Passion And Parsecs

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Her brows collapsed into a curious frown. It sort of looked like a tanker-truck on end, but she knew there was no way a truck could make it through these dense woods. Besides, it was far too large to be a semi, and the object had come from the sky.

She approached cautiously. It didn’t seem to be on fire. In fact, she was amazed to find the beam of her flashlight glinting off the metal as if it had just been hand-polished. Hadn’t it just been on fire a moment ago? Shouldn’t it be charred and twisted from all it had been through?

“Hello?” she called out, her rubber-soled feet crunching leaves and twigs as she walked toward the strange vessel, wondering if it indeed held any passengers. It wasn’t like any airplane she’d ever seen. “Is anybody in there? Are you all right?”

The object was about thirty feet in diameter and a good eight feet high. When she got close enough, she held both the first-aid kit and flashlight with one hand, reached out her free hand, and knocked. It felt like metallic canvas. Weird.

Maybe it was some type of weather balloon. Was it a foreign-made version of the space shuttle?

When no answer came from within, she transferred the white plastic box with the big red cross on it to her left hand again and walked around the object, shining her light over the surface. On one side there was some sort of insignia printed. The characters were about twelve inches high. Three of them. She thought that they were perhaps written in Russian since she was unfamiliar with the type of writing. Then again, they looked a little like Egyptian hieroglyphs, too.

For a moment she simply stared at the strange object and the foreign letters illuminated by the beam of her flashlight. Should she leave it be? But what if somebody was on board? Was it even a spacecraft at all?

She placed an ear against the surface and was surprised to find that the metal was warm, as if it produced its own internal heat. She knocked. “Hello?” Again, there was no answer.

It was entrenched in the dirt and tilted slightly to the left. It looked incredibly lightweight for its size. Another look around found no door or windows. It appeared both air- and water-tight. Maybe it was just a weather balloon after all.

She was just about to turn around and leave, but something inside her brain nagged her. She had to be certain there were no passengers inside this strange craft. If she turned her back on it and went home, the possibility of leaving anyone behind to die would always bother her.

Krista placed the first-aid kit on the ground and ran her fingers over every square inch within reach, searching for an opening. A moment later she found something; a door-sized piece of the object moved slightly. She tried forcing it open, but it only budged the tiniest of cracks. Putting down the flashlight, she looked around and found a stick then wedged it into the crevice, prying the door open. The door stuck at first, then slid right open; light poured out from the interior of the craft.

For a moment Krista stood there with her hand held in front of her face to block some of the glare. When her eyes became accustomed to the bright light, she called out again. Her ears only picked up the sound of crickets and the rustle of the leaves in the trees.

She climbed through the doorway and inhaled a quick breath once she was inside. All she could do was stand there, unable to move, legs trembling. When she'd come up to this strange vessel she had seen that it wasn’t a plane, thinking for certain it was a weather balloon or perhaps a satellite, but what she saw before her made her want to crumple onto the pristine white floor. No more than six feet away from where she stood was a man! Dressed in dark coveralls, he was slumped over the controls of this vehicle. His forehead rested against the complicated-looking console, and a low humming sound came from somewhere to her right.

What sort of aircraft was this? It had to be foreign. Most probably top secret.

After retrieving the first-aid kit, she approached the so-still man, her eyes darting around with each step, trying to take in everything at once. It was sparse, yet she could make out what she suspected to be the pilot’s sleeping quarters with a few cupboards and closets. There were dozens of flashing and pulsing lights in every color imaginable directly in front of the motionless figure. She’d never seen anything so complex-looking. This guy must have spent a decade just learning how to use all those knobs, buttons, and levers, she mused, nearly upon him now.

“Hello?” It was definitely a man as she could make out huge shoulders, firm biceps, and a wide back that stretched taut the thin material of his uniform. “Are you all right?”

Krista reached out a hand to touch him, then stopped, afraid he was dead. She held her breath and laid two fingers to the side of his neck over the carotid artery. Nerves made it difficult for her to detect a heartbeat. She slid her fingers a little lower. Pressing a bit harder, she let out her breath in a low, grateful sigh. There was a pulse, weak and irregular, but he was alive.

Another look around proved that this was the vehicle’s only passenger. At least she’d only have to worry about getting one person back to the cabin, though he was quite a bit larger than she. Even slumped over as he was she could tell he was well over six and a half feet tall.

“Sir?” Krista grabbed his left shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Can you hear me?” she said loudly. Immediately she detected the male scent of him; clean, unadorned, teasing to her senses. Her hand tingled where she touched him, and she squeezed a little harder, feeling firm muscle beneath her fingertips.

In the next instant she reprimanded herself for feeling this man up, finding his body scent so appealing, when he was comatose and needed medical attention. She’d obviously been isolated for too long.

