Endeavour Pluto Part 1: Horizons

Darkness descended upon the crippled figure like vultures on a corpse. Beyond the hills in the distance, the sun slowly fell unto a silvery, silken lake, and the moon rose gingerly in its place. A man, lying distorted, like a forsaken doll in the grass, sat up slowly, then with a cry fell back down unto the unforgiving terrain. His skinny body trembled; exposed white arms were bruised and scraped at the elbows; bright red blood dripped and stained his pallid skin. He looked at it with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, as though he’d never seen it before. Then, eyes still wide, he stood and studied his horizons like a wonder-struck deer.  The moon, which now looked down upon him in soft beauty, was big and silver, and not unlike Earth’s moon. Yes, Earth’s moon...for the first time since he had woken up, the flabbergasted young man remembered that he was not on his own beloved planet!

Hands shaking, he reached into the pocket of his bloodied white jumpsuit and produced a singed, crumpled star-map. It was barely usable now; it must have been burnt along with the rest of his suit. The thicker exoskeleton, complete with fish-bowl helmet, lay in a heap at his feet, and he was sitting, trembling, in the torn and singed remains of his jumpsuit. His armband, which had declared which country he hailed from, as well as his name-tag, had fallen off. He wasn’t surprised, or bothered. Crawling away from his suit’s remnants (which, with their eerie resemblance to the shed skin of a snake disturbed him) he pondered why. Well, it didn’t much matter now, did it? The people here didn’t give a damn if he came from Europe or America or Asia; they couldn’t even know what those were. The whole idea was rather liberating. As for his name, well...he’d never much cared for it anyway. Besides, it wasn’t really important what he called himself if he wasn’t alive, was it? His priority now was survival, and twenty five years of living had taught him that other people were pretty good for survival. Also rather detrimental to it, but there wasn’t much he could do about that here.

Thus, swaying, vision hazy, he stumbled toward the great metal deformity which still smoked a few yards ahead of him. The lights in his craft had gone out on impact, however, they still shone a bit in the light of the moon, and he was directed toward the vessel’s distorted body. Upon approach, he found that it had been flipped upside down, the glass shattered and bloody in the grass. The man’s heart beat quickly, viciously against his chest and his head spun as he knelt to look upon his crewmates, whom the blood and silence already told him were dead. Still, simple human desperation compelled him to bend and peer into the darkened space, stomach in knots.
Sure enough, there sat three stony figures in the seats, shadowed by the darkness, only the blood dripping from their noses visible in the moonlight. Tears welled up in his eyes and vomit in his throat. The young man stumbled away from the hulking metal coffin to puke violently into the grass. Stumbling and falling to his knees, he wept and vomited like he had not done in years. At least, for a little while. Until a familiarly low, hoarse, man’s voice penetrated his ringing ears. “Get the hell up, you big baby.” Turning with a grimace, wiping the refuse from his chin, the younger thin man turned to behold the older, hulking beast of a man who stood erect against the moon, silhouetted, hands crossed before his chest proudly. “Just my luck,” he muttered as he waited for the younger man to gain his bearings clumsily, “the only survivor is the brave scout, young Pluto.”

‘Pluto’ glared up at him through wispy brows and grimaced, wiping his eyes, pretending to not have cried. “I asked you people to stop calling me that. We’re astronauts, not children on a playground.”

“....Whatever. Pluto.”

The younger man glared and began to snarl something as he stood up, but thought against it and stumbled away instead. Oh Hell, he thought bitterly, dragging his heavy feet toward the lake in the not-so-distant distance, he’s the last human I know. I might as well grant him his silly insults, the child. He approached the lake, now, and fell upon its muddy shores roughly, staring into the strangely silver, still water to look upon another familiar face. A skinny, boyish face. His mother told him it was handsome, his child-hood friends stupid, his colleagues weird. Much like the rest of his body, it was long, and thin, and his cheekbones were as defined as his striking glacial eyes, staring intently at him through the water. Near-shoulder length mousy brown hair, which was shaggy on a good day, flew madly in all directions now, knotted and matted with blood. Indeed, blood was all over the ragged man’s nose, mouth, and neck. Gingerly, Pluto reached into the water before him; it was cold. Cold, but still usable. He bent forward eagerly and submerged himself for a moment too long in its wet embrace, gasping in shock and for air when he came out.  

Standing up more confidently now, the young human looked out onto an alien horizon, apprehension, excitement, and exhilaration broiling in his heart—along with, for reasons unbeknownst to him, fear and guilt. Peering over the jagged edges of the hills on the horizon, he squinted into the darkness, and was taken aback when he thought he saw a figure stirring in the hills. It stopped and seemed to stare at him a moment; then turned and hurried away. Suddenly alert, Pluto hurried away from the edge of the lake, calling, “Ben! Ben, hurry, we have to get a move on before any locals find us. Who knows where we are; there could be a whole town over the ridge for all we know. Come on, help with the ship.”

