by Jack Castle
Harry screamed.
#
To Harry’s surprise, he woke up the next morning. The rain was gone, and it was no longer chilly but a comfortably warm day. A gentle breeze swayed his hammock.
Harry was even more surprised to realize that his arm didn’t hurt anymore. He quickly looked down and saw that a hard black shell covered his wrist. He gave it a few practice hits with the knuckles of his left hand, and it produced resounding thunks. The covering was rock hard. In fact, Harry felt better all over, although he was ravenous. The black-furred giant had been trying to cure him, after all.
Harry heard the purple servants moving about the camp, but clinking sounds coming from the opposite side of the smoldering campfire grabbed his attention.
Still sitting on the log where he had parked himself the previous night, the red-haired samurai dug through the rucksack Harry had taken from his plane. The large beast sniffed a pack of Lucky brand cigarettes. He took a tentative bite out of the pack and chewed for a second before shaking his head wildly in disgust and spitting out the tobacco. He continued to spit for the next minute or two.
Realizing that Harry was watching, the beast looked at him suspiciously and growled. The message was clear: “Don’t even think about messing with me.”
Next, Big Red, as Harry had come to think of the giant woolly beast, took out a can of rations. More carefully this time, he tasted the can with the tip of his tongue and seemed to smell the food within. Big Red bit right through the can with a loud crunch and proceeded to lick the can’s interior with his long blue tongue. Harry realized the beast could easily do the same to his bones at any time.
Big Red continued to dig through Harry’s pack. He systematically removed the binoculars, flares, and spare clothes and threw anything inedible onto the tundra. Suddenly, Harry’s hopes rose. He remembered that the rucksack contained a spare pistol and clips and reasoned that the beast would chuck these items to the ground with the rest of his supplies.
As if on cue, Big Red removed Harry’s spare pistol, barrel first. He was about to toss the pistol to the ground, just as Harry had predicted, but then seemed to sense Harry’s keen interest in the metal object.
Harry’s hopes were dashed, but then Big Red pointed the weapon directly at its own face, and its thumb dangerously close to the trigger.
“That’s right, you son-of-a-bitch,” Harry heard himself say. “Go ahead and pull the trigger.”
Big Red heard this and stopped fiddling with the weapon to glare menacingly at Harry.
Harry held his breath and remained quiet. He quietly hoped that the stupid creature, which had taken part in severing his hand, would pull the trigger and blow its damn head off.
Just when Harry thought nothing was going to happen, there was a loud BANG as a single shot rang out.
The purple servants let out cries of surprise and scampered off, but the old, battle-scarred samurai arrived on the scene with a leap and a roar. The black-furred nurse soon followed.
When the gun smoke cleared, Big Red still sat upright, but his eyes were open wide in surprise. The bullet had partially penetrated his skin, right above his muzzle and directly between his eyes.
The battle-scarred samurai seemed to ask him what had happened in a crude language. Big Red responded with an animated speech that included gestures to the pistol on the ground, to Harry, and then to bullet that was still lodged in his face.
Black Fur stepped forward with a dagger and easily pried the piece of metal from Big Red’s face. Battlescar let out a hearty laugh at his friend’s expense.
The ridiculousness of the situation suddenly hit Harry, and he started laughing and quickly lost control. He laughed so hard that he fell out of his hammock and kept laughing as he rolled back and forth on the ground while holding his sides, which felt as if they might split.
When he finally settled down, he looked up and saw all three fur-skinned giants staring down at him, along with half the little purple servants in the camp, who had come over to witness the spectacle.
Harry didn’t care; it was just so darn funny — like watching one of those new Bugs Bunny cartoons with the dopey hunter. He took another look at Big Red, who rubbed the tiny bullet wound, and started laughing again.
When Big Red realized that this laughter was at his expense, he let out a lion-like roar, jumped to his feet, and headed toward Harry. Black Fur tried to stop him but didn’t even succeed in slowing down the much bigger samurai. Harry wasn’t laughing anymore. Big Red’s jaws were inches from Harry’s throat when he suddenly stopped.
