//------------------------------//
// Disembarkation 
// Story: Mare Doloris 
// by TinCan 
//------------------------------//

I was sleeping in my cabin when the captain called me over the intercom.

"Esteemed guest, we've nearly arrived. Do you wish to see the world from afar?"

When traveling between the stars, one swiftly gets tired of looking out the window. I had left mine closed for weeks now. Other than the galactic plane, all one can see is the pinpricks of stars against the abyss. Planet-dwelling creatures like myself soon find the sight oppressive when we cannot turn to soil or cloud for relief from its starkness.

Still, I decided it was reasonable to watch the world I'd chosen approach. I unfurled myself from the perch, shook the stiffness from my coat of scales and floated from the cabin to the bridge. Several of the crew greeted me or genuflected as I arrived. The captain gruffly ordered them to attend their duties, but nodded to me in welcome.

The sight did not disappoint. The almost-familiar blue-green planet and its white moon, my moon, shone in the blackness like precious jewels on velvet. The survey expedition's images had done justice to neither.

The ship's navigator, a hominid, pointed to the moon and began babbling excitedly and recording images of it with his headset. The captain growled at him again. He fell silent, but continued recording.

I asked her what he had said.

“Please, don't let him trouble our esteemed guest," she replied.

I insisted that I was not troubled, simply curious.

She explained, embarrassed. "These apes, they make good navigators because have a genius for finding patterns. Their weakness is to see them everywhere, even in meaningless piles of dust. He says he sees the profile of an animal of his homeworld in the surface of this moon."

The navigator babbled again.

"Pardon," she added, dripping sarcasm. "It's an animal not of his homeworld, but of myth. In other words, a nothing-at-all."

I wished to explain to her that the Increate allows such signs to appear, even in ancient dust, and waits countless ages for a single creature to behold them and understand. I tightened my jaws instead. It is not meet to contradict a captain before her crew. Perhaps I also feared the remote possibility that it might encourage the hominids to make pilgrimages here. I would not give away my peace before it was even attained!

I thanked the captain for this opportunity and returned to my cabin to prepare for the final step that would sever me from civilization.





Some hours later, the captain called me to her quarters as her crew prepared the jolly-boat that was to ferry me and my supplies to my new home.

Expecting this was simply a final formality, I began by thanking her and her crew profusely for carrying me to my destination. Before I could compliment further, she waved the words away.

"The crew is most dismayed to see our esteemed guest depart."

I could not in all honesty say the same, but I replied that I was touched and honored by their concern.

She gave me a wry look. "They're superstitious worms. The voyage has been peaceful, and they attribute this to our esteemed guest, the holy anchorite."

I assured the captain that, though not technically an anchorite, I would daily remember her and her crew before the Increate and make intercession for their safety.

To hide her contempt, she changed the subject. "The crew has observed lights on the planet."

I did not understand the significance of this and asked if there were fires or volcanic activity.

"Something worse: industrial civilization."

I told her I was perfectly aware that the planet was inhabited. My solitude would not be impinged by creatures on an adjacent world.

"The power to make a trip to their satellite is or will soon be within their grasp."

I allowed that this was possible, but vanishingly unlikely.

She shrugged. "As I told the crew, but they're certain the primitives will make a moonshot at any moment, our esteemed guest will end his days in a zoo or on some bloodstained altar, and his deity will curse the ship that brought him here."

I was speechless.

The captain reached into a locker, withdrew two objects and placed them on the table before me. I recognized one as a focused light weapon and the other as a translation machine.

I protested that both devices were antithetical to my purpose.

Her spines twitched in annoyance. "Our esteemed guest may destroy or bury them later if he wishes. Simply bring them to the moon to allay my crew's fears and I will be very pleased. Humor them and I will see to it that nothing delays our return unduly."

I doubted they would allow that regardless, but I was grateful for a final example of the society I was rejecting. Fear, deception and coercion ruled the day. I took the two objects in my claws and thanked her.





I asked blessings of the Increate on the ship and crew as we descended to the lunar surface, and this seemed to buoy their spirits somewhat. Still, the atmosphere was somber as the jolly-boat's legs settled into the dust.

Due to a fancy of the navigator, our course had brought us right to the lower edge of the "eye" of the creature he saw figured in the darker regions. My first view from the surface was from these highlands at the rim of the great crater, looking out across the smooth "sea". I had never walked the surface of an airless world before. The most distant objects seem impossibly bright and sharp and the too-close horizon is as dark and abrupt as if the world were suddenly broken off. The few rocks studding the landscape cast fuligin shadows across the pale dust.

My suit was working perfectly, though its movements over the scales on my back would take some getting used to. The crew and I unloaded my supplies and set up my shelter swiftly and without mishap.

While we worked, many of the sailors kept pausing to look out over the barren plains with trepidation. I assumed they were simply unused to such bare open spaces after spending months in the cramped corridors of their vessel. As we were completing construction and waiting for the habitat's atmosphere to finish brewing, one of them approached me and began grunting at me over the radio. I fished the translator out of one of my suit's pockets and activated it.

"—bad place. Nothing can live here. It's not right for living people to be here. Something else is here that hates us."

I confess my reply was rudely flippant and sarcastic. It may have overtaxed the translator, because the sailor did not appear to understand. After a few seconds of silence between us, I showed him the captain's weapon. He seemed marginally satisfied.

Not long after, though it felt like an eternity, the crew boarded the jolly-boat with much well-wishing and dubious advice and finally, finally took off. I was alone at last.

As the first deed of my new life, I removed the weapon from its holster and threw it as hard as I could over the lip into the great crater. With only this world's feeble gravitation tugging it back, it sailed so far I didn't even see where it landed.

Satisfied and exhausted with my work for the day, I returned to the shelter, peeled off the suit, curled myself into a ball of scales atop my new perch and immediately went to sleep.