I watched Tara shift uncomfortably. “You okay?”
She sighed and turned a frank expression to me. “This jump has been a waste of time so far. What good is this for anyone?” She spat the words and ground her teeth together.
“I don’t know. Maybe Eunavae and Dirk are deep into a pivotal conversation?”
“Yeah, or maybe they discovered the key to the universe buried over in their mound.” Tara’s acerbic tone softened.
“Or maybe they fell madly in love, will get married, and their offspring will cure jump splints.”
Tara busted out laughing.
“We heard that!” Eunavae sounded muted, but discernible.
We laughed again.
“I don’t hear any rain drops. Has it cleared?” I called to Dirk as I carefully peeled the edge of the tarp down to peek out.
“Just about gone.” Dirk groaned as though he shifted uncomfortably.
I slid the crate back, and Tara and I stuck our faces in the opening to get a good look.
“It’s not falling like rain anymore. It’s just kinda floating around out there.” Eunavae’s face appeared over Dirk’s shoulder.
The rain, not hovering in raindrops, floated around in stringy lines or flat plates. I moved the crate out of the opening and detached the canvas, careful to let the rain float away from the outside.
“I think we can come out if we are careful not to touch the, er, puddles.” Can you even have rain puddles without gravity?
“Give it a few more minutes. The stuff seems to be floating back up,” Dirk called and held his palm out to wave us back into the mound.
True enough, the moisture rose out of the spongy turf as though a slow rewind took back the deposit of rain.
After another half hour or so, the water disappeared, the turf glistened and pulsed a rainbow of color, and we emerged from our mounds.
Donnie and Mel were last to leave their mound. The color in Mel’s cheeks and the condition of Donnie’s hair indicated they had spent their time productively. It made me homesick for Kate.
I searched in the direction we had last seen them, but found no sign of them. Agitation forced my decision.
“I’m gonna go find Kate and Trip,” I announced and set a floating course in that direction.
“I’ll come too.” Tara launched herself to catch up with me.
“Wait up. We’ll all go,” Dirk called. “Let me just secure these crates, and we’ll join you.”
I didn’t want to delay. “Catch up to us. We already have momentum,” I called behind.
Tara reached for my hand and we floated, pushing ourselves along by the edges of the mounds. We traveled quickly once we perfected the balancing.
“Do you hear that?” Tara asked after we had floated a couple hundred yards.
I trained my ears on the sound and let my eyes follow. To our left, patches of dirt were being flung out of one of the mounds creating a pillar as the dirt floated into the sky. A grunting sound accompanied the spurts of dirt.
“Trip! Is that you?” Tara called.
We adjusted our trajectory toward the insubstantial column of soil.
“Trip!”
Trip stuck his head out of the mound, and my gut wrenched. Only one thing could put that amount of panic on Trip’s face.
Kate was in trouble.
“What is it? Where is she?” We bumped against the edge of the mound and latched onto it to keep from blowing past it.
“Gone! Snatched right out of my arms!”
I crawled into the mound to see what he talked about. Covered in black dirt and blood, he dug frantically.
“Trip, whose blood are you covered in?” I sounded old, even to me.
“What?” Trip ceased digging long enough to glance at me. I pointed to his back. “Oh, that. The rain is acidic, did you know?”
“Trip, are those acid burns?” Tara asked.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Kate, we’ve got to get Kate away from that thing.”
“What? What took Kate?”
“I didn’t see clearly. Tentacles, that’s all I saw.”
“Dig!” I commanded, and we positioned ourselves against the mound and frantically dug away the ground.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere!” Tara growled after we had dug three feet down and saw nothing. “I’ll go get a shovel.” She darted out of the mound and kicked against the side to launch toward base camp.
“Are you sure it came from under the ground and not outside?”
“Yeah, no doubt.”
“How did it manage to get her away from you?” My anger spilled over as I attacked the ground with a vengeance.
Trip didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to fight with him, so we just kept digging furiously.
