Ed whistled. “Whatever it is, it’s moving fast. Really fast, depending on its size.”
“Is it coming toward us?” Rico asked, shifting uneasily on his feet.
“Kinda looks like it,” Abigail admitted.
“My guess is that it’s something in a wide orbit of the gas giant, like an asteroid or even a small moon.” Ed surmised. “Hard to say. But it’s too fast to be a natural orbit, and we sure as hell haven’t seen it before.”
“Is it going to hit us?” Lamont asked, trying to keep his voice calm.
“This tower has stood for lord knows how long,” The technician observed flatly. “It seems unlikely that a piece of space debris would take it out just when we happen to be on it.”
“What about Westward?” Rosemary asked. “She hasn’t been here long at all, has she?” Indeed, from their perspective, it could be guessed that the object was headed directly toward their ship.
“Everybody calm down,” Ed urged. “It’s just perspective. Whatever it is, the odds of it hitting anything at all are…”
And then his observation was interrupted by a blinding flash of light.
For some moments, Lamont was entirely disoriented. He was aware of a sharp pain in his head and a sensation of vertigo. It felt as if phosphorus had suddenly been ignited close to his face, causing his pupils to suddenly shrink to pinpoints. Slowly, he became aware that whatever this spectacle may be, he was still in the midst of it. His eyes were struggling to make out the silhouetted forms of his companions, stumbling blindly with arms raised to shield their eyes, against the sudden pitch-blackness of space and something like a terrible lightning storm that was taking place where once there had been a sea of stars.
And then, just as suddenly as it had happened, it was over. The bright lights vanished. Slowly, painfully, his vision began to return to normal, except for the magenta splotches that drifted across his field of vision as his eyes recovered from the shock. Blinking away the phantoms, he could see that the other members of the expedition were also steadying themselves on their feet. His ears filled with their groans and muttered curses.
“What—what was that?” Rico stammered.
“A tremendous discharge of energy,” Abigail gasped, blinking at her radio box. “It fused my circuits.”
“Take a look,” Said Spratt. He was leaning, apparently against empty space. In fact, his palms were planted against the curved invisible wall as he looked downward at the huge silver globes connected to the tower. Following his line of sight, Lamont could see that the orbs now crackled visibly with electricity, with thin blue-white tendrils of lightning dancing across their mirrored surfaces, sometimes reaching between two globes in a horrifying arc.
“Where’s Westward?” Rosemary asked, her voice high-pitched with fear.
“It’s right there,” Ed assured her, lifting his head. “I can see it. It’s…” His voice trailed off and then became a whisper. “Oh. Oh, holy hell.”
Author’s Note: Page of Pulp will be taking a week off so that I can recover my writing buffer after the Holidays. In the meantime, I hope that those of you who celebrate Christmas have a very joyous one, and that those of you who observe the Gregorian calendar have a happy New Year! See you again on January 3rd. -ETT
So you are going to leave us with that!??!!
You are an evil incarnation.
Good work.
"Whatever it is, the odds of it hitting anything at all are…” - Poor guy doesn't realize he is in a story and that's like the worse possible thing to say...