“None. And it vexes me. I’ve been to most of the moons of the Solar System, set foot on every planet you could set foot on, and yet I’ve never met anything but transplanted men. We’re all of us from Earth, your domain, originally; the Martians, Titanians, what men are left on Venus, here on Pluto. All from Earth. Outside of a few Martian fossils, there’s never been anything anywhere else to compare with Earth life. But now…”
“Why does it bother you?”
“As I said, Sire—it makes me wonder.”
Dalin was growing tired, felt his mind drifting toward slumber as he yawned the words: “Wonder about what, exactly?”
“Wonder about what’s beyond our little Pluto here.”
“Hmm.” Dalin barely heard the pirate’s final words, and yet they penetrated his mind and colored his dreams with shimmers of particle waves.
“And who,” Shatz Abel said.
Awakening refreshed and dream-riddled, they made their ascent by the light of SunOne.
Shatz Abel proved a skilled climber; and with their adequate gear they had climbed a quarter of the way up in no time. The spot they had chosen was not ideal, though, and now the difficult part of the mount ensued. Dalin was not keen on dangling from a jut of rock, held by rope and piton, while the pirate scaled above him, looking for proper hand and footholds; one slip reminded him all too much of his recent brush with death, as he swung to and fro while the pirate, cursing above him, hauled him back to safety.
They rested in a scoop of rock face that could almost be called a cave; it drove back into the wall a good ten feet, but there was nothing of interest inside.
“Which is just as well,” Shatz Abel said, “since there are other more mundane creatures like bats and such in these parts.”
Dalin laughed. “What about your white bears? We haven’t battled them yet!”
The pirate scowled. “You may get your chance, King Shar,” he said.
Dalin laughed. “You fret too much.”
After a meal and water, they proceeded; and, as SunOne was lipping the top of the far wall, where they had begun their traversal of the canyon the day before, they had nearly reached the top.
Breathing hard, Shatz Abel called down to Dalin, “I’ll be going up and over now! Wait for my signal, then climb up after me!”
Dalin signaled him that he had heard.
The pirate, snugging his feet into footholds and using the piton he had just driven into the rock above him, hauled himself up and in a few moments had disappeared over the top.
Dalin thought he heard muffled words; he shouted, “What?” and waited for an answer.
There came none.
But the rope was taut above him, so he proceeded to climb up after the pirate.
At the top, with a few feet to go, a shaggy hand reached over the ledge—without thought he reached up to grab it.
Nearly too late, he realized that this hand was in fact a paw, and now he looked up into the huge and ravenous white face of a bear.
Dalin ducked down as the creature swiped at his face; the curled claws caught and sliced through the top of his headgear, mercifully missing the head within. The animal roared—
—but suddenly it was flying out and over Dalin, into the abyss, its face filled with sudden shock. Limbs flailing, roaring in rage, the huge animal dropped into Christy Chasm and was lost to sight. “Sire—get up here!”
Shatz Abel sounded nearby overhead, and Dalin scrambled up the rock face obediently.
Peering over the top, he saw the pirate standing just in front of him, his back to Dalin; through the pirate’s legs the king saw two more shaggy white monsters slowly advancing toward the pirate.
“I was able to push that first one over, but not these other two, I’m afraid!” Shatz Abel shouted.
Dalin crawled up between the pirate’s legs, scrambling to stand up.
“Give me the weapon, Sire!” the pirate demanded.
Still on the ground, Dalin reached around for his pack and rummaged desperately through it; his gloved hands were too bulky, and he pulled one of the gloves off, driving his bare hand into the pack and pulling out what he thought was the telescoping staff they had packed; instead, he held in his hand a crude flare.
“Give me something! Quickly!” the pirate said.
Looking out through Shatz Abel’s legs, Dahn saw the two bears mere yards away now, to either side. Their eyes were cold as Pluto itself.
The pirate reached down and Dalin thrust the flare into his hands.
