Image by Edgar Calderón from Pixabay

No one ever told you space was cold when you first volunteered for these deep runs. Javen wrapped his jacket tighter around him. It was black, cold, and empty. He pulled the tab on his coffee, counted to thirty, and took a sip. The hot liquid burned down his throat.

“Anything to report, Javen?” Sabine asked as she came up to the front of their small research vessel.

“Same old, same old,” Javen said. “Cold, black, and bleak. We haven’t seen anything worth reporting since we got out here.”

Sabine grimaced. “If we don’t find something soon, the mission could be in jeopardy.”

“I know, Sabine. But what did you expect? Those tales we heard came form half drunk, mostly crazy asteroid miners. They weren’t going to be true even if we wanted them to be.” Javen took another sip of his coffee.

“Those miners have been right about other things, Javen. Why couldn’t they be right about this?” Sabine countered, sitting down next to him.

Javen opened his mouth to challenge that when a flicker of light caught his attention. He turned to look and he saw a strange, glowing, octopus-like alien floating in space one hundred meters from the nose of the craft. “What the hell?”

Sabine looked out. “They are real,” she breathed. “Get a picture, quick.”

Javen fumbled with the controls, but when he got the camera up it was gone. “Damn.”

A few minutes later, it returned. It wasn’t alone. Hundreds of the aliens followed it. Javen and Sabine could only watch as they danced, swam, and cavorted in front of the ship. Javen managed to catch most of the display on camera. When it ended, the aliens vanished into the blackness once more.

“I was right,” Sabine said finally, when they could both speak again. “Crazy asteroid miners do know what they’re talking about.”

“Most of the time,” Javen agreed.

“Let’s head back to the station,” Sabine said.