Closer Looks

If the universe is so vast that we might as well be alone, would you keep looking? Nandi, with her intrepid canine companions, Pot and Pan, know their answer.

Alex Lynn is a budding writer from England. She has an MA in Creative Writing and enjoys genre-hopping between historical, SFF, and contemporary settings when both reading and writing. When not immersed in words, Alex can be found petting dogs, crying over unattainable women, or struggling to reach the top shelf.

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The thing that had followed Nandi most persistently on her mooch through the cosmos was not her mother’s parting frown, but rather the look in her little sister’s eye, the one all kids had when they first started to really grasp the vastness of what was out there, the one that said something must be out there with us. Still believing that ‘the universe is so vast we can’t possibly be alone’, not yet transitioned, as most adults did, to the resignation that ‘the universe is so vast we might as well be alone’. The universe was big, and it was empty — or at least, it was so big that it felt empty. But Nandi had never been able to accept that. At first, her dreams of exploration and finding other species had been indulged, as the dreams of children generally were, and then they had been gently but consistently disapproved of, as dreams generally were when they turned into aspirations an otherwise sensible adult had decided to pursue.

In a more literal sense, the thing — or rather, two things — that followed her were Pot and Pan, wagging their tails as their nails tip-tapped on the metal floor of the ship. It was confusing to keep track of time in space, even after decades of living in it, and Nandi was sure they managed to trick her into feeding them an extra meal at least twice a week. They were sat on their bottoms, blonde and ginger tails wagging like feather dusters against the floor, looking up at her with big brown eyes and matching soulful expressions of terrible hunger. Nandi gave in, because she wasn’t a monster, and gave them both a treat from the dispenser just as her comm terminal started to chime. 

With the tap of a button, Nandi’s screen filled up with faces, most smiling, some yawning. 

‘Nightingale checking in,’ Nandi said as everyone rattled off their callsigns. ‘Where’s Helter? And Odyssey?’ Nandi asked, her eyes combing over the screen and seeing two of the twelve members of their Voyage absent.

‘Odd had a comm probe go down and has had to turn around to go fix it, not sure about Helter,’ Ruben — Skysight, the unofficial leader of their Voyage — answered. 

‘Helter was going to investigate past that nebula, they weren’t sure if they’d be able to transmit while in it. Reckoned they’d be in there for a few weeks,’ Sakura said with a shrug. She was eating noodles with a grace Nandi had never seen before.

‘Alright well, who’s closest?’ Ruben asked, and The Argonauts, three brothers crowded into one little ship, put up their hands. ‘If we don’t hear from Helter by three weeks you can go check it out, see if they need a tow out of the nebula.’

‘On it boss,’ one of the brothers said with a smile. After that, it was time for sharing news — of the exploring and mundane variety — transmitting whatever little pieces of home had reached them out here to each other, discussing the book they’d all read that fortnight, and seeing if anyone had come close enough to each other to meet up. No one was close to Nandi, but she never expected it. She had ventured further than most; only Ruben was out as deep as she was, and he’d gone the opposite way to investigate a promising-looking but ultimately empty planet last month. 

Of their number, half of them currently had promising worlds or moons on sensors, and it was easy to get swept up in the excited chatter. Nobody ever talked about what they found; if they had found new animal species, anything living and sentient native to somewhere other than earth, they would have called the group immediately. It hadn’t happened yet, and no one liked to dwell too much on all the empty places in the universe. 

Towards the end, Shooting Star announced they were turning around, heading back to settled-space and the rest of humankind. He had been exploring for a decade and missed the feeling of dirt under his feet. This happened occasionally, and it always made Nandi’s chest hurt. Out here, the people in her Voyage were her family. In the pocket of space they had decided to explore (it was a pocket that was tens of thousands of light years in all directions, but in the grand scheme of the universe, it was a pocket) these were the people who kept her going, who believed just as much as she did, that they would, one day, find someone else out here. 

