The Aries Mission
Part One: The Knock
Dr. Penelope Stella had been alone in the observation module for exactly forty-seven minutes when she heard it.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Three soft knocks against the outer hull, polite as a neighbor asking to borrow sugar. She paused, stylus suspended over her tablet where she'd been logging their approach to Mars. The Red Planet hung before them like a rust-colored marble, growing larger by the hour as Aries Three completed its final orbital insertion burn.
Silence.
Penny shook her head and returned to her work. Thermal expansion, probably. The ship's hull contracted and expanded as they moved between shadow and sunlight during their approach, creating all sorts of sounds. Mission Command had warned them about the acoustic tricks that deep space could play on isolated minds.
Twenty minutes later, it happened again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
This time, the sound came from a different section of the hull entirely—somewhere near the main viewport. Penny set down her tablet and moved to the reinforced window, pressing her face against the glass. Mars dominated the view now, its polar ice caps gleaming in the distant sunlight. Nothing else was visible in the vast emptiness around them—no debris, no other vessels, nothing but the infinite dark of space.
"Stella to Bridge," she said into her comm. "Anyone else hearing metallic sounds against the hull?"
"Negative, Penny." Commander Torres's voice crackled through the speaker. "Everything's quiet up here. You getting spooked in the observation deck?"
"Just checking. Probably thermal stress on the joints."
"Copy that. How's the approach documentation coming?"
Penny glanced at her tablet—pages of notes about their orbital insertion, trajectory calculations, surface landing preparations. Standard procedure for humanity's third attempt to reach Mars. "Nearly finished. We should be ready for surface deployment in eighteen hours."
"Roger that. Let us know if you spot any little green men out there."
The comm went quiet, leaving Penny alone with the hum of life support and the whisper of recycled air. She tried to focus on her work, but the silence felt oppressive. They were further from Earth than any human had ever traveled, suspended in a metal shell in the void between worlds.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Four knocks this time, coming from directly above her head. Penny's blood chilled. There was no way thermal expansion could account for sounds that precise, that rhythmic, especially not in the vacuum of space. She grabbed a wrench from the maintenance kit and rapped it against the wall in response.
The silence stretched for several heartbeats. Then, impossibly, something knocked back.
*Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Torres!" Penny's voice pitched higher than she intended. "Commander, I need someone in the observation module. Now."
On our way."
By the time Torres and Engineer David Kim arrived, the knocking had stopped. Penny stood in the center of the module, wrench still clutched in her white-knuckled grip, eyes darting between the bulkheads.
"Where exactly did you hear it?" Torres asked, running her hands along the hull seams.
"Started over there." Penny pointed to the starboard wall. "Then moved to the main viewport. Last time it was directly overhead."
Kim pulled out a tablet and began running diagnostics on the ship's structural integrity. "All systems nominal. No micro-meteorite impacts detected. Hull integrity at one hundred percent. We're in deep space, Penny—there's nothing out there but vacuum."
"I heard it," Penny insisted. "Four knocks. I knocked back, and it responded."
Torres and Kim exchanged a look that made Penny's stomach clench. She knew that look—the careful expression people wore when they thought someone was cracking under pressure.
"Penny, you've been pulling double shifts on the approach calculations," Torres said gently. "When's the last time you got a full sleep cycle?"
"I'm not imagining things."
"No one said you were. But deep space has a way of playing tricks on the mind. The isolation, the distance from home—it affects everyone differently."
After they left, Penny tried to return to her work, but concentration proved impossible. Every creak of the ship's superstructure, every whisper of air through the vents made her jump. She found herself staring out at the star-field, searching for any sign of movement in the cosmic dark.
The next incident came during Kim's solo maintenance shift in the engine bay.
"Torres to all crew," his voice crackled over the intercom, tight with barely controlled panic. "I'm getting some kind of... contact sounds from the outer hull. Near the main drive assembly."
Penny and Torres rushed to the engine compartment, finding Kim floating near the massive fusion drive, scanner in one hand, emergency wrench in the other.
"Sounded like someone tapping on the hull," he said, face pale in the blue glow of the reactor display. "Rhythmic. Deliberate. But that's impossible—we're in hard vacuum."
Torres ran her own scans. "No hull breaches. No debris impacts. David, you've been working for fourteen straight hours. Maybe you should—"
"I know what I heard," Kim cut her off, the same desperate edge in his voice that Penny recognized from her own experience.
