When Experiment 626 emerged from hyperspace, the first thing he noticed was the smell of smoke. He felt the ship vibrate, and heard metal groan and alarms blare. He opened his eyes, and they immediately started to water. Something in the control console was burning, and the cockpit was filled with a thin haze of acrid smoke. He blinked to infrared vision. Yep, it was hot. Returning to normal vision, he peered out of the canopy. The stars were all unfamiliar, and an enormous blue globe loomed ahead. Somewhere off behind the planet was a star, bright white with no atmosphere to scatter its light. On the other side of his vision, coincidentally appearing about the same size, was the pale crescent of a moon. He was on the night side of the planet, but his sensitive eyes could still pick out faint blues and greens in the reflected moonlight. He didn't recognize the shapes. Where was he?
At the moment, it didn't matter. The planet had to only be a couple thousand klicks away, and it was getting closer fast. He had to stop his descent and get the cruiser into a stable orbit in a hurry. He grabbed the control stick and pulled hard. But all that happened was a loud bang. 626 scampered onto the headrest of his seat and looked out the back – the rear cameras were all disabled. Flames shot out of the craft, and he could see pieces of engine twinkling in the starlight as they flew away. Not good. Worse, the ship slowly started to rotate, pushed by the small thrust of the gases venting from the various holes in its side.
"Chootah!" 626 swore, and punched the dashboard, denting and tearing the plastic. It was soft, sticky, and very hot. Diverting his attention, he looked at the various warning lights. O2 levels were fine, but cabin pressure was low, and slowly falling. He had a leak somewhere. His hydraulics were completely dead, which was fine since so were both engines. He switched the control mode from thrust vectoring to reaction thrusters – these were normally turned off when the engines were running, but were used for attitude control and maneuvering during docking (626 had ignored this since he didn't care if the Turo got cooked by exhaust) - and tried again. Nothing happened, apart from the smoke coming from the console getting thicker. Uh oh. This was serious: he had no control over the ship whatsoever. And then there was the smoke. He took a deep breath and threw the switch to activate the onboard fire suppression systems. Again, nothing.
All he could do now was figure out what kind of planet he was about to crash-land on. The ship was spinning too fast now for him to clearly focus. He carefully pushed off from his seat, stopping his rotation and floating in the middle of the cockpit. He peered at the world. It was a mixture of deep blue and dark green. The blue could have been vegetation on a planet of an orange or red star, but for this one that was unlikely. And the green?
626 looked at the thin layer of haze on the limb of the planet. It was blue-white. That was encouraging: the atmosphere wasn't full of chlorine, which meant the green had to be vegetation, and the blue had to be ocean. But an ocean of what? He blinked to infrared. By the color of the ocean and the land, he could tell the approximate temperature of it. There was enough variance in the sea temperature that the atmosphere had to be fairly thin, which made it far too warm for the liquid to be ammonia, methane, or anything like that, meaning it could only be water. A second look at the atmosphere confirmed this: his infrared version allowed for basic spectral analysis, and the strong absorption bands of water vapor were visible… and oxygen! 626 let out a squeal of delight. He could survive on the surface! The vast majority of species in the federation were water-oxygen based. There were plenty of worlds with other types of life, but they tended to have crustal or atmospheric characteristics which didn't lend themselves to the development of spaceflight. As the view of the planet faded in the smoke, he noticed something else: city lights! Perfect!
There was just one problem. 626 needed both water and oxygen to survive, but they had to be separate. He had to breathe air. Jumba's tests had shown that his body's density was just barely low enough for him to stay afloat in highly-concentrated sodium chloride brine if he kept his lungs fully inflated, breathed shallowly, and paddled as fast as he could, and he could actually float in solutions of heavier salts like potassium iodide. But in dilute water solutions, he sank like a rock. And as he got closer to the planet, all he could see below him was blue. The smoke was getting too thick to see, and the lights soon vanished. 626 started to cough. Making an experiment resistant to heat was one thing, but a fire onboard a spacecraft produced thousands of different noxious chemicals and it was impossible even for Jumba to design immunity to all of them. He spotted a few tiny points of light amid the blue-black ocean before the canopy became too fogged to see out of, but he couldn't steer! There was no way to reach them. Growling, he grabbed onto the control stick and used it to push his face against the polyglass. The sun had vanished behind the planet now, and he couldn't have more than a minute before he hit the atmosphere.
