Alien Escape

Farhan Latif, a Muslim astronaut, explores Mars with the mission to terraform the dead planet for humanity to call home.

But dark lurkings shatter his assumption—that Mars is dead.

And Farhan battles his deepest desires for the sake of ultimate justice.

A thrilling yet poignant sci-fi short story from S. H. Miah, a narrative that you don’t want to miss.

Alien Escape

Mars, more than anything, was a wasteland. The red planet was less red and more a mixture of blood and dust, if Farhan Latif had to put a phrase to it. He had a way with words, and the planet was a symphony of demonic strokes all tucked into one paintbrush, before being administered to the entire planet in one fell swoop. Still, the domes in the distance and wind-pattered mountaintops that stretched into the sky as far as the eye could see were fascinating from the view of their rover as it landed.

This rover, of course, was nothing like the rovers of the past that struggled to even reach the planet and were the size of a small toy airship. Humanity, now, was ready for terraforming other planets, and had built rovers capable of doing so—the size of a small aircraft, with enough fuel to power it for years, if needed, or decades on lower settings that would disable some functionality, but not all.

Work had already begun on Venus, another planet that neighboured the coveted home of Earth. Mars, on the other hand, was Farhan Latif’s job. His astronaut in arms on this colonising mission was none other than Zigler Anderson, or Ziggy as he liked to be called. A man with many talents and perhaps too many jokes, and the lonely journey towards Mars had been rife with them. Much to Farhan’s annoyance.

Ziggy was the one manning the rover, steering it in the right direction and ensuring the sunset over the planet didn’t whisk them back into the universe in a direction they didn’t intend. They wouldn’t perish in such an instance—if that was the risk then humanity would never have sent them—but complications would certainly arise. And Farhan, more than anything, hated complications.

Though he was staring through the hull of the rover as it slowly descended onto the rocky planet’s bloodshot surface, Farhan could almost taste the salt in the air, could almost smell the dust clouds that no doubt would storm his way and attempt to string him off to an early death. The atmosphere would have to be dealt with, that was for sure, as well as ensuring the landscape wasn’t too wild for human habitation. Atmospheres, however, would take hundreds of years to change, perhaps even thousands, but that was the beauty of terraforming.

Farhan wasn’t just creating a better future for himself and his family. He was forming the foundations of a new humanity to live abroad, on the farthest edges of human technology and progress, where no man, until very recently, had reached before.

Farhan felt the typical buoyancy beneath his feet as the rover touched down, and the engines hissed as they deployed themselves to stabilise the rover on its spindly legs in comparison to its size. The engine rumbled once more, with a thousand other mechanisms Ziggy was more familiar with whirring in the background. Farhan felt off balance for a second, but that was completely normal for rough landings on a planet with the consistency of unpolished stones.

But Farhan wasn’t too concerned with the systems right now. He and Ziggy both had double and triple checked them before manoeuvring the rover into position for the final landing. They had been orbiting the planet for the last half a year, ensuring all the calculations were perfect with the assistance of mission control. And now they were here, finally ready to commence their mission of a lifetime.

Farhan was itching to get his suit on and get out there. There was something about stepping on a new place that couldn’t be understated, and it had been an impulse since Farhan was a child. Many times his parents had caught him venturing off into the undergrowth of the forest near his childhood home or the forbidden sections of whatever store they were in. It was an exhilaration nothing in the world could match, and when the unknown territory was a new planet, Farhan was almost giddy with excitement despite being a professional astronaut.

The sun bloomed in the sky, lighting the orange with a glow that shone through the hull and beamed into Farhan’s eyes. Despite the sun, however, the temperature was a mere illusion. A red planet and the shimmering sun in the distance  made for the expectation of desert-like climates, sweltering heat and a thick dryness to the air, but the truth could be further from that prediction.

According to the system’s console, the temperature surrounding the rover was minus-thirty-two degrees celsius. Back on earth, ice would have solidified to an extent that would be difficult to break, and going outside dressed for the summer would result in serious injuries within minutes if the person wasn’t careful.

Farhan, however, was careful, as much as he wished to roam free. He slinked back through the rover’s paler than death interior with its bland design to where the spacesuits were kept. He clung onto the suit, felt its weight dig into his hands as he hopped back to where Ziggy was seated.

This was the part he hated the most about his job. Though he knew it was a foolish proposition, Farhan wished he could go onto the planet without wearing protection and feel its atmosphere for real, breathe its air in its most authentic form, touch its ground with the pores of his fingers rather than the ridges of gloves that felt too thick as he tugged them on.