The wood nymph was back.
The purple servants dropped at her feet, pressing their faces firmly into the ground, and even the fur-skinned giants (with the exception of the older one) took a respectful step back.
The lithe nymph moved over to Harry and planted one sandaled foot on his chest, but she was so light that he barely felt any pressure. With the flexibility of a contortionist, she crouched low, so her face was close to his, and gently caressed his face, exploring it with her hands. Her long, thin fingers danced across his skin. She felt its texture and frowned in disapproval when she pricked her delicate fingers on the stubble of his beard.
The fragrance of her hair reminded Harry of autumn rain in the forests back home. He couldn’t tell if the scent was natural or the result of incense, but it was intoxicating nonetheless.
“How did I get here?” Harry asked, resigned to his fate but wondering at it none-the-less.
She seemed surprised at either his ability to speak or at his language. She touched his lips, waiting for him to speak again.
“My name is Harry,” he said. It was something to say; he wasn’t really expecting a reaction.
She turned her head from side to side like an inquisitive bird, just as she had done at their first meeting. She looked back at Black Fur as if to see if the woolly guard understood his words any better than she did, but when Black Fur didn’t respond, she turned back toward him.
“Harry,” she repeated questioningly.
He stared at her, “Yes, that’s right.” He smiled. “My name’s Harry.”
“Harry,” she repeated more confidently.
When Harry pointed to her, she placed her hand on her own chest with the same questioning look. When Harry nodded, she said, “Asha.”
There was a quick bark from Black Fur, a respectful but gentle reminder of some kind? Asha rolled her eyes at this and added, “Dan-Sai. Dan-Sai Asha.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Dan-Sai, Asha.” Harry presumed that Dan-Sai was some sort of a title, like princess.
There was a loud grumbling sound, but this time it came from Harry’s stomach and not from one of the large guards.
Princess Asha’s eyes went wide at the sound.
“Sorry. Just a little hungry,” Harry explained.
The princess seemed to grasp the situation immediately. She stepped off Harry and quickly uttered commands to the groveling servants.
The captain watched as the servants rose to their feet, without lifting their eyes from the tundra floor, and quickly scampered off to do her bidding. When Harry looked back at the princess, she was gone, as were the giant samurai.
Finding himself alone, Harry gathered up his gear one-handed and placed it back into his rucksack. When he thought no one was looking, he picked up and holstered his gun.
Harry didn’t notice the battle-scarred samurai watching him from the shadows.
Chapter 10
The River
Tae’s converted soil-mover sea train hadn’t been motoring over the vast open ocean for more than five days when its passengers spotted land of the non-floating variety.
A few hours later, with Tae still at the helm, the wagon train approached a mainland abounding with a dark, foreboding jungle and bordered by tan sandy beaches. For a time, the group was concer
ned about washing up against a menacing looking barrier reef, but the tide washed them through a wide opening in the jagged rocks and guided them right into a fifty to sixty foot wide, Mississippi style river.
On either side of the river, an array of multicolored leafy canopies. Thick trunks shrouded a lower layer of palms and ferns, creating a dense and nearly impenetrable blockade.
Leo was eager to wash the saltwater from his pores and cool his sunbaked skin, and he dove into the inviting river. When he surfaced, his future mother-in-law (he hoped) called to him in a mothering tone, “Leo, stay near the boat.”
“Okay, Mom,” he chided, but he still stayed alongside Tae’s water train as the current carried it lazily along.
Leo dove beneath the waves. The water was brisk but refreshing, and it was so clear that he could see all the way to the bottom, which was about 100 feet below. He saw beautiful reefs under the surface, along with an abundance of fish of all shapes and colors. Leo suspected this was how Earth’s waters must have looked long before pollution and overfishing.