After we shunted dirt for another three feet, the soil changed color and consistency. Moist foul smelling fumes rose out of the ground and a flat black surface appeared.
Trip and I glanced at each other then back to the strange layer.
“Is it a door?”
“It doesn’t feel completely solid.” Trip pushed the toe of his shoe against it, and it gave under the pressure.
I knelt down and smoothed the dirt away and explored. “It feels like Shamu.”
“What?”
“You know, the killer whale at Sea World?” I explained. “It’s cool to the touch. Weird.”
Trip scowled at the offensive surface.
“I can feel it pulsing. Like, like—”
“It’s alive.” Trip finished.
Tara and Dirk bumped against the mound with two shovels.
“Give it here,” Trip demanded. He slammed the shovel into the smooth surface.
I yelled at him to stop, but too late.
THE WHOLE WORLD pitched and trembled beneath our feet. Soil rained down from the mound arch onto our heads.
“Time to get out!” Dirk reached into the hole and yanked us both up and out of the mound.
We soared into the air and hovered about the strange planet as it shuddered and rolled. The mounds erupted with steam spouts all around us.
“Get away from them!” Dirk commanded and we all attempted to position ourselves high above and between the steam jets. Mel’s leg got caught in a spout of hot steam. She screamed and writhed. Donnie jerked her away from the stream, and they shot up into the sky.
We climbed as high as we could, but the higher we got the denser the fog of steam that gathered around us. I stayed at the bottom edge of the steam cloud searching for any clue as to Kate’s whereabouts.
I noticed intermittent breaks in the steam spouts. The stream paused and dark, solid objects flew from the mouth of the mounds with sputtering expulsion, then the jet resumed. The mound below me sputtered. I positioned myself to the side. The object vaulted out of the mound toward me, and I snatched it before it whizzed past.
I examined the black object covered in a tarry slick. I switched hands, and the sticky black substance stretched from my hand to the object.
“Corey!” Eunavae exclaimed.
I nodded at her. Yes, she had recognized it too. A human bone, a femur, stuck to my hand. I tried to drop it, but with no gravity to help dislodge the macabre thing, it clung to me like the web of a giant spider. I flung my hand, and the sticky black substance elongated and snapped as the bone released in the momentum.
Various sized objects covered in the black slime littered the air, floating around in the steam clouds. Some as large as a canoe and others as small as a skull bobbed around us. The quake on the surface calmed and dissipated. Trip made swimming motions until he reached one of the larger blobs.
“Corey, over here. This one shot from our mound.”
I made my way over to Trip and the ovoid sack of black tar. The obsidian-hued substance encapsulated something. It writhed around, pressing out on the film like a fist pressing against a balloon. I whipped out my short sword and grabbed the sack.
“Careful, Corey,” Eunavae cautioned from her perch above us.
> I stretched the sack as far as possible and nicked it with my blade. Trip took one side and I took the other. We ripped it apart. Kate gasped for air and shrugged out of the sack like a snake shedding her skin.
Coated in thick green mucus, Kate gagged and retched. I wiped the thick slime away from her face. She coughed, sputtered, and blinked away the ooze. “Corey,” she gasped and her eyes flitted back and forth between Trip and me.
The sphere popped into place enclosing the eight of us in its swirling white rapids, and then it took us back to Heartwork Village.
It regurgitated us onto the QHR floor with no decorum. Kate, covered in slime, made a gagging sound. Trip fell to the floor with a crash, suddenly very heavy in the old gravity, and he yowled in pain. He arched his injured back away from the chair he tumbled over. Tara landed on her feet and skipped to a halt. She whirled around and ran to Trip as we all wrenched our heavy limbs up from the floor. I took Kate’s hand and had to support her with my other hand behind her back to keep her from slipping out of my grasp.
She shivered so severely, I wondered if she were convulsing. The white coats ran into the room and separated us, taking each one of us to a private detox chamber. The usual questions were posed. Where did we go, what did we encounter, who was the target?
