Pseudocosmonaut

The most terrifying thing about space is not that it is vast and empty. It is the fact that it is only mostly empty.

A few decades ago, a tale emerged from the otherwise mundane routine that maintained the Second International Space Station, shortened to just ISS2, which has now been decommissioned. It began when German astronaut Ingo Mess was alone on a spacewalk out on the station’s hull in order to fix a little damage that had been done to one of the solar panels by microscopic space debris. As he was about to enter the airlock again, to his shock, he spotted something out in the distance. It looked like a human in a spacesuit, floating alone in the void. And it was moving. Mess claimed that the figure was fidgeting frantically and waving, obviously in distress. Mess entered the airlock, reported to his crew what he had just witnessed, and got out a manned maneuvering unit (MMU), a form of space-jetpack. With that he went out to retrieve the floating spacefarer. Mess claims again that the figure was waving and beckoning to him as he approached, but then suddenly stopped moving as he got closer. Mess feared that it was already too late and the person fainted or even died from the long isolation in space. He grabbed the body and retrieved it.

Once past the airlock, it became apparent that the body was clad in a Soviet spacesuit, of the Orlan-D-type typically worn by cosmonauts during the 1970s and 80s. At the time, the orbit of the ISS2 was close to that of the Plutonia, a smaller Soviet space station, so, even if the chances of such a thing happening are astronomically low, the astronauts speculated that maybe an accident had dislodged one of the cosmonauts from his station and by pure luck he had drifted to theirs. But to everyone’s shock, once the visor was lifted and the helmet removed, they saw that there was no person inside. It was just an empty spacesuit. 

Perhaps the movement that Mess reported was an optical illusion or even caused by gas escaping from the suit or air tank. When contacted, the crew of the Plutonia reported that there had been no incidents and that none of their cosmonauts had gone missing. But this opened up more questions, mainly why there was an empty spacesuit just floating around in Earth orbit, let alone a historic relic from the 70s? The suit was eventually chalked up to a mishap or perhaps even durability test during the early days of spaceflight that had gone unreported or forgotten.

However, the incident seems to have had a negative impact on Mess, whose crewmembers described him afterwards as increasingly erratic and “suspicious” of the suit. Days after retrieval, he still claimed to have seen it move when he looked at it through the security camera of the station’s storage room. The other astronauts chalked this up to swaying caused by microgravity.

Nonetheless, things really did start to become strange on the space station after the suit’s retrieval. The number of minor system errors did demonstrably increase, while many crewmembers started reporting health problems. The suit itself was frequently found outside its storage area after the astronauts woke up from sleep, one time even with its glove gripping the lever of the airlock. These incidents were most likely pranks on Mess by another crewmember.

When things truly got concerning was during the spacewalk of another astronaut, when she noticed there was a small hole in her suit and it was losing air rapidly. She thankfully noticed quickly and was able to re-enter the airlock before asphyxiating. The following days, Mess tried to do her job but before leaving the airlock he noticed that his suit was also perforated at the sleeves. The other suits on the station were soon after also found to have little holes poked into them. Someone was seemingly sabotaging the crew.

The cosmonaut suit itself ended up being the only one left intact and useable, in part because it was also in a surprisingly good condition despite its age and having been out in space for so long. Eventually, it was decided to bite the bullet and have one of the astronauts don the suit in order to get the necessary repairs on the station’s hull done. However, this was prevented by Ingo Mess, who barred anyone from even approaching the suit, because he feared something bad was emanating from it. Before anyone could wear it, Mess secretly ejected the suit back out of the airlock while the rest of the crew were sleeping. After he did, he reported that the suit began flailing again in panic, briefly holding onto one of the solar panels before losing grip and silently drifting back forever into deep space.