Earthlings' primitive spacecraft, with their inefficient engines, had to save every gram of fuel they could, so to land they relied on the atmosphere itself to slow them down all the way from orbital speed to subsonic, requiring heavy ablative heat shields and a precise entry trajectory. Federation ships had much better drive systems, could afford to fire their engines a bit outside the atmosphere to slow their motion to a crawl and descend relatively gently. The police cruisers were sturdy little craft, though. In a pinch, their lifting body shape let them aerobrake from orbital speed, at least around smaller planets. In the best of circumstances, the damage to the ship's underside would necessitate a complete overhaul before returning to flight, though, and this was not the best of circumstances. The collision had ripped the plasma cannon and its protective cover from the belly of the spacecraft, opening up a gaping hole. The ship couldn't have reentered safely at any angle, and without engines, hydraulics, or reaction thrusters it was in an uncontrollable tumble. Even worse, it was streaking towards the Pacific Ocean at a speed and angle far greater it was ever meant to withstand.
Under the circumstances, many pilots would have overridden the safety protocols and vented the cockpit to space, preferring a peaceful death from hypoxia to suffocating in the choking smoke, burning to death in a flashover, or being ripped apart as the ship disintegrated around them. Others would have intentionally detonated the engine cores, blowing the ship into tiny pieces and reducing the danger of debris hitting the ground. 626 considered venting the cockpit for a very different reason: fires needed oxygen. So did he, but unlike humans and most aliens, his lungs were strong enough that he could hold his breath in vacuum, and fire couldn't. He decided against it: it would be depressurized in a few seconds anyway. Letting go of the controls, he clung to his seat with all four hands and fumbled for his seatbelt in the smoke. If he was alive when he hit the ocean, his only hope was to cling to floating debris, and the foam cushions were the most likely candidate.
Smoke became fire. 626 felt the tingle of flames licking at his jumpsuit. He screwed his eyes shut and waited. There was a roar and the ship yawed violently. Now! He sucked in a deep breath and clamped his mouth shut.
Earth's upper atmosphere hit the police cruiser like a brick wall. The ship spun, tumbled, and flipped faster and faster, pieces melting and flying off. It rolled inverted, and the canopy shattered. A wall of air slammed into 626 at over fifty times the speed of sound, forcing him into his seat. The smell of burning plastic and electronics was replaced by nostril-burning ionized air being forced up his nose and into his sinuses. The heat was almost unbearable, even for him, and a blinding blue-white light forced its way through his eyelids. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't: trying to take another breath would boil the fluid in his lungs. He no longer had any idea which way was up. The cruiser was breaking up around him: the engines were ripped away, fuselage panels fell apart, and eventually the reactor core was breached, engulfing the ship in a brilliant green flame. The seat belt burned through, the foam of the cushion started to evaporate, and 626 flinched as drops of molten metal from the fuselage hit him with the force of bullets. His lungs were starting to burn from holding his breath. This was it… it didn't matter how strong his grip was, any second the structure of the ship itself would give way and he'd be flung off into the ocean.
Then WHAM! The cruiser smashed into the forests of Kaua'i, still travelling over the speed of sound. The reactor exploded completely, splintering trees like matchsticks and stripping away their bark and branches. A colossal ball of green flame rose into the sky, along with several tons of pulverized soil and hundreds of pieces of burning debris. The ship's structure completely disintegrated: denser components buried themselves dozens of feet underground, lighter ones were carried aloft by the rising plume of superheated air, and those in between lay strewn about the new crater.
Experiment 626 groaned and pushed himself to his feet. He rubbed his eyes, blinking away dust, and waited for his sight and hearing to return to normal. The crater slowly swam into focus: pulverized boulders, soil turned to glass by the explosion, and burning spacecraft wreckage lay everywhere. None of this… none of this quite felt real, not even his own body. Everything was numb. He knew things were supposed to hurt, but somehow didn't… at least, not more than a strange, fuzzy ache. His head seemed like it was full of smoke. Was this what being dead felt like? No… wait… he was breathing. He was breathing air. It was uncomfortably hot, but it definitely wasn't water. This wasn't the bottom of the ocean, it was land. 626 could hardly believe it… he was alive! He'd actually hit one of the tiny specks of light in the middle of the sea.
Still dazed, 626 looked down at his limbs. All six were still there, and although he couldn't feel them fully, he could at least move them. He curled and uncurled the claws on each hand in turn, flexed his back spines, and reached up and touched his antennae and ears. Running his upper hands down his chest, 626 broke into a smile. Even the stupid jumpsuit was mostly intact. Or at least melted to his fur.