The last question stumped me. We’d planned for Eunavae to be the target jumper. We had arranged it so. But nothing happened to Eunavae. Nothing happened at all, except Kate took a journey to the center of a giant planetoid.
It didn’t make sense.
They ran me through the showers, gave me new jumpsuits, and released me. I waited in the hall for my jump mates.
Tara and Donnie came out first and stood alongside me, leaning against the wall while we waited. A few moments later, Dirk walked out of a door with Eunavae and Kim.
“Hey,” he nodded at us, signed the clip board in Kim’s hand, and then walked toward us. Eunavae waved as she exited the corridor with Kim.
“They are keeping Trip and Kate overnight.”
“Why?” Tara and I cried in unison.
“Trip’s injuries didn’t heal in the return. That’s not supposed to happen. We are supposed to reset to our prior DNA pattern.” He glanced at Donnie for confirmation, and saw his concern. “Oh, Mel is fine. Her steam burn healed in the sphere. She’s just finishing up in the car wash.”
We had nicknamed the detoxification showers early in our team experiences, related to how they dragged you through several levels of scans, purges, and blasts on a conveyor belt.
“Why Kate?”
“That foreign goop covered her from head to toe. Nothing is supposed to come back from the jumps that didn’t go into them. We can’t figure out why the filters didn’t purge the slime. They just want to do some tests overnight.”
“I’ll go stay with her.” I stepped forward.
“No can do. She’s in quarantine.” Dirk placed a hand on my shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s get back to the cabin so we can talk.” He cast a furtive glance to a medic standing nearby. Mel stepped into the hall, caught Donnie’s wave, and we met her on the way to the door.
I glanced back at the medic to see her watching us suspiciously. She seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I had seen her before. I shrugged the impression off, thinking she just reminded me of someone from the two century jump. She resembled Taylia or one of the Darchori students with her creamy brown skin.
We burst through the metal double doors and hopped into the cart waiting at the curb. Dirk drove us back to First Cabin, and we all headed straight to the kitchen and scavenged a smorgasbord of leftovers, fruits, and breads.
We gathered around the table and dug in with relish. I couldn’t remember the last time we ate anything. My limbs were still far too heavy. I knocked things over and stubbed my toes. We all had difficulty adjusting to normal gravity. Well, not Tara, she seemed completely unfazed.
When the munching died down, Dirk leaned onto his elbows. “I can’t understand what happened.”
“The jump did not target Eunavae,” Mel agreed.
“It should have.” Donnie bit into a bacon sandwich.
“There didn’t seem to be a target. We just sat around for most of the time,” Tara said, licking mango juice from her fingers.
“Kate was the target.”
Dirk narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe,” he grunted and scowled at the empty bag of chips.
We didn’t talk about it anymore, and the meeting broke up quickly. Mel and Donnie left early to their apartment over the boathouse. Tara went to soak in her Jacuzzi tub, and Dirk decided to swim some laps in the pool before he turned in.
I went to the room Kate and I shared and stood at the foot of the bed, staring. I didn’t want to sleep in our bed alone, so I grabbed a pillow and blanket and closed myself in the study. I camped on the couch for the night while I worried about Kate.
I dreamed of her and woke with the perfume of her nearness. I didn’t want to open my eyes for dread the dream would end, and I would lose the scent of her. Soft lips brushed mine, and I smiled.
“My wife could be here any second, you know.” I gathered the beauty into my arms.
“Really? Well she deserves to find us together, abandoning you to sleep on this old couch.” Kate stretched out to snuggle beside me.
I kissed her hair. “No longer contaminated, I see.”
“Evidently, not.” She fingered my hands.
We dozed together for a few more minutes until the inhabitants of the cabin began stirring. We stretched and yawned. Then plodded out of the office to join our teammates in preparing breakfast.
The jump exhausted us. Normally free time would find us all over the campus, swimming, joining in a game of ball, canoeing, or jogging. Not today. We all gathered in the living room and sat around on the couches and recliners, dozing in and out. It reminded me of a Thanksgiving turkey buzz. Occasionally someone would get up for a drink or a trip to the bathroom but would amble back to a comfy spot and nestle back down.
