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The night was passing as smoothly as the day, uneventful and entirely expected; both qualities Adam preferred. It's not that he was an unadventurous fellow, no he had disproven that simple fact by working his way to the space stations position of communications officer.
His uncle Harlan liked to call him Mr.Spock sometimes, which bothered him. Spock was a science officer, not a communications officer. Harlan said it was all the same to him.
Adam thought it had something to do with the shear amount of jobs he had accumulated over the years. He was nearly a one man army, dedicated to charting and observing the shifts in constellations, orbits, comets and occasionally radio waves.
Yes, February 2, 2025 was a good day for Adam. That is until, a beep on the monitor interrupted his casually consumption of his lunch.
He wasn't sure how he had missed it before, perhaps it was the crunching and squish of the sandwich that had overtaken his ears for the begging beeps.
Now that it was an almost alarming ticking of dread Adam set down his food to stare wide-eyed at the monitor. The green induction on his scream showed it was crossing distances that would take days in a matter of seconds.
At this rate it would crash into the star base in a matter of minutes if Adam did not find a solution fast. The very suggesting had him choking down the bite of his meal in a sputter.
On any other ordinary day he would have received pings and notifications weeks in advance to any on coming comets or meteoroids, and would have had time to send notifications out. Today was no longer an ordinary day.
Adam saw the radio channels were picking up feedback, or at least, sharing a wave with someone or something. He slapped down the buttons that would allow him to listen and speak back, and began to talk over the static whine that followed.
“This is the NCSS, you are approaching the station at dangerous speeds, if you do not change course a collision is imminent.”
Adam's words felt heavy in the air, too technical and landing with a authority he couldn't find within himself. He bit his lip and tried again,
“Do you need assistance? Are you having trouble navigating? Do you need a place to Port?Do you read me?”
Adam drummed his fingers, the flood of questions were just as intimidating.
A whine sizzled out of the speaker, spoiling the air with more anxiety. Now the beeping was not just from the monitor, but also from the radio. Adam easily pinpointed it as Morse, but that did not make the situation any easier; infact when he flung open a manual book his hands were not as steady as they had been before.
Over a radio that could support verbalism, the code gave the situation a heightened emergency. Adam did not reply till he had triple checked that the translator was working, it was old and did not do well with the more primitive of communications.
The message read:
“Help. No control for speed. Damaged ship. Directions?”
Adam typed up onto the bright screen of the monitors, hoping it would translate his text correctly into Morse as he sent it.
“Swing over Station. Adjust angle .59°. Fall into orbit. Await further instructions.”
If they were able to dodge the station and get caught in the gravitational field of the earth it would give Adam roughly three hours to come up with a solution, judging by the speed they were going.
Then he would be able explain to ground control why a unidentified spaceship was swooping around earth. He was already rocking back and forth in his chair at the realization that no one had asked him about said UFO. Was everyone on break? Why must Adam be left to carry the weight of it by himself?
A transmission came through both in English on screen and in its original Morse through his radio.
“Understood. Should failure mean self destruct? Ship parts burn up in air. Ship destroy life.”
Adam frowned. They had a point. If the ship was broken into pieces the individual parts would be less harmful than a large chunk crushing the earthlife or station personnel. He would not allow such measures to be taken, and so in lack of things to say, responded with,
“Negative.”
Adam heard the readouts going to red alert at the proximity, he slapped them off like a man swatting flies and ran out of the room. The hallway was fresh with a clean whiteness that made the sight of the abyssal space beyond the windows stand out starkly. The air didn't seem to scratch at his skin, but gave itself up like a smooth balm to his lungs; when he gasped at the sudden sight of the ship he only felt the fresh breeze of an unforeseeable future fluttering down his throat.
It was almost the size of a house, covered with white paint that chipped away at points to show the black and silver metal underneath. The windows were tinted, but changed as different light hit it, almost like velvet. He saw it had an bubbly aqua film around it, but it hung loose like a torn snake skin around the damaged wing. It's metal was dragged back and exposed the delicate workings of it's innermost jets and gas breaks.
He was only just able to identity the parts within the ship, it was unlike any he had seen before. He strained his neck following it as it passed over head like a shooting star. After a moment, he did not feel overwhelmed by its existence, though any other man would have quaked under the confirmation of an advanced alien race, Adam only smiled. His ears twitched up with the movement of his lips while he jogged back to his communication room. His heartbeat quick from joy rather than fear, for but a moment.
It was a close save of only an hour to spare. He explained his solution to them in the bluntest way possible,
“Dock onto Station. Temporary push will move us forward. Auto adjusters will stabilize.”
They began to respond at once, and Adam could not help but to bounce his leg. Now with a plan he could let the facts sink into him, that being, he was speaking with an intelligent life form from another planet.
“Where to Dock? Station Docking unclear. Specify.”