Now what? He surveyed the wreckage. Was there anything salvageable? After several minutes of sniffing around and digging through the rubble, he managed to unearth four battered plasma blasters. They were tiny; there was no way he was blowing through a steel door with these things. But still, they were weapons. After some experimentation trying to find something he could use as a holster, he realized he could just stick them to the melted plastic on his back. Now to explore the strange planet he'd landed on. He clambered up to the rim of the crater. It was… surreal. The surface was covered in vegetation, from tall, woody trees to a tangle of leafy undergrowth. But in the distance, he could see lights! "Oocha! Chabata! Van Schiziz!" (I'm free! Come and get me, [untranslatable expletive] police!) he cheered, laughing with delight as he scampered down the fresh rubble slope to the forest, then onto what seemed to be some sort of runway.
The lights could only mean one thing, and the pavement confirmed it. Civilization. The very thing 626 was created to destroy. At the moment, though, the experiment was seeking them out for other reasons. The exhilarating, almost euphoric rush of adrenaline he'd felt when he regained consciousness was fading, and his nerves were starting to recover from the numbness caused by the intense heat of reentry. He was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. And as his mind started to work properly again, he realized he had no idea what dangers this unfamiliar world held.
626 had never been outdoors before. The entire world he knew was Jumba's lab, the councilroom, and the interiors of various spaceships. The jungle was completely different. Even with his excellent night vision, he couldn't see far in the dense trees and undergrowth, and his sensitive ears were flooded with hundreds of different sounds – faint rustles, buzzes, tiny footsteps, and a low rumble far in the distance. What was out there? He decided to stick to the runway. He was confident that no creature there could threaten him physically, but one thing he knew he wasn't immune to was poisons; the gas the police had flooded the room with to subdue him when he was first captured was proof of that.
Something hit the ground behind him. 626 jumped, drawing a blaster and firing. Nothing. Then something cold and wet hit him on the head. Alarmed, he drew a second blaster and shot it into the air. Again, nothing, except thousands of fat drops of water falling from the sky. In a couple seconds, he went from hungry, thirsty, and exhausted to hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and soaked. He hissed angrily at the sky. He wanted water, but not like this! Some drops fell on his tongue. They tasted fine, but he wasn't going to just stand there all night with his mouth open.
Then something croaked. 626 whipped his head around, drawing yet another blaster and aiming all three of them at a strange creature sitting on the pavement. It was a four-limbed quadruped, much smaller than him, with no clothing and smooth green skin. Ahh… a local! 626 carefully advanced on the creature, keeping his guns trained on it. "Taka Tatay!" (Take me to your leader!) he ordered. The creature didn't respond. 626 poked at it with a blaster barrel. "Sansay! Sansay!" (Quickly! Quickly!)
The creature still ignored him. 626 was about to ask if it was deaf or just stupid when the low rumble he'd been hearing for a long time suddenly grew much louder. Yellow lights flooded his vision, and a horn blared. He turned. A large, wheeled vehicle of some sort sped towards him. That noise… was an engine? He hadn't recognized it, it was far different from the electric motors and fusion turbines used by Federation technology, although he could hear the faint whine of a very small turbine. It didn't matter though; it had a cab, which meant shelter from the downpour. He drew his fourth blaster and trained all of them on the vehicle. "Aggaba-" he shouted. He was trying to say Stop or I'll shoot, but was cut off when the vehicle's front tire rolled straight over him. Thus, 626 learned his first important lesson about Earth. Primitive, heavily loaded vehicles on wet pavement stopped far more slowly than expected.
Being run over did far more damage to the trucks than it did to 626. Any Earth animal small enough to fit under the tires of a 40 ton semi would have been flattened by its weight, but his rigid skeleton acted like a speed bump. Tires blew out or were shredded by his claws, mud flaps were torn off, and axles and suspensions broke. Only the third truck, which had enough time to slow down more, was able to leave the scene of the accident under its own power. After being pried from under its fender, 626 was driven to the local animal shelter while the other two drivers waited in their cabs for tow trucks to arrive. His extra limbs and back spines were mistaken for severely broken bones by the horrified drivers, who were amazed that the strange creature was still breathing. Nobody wanted to look too closely at what appeared to be the mangled remains of somebody's pet, not even the shelter workers, who gave up on trying to euthanize 626 after the fifth dose of pentobarbital failed to have any effect. He might not have been immune to all poisons, but on Kweltikwan barbiturate-rich seed pods were a popular snack food.
In fact, there was only one reason 626 remained unconscious for as long as he did: after the day he'd had, he needed the sleep.
Author's Notes:
…And that's actually all, folks! This one's a short fic for a change.
This chapter is brought to you by Kerbal Space Program and by the time I read the aeromedical report on the Columbia disaster.
