What It Takes Ch 02

Dear Reader: This is part 2 of a 4 part story. All four parts are written and will be posted sequentially. In Part 1, struggling space crew member Luna walked in on a crew member, Dr. Janice Alton, sharing an intimate moment with a giant space slug. This is not one of my "normal" genres (check out my lesbian, shemale, and incest stories). I am not sure if I am cut out for non-human stories, but I wanted a change of pace in my writing. Let me know what you think. If you readers think I have a knack for this kind of thing, I may return to this genre in the future.

Chapter 2: Consequences of Incompetence

Less than 36-hours after I'd eaten an extremely quiet, and awkward, breakfast with the rest of the crew, we landed on the refueling moon. The moon itself was very small. So small that in places where you could see more than a few hundred yards into the distance, you could actually discern the moon's curve on the horizon. However, there were very few places where you could see for more than a couple of hundred feet, let alone yards, in front of your face. That was primarily for two reasons. The first was that the moon was incredibly craggy. Sheer cliff faces hundreds of feet tall would burst out of the heart of the moon. The cliffs, like seemingly every rock and speck of dirt on the moon was a deep orange color. Not like clay, brighter than that. Almost glowing.

The other element blocking views of the horizon was the plant life. While the moon was small, it had a comprehensive atmosphere that was similar in many ways to Earth (that was why CTA had claimed it and used it as a refueling depot). The thick atmosphere and the light from two different, somewhat distant, stars provided enough fuel and energy for a staggering amount of life. Mostly, the planet was covered in low shrub-like plants with fine leaves. There were also much larger, tree-like plants with large pom-pom like buds and obsidian black trunks. There were millions upon millions of vines tying all of the other plants together. The various details of each plant made them all uniquely different from anything I'd ever seen on Earth. But what was truly incredible was the color. Almost all of the leaves on all the shrubs, trees, and vines were a pale bluish color. Coupled with the darkish-blue color of the sky, the flora gave the whole world a sort of Dr. Suess-like quality.

There were animals about as well. I hadn't actually seen any of them, despite the fact that we'd arrived six hours earlier. Nonetheless, CTA had told me before the mission that they were there and that I should be wary of them. Tara told me that she had seen something amongst the trees the last time she was there, though she couldn't make it out entirely. More importantly, I could hear the creatures. It was almost jungle-like. The cacophony of insectile buzzing, growls, and squeaks all sort of blended together into a steady hum. After a few minutes on the moon, I had almost stopped noticing it. But I knew the creatures were there. I could feel their presence.

Despite the fact that I'd never been to this moon before and it was fantastical and wonderful in a lot of the ways that I'd always dreamed a distant world would be, I wasn't really thinking about it. My head was down while I worked, my outlook narrow. I was still far too preoccupied with the events of the previous day to think about anything else. Ever since I'd left the mess hall the previous morning, I'd simply been playing everything in my mind over and over again. Dr. Alton's...interaction with the space slug. The reaction of my crew mates. The incredibly strange meal in which everyone except for me acted like everything was completely normal. With a night's sleep under my belt, everything felt even crazier than it had the day before.

Dr. Alton had sex with slimy aliens and everyone thought I was strange for mentioning it. Every time that thought crossed my mind, I shook my head in disbelief.

That's not to say that I thought about everything that had happened the day before. While I wasn't really aware of it, something was creaking and straining in the back of my mind. I would find myself, in idle moments, suddenly realizing that I was imagining myself in Dr. Alton's shoes. I would see myself, naked and on the floor, while a giant space slug crawled over my body. I would picture myself licking the mucus off the creature's hide. I would imagine myself sucking on its cock and drinking down its sperm, watching the bluish sack empty into me. Anytime I would notice these thoughts, I would be filled with revulsion. I would imagine that I had raised the issue in my mind as a sort of waking nightmare. Still, if I had been honest with myself, I would have recognized that my body was trembling, that the area between my legs was sopping wet all day, that my nipples were constantly hardened. I ignored this, didn't even let it register in my mind. In the same way, I ignored the deeper, darker fantasies that ran lasciviously inside of my mind.