He donned the suit in almost record time, then went over to where Ziggy was stationed at the helm of the rover.

“You fancy coming outside for the first touchdown?” Farhan said with a lopsided smile. “You can put your name in the history books. Ziggy Anderson, the first man to terraform Mars. Like Neil Armstrong but way cooler.”

Ziggy gave a laugh. “If I’m worth remembering, history will find a way there for me anyhow. Go on, Farhan, you’re the one who worked harder for this than me. I’m just the one with the pilot’s licence. Get your glory, I’ll keep an eye out and let you know if anything happens.”

Farhan nodded, then pulled on the helmet of the suit. It insulated his skull, caused everything to feel ten times hotter, and once he fastened it into place, all he could hear were the thoughts raging around his own head. Thoughts of excitement, thoughts of exhilaration, thoughts of pride at how he was advancing the reaches of humanity beyond anything they had done before.

“What’s that?” Ziggy then said, voice muffled from outside the helmet. Farhan tapped the tempered glass of his helmet, and Ziggy switched communication systems to the speaker placed along the helmet’s inside edges like some strange form of futuristic surround sound for astronauts.

“Take a look there, Farhan,” Ziggy said, beckoning him closer with a hand. Farhan breathed in the fresh, pure oxygen as he gazed at the window Ziggy looked through. “Can you see that, there?”

Farhan followed Ziggy’s pointed finger and found a shadow in the distance. A shadow that, seemingly, defied what humanity knew about shadows. The shadow flitted in an imaginary wind, but didn’t shift over for a second. The shadow was slightly blurred, too, a phenomenon that Farhan hadn’t seen before in such dry climates.

“Must be some strange object we’ve never seen before,” Farhan said, staring at the dark spot of the shadow against the otherwise red rock. Confusion wrought his mind, but also not a small sliver of excitement. “I’ll take a look. Must be something interesting, maybe a new discovery.”

“We can be inventors now,” Ziggy said with a laugh. He tapped Farhan’s helmet lightly, then turned him around by the shoulders. “Go on, mate. Get your glory. I’ll send the message back to mission control that we made it through.”

***

Once the safety hatch released itself and allowed Farhan to step out, the first thing he noticed was the immense cold that floated around his spacesuit but not inside it. The insides of the rover were kept to an even fifteen degrees. Warm enough that the crew—which in this case was just Farhan and Ziggy—felt comfortable to walk through the day and sleep at night, but not so warm that the heat would stick to skin and sweat would form in high pressure situations.

“Can you hear me, Farhan?” Ziggy said, to check the communications systems were online.

“Hearing you loud and clear mate. How’s it on your end?”

“Good, good. Over and out.”

Farhan suppressed the smile at Ziggy pretend to be some military buff. He focussed his eyes on the red planet he now walked on, at the mountains jutting out in the distance and stretching their spires all the way to the heavens. At the harsh lighting that jutted down as if mountains of light, threatening to blind his eyes as if he was gazing at something forbidden for humans to see.

The desolation was akin to a desert back on earth, but held something otherworldly about it. Something ethereal that Farhan couldn’t place a finger on. This entire time, he’d been wishing to reach this planet, wishing to escape his orbit around Mars prematurely and settle the rover onto the red rock shores. And now he was here, enjoying the sights and wishing he could smell and taste the atmosphere, too.

One day, he would. If his mission succeeded. If humanity could terraform Mars into a habitable planet for their species.

It looks amazing, Farhan thought, the cold of the planet unable to take effect on him since his spacesuit was heated to a perfectly comfortable temperature. He walked through, and felt lighter than he’d ever felt before. Farhan jumped, floated almost twelve feet into the air from the force. He floated back down like a bird descending onto its perch, and Farhan almost felt as graceful.

“Focus on the mission mate,” Ziggy said. “There’ll be time for exploring later, but I wanna get a start on this number crunching.”

Farhan glanced back and found the rover’s window occupied by his fellow astronaut’s smirk. Farhan smirked himself, then realised Ziggy couldn’t see it because of the spacesuit hiding the expression.

“Fine,” Farhan said, and he set about grabbing his preliminary test equipment from the rover and seeing what made up the planet. First, he used a simple thermometer. Although the sensors around the rover were accurate, the little differences made all the impact, and so Farhan had to be sure.

He glanced around the open area, found a thin crack in the ground, and placed the thermometer in that crack. He used another sensor, one attached to his spacesuit, and used that to check the temperature, too. Both the thermometer on the ground and his suit were in agreement—minus-thirty-degrees celsius. A temperature more akin to the arctic back on earth.

