps a hand on my knee. His nails, rimmed dark, dimple my suit. The gesture opens his smell to me—an alluvial mix of mineral, dampness, and decomposing. 

“He’s still here,” he creaks.

“Mate, nobody—”

The pantry door squeaks. Something leans out from the crack. It shifts closer into the glow of the overhead light.

It’s Gunner.

His eyes are pearlescent orbs—all cloudy sclera and no pupil.

But …

Gunner waggles his eyebrows and emits a snicker.

I don’t look at what’s under my arm. I can’t. I’m still as a dormouse, my arm dead from cold, my heart, shuddering.

It’s so cold—how could it be alive?—but it breathes. Wheezes. 

I don’t know if it knows that I’m aware something is amiss. And part of me wants to keep up this charade. Can I do that? As a child, I once came upon a mama bear and her cubs in the wild and walked calmly and quietly backwards for half a mile. Can I do the same here? Stay cool? Can I pat it on the back with an, “okay, see you tomorrow,” and walk out as if nothing were wrong?

It quivers beside me.

I hazard a small tilt of my head to examine it. Whatever tenuous semblance it held of Gunner has eroded. Both eyeballs have shifted across the face to line up on the left, gazing up with me without eyelids.

My heart stops.

The lights blink off.

Gunner bolts from the pantry, skittering past us out the front door.

I scream, maybe I scream? I don’t know, because it’s whimpering and Gunner is cackling outside, and I’m so close to it, and I try to jerk back but I’m stuck to it—my arm numb and stiff and somehow still locked around its shoulders.

“Gunner!” I’ve tipped us both over into the bed, my arm off its shoulders but entangled in blankets, and

I’m kicking my feet to leverage myself away but I’m hitting the cot frame, the air—I’ve got no traction.

“Sharma!”

It crawls along my body, unbearably heavy, obdurate, solid as stone. My hand connects with its face, a wet pop as if I’d busted one of its exposed eyes. That hand goes senseless with cold.

I scream, have I stopped screaming? I’m half off the cot. My legs tangled in blankets. I kick, hard, connect with it. It rears back, I thud to the floor. I fumble free of blankets. 

On hands and knees, I don’t waste time trying to stand, but scramble on all fours towards the door. 

It crawls behind me.

At the door, I can hear Gunner giggling on the other side. He’s gone mad—he will be no help—he brought this thing here.

My right arm’s still numb. I have to use both hands to push on the door. Which does not open. He’s locked me in somehow.

I pound on the door.

I stand.

It’s standing, too. Behind me. I feel waves of cold, even on the top of my head. I turn my head fractionally but sense more than see the sheer size of it. Like dark drapery strung from the ceiling, sparsely furred as bat wings with the texture of a scab.

There’s the wet clicking of hundreds of eyelids forming, opening and closing. The gut-punch smell of ice churning the silt of stagnant antediluvian rivers.

It slides damp fibroidy fingers along the side of my neck, almost tenderly, like a lover. “You have words. Now we have words,” it says and this time the voice is its own. Croaky but soft, as if struck with wonderment.

Outside, Sharma shouts and the sound of Gunner’s laughter rises, then falls away. He must be retreating. Sharma shouts after him, “Goddamnit, Gunner! Come back! They answered our beacon!

They’re coming to get us.”  

I renew my efforts to get out.

“What else can we have?” it asks.

Sharma calls my name—close—almost at the door.

It clamps those fingers. Cartilage, bone, and tendons grind together in a starburst of pain. I can’t breathe or speak. But I know, without looking, as cold razors along my boots, that there is water rising in the room, rivulets churning into a lake of pure, starless dark at our feet.