“What’s this? Well—fine, then!”
In a moment there was a blinding light; when Dalin pulled his shielding hand away from his eyes he saw the pirate, roaring like a bear himself, running after the two shaggy white creatures, which were shambling off, shaking their heads against the light that had momentarily blinded them.
The flare began to wear down.
“Dalin! Quickly! Run that way!”
Standing now, able to take in his surroundings for the first time, Dalin looked in the indicated direction and saw a slope of what looked like ice, dropping off the rocky plain they presently inhabited, a hundred yards away.
“Run, damn you!” the pirate ordered.
Without question to the pirate or himself, Dalin sprinted toward the slope; when he looked back he saw the pirate hightailing after him, the two white bears with the sputtering flare at their feet, shaking their heads and just now locking their cleared vision on Shatz Abel. With a thunderous roar from each of their mouths they gave chase.
“Run, Sire, run!” Shatz Abel demanded.
Dalin continued to run, ignoring the huffing pain in his chest.
When he looked back once more, he was amazed and horrified to see that the bears had gained on Shatz Abel; their loping run had a terrible beauty to it.
“Ruuuuuun!”
Thirty yards from the icy slope, Dalin tripped and went down; when he pushed himself back to his feet, the pirate, running with all his might, had nearly reached him, with the furious bears close behind.
“When you reach the edge—jump!” the pirate ordered.
The bears snapping at their rumps, Dalin and Shatz Abel reached the end of the plateau and, with very little thought beyond momentary survival, jumped into what proved to be a deeper void than they had hoped.
They were airborne; and as Dalin glanced back, his heart drove up into his throat: one of the bears had followed them over!
Eyes still locked on them, the bear hit the slope first, splaying its legs and landing as a ready-made sled. The other white creature had stopped at the edge above and stood glaring at the proceedings below.
With evident pain, Shatz Abel hit the ice, followed by Dalin, whose own rump absorbed some of the shock; immediately he began to try to control his flight, which proved impossible.
The plain was a pure sheet of ice, steeper than it had appeared from above; the three figures—man, boy, and bear—slid uncontrollably down, picking up speed.
Dalin peered desperately ahead; there was what seemed to be miles of ice to navigate before what looked like a growing tumble of rocks in the distance would stop their mad slide.
“Dalin—you must try to stay to the right!” Shatz Abel shouted.
Dalin glanced behind; the bear, far heavier than the two men combined, was picking up steady speed and gaining on them. Its ferocity seemed, if anything, to have increased.
The pirate bellowed, “Curl your body—like this!” Dalin saw that the pirate had rolled partially onto his side, and was curling his body into a C.
“Do what I’m doing, boy!”
Dalin did as he was told; below them, the rocks drew closer, and the king now got the point: to the left, the rocks were coming sooner and looked more dangerous; if they could steer to the right, the slope ended more gradually.
Dalin felt something like breath on his back; he turned quickly to see the white bear just behind, raising a paw to strike at him!
Ducking low, Dalin curled himself into a tight
C shape and the bear, unable to control himself, slowly slid past, staying to the left as the king and Shatz Abel moved incrementally right.
The bear flailed with vehemence, trying to slow himself down or turn himself in the human’s direction—but before him the rocks inevitably loomed.
Dalin looked away as the huge white creature was driven off the ice into the field of boulders; there was a sickening thud and calling moan from the bear, which was then silent.
Far away, from the top of the ice plain, the bear’s companion yowled.
“Never mind the damned bears, Sire—look out in front!”
Turning his attention to his own plight, Dalin saw that they were heading into their own boulder field; set in the ice like thrusting tablets were blocks of stone.
“Look out!” Shatz Abel yelled, as he and Dalin were split by a tall slab of rock.
They missed another and then another; and now the ice was thinning out—but the plain was thankfully evening out and they were coming to a stop.
Dalin lay on his back, panting, hardly believing that he was alive.