Donnie and Tara roused enough to play a game of checkers by the fireplace, but one game found them with heavy eyelids and sluggish movements. I wondered if something in the steam on that planet had poisoned us, but couldn’t keep the thought in my head very long. I had Kate with me, our teammates were safe, and this recliner enfolded us in comfort.
We woke when the screen door slammed. We roused from our lethargic repose to greet Trip and Eunavae.
“Did you guys all sleep in here over night?” Eunavae asked as we poked our heads over couches and makeshift beds.
“All night?” I pressed a fist into my bleary eyes. “What time is it?”
“10 AM.”
“No, it can’t be, it’s just 4 in the afternoon.” I glanced at the clock. “Whoa.”
We wriggled out of our nests. Groggy and stiff, we stretched.
“I slept all day too,” Eunavae admitted.
“Yeah, me too, but I thought they had drugged me,” Trip added.
Dirk pointed at the neatly stacked supply trunks. “Who packed the crates?”
We all stared at each other blankly.
“I never heard anyone.”
The screeching sounded and the sphere fell right in the middle of the living room, whisking us away.
WE LANDED IN a copse of trees and Dirk barked out orders. “Trip, Donnie, check the perimeter and set up a watch. Eunavae, make a fire ring at the center. Mel set up an area for first aid and meals. Corey, help me with latrine. Tara and Kate, get the tents set up. You know what to do. Break!”
We groaned, yawned and stretched some more before donning our jumpsuits. We collected our weapons and tools, woodenly stumbling to our assigned tasks. Dirk and I dragged shovels a few hundred feet from the campsite and completed our chore thoroughly if not quickly. I had my share of digging for a while and said so. Dirk chuckled as he slung soil over his shoulder.
“Well, all we can do now is wait.” Dirk wiped dirt on his pant
s as everyone trickled back into the campsite. “Unless anyone wants to volunteer to gather firewood?”
“Kate and I will go,” I said tucking my Gladius into a holster strapped across my chest. I turned and helped Kate into her jacket. I wanted some time alone with my wife.
“Let’s go with them,” Trip suggested to Tara, who nodded and strapped her scabbard to her hip.
Okay, so no time alone for now. We decided to start at the perimeter of camp and work our way in, so we strapped on our packs and struck out at a leisurely pace. Several hours before sunset, we felt no pressure.
“The trees look familiar.” Tara tipped her head back and pointed into the canopy.
I glanced up and noticed they were very similar to our trees in Jewel City, large branchless bases with upward reaching limbs in the heights of the trees.
“Do you remember the time Ash and Jose had a contest to see who could cut the tree down the fastest?” She touched my arm, eyes shining with laughter.
“Oh, yeah. The raccoon family!” I snorted.
Kate dropped my hand and leaned into Trip. “Come on Trip, the old fogies are reminiscing again. I’ll race you to that cliff face, see it?” She pointed.
Trip tossed his sword and scabbard to Tara and she slung it over her shoulder. “On the count of three. One, two...” Trip took off running.
“Cheater!” Kate called after him and sprinted away.
Tara and I laughed.
“It’s good to see Kate somewhat recovered from her grief.” Tara found a clump of tender shoots that were sturdy, but thin and cut two of them.
I watched Kate disappear into the forest.
“These will make awesome spears!” Tara began sharpening the end of one and tossed me the other.
With a tiny pocketknife and my short sword, we whittled the saplings into sharp spears within a few minutes. “We have spears back at the campsite, Tara. Why exactly are we—”
A blood-curdling scream interrupted me.
“Kate!”
We tore into the direction of the scream but slid to a stop after a moment to listen. The yelp of an animal came from slightly to the right, so we adjusted our course and ran as fast as we could, cutting in and around tree trunks. The cliff face loomed ahead of us through a break in the trees.
The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series Page 8