Giving him another little shove, Krista jumped, startled, when he turned his head to the side and mumbled something unintelligible. There was a deep gash over his left eyebrow. Blood trickled freely from the wound that was swollen to the size of the Hope Diamond. It probably needed stitches. He moaned and mumbled again, words she didn't understand, but at least he wasn’t completely out of it.

Optimism swam through her. Perhaps he wasn’t as bad off as she had first expected. Maybe she could rouse him enough to assist her in getting him back to the cabin and her Jeep.

Taking him by the shoulders, Krista pushed him so that he sat upright against the back of the swivel chair. His neck muscles were useless as his head lolled back. “Sir.” She patted him on the cheek, ignoring his warm skin under her clammy palm. Ignoring thick sable lashes that lay softly against smooth, golden flesh. His facial features were clean-cut and angular, and if it hadn’t been for the slight growth of a beard and mustache, she would have envied skin and bone structure as flawless as his. Without thought she reached up to touch the scar on her left cheek.

He moaned again, clearly uncomfortable. Krista didn’t like seeing anyone in pain, but this stranger’s pain might be just the thing she needed to keep him conscious long enough to get him back home. If not, she’d never be able to drag a man of his size all the way to the cabin.

As an afterthought, she checked his arms and legs, not finding anything broken, though his facial wound needed tending to before they headed back. Opening the kit, she found a few antiseptic pads in foil packets, gauze, and waterproof tape. Taking out the needed items, she cleaned his wound, placing several of the gauze squares over the cut, wincing as she applied pressure for a few minutes to try and stop the bleeding. Her stomach pitched a little. She wasn’t cut out to be a nurse.

When she figured it had stopped bleeding enough, she secured fresh pads with some of the tape. “Not too bad for a novice,” she deemed, inspecting her handiwork.

Now she had to figure out how to get him back to the cabin. “You’re a pretty big guy,” she said as she stood staring down at him, one hand on her hip. “You’re going to have to help me out a little. Think it’s possible?”

Her only answer was more unintelligible mumbling.

She stashed the first-aid kit in one of the big breast pockets of the stranger’s coveralls. Too bad she didn’t have smelling salts. She unbuckled the seat belt that kept him firmly in his chair. “Well, here goes nothing.” When she bent down at his side and slid an arm around his back to get him to his feet, his eyes fluttered open, wide and unseeing, his body going tense.

Krista, her face mere inches from this stranger’s, let out a breath of awe when she saw those eyes. They were large, almond-shaped, and black as the blackest night. And they did something strange to her insides. As if, even in his near-comatose state, he was seeing deep inside of her, reading her mind, her very soul. It was unsettling.

“Oh sure, Krista,” she chided, telling herself again that she had been alone for too long and was so lonely for a lover that she was bound to start weaving some pretty wild fantasies. Still, his blank gaze upon her gave even her bones goose bumps.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, laying a hand on one hair-stubbled cheek in a gesture of comfort. Soon she felt him relax and saw trust in the inky depths of his eyes.

Great, here she was attempting to play Florence Nightingale to this injured, displaced cosmonaut, when she could barely take care of herself? At least when it came to her own mental and emotional well-being. But she vowed to do all she could for him until she got him to a hospital.

Looking away from those exotic eyes, she kept her mind focused on the hike back to the cabin. She looped one of his arms around her neck and urged him to help in getting to his feet. With great effort, he was standing a few minutes later, limp and swaying due to his injuries. To Krista’s relief, his eyes drifted closed as they half stumbled, half shuffled, out of the strange craft.

“We have to get you some medical attention,” she said once they were out into the night and on solid ground. “If you can just stay conscious long enough to get you back to my place, we’ll be in business.” She looked around for her flashlight, finding it a few feet ahead where she had left it on the ground. Propping him up against a nearby tree, she steadied him for a moment. Once she was sure that her mystery man wouldn’t keel over, she left his side for the briefest of moments to retrieve the only source of light they had.

Slipping her arm around his waist, she caught him before his knees buckled. “Hang in there, big guy.” She grunted under his weight. “We still have a way to go before you can go to sleep.” Once she had his arm around her neck again for support, they started on the long, slow journey.

When they had gotten no more than fifteen yards away from the craft, there was a loud roaring noise, much like the one she had heard when first seeing the object in the sky. She looked over her shoulder as the sound rose in pitch, her eyes growing wide as the vehicle turned a luminous red with a brilliant white halo—then it was gone, as if it had never been standing there in the first place. No dried leaves burned in its wake, no pine needles smoldered, no nearby tree was left scorched. It simply ... disappeared.

Krista turned her head to look at her mystery man, her blood surging cold in her veins. Panic lodged in her throat, nearly suffocating her, as moonlight played over his ghostly pale features and firmly shut eyes. He seemed oblivious to the fact that his rocket, or whatever it had been, had just gone poof. If she had arrived a few minutes later, would he have vanished too? If she had lingered inside the ship a moment longer, would she be gone from this Earth as well? The idea chilled her to the core and left her stomach feeling queasy.