Over the next several days, the pattern became clear—the knocking only came when crew members were alone. Torres heard it during her solo EVA to inspect the communication array, a series of raps against her helmet that made her spin around in terror, finding nothing but the infinite void of space. Dr. Webb experienced it while alone in the medical bay, a rhythmic tapping that seemed to move along the exterior hull like footsteps.
Each time, when they tried to tell the others, doubt crept in. "Are you sure it wasn't system noise?" "Could have been the hull settling." "Deep space acoustics are weird—vibrations carry through the superstructure."
The crew began avoiding solo duties. Sleep shifts became communal affairs, with crew members finding excuses to stay together in the common areas. Productivity dropped as paranoia rose. No one wanted to admit what they were all thinking: something was out there in the void, something that knew they were inside.
On their seventh day of approach to Mars, the knocking became hammering.
Penny was alone in the observation module again—someone had to complete the final orbital calculations, and she'd volunteered to prove she wasn't losing her mind. She was checking their trajectory when the first blow struck the hull with enough force to make the entire module shudder.
BANG.
Then another. And another. Whatever was outside wasn't asking permission anymore—it was demanding entry. The blows came faster, harder, shaking equipment loose from their magnetic clamps and sending her tablet spinning through the zero-gravity environment.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
"Emergency! Emergency!" Penny screamed into her comm as she grabbed a handhold to steady herself. "Something's attacking the ship!"
The hammering stopped abruptly, replaced by a silence so complete it made Penny's ears ring. When Torres and Kim burst into the observation module thirty seconds later, they found her pressed against the far bulkhead, shaking.
"Where?" Torres demanded, scanner already out. "Where's the breach?"
Penny pointed to the section of hull where the hammering had been strongest. Kim ran his instruments over the area, frowning at the readings.
"No damage," he reported. "Not even a scratch. Hull integrity unchanged. Penny, there's nothing out there but vacuum."
"That's impossible," Penny whispered. "It was trying to break through. The whole module was shaking."
Torres helped her stabilize in the zero-g environment, studying her face carefully. "Penny, I think you need to take a break. Get some rest in your quarters, let Webb handle the approach calculations."
"I'm not crazy!" Penny's voice broke. "Something is out there! It knows we're in here!"
That night, they held an emergency meeting in the common area, all four crew members floating in a circle around the central table. Penny felt their skeptical glances like physical blows. She knew how she must look—sleep-deprived, paranoid, fragile. But she also knew what she'd experienced was real.
"I think we need to consider the possibility," Torres said carefully, "that the psychological stress of deep space travel is affecting our perceptions. We're further from Earth than humans have ever been. Our minds are trying to process—"
"It knows our names."
The words tumbled out of Penny's mouth before she could stop them. The others stared at her.
"What did you say?" Kim asked.
Penny took a shaky breath. "Last night, after the hammering stopped, I heard something else through the hull. Faint, like someone whispering through the vacuum. It said my name. 'Penelope. Dr. Penelope Stella.' It knows who I am."
The silence that followed felt like a physical weight pressing against her chest. Torres and Kim exchanged another one of those looks.
"Penny," Torres said finally, "I think you should return to your quarters. Get some medication from Dr. Webb, try to—"
"Listen."
Kim's sharp whisper cut through Torres's words. He was staring at the ceiling, scanner forgotten in his floating hand.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Three soft knocks, polite as a door-to-door salesman calling in the depths of space.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Torres reached for her emergency kit, but the knocking had already moved. Now it came from the port side, then the floor, then somewhere impossible to locate. It circled their ship like a predator testing the defenses of its prey, moving through the vacuum as if the laws of physics were merely suggestions.
"Sweet Jesus," Kim breathed. "What is that?"
The knocking stopped. In the silence, they could hear their own rapid breathing, the frantic beeping of monitoring equipment, the whisper of recycled air. Then, impossibly, they heard something else—a sound that made their blood turn to ice.
A human voice, muffled but unmistakable, calling through the hull from the vacuum of space:
"Please... let me in."
The voice was male, desperate, exhausted. It carried the weight of someone who had been calling for help across the cosmic dark for a very long time.
"I just want to come home."
Penny looked at her crewmates' pale faces floating in the dim light of the common area and saw her own terror reflected there. Whatever was outside their ship, drifting in the impossible cold of space, it wasn't just knocking anymore.
It was begging.
A BIG thank you to
for this prompt challenge. This story wouldn't exist without you. Go check out his version of the prompt!!!
If you would like more of this story, please let me know…..
This one would fit in The World of May-hem.
wow I am so sorry I am just now getting to this, but good golly Maryellen! You slip into different genres with such ease and every piece is pure gold! This is absolutely amazing!
LOVE!!!!