With my conscious and subconscious minds overheating at the same time, focusing on the things I was supposed to do was nearly impossible. Yesterday had been bad. Today was even worse. The whole morning had just been a running series of mistakes and missteps.

I'd been assigned about half a dozen of the easiest tasks around the re-fueling compound. The compound itself was quite small, an area around 500 feet by 1000 feet on a relatively flat clearing in the jungle. CTA had leveled the spot, surrounded it with a tall fence, and then built a few buildings inside. The fuel itself was buried in tanks under the moon's surface. We couldn't actually land the ship on the moon. We'd placed it in orbit around the moon and then sent down our "tether" as it was called, once we'd synched our rotation. The ship was so large that it dominated the sky above us, making the moon dark, like early evening despite the two suns. The tether was a large tube containing inside of it several other large tubes roped together. Some of the tubes were used to suck up fuel once the tether was attached at the re-fueling compound; others were used for transportation of the crew.

My tasks, once we'd been transported down to the moon's surface, had been to clean the re-fueling nozzle on the ship, clear out the contact point with the tank, secure the tether (that Hilaria had connected to the ship for me) to the re-fueling surface, and connect the water hoses to prevent overheating. In short, I had been assigned all of the physical grunt work. That was because Tara and Hilaria had not trusted me in the actual buildings on the compound, where the computers were located. As I sweated outside, they ran the complicated protocols to ensure that nothing went wrong during re-fueling. They also monitored the sky to ensure nothing happened to the tether.

I guess I wasn't even really offended anymore that they didn't trust me, despite the fact that I had more training on the computers than anyone else. As it was, I nearly ruined the mission just doing the physical labor. I had accidentally attached a human transporter, rather than a fuel hose, to one of the fuel tanks. Only the fact that Tara noticed a pressure imbalance and radioed me prevented me from filling half the ship's living quarters with fuel. I apologized profusely, but neither Tara nor Hilaria said anything.

Despite my mistakes (and there were plenty more minor ones beyond that), I eventually got everything hooked up and ready for re-fueling. Unfortunately, once everything was put in place, that process would take several hours. Tara and Hilaria had everything covered inside the control room, so there wasn't really anything important for me to do. I knew that Dr. Alton had come down separately after us and that she was walking around the compound somewhere, maybe inside one of the buildings. I desperately did not want to talk to her. Luckily, Tara suggested that I walk the perimeter and check on the fences and other structures to make sure that everything looked like it was in good order. If I noticed any problems, we would report them to CTA maintenance when we returned to Earth. I knew it was, essentially, busy work. But I was happy to have it, and quickly set off to the perimeter of the compound.

I started in one corner, where two perpendicular fences met. I was shocked by the contrast between the two sides of the fence. It was a flimsy chain-lubj thing, but it seemed to hold the line between the well-manicured and totally controlled field of compound and a wild jungle so dense that I couldn't see more than a few feet into the darkness. The strange animal noises were louder now.

But, like I said, I didn't spend a lot of time dwelling on the creatures, or anything else. In just a few moments, my conscious mind was completely absorbed in searching for flaws in the fences, while my subconscious mind dwelled more and more deeply on Dr. Alton. And my own feelings of inadequacy and isolation.

I was carrying a clipboard as I walked and I made copious notes. I wasn't sure what was "good repair" and what wasn't, so I tried to cover everything that could even conceivably be considered bad. As usual, I was overthinking everything. I took so many notes that my hand began to cramp and my writing became illegible, even to me. Plus, even if it could be read there were so many suggestions that it essentially amounted to "replace the fence" which was neither feasible with CTA's tight-fisted accountants, nor really justified by the condition of the fence. I was quietly screwing up another task. At least nothing I was doing this time put anyone in danger.

Or so I thought.