After the incident, the astronauts were able to repair one of their own suits again into a workable condition and fix the hull and panels. Technical and health problems also decreased and all crewmembers were able to safely return to Earth after the end of their mission. Mess, however, was largely shunned by his colleagues and reprimanded for his actions by the command centre. He had to go through another psychological evaluation, under fear that the isolation in space and his long separation from his wife and child had taken a mental toll on him. But the evaluation found him to be perfectly lucid and mentally competent, if a little traumatized from the experience.

Nevertheless, the following years largely saw the incident, including even the sabotage of the other spacesuits, being blamed on Mess’ mental health and his previously respected reputation sank quite a bit, at least outside of the circles of conspiracy theorists. Mess himself claims that his actions saved the lives of the entire crew. He has come up with his own explanations for what was up with the suit and the weird string of coincidences that befell the astronauts, but said theories have not exactly helped him beat the insanity accusations.

Early on Mess seriously claimed that the spacesuit was possessed by the ghost of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who was the first human being to die in a spaceflight (in order to save Yuri Gagarin from said fate). This can of course be rejected outright, not just because ghosts obviously do not exist, but also because Komarov died in 1967 and he burned with his spacesuit into a carbonic crisp during atmospheric re-entry.

Next, Mess claimed that the suit was some sort of secret failed experiment by the Soviets, perhaps actually being mechanical with an AI built into it. While this explanation at least does not invoke supernatural entities, it still has no evidence speaking for it, especially given the fact that such technology would not have been possible to achieve in the late twentieth century. This is nevertheless the favoured theory by the majority of conspiracy theorists.

In the last years of his life, Mess speculated that what his crew picked up may have actually been an alien lifeform, which, for whatever nefarious purposes, imitated the appearance of a cosmonaut, perhaps without knowing what the inside should look like.

The spacesuit has never been encountered again.

Image source:

• Wikimedia

Puraeus

Although Venus has no trees, even it has more arboreal organisms than Mars, most of them living in the floating jungles of the upper atmosphere. Martians meanwhile have not much to climb on except for rocks, boulders, mountains and maybe a few tall shrubs here and there. The degrading climate has stopped supporting the growth of tree-like organisms millions of years ago. The only exception is the region of the Hellas Basin, but even here the scale-trees and tube-trees grow only sparsely, making the region resemble an open savannah more than forest. As such there are not many organisms specially adapted to dwell on them.

One of the few savannah-dwellers that can actually be called arboreal is a relic from an earlier time. The puraeus is one of the last remaining flagrobrachians. These are one of the groups which make up the insect-like phylum Aspiderma, to which also belong the wadjets. The relationship is immediately apparent, with the six lens-eyes, large head-plates and even little external gills, which look like they could be the archaic precursors to wings. Yet this animal cannot fly, but instead slithers and hangs between the branches of the scale-trees like a serpent. Neither are flagrobrachians the ancestors of wadjets, they are their own group that, as fossils show, made their way independently out of the vanished Martian oceans onto land.

Their most distinguishing feature are their mandibles, which have been repurposed into a pair of raptorial arms from which sprout long, prehensile tendrils. The puraeus is an ambush-predator, which lies in wait hanging from trees, ensnaring any smaller creatures which might climb or fly by, such as nekhbets. As the puraeus can no longer utilize its mandibles to kill and chew its prey, its jawless mouth has evolved a syringe-like spur, hidden underneath the headshield. With this it injects venom into its prey, as well as a strong acid, which digests it from the inside and allows the predator to simply suck it dry, like a spider.

The venom is also useful as a defensive weapon, as the puraeus can fall prey to various flying creatures such as ballousaurs. It is usually not strong enough to kill the attacker, but based on the behaviour of those bitten, it appears to cause a lot of stinging pain. Of course, no astronaut has ever volunteered to test that hypothesis themselves.

Puraeus also nest in trees, usually in holes beneath the bark. There they also raise their young. Once two puraeus have mated, only the impregnated partner will care for the offspring, but does so quite dutifully until they are old enough to hunt themselves. Until then it will usually feed them with regurgitated juices.