Alien or Alian
Chapter 7: The Gas Giant

“So, I think it was somewhere over 1000 days before we finally got there,” Ezra started. He still leaned against the kitchen counter, keeping his eyes pinned to either the floor or the ceiling. “I’m not too sure, Kaine was more into keeping track of the time.”

“Who’s Kaine?” Ozias curiously asked. He turned himself along with his chair to face Ezra.

“Oh, he’s my older cousin. Him, and Sid’s cousins, Lyza and Dimitri, we all trained together before becoming a team,” Ezra explained. “Usually a team of astronauts has more than four people, but since the only people who know about this are our two families, we’re kinda limited in that department and each one of us needs to double down on tasks.”

“Wow,” Ozias remarked, for perhaps the third time that morning. “And, where did you guys go?”

“Fifth planet from the sun,” Ezra meekly grinned. “Jupiter.”

Ozias’ eyes widened with wonder. “Jupiter?”

“I’m guessing there really was no solid surface to land on then?” Ethen broke in, not paying any attention to Ozias.

“Yeah, it really is the ‘Gas Giant’,” Ezra continued. “There were like three layers of gas and dust, we could barely see anything.”

With vigilance, Nina questioned, “you didn’t venture too deep, right?”

“No, we stayed just at the edge of its atmosphere,” Ezra reassured. “It was still drop-dead cold though, even through our suits.”

“So who was the first one out there?” Sid asked.

“Kaine was, actually. He caught a glimpse of Ganymede before we were stationed, and he wanted to try and see it from where we were. We used the buddy system, so Lyza went with him. Me and Dimitri were almost geared up and ready to head out, when we heard Kaine shouting. We hurried out there to find him and Lyza, they hadn’t gone too far thankfully. Kaine was shouting at...something. It was a thick black blob, about as tall as us, not too far away.”

“A ‘black blob’?” Ethen repeated.

Ezra shrugged and nodded his head simultaneously. “That’s what Lyza called it, and I had to agree. That thing didn’t really have any shape, it was kind of like how we are in our early years, all amorphous and whatnot.”

“What happened next?” Nina pushed, while also trying to imagine the blob for herself.

“Well Kaine kept shouting at it, trying to get its attention and figure out what it was. But, then it started moving somehow. It didn’t have any limbs that we could see, so it was just floating towards us. As it did, it started making these sounds. It was this muffled mumbling I think, and it was also kind of high-pitched somehow. We tried listening for a bit to see if we could understand it, but it started getting so loud and erratic. That’s when I told everyone to get back to the shuttle. Luckily we weren’t too far, but it was only so fast we could grab our tethers with all the dust and the freezing temperature. We finally got inside, but that’s when I realized only three of us actually made it in.”

Nina released a burdened sigh. “Kaine.”

Ezra nodded. “We went back out of the shuttle to get him, but he wasn’t there. His tether was extended, so me and Lyza followed it. We found Kaine right around where we saw that blob, he was just there, not really moving. He seemed pretty out of it so me and Lyza helped him back to the shuttle. He was acting pretty strange.”

“Strange how?” Ethen questioned.

“He didn’t say anything the entire time, and you know Kaine, it’s always like he was born yesterday whenever he sees something for the first time. And he kept staring at me and Lyza like he’d never seen us before, did the same to Dimitri when we got into the shuttle. Then while we were getting his suit off…”

“W-what?” Ozias urged, the back of his heel rapidly tapping away against the floor.

“...his skin, it was so cold. We couldn’t really touch him, but it was like he couldn’t even feel it himself.”

“Did you get him to the hyper-inversion chamber?” Nina sternly asked.

“Yeah, but he seemed confused when we brought it up so the three of us walked him over there. He went inside, but like a minute after when we tried turning it on, he started freaking out.”

Ozias gripped the edge of his seat, and his clutch got tighter with each word Ezra spoke. He wanted to ask about the chamber Nina had brought up, but with every detail Ezra revealed of his recount, Ozias lost the appetite to interrupt with questions.

“He banged the walls and screamed, so we let him out to calm down, but then he passed out. We got some gloves on and carried him to the mid-deck to get some rest. But later after the rest of us hit the sack, we got blasted by the Emergency Recovery system getting triggered.”

“Emergency recovery system?” Ozias echoed. He realized a second too late that he had said it a bit louder than he intended.

“Yeah, if we run into trouble or complications while out there and can’t pilot the shuttle back to Earth, we can activate that system and the whole thing will go into autopilot and take us back at twice the speed,” Ezra clarified. “The three of us went up to the flight deck to see why it was activated, and then we saw Kaine messing around with the main controls. He looked like he didn’t know what he was doing, and he wasn’t stopping so we tried prying him away. It wasn’t easy though; he fought back. He found Dimitri’s pocket knife lying around beforehand; that’s how I got that gash on my stomach. At one point before he shoved me off he grabbed my wrist, and it was the coldest thing I ever felt. I swear I started feeling my entire arm go numb.”

