Rescued by the Aliens

Aliens save astronauts stranded on Mars

Following the Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption, the Earth is cast into an ice age. Six astronauts were left on Mars. Struggling to survive, they are rescued by a passing alien starship.

Helen Gould paused to examine the dead city. The last time she had been in St. Louis it had been a thriving metropolis, but now the city was abandoned. She and her four alien friends were the only living souls among the decaying buildings. Helen looked up at the sky. The red streaks of dawn’s early light were masking the stars. When Helen had arrived, the sky had been black with no hint of the city lights reflecting in the sky. The cold, clear air had allowed the extraordinary brilliance of the Milky Way Galaxy to shine through. The sight had reminded her of how the stars looked during a Martian night.

“Hurry,” Ah-mee said. The female alien spoke English. “They are waiting for us.”

She followed Ah-mee across the empty street. Helen and the four Eddanites reached a parking deck; they climbed the stairs to the top level. While the others were entering the space shuttle, Helen touched the control stud to open her spacesuit. She was wearing one of the alien suits, not the one NASA had provided. Pushing the collapsing helmet aside, the cold breeze brushed her cheek. They had worn the suits to protect them from the icy, foul air. She marveled at how the thin plastic material of the Eddanite spacesuit kept her warm. She drew in one last breath of Earth’s air. It smelled of death. She stood in the hatchway of the small spaceship and scanned the horizon of Earth one last time. Her heart swelled and choked off her breath. It was unlikely she would ever return to her home planet.

The space shuttle lifted off from the roof of the parking deck and ascended into orbit around the Earth with the smooth, quiet efficiency of the alien’s anti-gravity drive. The trip bore no resemblance to the white-knuckled ride Helen had taken aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft atop the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle 393 days earlier.

The aliens chatted among themselves. They spoke their native language, but Helen was not insulted. She knew only Ah-mee spoke English. Besides, she was in no mood for conversation. She gazed out the artificial porthole, watching the ice covered continents of the dying Earth below. However, it was still as beautiful as ever.

The gigantic, white starship, the Cal-Vox, drifted into view. As though they had teleported into an episode of Star Trek, Helen and the other five NASA astronauts from the Mars mission were now members of the starship’s crew. The Eddanite ship was on a mission to search out new life, and they had found the six stranded Earthlings on Mars.

Once aboard ship, Helen went to her cabin. It was the middle of the day, ship’s time; however, she had been awake for 20 hours. She wanted to sleep. She knew her fellow astronauts would be in the mess hall watching the starship’s departure on the large view screen. They didn’t know she had been to the surface, and she didn’t want to tell them about it now. One day, she would discuss her meeting with Frank, but today she wanted to be alone.

♦♦♦

Don Rosenberg had been the Mars mission commander, but now he was a junior member of the Cal-Vox bridge crew. Yet, he had no real assignments as he learned the starship’s operations. The Eddanites had decided to keep the Earthlings aboard instead of releasing them on Earth. To some extent the six astronauts were prisoners, but it was a lush prison with golden bars. Those remaining alive on Earth were locked in a desperate struggle to survive. It would have been unlikely the six astronauts would have survived had they been released.

“Where’s Helen?” Don asked, as he joined the knot of Earthlings in the mess hall.

“Her locator is set to private. I left messages for her to join us,” Stickshift answered. Stanley Malone had been the pilot for the Mars mission. Better known as ‘Stickshift’, he was also a new, junior member of the Cal-Vox bridge crew.

“She’s probably thinking about her brother,” Ski said. Marion ‘Ski’ Kowalski had been the mission engineer on Mars. He could fix anything, and he was now learning more from the Eddanite engineers. He left unsaid the likelihood that Helen was with Kee-rot. His locator was also set to private. While the Eddanites were generally not monogamous, Kee-rot and Helen had been pretty much exclusively with each other.

“Yeah,” Don agreed.

After the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, which had propelled the Earth’s climate into an ice age, the majority of the North American population had perished. Helen’s brother Frank Gould was the only surviving family member of the six astronauts. While the other five had already said their mental goodbyes to their lost families, Helen was now facing the fact she would never see her brother again.

Martin Greystone and Roger Borman were the other two NASA astronauts. The five of them watched the Earth on the view screen. They were currently orbiting over the North American Continent, but it was unrecognizable. The polar ice cap stretched down to the midsection of the United States, and the sea level was so low that the visible coastlines were distorted. The one landmark which assured them this was North America was the black blight of volcanic ash spread across the Midwest. This was the remnants of the Yellowstone supervolcano.

There was a slight vibration in the ship which was telegraphed through the soles of their feet. Then, the blue-white planet began to shrink. The Cal-Vox was leaving its orbit around Earth. There was no sense of acceleration as there had been when their own spaceship had departed Earth orbit for Mars. The Eddenite’s artificial gravity technology was a marvel. The Earth shrank until it was the size of a marble at arm’s length. Then there was a more significant shudder through the ship as they jumped into hyperspace and accelerated beyond the speed of light. The Earth, and all the stars which had been visible, vanished.

