I'll tell you what the worst part of interstellar space travel is. It isn't the relativistic effects on time of moving at faster than light-speed. Not for me, anyway. My wife left me for another man shortly before I signed up for my first mission and took the kids with her. About four years passed for me on that trip, while a few hundred years went by back home. Suffice to say, everyone I knew was long dead. It didn't matter too much to me though. I'd never had many close friends and I wasn't about to shed a tear for that cheating bitch. I did get the chance to visit my great great great great grandson in the retirement home. He seemed like a nice enough fellow, if a bit senile. After that it really wasn't a big deal to go on the next mission because I didn't know anybody at all anymore.

I've encountered a few aliens on my journeys, but truthfully most of them have been the extraterrestrial version of cows. Sure, they may have a few bug eyes or tentacles here or there, but essentially they're just herd animals and harmless for the most part. There was that one planet filled with hyper-aggressive acid-spewing crustaceans, and that had been far from pleasant, but in retrospect narrowly escaping with my life had been kind of an adrenaline rush. It had certainly been an adventure.

Even the boredom of long space flights isn't the worst part. You can choose to go into suspended animation, if you'd like. Then it feels like no time passes at all. If you do opt to stay awake, there's no shortage of entertainment. There's enough movies, books, music, and video games to last several lifetimes. If there are other crew members and if they're not total wasteoids, you can kill some time talking to them and drinking some booze. But for the most part I prefer solitary missions.

To me the worst part is you can never know for sure when you take off if the star you're headed for is still going to be there by the time you arrive. It takes a long time for the light from even nearby stars to reach us and we can only know they were there hundreds or thousands of years ago, depending on how far away they are. I've made the lengthy trip more than once only to discover the star in question had already gone supernova and burned itself out. It happens more often than you might think. If you're really unlucky the star might have collapsed in on itself and you'll find yourself arriving at a black hole. If you can't put the brakes on in time, you're really screwed. That's never happened to me, but I did have a colleague who got sucked into one. Rumor has it you can still see his ship just inside the event horizon.

I still can't describe the disappointment of discovering you've traveled many light years across the void of space only to arrive at a burnt out husk of a dead star. The first time it happened to me I thought something had gone wrong with the navigation system. But multiple checks confirmed I was where I was supposed to be. They've got state of the art machines these days that can do mind-blowing physics computations in fractions of a second. They can send you to the exact point in space where the star will be at the time you get there, but they can't tell if it's still going to actually exist. To go all that way for absolutely nothing is just a soul-crushing feeling.

But something different happened this last time. I was on a solo mission investigating a newly discovered star, but by the time I got there it was gone. I was cursing loudly and making preparations for the long trip home, resigned to returning empty handed, when a spaceship suddenly materialized nearby. It had a strange design full of harsh angles that didn't appear like anything in nature I was used to. It clearly wasn't one of our ships.

Like I said, most aliens are dumb as bricks. Nobody's ever encountered another space-faring race, so this was an amazing discovery. I tried hailing them with the communications system, but received no reply. Evidently they didn't use the same sort of ship-to-ship signaling technology as we do. I watched the alien ship through the viewscreen for several hours as it just hovered there. Nothing much seemed to be happening, but I couldn't just leave without attempting some sort of further investigation.

I switched my ship to manual navigation controls and slowly piloted it as close as I dared. I didn't want to spook the other ship off or have them mistake my maneuvers as an act of hostility. I didn't know what sort of weaponry they possessed and I didn't want to risk being blown to smithereens. I adjusted my power settings so my defensive shields were at full capacity, just in case.

A full forty-eight hours passed with no action. The alien craft just continued to stay where it was. I began to get the unsettling feeling that I was being studied. I didn't know what to do. They didn't respond to my attempts to communicate and I certainly wasn't going to leave this dead and empty solar system before they did.

Another thirteen hours passed and I had just come to the decision to try to get closer and maybe attempt to board them when I felt a strange tingling sensation across my entire body. The interior of my ship began to grow dim and for a brief moment I had the feeling that I was floating in nothing at all. The next thing I knew I found myself in a small room with many pipes and exposed wires all over the walls.

I was surrounded by three strange creatures, which I can only describe as some sort of insectile centaur. They had lengthy abdomens, which appeared to be covered in scales and they stood on four long legs covered in hairy spines. Their upper body was vaguely human like and they had two additional arms in which they held something that looked like a shepherd's crook made out of bronze. Their faces were like nothing I'd seen before, consisting of large gaping mouths dominated by three large fangs. They had virtually no eyes to speak of, but there were long pointy protrusions on either side of their heads that I assumed functioned as ears. They were almost completely bald, although the one directly in front of me had a few fuzzy strands sticking out of its head that resembled cotton candy or maybe spiderwebs. It seemed to be able to move these strands around according to its will, although I had no idea what their purpose might be or why the other two didn't possess these features.

After taking a moment to get my bearings I came to the conclusion that the aliens must have teleported me over to their ship somehow. I waved my hand in greeting and attempted to introduce myself. They responded by making a high pitched clattering sound and prodded me with their bronze poles. I felt a mild electrical shock when the poles made contact with me and I resolved not to make any more sudden movements.

The alien with the strands, who I took to be the leader, began gesturing with one of his hands and repeatedly making a clicking sound.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," I said.