Many of the things Stitch had to deal with have happened to real spacecraft. Obviously we don't have space fighters shooting plasma cannons at each other, but we've had the following mishaps:
o Collision in space. A Progress spacecraft bumped into Mir during docking, damaging the pressure vessel of one module and forcing it to be sealed off for the rest of the station's lifetime.
o Cabin depressurization. Happened to Soyuz 11 due to a faulty valve getting stuck while separating from the service module prior to reentry. Unfortunately, all crew were killed.
o Fire in cabin. Happened to Apollo 1 – on the ground. Unfortunately, all crew were killed.
o Multiple systems onboard spacecraft crippled by explosion. Happened to Apollo 13.
o Spacecraft spun or pushed off course by venting gases. Happened to Apollo 13.
o Breakup during reentry due to damage sustained earlier in flight. Happened to Space Shuttle Columbia. Unfortunately, all crew were killed.
A spaceship crash is far, far, FAR more violent than getting run over by a truck, and it was what really did the damage that lead to Stitch being knocked out for so long.
My theory is that Stitch didn't wake up in the shelter with a splitting headache because of the impact of the trucks… it was because of dehydration. Accounting for waiting in a container for the trial, being transported from Turo's surface to the Durgon, and being unconscious for what, around twelve hours, that's a lot of time to not drink any water. Reentry made the problem worse: superheated, ionized air (i.e. plasma) was forced up his nose by the huge dynamic pressure, exposing his mouth and sinuses to immense heat that boiled away all the fluid there.
It is actually realistic for Stitch's clothes to partially survive an unprotected reentry. Objects that reenter on a very fast, steep trajectory experience much higher heat flux, and the drag forces are extremely high, but the total amount of heat absorbed is lower because it's so brief. Manned spacecraft usually perform shallow reentries because the g-forces in a steep reentry would require a much stronger and heavier spacecraft structure, and could be harmful to astronauts. In the Columbia disaster, nonmetallic parts like tires were recovered in a recognizable state, although the astronauts' spacesuits didn't fare as well.
Some people seem to think Stitch weighs something like a hundred pounds… no. Just no. The upper bound for Stitch's weight can be determined from two facts: first, his physical size is about the same as a five-year-old girl, who would weigh about 40 lb, and David was able to save him from drowning. Lifeguards can save fairly heavy creatures because Earth animals, including humans, are about the density of water. The worst-case scenario is a man with low body fat, who might have a specific gravity of 1.08 with his lungs empty, about 5% denser than seawater. David is presumably a strong swimmer, so let's say he could pull a 200 lb man that dense to the surface (this would be pretty difficult), overcoming about 10 lb of negative buoyancy. A 100 lb Stitch would have about 60 lb of negative buoyancy, equivalent to pulling SIX fairly large, dense men to the surface. A more reasonable value of Stitch's weight is around 50 lb, giving him a specific gravity of 1.25 and about 10 lb of negative buoyancy (equivalent to a worst-case scenario human). He'd still sink like a rock in the ocean: that density is equivalent to a typical 160 lb man weighed down by 45 lb of lead weights. And Stitch's strength wouldn't help him much because his limbs can only physically displace so much water. On the other hand, in a hot, saturated sodium chloride solution with a specific gravity of 1.2, he'd be able to swim with some effort, similar to a man with low body fat. In solutions of heavier salts such as iodides, he could even float without significant effort, similar to how people can easily float in extremely salty bodies of water such as the Dead Sea. Speaking of which, Stitch would be about neutrally buoyant in the Dead Sea.
Incidentally, a 50 lb weight would also put Stitch around neutrally buoyant when wearing a normal child-sized life jacket – but he'd have to actively work to keep his nose out of the water.
Realistically the animal shelter would have been able to detect a heartbeat and breathing, so "we thought it was dead" probably meant "we didn't think he'd be alive in the morning." And they would probably have tried to put an animal that was run over by multiple semi trucks out of its misery, although they really shouldn't have left Stitch in a kennel with other dogs. L&S doesn't mention biochemical differences between species very often, but even on Earth, there are a ton of substances that humans regularly eat that are poisonous to many species – for example, caffeine, theobromine (in chocolate), and an unknown substances in grapes are all very bad for dogs. In designing Stitch to be able to survive on hundreds of different worlds, he would have had to make sure he wouldn't be poisoned by eating random plants, which would require covering a lot of different molecules. Barbiturates are fairly simple molecules, comparable to caffeine or theobromine, so there's no reason that alien plants shouldn't use them to poison predators, or for other species to evolve to enjoy eating those poisons.