Farhan didn’t feel that cold, but a chill did sweep through him at the idea that he walked through such a foreign climate. Except there was no water around, only hard rock coloured the shade of dried blood and cinnamon. And no life, too, other than Farhan and Ziggy.

Soon, there will be life here, Farhan thought. Soon, we’ll be able to make this a home for humanity to enjoy.

Farhan placed the temperature equipment back, and was about to decode the composition of the atmosphere using another device, when Ziggy’s voice rang out again.

And this time, a slightly larger level of concern was laced within.

“I think you should check out that shadow, mate,” Ziggy said. “There’s something strange about it, but I can’t really tell from here. I’d come out with you, but the rover needs someone in here at all times and you already got the suit on.”

“Just admit you’re scared,” Farhan said with a laugh.

“I’m being serious,” Ziggy said. “Take a look over there, and you’ll see what I mean. By that rock to the rover’s three o’clock. It’s…morphing almost, like something’s getting bigger and smaller whilst in the sun.”

“Probably a plant of some kind,” Farhan said. He wanted to brush the concern off as nothing more than speculation and continue testing the planet, but Ziggy’s words stilled those thoughts.

“But life ain’t supposed to exist out here.”

Farhan’s blood temperature rose at that, far above minus-thirty-degrees. “You’re right,” he said, the realisation slowly dawning on him that, if it was a plant, it may be a discovery worth writing home about. And so soon, too.

Farhan, of all things, hadn’t expected this.

The glory almost flooded through Farhan’s veins from anticipation alone. But the circumstances didn’t make sense. If it was a life form on Mars, then why hadn’t previous missions here, of robots sent by NASA and other space organisations before they all unified, found such plants?

Farhan rubbed the visor of his spacesuit, confusion running rampant in his mind. Confusion that requested him to take the one road leading to answers—across the red planet.

“Fine, I’ll take a look,” he said.

“Good luck out there,” Ziggy said. “Over and out.”

And, despite not being in immediate danger, Farhan sent a silent dua that Allah kept him safe as he threaded through the bloody rock.

***

Though Farhan was an experienced astronaut with decades in the field, he still hadn’t gotten used to walking around in gravities less than that on earth. Of course, gravities were somewhat relative—once one got used to gravities outside of earth, going back to earth was an even bigger challenge. Farhan’s first expedition into the cosmos resulted in months of physiotherapy in order to walk again, since his legs felt akin to jelly than bones and muscle, let alone run and function as a normal human being with missions to train for.

Now, he traversed the red planet with ease, as if he was always meant to walk here. As if it was his destiny all along, a destiny that only he could fulfil. The smell of his own breath and that of fresh oxygen clouded his helmet with an odd scent as he walked over a particularly large piece of rock. Though Farhan had seen images from space before, and had orbited the planet for six months, he yearned to get his hands on some of the rock and examine it for its properties. Terraforming required careful consideration of the elements that naturally formed on the planet, so humanity could work around them to create a habitable environment for themselves and animals.

“The thing’s moving again,” Ziggy said into his earpiece, and for a strange reason Ziggy was a little alarmed. “The shadow, I’m talking about.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Farhan said, crossing through a little dent in the rock beneath his feet, like a stream had once flown through the crevice before drying up over thousands of years. A zing raced across Farhan’s leg as he stepped over it. He wasn’t just making history, he was walking through it, and this history was untouched and untampered with, not written by its victors.

The shadow Ziggy was speaking of resided in a canyon not far from where Farhan stood. Though, considering the desolation that was Mars, not far meant a trek of at least ten minutes in a straight line, longer if Farhan had to walk around objects and different obstacles, which was the case with the mass of boulders embedded in the ground.

He traversed the red planet, wondering just how blessed he was by Allah to have this as his mission. Farhan had always prayed to be an astronaut, ever since he was a child. Whilst the rest of the class had answered astronaut to the question of what they wished to be when they were older, Farhan was the only one who’d answered truthfully.

That dream always brewed within him, and after the class he’d even asked his teacher what was needed to be an astronaut. His teacher, a woman named Mrs Sterling who instilled him with a confidence no other teacher had, explained to him the process of getting a degree and a masters, and more qualifications beyond that, before enlisting in training as part of humanity’s outreach program that allowed astronauts, as part of the unified space organisation USO, to go on expeditions to outer space.