Ben grunted; he wasn’t used to taking orders or listening to other people; especially not little Pluto, who had been the runt of the crew...who still was. Still, he couldn’t refute the younger man’s wisdom, and set to work helping him tip over the ship. It creaked and moaned like the metal behemoth it was, and there was a great clattering and shattering of glass as it fell with a thud right-side up. What remained of the glass top shattered on impact; it fell like blistering, bloody rain onto the laps of the deceased crew members, still sitting limp in their seatbelts. The moon shone brightly upon their distorted faces and Pluto finally got a clear glimpse of them; of the gashes in their fleshy faces, the blood dripping from their noses, the glassy, lifeless stare of their eyes. He inhaled quickly and tried not to vomit. These people weren’t his friends, he didn’t much care for them, he wouldn’t have wished them a happy birthday—but he’d just spent three months of his life with these people; he’d shared the same breakfast space every morning, slept in the same cabin, heard none but their voices for three entire months. And now they were dead. Now, they were but limp, motionless blood-bags sitting in bloodied seats and bloodied glass and bloodied grass, blood, blood, so much damned blood!

Tears were dripping from the youth’s face as he and Ben unbuckled the other three deceased crew. Pluto’s slender hands trembled, especially white tonight, glowing under the moon as he tore open the seatbelts and hauled the bodies out. The bodies; not the people, the bodies. Pluto shuddered at the concept. He moved slowly, and every lift was a labour. In the time that he had hauled out one, Ben had brought out the other two, and laid them in the cool grass.  Pluto knelt and gently closed the lids of their eyes. He didn’t speak as he turned, retrieved two emergency spades, threw one to Ben, and set to work digging.

Dawn was breaking over the lake when the pair had finished their morbid task. Three mounds of dirt existed now at their feet, and Pluto had erected a small stone monument at the head of each, scraping their name and age into the stone. He wasn’t quite sure why; nobody would ever be able to read it. But there was something about the tradition it all that served to provide some small comfort. Pluto recited some words that he’d heard once at a funeral, about what type of people they had been, about their lives having been so great. He didn’t think any of them were religious, but he mumbled some hazy references to spirituality just in case. When the deed was done, he wiped the dirt from his hands and walked toward the ship, setting to work salvaging what he could. There was no time to grieve; survival had to be their number one priority now.  Pluto managed to put together a few rations, some clothes, and some pots in a burlap sack which he swung over a boney shoulder. Ben lumped together some supplies in a huge travel pack and secured it to his back. As they turned and walked toward the horizon, Pluto caught a glimpse of something long and thick protruding from the pack.

“A gun?” He asked in an as if tone. They could have packed six more pounds of food for that weight. Besides, if it were anyone else he might have been more lenient, but Ben he didn’t trust with a cap gun.

“Yeah, a gun. If the locals don’t like us, we had better have a way to protect ourselves, hadn’t we?”

“If somebody doesn’t like you, you don’t shoot them, for god’s sake,” Pluto retorted quickly, adding in his head, if you did that everyone you met would be dead.

“Animals,” Ben sneered, turning and moving on as though the conversation was over.

“Animals? How are we supposed to know what’s an ‘animal’ and what’s not? What makes you think there are animals here and not some other weird kingdom?”

Ben sighed and the bristles of his dark moustache quivered along with his tiny, beady brown eyes. “Look; if somethin’ is goin’ for my throat I’m gonna do whatever I need to do to keep my self alive, alright?”

It was a statement, not a question, but Pluto responded anyway. “So long as you don’t shoot anything that moves...”

Ben didn’t respond. He and Pluto wandered onward over the horizon side by side, grimace by grimace. Pluto squinted into the amber light which glazed over emerald hills in awe, gaping at the country’s alien beauty. Everything was so beautifully...different. The grass wasn’t normal, though it was grass; it was two shades too light, and swung a little bit too much in the breeze. The air was cool, and there was a wonderfully foreign scent riding on its current. Pluto closed his eyes as he walked and allowed himself a moment of solace, slowly opening them a few moments later and gazing lazily at the hills silhouetted about him. Suddenly, in the distance he caught glimpse of a moving figure again—this time more clearly. It was...it was humanoid! Moreover, it was a woman; tall and curvaceous, she seemed to stare Pluto down, though he could not see her eyes. She lifted an arm and waved it back and forth slowly. It took Pluto’s foggy brain a moment to realize that she was waving. He smiled and returned the gesture emphatically.

 “Hey!” Ben swung round suddenly, demanding, “what are you doing?! Is that...Get down!” Suddenly Ben dropped his pack and before Pluto could do anything, the gun was free and set in Ben’s hands. He aimed it, put his finger on the trigger, tensed—

“No! Stop!” Pluto leaped into him, throwing the burly man to the ground just as the gun went off. Instantly, a searing pain shot up through his leg, and he swayed, screaming as he plummeted to the ground. The last thing he heard and the last thing he saw as his head hit the ground was the sound of a horn, and the eruption of a crowd rising up behind the woman on the horizon.