After a few moments the huge pirate, looking like something of a bear himself, had pushed himself to his feet and stood looking down at the king. Dalin rolled onto his stomach and tried to stand. Shatz Abel threw back his head and laughed. “My stars, boy!”
Dalin stood up, scowling. “What is it?”
The pirate held his sides, laughing.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dalin demanded. “Not me—you!”
Anger rose in the king at the pirate’s continued laughter; Shatz Abel made a motion behind himself, patting his own rump.
“Look what you’ve done to yourself!”
Dalin reached behind—and discovered that there was no clothing anymore between his buttocks and the elements. It had been worn completely away by the ice, and his backside was sore to the touch.
Unable to stop laughing, the pirate turned, doubling over.
Now it was Dalin’s turn to laugh.
Shatz Abel straightened; his face grew sober as he checked his own bottom.
“Heavens!”
“Ha!” Dalin said. “And you had hair to lose!” The pirate made a painful sound as he touched his gluteus maximus gingerly.
“We’d best be covering our seats before they freeze,” he said soberly.
Dalin, feeling the cold now himself, ceased in his own laughter.
Thus chastened, they sought patches, and coverings, and such.
It was not only their buttocks that had taken a beating in the slide. Though fortunate to be alive, and smart enough to realize it, they would now continue their journey with no provisions. Both of their packs had been torn open in the skid; everything had been driven from Shatz Abel’s pack, and Dalin’s held but one flap with two food tubes within. This would be the end of their sustenance; both of their water flasks had also been lost. Also, their meager instruments were gone, and their weapons. In addition, the backs of their boots had been scuffed to within a quarter inch of their soles within, and would not afford them the protection they had had.
Turning in a slow circle, then studying the sky, Shatz Abel finally professed, “We’re in bad shape, but not out. That slide brought us a bit east of where we want to be.”
He pointed to a dim green glow over a nearby hill. “That’s our direction, Sire, and we’d best be on our way, since hunger’ll find us soon enough.”
After a few deep breaths, they climbed the hill, which would be one of many they climbed that day, and the next.
On their fourth day out, they seemed no closer to the green glow that marked Tombaugh City. Behind them stood a flotilla of hills; before them, more hills, which led to a cradle between two mountain peaks. Above them, the sky was threatening again, an occasional blot of blowing cloud covering SunOne’s weak light.
“I don’t like this at all, boy,” Shatz Abel said. He held up his own food tube, squeezed down to a quarter; it represented one-quarter of one normal meal. “And it’s not so much the food as water—if only we could find water ice!”
He kicked at the dusting of methane snow that topped their present hill.
“Even if we found water ice, what would we do with it?” Dalin said. “How would we melt it?”
Shatz Abel grunted. “That’s the easy part. You that spent your life in cushy surroundings don’t know about such things—”
Dalin interrupted, “You mean the lens we lost on the ice plain? The one you’d use to focus SunOne’s heat on, to melt the snow? Let’s see, it would take you approximately—”
“That’s enough, boy,” Shatz Abel said ominously. Dalin laughed, enjoying the man’s anger.
The pirate held up his food tube. “You know, I could always eat you, Sire. You wouldn’t make much of a meal, but it might be enough for one man to get along.”
For a brief moment Dalin looked into the pirate’s eyes and believed the man meant it—but then it was Shatz Abel’s turn to laugh.
“Don’t you worry, boy!” the huge pirate said, slapping Dalin on the back. “I gave up cannibalism years ago!”
And still laughing, leaving Dalin to wonder and then catch up, the pirate trudged on toward their goal.
And then the hills were gone.
“Will you look at that,” Shatz Abel said in wonder.
Before them stood a frozen lake, a flat expanse of blue ice. They stood on a black beach; on the far side, over a jumble of low peaks, the glow of Tombaugh City was bright; they could just see the top of one tall spire.