It must've been about half an hour into my inspection. I'd just finished one full, 1000-foot length of the compound fence. I'd been moving incredibly slowly and I was very unlikely to finish the whole thing in the time remaining. I came to the realization that, once again, I had failed to do what I had been told. And besides that, I was completely exhausted. I'd spent a year in cryosleep in absolutely 100% climate controlled conditions. Now it was nearly 40 degrees Celsius and I was sweating, sore. I was breathing heavily. As I walked, my head dropped and I moved slower.

By that time, I was starting to work around to the back half of the compound. This area was, by far, the most isolated portion of the compound. Most of the structures created by CTA were lined up along this leg of the fence. There was only around ten feet of clearance between the back of the corrugated steel buildings and the jungle. The location of the sun ensured that these 500 feet were draped in shade, though it didn't seem to be any cooler.

I'd only traveled about 25 feet down the length of this portion of the fence and I was directly behind the personal supply depot when I tripped over a root or something on the ground. Much like on the bridge the previous day, I hadn't even noticed it. It hooked my foot completely and I went sprawling forward. Only this time, I didn't catch myself. Instead, I pitched chest first into the packed orange dirt of the compound, yelping slightly I skidded through the dust. There was a sharp pain in my ankle as I came to a rough stop.

For a moment, I was just frozen there, not even really sure what had happened. One second I was on my feet and the next...I was totally disoriented. I was face down on the ground now, the dust rising around me and filling my nose. I dropped my forehead down onto the ground and took a deep breath. I shook my head in the dirt and sighed. I couldn't even walk in a circle without almost killing myself. It was, in a lot of ways, the straw the broke the camel's back. It destroyed the last of my reserves. I felt the unbelievable weight of my embarrassment, my incompetence, my pain, and my loneliness weighting down on my. I was so tired. I couldn't even pretend to have the strength of will to get back up on my feet and finish my round. I just wanted to lay on my face in the dirt until Hilaria dragged me into ship. I couldn't even roll over.

But, somehow, I did. I hadn't made any effort. I'd just been lying there, breathing in the orange dirt. Then, suddenly, I was flipped over onto my back. I could see the tops of the trees to one side of me and the underside of the space ship, high in the sky above me. I felt more disoriented than I had than when I'd fallen. I didn't have the will to move, but somehow it had happened anyway. Something had moved me. When that thought struck my brain, I realized that something really had moved me. The pain in my ankle was gone, replaced by some kind of strange pressure. Something was wrapped around it. I laughed slightly, wondering if it was Hilaria fulfilling my last wish. I reached my hands up to my eyes, rubbing the dirt out of them. As I opened them, I spoke.

"I am sorry, I will finish as soon as..." and the words died on my lips. I couldn't even remember what I was going to say. My eyes widened and a strange croaking noise issued from my throat, my mouth going dry instantly. My heart stripped its gears jumping up into action. All of my muscles tightened. I was frozen on my back on the ground.

It took several seconds for my mind to fully comprehend what I was looking at. Even afterwards, I wasn't really positive I was really seeing. But slowly, the image before my eyes began to clarify itself in my brain. It was...some sort of alien creature. Even now, it is hard to describe how terrible the creature was...how alien it was in every sense of the word.

What I noticed first was the legs. There were six of them. Each of the legs was exceptionally thin and spindly. Each one was no more than two inches or so in diameter. But they were incredibly long. The back four legs were probably each nine or even ten feet long. The front legs (to the extent I could tell what those were) were shorter, but still probably five feet long. The legs were black in color, but each seemed to be coated in a very fine covering of bristly green hair. While the legs were very thin, they were also rigid. They looked like they had the consistency of bamboo shoots. But they had... a lot of joints. The rear legs seemed to be able to bend at 90 degree angles in maybe six or seven places, the front legs four or five. Actually, there were a lot more joints than that on each leg. The last six inches or so on each leg was just a series of continuous joints. I knew this because, I could now see that the end of one jointed leg was wrapped tightly around my ankle.

