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Janet sat back from the controls with a sigh, and reached out to stroke the small tomato plant floating next to her. It had become something of a talisman these last weeks, and the scent of the leaves never ceased to ground her. Today made six weeks since she'd lost touch with the flagship, and she hadn't realised it was possible to be this lonely. Or this lost. This morning she'd had to make the call that they were not coming back, and she'd just set the navigator to head for the only coordinates her ship had recorded. Ths ship had never been intended to travel alone, and she'd have to hope that they'd work that out and come to meet her.
I guess that's it,she whispered to herself. Alcyone, here we come.
It wasn't until the very end of the day that she let herself fall onto her bed and cry. It had been a long time alone, and the trip to Alcyone was another month's journey. And the flagship wouldn't have left her behind without cause. What so dire could have happened that they would leave her behind? Or had they too fallen sick and lost their way?
In the morning, Janet checked the navigation then went about her daily rounds. Her ship had been earmarked to store all the plants they couldn't keep in storage, so she spent a substantial chunk of the day on their needs. It was a comforting start to the day, one of the few things that reminded her of life on the ground. She hadn't been the gardener at home – that was her mother – but the leaves brushing her skin still felt familiar and homely. She took her time, mixing up the nutrient solutions for various plants and snipping dead leaves as she passed, enjoying the gentle fragrances that enlivened the usually sterile smells of spaceflight.
Eventually she realised that she was no longer doing actual necessary work and was instead time-wasting, and so reluctantly went to the exit bay to suit up for a spacewalk. Checking and repairing the hull was a core part of flight, but she'd found it eerie from the start, and it was only worse now that she was alone. So she was cautious as she suited up and attached the tether at her belt. It would do her no good if the ship arrived at Alcyone but she was left behind between the stars. Triple checking all her fastenings, she stepped into the airlock and waited as the door sealed behind her. She muttered a quiet prayer as she hit the outer door release. Let me make it through this safely.
No matter how many times she did this, she couldn't banish the feelings of insignificance that arose on stepping through the door. There was she – an ant on a silver ball – and there were the stars, spread out in their glory, galaxies and nebulae laid out in an intensity beyond anything that could be seen even in the deepest of dark sky reserves on Earth. Stepping out into it every week felt like taking her life into her hands, as if sheer awe could be terminal.And yet she did step outside, small spider clinging to the outside of her ship, held in place only by a single thin strand of silk.
Carefully she climbed across the near side of the ship to check for unregistered damage or crustings that could cause trouble. Today was a good day; the worst was a few small pieces of debris, and she could clear them without effort. She moved across to the far side of the ship and systematically checked it as well. It was a relief when she could say with good conscience that the ship was clear, and she could wind herself back into the ship and into her regular day.
It was a week later as she was doing her morning check that Janet noticed something out of place – one of the sensors, indicating something on the hull of the ship. More ghosts on the hull, she thought irritably. The sensors seemed to have a hair trigger, and she'd yet to have anything real to deal with. But they'd been warned off any boy-who-cried-wolf assumptions, and she really did have to check, much as she hated it. So again she stepped onto the side of the ship, trying vainly to conquer her dizziness. She pulled herself around to the indicated quadrant and started her search for damage.
To her surprise, it was a real alarm this time. As she rounded the wing she spotted the debris, a small golden barnacle on the side of the ship. She gave it a prod to see if it would be that easy to dislodge, but jumped back with a start when the rock moved unexpectedly. It grew larger and unfolded before her eyes, unrolling head and tail in the very manner of a cat disturbed from its sleep – although usually the cat would glare for a moment and then stalk away offended, while this stayed still.
Now, Janet had never seen a dragon in her life, but it seems to be a body pattern mapped onto the human psyche, instantly recognisable no matter your background. The creature before her mapped precisely onto her mental picture of a dragon; the long neck and reptilian head, the golden wings outstretched, the tail held proud as if to balance. Yet, it was small – perhaps a metre in length nose to tail – and more to the point, it was standing on the outside of a ship in the depths between the stars, without any protective garments or helmet. No dragons she had ever heard of lived in space, although in fairness not many people were writing folk tales in the age of space exploration. And, well, no one she knew had ever actually seen a dragon. Yet still, there was no doubt in her head that that was what it was.
As all these thoughts passed in succession through her mind, the dragon was swinging its head around and keening softly, as if looking for something. It caught onto her and fixed still, gazing almost as intensely as she was at it. She recoiled a few steps, but couldn’t quite bring herself to leave. She might be the only human who had ever seen this beautiful beast, and so she stayed, and tried to memorise its shape and markings. Her husband Nic would love this – he was such a fantasy buff – what a shame that she would only be able to share the story, and not the experience itself with him! She took mental notes on its every movement, wanting to give him as clear a story as she possibly could.
