Breaking Down Read online

Down

  ©Lelanthran Krishna Manickum

  November 2011

  The spaceship wobbled through the atmosphere. It wobbled, firstly, due to being designed for a different gravitational pull than the one it was currently experiencing and secondly, due to the fact that it was currently undergoing what maintenance crews would call a slight systems malfunction, but what pilots would call a reason for decapitation. The astronaut in this particular vessel was not helping matters in any way either, being sharply and prematurely awoken from his suspended animation sleep to manoeuvre the craft safely. Swearing violently at the ship, the strange and unexpected planet and, above all, maintenance crews the galaxy over, he switched on the emergency flashers and guided the now-spinning ship across the alien skies, looking for a suitable place to land his craft.

  Ezekiel 1

  4And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

  5Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

  6And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

  7And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

  The astronaut grunted in satisfaction. He’d landed (or, more accurately, “crashed safely”) and sent out the scout robots to examine the exterior of the craft for damage while he checked the ships diagnostics for electrical and/or fusion malfunction, but some of the local wildlife had started howling at the robots, causing them to retreat back into the ship, damage unexamined. He checked the video feeds from the sensors mounted on the exterior of the craft. Luckily, this craft was a research probe, and was filled to the gills with sensors. Currently these sensors were informing him that the wildlife was still outside, waiting. Were they predators? If they were, then either the prey on this planet was remarkably easy to catch or these were remarkably smart predators, because all were bipedal (you run slower with only two legs) and had neither claws nor talons nor teeth worth a damn. So, probably not predators then, but why take a risk? Better to be safe than sorry. Besides, it was against company policy to be eaten on a remote planet. Many an astronaut’s wife was, in the past, handed a small jar and a meagre pension with the consolation, “But we told him not to!”

  The astronaut sent out an organic-bot; one designed by the boffins back in the lab to be as tasty as possible so that explorers could ascertain the predatory leanings of the creatures on the various worlds they sought out before approaching the locals with peace-offerings and risk breaking the company policy. To speed things up, the bot was programmed to attempt communications using a variety of visual, auditory, pheromonal and telepathic methods.

 

  Ezekiel 2

  1And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.

  2And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.

  The organic-bot had no trouble whatsoever instructing what seemed to be the alpha male of the pack. The astronaut was glad; being able to communicate with the locals made it that much easier to avoid being eaten. Also, it was one thing to break down in the middle of a little-travelled route, but another to break down amongst potentially hostile and technologically advanced species. At least he could now scan the area in relative safety for enough chemical resources to repair the damage done during his voyage and subsequent landing. Settling down at the ships computer, he entered codes for the various materials he would need. The scanners would do the rest and identify possible sources of the carbon, hydrogen and sulphur that the lazo-weld machine would need to recreate the damaged bits of the aircraft.

  It was three earth-days later. The scanners had discovered some sources of material not all that far from his current location. The only worry for the astronaut was the question of forcing a damaged ship that distance. Gravity on this planet was twice what it was back home, and anyway the ship was designed primarily for long space-jumps, not piddling planet-local hops, and thus the designers had neglected to include an option for fighting strong gravity, or, for that matter, fighting off starving predators. He had to move sooner or later, for it was only a matter of time before the ship would be discovered by something larger than the bipedal figures that occasionally kept watch on it. A planet this size ought to have at least one carnivorous plant or animal. If not, then there was almost the certainty that something around here was venomous.

  The astronaut wondered about the bipedal creatures; they were as defenceless as he had first thought but no predator seemed to get near them. Perhaps they had a planet-specific defence, or maybe released noxious odours when threatened? They would need further watching from the Galactic Federation, and he’d made a note to inform the Explorer Corporation about these creatures once he’d gotten off this rock. He’d had nothing to do since starting the scanners but invent new curses for maintenance crews, and he’d come up with a number of new and novel terms for those people who were supposed to make sure that the craft was space-worthy.

  The engines heated up, the ship began to hum and the ground beneath it trembled. The ship rose gently, if a little unsteadily, into the air and began it’s ungraceful lurch towards the area pinpointed by the scanner as containing the required material. Unknown to the astronaut, one of the bipedal animals was watching all of this intently and marking what appeared to be a very uniform piece of large leaf. The astronaut would have been troubled had he seen any sign of intelligence from these creatures. Luckily, he was too busy being troubled by his broken and barely controllable ship to notice the less-troubling trivialities. When he bothered to stop being troubled by his crippled ship, he reverted to cursing maintenance crews.

  The ship had almost reached it’s destination when it dipped into the ground once more, this time a lot more impressively as various bits fell off of it and caught fire in a spectacular manner. The astronaut quickly swung into emergency response mode, and grabbed the flameproof suit and extinguisher-gun before heading outside. As the ship was meant for long inter-stellar jumps, it carried a lot of energy as fuel for the trip. This energy was massively compressed into fuel cells and having a fuel cell explode will be the start to a very bad day. The astronaut, once outside, fumbled his way into the flameproof suit and headed for the biggest source of fire, which happened to be an almost empty fuel cell that had landed away from the ship and had set a large bush alight. It was important that he put the flames out before they caused the fuel cell to explode.

  Confidently, having trained innumerable times for this very situation, the astronaut went right up to the edge of the flame, pointed the extinguisher-gun at the base of the flame, pressed the button that released a single pellet and extinguished the entire fire before the explosion could occur. At least, that’s what he meant to do; what actually happened was that he ran up to the edge of the flame, tripped on a rock at the very last minute, and fell into the middle of the fire. He stood up, about to thank his native gods that no one had been around to see this, when he found, to his surprise, that he had had a bipedal audience. Luckily, it seemed that the creature had not noticed his clumsiness, and so the astronaut recovered his aplomb, and attempted to go about instructing the creature to urgently move away from a potential explosion, and to make sure other bipedals kept away too.

  Exodus 3

  2And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

  3And Moses sa
id, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

  4And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

  5And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

  …

  8And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign.

  9And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.

  After much gesturing and repeating some of what the computer had learned of this language in the last few days, the astronaut finally convinced the creature to leave. He hoped that the creature would not be back, and then tried to extinguish the fire but found that it had already died down anyway. Even flames had their pride it seemed. He turned to the task, once again, of repairing enough of the