M114 - Commander Richard Smith - Professor Carter
From Create Your Own Story
PLANET M114
Twenty minutes later Commander Smith was sitting in a chair beside a rusty folding table. On top of it was a forty-year old computer. Papers and notebooks were strewn everywhere. Old clothes lay on top of dug-up artifacts. Sunlight streamed in through open door, illuminating the dust particles floating throughout the room. An electrical cord, crudely fastened to the ceiling, ran to a naked bulb dangling down over the center of the room. Professor Carter had just completed a long-- and rather rambling-- narrative. Finally, Commander Smith spoke, “A Shape-Shifter?”
“Not physically, of course,” Professor Carter said, swirling his hands nervously in the air as he paced back and forth. “More of a ‘chameleon of the mind’. That‘s what…” He smiled, but it was sad smile. “That’s what Nancy always called… the Creature.” Carter drifted over to the doorway and stared out of it. “Funny. But I’ve been calling her… uh, the Creature, ‘Nancy’ for so long, I sometimes forget that is not really her.”
“And this… Creature… can read minds?” Commander Smith asked.
“Not ‘read’ so much as…” Professor Carter turned from the doorway to look at Commander Smith. “See images. And project them back. And… she… It… can sense feeling. Emotions.”
“That still doesn’t explain the deaths,” Commander Smith reminded the Professor.
“We had been here three days before she… it… had the courage to approach us.” He shook his head at the recollection. “I don’t know where she got the energy from. She was nearly dead when we first got here… Anyway, we thought she was…” He laughed, “I don’t know what we thought she was. But that first night…”
“She fed?” Commander Smith prompted.
“She fed,” the Professor nodded. “On all three of us. She snuck in our separate huts and…” He looked up, a sheepish smile on his face. “At first we men tried to keep her, uh, feedings, secret. But you know how those things go.” Commander Smith nodded. “It was Lucy who first caught her.” He jerked his head towards the Dunes. “Out by the dig. There was hell to pay, as you can well imagine. When Nan… when the Creature appeared again, Lucy confronted her. They walked away from the rest of us. A few minutes later we heard a scream. The Creature came running up crying hysterically. Saying Lucy had fallen.” He stared into Smith’s face his eyes searching for… understanding? Forgiveness?
“But she was pushed,” Commander Smith said.
“She was pushed,” Professor Carter agreed. “We did not find out about it until… Oh, months later. By then she had… moved in with… Lucy’s husband. Sort of taking her place.”
“But you other two men continued to ‘feed’ her as well?”
Professor Carter shrugged. “You don’t know what she was like. When Mary caught her husband with the Creature, she went berserk. Mary not only shot and killed her own husband, but she turned the gun on herself. That’s when the Creature revealed herself to us.” Again Professor Carter’s thoughts turned from the past to the present. He stared pleadingly at Commander Smith. “She really is a gentle creature. She said she could not be responsible for any more deaths. That she would just go off in the desert and join her ancestors.”
“But yet she killed Lucy,” Commander Smith pointed out to the other man.
“She killed Lucy,” Professor Carter admitted. “But she didn’t know us then. And she was hungry. If someone tried to cut you off from all food, what would you do?”
Commander Smith wasn’t the one ‘on trial’ so he ignored the question. “So you forgave her?”
“It wasn’t so much a question of forgiving, Captain,” Professor Carter continued to try to explain. “There were already three dead. What would a fourth death accomplish?…. Nancy understood. She even,” Professor Carter had to lower his eyes from Commander Smith’s gaze. Staring down at the dirt floor, he continued, “She even agreed to… share.” The man swallowed. “Me.”
“How very noble of her,” Commander Smith retorted.
Professor Carter snapped his head up and glared at the Spaceman. There was anger in his eyes. “You didn’t know Nancy. Even two men can only produce so much sperm. Nancy understood.” Professor Carter looked towards the window. “That poor thing is hungry all the time. Can you imagine what constant hunger must feel like?”
“So the Creature killed the *real* Nancy ?” Commander Smith pressed. “Eliminating a competitor of the food supply?”
“You bastard,” Professor Carter growled. “You don’t know either of them.” Both men locked eyes for a few seconds before the Professor looked away. “Nancy. My Nancy. The real Nancy. She died of a ruptured appendix.”
“Bullshit, Professor!” Commander Smith barked. “Appendixes are destroyed by micro laser surgery for all deep space travelers.” Smith slapped his own right, lower gut. “Mine was. All of my crew’s were. It’s regulations.”
“It wasn’t a regulation forty years ago,” Professor Carter answered softly. “The last of us, Henry, died five years ago.” He quickly looked over to Commander Smith. “Heart attack.”
“Alright, Professor, I don’t know how much of your story I believe,” Commander Smith stood up. “If any. I only know I was sent to collect Data from a party of six and find instead five corpses and a… thing. The only reason I haven’t dashed over to the Dig is because all three of the men are carrying a CommLink,” he touched the one on the right side of his own belt. “If anything had happened, one of them would have contacted me by now.”
"Let’s go over there, then,” Professor Carter challenged the Spaceship Captain. “I’ll have her show you for yourself.”