“What?” Ethen blurted, bewildered over what he was hearing.

Ezra finally looked over at him, fully understanding his discomposure. “When he shoved me off, that’s when my head hit the deck. I was out. When I woke, I saw Lyza and Dimitri lying unconscious next to me in the snow, and the wreckage of the shuttle all around us. I tried getting up to help them but I was barely conscious myself, and I could hardly move, and every inch of my body was freezing...I had my suit on somehow, we all did, thanks to Lyza or Dimitri I guess. And luckily Ethen found us eventually.”

“S-so, you really crashed...You crashed all the way from outer space,” Ozias said with a quivering voice that seeped with uneasiness. Right then he thought, unless you were in the profession of travelling to space yourself, it was undoubtedly likely that anyone else would be able to truly fathom the terrifying experience of hurling through the sable lacuna and then being impelled by the crippling atmosphere until you eventually splattered against the Earth. “B-but, shouldn’t you have landed safely with your emergency system thing?”

“Yeah…” Ezra shrugged. “Something must’ve happened after I was knocked out.”

“We recovered part of the main system from the shuttle debris,” Nina started. “Though damaged, it revealed that the emergency system malfunctioned, causing the shuttle to lose control and plunge back to Earth at nearly three times the speed.”

Ozias’ eyes went wide as he looked at Ezra. “H-how are you alive after that?”

“The spacesuits we use are quite durable, made to withstand all sorts of impact,” Nina answered.

“Speaking of ‘alive’ though,” Ezra raised, “Lyza and Dimitri?”

“They’re good, we got ’em to the chambers hours ago, and they’re resting up now,” Sid said, giving Ezra a curt but assuring nod.

Relieved, Ezra nodded back. “And Kaine? Did you find him? Is he ok?”

“He was a few miles away from the wreck, out cold,” Ethen filled in. “He seemed fine when we took him into the chamber. That thing you guys saw on Jupiter…”

“Yeah,” Ezra knew what he was getting at. “I think it might’ve gone inside Kaine. Don’t know how the hell it could’ve done that while he was in his suit, but, it sounds like it’s out of him now.”

“But wait,” Ozias interrupted. “If the blob crashed to Earth with you, and now it’s not inside your cousin anymore, does that mean it’s just out there? In town? Inside someone else?”

The kitchen fell into a tense silence, reverting Ozias back to his timid-self, forcing him to swivel back around in his chair and tuck his hands between his legs.

“Come on now, let’s not drown in our worries,” Nina finally said. “I’ll inform some of the others back at the lab and they can keep an eye out for any strange happenings around the town. For now, we need to go and get Ezra into the chamber.”

Ezra tried to protest, “mom I’m fin-uooghh.” He lurched as soon as he stepped away from the counter.

Panicked, Ozias rose from his seat ready to help, but Ethen and Sid had beat him to it. They huddled him on each side and braced his arms over their shoulders.

“There’s a car out in the front of the house, Get him there quickly,” Nina ordered them. As she stood from her seat she looked over to Ozias. “Come along now. It’s Ozias, yes?”

“Uh, yeah-yes, that’s my name. But, do you really want me to come with you all?”

Nina shared a rapt smile. “Well, we couldn’t just leave you alone right after telling you all that. And besides, something tells me it would make Ezra feel a lot better later if you stuck around.”

“Mom.” Ethen halted midway to the kitchen entrance, making Sid, and a now semi-conscious Ezra, stop with him. He scowled at his mother.

“What?” Nina replied with barefaced innocence. “Would you rather we left him here to his devices, looking for someone to talk to and help make sense of all the unbelievable things he’s just heard?”

With a frustrated huff, Ethen continued to scowl at Nina, then shifted his angered look to Ozias for a few seconds. “Let’s go,” he then said to Sid, and they proceeded carrying Ezra through the entrance.

Nina sighed. “You’ll have to forgive Ethen, he has a growing tendency to be prickly around people.”

“I’ve heard, actually,” Ozias concurred, glancing with a culpable look at the kitchen entrance as if Ethen were still standing there.

“Oh, have you?” Nina giggled. “You and Ezra must really be getting along.” She buttoned up her coat then reached out to hook her arm around his, guiding him out the kitchen as well. “Try not to worry too much about all this. We’ll get to the bottom of it,” she whispered to him after noticing his apprehension.

Ozias managed a feeble nod back, but he couldn’t deny his worriment. All in under an hour, he had learned that Ezra had crashed down to Earth all the way from outer space; there was likely a mysterious black blob roaming around Elbel Court, and now Ethen was upset with him.

He hoped the day wouldn’t get any more worrisome.

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