Thrum

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting just outside the airlock, arms curled around my knees, a perfect re-enactment of my earlier breakdown. It’s just that my limbs refuse to work, and my mind is not my friend just now. It’s awash with everything wrong, nightmarish, half-seen, and shadowy. I don’t trust myself.

An alert sounds. A soft, cloying chime. Different than the other alarm, but no less shocking in this awful silence.

Proximity alert, says Pioneer.

I lift my head. I must have heard wrong. “What?”

Proximity alert.

The alarm chimes. I remember it from training. It was supposed to be a good thing, an indication that we were nearing a planet, or an alien ship, that we were doing our jobs right. It doesn’t feel like that now.

A slow spike of terror slices from the back of my throat down to my tailbone. I refuse to stand up, to move to the cockpit, to look out the viewscreen. “Proximity to what?”

Unknown.

I allow anger and frustration to take over, more manageable emotions than fear. “What do you mean, unknown?” And I’m finally standing, pushing sweat-thick hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ears. “What’s out there? An asteroid? A ship?”

Unknown. Negative. Unknown.

I growl in frustration, a guttural sound that scrapes my throat. I don’t want to see whatever it is with my own eyes. I don’t want to know. I want Pioneer to tell me. “I didn’t realize how useless you’d be out here,” I spit, directing my fear and anger at the ship, who can’t be hurt by it.

Pioneer says nothing.

“Unknown,” I repeat acidly, dragging myself up the ladder to the cockpit. “Negative. Unknown.”

A surge of relief fills me when I stare out the panoramic-viewscreen of the cockpit and see nothing but an infinity of stars. Maybe our sensors are malfunctioning; maybe it’s a mistake. I’m about to say so to Pioneer, and then I see it:

An absence.

A space where the stars aren’t, a shape of blackness. A shadow.

“Pioneer, what is that?” My voice is high-pitched. I lean forward, peering at the viewscreen. I see nothing, just the absence of something, like a cloud blocking the stars, a shape that moves slowly, swallowing up the distant pricks of light as it drifts blackly. And it’s getting bigger; it’s getting closer.

Unknown.

“You put out the distress call,” I say, and it’s not a question.

Affirmative.

“Um.” My teeth chatter comically. Every muscle in my body is tense, my sweat now dry and caked to my frigid skin. My fingers shake when I pull up displays: infrared, sonar, radar, everything. All I get back is garbled nonsense, as if the ship refuses to understand whatever it’s claiming is proximal to it. I grit my teeth. As frightened as I am, this could be a response to the distress call. This could be my salvation.

“S-send a message, Pioneer. I mean, hail them. I mean, send the welcome package.”

Affirmative, says Pioneer.

My heart swells in my throat.

The “welcome package” is our way of introducing potential alien life to humanity, to Earth. It was designed to be a communique in every human language, plus binary and a celestial language that I insisted on including — the language of the stars. It’s a primer on who we are, and what we’re doing so far from home. That we’re not a threat. We only want to be friends.

Welcome package sent, says Pioneer.

I wait. I don’t know what for. There’s no visible ship out there. Just a blackness, inching closer, threatening to swallow me. Shifting terror roils in my gut like a wraith. Whatever cut the comms array, the fuel tank — what if this is it? Some unknowable being, drifting darkly through the stars? What if it swallows me up, the whole ship, the dead crew? What if this shadow is the vacuum itself, the cosmos, coming to put an end to our human foolishness?

Something beeps on the dash. It’s the comms display. I stare, open-mouthed.

After a moment, Pioneer says, Ms. Selwyn, we are being hailed.

I don’t believe it. I see it, but I don’t believe it. I see the flashing light. I hear what Pioneer tells me. But — it’s nonsense. Ridiculous. Is the black shape, the shadow, trying to communicate with me?

Well, someone is.

I press a button, and there’s a crackle: The sound of a channel opening.

I’m supposed to speak. I even wrote the script we’re meant to use, once we learn how the alien life, or… whatever it is, prefers to communicate. It’s a flow chart. A step-by-step method for introducing ourselves to the universe.

But I don’t remember any of it just now.

So I wait.

And then, what feels like a million moments later, a voice comes through. It’s muffled, breaking up — probably due to the damaged comms array — but I understand it.

“We’ve received your distress call,” says the voice, deep and masculine. “Please confirm your status.”

My knees threaten to give out, and I sit.

“Pioneer,” I whisper. “Is he speaking English?”

Affirmative.

“I am,” says the voice. “I got your welcome package. I learned it. I understand the primary language of your crew is English.”

This is beyond anything we learned in training. There is no step on my flow chart that says, “In the event that the alien subject speaks fluent English, proceed to item 3F.” Something in my chest ignites at the slow realization: I’m talking to an alien being. A lifeform, ostensibly. Someone with the ability to learn English in… was it only a matter of seconds? An entire language. My thoughts stutter and stop, as if my wiring is malfunctioning.

“Who…” I begin, then clear my throat, which has gone bone-dry. “Who are you?”

There’s a beat of silence, cut through only by the crackle of the open channel.

“My name is Dorian Gray.”

What the hell? “That’s an Earth name,” I manage.

“I picked it from one of the books in your welcome package.”