‘I’ll go back a different route, drop lots of beacons on the way to expand the comms network, and keep exploring while I go. But, I don’t know, I think I just really miss potatoes that come from the ground instead of a materialiser, you know?’ 

The Voyage all nodded like they agreed, and Nandi couldn’t help but worry that everyone else might turn around for potatoes and strawberries one day. Even with Pot and Pan, she was sure she couldn’t do this alone. Humans weren’t built to be alone, and nowhere was that felt more keenly than in the void of space. It was why everyone who set out for long missions of exploration was encouraged to form a Voyage; with a Voyage, exploration was a treasure trove filled with adventure and discovery. Alone, Nandi had no doubt it would feel very different indeed. She remembered being a child, left home alone for the first time, and how scared she’d become of the silent house despite knowing every nook and cranny. 

They all signed off, Pot and Pan shoving their way into the frame and wagging their tails when the Voyage demanded to see them before saying goodnight — or good morning, or good afternoon. 

• • •

‘It’s not looking promising so far,’ Nandi said aloud, as she stepped off her ship and onto the solid rock of a planet spinning fast in a binary system. The air was, at least, a lovely temperature. But looking around, the planet was so dry it was barren. ‘But,’ she reminded herself, ‘if I stepped onto Earth in a desert, I might think that too.’ Her sensors had suggested the whole planet was like this, but she’d always been a big believer in second chances and closer looks. 

Beside her, Pan barked, fogging up the clear glass of his little bubble space helmet for a moment before the air recyclers dealt with it. He was wagging his tail; behind him, Pan was hopping back and forth on his front feet excitedly. 

‘Alright, behave and bark if you find something. Off you go.’ She freed them, and they bounded off for a long run. It was another good reason to always land the ship and have a look. She may not have found life yet, but she had seen some astonishing vistas. Things that made her wish she could draw or paint, because sometimes the camera, even with all its holographic-multi-dimensional-panoramic features, just didn’t capture the beauty of other worlds. Worlds so alien, just without the aliens. 

The feeling of sun on her skin was welcome. The atmosphere might not have been breathable — to her at least — but it wasn’t inherently harmful either, leaving her walking around in a helmet and her normal clothes, the rest of her spacesuit tucked away. 

The planet was beautiful. Rock and sand in every direction, and maybe it would look beige and boring if you only took the time to glance, but Nandi looked properly and she saw the gradient of a thousand colours, the strange, blobby formations of rock that spoke of airflow currents and the steady abrasion of sand on the wind. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, in any direction, which could mean there was no rain, or that it was just a sunny day. The sky itself was a burnt shade of pink, bathing the planet in a soft, warm glow that well matched the gentle but thorough heat of the sun on her skin. The gravity here was lighter than on Earth, lighter, even, than found on hippy space stations. It made her feel effervescent, and it made Pot and Pan hyper, leaping high over each other, playing bitey-face in the air, and then spinning excitedly when they hit the ground and did it all over again.

Scans of the sand had reported it as harmless, not unlike the sand back home, so Nandi started digging with her fingers, keeping one eye on Pot and Pan while she did so. She wiggled her fingers deeper into the earth, fascinated by how warm it was, even the deeper layers, away from the sun. It didn’t take on that cold, thickened texture that sand on Earth did; instead it stayed fine and warm. It was a lovely sensation, and made Nandi want to half bury herself in it, just to feel blanketed in such a natural heat. She settled for taking off her shoes and wiggling her feet in. 

Warmth like that meant there was no water lurking close under the surface, and when she dug a probe deeper into the sand to go burrowing for answers much deeper than Nandi could manage with her fingers alone, it reported the same – no water. 

‘No water doesn’t mean no life,’ she reminded herself. ‘Creatures on Earth evolved to need water. Living things evolving on another planet could have very different needs.’

