The hum of the Stellar Odyssey's engines was the only sound in the observation deck, broken occasionally by the faint hiss of the air recycler. Maxwell stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the endless dark. It had been four weeks since they left Orpheon-7, and the journey through the uncharted coordinates was beginning to feel like a slow, silent test of their endurance.
The starmap shimmered faintly on the transparent display in front of him. A large patch of crimson light pulsed faintly on the edge of their path — a region their automated scanners had flagged as The Crimson Sea. The name wasn't official; it was simply what the ship's AI, based on spectrum readings, had labeled it.
"It's… glowing," muttered Lieutenant Aria, who had been reviewing the same readings from her station. "That's not reflected starlight. It's emitting its own radiation."
Maxwell didn't answer immediately. He knew that regions of space with self-luminescent nebulae weren't unheard of, but the energy signatures here were… strange. Almost rhythmic.
"Lieutenant, patch the visuals to main view," he said finally.
The holoscreen lit up, replacing the starmap with a real-time image. The crew collectively inhaled.
Before them stretched a vast cosmic ocean — not gas in the traditional sense, but an endless shimmering expanse of deep red particles that rippled like liquid silk. It moved with a slow, hypnotic grace, as though some great unseen current stirred it. The color shifted subtly, blood-red one moment, a burning scarlet the next.
Ensign Vell, leaning closer to the screen, muttered under his breath, "It's beautiful… and wrong. Something about it feels alive."
Maxwell's eyes narrowed. "Run a long-range biological scan. If there's life in there, we'll know before we get close."
The scanners pulsed silently for several minutes, their rhythmic ping echoing faintly in the deck. Data streamed across the console — molecular breakdowns, thermal variations, radiation levels.
"No conventional life signs," Aria reported, "but… there's a repeating electromagnetic pulse at a fixed interval. Almost like—"
"—A heartbeat," Maxwell finished for her. His voice was low, unreadable.
The room went silent again.
---
Two hours later, the Stellar Odyssey drifted closer. The ship's shields shimmered faintly as the edge of the Crimson Sea lapped against them. The red particulate matter swirled in eddies, almost curling toward the hull as if drawn by some invisible attraction.
Maxwell sat in the captain's chair, reviewing the latest spectrographic data. "It's not just dust or gas," he said. "Each particle is… hollow. Microscopic, shell-like structures filled with an unknown fluid."
"Could be organic spores," Vell offered, frowning. "If that's the case, we're floating through the largest organism in recorded history."
"Or," Aria countered, "we're inside something's circulatory system."
A sudden shiver ran down Maxwell's spine. The idea was absurd — but then, so was most of what they'd encountered in the last year.
"Helm," he said, "maintain a drift speed of 10 kilometers per second. No sudden acceleration. I don't want to stir this up until we know what it can do."
---
By the fourth hour inside the Sea, the crew began to notice a faint vibration in the deck plating. At first, it was almost imperceptible, like the hum of distant machinery. But gradually, it grew — a slow, thudding tremor that matched the electromagnetic pulse detected earlier.
"That's not coming from the ship," Aria whispered, looking pale. "It's external."
The lights on the deck flickered, and for the briefest moment, the forward view darkened. When the display cleared, the Crimson Sea was moving. The swirling particles began to shift in a coordinated pattern, forming spirals that tightened and expanded in sequence, almost like muscle contractions.
"It's… reacting to us," Vell said, his voice tight.
Maxwell stood, his mind racing. "All stop. Let's see what it does when we're still."
The Odyssey halted. The spirals slowed, then stopped. The particles drifted again in their lazy, hypnotic way.
Maxwell exhaled slowly. It's not mindless, he thought. It's aware.
---
That night — if you could call it "night" in deep space — Maxwell recorded a detailed entry in his personal log.
> Maxwell's Log — Day 142
I've commanded vessels through asteroid storms, navigated black hole edges, and skirted the event horizons of neutron stars. But never… never have I felt watched in the way I feel now. The Crimson Sea is no nebula. No cosmic fluke. It is a living entity — or the byproduct of one — and it knows we are here.
When he finished the log, the deck beneath him gave another faint shudder. Somewhere deep in that ocean of red, something was moving — and coming closer.