by Marie DesJardin
Sometimes there are second chances....
Carrie hadn’t packed. She’d suspected she might have to, but she didn’t want to jinx the funding decision by preparing for the expected result. Now, the packing went surprisingly fast. How much easier it is to fold up one’s life and go home than it is to try something new.
“It won’t last forever.”
Carrie ignored her roommate. The pictures from the slim bookshelf went into the case on top of her neatly folded shirts. She laid her uniform on top to cushion them.
“Funding cycles come and go,” Allison continued. “NASA will get its act together, and manned exploration of space will continue. They can’t do it all with robots.”
The bookshelves and drawers were clean. Carrie hadn’t brought much with her. The largest part, the part that weighed most heavily, was inside her.
Allison asked, “Are you going to try JPL?”
Carrie zipped her suitcase. “I’m going home.”
“To Minnesota? That’s good. Take a break, visit your parents—”
“I meant I’m going to my aunt’s old house.”
Allison paused. “Didn’t your aunt die?”
“The house is there.”
“It’s in the middle of the boonies. It’s probably falling apart.”
“It is.”
“Then why?”
Carrie picked up her suitcase. “I want to see the sky.”
“There’s sky in California, kiddo. Why don’t you come home with me? My folks would be glad to put you up. I don’t want you brooding—”
“I’m not brooding.”
Allison threw up her hands. “Fine. Go and see the Minnesota sky. But call me before you sink into a pool of depression.”
“I will.”
Carrie faced her roommate. Curly-haired, dusky-toned Allison, her skin smooth and her intelligence shining in her dark, compassionate eyes. She’s our best, Carrie thought. They had the best of us in their hands, and they just sent us away.
Allison seemed to read her thoughts. “They’ll change their minds. They have to.”
“That’s the trouble. They start, they stop—but when will we actually go?”
“Houston isn’t the whole industry. We should try for JPL now, before every other former candidate does the same thing.”
“I know. But first, I need to—”
“—see the sky. I heard.” Allison sighed. “Do what you have to. Good luck.”
But Carrie wasn’t going home to see the sky. She was going to see the ground.
* * * *
Children don’t tell. They cover things up.
Carrie was eight when she saw the spaceship. There was never a moment’s doubt in her mind that it was a spaceship. Even today, she could see the image as clearly as if it had just happened:
Carrie, walking through the long grass behind her aunt’s house, her pudgy toes naked against the brown soil that anchored the strong blades. The break in the grass, the scrape in the mud, the tiny crater where the object had come to rest, half buried in the earth.
There was no metal; this wasn’t a human spaceship. But the tragedy was clear. Sometimes Carrie came across baby rabbits, huddled together in their nest of grass. But these things were unlike any she had seen before, all writhing limbs and colors that, while emphatically different from other beings on Earth, were clearly living creatures. But so tiny. The entire impact site was no larger than a basketball. The inhabitants were oddly shaped and naked, twisting within the shattered globe. The shell fragments looked soft and translucent, scattered among the wreckage.
She didn’t know what to do, so Carrie crouched next to the depression and watched the tiny visitors move. She expected them to squeak, like kittens, but they made no noise. Carrie poked one of the clear shell fragments with a fingertip; it was moist and bent beneath her touch. She took her finger away and wiped it on the grass.
Her aunt’s house seemed a vast distance away. If her dad had been home, she would have told him. But her mom was yakking with her sister, and wouldn’t want to investigate something peculiar in the grass.
“You’d have done better to let it be,” she had said the last time Carrie had brought home a baby rabbit, intending to feed it. And her mom had been right, because the rabbit had died within a day. If Carrie couldn’t save a baby rabbit, how could she save something that was already so hurt?
The things were still moving when Carrie took herself in for dinner. All through the meal, helpless forms walked through her mind. When Carrie hurried out again afterwards, it took her some time to find the correct spot in the field. She resumed her vigil. One by one, the forms stopped moving. Carrie stayed by them until it was dark, and her mom’s repeated calls drew her inside.
The next morning it was over. The minuscule remains melted into the ground—crew, spaceship, and all. She might almost have dismissed the entire episode as a dream, had not every visit presented the evidence of her failure in the form of barren earth. As the years passed, the event became so unutterably huge that Carrie could never bring herself to mention it. Her doubts aside, she was ashamed over her cowardice in never even trying to help the strange visitors she had seen.
When her aunt moved into a group home, Carrie bought the property with her mother’s help. No individual could afford to be a farmer anymore, but Carrie’s mom was pleased that the property would not be turned over to an agricultural conglomerate. Carrie told no one the real reason why she had to have the land; the unmarked grave could not be pulverized into nonexistence. It was the least Carrie could do to honor the unacknowledged dead. Eventually she went into the astronaut program, because she knew that other beings were out there. But she never told anyone that, either.
