“But . . . ” said Kalac.
“But the nyrine quantum inducer is one of the pieces that slows and regulates that process. Without it, the reactor must have burned up all its iridium in a single instant. Several years’ worth of power were fed right into our grid all at once!”
“And that’s what caused the fire. Those two explosions were, like, transformers overloading,” said Nicki in Xotonian.
“Exactly,” said Ydar, a little taken aback by her linguistic and technical aptitude.
“She’s the genius, but I got the looks,” offered Becky.
Ydar nodded uncertainly.
“So what do you mean the nyrine quantum inducer is gone?” I asked.
“Well, here is where the nyrine quantum inducer should be,” said Ydar, pointing to a tortuous nexus of cables. “And yet, you can plainly see that there is no nyrine quantum inducer there.”
In fact, I couldn’t plainly see that, but I was willing to take the High Observer’s word for it.
“What happened to it?” asked Nicki.
“I suspect it blew out somehow,” said Ydar, shrugging. “Perhaps it got so overpowered that it imploded. I don’t know. It’s just . . . gone.”
“Nobody saw anything strange?” I asked.
Ydar shook its head. “The facility is unmanned.”
“Can you fix the reactor, Ydar?” asked Kalac.
“No. Without the inducer, we can maybe get it running at twenty percent capacity. But I don’t know what damage that might do to the system. The reactor may fail again, and there’s no telling when.”
“Will it still produce enough power to maintain the Stealth Shield?” I asked.
Ydar shook its head gravely.
“But without the shield, anyone with a long-range scanner will be able to locate Core-of-Rock,” I said. “We’ll be sitting shuggs.”
Ydar sighed and nodded. Then it turned toward Kalac. “There is one more thing, Chief. I hesitate to mention it, what with all this on your mind. . . .”
“Go on,” said Kalac.
“Four hours ago,” said Ydar, “a Vorem trireme was observed departing the battle cruiser.”
“What?” I cried. The ruined Vorem battle cruiser—or half of it, anyway—now traveled the same orbital path as our asteroid. Though its hyperdrive and communications system had been disabled in the battle, there were still a few Vorem alive aboard the vessel. Only one of the ten triremes—the small, agile starfighters accompanying the massive battle cruiser—had survived the battle. And now, it seemed, it was unaccounted for.
“Don’t tell me General Ridian means to use his last ship to try to land troops on Gelo again,” said Kalac.
“No,” said Ydar, “We believe the trireme has landed on the new planet.”
Chapter Two
“Please sync your workdrives to location 219 and follow along as I read from the text. This information will be on the test. . . .” From a human holographic computer—a so-called holodrive—a 3-D projection of one Ms. Neubauer, a human female with thick glasses and an elliptical pile of frizzy brown hair, was currently teaching us something known as “geology.”
After the invasion, we Xotonians decided we could no longer take for granted the ancient technological devices passed down by our ancestors. To survive, we needed to learn.
And so we began the fifth grade. It was Becky’s idea—though perhaps she only wanted us to suffer as much as she had. In advance of the asteroid mining mission, each of the human children had had a year’s worth of schooling prerecorded for them on their holodrives to cover the class time they would miss. The humans figured that these lessons could give the average Xotonian a basic foundation in (at least) math and science.
But at the moment—in the time-honored tradition of students on all worlds throughout the history of the universe—I wasn’t paying attention in class. I stared past Ms. Neubauer’s shimmering holographic form at a screen on the far side of the Observatory.
On the distant screen hung a fuzzy green ball: the new planet. It was orbited by a lopsided planetary ring, warped by the gravity of a single icy moon. Three months on, and we hadn’t come up with a better name than “the new planet”—although “Gusworld VII” was advanced from at least one quarter.
The new planet seemed to be habitable: It had a nonlethal temperature range, its atmosphere appeared to be breathable, and we knew its gravity wouldn’t crush us to jelly, at least. Indeed, its surface was green with life. But at the same time, it didn’t look like the top vacation spot in the sector, either.
