The Loss Of The Ether Sprite
Rain lashed down through the planet’s turbulent atmosphere, and despite being sealed within a temperature controlled enviro-suit, Harry Swanson couldn’t help but feel a shiver run down his spine. He watched his partner, Jenkins, struggle to find his footing on the narrow ledge they were traversing. The enviro-suits protected them from the weather but limited their visibility. It was a trade off that was usually worth it, but here and now he sorely wished that removing the helmet was an option. Even with the helmet on, though, he could clearly see that the terrain disappeared sharply into what looked like oblivion, just scant inches from where he was stood.
“Watch it, Jenkins, you’re…” he began, but it was too late. Time seemed to stop for an instant as his partner lost his footing, then everything sped up beyond normal time and he was gone, a faint scream echoing over Harry’s com unit as he disappeared into the mist below. Harry stuck out his chin to switch channels on his com. “Ether Sprite this is Swanson, I’ve lost Jenkins, ma’am.”
“Swanson this is Ether Sprite,” came a female voice over the speakers in his helmet, “what do you mean you’ve lost Jenkins?”
“He, ah, lost his footing,” Harry explained, “appears to have plummeted to his death. Nasty business.”
“Yeah, well, you need to find him and bring back his identi-chip,” sighed the female voice over the comm. “Without that I’m going to have a ton of paperwork to fill in when we get back to Earth, and I’ll be holding you personally responsible for that.”
“What?” Harry complained.
“Swanson…I will find some way to deny you your bonus if you don’t get me that identi-chip, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he sighed.
He clumsily fished out the light weight rope from his back pack. It was made of millions of nano-filament cords wound together into an exceptionally light but incredibly strong rope. Fixing it securely, he hoped, to a rocky outcrop, he began to carefully rappel down the cliff face after Jenkins. It was an exceptionally long drop, and the ledge he’d begun his descent from soon disappeared into the mist above him. Eventually his feet found solid ground; he pulled out his torch and began to search for Jenkins’ body in the gloom.
Thankfully it wasn’t long before he found it. The faceplate on Jenkins’ helmet had a rather large crack running down the middle of it, so if the fall hadn’t killed him (and judging by the nasty angles in his spine and neck it almost certainly had) the noxious nature of the planet’s atmosphere would have done for him fairly quickly anyway.
With a sigh he retrieved the identi-chip from Jenkins’ helmet, reflecting for the briefest moments on the fact that the people he worked for didn’t care about recovering the body, but only minimizing the amount of paper work involved in someone dying on the job. It was not comforting to know that his death was, one day, likely to be no more than an annoying inconvenience to someone in middle management.
It was as he was tucking the identi-chip into a pouch on his leg that he noticed them.
“Ether Sprite, this is Swanson, I’ve got something here…” he began.
“It had better be that damn identi-chip, Swanson,” the female voice replied.
“Yeah, sure, I’ve got that, but forget about Jenkins for a minute, I’ve found something…” he continued.
“What have you found now, Swanson,” the voice sighed.
“Well…it looks like some eggs…maybe half a dozen…” he replied.
“You planning on making an omelette, Swanson?” the voice snapped back, sarcastically.
“Will you just shut up for a minute, Christy, I’m serious here…I have eggs…alien eggs…as in life, Jim, but not as we know it…” his voice gained a slightly forceful edge to it.
“Harry, are you serious?” Christy replied.
“I’m damn serious,” he shot back at her. “You want me to bring them in?”
“Of course I want you to bring them in,” she replied. “But I’m getting fifty percent.”
“Thirty.”
“Forty percent and you get to take me to dinner.”
“You’re on.”
_________
“So, what do we do with them?” Christy mused.
“Well, we can’t risk them hatching or something on the trip home…” Harry began.
“No way,” Christy cut in, “I think we’ve all seen those movies.”
“Jenkins’ stasis pod is empty,” said Harry, deep in thought. “I say we stash them in there for the ride home, then hand them over when we get back to Earth and split the reward that our generous corporate benefactors are bound to shower upon us.”
“Sound like a plan to me,” Christy smiled. “What could possibly go wrong?”
_________
The Ether Sprite slid silently through the endless void of deep space, inter-stellar engines burning brightly as they warped space around the ship, enabling them to cruise at speeds greater than light speed. Deep inside the ship its crew slept, their metabolisms slowed to a point just next to death by the stasis pods they slumbered within, practically halting the aging process during the months or years spent on inter-stellar voyages.
In one such stasis pod, bearing the identifier “Jenkins – M,” a half dozen strangely patterned eggs gently trembled from the vibrations caused by the ship’s giant engines.
One of the eggs began to crack…