This was a lively discussion topic among both Voyagers and settled-space scientists: whether water was a prerequisite for all life, or just a prerequisite for life from Earth, which was the only life anyone had ever been able to study. As far as Nandi was aware, the jury was still out, but she’d picked her side; eradicating all planets and moons without water from their search for life took out too high a percentage of worlds. They already couldn’t search on gas giants, not without the most advanced, robust of spacecrafts anyway, which Nandi didn’t have, and besides, she liked being able to stand her two feet on other worlds. Trying to stand on a gas giant would be an ill-advised and short-lived experience that would only have one result.

Sometimes, she and Ruben talked about the gas giants, how they might be missing any number of sentient life forms swirling around on those planets, life made of gas instead of biomatter, dancing in the vortexes. She wondered if they ever imagined life made of sticky, squishy biology.   

• • •

The tiny moon that orbited a dwarf planet had felt promising, as all planets with some form of flora felt promising, and Nandi would have landed there no matter what, but after two more of their Voyage had announced intentions to return to settled-space, Nandi had needed ground beneath her feet. She had needed to see something fantastic, and the moon’s huge, sky-blue leaves, spongy and thick enough to jump on, were just that. The trunks were formed from something rubbery that reminded Nandi of the colourful clay children like to mould and squish between their chubby little hands. Thetrees and their huge leaves reached up high into the purple sky, which was dominated by the pretty silver surface of the dwarf planet. 

A few trees over, Pot and Pan were climbing on the leaves, managing to climb up two before the leaves drooped under their weight and gently deposited them down onto the floor with a playful woof and another attempt. 

Nandi checked the trees for any signs of animals — nibbles from the leaves, fruit that might fall and be foraged, markings scratched into the trunks from tusks or tools, burrow holes in the loamy red soil at the base — but there was nothing. The more Nandi walked and searched, the clearer it became that these trees, tall and beautifully strange, were the only things that lived here. One species of plant, a complete lack of biodiversity around it, fantastic and flourishing, but alone. 

She took pictures of the trees to send back to the scientists in settled-space, and pictures of Pot and Pan playing on the leaves for her Voyage. 

• • •

More of the Voyage was considering turning around. Nandi knew this happened to groups, that a couple of people heading back in a short space of time could have an avalanche effect on everyone else. Could get people thinking about the things and people that they missed from back home, or, worst of all, could leave you wondering if there was anything out there after all, and even if there was, whether the chances of finding it were so small that it wasn’t even worth looking for, just like most people back in settled-space believed. 

Worst of all, even Nandi was considering it. There were things she missed from home — of course there were — but she’d always believed exploring would be worth it. That even if it took decades, they would find something out here, and then all that time spent forging through empty space and finding empty places would have been for something. Discovery, wasn’t that the human condition, wasn’t that the thing that drove humankind forward? A need to discover new things. Happy but not satisfied, even back in settled-space, people invented and imagined and tinkered their way to new discoveries. Those discoveries would eventually yield faster ships with better sensors. Maybe it was better to leave this mission for a later generation, with better tools and more sophisticated ships. Then again, with an attitude like that, you could put anything off. With an attitude like that, humans probably never would have made it to the moon, or to Mars, and they certainly never would have made it out of the solar system. It would always be easier later, but that was no reason not to do it now. 

Still, she missed her parents, and her little sister who wouldn’t be so little anymore. She was sure Pot and Pan missed the sight and smell of other dogs. Maybe it would be better to leave this work to someone else, maybe it had been a mistake to come alone, maybe other species really were simply too far away. Maybe maybe maybe. 

Maybe tomorrow would be the day she found something. 

Or maybe she never would. 

Her comm terminal chimed with a call. When her screen filled up with Skysight, Sakura, Helter, and The Argonauts, the remaining members of the Voyage, Nandi feared the worst and worried that her hand was going to be forced before she was ready. It would be insane to stay out here alone, without a support system, without a family nearby — relatively, at least — to call for help if she needed it, or just to speak to. 

‘Hey Nightingale, we were thinking,’ Ruben, Skysight, their most fervent explorer, started, and Nandi braced herself for the blow. ‘We could travel as a group for a little while? I think we’re all needing a bit of human contact right now.’