Huge, churning dust storms, charged with electricity, raged across continents. Wide, barren swathes of land—like colossal scars on the planet itself—seemed to support no living thing at all. The rest of the surface seemed to be covered in thick forest or fetid swamp.
We had seen some possible signs of intelligent life there. But cloud cover and dense vegetation made it hard to gather conclusive proof. Our official policy was not to attempt contacting the world until we knew more. So we continued to study it from afar.
The Observers pored through their ancient cyclopaedias, searching for any information about the new planet. As always, they pretended they had the situation well under control. In truth, they knew nothing. So far they had only been able to narrow down our present location in the universe to a handful of possible galaxies.
You see, at the end of the great battle, our asteroid had been pulled through a wormhole—a wormhole accidentally created when we fired the Q-sik at the Vorem battle cruiser—and flung across the universe. If you don’t understand how that works, don’t worry. I don’t either.
I consider myself pretty smart. I’m a decent speller (a lot of Xotonians forget that the word has two s in it; not me). I have a working knowledge of human slang terms meaning “good” (“cool,” “rad,” “dope,” “totally Little Gus,” etc.). And I am a qualified expert in Xenostryfe III (high score: 1,672,890. Try to beat it. You can’t). But rips in the very fabric of space-time are somewhat beyond my understanding. Suffice it to say we hadn’t covered wormholes in fifth grade yet.
Ms. Neubauer droned on. “Metamorphic rocks are formed when intense heat and/or pressure produce physical or chemical changes in an existing rock, which we call a protolith. . . .”
Thank Jalasu Jhuk not all our lessons were prerecorded like hers. Sometimes the young humans themselves taught subjects in which they were particularly knowledgeable.
Hollins and Becky had brought in one of the human rocket-bikes (disassembled and recovered from the surface of Gelo). With several eager students, they had already reassembled it. With the two of them teaching, it also functioned as a master class in the human vocabulary needed for pointless bickering.
Nicki too had been teaching the fundamentals of programming using the holodrives and some spare Observatory computers. Though baffling to most, many of the less athletic Xotonians had made great strides forward in this oddly universal science. Indeed, thanks to her lessons, many of the screens in the Observatory now displayed “Hello, world” in glowing human letters.
Little Gus had even tried his hand at teaching a course he titled “Fancy Gourmet Cooking for Master Chefs Who Are Cool,” but he quickly gave up when he discovered that he couldn’t get the ingredients he needed for his first lesson. Whatever “nacho cheese” is, it is unknown on our world. If it is as wondrous as the humans say, we are all the poorer for it, though.
Collectively, we Xotonians called all these lessons “human school.” Listening to hours of the video instructors and the young humans talking every day also had the incidental effect of quickly teaching other Xotonians the human speech. (In addition to being highly attractive, we Xotonians are naturally good at learning languages.) After a few weeks of class, many were nearly as fluent in human-ese as me.
“Igneous rock,” continued Ms. Neubauer, “may form above or below
the surface of the Earth’s crust. . . .”
Just then, her hologram flickered, and the lights in the Observatory dimmed. Several of the screens around the chamber went dark.
“What?” cried Linod, snapping awake again. Ever since the explosions and the fire, blackouts and brownouts had been occurring frequently in Core-of-Rock.
A few minutes later the holodrive, too, abruptly died, cutting off poor prerecorded Ms. Neubauer midsentence. Someone had forgotten to connect the device to the Observatory’s power grid to charge. Now its batteries were completely drained.
Ydar, who had been proctoring the class, stood up from its own console and approached the dead holodrive. The High Observer plugged the device in, but it didn’t reactivate. After scowling at it three times and hitting it once, Ydar sighed in defeat.
“Well, I suppose that’s where class ends today,” said the High Observer.
“What? Speak up!” cried old Gatas from the back.
The rest of my cohort began to file out of the Observatory, each taking a dismal geology worksheet as it left. It was strange to resent something voluntary, but perhaps that was simply the nature of school. I noticed Linod choking back sobs as it collected its things.
