A pearlescent boomerang-shaped ship sputters through a violet alien sky.
“No. No. No. No. No.” Dr. Philip Nogumbraun silences a blaring alarm while warning triangles and error boxes dance in the lenses of his thick glasses. “Maybe this will work.” He winces, flicks up a clear guard, and presses a round red button. Philip inhales a deep breath and wipes sweat from his brow—triumph fills his chest.
Wondrous Kartrus expands beneath him. This unique world of wild fauna and mysterious flora could salvage his academic career. Thirty years ago, his doctoral thesis, “On the Comparative Biology of Intergalactic Life,” changed space-colonial astrobiology, but with fame came scrutiny and politics. Advisors became critics, and critics became adversaries. He must not shrivel before these bullies. His nature forced him to stand his ground and ferociously fight—his parents did not survive the zarkon plague for him to roll over at the first sign of trouble—but he found himself surrounded, shunned, and shut out of publication. Philip surrendered and turned to the private sector and engineered lush landscapes in esteemed terraforming projects—Aethu, Varense, Qaichu-Bu, Syklos—wealthy private planets. Academics sneered and marked him as a sellout. He’d show them. His work would prove his legacy and eclipse them from history. What about funding? Cursed with stigma, every organization turned their nose at him—no matter—he made enough in the private sector and Kartrus sat undisturbed, undiscovered, and ready for his exploration. What could go wrong? Success was certain, and with that in mind, Dr. Nogumbraun liquidated his assets, stockpiled expensive expedition gear, bought the first spaceship he found, and navigated to Kartrus.
Flashing lights bathe his wrinkled face. “Flark me—”
The vessel plummets toward the crimson ocean below. His panicked digits jab touch screens. “What to do? What to do?” He mutters phrases from long-forgotten prayers while wide eyes dart across text projected from lit consoles.
“Eureka!” He flips a toggle, opens a panel, and throws a knife switch. The screens turn off. “One, two, three—” Dr. Nogumbraun thrusts the knife switch in the opposite direction and the screens flash to life, and with them, the thrusters whoosh into action. The expansive crimson sea grows ever closer. Philip cranks back on the U-shaped controls, and the ship arcs out of its nosedive, and the underside skips along the ocean’s surface.
“Hold together. C’mon, hold together.” Dr. Nogumbraun wrestles for control of the ship amid the jostling waves. In the endless crimson, a circular shadow emerges and swells to the diameter of the ship and then swells to the diameter of a dozen ships.
Silver scales glint in the red sun, and an enormous claymore-toothed maw follows. Human-sized blades glisten in infinite overlapping rows born from a pink fleshy gullet that rises from the sea and eclipses the sun.
“What the flark?”
The beast’s wide, muscled tongue caresses the cockpit and smears mucus along the vessel.
“Fascinating. What a magnificent creature. Surely, I am not in your food chain… What shall I call you? Teeth… hmm… whale-like… Cephalus… Physeter Mega-Cephalus. Yes. That’s a splendid name—”
The ship jerks from the tongue curling around the cockpit.
“Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.”
The tongue yanks the ship toward the teeth.
“Sorry, my immense friend, but I am not on the menu.” Dr. Nogumbraun scrolls through the commands on the console.
The teeth move closer together, and darkness engulfs the ship. Bright multicolored cockpit lights wash across the creature’s smeared saliva, which coats the ship.
“It must be here somewhere…” His taps speed into a constant drumroll. “Please.” The doctor’s frantic fingers click the screen and initiate an incessant beep.
Snapping shut; the gargantuan jaws produce tremors that rock the ship. Philip glances left and right in panic before his eyes fix on the creature’s gumline. “Curious.”
Faint green apparitions appear in the periphery. The ghosts clamber sideways toward the ship and reveal themselves.
“Most curious. They must be some kind of lambent crustacean.”