The three aliens withdrew a short distance away and appeared to be conversing amongst themselves. After a few moments of this, one of them opened up a small cabinet-sized door that was built into the wall and pulled out a solid block of metal. It grabbed a few tools that I couldn't recognize at all and went to work. The other two aliens resumed their positions on either side of me and stood silently. While I didn't feel actively threatened at the moment, I had the distinct impression that they wouldn't stand for any sort of escape attempts.

After what I assumed to be around twenty minutes the alien finished its work. The chunk of metal had been crafted into a small box-like object with numerous holes in it and a few wires sticking out. It shoved the box toward my face and made a gesture with its hand.

"I don't know what you want me to do," I said with a shrug.

The box began to whir for a few moments as the aliens appeared to study it intently. Then it made a clattering sound that resembled the aliens' language. Immediately after that, the box spoke in perfectly understandable English, although with a slight accent. "Calibration complete. You may now initiate communications."

The lead alien grabbed the box and clattered into it. "What have you done with the fire god?" the box translated.

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

The box made a clattering sound translating my words to the aliens. The lead alien responded with a rapid series of high-pitched clicks.

"Do not lie to us, creature. The fire god. Where is it? What have you done with it?"

"Do you mean the star that was here? I don't know. It must have imploded. Maybe it went supernova first. Is it your sun? Are you from this solar system? How did the star die and leave you alive?"

"We do not understand supernova or sun or solar system. Fire god reign in night sky among many lesser deities since beginning of time. Then fire god disappear. We ask fire god where he go but fire god not answer. So we build vessel to go to fire god. But fire god not here. Instead we find strange vessel. We not understand what you are so we build device to scan vessel. Find you. We not know how to reach you so we build device to bring you to our vessel. We not understand you so we build device to speak for us. Fire god not here. You are. Conclusion - you have done something with fire god. Where is fire god?"

I continued to try to converse with them, but communication was difficult, even with the assistance of their translation box. Slowly, I believed I began to piece together what was going on, and quite frankly it was astonishing. On the one hand these beings seemed to be quite primitive in their beliefs. They appeared to have no understanding of what a star was, and from what I could tell the one that used to exist here had probably been the brightest one in their night sky and they worshipped it as a god. I wasn't clear if they orbited another star closely enough to have a daytime sun - possibly an object that they didn't recognize as being the same as the stars they could see at night, or if they evolved on some sort of rogue planet that traveled through the emptiness of space. I couldn't get a straight answer out of them on this point. Or at least not an understandable one.

On the other hand they seemed to possess unfathomable intellect and technological ability. If they didn't have a solution to a problem they seemed to be able to merely invent one on a whim. I gradually understood that prior to this expedition they had never left their homeworld before. But when faced with the need to investigate the disappearance of their fire god they simply invented interstellar travel and flew through space as if it were as easy as sailing on a pond. Similarly, I don't believe that they had possessed transporters or universal translators prior to their encounter with me. They just saw the need for them and so they invented them on the spot. No particular trial and error period involved, merely the time it took to build whatever device they needed.

I saw this in action first hand. I was trying to explain to them who I was and where I came from and that I had not had anything to do with the death of their fire god but merely was a visitor from another star on a mission of exploration. They insisted on seeing firsthand what I was talking about and within an hour had whipped up a sort of telescopic viewport. I located the faint yellow light that was my home star and pointed it out to them. They seemed very interested to learn about another fire god and began asking me many questions about it, many of which didn't make any sense to me, but I did my best to provide them with answers.

After a while they seemed to be satisfied with the information I had given them on this point and they circled back to the disappearance of their own fire god. They still seemed convinced that I was involved somehow in its destruction. They either didn't understand or simply wouldn't accept that I was an innocent explorer who didn't even know the star was already gone when I set out to visit it. They kept demanding to see the spear with which I had slain their fire god. I extended an invitation to visit my ship so they could see that I had minimal weaponry. Certainly nothing powerful enough to destroy a star.

The lead alien took me up on my offer and we teleported together back to my ship. It took its time inspecting every nook and cranny and seemed to be taking notes on an electronic pad it had managed to whip up. After it had examined my ship to its satisfaction, it clattered something into the translator box.

"The fire god demands vengeance in equal measure for its death. It shall not be long now."

After that the alien teleported back to its ship leaving me alone on mine. I watched through the viewport as the alien craft fired up its engines and disappeared from view in a brief, but intense blaze of light. Sensing there was nothing left for me to do here I set my coordinates for home.

During the course of my return journey I realized the full implications of my actions. I had never been able to convince them that I was not responsible for the destruction of the star that they worshipped. I had also stupidly pointed out to them exactly where I came from. And with their ability to seemingly invent anything they can conceive of, I have no doubt they have already begun building a weapon capable of destroying a star. After all, their fire god must be avenged in equal measure.

So I'm afraid I can't stay around and chat any longer. I'm certain they'll be here sooner rather than later with their star destroying weapon ready to wipe out our sun. I'm headed off to the nearest star system with habitable planets as soon as my spaceship is serviced and ready to go, and I'd advise you to do the same. I'm planning on starting a new life there, maybe the beginning of a whole new civilization. I just hope the star is still there when I arrive.

The End

~~~

Wuckster is a temporary visitor to the planet Earth currently living it Las Vegas. He's not quite sure how he got here but he thinks it seems like a nice place. Go visit his profile to see some alien work!