What Neither Star Nor Sun Shall Waken: A Sci-Fi Horror Story by Ryan Notch

Author:Ryan Notch
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Anthologies & Short Stories, Space Opera, Anthologies, Science Fiction, 30 Minutes (12-21 Pages), Literature & Fiction
Published: 2013-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

The sound of his own strangled cries woke him. He was so filled with residual terror from the nightmare that at first he was afraid to move, even to breath. Afraid he was just dreaming another false awakening. It was a small eternity before he forced himself to look to the left. Jack’s spacesuit, his body bag, was exactly where it had been. It hadn’t moved. Gibson went to the visor, not letting himself stall, not letting the fear claim him. He jerked it open. Jack was there, staring blankly up with dilated pupils. His eyes had been closed before, but it wasn’t unusual for a corpse's eyes to open on their own. Gibson took Jack’s pulse again, even took his temperature with a thermometer from the medical kit. Residual guilt from the dream wouldn’t leave him, but Jack was long dead. Gibson thought he saw a look of terror on Jack’s damaged features now. The radio squealed to life again, nearly making him leap out of his skin as he spun to confront it. It was louder than ever. He felt stupid for being afraid of a noise, but couldn’t help it. He turned back to Jack, ignoring the radio for a moment.

“I’m sorry buddy,” he said, and shut the visor.

Gibson walked over to the pilot's seat and sat down. He couldn’t risk standing for very long, not with his injuries. He began to wonder if that tectonic movement wasn’t causing the static somehow and compared the sonar scans of the area with the times of the various broadcasts to see if there was any overlap. Luckily the sonar had done its most recent sweep of that area just moments before…

He began to wonder about something that couldn’t be true, but checked anyway. The last scan of that region, and the time before. It was true.

“Captain reporting for black box recording. I’ve made a strange discovery. Each time the sonar pings the area around the trench, a few minutes later I get a weird burst of static over the radio. Unfortunately the angle prevents the sonar from bringing back clear images from more then a few hundred feet into the trench, but my calculations suggest the timing is right for the sonar waves to bounce it all the way down and the radio waves to bounce back up a few seconds later. I can only conjecture that something down there is converting the sonar waves into radio spectrum and bouncing them back. But what kind of rock could do that, I can’t imagine. And what’s more, the duration of the radio broadcasts doesn’t remotely match the duration of a sonar wave. ”

The radio went on and on. Sounding now like a sine wave, now like moaning, now like piping.

“I’ll tell you one thing, the sound itself is maddening. It gets right down into you, into the back of your brain. It’s downright creepy. I’m checking the analysis of the latest ping and response now, to see if it’s…”

And it was.

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