“Oh. Of course.” As if it’s normal, a standard thing. Of course he did. Of course he dug through the entire library of Earth’s works and landed on Oscar Wilde.

“You may call me what you like,” says the voice that belongs to Dorian Gray. “I’m not sure you’d be able to pronounce my true name.”

“What is it?” I ask, unable to stop myself, eager to hear his language. I find myself leaning forward to the view screen, as if this unseen creature’s name alone can save me.

And then… he speaks. At least, I think it’s speech. It almost feels like something, as if the deep and guttural utterance is drifting in from the speakers on the dash, into my ears and coating my brain in a syrupy, languid vibration.

Then the sensation is gone, and I gasp at the sudden absence. “That’s your name?”

“Yes,” says Dorian. “Apologies, if it felt strange. My language can be… detrimental, to some. It is not the same as yours.”

Detrimental?

“No kidding,” I breathe.

“Do you require assistance?”

“Yes.” There’s no reason to be coy. I’ve already sent the distress call and the welcome package. Either I accept his help, or I resign myself to death and join my crew in the dark eternity. “Are you…” I start, not knowing how to phrase it. “That shadow, blotting out the stars. Is it your ship?”

“It is,” says Dorian. He sounds almost apologetic. But the words soothe me, and I wonder how he’s managed to sound so human. There is nothing alien in the way he talks. He even, I realize, has an English accent. Southern English, to be precise — and posh.

“What assistance do you require?” Dorian asks.

“My comms array is broken,” I respond, as if everything is fine, and normal, and this is a routine conversation. “I only managed to fix it enough for short-range transmissions. And I’m out of fuel. And…” I swallow. A razor-sharp pain shoots across my chest. “My crew is dead.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, as if Dorian is contemplating what I’ve said. Maybe he’s deciding whether or not to nuke me. How can I possibly know? I’ve revealed all my weak spots — though I’m sure he must have already seen, must know that I’m truly stranded. That he could do as he wanted with my ship, with me, and I’d have no way of retaliating. Pioneer isn’t a ship of war.

“Dead?” he says at last, his tone subdued.

“We traveled in stasis,” I explain, trying not to let grief overwhelm me. “It’s supposed to be safe, but… it wasn’t. Their pods either malfunctioned, or their bodies couldn’t take the extended coma. I’m the only one who woke up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s fine,” I lie. His words, strange as they are coming from his inkblot of a ship, threaten to undo the weak threads that are holding me together. I cling to the saving grace that is Dorian, this being of shadows, the very thing we came here to find. Alien life. Maybe the mission hasn’t failed. Not yet.

“I’d love to talk to you,” I say awkwardly. “I mean, if you read the welcome packet, you know why we’re out here. If you’re willing, I’d like to…”

“You’d like to study me?”

I swallow. Study makes it sound detached, invasive. But he’s not wrong. “Yes, technically, I’d be studying you. But you can study me back. And if you have the time, maybe you can help me fix my ship?”

This all sounds ridiculous, so much simpler and less than what’s happening. Than what I’m feeling.

“Of course,” he responds, unhesitating. “I’d love to let you study me. And I can help you with your ship.”

My stomach twists. I’m not sure if it’s fear or excitement. “That’s… that would be great. Thank you.”

“Do you have enough fuel to dock?”

I check the fuel display, and my heart sinks. “Not really. If I start the engines, they’ll eat up most of what I have left just warming up. I’m dead in the water.”

“Dead in the water,” says Dorian, parroting me with a thoughtful tone. “Not to worry. I’ll bring you in. But you’ll need to strap yourself to something.”

This is ominous in a vaguely comical way — make sure you’re sitting down for this. In a suspended state of disbelief, I pull the cockpit chair’s safety harness around me. I fasten it on either side. I’m as strapped in as a woman can get. “Done.”

“Engaging now,” he says.

There’s a pause, a moment where I’m frozen in time and all of this is a spectacular dream, and then there’s a horrible lurch, and I’m thrown side to side in the chair. My restraints keep me from injury, but it’s not comfortable. I glance down at the navigation display, then through the viewscreen. We’re moving. Pioneer is moving. And I’ve lost sight of Dorian’s horrible invisible ship.

Warning, says Pioneer. Unplanned inertial change. A new alarm begins to blare.

“Sorry, Pioneer, I should have warned you,” I bite out, fingers white-knuckled on my armrests. “We’re being towed somehow. A tractor beam?”

“Something like that,” says Dorian.

I start at the sound. I had forgotten the line was still open. “Is your ship shielded?” I ask.

“It is not shielded.”

“Why can’t I see it?”

“Your ship’s computer does not understand it. You would not understand it.”

“That’s a big assumption.”

“I read your welcome packet,” says Dorian. “It’s not an insult.”

The process doesn’t take long. It’s strange — I felt the jolt as we were caught in Dorian’s ship’s tractor beam or whatever it is, and then nothing. Though I can see the stars moving as my ship turns, and then gradually, almost like lights winking out from a great distance, the stars go dark.

“Pioneer,” I say, “status update?”

Unknown.

It’s as if we were swallowed whole by darkness, enveloped in a velvet shroud.

“You’re in my ship,” says Dorian. “You may safely disembark.”