Despite the fact that Farhan was a child, Mrs Sterling answered him honestly and didn’t take the ordeal as a joke, as some other teachers would have. As some other teachers, later on, had done. And despite being a child, Farhan attacked his ambitions with a fervour that no other astronaut had matched before him.

And that was why he was on the rover mission to Mars, to terraform the planet and change humanity’s future for the better. And that was why, as he walked across the red planet, he was the best person to deal with the complexities that a strange shadow resembling plant life would bring.

And it was a blinding complexity, all right.

As Farhan turned the corner where Ziggy said the shadow would be, the shadow had magically disappeared. Magically removed itself from the space as if—

As if it had movement. As if it wasn’t a plant, but a creature that breathed and moved and functioned like an animal species.

Oh, Lord, Farhan thought, feeling the pangs of dread and excitement mix into one concoction that stirred in his stomach. There is no way…

He peeked round the edge of the red wall, dust creeping onto his visor from the wind that was picking up, and found nothing there but a footprint in the dust. A footprint that was unlike anything Farhan had seen before, and Farhan was sure that no biologist back on earth had witnessed anything resembling it either.

The footprint featured three toes, though they were webbed and attached in the middle of the toe, rather than at the bottom to a much larger foot. The foot itself, however, was as thin as the toe, and stretched sideways for double the length. Biomechanically, it didn’t make any sense, and yet the proof was right there in front of Farhan for him to digest.

“Ziggy, we’ve got a bit of a situation here,” Farhan said, poking his head around the side of the wall. There was a little hole in the ground, a hole that burrowed deep into the crust of the planet. So deep that all Farhan could see was a black void staring back at him, as if daring him to explore and warning him away both at the same time.

“What’s the situation, chief?” Ziggy said.

Farhan glanced back, and could almost see Ziggy inspecting him from the windshield of the rover. “I think there’s evidence of life here. And…I think I know where it is.”

Farhan heard Ziggy sigh over the radio transmission. Then, Ziggy coughed, paused, and spoke. “So it wasn’t a plant after all, then,” Ziggy said, clicking his teeth together. “And here I was thinking we’d get some free food.”

“We’re here for another mission,” Farhan said, glancing from the rover to the black hole beside him. “We’re not here to investigate signs of alien life, but command back on earth would want to hear of this. You’re communicating with them, yeah?”

Ziggy replied affirmative. “I’ll let them know.”

“No, not yet,” Farhan said. “Not until we’ve confirmed what we’ve found. They already know we’ve landed, just give them the usual status update and let them be.”

Ziggy said, “Fine, do what you have to do, chief.”

Farhan laughed, then glanced at the black hole and his laughter died. Was it like the black hole at the centre of their galaxy, that trapped anything that went inside it and didn’t let the light escape?

Was Farhan being lured into a trap by the alien species, a trap that Farhan was too arrogant, or perhaps too foolish and insolent, to see?

Farhan didn’t know, so he dug around the area of the black void, searching for a further sign of life, for more signs than random footprints and a hole in the ground that could’ve formed naturally. For more than a mere shadow in the distance that may well have been a mirage in the shimmer of sunlight.

And then he found it. A staircase on the opposite side of the black hole, a staircase dug into the dust and rock, impossible to have formed naturally. And it was just big enough for Farhan to descend.

“I’m going down,” Farhan said, to which Ziggy laughed. “I think we have some cosmic neighbours.”

***

Farhan wasn’t an architect—far from it, actually—but even he knew the stairs were made by some kind of intelligent force. The stairs back on humanity’s home, Earth, were similar in that they were proportioned to perfection, edges lining up easily with the rock on either side, descending at even paces with no step larger or smaller than the one before it.

As Farhan stepped down through the darkness, he wondered not for the first time who the strange creatures were that operated in the shadows. Were these aliens, and if so, what were they doing here? Were they from another planet, or were they native to Mars? And if they were native, why hadn’t any of the previous drones or rovers spotted them over the hundreds years or so that humanity was sending probes to this red, rocky planet?

Farhan shrugged off his thoughts. He was a scientist first, and that meant he was to observe. But, in the darkness, there wasn’t exactly much to see and examine.

Farhan found the bottom of the stairs a few minutes later, though he didn’t feel as if he was deep into the planet. The temperature on the flat surface here, according to the monitor on his suit, was hotter, though in Mars terms that didn’t mean much. Farhan pushed through the darkness, which from under his suit was as thick as water.

And a light blinked in the distance. A light that illuminated what looked like a cave, with scratch marks along the walls that glistened in the shadowy murk of the cave corners. And inside that cave—Farhan almost slapped a hand over his mouth at the sight, and likely would’ve had it not been for the space suit blocking him from doing so.

