Inside the small Argo-7 ship, chaos had a name and fur.
"Zara, not again!" Valeria shouted, as a tiny possum in a space suit climbed up the control panels, leaving a trail of cookie wrappers floating in zero gravity.
Zara, with her big eyes and trembling nose, found it particularly fun to activate a button with her paws that turned on the pressure alarm.
"ALARM! Unstable cabin pressure."
"That's not a toy!" Valeria pushed hard, floating until she reached her while Zara fled with a shrill chuckle, as if she knew exactly what she was doing.
It was a whirlwind.
Valeria finally caught her, held her in front of her face and sighed. Zara stuck her tongue out through the viewfinder.
"I swear one of these days you're going to make me bald, little saboteur."
Zara looked at her with her face cocked and then curled up against her neck. Valeria smiled, tired, and sat down in the cabin again. Planet Z-75 was already visible on the horizon: a reddish-hued sphere, with swirls of dust and dark spots like healed wounds.
"Time to work," he murmured, in the tone of someone who hasn't slept enough for weeks.
The descent was slow, turbulent. The wind was pounding the stabilizers as if the planet itself was trying to prevent their arrival. When they finally touched land, a cloud of red sand enveloped the ship, covering the observation dome with an opaque layer.
Valeria activated the hatch filters. Outside, the landscape was as barren as an open wound: eroded mountains, dry craters, rock columns like ancient towers covered in rust and dust.
And a sound. A constant, low hum, like a buried wail.
Zara held on to her leg tightly. Even she, as restless as ever, seemed to have noticed that something on this planet wasn't right.
"Don't worry," Valeria said in a softer tone, touching her companion's back. We just have to take samples, analyze the atmosphere, and come back. Easy.
But the truth was that nothing about Z-75 was easy.
From Saturn's base station, they had sent three teams before her. None returned. The last transmissions were incomprehensible: screams, static, fragments of distorted logs.
The clearest of all had been one:
"The Monscars... they are alive!"
That name, Monscar, had begun to circulate as a joke among the technicians, a kind of galactic legend to scare the new ones. But among the commanders, the tension was real.
Valeria activated her communicator.
"Valeria to the base." I request immediate reproduction of the blog "Monscar Alfa". Authorisation code V-L-07.
A pause. Then, the robotic voice of the artificial intelligence responded:
—Reproducing the Alpha log.
"Historical record: species called Monscar, original inhabitants of planet Z-75, formerly called Earth. Presumed extinction 13,000 years ago.
Probable cause: Pandemic caused by a highly mutated virus, recorded in old archives as SARS-CoV-2.
The archaeological remains found suggest a civilizational collapse... however... Recent scans indicate residual organic presence with signs of active mutation."
Valeria stopped the recording.
A cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, something unusual under the thermal control of his suit. She looked through the dome, toward the silent mountains that watched her like sleeping witnesses.
"Zara," he whispered, his hand instinctively reaching for the pulse weapon in his belt. Something is still here. And he's been waiting too long.
Zara gave a low squeal, pressing against his side.
Valeria looked one last time at the horizon, before activating the reconnaissance drone and preparing to exit the ship.