Adam blinked hard once. The man usually found himself in simple social predicaments where he had over or under specified, this however, brought upon a separate anxiety. It would be irresponsible to give them blueprints or a map of the station, but without one it was nearly impossible to indicate where the Docking port was, especially to someone who didn't even hail from Earth.
Adam tugged at his hair, but jerked his own hand away. Harlan had said it was a bad stimm. He rubbed the inside of his hand with his thumbs instead.
Adam glanced at the door, knowing that down the corridor, past the second door to the left, was his own tenderly cared for space suit. He had been trained just as any other members of the station, to operate in zero gravity, in case something went wrong and the ship stopped rotating, or he was forced to work on the main branch that was always in zero gravity. Both of the training scenarios were vastly different from what he had in mind. Adam did not like being unprepared, and spacewalks always had a plethora of variables to account for.
He scratched at his hand. The beeps pulled him back from the edge.
“Specify?”
Appeared again on screen.
Adam shuttered, his breathing was hard as he typed out,
“Scan for life outside station. I'll open the docking port.”
Adam rubbed his face, he could do this. He new the layouts, the suit itself. One step at a time.
“Understood.” Was the sollem reply.
Adam ran quickly to his room, looking at his wrist watch constantly. He had a lot of time but it didn't feel like it. His whole world was rushing around him, swirling like a thick soup of boiling water. It changed shape only to evaporate completely and leave him cooked.
He slipped inside his space suit, a crab burying himself in the wet sand.
The white durability of its material blended nicely into the background of the ship but inside it he was cut off completely from the noise and light of the station. Adam caught his breath and let the weighted hug of it take over his mind. The walk to the dock was uninterrupted.
Harlan greeted him there, tipping his old cap up to watch the spaceman pass. “Adam, Adam, Adam.” He mumbled, “And what are you up to now boy?”
“I'm going to use the station to stop a ship from crashing. Or worse, spiralling endlessly into space.” Adam mumbled out.
Harlan, who had seen no such ship, nor heard any news of it coming, only said, “If that's what you have to do, then do it.” He figured Adam was using some profound metaphor he didn't have the energy to decipher.
Adam stood up straighter at the reassurance and nodded shortly before marching on to the air tight room that was one wall away from the cold depths of space. He clipped a rope onto his suit and sealed the chamber so that nothing but himself would be sucked out once he flipped up a lever. He saw from the monitor in the chamber that the ship would be coming close enough soon. Adams hands felt damp even in the cool suit, he punched in the five digit code and held his hand over the lever tightly. This would be a simple job, he just needed to bring them in. One step at a time.
Adam threw the lever up before he could give himself further thoughts, and braced himself.
The air whipped out, but their was only a pocket full thanks to the second chamber seals. Adam found himself turning circles and gasped quickly onto his tether to pull himself back home. He had ripped the bandage off, he knew what to expect of space, knew everything there was to know currently. Having completed the test, he allowed a moment of contemplation as he sat in the open room, feet dangling into space, where his whole body had just swung.
“The ship!” Adam said to himself, he saw it shimmering closer, more controlled.
Adam waved frantically, it altered it's coarse and he knew they had to have seen him. He walked over to pick up the large suction like tube that would prevent the spaceship from falling back once it collided.
It was coming in hot. Adam was a cowboy trying to wrangle a wild stallion.
There were no sounds to announce it's crash, no fire to explore the base, in fact, Harlan only noticed a small flicker of the ships lights as it pushed back against the shove.
“Hmm...must have blinked.”
Adam was swung out into the inky sprinkle of stars, wrapped around the NCSS's tether and grasping onto the tube that had latched on, with a powerful suction, to the alien ships broken wing. He felt a hard tug finally relent, jostling them both.
Adam panted hard, he slapped a button on his belt and they began to be manually reeled into the dock.
///
Lucas's head was pounding and there was a definite downpour of blood coming from various cracks and cuts on his face. He had thought to heal them during the three hour trip round the small planet, but he didn't count on his interactive ship going dead during the middle of it. He had been flying manually the entire time, flipping and tapping at the display screen. His breath had caught at the sight of the small being waving at him. He was sure they would be crushed under the uncontrollable body of his ship, but after a hard lurch and two bangs against his head the ship had stopped inside the “NCSS” and his craft was still registering the lifeform.
He whipped his eyes wearily, and the tiny robots that practically made up his suit jumped to attention, collecting together to make his glasses.
“Fanny, are you online?Where are you girl?”
His ship stuttered, whirled, rebooted.
“Online. Power had to be confined to the engines and boosters. You did a great job on your own
.”
“It wasn't fun, I'm glad we're safe.”
His lungs wheezed,
“What's the matter? I'm not hurt but I feel terrible- is the human okay?”
Lucas blinked at the monitors.
