The Lost Explorer
A short story
Elkkorr Hauxx did not react for the first two seconds after the meteor struck his ship. It was his fault. He had dropped out of light speed to observe a star rise above a planet’s rings. He had a soft spot for sunrises, and when the computer alerted him that his ship would pass by a ring sunrise in the middle of this eight-planet system, he couldn’t resist.
So enthralled was he that he didn’t register the collision alarm until it was too late.
His ship shuddered and vented precious oxygen into space. The force of the gas jetting from the breach wobbled his interstellar vessel wildly.
Elkkorr tightened his harness and slid his seat as close to the controls as his rotund belly would permit. He switched the ship’s operation from automatic to full manual. A yoke popped out from the panel, and two foot pedals emerged beneath his feet.
The stars blurred out the window like an enormous snow squall, and for a moment, it was as if he was back on his wintry home world.
Sweat dripped along his long, white beard as Elkkorr pumped the pedals and wrestled the yoke.
Elkkorr didn’t have time to don his space suit because if he released the controls, his ship would fly into the planet’s perilously close moon. But according to the readout, only nineteen seconds of air remained.
Either way, I won’t have time to transmit a goodbye message to my family. Remember me, he thought.
Fifteen seconds later, the gold and yellow-ringed planet stabilized outside his window. Elkkorr released the controls. The ship no longer spun.
A new alarm warbled.
The oxygen!
Elkkorr reached for his spacesuit, but it floated off before he could grab it. He pressed the emergency release button on his harness and swam after it but missed the suit by a hand’s width. He bounced off the wall.
Elkkorr grabbed onto switches and knobs, crawling hand-over-hand in zero gravity, struggling to get back into the chair.
Another alarm.
Now what?
Three flashing red displays read, “Fuel Critical. Air Critical. Communications Offline.”
A green light blinked.
At least the navigation system works. But where can I navigate to?
Another blinking green light caught Elkkorr’s eye. The 3D printer was online.
That might come in handy for making parts, but I first need oxygen!
Elkkorr squinted at another red light. Battery at six percent.
He scanned this solar system for a hospitable world on which to survive, first at normal magnification, then ten times, then one hundred. Without comms, however, he doubted a rescue would come.
Elkkorr spotted a faint but beautiful blue ball he estimated to be one-point-five billion kilometers distant. He performed the trajectory calculations in his head, not wanting to waste power using his ship’s computer.
Elkkorr set the autonav for that world. Twenty-six hours and he’d be in orbit. Elkkorr slept during the flight to reduce his oxygen consumption.
The ship vibrated as the thrusters positioned it in orbit around this planet.
Eleven minutes of oxygen left. This is cutting it close.
Elkkorr pushed his vessel into an emergency descent. He’d never performed an emergency landing before but believed that luck had served him well so far and would continue to do so.
But what kind of luck strands you in a broken spacecraft without any way of communicating with your family?
Elkkorr aimed for the snowy mass on the planet’s north pole, hoping to set down in a place whose environment was similar to Brrwoko. A violent atmospheric disturbance—a gigantic mass of clouds with horrific winds surrounding a column of relatively still air—flung him off course toward a mountain range. He engaged manual control again, narrowly avoiding death. Three minutes later, at the exact moment he ran out of fuel, Elkkorr landed.
A large stone complex with turrets encircled by a water-filled trench occupied most of the horizon. Smoke wafted out of the structure’s myriad chimneys. Dozens of tiny, wooden and mud huts dotted the landscape on the other side of that moat.
Voices and animal calls drifted through the air.
There’s intelligent life on this world.
He wouldn't be alone. That thought soured when Elkkorr remembered rule number two for space explorers: Do not contaminate other cultures.
He looked around more. No lights, no electricity. His eyes misted.
These people live primitive lives. They have little.
Elkkorr’s thoughts drifted to his children, Yyoiua and Htrnzt, turning his eyes into fountains of tears. Over the next three months, Elkkorr disassembled his ship and buried it deep in the ground.
He constructed a flying sled out of bits and pieces of technology. He donned his thick, wooly, red coat, hoisted the 3D printer—the only intact technology—onto the sled, and flew north to the ice and snow.
When he reached the planet’s north pole, he built a home out of frozen water, using the replicator to fashion doors, windows, bed, table, and rocking chair.
For ten years, Elkkorr existed in his melancholy home, barely venturing outside, missing his children and their joyful faces, the memory of his wife’s soft lips gone like sugar dissolved in water. Howling winds were his music, the six months of darkness were his light.
Most days, when not fishing for food, Elkkorr either paced from one side of his one-room home to the other or slept all day. His big belly got bigger, and his lonely soul grew sadder.
One day in mid-December, Elkkorr tripped over his 3D printer. As he grabbed the machine’s sides and hoisted himself off the floor, an idea rang in his mind. He ran his hand along the printer’s top, estimated the raw resources remaining, and got to work.
He would build toys for this planet’s children and deliver them stealthily once a year for the next 1,500 years. Nobody would ever see him, nobody would ever know who brought the toys. He smiled for the first time in a long time.
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I'm 72 and I never stopped believing.
This one made me smile. It's a lovely thought.