“Linod-tron, what’s the matter?” I asked.
Linod shook its head. “I was thinking about the fire again,” it said. “I just miss them so much. . . .”
“Who?” I asked. Thankfully, Linod hadn’t lost any friends or family in the blaze—Lhoy was completely fine.
“My fascinating fungi!” Linod cried out “All of them burned!”
“Don’t worry, you’ll find more,” I said, patting its thol’graz. “There are plenty of spores in the cave, as the old saying goes. I’m sure your new collection will be even more fascinating than before.”
“You know what would make me feel better?” it said between sobs, eyes glistening pitifully. “If I could just have one of your humans. Just a single one. I could take one of the Garcías, since you’ve got a spare.”
“We’ve been over this, “I said. “They’re not pets, Linod. I can’t just give them to you.”
Linod squinted at me. “Okay, how much do you want?” it said, reaching for its x’yzoth wallet. I shoved it out the door and returned to my desk to wait for the humans.
“Cer’em, Chorkle. Oed Little Gus, ha’ois la’stisiaekt soiris. Di omih,” said Little Gus as he burst through the door a few minutes later. Roughly translated from Xotonian, this means: “Greetings, Chorkle! I am Little Gus, your sovereign ruler. Obey me.”
“Gus f’a’raely. Chorkle ael phsii etv lisstil ta’ delnis!” said Nicki, meaning: “Foolish Gus. Chorkle is free and serves no master!”
“Ya’oi esi nerds,” sighed Becky, shaking her head. (“You guys are nerds.”)
The humans had been learning too. Since no one knew how long they would be living on Gelo, they decided they should be able to talk to their new neighbors. So they spent a portion of every day studying what they called XSL: Xotonian as a second language. Biologically, the human brain wasn’t as quick to pick up new languages as ours. But after a few months under the tutorship of Loghoz, a member of the Xotonian Council and self-declared grammar enthusiast, they’d made a lot of progress.
Nicki—especially diligent about studying everything—was nearly fluent. Becky and Little Gus did virtually no work outside of class, and yet they were still pretty good. Only poor old Hollins seemed to be having trouble.
“Hisi aen ra’dil. Da’il lehaetk. Cer’em lehaetk. Asi ha’oi doilysa’a’d?” he said to me. Which, roughly translated, means “Here it comes. Does saying. Hello saying dentist. Are you pudding?”
I nodded, confused but trying to seriously consider his question. Was I pudding? In some sense, weren’t we all just pudding?
Switching back to human, Hollins asked, “Are we ready to give home a call?” The human children sidled up to the Observatory’s communications station. Every three days, they tried once more to contact their parents. It never worked.
“I’m afraid it won’t be possible today, children,” sighed Ydar, speaking passable human. “We’re running on very limited power.” A few screens scattered around the Observatory still showed feeds of stars. Most were dark.
“What? We walked up five thousand stairs to get here,” said Becky.
“Yeah, how do you do it every day?” said Gus to Ydar. “Your quads must be ripped. Wait, do Xotonians even have quads?”
Ydar quickly spot-checked itself for “quads,” then shook its head no.
“Are you sure we can’t try? Just for a minute?” asked Hollins.
“We did kinda save your civilization,” said Becky. “So . . .”
The High Observer sighed and looked around shuggishly. “Oh, all right.” At Ydar’s command, the rest of the Observers deactivated their own consoles. Ydar then powered up the communications center and adjusted a few dials and sliders. It nodded to the humans.
And so Hollins repeated the following into the microphone: “Hello. This is Daniel Hollins, Nicole García, Rebecca García, and Augustus Zaleski of the Nolan-Amaral mining vessel Phryxus. We are safe, though our location is unknown. We seek immediate rescue. Is anyone out there? Over.”And his words were beamed out into the cosmos.
“Do you think anybody heard that?” asked Little Gus.
“Well, the universe is a pretty big place,” said Nicki. “And we could be anywhere in it. Even if the new planet—”
“Gusworld VII,” interjected Little Gus.
