Iterations and other stories (collection)

Raji and Tina stepped inside. Although the outer hull was opaque, the inner hull seemed transparent—Raji could see the gray-blue sky vaulting overhead. Doubtless there were all kinds of equipment in between the outer and inner hulls, so the image was perhaps conveyed inside via bundles of fibre optics, mapping points on the exterior to points on the interior. There was plenty of light; Raji and Tina followed the short corridor from the door into the ship’s main habitat, where—

Tina gasped.

Raji felt his eyes go wide.

There was an alien being, dead or unconscious, slumped over in a bowl-shaped chair in the bow of the ship. The fissure Raji had seen outside came right through here as a wide gap in the hull; a cool breeze was blowing in from outside.

Raji rushed over to the strange creature. There was, at once, no doubt in his mind that this creature had come from another world. It was clearly a vertebrate—it had rigid limbs, covered over with a flexible greenish-gray hide. But every vertebrate on Earth had evolved from the same basic body plan, an ancestral creature with sensory organs clustered around the head, and four limbs. Oh, there were creatures that had subsequently dispensed with some or all of the limbs, but there were no terrestrial vertebrates with more than four.

But this creature had six limbs, in three pairs. Raji immediately thought of the ones at the top of the tubular torso as arms, and the much thicker ones at the bottom as legs. But he wasn’t sure what the ones in the middle, protruding halfway between hips and shoulders, should be called. They were long enough that if the creature bent over, they could serve as additional legs, but they ended in digits complex and supple enough that it seemed they could also be used as hands.

Raji counted the digits—there were indeed six at the end of each limb. Earth’s ancestral vertebrate had five digits, not six, and no Earthly animal had ever evolved with more than five. The alien’s digits were arranged as four fingers flanked on either side by an opposable thumb.

The alien also had a head protruding above the shoulders— at least that much anatomy it shared with terrestrial forms. But the head seemed ridiculously small for an intelligent creature. Overall, the alien had about the same bulk as Raji himself did, but its head was only the size of a grapefruit. There were two things that might have been eyes covered over by lids that closed from either side, instead of from the top and bottom. There were two ears, as well, but they were located on top of the head, and were triangular in shape, like the ears of a fox.

The head had been badly banged up. Although the alien was strapped into its seat, a large hunk of hull material had apparently hit it, cutting into one side of its head; the debris that had likely done the damage was now lying on the floor behind the being’s chair. Interestingly, though, the head wound showed no signs of bleeding: the edges of it were jagged but dry.

At first Raji could sec nothing that might be a mouth, but then he looked more closely at the middle limbs. In the center of each circular palm was a large opening—perhaps food was drawn in through these. In place of peristalsis, perhaps the creature flexed its arms to move its meals down into the torso.

Assuming, of course, that the alien was still alive. So far, it hadn’t moved or reacted to the presence of the two humans in any way.

Raji placed his hand over one of the medial palms, to see if he could detect breath being expelled. Nothing. If the creature still breathed, it wasn’t through its mouths. Still, the creature’s flesh was warmer than the surrounding air—meaning it was probably warm blooded, and, if dead, hadn’t been dead very long.

A thought occurred to Raji. If the breathing orifices weren’t on the middle hands, maybe they were on the upper hands. He looked at one of the upper hands, spreading the semi-clenched fingers. The fingers seemed to be jointed in many more places than human fingers were.

Once he’d spread the fingers, he could see that there were holes about a centimeter in diameter in the center of each palm. Air was indeed alternately being drawn in and expelled through these—Raji could feel that with his own hand.

“It’s alive,” he said excitedly. As he looked up, he saw the air ambulance hoverjet through the transparent hull, coming in for a landing.

The ambulance attendants were a white man named Bancroft: and a Native Canadian woman named Cardinal. Raji met them at the entrance to the downed ship.

Bancroft looked absolutely stunned. “Is this—is this what I think it is?”

Raji was grinning from ear to ear. “It is indeed.”

“Who’s injured?” asked Cardinal.

“The alien pilot,” said Raji.

Bancroft’s jaw dropped, but Cardinal grinned. “Sounds fascinating.” She hustled over to the hoverjet and got a medical kit.