Fanny chirped a bark,
“They have connected me to their NCSS. I am allowing them access inside. Your body will need to adjust to the atmosphere and germs.”
Lucas shakily held his stomach as his nanobots worked to make his immune system accept the air outside Fanny. Lucas heard the clanking steps down the corridors and strange noises,
“Hello! Are you injured? More damage might have been done by - oh I like the design of your ship, it's efficient. Hello? Is anyone, is there anybody alive?”
Lucas frowned and strained his pointed ear,
“What do those noises mean, do you think? Run them through translations, please, Fanny?”
“Another Earth language, English is more common. I am receiving more information from Earth's later messages, Morse is a tradition language not often spoken.
”
Lucas fretted, he had done all the downloading and studying he needed for Morse, felt sure that he would master it's pronouncing with his species ability to mimic even the most artificially of sounds. Even as he still required the ship to decipher the two separate written forms of Morse. This did not help to lighten his already damp spirits.
The steps seemed extraordinary light to Lucas ears, and he wondered how graceful the person had to be in order to maintain the dim clunk.
“They are inquiring about your health, and have complimented me.”
Lucas's head swam as more air was carried in,
“Oh that's nice of them, but it will be obvious enough how well I'm doing.”
Lucas smiled, he tried to cheer himself, he could work around the language barrier.
“Hello?” The sound was sweeter now that it was in the same room.
Lucas struggled out of his seatbelt, and crained around to see them.
“Hej…”
Lucas felt his stomach twist with a different kind of sickness. He was shocked at the being that stood in his doorway. They had pale skin, white as his blood, and curling brown hair the likes he had never seen. He closed his mouth with a swallow, thankful that he had not looked for too long.
They spoke again, a solid slate of sounds, “Your head is bleeding,at - at least I assume it's blood, your skin is blue. We are
clearly
not alike in all aspects... Do you need medical treatment? The NCSS has medical facilities, but I would need to notify my superiors of you.”
The visitor shuffled in place, wide eyed and staring.
Lucas shot glances at his monitor which was writing up translations for him, still he floundered at what was to be done. As the human began to fidget, wringing their hands while looking to him, Lucas found his words,
“I'd love to come aboard the NCSS.”
He stumbled out gesturing to the human with a hand.
The suit clad being focused on a space just above his shoulder as they spoke, “I think your ability to sound just like a Morse code transmission is amazing, and it explains some questions I had,” they stopped to rub their hands again, before, “But I can't understand you.”
Lucas nearly did not respond, too caught in the human's strait and mono tone voice, how he wished he was capable of such vocal regulation.
“ We could use the ships to translate?
” Lucas managed to draw out, studying the shades of pigment in the human's hair. He did not dare look to their face,for how could he risk making direct eye contact?
They blinked and followed his hand movements to see the screen Fanny was displaying on his dash. Lucas watched them inspect the strange symbols that sprung up.
Their mouth open in wonder scanning over the technology but all they speed out was, “Okay. I'll show you.” Before turning around and quickly walking back to the direction they came.
Lucas watched the translator work, and glanced at the humans wandering presence,
“Fanny can you feed the translation into my suit? I have to go, um, I'll be back.”
His ship lit up,
“You have limited fuel it will take more time, permission to delay adjustments to atmosphere to refocus energy?”
Lucas was already trailing after the human when he gave a distracted affirmative.
When he stumbled out of the passage that plugged directly into the docking port he wheezed, the air was sharp against his lungs. The human noticed and frowned,
“Your not okay, why are you not wearing a spacesuit, are you having trouble breathing?”
Lucas watched the translation flutter out on his glasses and tried to answer as he was fed information, “This is my spacesuit.”
The human tilted their head slightly with raised brows,“You know English now?”
Lucas swallowed, working his tongue around the language, “Easy to do with the suit.”
They nodded but said, “Your suit isn't helping you much with your respiration, but I know how to fix that for you, I fix a lot of things here- uh, would you, could you follow me?” They pointed forward and began to walk quickly.
Lucas walked after them, deeply curious and observing the white clean structure of the NCSS, touching the ceiling with an outstretched hand.
He worried fainting about the human's supervisors, Earth had scent a few attempts at outside contact but one could never be certain. The last starbases he had traveled to was dangerous enough. Word had spread quickly about the ordeal on his home world, but of course someone had taken the liberty of skewing the facts. He dreaded the point that he would have to recount the events but he would not avoid it, he doubted that the human, as kind as they seemed, would accept “Oh I just happened to be passing by your neighborhood” as an explanation.
Abruptly
the human stopped and turned around in a flash, a impressive feat given that they still wore a thickly padded suit.
“This is my cabin, my tools are here but please don't touch anything, somethings are breakable.”
“I'll make sure I'm the only broken thing to fix today.” Lucas tried to joke, but he was too nervous and he knew the words came out unnaturally, they only hummed in response.
