They never noticed me leaving the ship; damned espers all wrapped up in their own heads. I walked along cautiously, hating Jimmie and Reba and all the other damned espers, feeling like the ultimate rejected too-big-to-be-graceful kid on the playground, the kid too big to even trick or treat anymore, the one shut out of every game, confidence, or clique. I approached the trees, my vision uncertain in the hazy sunset light of the bright umber Class K star which served as our new “sun.”
But ruddy light or not, after a couple of minutes it became apparent that something was moving, just beyond the outcropping of short, meaty-fleshed trees. I made out long shapes, upright forms with thinner, lashing body parts. Tails. Beasts. Skin or short fur dappled in shades of brown, dull orange, and pale tan. Smallish heads, with huge, vaguely feline ears. Light shone through the tips of those ears, turning the skin radiant. Large slanted eyes, with the hint of vertical pupils. Short arms, in proportion to the slender elongated torsos. Thick legs, short femur, with near-human knees, merging into narrow fibula-tibia sections, which met elongated tarsals. Or whatever kind of bones they actually had; that they had bones was apparent, muscles, too. Strong, thick muscles. As I stepped closer, my chest growing tight with nervous tension, I saw the ripple of muscles under their finely furred skin.
The creatures reminded me of begging cats, dancing on their stubby metatarsals. No, meercats, stretching their spindly bodies to catch every ray from the rising sun in the cold desert dawn.
Still, they lacked feline whiskers, and the shape of the arm wasn’t quite cat-like—and they had hands, not paws. Hands! Long metacarpals between carpals and the fingers—and their opposing thumbs were unmistakable.
Not animals then...but not people as I knew them, either. Their lack of clothing may have been intentional, but there was something about these creatures which suggested that even the thought of clothing was alien to them. The things seemed nervous, but only about my presence, not their own light-furred nakedness. I could see the rounded furry sex of the ones I figured to be males, and as I edged closer, peering through the trees, I made out a distinct furlessness and flatness on what had to be the females.
I think it was then that I noticed Penti, the one with the white patch on her tail. Not that she was Penti then, Jimmie didn’t get around to bestowing names on the most distinctive of them until a week or so later—two names for each, an everyday name and a fancy name, plus the name only they knew—he’d read his T. S. Eliot! In retrospect, I suppose it was strange of me to dub the white-patched female and her kind beautiful, considering that I’d just laid eyes upon them only moments earlier, and knew of no standard by which to judge their appearance. But they had an appealing grace, all of them: Pentilope (she of the white daub tail) with her fancy name of Penti-Lope-Lope, little Heidi (known to Eliot and herself as Schmighty-Heidi), and Lucy (Lucy-Goosie). The oldest of the young males became Pere (Pere Ubu). Then there was Alfy (Alf-Alfred Jarry), Mister (Mister-fister), Baby Boy, Wildcat, and Slim....
The creatures’ eyes were canted, with an almost Oriental tilt to them, spaced rather wide apart. Their irises ran from a muddy blend of greenish-tan to more orange hues. Their pupils were small in relation to their eyes; they seemed to float in bright pools of color, not unlike human eyes. That seemed the most shocking part of them, those too-human eyes as a part of a very alien species.
Then I realized that they were looking at me, their stares intense yet somehow blank, unreadable. By that time all of them were becoming agitated, leaning in to rub heads or bump long, flattened noses, all the while making a rumbling, grunting sound, talking could it be? I only half noticed them; my eyes were focused on the small daub-tailed female, as were hers on mine, like a cat and its prey, or a mongoose and a cobra. When her pack took off in a simultaneous powerful leap up and forward, she held her stare. Just long enough for me to realize that I, too, had been closely scrutinized that afternoon, as if being studied.
“I think that one likes you, the spot-tailed one—”
I hadn’t heard the others come up behind me. When Huoy spoke, I nearly screamed aloud. I think my cheek jumped; at any rate, Reba came up beside me and took my hand, saying “Sorry, Scott...didn’t realize we scared you. Jimmie calls them ’lopes. After jackalopes, something he swears really existed—” Her voice ended on a teasing note, but Jimmie cut in from behind me, “Just because they’re extinct doesn’t mean they weren’t—”
“Sure, Jimmie, tell us another—”
“No, no, it’s true—” and then they were all laughing, sharing their private joke, and after a while, I laughed too, as I watched the horizon for long loping bodies....
Day 114:
The writing is getting easier now. This is the second lucid day I’ve had in a row. Don’t know how long it will last. I’ve got to get as much written before the end comes. Before the end of consciousness drops like a heavy velvet curtain between my body and my mind....
The Sagittarius IV was a Class Five star transport/exploration craft, with a crew capacity of up to nine people, plus lab animals, soil and plant samples, the works. And there was no law against carrying one-way passengers for a single segment of a ship’s total round trip passage. Reba wasn’t even required to obtain formal permission for me to join the crew. And with Reba being Reba, she didn’t bother to tell her crewmates that I was coming along for the first part of the ride until the crew assembled for takeoff.
Oh, true, none of them openly objected to my unexpected presence, but I wasn’t blind; I saw the reflexive tensing of their neck tendons, and the quick darting eye movements which were a give away to esper communication. The commander, Neil Aaron, did feel compelled to let me in on a small fraction of the conversation; pulling me aside while the others (Reba Griffith, Elizabeth Hewson, Jimmie Beecham, and Huoy Veng) silently argued, he smiled as he told me, “We can’t stop you, Mr. Renay, but the others are only thinking of the contingencies...should something happen during the voyage. We only have long-term provisions for five—”
Reba heard him; turning on one heel, she snapped, “Oh Neil, if that’s the problem he can bring his own supply of extra ’slop. But he’s coming whether you like it or not. My guest,” she finished, in a tone of voice which brooked no further argument—verbal or esper.
Day 127:
Reba crossed her arms—
Wait, where was I? Wait, look, I need to...my God. Thirteen days have gone since I last wrote; where ever did they go?
Running through the polefruit trees, ’lopes scattering every which way, tumbling on the grass when fatigue came. ’Lopes gathering around while I slept, conserving warmth and scattering like cottonseed when I stirred. I’m here in the ship now and all that seems so far away, like someone else’s life. Got to get my bearings. Back then I wanted to run. Right now I want to write. Back to the beginning. It’s easier to remember emotions right now. I don’t think I ever finished the story of that early morning, when Reba asked me to come along on the Sagittarius....
Reba crossed her arms; while she stared at the spindly towers of Bismark beyond my fifteenth story window, she coaxed, “I could help you through it. I could lend you my strength in t-space and the drugs could do the rest...and it’s not as if you weren’t trained. You’ve jumped before—”
“Only on a two-week voyage—”
“But we won’t be in hyperspace the whole time...it’s those times in-between that will make the whole trip worth it,” she finished in a pleading voice; the sound of her voice brought the memory of her voice, her touch, her smell, to my mind, my fingertips, to my tongue. Shyly, she turned her head my way, adding, “And you’ll have to make the trip anyhow, Scotty...I checked your assignment before I came here. Your new job is within the same solar system; you’ll be taking the same route as the Sagittarius for a month. Through hyperspace.
Reba had me there; no doubt she’d already learned that I had to report to my job at the Escondido Linear Accelerator on Harcourt’s planet within six months; if I accepted her invitation to ride along on the Sagittarius, I’d shave a few weeks off my Earthside time, but also finish my workshop on elementary particles and their interactions a couple of weeks