“It’s got to heat up, Leon! Get it up in the sunlight.” It was Cogs on the line, not Zeke.
Leon left the bucket to float beside him, took the sparkling chunks of ice in both hands, held them up to the snowball like some kind of offering, then raised them over his head and poked them with a finger. The chunks rose slowly, rotating slightly, and for a long, horrible moment the two men stood before the Orion-sized snowball—waiting for a reaction.
Nothing, at first, the ice chunks a meter off, then two, tumbling still. And then they began to change: first dirty ice, now a dark green, then lighter, changing shape, flowing into a single mass and spinning faster, twisting into a coiled cylinder. The cylinder writhed like a snake, stretching out towards the snowball as a tentacle of white stuff emerged there to grasp it like an elephant’s trunk taking a peanut. It was gone in a flash, sucked up like all the other ice on the hull.
“Jesus,” said Arnie, barely audible to Leon, the sound of his own heartbeat pounding his ears.
There was nothing else to say, and all they could do was stand there and watch as the snowball backed off to where its companion waited. The things turned together, moved off slowly, and suddenly the space around the two men was sparkling in crystals of flawless white, a light dusting of snowflakes pure as spring water. They stood gaping for minutes, until the two snowballs joined the bigger one, melding into its sides, disappearing into it. The big one pulsed green, turning, its emerald glow steadying, and then it moved away, slowly at first, trailing a sparkling plume that widened as the thing suddenly accelerated. In seconds, it was only a bright spot flickering in and out within the dust lanes of the dense nebula beyond.
“Good job, guys. Time to come inside,” said Zeke.
“Yeah,” said Leon, still looking outwards. He followed Arnie back to the hatch, where Arnie leaned forward, their faceplates touching.
“Leon—those things out there—they’re alive.”
“I know,” said Leon—and then they went inside.
Four months later, on their way back to the picket platform “Harrison,” the entire EVA crew was just finishing breakfast in the mess room. A young tech was having a problem with one of the synth dispensers, and had started banging on it with his fist when Waisley walked in, and then the banging stopped.
“I have an announcement,” said Waisley, grinning. “Molecular cloud complex 3G7 wishes to announce the birth of a new star!”
“Let me guess where it was born,” said Leon.
“Cogs says the color-T is ten thousand Kelvin, but it’ll settle down to eight. A nice sol-type sun for whatever’s out there.”
“Good enough for snowballs?” asked Arnie.
“Could be. They seemed to know where they had to be. Anyway, we’re gonna find out. As soon as we retrofit at Harrison, we have orders to go back out there to look for them.”
Everyone groaned.
“Hey, this is important! First contact, and all that, and besides, there are some planets forming back there. It’s our job to look in on them happening, men; don’t forget what you signed on for.”
“We gonna try talking to them?” asked Arnie.
“Maybe, if the scientists at base can figure out what we’re dealing with. Cogs is their hero right now. He’s in heaven.”
“What the hell could we say to each other?” said Leon.
Waisley laughed. “I’ll settle for a thank you,” he said, then left the room.
The tech started banging on the synth dispenser again, and Leon jerked around to shout at him, “You got something against that machine, Keith? Jesus, the racket!”
“Pop’s coming out warm again. Ice is gone. We never have any ice around here when we need it!”
And then he quickly ducked, to escape the barrage of wadded-up napkins simultaneously thrown at his head by every other man in the room.