Even the computer voice, so eager to remind the humans of their impending doom, had fallen silent. After the air had run out, it probably assumed that all sensible humans had evacuated.
The young humans had sent their message. They’d located the book, and then Nicki had used another hologram computer device, this one belonging to Hollins. She’d plugged it into the wall and reprogrammed the ship’s lighting controls. Instead of flying saucers, the holographic display had shown a floating stream of human computer code that Nicki manipulated and changed. Apparently the devices weren’t just for games.
Now, periodically, the lights of the pod would flick on and off according to an ancient human code of dots and dashes that represented characters in their alphabet. If someone was observing from space, and they knew this code, they might have gotten the following message:
“SOS. ONLY THREE HOURS AIR LEFT. SOS.”
For a while, the blinking lights kept repeating this message (with Nicki periodically revising the number in the middle downward). Eventually the air had run out, and so it was shortened to simply:
“SOS.”
The humans had each collected a few things in airtight bags: food, water, small illumination devices, more of the rope they’d used to restrain me, and Hollins’s folding knife. They’d gathered these things as if they meant to take them somewhere, but it was unclear where they planned to go.
I’d gleaned that this was the pod where Hollins had lived with his two originators—the fact that all humans apparently have two originators struck me as incredibly bizarre and disturbing. I was morbidly curious, and I wanted to ask them more about this. But I didn’t quite have the language skill, and frankly it seemed like the wrong time.
Every so often, the whole world would rattle and shake for a few moments. Aftershocks from the quake. Each time the rumbling would raise the young humans’ hope: Perhaps their mothership was landing nearby. Each time those hopes were dashed.
“They’re not coming,” said Becky at last. Her voice was faint, barely a whisper.
“Don’t say that,” said Hollins. “They’ll come back. My mom won’t leave us here.”
“Why didn’t she override the automatic quarantine?” Becky began.
Nicki cut her off. “Does it really matter, Becky? We’re here now. That’s all.” Becky shrugged and went silent again.
“I never even got to see Paris,” said Little Gus.
“Did you want to see Paris?” asked Nicki.
“Not really,” said Little Gus glumly. “That makes me sad too. Why didn’t I want to see Paris? Is something wrong with me?”
“C’mon, let’s send the message again,” said Hollins. Nicki plugged her hologram device into the wall, and the lights flicked off and on in the now familiar pattern. Three short blinks. Three long blinks. Three more short. SOS.
The humans were trying their best to deny the obvious. In a little while, the oxygen tanks on their spacesuits would be out of air as well. Despair was creeping in.
“Can help,” I said, breaking the silence. Becky glared at me. At this point I knew what was coming next. My offer would be met with an argument, an accusation, a declaration of my obviously hostile intentions.
“How?” she said instead. “How can you help?”
“Have air,” I said. “Have human air.”
I’d made a decision. I couldn’t just leave these humans to suffocate. If I hadn’t sneaked aboard their pod, they would be up there between the stars. Headed home. Safe. Among their own kind.
It was my fault they were here.
Our two species might very well be at war now. But these four were my responsibility. I wasn’t going to let them die.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I stood with the four humans in the sideways airlock. We were packed and ready to depart.
I had told them, in halting human, that I could guide them to the cavern entrance near Jehe Canyon—where I’d seen them racing before. Once inside, they would be able to breathe the oxygen-rich air without their spacesuits.
At least this is what I hoped that I had said to them. I was learning their language quickly, but I was still only able to string a few difficult-to-pronounce human words together at a time. To me, human speech still sounded a bit like usk-lizards making territorial grunts.
Mercifully, I had been untied. Though I was informed in no uncertain terms, by both Hollins and Becky, that I was still their prisoner. Now possibly a “prisoner of war,” in fact. Which sounded much worse to me.
“They can both be kind of bossy, huh?” said Little Gus, when he and I were alone for a moment. Nicki overheard and nodded knowingly.