After a few minutes of this standoff, the dragon seemed to lose interest in her. Unfortunately, its interest passed instead to her ship. It kneaded the hard outer hull with its claws, as like a cat as ever could be, before curling up again. The hull of the ship was easily strong enough to withstand the depredations, but over time even it could be damaged – which, of course, was the reason she was out there in the first place.
The supplies she had brought for clearing a piece of debris from the ship were hardly suitable to address a dragon. Janet retreated to collect some more appropriate supplies, and crept back around the outside of the ship. She prodded the pile gently with a short pole. It turned its head to look at her, and gave a small hiss. She poked again. This time she managed to lift it off the ship slightly, but it tumbled head over heels then made a few uncoordinated flaps, serving to return it to her ship. In all honesty, the leverage wasn't good enough for this; she felt rather at risk of sending herself flying instead of the dragon, and in no way did she trust her tether enough to take that risk. Changing tack, she tossed a hastily-weighted net that had been used for transporting supplies when the ship was loaded, and managed to pin its wings against the ship, then wrap it up so that neither wings nor claws were free. At that, it hissed again, and this time popped out a tiny orb of fire, no bigger than a candle’s flame.
Janet almost laughed at that. “You really are a baby!” She smiled down at it, suddenly affectionate. Now she’d realised how young it was, she couldn’t help seeing Elise and Nellie’s faces as she looked down at it. “You probably have parents too,” she murmured. “And if you don’t I think my girls will adopt you, when we find them. All right, but you’re getting a nail trim. And all of this is rescinded if you flame my plants.”
It was another three weeks to Alcyone.
Over that time the dragon became not only a companion but a constant one; wherever Janet went on her routine, she was tripping over it, as if it was a cat rather than an actual more or less airborne dragon. Its flight was just as clumsy inside the ship as it had been when it tumbled head over heels (or, well, over tail) when she was trying to evict it; most of the worst moments were when it was trying to fly alongside her, and once it managed to bowl both of them through a doorway and halfway through the next room with its clumsiness. She was never quite sure if she regretted bringing the dragon on board or not. One day she'd be chasing it through the greenhouse trying to prevent it crashing into her grow lights – the next it would lie down beside her and gently hiss its pleasure. She'd be coaxing it to create its tiny flaming orbs in front of her, then it would be on the other side of the ship trying (and fortunately failing) to flame at her dried foods. For a while she tried to keep it on a leash, but as elaborate as her knots and harnesses became, its escape attempts were more so. (She had never been a Girl Scout, and rapidly ran out of knots to try.)
It seemed to particularly love the artifical sunlight of the greenhouse – at first she was worried it might eat the plants, but although it took a few test bites, it didn't seem terribly interested – or otherwise sitting in the viewport, gazing intently at the stars. The occasional depredations in the greenhouse were small enough to bear; less so was the time that she looked up from attuning the navigation to find that it had eaten the first green tomato on her desk tomato plant. This was not so much a food problem as a morale one. It had become something of a mascot for her, and she realised she'd been looking on the fruit almost as an omen of success in her journey. She looked up from her daily navigation check to find it munching happily, although it startled and zoomed away rapidly when it saw the expression on her face. This was a couple of weeks into their journey together, and its flight seemed to be improving; it couldn't have done that when it first joined her on ship. She thought with a stab of Nellie, who had just moved beyond her first steps to a confident walk. Who knew what mischief she might be up to now – terrorising the flagship as she figured out low-gravity movement, perhaps, not unlike the small dragon – although Nic's parents had been bunking with him and the children to keep them busy while he carried out his pilot duties.
After a week or so, Janet named the dragon. Aurum, after its gold colour. And a week later, she was chatting away to itas if it understood. Sometimes she even fancied that it did understand, it seemed so attentive, and occasionally she even thought it was trying to talk ack to her. That had to be her imagination, though – of course she'd try to picture its parents, when she was telling it about her own family. Didn't mean anything about what the dragon itself was thinking. But she kept telling it stories, like the way that Nellie would dive headfirst into any food item she particularly liked, or Elise's storytelling and fanciful notions about where she and her sister had come from.
And then she went on to tell Aurum the story of her flight.
-
They'd set out in five ships, sailing together through the stars to their new home. Janet had been deputised to the smallest. She was one of six crew on the ship, designed to carry plants that would not survive storage for the length of their trip. It was too small for her family to join her, and in any case both she and Nic were pilots and their skills were needed on separate ships. It had been hard to say goodbye to her family – of course it was hard – but it was only supposed to be four months in space, then they'd be together again.