Nandi burst into tears, which worried the Voyage and over-excited Pot and Pan, shoving at each other to try and climb their too-big-bodies up into her lap and find out what was wrong. 

• • •

Nandi was first to the coordinates they had all agreed on, not because she had been closest, but because she had passed the least number of promising worlds on her way. It hadn’t dampened her spirits; she was too excited about travelling with the others for a spell. They would cover less ground this way, but that seemed to matter less than it had in the past. 

The rest of the Voyage weren’t far off, somewhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks, but it wasn’t in Nandi’s nature to hang around doing nothing, and it wasn’t something that made Pot or Pan happy either — they could always tell when the ship wasn’t moving and expected to be allowed off, and became mischievous if they weren’t. That was how Nandi had ended up with a broken waste compactor and two guilty looking dogs just months into their travels. Determined not to turn around for anything, she had fixed it herself, which had been a lesson in both humility and engineering. 

Scanning the nearby space, Nandi found a couple of planets and one moon that bore investigation. The moon seemed unlikely to hold life — cold and with a thin atmosphere — but her readings showed that absolutely everything on its surface was different shades of purple, and she was gripped by a strong desire to see it. 

‘Wow,’ Nandi said as she stepped off her ship and was greeted by more purples that she knew existed. And she had no doubt that there were purples here she couldn’t even see, hidden beyond the ability of human eyes. She could feel those unknowable colours, just beyond reach, teasing at the very edge of her vision. 

The sky was a pastel lilac, and the dirt was a deep, rich plum. The rocks that littered the ground like punctuation were mauve and mulberry and amethyst and a purple so purple Nandi had only ever seen it in a stellar nursery before. Dappled across the ground was a raggedy, wilting plant; an ugly little wisp of a thing in a horrible shade of fuchsia  — and it turned out that the wilting was a lie: when Nandi stepped on one it refused to move, nearly puncturing her shoe with its obstinance. 

When movement caught the corner of her eye, Nandi expected glittering purple dust blowing in the wind. At first, Nandi thought that was exactly what it was, little periwinkle specs blowing around on the ground, except, they weren’t blowing around at all. They were scuttling.

‘Oh my god,’ Nandi whispered, trying to simultaneously go still and get a closer look. She had to be wrong, but if she wasn’t, if there really was something moving, then she shouldn’t scare it off. 

She needn’t have worried; even as she inched closer, the little bugs paid her no mind. Even as she blocked the sun and crawled closer to loom above them, they continued on, unconcerned. They were marching in little lines, two by two, up over one rock and underneath it, coming out the bottom carrying jagged little pieces of biomaterial from under the rock, then marching back the way they came. Over and over again, an unending march, that would only be concerned by Nandi’s presence if she broke the chain. 

‘Ants,’ Nandi whispered. And then louder, more excited, yelling up into that purple sky. ‘ANTS!’ 

She was mesmerised watching them on their march, even as she vibrated with the need to tell the Voyage. She lost time, watching their work, and didn’t even take pictures. She only noticed how much time had passed because the sun was setting and Pot and Pan had come back from their run, covered in purple mud and restless for some food. 

When the light was so low she could no longer see the twinkle of little purple soldiers marching on, she ran back to her ship, urgency taking over her. 

She called the Voyage, using the alert button she’d never used before. They picked up quickly, bleary and concerned, asking if she was okay. Nandi smiled at them so wide it made her cheeks ache, her heart felt like it was trying to crawl up and say hello too. 

‘Hit your boosters. I’ve found something.’

Silence, disbelief, maybe a little fear that they had misunderstood. Sakura said, slow and careful. ‘What’ve you found?’ 

‘Ants. Perfect little purple ants.’ 

The cheers were deafening, the excitement and elation palpable. No one asked for a description, no one asked for details, no one even wanted to see a photo. They wanted to see for themselves. They all hit their boosters. 

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