“My whole thing is just chill, you know?” he said. I didn’t know. But I nodded anyway.
My only request of the humans was that we bring all the remaining boxes of Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream with us. Perhaps it was unfair of me to ask anything of them, since I had gotten them into this predicament and they were in no position to refuse. But honestly, I didn’t care. I wanted—nay, I needed—to eat more of those delicious pink treats.
As it turned out, they had two unopened packages in addition to the one I had, er, sampled—and Little Gus had fallen on. I offered to carry all three boxes. To be helpful.
“We have to let our families know what happened,” said Becky. She attached a handwritten note to the wall of the airlock. It explained the situation—why the humans were leaving the pod and where they were going. It included a crude map—that the young humans had drawn with my guidance—pointing toward the cavern entrance where I planned to take them.
I felt torn about leaving the human race a map to the Gelo cavern system, but I saw no other way. I realized I would likely face many similar ethical dilemmas if I was going to help these young humans survive.
“All right. Time to go,” said Hollins. He pushed the glowing orange button, and the inner door of the airlock slowly rolled closed. Then the outer door opened. There was no whoosh this time. The air inside was the same as the air outside. The blue-gray surface of Gelo stretched out beyond us.
“Sound doesn’t carry far in this atmosphere,” said Hollins. “So we’ll need to be on communicators once we’re out there. Try not to talk much. Let’s conserve battery power.” I reactivated the tiny Nyrt-Snooper still in my ear.
Hollins hopped onto one of the four rocket-bikes in the airlock. “I’m the best pilot,” he said, “so I’ll take the lead.”
“Wait a second,” said Becky. “You’re not the best pilot. Everyone knows I am.”
“Becky, you remember the emergency flight training course we did in preparation for this mission? I shouldn’t tell you this, but I got rated ninety-four percent.”
“I was rated a ninety-seven percent,” said Becky, smiling.
“Yo, I got a twenty-two percent,” said Little Gus quietly. “That’s still pretty good, right?”
“Not really,” said Nicki, but no one seemed to hear her.
“Look, we could debate this all day,” said Hollins to Becky. “Even if we are both equally good pilots—”
“Ninety-four and ninety-seven aren’t equal,” she snapped.
“Becky, my mom was the commander—”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“I’m thirteen. You’re only twelve. I’m nine months and twenty-two days older than you. So that means I’m the leader,” said Hollins petulantly. Maybe he was still sore about losing the rocket-bike race to her?
“They’re always like this,” said Little Gus, shrugging. “It’s like ‘get married already.’”
“What? They are not going to get married!” cried Nicki. It was the most animated I’d ever seen her.
“We are not going to get married!” said Hollins and Becky in unison. Hollins’s voice crackled high.
“What is ‘married’?” I asked. No one had a ve
ry good answer for me. Apparently it was a legal and emotional union between two humans who specifically were not originator and offspring—the two adult Hollinses I’d seen earlier were an example. Beyond that, the humans got a little evasive.
“Why are we wasting time explaining this to it!” said Becky, exasperated.
“It? It has a name, you know,” said Little Gus. “Wait . . . you do have a name, right?”
“I am Chorkle,” I said.
“Whew!” said Little Gus. “I was worried it was going to be something crazy like ‘Zhalufaxdyn’ or ‘Ranvonmo the Eternal.’ Chorkle. That’s easy enough to say.”
“Pleased to meet you, Chorkle,” said Nicki, and she extended her hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said and waited. Her hand was still out. At last I grudgingly handed her a Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream bar. She looked confused and then handed it back to me. That was good. I really hadn’t wanted to give her one.
“Since we only have four bikes, Chorkle can ride with me,” said Little Gus, clapping me on the back. I suddenly recalled watching him wreck his rocket-bike a dozen times when I’d observed these humans before. I didn’t want to end up a Chorkle-colored stain on some jagged rocks.