Janet had been the first to fall sick. She'd been in the bridge when it happened, had stood up to go back to her cabin when the room had tilted sideways and she'd had to stagger for the door.
After that point, her memories were a blur. She knew she'd somehow managed to get back to bed, and she had an image of Irene bringing her food at some point, but she wasn't sure when that stopped or when the rest of her crew had succumbed. When she finally had the strength to drag herself out of bed, she found a silent ship and an unanswered distress beacon blinking, the flagship gone from her viewport.
The next day she checked the crew bunks. Knowing what she would find didn't make the finding any easier. Hoani was slumped in the greenhouse among the plants that had been his special project for years before the journey began; Frances was on the floor in her own room. The three others were all in their bunk, cold and still.
It was days before she had the energy to move them, even in the low gravity of the ship, but when she could she held a funeral alone. She didn't enjoy cremating them, but the only alternative was to send them out into the vastness of space, which was no alternative at all.
She sang softly as she committed each of her companions to the flames. “Go now in peace, dona nobis,” and as she bundled up the ashes her voice broke. “Dona nobis pacem, pacem...” but she could no longer sing. She started sobbing then as she farewelled each friend, remembering what they had been to her and thinking of the expected reunion at the end of the trip and the grief she would have to share instead. Gently she carried the five small bundles and laid them in the greenhouse amidst their life work. Rest there until the journey is over.
-
Hard though it was, it did help to tell the story aloud. With the sharing of grief, the dragon became a kind of co-conspirator, a friend sharing her struggles, nonsensical though that might sound. It seemed to feel the same change, and it started coming and nudging her on days when she was stuck still in her grief, cheering her up with private fire shows.
On one of those occasions, Janet found the image of its own parents floating into her head. It seemed almost to be a picture from outside her, it was so detailed. They'd be huge – nearly the length of the ship – and surely their flight would be elegant and graceful. She wondered what they lived off, out amidst the void, and the image of a star came into her mind. Solar powered dragons? She thought about Aurum's fondness for the viewport, and wondered.
Finally – and it did feel like finally – they approached Alcyone and she adjusted course to the second planet, their goal. There had been an exploratory mission some years previously, and although they had not left a permanent team there was a depot with material for their gardens. More imprtantly, though, the flagship had to know that she would head here; this was the only set of coordinates she had, and the only landing she'd expected to do alone. Unless they think we're dead, a gloomy voice opined. She shook it off. Nic wouldn't give up on her without proof, and he wouldn't let the rest of the ship do so either.
But still, she found herself checking the navigation obsessively, at the bridge on an hourly basis, despite knowing nothing could have changed. It was a deep relief when the approach was finally near enough that she had to take over control. She took her accustomed seat as she had done at the very start of their voyage, and slipped into the comforting routines. The asteroid cloud was particularly dense in this system, so she slipped through; and soon they were approaching the second planet. This was a barren planet; it had a breathable atmosphere, and algae in the seas, but the land was rocky and dry, so it had been left as a staging post without any permanent inhabitants. As she descended mountain ranges resolved in front of her, and then she could see the domes left behind to shelter precious equipment and seeds. A pang of anxiety shot through her when she realised the domes stood alone, unaccompanied by any ships – but perhaps the flagship had left her a message? Some further coordinates? She knew their final destination was somewhere in this quadrant, so perhaps she could manage another journey alone if it would be a short one? She almost ran to the exit bay the moment the landing procedures were complete, desperate to have answers.
The nearest dome opened at her suited touch. There were the seeds she'd been originally sent for; and here were the extra supplies she'd need. But devastatingly, no sign of her homeship. No sign of her husband. She searched that dome in a frenzy then went to the next – and the next – looking for any trace of recent life. The last entry the logs recorded was the departure of another crew 6 years before. She almost ripped them apart – regardless of their value – in her agitation and searching. The gnawing anxiety that had consumed her since they entered the system was threatening to overwhelm her. She managed to collect herself long enough to sit down, but that only lasted ten minutes before she was up and wandering again. This time she took it more systematically, but she could still see no sign that any of the four domes had been accessed recently. A slow aerial search of the area yielded no more information, and when she touched down she had about given up.
It took some time before the tears came. This was it - “here, at the end of all things,” her brain supplied. Nic wouldn't have left her behind if he had any choice in the matter. He would have met her here. So something had happened to them, something catastrophic. They were dead out in the depths of space, and here she was, alone on the planet, and soon enough she'd be dead as well. Or, not soon enough. She could survive for some time with the food they'd brought and the seeds she'd just found, but there were no further expeditions scheduled to this quadrant, and she had no hope of being found.