Lucas walked in, the doorway forced him to bend down somewhat, but the room itself was high ceilinged with a jumble of things carefully organised along the flat surfaces.
He sat on what looked to be a small bed while the human slipped off their suit. It was one of the strangest greetings he had accepted. His tour guide seemed to be thinking along the same lines as suddenly they looked up, chocolate hair bouncing buoyantly,
“I haven't introduced myself,” they said almost distressed, judging by the speed they shot out their hand, “My name is Adam, what's yours?”
Lucas stared at the outstretched hand and knew he was flushed blue, was Adam offering him a chance at scenting them? He didn't want to break some code amongst the humans greetings but what other purpose was there to this display?
Lucas hesitant took their hand by the wrist and brought it closer, leaning down as well, he breathed deeply. Their scent was layered, a clean fresh plant like smell covered up a vegetative purple that was overlaid with a delicious aroma of musky salt. Lucas tinted a navy as he was weakly able to stutter out a,
“My name, mynameis Lucas.”
He glanced up to their face and saw that it had changed into a red. He stared at their cheeks in utter awe and could not stop himself from saying, “
Your face is red, I, it's been so long since I've seen that color.
It's so rare on in my home, red.”
///
Adam felt his body run hot with the confirmation that his face was blushing. He was sure Lucas hadn't meant anything by sniffing his flesh, animals did much the same in greeting humans, but the action parodied the famous gentleman's kiss of a maiden too well to leave him unflustered. Adam drew his hand back in a war with himself, surely he was a poor first encounter for Lucas to meet, likely confusing the blue alien at all turns. He pushed his embarrassment aside,
“Red is a common color on Earth Lucas, I'm sure you'll see it more here. Uhm, can I take a look at your suit now?” he asked with his eyes focused on Luca's arm.
Lucas offered it, “I don't think you can help me, but you can try.”
Adam nodded, it was completely foreign technology but if Lucas could learn English then he could adapt to Lucas's suit. Adam brought out a box full of tools and began examining the suits material.
Maybe after he helped fix it then he would have time to tell Harlan and the station on earth of Lucas's existence. He wondered how no one else had caught on and then remembered the loose film around Lucas's ship.
“Lucas do you have any way to make your ship undetectable?” He asked while he tinkered on the suit.
Lucas shivered as a piece was tweaked, “Fanny is usually undetectable yes, the damaged wing made it difficult to maintain but we managed.”
Adam hummed, only half focused as he struggled to understand Lucas's suit, “Do you have a schematics of how your air is filtered?-And is your ship called... Fanny?”
Lucas smiled, “Yes her name is Fanny- but er, schematics? I'm not sure. I do know how my gravity is kept.” Lucas offered up quickly.
Adam didn't find the information helpful but he new what an ugly feeling it was to be viewed as useless or worse helpless; so Adam asked,
“What do you mean Lucas? There's gravity here now.”
Lucas looked down to their feet, “Yes there is, but not strong enough to keep me here.”
Adam frowned but didn't know what to ask next, it seemed too vague for him to pick the right thing to say, or maybe the translation was faulty. He backtracked,
“Why were you hiding in space? Being undetectable in something so large seems... redundant.” He asked bluntly, but not unkindly, “No one could find you unless they really looked for you.”
Lucas sighed heavily making Adam worrie that he had said something wrong as he often seemed to, or maybe they were struggling to breathe again. He hopped it was the latter, he didn't want to do offend Lucas and not be able to explain why.
“Somebody is looking for me, they want to hurt me for a crime I did not commit. They cast me out of their star system, the second I've been to, they damaged my ship, now I have...nowhere to go.”
Adam wanted to ask more but Beth once said it was rude to pry, so he continued to work and waited for Lucas to elaborate or change the subject on his own.
“It seems impossible to escape the past.”
Adam blinked, “No it's not, just move somewhere else.”
The room filled with the sound of windchimes aggressively jangling and Adam startled, he jerked up at stared at Lucas, whose head had been thrown back, mouth open in a smile. Adam watched it die down to a few chimes before he commented,
“I've never heard anyone laugh like that.” Adam didn't know what part of what he said was funny but was glad he had experienced the aliens giggles, shocked as he was.
“Would you prefer to keep hiding?” Adam asked after a beat, watching at the darker blue faded from Lucas's face.
“Yes, very much so, I don't know what will happen if I am found and I don't want to get anyone in the crossfire.”, They stressed urgently, “ As soon as my ship is fixed I can go, I'll try not to be a trouble.” Lucas seemed to plead.
Adam bit his bottom lip, maybe he could tell them about Lucas after the alien left, then there would be no harm to anyone's safety. There was no rule saying be had to report it once, there wasn't even a protocol for this.
Adam nodded,
“I understand Lucas, I won't lie for you but I won't tell anyone about you.”