2021: Creature Inside The Ship

First, you notice the absence. In the galley, the emergency rations are untouched, but the foil packets have been licked clean of their nutritional paste from the outside in, as if a tongue the width of a forearm slimed its way through a two-centimeter gap. The water recyclers taste of copper and old bone. Then you notice the heat. Certain sections of the ship—corridor C-7, the aft observatory, the morgue—run five degrees warmer than ambient, even with the cooling systems at maximum. It’s not a mechanical failure. It’s the creature’s fever. It nests near the reactor core, where the radiation is a lullaby. Its skin (if you can call it that) is a patchwork of shed ship-suit fibers, crystallized coolant, and its own desiccated molts. It is the color of a bruise three days old: purple, yellow, and a deep, vascular green.

Do not run. It feels that best of all. Just close your eyes. Make your heart slow. Pretend you are already part of the wall. Pretend you are insulation. Pretend you are nothing but another vibration in the long, wet, patient throat of the Cressida . And pray that the creature believes you. creature inside the ship

The crew has learned the rules. You never walk barefoot. The floor grates in Section G are loose, and below them is a two-meter drop into a service trench that the creature has claimed as its throat. You never, ever shine a light directly into a ventilation shaft at night. Because it looks back. Its eyes—if they are eyes—are not reflective like a cat’s. They are absorptive. They drink light. You will see two perfect circles of absolute, two-dimensional blackness floating in the dark, and they will be closer than geometry allows. You will feel, for one sickening second, that you are not looking at a face. You are looking into a hole that the universe forgot to fill. First, you notice the absence