At first, Leo was a little frightened, especially when one of the strange fish brushed up against his skin, but the majority of the fish were small and extraordinarily beautiful. He wished he had scuba gear with him.
After gazing at a school of oddly shaped, multicolored fish, he turned around and saw a very large gray face next to his. The creature had gentle, lazy eyes, extremely long whiskers, and a large protruding nose. It was the largest creature he had seen all day. Leo shot out of the water like a bullet.
#
Out of the corner of her eye, Mac caught sight of a huge splash of water as Leo broke the surface on a gasp and flailed backwards as a large gray creature closed in on him. “Leo?” Mac shouted. She jumped one container at a time from her train car to the nearest one, her heart in her throat, expecting at any moment to see her nearly-son-in-law get eaten by a giant alien whale.
Mac shielded her eyes with her hands and saw that Leo had abandoned his frantic splashing and was now swimming calmly alongside the water train, twenty feet off its port side. Looking more closely, she saw the large gray creature about the size of a car floating next to him, just under the surface. The water creature had several blowholes, and when it breathed through them, it produced flute-like sounds. Her lieutenant trod water next to it and was playfully splashing water into the creature’s open mouth. “Leo,” she shouted to him, “you okay?”
Leo stopped splashing his new aquatic friend, which resembled a manatee with frilly wings. “Yeah, just making some new friends.” He smiled broadly. “The big guy gave me quite a scare at first, but he seems really friendly.”
The mammal turned over and allowed the pilot to rub its belly. Leo added, “Real friendly. Maybe we could keep him as a pet.”
“Yeah,” Mac said, “I’m sure Emma would love to have a flute-playing manatee for a goldfish.”
Leo continued to tread water and give his newfound friend the belly rub of its life. The creature rolled over and began nudging Leo’s chest. Leo laughed, “Hey, stop that…”
A loud RAT-TAT-TAT sound cut Leo off, and his face was suddenly splattered with the creature’s blue blood.
“No!” the lieutenant screamed. Huge bullet wounds punctured the creature’s side, and its flute-like noises were replaced by heavy groaning.
Mac turned to see Commando Stein staring through his sniper scope. Crazily, she realized that it was the same scope he must have stared through when he shot Joan. “Stein, what the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked. “I’m saving Leo’s life.” He yelled to Leo, “Leo, get out of the way. You’re in the line!”
Leo didn’t hear the commando; he was too busy watching the creature bleed into the water. Sobbing in alien squeaks and whistles, the dying water beast began to sink beneath the waves. “No, no, no!” He put his hands beneath the creature and kicked madly to keep it above the surface, but he couldn’t hold the beast up, and it descended to the riverbed floor.
Mac turned to face Stein and grabbed the barrel of his gun, attempting to yank it away. “Stand down, soldier,” she said in a gruff voice.
Stein held fast. “Back off, lady.”
His tone alarmed Mac, but not as much as the bloodthirsty look in his eyes. “No. Give me your gun, Stein,” she ordered, standing her ground.
Leo climbed out of the water and walked over to them. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked. Leo was angrier than Mac had ever seen him.
Stein easily yanked his weapon free from Mac’s grasp and turned to face Leo with that same murderous stare. “I saved your life,” he countered. “I thought it was going to eat you.”
“But it wasn’t attacking me,” Leo shot back.
“I didn’t know that,” Stein said vehemently. He looked at Leo as though he were about to beat the young astronaut within an inch of his life and enjoy it.
Leo refused to back down. Mac knew he didn’t have the training or experience to fight Stein. Sure, Leo could land a crippled space shuttle and navigate Orion’s belt without a navigational computer, but up against a trained Security Force Response commando like Stein, Leo would lose. And Mac knew Leo hated to lose. Yet here he was, squaring off against the giant commando like Emma’s honor was on the line. Right then and there, Mac decided she’d happily let him marry her daughter if they ever got off this planet.
“You two had better step back unless you want your heads blown off,” Stein warned Leo and Mac.
