Cavern located at 01:31, 44.2122205, -72.5584645 N44° 12.7332', W072° 33.5079'

Planet Jagalchi


Hungry. So hungry.

I have run the length of this feeble planet and only found enough to whet my appetite.

With one claw, I grab hold of a small crustacean, only about two feet in length, and crack its shell, devouring it.

In the past, far in my distant memory, there rode wild beasts, six legged behemoths with no heads and wildly lashing tentacles. I ate them all.

Half of them I consumed before my yegxigm had developed, so breeding was not a concern.

The other half, well, in between my offspring and my own personal feeding, that was it. No more shaggy hooved Siovgol.

My children endured for a time, but most of them died of starvation.

Only Sshanburo remained, the one that taught me about the hard shelled Madfifo, but, sadly, even she died, due to a misstep on a loose chunk of rock overhanging a chasm.

I still hunger, and the urge to breed is overwhelming. My yegxigm has become so swollen that it causes me pain, but there is no receptacle in which to place my eggs.

I'm not going to make it. Even now I am shaking from low caloric intake, and the creatures in these caves, and even on the surface, are not enough for my needs.

I only have one chance left.

Hybernation.

Slow my metabolic processes for a few months, and wait for the livestock to repopulate itself.

That is my only hope.


"When we arrived on Jagalchi, we thought the planet would be another Mars. That was before we found the dissolved bones."

-Boris Stanislov, planetary geologist.


Base 657.3, Planet Jagalchi, 14:00


My android doctor slides a rod over the stretched out belly of my pajama top, and a hologram of a fetus hovers above the table in front of me.

I sigh in relief. Human. I don't know why I expected different, but it was reassuring to see a perfectly formed head and fat little digits instead of...

I shuddered, trying not to think about the dreams.

"I'm detecting no brain or heart defects," the doctor said in bored sounding tones. To induce calm, Type 322B androids were programmed to sound overly competent at the expense of bedside manner. "Sensors are not picking up any other abnormalities. The infant appears to be completely healthy, Ms. Ripley."

To make him nonthreatening as possible, Dr. Venn was designed to look like a human sloth, his posture slumped, shoulders rounded, flabby arms, fat stomach.

Behind his square glasses, the robot's beady eyes traveled up and down my body systematically.

Diagnostics scan. Borderline creepy.

the room was a concrete cube, lined with the usual tools of the trade. Self sterilizing tongue depressors, renewable cotton swabs, eye and nose scanners, blood pressure rings.

A monitor, serving as a fake window cum EKG machine, displayed a view of a shore with waves crashing on a beach.

"The nutrient patch I've affixed to your neck should provide compensation for your nutrient deficiencies."

He fell silent, idling, I suppose.

"And my baby is definitely male."

He nodded. "There have been no changes in reproductive equipment of the fetus."

An awkward silence followed as I waited in vain for humanity.

"Do you have any other medical problems which require my assistance?"

I was a million light years from earth, and I was speaking to a robot, but a pregnant woman with hormones has certain expectations about medical office visits of this type.

The doctor is supposed to be as excited as you are about the baby. They were supposed to be happy for you. Dr. Venn, however, treated me no differently than if I'd merely come in to treat a fungal infection.

"Dr. Venn," I frowned. "Did your builders forget to program the word `congratulations' into your verbal dictionary?"

"I congratulated you weeks ago when I informed you that you were pregnant and it was a boy."

I flushed red with anger. "Well maybe I want to hear it again."

The doctor smirked, one of the rare expressions of emotion this model could actually display. "Congratulations."

It'd have to do. I sighed and shook my head.

"Oh baby! That's wonderful!" a voice called from the door.

I looked up and found myself being scooped up in my boyfriend's muscular brown arms. He kissed me.

I smiled, gazing into his dark chocolate eyes.

Brett.

Sweat glistened on his bald head.

He still wore his black engineer's jumpsuit, made of a slick grime resistant material. The uniform that first caught my eye so many months ago.

Ex police officer. Boy Scout. Brains and brawn.

When I first got morning sickness and got checked out, we talked about settling down, getting a transport off this rock. I believed he had the connections and resources to do just that.

Get us a little house in the middle of a bustling city instead of solitary confinement on a glorified asteroid riddled with ammonia swamps.

"You still haven't knitted a space suit for him yet," Brett joked.

I laughed.

"We finally got all the oxygen-co2 compensators fixed. Is it too late to look at the baby?"

The doctor shrugs, then touches the rod to my stomach.

I see a flash, and I'm screaming, clutching my head.

It was an image from the dream again.

I saw an image on a sonogram, but it wasn't a baby.

Something else.

I was lying on a scaffold, lowering myself into a pit of molten steel.

A little beast, a white creature looking like a snake, explodes from my chest, and I hold it against me, so we both could die.

I blink and I only see a human fetus floating before me.

Brett squeezes my hand. "You okay?"

I nod. "I think it's just the isolation getting to me."

But then I shudder as I think about the vision of the huge snarling face.

I got a sense of déjà vu when I saw it. But why?

I've never see a thing like that before in all my waking life.

No eyes.

Distending its jaw.

It seemed so real.