Her sleep was terrible that night. She tried distracting herself with movies – watched on the navigation computer in the bridge – but it felt disloyal to even try to think about anything other than her family. And regardless, the moment she turned it off her mind returned inexorably to the disaster. She did get a few hours of sleep, but even that was broken in the extreme, and each time she woke it took a minute to work out why she was feeling awful before the memory returned. Come morning, she awoke in a fuzz, full of yesterday's grief and the broken shreds of dreams – dreams of seeing her family mixed with nightmares of plague and death.
She got up determined to distract herself with work, but planetside her regular ship duties were largely moot. Of course, there were always the plants to water, and she lingered by the tomato that had been her companion on the bridge. It had no fruit on it, thanks to Aurum, but it was determinedly putting out small star-shaped flowers again. The leaves still smelt of home, but it was no longer a comforting scent; instead of reminding her of the future, it had become a sign of everything that she had lost.
It took her a week to spring clean the ship and move onto the domes, a week of distraction from fear and grief. When she had completed the final dome, she sat down, and was almost surprised when Aurum came to join her. She had seen little of the small dragon in that week, it seeming content with its own explorations of the area and local rockfalls. Today it flew over her and tumbled as it tried to stop abruptly in front of her. It puffed out a flame – these were slowly growing bigger than the candleflame she had first seen from it – and settled itself down against her side. An image floated into her head of another dragon, a subtly different colour and much more graceful. She brushed the thought away, but it returned insistently.
“Yes, I guess your family is still out there somewhere,” Janet said. “What do you think? Shall we take that as our goal? I have no idea where to start, but... I also have nothing else to do.”
Now the image of the asteroid belt appeared, and she looked down at the dragon. Is this... communication? I certainly wasn't thinking of dragons before you arrived.
“Well, let's try it,” she decided. “All set and we'll head out tomorrow.”
Next day she dithered somewhat lookng at the domes. She decided that she would load up with the supplies she had been expecting to take. It was a difficult task solo, but if they were going to go on a serious search she didn't want to be hampered by having to come back to planet. If the dragon didn't have anything, she guessed she could retrace their journey, try to to reach the place she had first met it, which was as much lead as anything else they had. In the meantime, asteroid belt it was, she guessed. She have any particular plan for where to go in the short term; nor did she really expect to find anything. So when they reached the asteroid belt she allowed her gut to decide which direction to take. So it was that they turned left and wove among asteroids, giant space rocks tumbling on either side. And so it was that she was astonished to see something unfamiliar out ahead.
Really, it was the dragon that told her what it was. It had stopped sitting next to her and was darting back and forth across the bridge. Occasionally it stopped to breathe out a tiny orb of flame, then resumed its frantic dance. She turned to look outside, and yes: the figures became clear, two graceful giants, celestial dragons the length of her ship, flying through space towards her. Embarrassing as it was, she did panic a little at that point. They certainly seemed large enough to squash her ship and her inside it, and she hadn't planned a strategy for dealing with a beast she had never expected to meet. She yanked on the steering and dropped them to the nearest asteroid, because it felt like that would be meeting them on at least something like equal terms. Both of these iridescent beings dropped down after her, and landed with perfect aplomb on either side. Janet suited up and opened the airlock, Aurum by her side. The moment the outer door opened it was off with a flash, dancing around the two giant dragons as if they were not twenty times its size. They were entirely occupied with it for a few minutes, and she hung back out of a combination of respect for their reunion mixed with a very real fear of what the dragons might be able to do. Eventually, though, one turned its head to her. She caught an overwhelming sense of gratitude, strong enough that she actually took a step back in surprise. And then – almost a question? A feeling of family, but as an interrogation. She thought of her own family, pictured the ship that had taken them far across the stars from her, and hoped that would be enough. And received an image. That ship, that very ship, landing on a green planet – landing on the very planet they had been headed for, and yet which she would swear she hadn't communicated to them. And then, an imperative came to her. Follow. She looked at it uncomprehendingly, so it nudged its partner and together the two of them insisted. Follow.
They nudged her to the ship, and she took a leap of faith – possibly the most fatalistic thing ever to be described as a leap of faith, driven as much by a lack of other options as by an actual hope for her future. But she allowed herself to be nudged to her ship, and was quietly suprirsed when Aurum chose to follow her inside it.
Together, Janet and Aurum followed the dragons on paths between the stars. And when she landed, warm in sun, surrounded by tears of joy, she had one perfect tomato to share with her daughters.