It was an alien, his first sight of one, humanity’s first ever sight of one in their history. It looked nothing like Farhan expected. Nothing like the machinations his imagination had drummed up on countless nights before sleeping.

The alien had a skull, or what seemed a head, although eyes jutted out of each side of its skull. The eyes were round and blackened, like someone had placed charcoal in those orbs. One eye was at the front of the head, whilst the other two sat on the flanks. The alien seemed, for all intents and purposes, to have two-hundred-and-seventy degree vision.

But that didn’t matter, because the alien’s vision was fixed on Farhan, and Farhan alone.

Farhan couldn’t hold that gaze, so dropped his eyes to the alien's torso. The torso was short, though stocky, with a wide belly that showed the muscles beneath. The legs were long and thin, as if the alien had undergone a strict calorie diet with no muscle training to supplement. The alien’s feet waddled, like that of penguins, with the feet matching the footprint that Farhan had seen earlier.

The toes were not attached by a single sole, but instead they were webbed together strangely, with another line representing the main ‘foot’ so to speak.

The alien stepped closer, and Farhan stepped back once. The alien’s orange skin matched that of the rocky planet they were on, and for the first time in his life, Farhan wasn’t on home turf during a face off.

“What do you want, then?” Farhan whispered under his breath. He raised a hand, as if in greeting, then flicked on the secondary communications channel on the side of his helmet. That activated a stronger signal that flashed back to Ziggy, since sometimes regular signals found it hard to push through solid surfaces.

“Everything all right down there, mate?” Ziggy asked, voice crackling to life.

“Yeah, fine,” Farhan said, trying to keep his rattled heart rate out of his voice, all the while the alien with orange skin and strange feet stared at him, a curiosity in its eyes. “Just meeting with an alien, that’s all.”

“Are you all right down there, then?”

Farhan glanced at the alien once more, whose skin shimmered in the light with coarse shadows alongside it. That light was from a little fire in the centre of the cave, lit with a strange kind of wood. Wood, Farhan thought. That means there’s more life here that we don’t know about, and they know how to make fires, too.

“Should be fine,” Farhan said, calming his tone. “I’ll let you know if anything happens.”

“Stay safe, mate. We don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Farhan nodded, though Ziggy, for obvious reasons, couldn’t see the signal. He shut off comms for now, then glanced back to the alien, who had its hand raised, too. The hands were as webbed as the feet, and the alien pointed to himself, then to Farhan.

Farhan stood shell-shocked. What on earth was he supposed to do? He stepped ahead again, making sure that the alien didn’t move. It didn’t, thankfully, and Farhan was able to get within metres of it. He wished to inspect it, wished to pore over it under an examination table and really see what was going on. Alien life was something humanity had vied to discover for hundreds of years, and now the neighbouring planet was the one housing them.

What a turn of events!

The alien made a humming sound and a guttural sound at the same time. Like chalkboards grazing against each other in some strange symphony.

“I can’t understand,” Farhan said, though the alien could likely only hear the muffle of his voice. And even then, it wasn’t like the alien understood English.

The alien, again, raised a hand and pointed to Farhan, then pointed to himself. Farhan did the opposite—pointing to the alien first, and then pointing to himself. The alien turned its head to the side, glancing at Farhan with the other eye.

Farhan almost jumped out of his suit and died. Even though he knew the alien had three eyes, seeing it up close in action was another thing altogether.

Farhan then pointed to himself first, then to the alien. The alien stepped towards him instantly, and Farhan tried his best not to be alarmed.

“So that’s what it means,” he muttered, before waiting for the alien to give signal once more. The alien pointed to a boulder near the cave wall, then to itself. It walked over there and turned to face Farhan, before pointing to the adjacent boulder and then to Farhan.

Farhan edged over to the boulder, all the while keeping tabs on the cave around him. The cave held a black hole, like the void of space without stars, that led deeper into the tunnels of the surrounding caverns, and Farhan could’ve sworn he heard distant echoes of the same guttural sound that the alien before him had made.

The alien then sat on the boulder and stared at Farhan with the front eye. Farhan didn’t know what else to do, so sat on the other boulder the alien had pointed to. His spacesuit squished under him, but the suit was made of tempered materials. It wouldn’t rip because of a little rock, even if it was martian rock.