“So, where are we off to?” Martin Greystone asked. Better known as ‘Doc’, he had been their mission doctor and biologist. He was now learning the advanced medical trade of the Eddanites.

“The next star system on their list. I’ve been shown its position on their holographic star chart, but I don’t know how to express an answer to your question,” Don said.

Stickshift pointed to the blank view screen. “If you can recall the positions of the stars just before we jumped into hyperspace, our destination is the second star to the right.”

They chuckled for a moment with the reference to Peter Pan.

“And, I bet we’ll be there in the morning,” Roger Borman said. He had been the mission chemist.

Helen had been their geologist.

“No, more like a month,” Don corrected. “A hundred times the speed of light is still damn slow in this big galaxy.”

“A mere distraction compared to the nine months we spent transiting to Mars,” Roger said.

“Marion Kowalski?” All eyes pivoted to the female Eddanite in a blue jumpsuit, the uniform of the science division. “Is one of you Marion Kowalski?” Surprisingly, she had spoken English.

“I am, but my friends call me Ski.” He stood. He was not normally so polite to those who mistakenly called him Marion.

“Ski,” she slowly let the syllable roll off her tongue, “I am sorry to interrupt, but you are scheduled for a brainwave transfer. If you will follow me, please.” She turned and walked away.

Ski spent a moment admiring her posterior. All of the Eddanite women had fantastic butts, and their skintight jumpsuits left nothing to the imagination. This alone was reason enough to follow her.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, catching up with her.

“I am Technician Rey-loo.”

“This brainwave transfer, does it hurt?”

“Ha, no, not at all. You will take a short nap, during which time I will pump your head full of knowledge. You are scheduled to learn our language and the operation of a variety of ship’s machinery. The raw knowledge alone will not make you proficient, but it will greatly facilitate you as you learn our ways.”

“And, after the nap?” He drew a breath. “What then?”

She stopped and looked him over.

Ski had always been a fan of science fiction books, TV shows, and movies. He specifically enjoyed the older works, those written before the bleak reality was known about the planets in the Solar System. In these movies, such as Queen of Outer Space and Cat-Women of the Moon, outer space was populated with sex starved women. Even James T. Kirk’s romantic exploits were legendary. Imagine Ski’s surprise when he discovered how close to reality this concept was. The long periods in hyperspace were quite boring, and the Eddanites were very amorous.

Rey-loo winked. “Afterwards… we shall see.”

An hour later, Ski awoke from his short nap as Rey-loo removed the transfer apparatus from around his head. There had been two other technicians attending other sleeping subjects when Ski and Rey-loo had arrived. Now the pair was alone.

“And so, was that painless? Did you have pleasant dreams?” she asked.

“It didn’t hurt a bit, but I don’t recall any dreams. Did it work?”

“Oh, yes, you understand me, don’t you?”

Ski realized they had not been conversing in English. He could understand and speak their native tongue. Grinning, he said, “That is marvelous! Can you teach me to be a brain surgeon?”

“I can teach you about the anatomy of the brain, but the machine cannot impart surgical skills. These must still be acquired the old fashioned way.” Rey-loo stood over him as he lay upon the procedure table. “And now, we have time for…” she winked, “something else.”

The aliens were different from Earthlings in that they were taller and more slender. Additionally, they had no hair on their bodies. This created the impression that their bald heads were larger than those of the Earthlings, but measurements had confirmed this to be only an illusion. To say they were aliens was accurate in that they were from the distant planet of Eddan, but they were not exactly an alien lifeform. They were genetically humans; distant cousins of the Earthlings. The six astronauts had learned the galaxy portrayed in Star Trek had been realistic. In the TV series there were Earthlings, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, and Orions, which were all humanoid with only slight physical differences.

In the real life galaxy, humanity had not originated on Earth. Earthlings, Eddanites, and many others were all colonies of an ancient civilization. The mission of the Cal-Vox was to find other human colonies.

“Shall we socialize in the mess hall?” Rey-loo asked.

“Uh, yes.”

“Don’t be so shy.”

Rey-loo entwined her fingers in his hair. The five men from the Mars mission had quickly learned how fascinating the Eddan women found their body hair to be. The only hair on the Eddanites’ bodies was their eyelashes.

“You know,” Ski said, “on Earth, hair is used as a biological marker to define what a mammal is.”

“Hmm, when we are born, we also have very thin hairs on our skin. These are hardly noticeable and fall out after a few days.”

Another characteristic of the Eddanites was that they lived longer than the Earthlings. To Ski’s eye, Rey-loo looked to be 30 years old, but he knew she was probably closer to a hundred.

THE END

Copyright ©2023 by S. M. Revolinski All Rights Reserved

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