I looked up at the ceiling above the hole, but it was completely intact. Likewise, the walls of the hold appeared undamaged. If a meteorite or some other projectile had punched through the hull and then through the floor of the hold, I should have been able to find some evidence. But there was nothing.
While the bots worked on the repairs, I climbed down to the lower hold on level 4 and positioned myself right below the hole. There was nothing down here either: no other breaches, nor any foreign bodies.
I climbed back up to three and inspected the stack of crates piled up high on the far edge of the main hold. What if some weirdo artifact had come alive or something?
But there weren’t any broken crates. Nor did I see any puddles of acid. Everything appeared to be—
I froze.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something impossible.
A section of the interior wall near the lift area began to lose its color and turn transparent.
I moved closer, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
An oddly shaped section of the wall plating was now completely transparent—revealing the wall supports, data conduits, ducting, and various other tubes, wires, struts, and sensors behind the wall.
Before my eyes, the color drained from everything else in that section of wall. Now everything in that two-meter area was transparent. And within seconds, it started crumbling away.
Another klaxon sounded and the maintenance bots sped over to the wall section, trying to triage the structural damage.
I just gaped in disbelief as more of the wall crumbled into nothingness.
What could be causing this? It was like some sort of localized molecular breakdown.
Maybe there was some sort of hull breach and the atmosphere here really was toxic—toxic enough to destroy the ship.
A tightness gripped my chest and a surge of adrenaline rushed through me.
I needed to get into an exosuit right now. Unfortunately mine was down in my cabin on the lower level. My eyes darted around the hold until I saw the door to the cargo bay. There would be extra suits stored in the equipment room near the airlock. Weapons too.
I dashed towards the door just as the ship lost power again. Emergency lights flickered on, barely providing enough illumination for me to find an exosuit that would fit.
There was just one suit remaining in my size and I yanked it out of its case and started pulling it on.
This was insane. I had just managed to secure my helmet and initiate startup when the ship jolted to one side with a loud, deep screech of metal. I was thrown across the room and smacked into the wall near the airlock door. Thankfully the suit absorbed most of the impact and as I flailed around, the magtouch unit kicked in and I managed to anchor myself to the wall, which was rapidly becoming the ceiling as the ship twisted.
Maybe the planet’s surface was unstable. But surely the gyros should have kept us upright.
The power stuttered back on, but I knew it wouldn’t last. I needed to get out of here while I still could.
I grabbed a radiant blaster from the weapons locker and hit the airlock release.
This couldn’t be happening, but it was.
I stood fifty meters away from the Vostok and watched in horror as the ship collapsed.
First the massive landing gear struts drained of color, then folded as if they were made of tin foil. The Vostok teetered over in slow motion, crashing to the ground, sending up a cloud of debris.
I sat there, on a large rock, for hours—transfixed. Bit by bit the ship dissolved away into nothingness. And I had no clue what was going on.
Then I noticed that the same thing was happening to my exosuit. First the shin sections of my suit began to discolor. It was like a greyish-white stain that spread throughout the deep crimson-colored armor. Soon other parts of the exosuit were covered with milky blotches. And these blotches started to expand.
Just like what happened with the ship, sections of my exosuit turned translucent and then just kind of flaked away into nothingness.
My brain hurt trying to figure this out. Something was disrupting the molecular structure of all man-made materials. But whatever agent was causing the destruction, I couldn’t detect it in any way.
Within an hour my suit—and clothes—had completely disintegrated and I found myself shivering, naked, on a rock. I had no shelter, food, weapons, or water. I had nothing.
The Vostok had long since broken down into dust. The debris field initially stretched out over two hundred meters, but even that was shrinking, as the dust itself dissolved into nothingness. By the time the sun of this odd planet sank below the horizon, there was absolutely nothing left of the Vostok.
2
I spent the night huddled against a large boulder for warmth. It worked for a few hours, but as the night passed, the rock grew colder and colder and I ended up just pulling myself into a ball and trying to conserve my own body heat.
At most I dozed off for a few minutes here and there. My mind wouldn’t stop racing, trying to make sense of what had happened to the ship. All night long I found myself checking my arms and legs and fingers by the light of the immense planet that shone in the night sky. I half expected to see my own appendages turn transparent and flake off into nothingness.
When the first rays of the sun lit up the grassy plain where I had spent the night, I inspected my body. Thankfully, other than being cramped and frozen, I seemed to be okay.
I stood up and tried to rub some life back into my arms and legs. The sun felt good on my skin and once I started moving around, some of the chill left my bones.
It looked like I