The alien made another guttural sound, then pointed to the wall. He brought a stick out from behind him, then dipped it in the fire. The flames whooshed, the sound muted when it reached through Farhan’s helmet to reach him. Despite the spacesuit regulating his temperature, Farhan felt the heat wash over him. As if it was trying to send a message, and it dawned on Farhan just how strange this situation was.

He was with an alien on Mars, sitting with them as though they were in a communal area enjoying a cup of coffee for breakfast. The situation was laughable, and yet there was something starkly pure about it that Farhan couldn’t place his finger on. Like sitting with an innocent child that bore no sins, and interacting with them.

The stick, now imbued with flames at one end, was held by the alien, who raised it to the wall. The alien washed it over the walls, lighting up what was written there. And Farhan jolted at the images he saw, carved into the stone with an accuracy that was astounding. The inscriptions were like chalk across a board, scraggly yet accurate and immaculately drawn.

It was like those inscriptions in caves that humanity couldn’t decipher for thousands of years, except these were easy to read, easy to grasp the story the alien was trying to tell without words. The inscriptions featured words that Farhan didn’t understand, but the drawings were clear enough. Clear enough to send the message the alien was trying to convey.

There were herds of the alien species in those drawings, drawn as little circles with three dots, and high above them was a spaceship. It didn’t look like anything Farhan had ever seen, didn’t look like any of humanity’s spaceships. And yet, it held a similarity that Farhan couldn’t place. Hovering above the herds of aliens like an ominous vision of the future.

The alien made a guttural noise, and Farhan jumped at that. He’d been so absorbed in his own fascination with the drawings that he’d forgotten that the alien was right beside him.

Farhan watched as the alien pointed to another drawing with the stick carved into the wall, and this one illuminated more of the story. It depicted the aliens fighting for their lives as the spaceship sent shots at them, drawn as little beams resembling humanity’s plasma weapons. What those shots were, however, looked unclear to Farhan. But the invasion and persecution was clear as day, clear despite the pockets of darkness shrouding the cave.

And the hairs along the back of Farhan’s neck rose an inch. Then rose a mile. Heat snaked over his skin, as the nature of his own mission dawned on him. The mission that he was serving for humanity, a mission that would be equally as destructive to this species as it had been before, when those other people came here and persecuted them. Farhan, in terraforming the planet for humanity’s entrance, would forebode the exit of the natives who were here already.

The alien glanced at him, and that singular eye seemed so human it was about to shed tears. And Farhan was reminded of the stories he’d read in history textbooks, where one country like America or Britain would invade other countries and ruin them economically, and plunder their resources for their own benefit or just because they perceived them as a threat.

And now Farhan, a product of those oppressed societies since they represented his ancestors, was doing the exact same to humanity’s cosmic neighbours.

Farhan was no better than the colonisers. And he didn’t know how to interpret that. Didn’t like the uncomfort it shot into his stomach, far more potent than a shot to the chest.

And it didn’t matter anyway. The alien lowered the stick, then shoved it to the ground and rubbed it until the fire withered away. Whimpered as if mimicking the alien’s imploring of Farhan. To not invade them, not to repeat the mistakes of the past, the oppression of the past that the aliens had barely escaped from. Had hidden so far away from that they burrowed into the caves of their planet to avoid being seen, avoid being noticed.

Farhan stood up, confusion wrought in his mind, blinding his soul. He glanced towards the black void in the edges of the cave, and that darkness pulsed, as if imbued with life. As if Farhan’s coming here constituted another oppression that the alien wished him to understand.

Farhan clenched his jaw. Gosh, what the heck was he supposed to do? Abandon the mission he had spent his entire life striving for? Ruin himself for the greater good, and destroy his own career in the process? Farhan paused, and tried to rub his chin in thought. But realised he couldn’t, since he was in a spacesuit.

In a spacesuit because he couldn’t handle the climate of this planet. Because the planet wasn’t his home, wasn’t the place he was supposed to be.

Farhan sighed, hearing the shudder of his breath throughout his body, then glanced at the alien who was still looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” Farhan said, not knowing why he was saying it or who he was saying it to. He heard more guttural sounds emanate from the blackness in the cave’s corner, and the urge to follow the darkness met him.

But the guttural noises grew louder, and more were joining the fray. And, despite being millions of miles from home, and speaking with an alien species, Farhan could sense the danger in the air. The smell of fumes almost culminated in a crescendo of fear.

He rushed back to the opening of the cave and rushed up the stairs two at a time. Then three at a time, since human legs were faster than the alien’s. He glanced back, into the murk below, and saw the one alien speaking with some others. Their guttural sounds bashed into Farhan’s back as he swarmed the stairs in an attempt to reach the surface in time.

