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“I dunno, Ellie,” Simon said into his EVA suit radio, hesitant as he ventured forward. “These caves go on for… forever, as far as we know.”
Simon shone his flashlight around the unidentified moon’s subterranean system, the walls made up of a material he couldn’t place and stretching in so many directions it was a wonder the surface hadn’t collapsed.
Turning back to look up the hold he’d dropped down, he found Ellie peering down at him from the SM-13’s window, safe and sound in her hamster ball of an aquarium. Though the many-limbed fish alien couldn’t speak per say, her telepathy conveyed her thoughts and intentions quite well, insisting on her sense that something on this desolate moon was alive.
“OK, assuming you’re right and something is down here that evolved to survive without an atmosphere or source of nutrition—” Simon swung the flashlight back around, unappreciative of the way the tunnels were shaped, as if they had been deliberately carved, “How can we be sure it’ll be friendly?”
Ellie curled her little body in on itself, folding several pairs of hands and crossing all her legs as she admitted that while she couldn’t guarantee that, whatever was on this moon was scared.
Simon stuck his tongue into the pocket of his cheek, sighing. Ellie was hardly ever wrong about these things—Lord knew she could read Simon’s emotions better than he could sometimes—and even if this proved to be the exception, she would never let him hear the end of it if they left now and potentially abandoned someone in need.
Simon gripped the belt at his waist, shaking the tether connecting him to the SM-13’s airlock. “I’m not going any further than this will let me.”
Ellie unfurled herself, an undercurrent of excitement lining her acknowledgement.
“You know where the button is to reel me back in if I need it?”
Ellie waved her hands as if to shoo him away, simultaneously assuring him she knew the button’s location and urging him to get going.
Sighing again, Simon turned back towards the tunnels, gathered his nerves, and set out on his way.
The caves expanded every which way, sometimes dipping downward, but with Ellie’s innate sense of where both he and this mysterious new being was, she was able to guide him in what she insisted was the correct direction.
Unfortunately, the tether didn’t stretch as long as her confidence, and after ten minutes of cautious exploration, Simon found himself with just a few feet left.
“Ellie, I’m not gonna make it much further,” he said into the radio, stepping around a rock that had managed to fall through the strange material’s roofing. “I think I may need to turn around.”
Her thoughts vehemently urged him forward, insisting on how close he apparently was to the supposed third person.
Simon huffed against the glass of his helmet. “Ellie, I told you I was only going as far as the tether would let me. I’m not—”
His words fell dead away as he turned one final corner, gawking at the sight before him, Ellie urging him to respond at his sudden silence.
A cave-in had reduced the strange foreign material to rubble, but that wasn’t what baffled him so. No, it was the spaceship that lay buried beneath the rocks, inert but intact.
Panic etched its way into every corner of Ellie’s calls to Simon, begging him to say something, anything.
“I-I’m alright. I just…” Shock wearing away, Simon finally got his feet to move, rushing forward. “Ellie, I found it, er, them, I—”
His excited and terrified rambling was cut off by a sudden, harsh tug at his waist, the tether having finally run its course. Simon glanced between the taught rope and the ship only twice before muttering, “Fuck it,” and unclipping himself.
“Ellie, I found a spaceship!” he relayed as he furiously dug at the debris, his efforts making him realize a set of spindle-like legs were attached to its hull, more pairs presumably hidden by rock. “Or maybe a rover? Is the person you sensed inside?”
A multitude of thoughts raced through Ellie’s connection, asking him why the tether had gone slack, if he was sure about what he was seeing, but all he paid attention to was her confirmation.
As he absently dismissed her concerns, Simon continued to dig as fast as he could, uncovering some letters on the side that his fervor initially didn’t allow him to recognize.
Hail Mary, the little vessel was apparently dubbed.
“Ellie, there’s— I don’t understand it, but there’s English painted on the side of this thing.”
Ellie sent over her own wave of confusion, asking if there was a human inside.
“I… I don’t know,” Simon stammered as he uncovered a porthole-like window on the habitable rover. Brushing away moon dust, Simon shone his flashlight inside, craning his neck to peer in. “H-hello?”
The interior was pitch dark and severely cramped, damage denting the walls. For a moment, Simon worried he and Ellie had somehow made a mistake, that the third person was elsewhere, but the right angle revealed a strikingly man-shaped being lying stone-still on the Hail Mary’s floor.
Well, man-shaped except for his half-missing leg, blood oozing out the crudely-wrapped bandages around the stump.
“H-hey! Hey!” Simon yelled, banging on the window. “Can you hear me? Hello?!”
Ellie asked a million questions, but Simon failed to answer a single one, staring slack-jawed as the man inside struggled to rise to his elbows, dragging himself across the floor and leaving a trail of blood behind.
Eventually, he hoisted himself onto a console at the front of the rover, gasping for breath as he managed to press one particular button.
As the stranger lifted his face to stare back through the porthole, he revealed one more strike against his potential human nature: crystalline gems sprouting all over the left side of his face, shining under Simon’s light.
Tears streaming out of his unaffected eye, the stranger begged through a buried PA system, “Please help. Please help me. I-I don’t wanna die down here.”
Still not quite over his shock, Simon said over his EVA radio, “Ellie, we’re going to be here for a while.”