Better than a Goldilocks

            “We’ve got a couple visitors,” John said, peering through his binoculars and checking his pistol.  Peter grabbed the binoculars.  His breath caught in his throat.  “A couple” was the understatement (1) of the millennium (hyperbole, 2).  An armada of at least one hundred ships hovered at the edge of the horizon, black dots silhouetted against the white light of a sun (antagonists, 3).  John rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t just hallucinating a scene from Independence Day (allusion, 4).

            “Those are not friendlies,” Peter said.  He ran to the communications tent and found Mary fiddling with some equipment.  “Any new contact?”

            “No, sir.  This is day five (symbol, 5) and still nothing.”

            “Well, we have something.  Alert the others.”

            Wide-eyed, Mary summoned the team with her short-distance radio.  They rushed to their base clearing and saw the silhouettes moving closer, clearly distinguishable without binoculars at this point.  “Oh my god.  Oh my god!” one of the crew members gasped (anaphora, 6).

            “Grab your gear, stand position on the edge of the crash site crater,” Peter ordered.  We’re screwed, he thought.

            “Our Father, who art in heaven…” someone muttered (apostrophe, 7).

            They all scrambled to their places.  Peter was about to yell another command when he saw a rocket headed toward them.  “TAKE COVER!”

            The blast threw him back against what looked like a tree.  The haze and smoke reminded him of their crash onto this planet, just five days in the past.  What went wrong?  Why is this happening?  Every sense he felt at the crash came back immediately. 

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Some light had trickled past his eyelids, breaking the astronaut’s forced and pained slumber.  How long have I been out? Commander Peter Bishop (protagonist, 8) had thought as he gathered his surroundings.  He blinked hard and wiped a black film of sweat, blood, and ash from his forehead on the sleeve of his space suit.  More expensive than a luxury car, his suit was made from the most scientifically advanced material on earth.  It was designed to withstand cuts by diamonds and still be as flexible as nylon (simile, 9).  The crash shredded it (simple sentence, 10).  Peter wiped his face again.  He stared at his forearm.  Wait, wiping my face?  How— he thought.  He spun around, looking for his helmet.  I can’t breathe (contraction, 11).  He clawed at his throat and leapt up with a grimace, too panicked to notice or care about his fractured right leg.  Peter saw nothing but dirt and rocks scattered in the hundred-meter crater in which he found himself.  He scrambled to the top, gasping for oxygen.

            A low shining light just over the horizon, a sun, hit Peter’s eyes as he climbed over the lip of the crater, momentarily blinding him (appositive, 12).  He blinked rapidly, and then noticed ten people gathered in a lazy half-circle near him.  His shipmates.  Peter rushed them, pointing to his neck and wheezing.  Several of them jumped up and ran to his side.  Peter felt as though he were about to pass out, but then the youngest member of the team, John Zeb, said, “Commander Bishop, there is oxygen here.”  Peter locked eyes with him and inhaled. 

            It was a god-forsaken panic attack, Peter thought.  “We thought you kicked the bucket, Pete,” Andy said (euphemism, 13).  He sat down on what he thought was a rock before it yelped and scurried away.  It turned out to be a giant rodent, almost exactly like the kind Peter saw in those stupid sci-fi movies his older brother got addicted to.  Muttering the cleverest string of curse words that came to mind, the commander sat on the red and blue-speckled terrain, put his head in his palms, and gathered his thoughts (parallelism, 14).  His team watched him.  His stream of thoughts, a high-speed train showing no sign of slowing (metaphor, 15), was running wild ever since he gained consciousness.  It could have been his imagination, but the chunks of red and blue in the otherwise black soil beneath started to move, too.  Peter jumped up and started to stroll around the lip of the crater, taking in his surroundings, preparing for worse apparitions (asyndeton, 16).  Now, his thoughts started to slow and process coherently.

            So we’ve made it…wherever this is… His thoughts trailed off as he watched something that looked like a palm tree with spiky yellow leaves swoop down over a sneaking rodent.  It squealed for a moment before there was a loud SNAP and the leaves rustled to their original quiet position (onomatopoeia, 17).  Everything on this strange planet was still.  There was no wind, but there was light. An orb about twice the size of the earth’s sun appeared to be setting, and another star about a quarter of the size of the first on almost the directly opposite side broke through the horizon line on Peter’s right, murdering his shadow in the moments before the big star set.  Even without wind, the planet still had a certain life to it; its landscape breathed and shifted, as if it were an alien being itself (figurative language, 18).  The sky was the vibrant blue of the water at a Caribbean vacation spot.  And everywhere surrounding the crater were trees and plants of different shapes and sizes and effervescent colors, some of them similar in appearance to earthen flora but most completely strange and foreign (setting, 19).

            Peter completed his path around the crater and made it back to the crew of the USS Synthesis.  They all stared at him.  He said, “Anything left from the ship?”  He hadn’t seen any parts. 

            His second-in-command, Lucas Evans, said, “Just the back capsule.  We have a little food, enough clothes, and some electronics.”

            “Comm system?”

            Lucas nodded.  “Mary’s working on it in a quieter clearing with Andy.  It’s got a shot.”

            “Where?”

            Lucas pointed over Peter’s left shoulder.  “About a quarter of a mile in.”

            “Is it safe?”

            John spoke up again.  “We haven’t seen any animals that have tried to prey on us.  The plants don’t seem to like us either.  Commander, I think we found a Goldilocks planet.  It has air and it has to have food and—“

            “Water?”

            “Yeah,” Lucas said.  “It’s in the ground, and we found a river not much farther than Mary’s position.  It’s pure.”

            “It’s better than a Goldilocks,” John said.

            Peter nodded.  He realized he must have been out for a few hours longer than the rest of them if they already knew so much.  Better than our Goldilocks? he thought as he headed in the direction Lucas had pointed. 

            Mary and Andy, two of the most intelligent communications operators on earth, were huddled over the intergalactic radio (nothing more in appearance than a black box a foot in diameter), cursing under their breaths (parentheses, 20).  “Any progress?” Peter said.

            They both flinched.  “Jesus, Peter, why do you have to scare us like that?” Andy said.  “No progress yet, but there’s no reason why this shouldn’t—”

            Something had worked.  Something knew they were there.

------TO BE CONTINUED-----