His knees almost cracked at the next step, and would’ve had it not been for the spacesuit. The suit was made for surviving in space, and surviving in climates that humans weren’t accustomed to. That didn’t mean it was a combat suit, and especially not against aliens of all things.

Farhan reached the top a few minutes later, sweat lining his forehead from the effort of walking in a different gravity at high speeds. The suit, heavy, added another burden, and the smell of fumes, as if the fire from below was racing after him to burn his skin, rammed his nostrils.

He breathed in the oxygen that didn’t smell as pure anymore, and risked another glance down as the light above him grew larger and larger.

And he saw scurrying bodies in the deep below. Bodies that were after him. Bodies that viewed him as a threat like the previous invasion, and they were ready to kill to defend their property, defend their home planet, the same way humanity would if cosmic neighbours attempted to invade them.

Farhan reached the light with relief flooding his veins, legs tired beyond anything else, then glanced down once more. He, for some foolish reason, thought that the aliens would stop chasing once they realised Farhan wasn’t trying to encroach on their caves.

But Farhan thought wrong. The aliens, for all intents and purposes, were gunning for death. And judging by the claws attached to the ends of their fingers, they could rip into anything they wanted. And that included space suits.

Farhan needed to run.

“Ziggy, can you hear me?” Farhan said, desperation fuelling his voice. He repeated the question, having realised he hadn’t activated the comms systems of his suit.

A second later, Ziggy’s voice crackled into his earpiece. “Loud and clear, mate. What’s up?”

“We’ve got to abort the mission,” Farhan said. Direct, to the point. “We can’t do this anymore. Bring the rover towards where you saw the shadow. We need to get out of here, quick.”

Farhan glanced back and saw the first of those aliens come out of the hole. Farhan was running on flat land, in the absolute open plains of Mars other than boulders that were too far to hide behind. Danger crept into Farhan’s legs and almost clamped his movements altogether.

As he glanced again, he noticed these aliens were larger than the one he had spoken to. That one must’ve been a baby, Farhan realised. Allah saved me from it being an adult. Only a child would risk being found by leaving the caves, and so that was how Farhan had found them.

“There better be an explanation for this,” Ziggy said, and Farhan saw the rover spread its spindly legs and begin clawing its way across the atmosphere towards him. But it was slow, and Farhan didn’t know if it was too slow.

The gravity was waning on Farhan, who felt like he was wading through water instead of running. He glanced back, and then wished he hadn’t. The guttural noises were loud, but didn’t betray just how close the aliens were. They were accustomed to the gravity, and accustomed to warding off invaders. They were far readier than Farhan ever was.

And there were tens of them, with more joining the ranks at the back. Like they had been waiting their entire lives for this moment, to defend their home once more. And they took pride in that, the same way humanity would when it came to defending earth.

Farhan pressed the button to activate the comms systems again, watching as Ziggy’s eyes widened through the windshield of the rover. Widened at the sight of the aliens approaching.

“We got a problem,” Farhan said, running as fast as his legs would allow him. “Open the airlock now, Ziggy.”

“What, but we can’t—”

“Just open it. That’s an order.”

Farhan watched as the airlock extended itself out of the rover and onto the ground. Farhan reached it a few moments later, as the guttural noises crowded over him as if he was at some kind of festival. Except, everyone at this festival wished to kill him outright and shed his blood.

Farhan understood their reasons, though it wasn’t a pleasant feeling regardless.

Farhan bundled himself into the airlock after it opened, staring at the green species running after him. Their legs bashed against the rock, but they seemed unaffected. Their eyes were fixed on him, glued to his spacesuit, and despite being an alien species, the emotion of anger was clear in their eyes. Those black orbs were fiery with hatred for Farhan and what he represented.

For he represented the invaders, the colonisers who were checking out a potential colony in preparation for destroying everything within it to fit their own ends.

Farhan, with breath rushing out in gasps, shut the airlock behind him. Then waited for Ziggy to push the button that dragged it back inside the rover, instead of suspending it out on the martian surface.

Smacks hit the outside of the rover, as though drilling through the place, and Farhan heard the scratches of alien nails against the rover’s exterior. Aftershocks of fear still gripped him, but once the rover inserted the airlock back into the main section, those tingles disappeared.

Ziggy was already out of his seat and glaring when Farhan entered.

“What the hell was that about?” Ziggy said, arms open as if he wanted to hug Farhan and slap him at the same time. “You can’t abandon the mission. What the hell have we been working for?”