“I’ll bet that’s water ice, Dalin. If we only we had our lens—and if only we had our sled now,” Shatz Abel said. “We’d be over this in a matter of hours, and on our way. As it is …”
“As it is we walk, right?” Dalin said.
“Unless you’d like to build a sail on your belly and slide across on your sore backside?”
Dalin was scouring the nearby beach, looking for anything worthwhile to build a sled with. There was nothing; between the wind and storms and Pluto’s dearth of surface vegetation, their surroundings were scoured clean.
Shatz Abel, already convinced of their plan, gingerly stepped onto the ice, testing its ability to support him.
“It seems thick enough.”
“It should be,” Dalin said. “The temperature never goes above freezing, does it?”
“It’s happened, on occasion. A year after I was dropped here, SunOne went out of phase and heated the entire planet to a slushy mess.” He seemed preoccupied, staring down at the ice with furrowed brows.
More goblins?” Dalin inquired.
“No, Sire. But they do say there may be things living beneath the waters on Pluto. Never seen it myself, but there was a fellow I knew, years ago, who did some business with Tombaugh City. Story was he had to land on one of the lakes and never took off after his repairs. Never found a trace of him.”
Dalin was now ahead of the pirate, leaving the man to study the ice.
“Tell me about it later, in Tombaugh City.” The pirate nodded and soon caught up.
“It’s not like we have a choice,” he said.
Soon they were between shores. Hunger gnawed at Dam’s stomach; they had finished the last of their food tubes, and he banished thoughts of thirst by thinking about food. He tried to think about what it had been like before his food had come out of a tube; and since recalling the feasts he had had on Earth was too far removed from even his imagination at the moment, he concentrated on the finest dining he had done since his arrival on Pluto. There had been one meal in particular he remembered, something that purported to be carrots but instead tasted exactly like chocolate.
“Hold it, Sire,” Shatz Abel warned, halting their progress. Ordering Dalin to stay where he was, the pirate walked on, studying a heave in the ice.
After inspection he signaled Dalin forward, and they stood together, looking over a tall tumble of cracked ice blocks, which looked as though they had been blown up and out of the ice; around them
the lake had refrozen, making a strange sculpture.
“Whatever did this was big,” Shatz Abel said.
Dalin scoffed, “It’s nothing but an ice fault.”
They walked on, but the pirate shook his head. “There’s more stories about this planet,” he said. “About things they tried when they were building Tombaugh City. Something like the old yarns you hear about alligators in the Martian aqueducts—”
Dalin guffawed. “You mean those tall tales about pets being let loose when they got too big?”
The pirate retained his serious look. “It’s all true!” Dalin laughed even harder, forgetting his hunger and thirst.
“Laugh if you want,” Shàtz Abel said. “You laughed about the goblins…”
Waving his hands in superstitious dismissal, the pirate walked on, away from the mound of ice blocks.
Dalin followed, his eye momentarily caught by what appeared to be a long black wiggle of movement under the ice.
“Shatz—” he began, then thought better of telling the pirate what he had seen; the man was superstitious as it was.
The king studied the ice, and again saw a long dark movement beneath them through the opaque blue; it slithered away from them and was gone.
Then the ice rumbled.
“What in hellation?” Shatz Abel shouted.
“I just saw—” Dalin began.
But then, before them, the ice broke upward in a mighty heave, and they beheld what Dalin had seen a glimpse of beneath it.
A long tendril, studded with jet-black suckers, drove upward through the surface; it was followed by two more tentacles and the beginnings of a bulbous head.
“Sire—get back!” the pirate shouted, as a crack of lurching broken ice drove toward them.
They dove to either side, and Dalin watched as the monster’s head broke from the surface, covered in dripping water; its flat red eyes regarded their surroundings while its tiny mouth made a horrible sucking sound.
With a mighty shudder the monster dropped back into the deep. A rush of falling ice dropped after it, and already the surface of the lake began to freeze back into place, monolithic chunks of ice forming a new frozen sculpture.
Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy Page 7
