Life! We were on our feet shouting, drunk on our discovery. We’d found life!
The alien vessel looked scaly—a mythical dragon adrift in space. I initiated the Linguistic Spectrum Array. Millions of sound combinations—phonetic and otherwise—were blasted across every available frequency. Anything that might say hello.
The dragon answered by opening its mouth and spitting fire.
A split second later, an explosion rocked us. Alarms blared. The lights flickered, then went out. The controls froze in my hands. We were spiraling out of control toward the planet below.
Somewhere in the darkness, a crew member whispered, “Hail Mary.”
“Forgive me,” I said to the photo. “I won’t be there…to walk you down the aisle.” Dark swirls covered my vision. “Goodbye, Angela…” Her smiling face remained as my world collapsed to a pinhole of light.
Suddenly, we surged upward. My vision cleared. We were flying approximately two feet above a vast stretch of water. The computer had regained control—barely.
“Smith,” I barked.
“On it, Captain,” he answered. “Going to assess the damage.”
I traced my finger along the photo. Angela stood at the edge of the portal staring into the kaleidoscope that swirled along its edges. Waiting.
“Still here,” I whispered.
Every crew member was issued a similar photo—someone important, waiting at the portal’s edge—to keep up morale in the void. We were a million light years from home, above the most promising planet for life ever discovered. At that distance, even light-speed communication meant a million years each way.
An alternative was developed.
I only understood the physics in layman’s terms: a portal could transport a small craft across that distance in under a month. We’d barely emerged before the dragon nearly destroyed us.
“Captain, we’re leaking fuel,” Smith said as a mountainous island rose into view. “We need to land.”
The computer wasn’t designed to land in such terrain, and I wasn’t sure I could either. We didn’t have many options though, so I cut thrust and aimed for the only open stretch I could find— a rocky shore barely twice the width of our ship.
"Brace for impact!" I shouted. We slammed down against the rocks, nearly tipping as we hit.
“Everyone OK?” I yelled as I leaped out of my chair. I was about to check on the rest of the crew, when an ominous blip appeared on the navigator.
“A large craft’s heading toward us,” I shouted. “Ensign Pearse, take the controls. I’m going to activate the gateway.”
“But the fuel,” Smith shouted. “It could explode.”
“We have no choice,” I answered. “They’re not coming to say hello.”
At the rear of the vessel, I keyed in the activation code. Bands of blue, green, and yellow slowly came into view, forming a doorway just above the ground.
Alien fire rained down. I strapped in. “Full speed ahead, Pearse.”
A concussive strike then tore through the rear hull. I was thrown into the air. The belt snapped. I slammed into the rocks. I tried to stand but collapsed. Through blurred vision, I watched what remained of our ship vanish into the gateway.
Then I saw her. Angela! Barefoot at the water’s edge, hand outstretched. Waves rolled in behind her, each one larger than the last, pounding the shore until it trembled.
Then she was in her wedding dress, reaching for me.
Angela? Wedding dress?
An explosion thundered behind me, snapping me back. I managed to pull myself up and stagger forward. Another blast and I was airborne again, accelerating rapidly to the ground.
Then...I was floating, surrounded by swirling colors. Somehow, I’d been thrown into the gateway.
What was left of our spacecraft drifted out of reach. I was injured, and my suit didn’t have enough food or water to survive the month-long return to Earth. Following protocol, I triggered suspended animation and let the portal carry me home.
* * *
I awoke in a chair aboard what remained of our vessel. Instinctively, I rubbed my head, looking for injuries.
“I just had the medic robot look you over,” Pearse said. “You took a serious blow. Suspension probably saved your life.”
“The rest of the crew?” I asked.
“Everyone is safe.”
As I breathed a sigh of relief, the Ensign pulled something from his pack. “I saved this.”
Angela’s photo.
He sat quietly beside me while I studied her black hair and smile.
“We’ll be landing on Earth in about an hour,” Pearse said. “Too bad our families can’t be waiting at the portal.”
“Instead, we’ll be welcomed with quarantine, debriefing…” I rolled my eyes, ”And endless questions.”
He smirked. “And the big one: All those tax dollars—for a mere two hours—was it really worth it?”
“We found life!” I said. “Totally fucking worth it!”
He laughed. “While you were out, a friend at the lab told me engineers were working on better defenses for a second mission.” He cocked his head. “If that happens, we’d get first dibs, wouldn’t we?”
“I’ll definitely fight for it,” I said. Then added, “Ensign Pearse, you land the ship. Command should recognize who brought us home.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Pearse saluted. Then he floated back to the controls at the front of the ship.
I stared at the photo and thought of the wedding I’d almost missed. Angela spent months planning it. I tried to help but she gently nudged me to the sidelines. I chuckled—it took four hints before I caught on.
“It was worth it,” I whispered to the photo.
But a second time?
I gazed past the jagged shards at the rear of the vessel. My thoughts turned to grandchildren—of small hands in mine, like hers when she was small.
Once was enough.