Devil's Eye.(Kevin Hughes) Author’s Note: Jumbo’s are huge planets, almost stars, but not quite. There are as many as hundreds of these floating in interstellar space. Racing through our Galaxy without a star to orbit. We would never see it before it hit us…but what if they saw us first? Story below.


“Are you sure?”

Felp enlarged his pressure membrane a bit. The equivalent of a human shrug.

“As sure as I can be. I mean these creatures eat light. What am I supposed to make out of that? But are they intelligent? Yes. Definitely. I mean they can count anyway.”

Forb let a stream of liquid helium propel him closer to the bubble that Felp had constructed. He had no idea what, or how, the darn thing worked, but somehow, it collected visible light, polarized it, and created a “tunnel” out of their atmosphere to see out into Space.

Nobody had ever seen light before. Or a Star. Now, both of them were visible in the bubble that Felp and a dozen other brainiacs had designed. It had only been working for a few Darves (about a week or so in Earth Time) when they had three shocking discoveries in a row: Light, a Star (bright Yellow) and some sort of radio waves with patterns in it that resembled Math.

“When will we get there?”

Felp expanded again. Yet another “shrug”:

"I don’t think we will. I think…and this isn’t really much more than a guess…I think we will probably pass close enough to strip two, maybe as many as four…of the planets around that burning orb. They will orbit us from then on.”

Another blast of liquid Helium and Forb sank back into the depth and pressures of his Planet. Felp followed. It was time to tell the others.

*****

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. I mean these creatures live in an atmosphere more than a million times denser than ours. The pressures they exist under are extreme.”

“How extreme?”

“Well, you know what happened to that submersible a year ago?”

“The Titan?”

“Yes.”

“I do. Why?”

“Well what happened to that deep see vehicle would happen to the entire Earth if it fell into the Atmosphere of that …that…thing.”

The Director’s eyes widened.

“You mean to tell me that something alive, lives under pressures that would melt our rock?”

“Yep. I mean these creatures seem to live on Liquid Helium the way we live with Liquid Water.”

“When will they get here?”

Another shrug:

“Maybe a month…two at the outside. Then the size of that planet…brown dwarf…baby star…whatever. Anyways, it is so big that it will strip off two, maybe as many as four- of our planets into its gravity well. Neptune, Uranus, Pluto…for sure. And maybe Saturn and Jupiter. We need more data.”

“What happens when we lose those Planets?”

This time there was a long pause before he answered the Director. Turning to look directly into the Director’s eyes, he told her what he really thought:

“Then, well, we all die. “

*****

“Can you do it?”

Felp did the equivalent of a Human shrug…again.

“If the Numbers they sent us are correct. If we can slow ourselves down. And if we hit that sweet spot…then yes.”

Forb let the winds cycle through her membrane at their gentle (to her) speed of some thousands of kilometers an hour. It soothed her much like lapping waves on a warm beach do Humans.

“So we stay far enough away that we don’t strip off any planets…and they will survive?”

“Yes.”

“And what do we get?”

Felp gurgled up several compounds that would have been incomprehensible to Humans…but conveyed the same emotion: Laughter.

“We get two things.”

A small cyclone appeared to rise up two layers of atmospheric zones. It was the equivalent of raising an eyebrow on a Human. If Humans had eyebrows kilometers in size.

“Such as?”

“First we save an intelligent species from extinction.”

A towering vortex leaned to the right. The human Equivalent of a head nod.

“Second, we get a home. No more wandering in the dark.”

It took only a few dorps (the Human Equivalent of seconds) for Forb to make up her mind.

“Do it. Let there be light.”

*****

“The JWT confirms it. The Jumbo rogue has stopped.”

“How?”

“I can’t even imagine. But the Astrophysicists seem to think that they slowed their planets rotation, and “bulged” a huge chunk of atmosphere in front of itself to act as a brake. And now it is in Orbit far enough away to keep us all safe and in equilibrium with their gravity well.”

“So now what?”

“We talk.”

“What about?”

“Light.”

“Light?”

“Yes, Light. They have never seen any. At all. They are not reflecting anything…since light never hit them from a star before.”

“Will we be able to see them?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe not them. But we will see their Planet … but only with a telescope. It will look a lot like Jupiter…if Jupiter was about a hundred time bigger. “

A month later, and the first pictures of Jumbo were released. It looked like a “tonk” marble called a “Devil’s Eye.” Yellow with a red streak down the middle. Poster of it were all over Earth within days.

*****

All intelligent life on the Jumbo were gathered near the highest altitudes. Forb and Felb floated gently, letting the gasses push them up to the very edge of the atmosphere. They watched the first rays of “light” excite the lighter gasses near the edge. An edge they could never approach, let alone pass through.

For the first time in history, they saw light. Not like we do, but as a spectrum. Forb, Felp, and everyone else sunk gently down into the depths as they unconsciously let out a myriad of compounds and gasses. Only to realize they couldn’t ‘see” anymore. So they popped back up to look yet again.

“So that’s light.”

“Beautiful.”

And it was.

---