* * * *
Carrie hugged herself as she walked out the back of the abandoned house towards the field. The grass was shorter now, brown and dry. All around her, the monotonous tilled fields boasted stubby lumps of drought-resistant cabbage. Clouds hung heavily in the sky, grumbling and threatening rain that rarely came. The air was muggy, but the mosquitoes mercifully few. Perhaps they were dying off, as farm animals had all but vanished from the scene.
Carrie experienced the usual rush of panic when she thought that this time she had lost the crash site for good. Then, out of ground she was certain she had already trodden, sprang the familiar configuration: the slight tilt to the plain, the scrape through the dead grass that now revealed rocks rather than roots, the elliptical stain of the crash site. As always, no grass grew on the site. It had been almost twenty years, and still the ground was bare.
Guilt mingled with melancholy. Carrie had done what any eight-year-old girl would have done: scattered soil over the melted remains and marked the spot with a stick. Adult Carrie knew she should have done so much more. She should have told her parents. Even if they couldn’t have saved the travelers, at least they would be a known part of our universe. No one would cut back on space exploration funding if there was something so immediate and important to investigate. But the evidence was long gone. What could grown Carrie do now? All a belated announcement would accomplish would be to dash her hopes of joining the space program forever. As far as she knew, NASA wasn’t fond of taking on astronauts who believed they’d seen little green men.
Carrie stared at the vacant spot, mulling her thoughts. A patch of earth; all that was left was a patch of earth. Such an insufficient memorial to mark the end of so many dreams.
Her eyes narrowed. Standing alone among the hissing grasses, idly listening to the rumble of thunder, it struck her: why did the grass never grow back? There had been rain enough to nourish the tough sprouts underfoot. Even the roundish crater had started drifting down the slight incline over the years, more evidence of water flow. Yet the soil on the site never bore seed.
Carrie had specialized in engineering. For this problem, she needed a biologist. She pulled out her phone and touched the code.
Allison answered on the second ring. “All right, kiddo?”
Carrie gathered her courage. “What would keep grass from growing back over a crash site?”
There was an extended pause. Carrie gathered that Allison was adjusting her thoughts from renewing her invitation to this unexpected topic. “What kind of crash?”
“A flying vehicle.”
“A vehicle?”
“A ... spaceship. If a spaceship crashed into my aunt’s backyard, why would grass never grow over the site in twenty years?”
The pause was longer this time. Carrie expected a challenge. Instead, Allison said, “That’s why you wanted to be an astronaut.”
Carrie sagged with relief. “Yes. I didn’t want to say anything before, but now that there’s no longer an astronaut program to get kicked out of—”
“Right.” Allison took a breath. “Okay. If a lifeform evolved elsewhere, there’s no reason why their chemical composition would be compatible with ours. DNA is basically an accident; our whole ecosystem owes its current shape to random mutation. But somewhere else? Who knows what path natural selection might take?”
“So the foreign chemicals might somehow inhibit ours—”
“Possibly. I would think they’d simply be overwhelmed, but it’s impossible to say without conducting a proper analysis.”
“Could you?”
Allison paused. “Not by myself. For something like this ... I’d like to contact Dr. Allen. He’s spent a lot of time thinking through a scenario like this—just in case.”
“And he no doubt will want to bring his staff.”
“Probably.”
“So, delusion or no, word will get around pretty quickly.”
“I’m sorry, Carrie, but space aliens are news. See? I just said ‘space aliens,’ and now everyone in the room is looking at me.”
“And when the news breaks, they’ll be looking at me.”
“If there’s something in this ... Carrie, I hate to say it, but you’ll probably receive a lot of flak over not having reported the incident earlier.”
“If it was a real incident.” Carrie looked at the patch of ground, so insignificant in size. Today, it seemed smaller than ever. “Call Dr. Allen. I’ll be standing by.”
“You got it. And don’t worry; we’ll keep it as quiet as we can at first, just in case you are crazy.”
“So only the professionals in my chosen field will know to avoid me with a ten-foot pole.”
“Exactly.”
Carrie nodded. “I can live with that.”
“I knew you could. Listen, kiddo, I’m going to get rolling on this. Stay tuned.”
“Thanks, Ally.”
“Hey, we’re wingmates. Talk to you soon, bunkie.”
Carrie put the phone away. Her stomach roiled inside her as uneasily as the clouds above. She had just risked her career and her reputation on a childish memory.
She looked at the patch of earth. “But I owe you that much, don’t I?”
Lightning cracked. Fat drops fell around her, smacking the earth like stones. She stayed put, the occasional raindrops pelting her almost hard enough to bruise. But she was in no mood to go inside. This was her metaphor: Carrie Sutcliffe, all wet.
Slowly her eyes widened. The rain had intensified, and was falling steadily, pushed about by gusts of wind. But over the crash site, there was a localized haze—as if something in the soil repelled moisture. The droplets danced above the barren ground, breaking into a low, misty dome.
Carrie stared. This was no dream. Whatever was happening now was real—as real as anything she could see with her own eyes. All her former doubts vanished. In one magical instant, Carrie felt she could redeem her past mistake—and the stars were again within her reach.
Carrie spread her arms, welcoming the storm. The rain lashed down.