Nicki sighed. “Even if Gusworld VII is just a single light-year from Earth—and assuming we knew Earth’s location relative to our own, which we don’t—it would still take a radio transmission a full year to reach our parents.”
“Isn’t there a faster way?” asked Becky. “I’m missing a ton of TV shows back on Earth.”
“Well, I’ve talked to the Observers,” said Nicki. “Some of their old manuals do mention faster methods of communication: hyperlight, tachyonic ansible, and a couple of others. But the Observatory doesn’t have any of this stuff.”
“That’s probably intentional,” I said. “Jalasu Jhuk wanted Gelo—and the Q-sik—to remain hidden from anyone who might be looking for it. Outgoing calls would not help with that.”
“I guess for now, then, we’re stuck with good old-fashioned radio waves,” said Hollins. And he repeated his message a handful more times before the communications console flickered and went dead.
“Or not,” said Becky. The Observatory was now powerless, totally dark. After a moment, Little Gus flicked on a human flashlight (humans suffer from a sad and crippling inability to see in total darkness; in my experience, they don’t even want to discuss the possibility that they might need more eyes).
“Well, I suppose that’s it for today, everybody,” said Ydar to the other Observers. “Take the rest of the day off. Spend some time with your offspring. Try to get some exercise.”
The Observers, used to spending their time hunched over glowing screens, stood and stretched uncertainly.
“Sorry, children” said Ydar to the kids. “Feel free to borrow some cyclopaedias when you go.” It pointed to the shelf of the dense astronomic tomes.
“Yay,” said Becky.
Previously, these ancient cyclopaedias had been sacred holy books of the order, completely off-limits to the uninitiated. Now Ydar was encouraging anyone who had the time or the interest to study them for clues as to just where in the wide universe we might be. I hadn’t borrowed any before—they were notoriously dry reading, and I worried that with extra homework my Xenostryfe III skills could suffer—but I figured I might as well give it a shot. I grabbed a thol’graz-ful at random.
“Ah, Spiral Arm 314229 of the Turech Galaxy,” said Ydar, smiling with approval at one of the books I held. “An underrated classic.”
As we descended th
e spiral steps of Dynusk’s Column, the children were quiet. Their mood was glum. They missed their parents and their planet.
I too was quiet. I felt responsible for their predicament. My actions had accidentally stranded them on Gelo. Through my curiosity, and a boundless love of Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream, I’d involved them in Gelo’s ancient war with the Vorem Dominion and somehow gotten them trapped on the far side of the universe.
I wanted to help them contact their parents. I wanted to help them find a way home. But at that moment, I simply wanted to cheer them up. So badly that I was even contemplating drastic measures. I still had a few Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream bars—the universe’s most delectable treat—hidden in various secure locations around the city. I was on the verge of offering one of these to them when Nicki spoke.
“I wonder what Mom and Dad are doing right now,” she said.
“Probably polishing your awards,” said Becky. Nicki nodded in satisfaction.
“I hope everybody on Earth isn’t, like, an ape now,” said Little Gus.
“Don’t worry,” said Hollins, “we’re going to make it home. We’ll think of something. ‘All the resources we need are in the mind.’ Teddy Roosevelt said that.”
“But what will we think of?” asked Gus.
“If we knew that, we would have already thought of it,” said Hollins.
We walked through Ryzz Plaza, past the iridium statue of Great Jalasu Jhuk. Whole neighborhoods of the city were totally dark. With the power outages, certain foods had become scarce or even disappeared completely. As we passed through the market, we saw some stalls deserted, while others had incredibly long lines. Xotonians grumbled at one another and jostled to get to the front.
“Hey! How come mine doesn’t have any fried mold on it?” cried Dyves, prodding the cave slug it had just purchased from Sertor’s stall.
“The mold fryer needs power to run,” said Sertor, brandishing its spatula like a weapon. “And there isn’t any power!”
“But I’m on the Xotonian Council—”
For the Love of Gelo! Page 2