“Maybe should ride with Hollins,” I said, “as guide.”
“Good point,” said Hollins. “Hop on the back.” I climbed onto the rocket-bike behind him and grasped him around the trunk.
“Everyone ready?” said Hollins, firing up the ignition of his rocket-bike.
“I kind of have to go to the bathroom,” said Nicki.
“No time. Just go in your spacesuit,” said Little Gus. “They all have automatic waste-processing capability.”
“What?” said Becky. “No they don’t.” Everyone stared at Little Gus.
“Oh. Huh,” he said. “Oops.”
“Hang on, Chorkle,” said Hollins. And I did.
There was a roar. Then we were hurtling across the asteroid’s surface at an impossible speed. Rocks and craters flashed past us in a blur. Hollins kept the rocket-bike steady with his hands on the pronged steering mechanism.
Sometimes we’d swerve left or right to avoid an obstacle. Sometimes Hollins would give the bike a little altitude and we’d sail right over a boulder at the last possible instant. It was thrilling and terrifying at once, like some sort of a real-life hologram game.
Just then another rocket-bike started to nose past. It was Becky, a broad grin spread across her face. She was turning this into another race.
Hollins leaned forward and punched the accelerator, and we went even faster. But Becky was still ahead of us. I clung onto Hollins for dear life. I looked back. Far behind us, I saw Nicki shaking her head.
“Becky, slow down! What are you doing?” said Hollins over their communicators.
“It’s called ‘piloting,’” she radioed back. “Don’t worry. I can teach you.” She actually sounded happy for the first time since the pod had crashed.
Becky pulled dramatically into Jehe Canyon a few seconds before Hollins.
“Wow, glad you finally made it,” she laughed. “I was getting bored.”
“That was totally irresponsible,” yelled Hollins. “This is an emergency situation. Now is not the time to goof off.”
“Sorry, what did you say? I don’t speak loser,” said Becky. I had understood Hollins, so I felt a burst of pride that I apparently did speak loser.
At last Nicki arrived in the canyon.
“Guys, splitting up the group and traveling at high speed for no reason is kind of dangerous,” said Nicki. “You know that, right?” From the looks on their faces and their mumbled responses, they both knew that.
Little Gus pulled up a little while later. His rocket-bike had a fresh dent in it, and his spacesuit was covered in dust.
“Good thing you weren’t riding with me, Chorkle,” said Little Gus, rubbing his neck, “This rock came out of nowhere, and wham! I think I fractured my, uh . . . this bone right here.”
“Clavicle?” said Nicki.
“Gross, Nicki,” said Little Gus.
“Okay, so where do we find these caves?” said Hollins to me.
And so I brought four humans to the hidden entrance to the real Gelo.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Before I took them below, I encouraged the humans to conceal their rocket-bikes as best they could.
“Couldn’t we use them to get around in the caves?” asked Nicki.
“Yeah. Beats walking,” said Becky.
“Not inside,” I said. “Too narrow.” The rocket bikes were too big for most of the winding confines of the tunnel system.
The humans ended up stashing all four of them inside a nearby crater. They were invisible unless you were looking down from above or actually standing inside the crater itself. It wasn’t a perfect hiding spot, but it was better than nothing.
“So where is this entrance?” asked Hollins.
I found a thoroughly ordinary blue-gray Gelo rock and reached behind it, fiddling around a bit. There was a click and then a hiss as it swung open to reveal a dark tunnel behind it.
The four humans followed me inside, and I closed the hatch behind us with a dull clank.
“My home,” I said.
Their eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. Then their mouths fell open. We stood in a cavern that snaked its way downward, toward the heart of the asteroid. The walls and floor were covered with countless species of mushrooms and lichens and molds. Bulbous phosphorescent globules—fungus that we Xotonians call glowing zhas—provided enough dim greenish light for the humans to see.
