Dove Levy - Way Station

They’ve come back. We heard loud scraping as soon as the ferry gate opened to allow it in. We’d worried one or more had made it on, but it’s safely inside now. I see a few scratches along the hull, but nothing untoward is below deck or in any of the cabins. It’s leaving that’s going to be a problem.

We’re about to push off. I hear them prowling around outside. We have a few guns on us, but I don’t know how much they’ll do. My little friend didn’t seem affected by the bullets, but maybe there’s some sort of head we can aim at to take them down. Or — … [laugh] He says maybe I’d just missed. I’m not that bad of a shot.

Gate’s opening. Here’s hoping they can’t swim.

[panting] So… uh.

They can swim.

They’re on the deck. Glad, really, really glad that this thing is automated. If there was a navigation room, with the above deck view required of it, whoever sat in it would be dead by now.

I think I counted six of them. Doctor?

Oh, right. Five now. We took out one.

I must have been a bad shot after all, because guns certainly work.

Ugh. They’re just — they’re just crawling around up there. Or walking. Or slithering. I don’t know what the right term is for things like this. They’re just limbs, gangly limbs that look and move like tentacles until one slams you in the stomach with all the force and sturdiness of a battering ram, whatever joints or similar structure they have locked into place before collapsing again.

[groans] They pack… a nice punch in them.

We have a week and a half, two weeks until we reach the island that houses Facility H. We can take our chances in trapping these things inside the harbor there, if they even survive that long. We don’t know what they live off of, if they even can survive away from land at all, but we also can’t assume they’ll just die off if we wait.

That’s a long wait, though. A long wait full of tension and fear that I don’t want to sit through. But I think a short break is fine. Food stores, fresh water stores, and plenty of necessary facilities under the decks. Don’t have to deal with it right away.

I can’t help but be intrigued. These things are — not sapient, I don’t think — I hope not. But they’re smart. Smart in the way dogs are, or rats.

Two of them found a way under the deck. Came upon us as we slept, the bastards. Dr. Federman took the brunt of it before we got our guns on them. Just thinking about them is…

The door on the deck has a turning wheel to unlock it and then a handle to pull up, and it’s heavy. Of the animals on Earth that may be able to figure out how to get down to us, very, very few have the strength or dexterity for it. Even then, after the ones we’d injured and driven off before we were able to open the hatch ourselves and get down, none of them saw us do it. They’d have to have figured it out all on their own.

I want to update my earlier statement. Even rats, the clever little things, couldn’t figure this out without seeing us exemplify it at least once. Apes, maybe. Gorillas. They’re smart enough to learn sign language.

Or these are, in fact, sapient, and then we’re probably screwed, right?

Three still left. They die as easily as anything else when shot in enough places. No head that we have been able to see, and it’s not like we had the time to experiment as to which areas were the fatal ones. I don’t mind the waste of bullets right now, though. With luck, there will be nothing on Facility H’s island, yeah?

Now is not the time for scientific curiosity, I told Dr. Federman. Now is not the time for scientific curiosity, I then told myself.

An alien corpse is stretched out on our kitchen table now, cut down the middle and pinned open. I’m not a very convincing person.

It is fascinating, though, now that we’re not fearing for our lives. The other three are still wandering around up there — they must not have been nearby when these two figured out their way in. Or they were, and now know the choice to be fatal. It gives us time to think, and there’s really not much else we have but time. It hasn’t even been a day.

Neither of us has any training in veterinary sciences, and this is even further from humans than Earth animals are. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to learn, but any data is a start for whoever will come here afterward, yeah?

Its skin is translucent and colorless, like water. If not for the organs within, it would be nearly invisible. No need for coloration, I suppose, on a planet with no light. It’s what I would have expected from deep sea life, maybe with a kind of bioluminescence — some of the creatures at the deepest parts of the oceans on Earth, where light hasn’t reached since the world first formed, have their own ways of making light. This has none, though.

No eyes, I don’t think. Unless that function rests within an appendage that we can’t recognize as eyes. No ears, no mouth, just… limbs. Six in total, three on each side like an insect, and long. Two of them, on opposite sides, are three feet long, the middle two are two and a half feet, and the front two are four feet. Or back two, now that I think about it. They could be for jumping while the three-footers are for balance, or the other way around. A mass of flesh connects them all.

I…

Ah.

I really wish I could learn more about this, but—

It’s like jellyfish, right? Jellyfish are mostly water, and they will evaporate after a sufficient amount of time and heat are applied.

I think this is similar. Its organs are turning to goo beneath Dr. Federman’s hands.

[cough] And emitting a… very distinct smell.

…

They’re at the hatch again. Not coming down — the wheel is loud, we’d hear it. But they’re roaming around up there.

We have two weeks to deal with them. But Dr. Federman’s wounds are bleeding again, puckered and red and oozing despite the top notch medicine we applied earlier. My arm burns.

Hopefully, we’ll have two weeks.

Dr. Eve Strauss, Research Facility H on Nessi’s Island, assisted by Dr. Isaac Federman. Walls are intact and the life support system is running at optimal capacity. Food storage and air supply are clean. All areas of the facility, with the exception of the residential sector, show signs of struggle. No bodies were found within the facility or its borders.

Blood samples were taken from each separate area where a struggle had occurred, as well as skin and hair samples where some were found. There are matches for each member of Facility H’s team. The fighting happened amongst the team members instead of with an outside force. Seven out of ten of the guns were taken from the weapons cache, and impromptu weapons were found around the facility as well, examples including kitchen knives, scalpels, and blunt force weapons made from chair legs and lab instruments. Those weapons with discernible fingerprints match those on file for some of the team members, and the blood on them was not from those wielding them.

By the amount of blood found on the walls, floor, and furniture, I’d estimate that most of the team was dead or dying by the time they all left the facility, but the manner of that exit is not conclusive. Possibly they walked out, or a few survivors dragged out the bodies, but no blood was found outside the facility to tell us where they went. The footprints outside are numerous and we have no way of knowing which were from before the fight and which were after.

Much of the equipment within the station was destroyed, though we don’t know whether that was intentionally or unintentionally done. No signs of animosity are within the personal journals of the team members. While our equipment currently hasn’t picked up anything unusual in the blood samples we’ve examined or in the food and water supply, it is possible there was a poison, fungus, parasite, or another such thing that made its way into the team members, causing them to lose control. Currently, this is our only theory.