This time, a much more capable hand clamped down on the barrel of Stein’s automatic weapon: Brett’s.
“Now, Stein, what in this gosh-forsaken world did you go and do that for?” Brett asked, his Midwestern accent thickening.
Moving closer to Brett, Stein explained, “I thought Leo was in trouble, and we also have to know if our weapons will have any effect on these creatures.”
“Why? They’re not trying to hurt us,” Leo, who stood behind Brett, countered.
Stein tried to yank his weapon out of Brett’s hand, but Brett held fast. The two men squared off.
Mac admired Brett’s response. His good-natured smile was replaced by a glare that nearly equaled the German commando’s. Stein was taller than Brett, but Brett outweighed him by a good forty pounds.
Brett jutted out his square jaw. “Stein, I crap bigger than you.” More quietly, he asked, “Do you really want to throw down over a fish?”
“I didn’t feel like fish anyway,” Stein muttered. He relinquished his rifle to Brett.
Once he was out of earshot and Leo had gone off to find a towel, Brett turned to Mac and handed her the rifle. He said quietly, “You know, in Alan’s defense, at first I thought the creature was attacking Leo, too.”
“Well, it wasn’t, Brett,” Mac said angrily. She took the rifle from Brett and checked to see that the safety was on. “You watch him, Brett. You watch him close.”
In the distance behind the wagon train, there was a loud wailing sound that resembled the call of the manatee-like creature Leo had befriended, but this water beast’s song was somber and marked with great mourning.
#
For the rest of the afternoon, the group saw numerous indigenous life forms, such as an iguanodon like creature that frolicked near the riverbank. They also saw more creatures like the one Leo had befriended, but none of them would approach the wagon train, despite the lieutenant’s best efforts. It seemed that word had gotten out that they were murderous killers on the river. There goes the neighborhood, Mac thought.
Hours passed, and they traveled farther down the river. After checking on the general’s condition, Mac found herself sitting alone, trying to think happier thoughts. Sailing the river reminded her of when she had helped Emma with a class project on Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Instead of just typing up a report, they had built a raft similar to the one in th
e novel and sailed it down the Tennessee River, which ran just behind their house. They had filmed the adventure and edited it, and Emma had received an A for the project. These thoughts turned sour at the thought of never seeing Emma again, which pained Mac greatly. She suspected that Leo was going through the same thing.
As night approached, the expedition spotted a great wall in the distance that ran parallel to the river. It was several miles off, but they could judge its immense size because it towered over the plentiful forests. It was the first sign they had seen of any kind of civilization.
The river narrowed as they got closer to the wall, and Mac ordered Tae to land on the next beach. Less than ninety minutes later, Tae’s soil-mover train landed. Leo commemorated the occasion by planting a little flag.
Their celebration was cut short, however. When they went to unload General Zimmerman from the train, they discovered that he had died sometime between approaching the shore and actually landing on it. This had been one of the few times Brett had left the general’s side and Mac could see that he intended to blame himself for the general’s death. Not that there was anything they could have done. Mac debated bringing it up and decided to leave the commando to his grief, feeling an echo of it herself.
They dug a grave near the tree line, and Mac presided over a service. Leo said she did a good job, but Mac felt that no amount of words would do it justice. As the group departed from the gravesite, Mac lingered next to Brett, the commando holding his silence like it was a tattered battle standard. Mac decided she could speak for him and so she opened her mouth to tell the general that she would miss him and that she wished he were there now because they all could use his strength.
Brett heard her words and placed his large hand on her shoulder. Mac fought back tears, realizing she hadn’t had the chance to bury Joan. Instead of breaking down, she turned to the commando and said, “You know, he never said anything, but I could tell that he loved you like a son.”
Brett’s lips tightened and a single tear rolled down his cheek before he looked away. He started to say something, clearly wanted to say something, perhaps that he’d known it and that he’d loved the general like a father, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he walked off to be alone.