“Dude. This. Place. Is. Super. Weird,” said Little Gus, slowly reaching out to touch a feathery sicras-stalk growing out of the rocks. The sicras-stalk recoiled from his hand, startling him.
It struck me how strange these caverns—utterly familiar to me—must seem to a typical human. They’d all been born and raised on the bright blue-and-green surface of Eo.
“We thought this asteroid was totally lifeless,” said Hollins, shaking his head in disbelief. “I guess we were just focused on looking for iridium.”
“I have to collect samples!” cried Nicki. And she ran to the walls and began picking one of each type of fungus and carefully storing it inside an individual plastic baggie. Fascinated by fungi. She and Linod would probably get along well.
“Nicki, come on,” said Becky. “Those things are disgusting.” But from her tone I could tell she held little hope of dissuading her duplicate in this matter.
The humans were still wearing their spacesuits. Hollins checked the meter on his belt.
“Only thirty minutes of oxygen left,” he sighed.
“Air here breathable . . . for humans,” I reiterated. This was the reason I’d brought them here. Becky and Hollins looked at each other.
“If you’re wrong about this . . .” said Becky to me, crossing her arms.
“We’ll all suffocate to death horribly,” added Nicki helpfully. She noticed that everyone was staring at her. “What? If we want it to learn proper grammar, we have to speak in complete sentences.”
“Maybe bringing us here to suffocate was its plan all along?” said Becky. That would have been a very complicated and time-consuming plan, I thought, considering I could have just as easily let them die in their own pod.
I didn’t share this, of course. Instead I said, “Not plan.”
“Too late to worry about it now,” said Hollins. “We have no choice but to trust Chorkle. If I pass out, try to re-pressurize my suit and wake me up.”
“Pass out?” said Little Gus. “Wait, Hollins, maybe we should—”
Hollins cut him off. “Here goes nothing,” he said. In one final act of not quite total trust, he took a big breath of air. Then he popped the seal on his spacesuit’s helmet.
He slowly l
ifted the helmet off his head, still holding his breath. Everyone stared at him in agonizing silence. I suddenly started to worry that I’d incorrectly judged how much oxygen these humans actually needed to live.
Hollins’s skin took on a bluish tinge. He began to tap his foot. At last he gasped and sucked in a big breath of Gelo cavern atmosphere. His face looked terrified. Gradually his breathing slowed to normal. His fear gave way to a smile. He gave the others a nod, and one by one they popped off their helmets as well.
They all began to laugh. Little Gus danced around and burst into an impromptu song about how cool breathing is.
“Chorkle, you did it!” cried Nicki, and she wrapped both her arms around me and squeezed. “So the air in these caverns must be at least seventeen percent oxygen, right?”
“Uh,” I said.
“An alien best friend,” said Little Gus, trying to pick me up but toppling us both over. “Everybody in sixth grade is going to be so jealous. Might even impress a few seventh graders.”
“This still doesn’t make up for causing our pod to crash,” said Becky.
“Come on, Becky,” said Hollins. “Ease up. Credit where credit is due. Thank you, Chorkle. You saved our lives. You’re still a prisoner, though.”
“Thanks, alien,” said Becky quietly. She still sounded angry.
The truth is, Becky was right. I’d solved the most pressing of the humans’ problems; they weren’t going to run out of air. So what? It still didn’t make up for stranding them here.
“Chorkle, are there any others of your kind?” asked Hollins. Now that the immediate danger had passed, he was already trying to think of the next step of their plan. “Maybe they could fly us back to our parents.”
“Xotonians not have starship,” I said.
“Maybe there’s another way they could—”
“Others not . . . understand humans,” I said. I was trying not to scare anyone.
There was no way I could take them to Core-of-Rock. I could only imagine what Sheln—and all the others who favored a direct attack on the humans—might do if I brought these four back home with me. In fact, now the greatest danger to these humans was probably running into an angry mob of Xotonians in the tunnels.
Space Rocks! Page 7