A dozen-meter-tall crabs pulse with a pale green glow. Reflective compound eyes rest on stalks that protrude from the crustacean’s luminous, wide-domed carapace. Some creatures wash their eyes with pom-pom-looking appendages on two front legs—others instinctively follow this ritual. Small claws wriggle about a foaming and flapping mouth, and exterior to those jut a massive pair of powerful claws which alternate opening and closing in front of two sides of four columnar pointed legs.
“Marvelous. They must live inside this whale and scavenge its prey. Absolutely marvelous—”
The tongue rocks the ship toward the whale’s undulating throat.
“Mirt. No time for observation.” The biologist scrolls across another page. “Eureka!” He turns a knob clockwise, and the engines backfire. “Mirt!”
Crabs crawl onto the ship, and the tongue constricts the ship in its spiraled grasp.
The biologist remembers his failures, and the specters of his past swarm him. All his adversaries and his critics flock to attend his demise. Would they critique his latest failure? Again, powerlessness grips him, and he hears their criticism and verbal daggers carve a million tiny holes in his flesh. They flay him, and he sits helpless—his entity replaced with an exposed nerve—and he investigates eternity. He seeks his parents, begs forgiveness, and finds silence—frozen silence capable of chilling the soul. The icy grasp of regret binds him, and not because of his limited academic success or because of his business ventures, but because he quit—he gave up. By choice he threw away everything he had worked for because of the challenge of his peers—who challenged him in the best interest of science because scientists, and society, must challenge all ideas to evaluate their validity and move closer to discerning the truth about the universe. Despite his parents never admitting their disappointment, he knows they thought of him as a quitter—well, no more. Brilliant light emanates within him and burns away the effigies of his tribulations and exorcises the demons of his past. “The illustrious Dr. Philip Nogumbraun is not dying on this forsaken mirt hole!” He slams his fist onto the console, and flame bursts from the ship’s exhaust.
Deafening moans quake from the creature. Combustion jets sear the fleshy tongue, and the crabs shamble away. The radiant red sun peers through separating teeth, and the humongous, scorched tongue unfurls and retreats. Dr. Nogumbraun clutches the controls, and the ship rockets from the whale’s mouth into the violet sky. Windswept saliva slides tangent to the cockpit, and mighty ancient purple-foliaged trees appear on the horizon.
“Finally. Land.” He thinks of the magnificent sea beast and luminous phantom crustaceans, and he imagines the scores of other incredible life-forms on this distant rock. His mind fills with visions of fame and renown, awards, and banquets and speaking engagements. Alarms ring.
“Not again.” He scans the blinking instrument cluster. “Low fuel. How could I—the thrusters? That must be it.” His hand rolls the knob counterclockwise, and the ship smooths to a glide toward a towering, growing marble cliff. Dr. Nogumbraun rears back the steering, and the ship arcs up within a meter of smashing into the cliff face. He exhales. The ship climbs above the cliff at a steep angle, sputters, and stalls. “No. No. No… Flark.” Philip pounds the console, and nothing happens, and the ship falls topside first downward—and lands on a gigantic pink and chartreuse mushroom with a soft thud.
“Phew.” He surveys the situation the best he can while hanging upside down harnessed into his seat. “Wow. Massive fungal fruiting bodies the likes of which I’ve never seen—the likes of which I doubt anyone has seen. Magnific—” The ship slides and rolls off the mushroom’s cap and crashes ten meters into charcoal-colored dirt.
“Finally, land. At least I’m right side up.” He unfastens his harness, gathers his gear, dons an environmental protection suit, and exits the ship. “Hello Kartrus.” His eyes well with rubbery tears, and his mouth gapes in awe of his beautiful surroundings, and awash in the warm embrace of victory, he knows his parents recognize his determination, and now his work begins.
He compiles a rich catalog of stunning flora and fierce, majestic fauna. The immensely detailed descriptions and evidence illuminate key insights about life in the universe and garner immense acclaim, publicity, and dozens of awards—posthumous awards—and create a mystery, for despite transmitting his research and ultimately his books, The Varied Biology of Kartrusan Species and A Biologist’s Guide to Kartrus, both of which are best sellers, back to the colonies, the illustrious Dr. Philip Nogumbraun never returns from Kartrus.