The legs were sort of symmetrically arranged down the two sides of the creature's body. Although, calling it a body might not be a completely accurate. It's hard to describe exactly what it was. The legs sort of plugged into a large almost perfectly round ball, maybe about the size of a grown man curled into the fetal position. It looked sort of small given the length of its legs. The creature's entire body was covered in the same fine hair that its legs contained, though the hair looked slightly longer and less bristly there. To the extent that I could see the creature's skin, I saw that it was a sort of dull brown color.

At first I thought that the entire ball-shaped creature looked identical. But after a moment, I noticed something... repulsive. At first it was just one spot. Right in the front of the creature's body...between its two front legs. The black hair and brown skin suddenly disappeared. There was just a round, maybe slightly ovular, gap in the creature's flesh about the size of a baseball. No...not a gap. It was a blank bluish-white spot. I noticed, after a moment, that there was a dull dark dot in the center, around the size of a nickel. Then the bluish white spot was gone. For a moment. Disappearing as quickly and completely as it had appeared. And then it was back. In fact, there were several bluish-white spots with black dots. The original one, then one a few inches above it and to the left and one near the very top. Soon those disappeared, and more appeared. I turned my head slightly, to the side, trying to figure out what was going on. Several more bluish white spots appeared, the black dots shifting in unison, following the direction of my movement.

My stomach churned as I realized what I was looking at. The creature had eyes. Each time the hair and fur disappeared, it was because its eyelids were retracting, exposing its eyes. What was disgusting, for reasons I still cannot understand, was that that it seemed to have dozens and dozens of eyes. They were all slightly different shapes and sizes. They were spread out across the creature's body irregularly, some seemingly piled almost on top of each other, and others isolated with inches of skin surrounding them. The only place on the creature's body that didn't seemed to be nauseatingly peppered with eyes was the very underside. And even there, it was only clear of eyes near the back of the creature's body, between its four back legs. This was just covered in the same hair as the rest of the body.

My first thought, upon realizing what it was that I was looking at, was that it was some sort of giant space spider. Some of that might have been because of the creature's location. It had evidently climbed up over the fence from the outside. Its two back legs on its right side were gripping around the chain links of the fence, about halfway. Its other legs were dangling free, including the one front leg that was wrapped around my ankle. It looked a bit like a household spider, dangling from its web. Now I realize it wasn't really a spider. It didn't have enough legs. I never saw it spin a web. It didn't even have a body segments. Just the one, eye-covered lump.

As my mind adjusted to what I was looking at, the creature began to move. I watched its various joints move in a jerky, but efficient fashion as it crawled down the length of the fence. Its joints made a strange, terrifying creaky sound as it went. Otherwise, the creature was completely silent. Its dead eyes remained on me, blinking randomly from. They grew whiter and whiter as the creature moved into the shade, making the contrast between the eyes and the creature's skin starker.

In a matter of moments, the creature was on the ground, directly in front of me. My eyes remained fixed on the creature, not even blinking. I felt a cold rush down my spine and I shivered slightly. My mouth opened, without any conscious thought, as if to scream, but no sounds came out. That's not true. There was some sound. Some sort of low croaking sound that couldn't be heard even five feet away.

The spider kept its leg wrapped very tightly around my ankle (so tightly that I felt it rapidly falling asleep). With its other legs it scurried silently towards me. Soon, I felt the other front leg press against my leg and the creature leaned down over top of me, its...body hovering just a few inches above my knees. The creature's smell was terrible...a somewhat rotten and fish-like odor. As my senses absorbed the creature, I had no conscious thoughts at that time. I just froze in abject horror. I was certain, if I'd ever been certain of anything, that I was moments away from dying. Being eaten alive.

The spider leaned even more closely towards me. I could see its terrible eyes now, hovering just over my stomach. It blinked a thousand time and I could hear a dull clicking sound coming from somewhere in its body. That body was vibrating slightly, and shaking from side to side. After a moment, the creature paused. Its back legs suddenly straightened and the creature rose up quickly, the strange sound grew more intense and my leg was lifted up off the ground. The creature's body let out one great shudder, and then suddenly all of its eyes opened at once. All of them turned on me. I held my breath, knowing that the preliminaries were over, the creature was about to kill me.