“Get in the air,” Farhan said. “We need to leave now. Activate the thrusters. That’s an order.”

“You idiot. Entire mission’s about to go bust because of you.” Ziggy smacked a palm against his chair in the cockpit, then glanced back at Farhan. “You can’t be serious about this, mate. Man to man, come on, what the hell is this about?”

Farhan could hear the scratches raking through the rover, but they were muffled and would do nothing. Scratches couldn’t dent strengthened metal, let alone tear through it and damage it enough that they wouldn’t be able to use the rover.

“That’s what this is about,” Farhan said, pointing outside to where members of the orange martian species glared at him through the windshield. Their faces were set in unadulterated hate, and Farhan shivered as he remembered what could’ve happened to him had he been outside at that moment.

Torn to shreds, that’s what.

“These aliens live here,” Farhan said. “They breathe the air, and they’re the ones that made this place a home for themselves. We can’t just destroy everything they have.”

“We can live with them,” Ziggy said, sitting down on his chair. He glanced at the aliens outside, and Farhan was glad his comrade was calm. Two fired-up astronauts didn’t make for a steady ship, nor a calm cockpit. “We live with animals all the time, what are they different?”

“And you’re the one, are you not, that’s all about animal rights and habitat conservation?” Farhan countered, striding to his own seat in the cockpit and standing over it. He placed the hands of his suit on it, then realised he was still wearing the thing. That was why Ziggy’s voice had been muffled.

He shrugged off the space helmet, felt the fresh air brush his face and the coolness douse his skin. The smell of antiseptic wafted through the air, in addition to chemicals he couldn’t identify. The scent of danger, of fumes and the coppery taste of dryness in his mouth, remained however.

“I know I advocate for that,” Ziggy said, “but this is different. This is saving humanity when we need more space.”

“You know it isn’t,” Farhan said. “You know this is a colony mission. There’s enough for everyone if the elites don’t hog it all for themselves, and this kind of mission is just pocket-change window dressing, now that I think about it. We thought there weren’t anyone else here, and that’s why we came. We can’t kill them, we can’t let them send more astronauts here and let all these aliens just die for no reason.”

Ziggy clenched his jaw, and Farhan could sense the wheels turning in his head. Ziggy, despite the glory that sometimes coloured him, was a good man. And good men understood hurting others for no reason was a bad thing. Good men understood that wiping an entire native population off the planet was pure evil.

Ziggy, above being an astronaut and a bastion for humanity’s interests, was a good man.

“Fine,” Ziggy said. “Fine.” He glanced outside at the aliens who were fast approaching to scratch at the rover in attempts to defend their property and defend their planet. “Fine, we’ll leave and spew a lie about climates being too harsh or something.”

Farhan nodded. “Just say the conditions weren’t right, but don’t mention a thing about aliens. That will only get more attention, and then they’ll try and kidnap them for testing or some other nonsense.”

Ziggy sighed, fired up the thrusters that were enough to boot them back into orbit in cases of emergency. “They got sensors here, you know,” Ziggy said, referring to command back on earth who were monitoring the rover and its movements. “They’ll clock as soon as we’re in orbit and the signal of our location gets sent, but I can mess with the recordings a bit, set them on a loop so command don’t realise we saw aliens.”

“That’s good thinking,” Farhan said, having forgot about the cameras. “It doesn’t matter if they find out we’re coming back, though,” Farhan added, remembering the hardships that his Prophet Muhammad (SAW) went through to protect the rights of the people under the justice of Islam. And Farhan knew that senseless killing for selfish gain was the epitome of sin, and Farhan wouldn’t fall into that.

Even if it cost him his career, even if it cost everything he stood for. Everything he wished to attain his entire life.

Because Allah would replace it with something better, and Farhan was sure of that.

“You’re a crazy character, Farhan,” Ziggy said. “But I respect it. I…I can’t do nothing but respect it.”

“You’re a good man, too,” Farhan said, watching through the windshield as the alien species scampered away once the rover flung itself in the air. The air finally smelt fresh again. “You’re a better man than you think.”

Farhan leaned back in the chair he was strapped in as the rover raced towards orbiting Mars, before it would align itself with earth and burst itself from one orbit to another. Farhan wouldn’t know what to say to the higher ups when he returned in person, at least not exactly.

But he knew that, in saving the aliens on Mars, in saving them from the risk—no, the certainty—of being wiped out entirely, Farhan had done the right thing.

And, at least in that if not anything else, he could find a comforting peace to lead him back home.

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JazakAllahu Khayran for reading.