Third Rock

by S E T Ferguson

  “Actually, I would guess this is more of a rookery than a nest.” Iris loudly suggested.

  “What’s the difference?” Heming began, then stopped his questioning. “Never mind. I don’t care what the difference is. Either way, I don’t think those caterpillar things want us here.”

  “No kidding,” Vlad said. “I suggest we get out of this clearing as soon as possible.”

  Vlad went to pick up his backpack, but as he did, he saw the telltale sign of rustling leaves where they had cleared the path into the clearing.

  “Are you shitting me?” Heming yelled as the second creature appeared out of the woods. “They get bigger?”

  The second of the creatures was almost twice as long as the first one, a huge mass of wriggling feet that was as scary as anything Vlad had ever seen in an old horror movie.

  Also, they were apparently not going to get out of the clearing without a fight.

  Iris shot the second creature, increasing the still-lingering sickeningly sweet smell that had arisen after Beryl had killed the first one.

  And still, the humming around them only increased.

  “Any chance that humming is something other than these caterpillar things?” Vlad asked Iris, already knowing the answer, but hoping there was even a slight chance he was wrong.

  “No, it’s definitely the caterpillars.” Iris confirmed.

  “How about this—is there any chance there is only one more of these things in our vicinity?”

  As if to answer his question, the leaves at the edge of the clearing began rustling where the first two had emerged.

  And then to his left.

  And then his right.

  Vlad didn’t have to turn around to know that the leaves behind him were rustling as well. He could hear the sound of the trees, even over the humming.

  In front of him, six of the creatures emerged from the woods, and he saw others coming out elsewhere in his peripheral vision.

  “How in the world do they see where they are going without eyes?” Heming asked over the humming and gunfire as everyone started killing the creatures as fast as they could. The insects did seem to have an uncanny sense of where each of the humans were. It seemed as if they all headed straight for them when they emerged from the jungle, despite their seeming lack of eyes.

  In front of Vlad, one of the creatures opened something that resembled a mouth, and a long, pink, forked tongue slipped in and out.

  If Vlad thought they had been as scary as anything he had seen in a horror movie before, the forked tongue definitely made the caterpillar-like creatures far scarier than anything he had ever seen in a horror movie. Hell, he thought as he shot at one of the newly-emerged creatures, they’re even scarier than the Vos. At least the Vos rarely show up in large numbers.

  “Their tongues.” Beryl answered Heming’s question. “They’re like snakes back on Earth. They probably can’t see or hear well, so they use their tongue and sense of smell to find their prey.”

  “Because being gigantic, killer insects was not scary enough.” Vlad aimed at one of the larger creatures and pulled the trigger. He took aim at them one after another, taking out eight of the giant insects.

  Around him, everyone else was doing the same thing. The smell of the dead bugs now overwhelmed the clearing. It was so sickeningly sweet Vlad felt like vomiting. Even worse, as quickly as they could kill the insects, more appeared.

  At seventeen dead insects, just as Vlad thought they were never going to stop the creatures, the humming sound around them began to diminish, almost like turning down the volume on the jungle.

  Finally, after he made his twenty-third kill, the humming stopped.

  Almost immediately, Vlad noticed that the woods came to life around them with sounds other than humming. He didn’t know if they were birds, frogs, or insects.

  “Do you hear that?” Beryl said, clearly hearing the same thing. “The woods here aren’t as unnaturally quiet as we thought.”

  Next to Heming, a final, small insect emerged from the ground that the first creature’s tail had impaled. Heming aimed his gun at the bug and shot. The lone insect burst into flames before exploding into an uncountable number of pieces.

  “I would guess the silence means they are gone.” Iris smiled.

  “An excellent development.” Heming picked up his backpack and machete, and he started toward the path from which they had entered the clearing. “But I’m not going to stick around here to see if it’s true.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How come all the first creatures to evolve on planets seem to be giant, man-eating beasts?” Beryl asked as the group sat on some rocks they had found along the path Camp led them down. They had put at least a mile between themselves and the clearing before stopping to get the rest that had been denied them earlier.

  No one was complaining now that they were still in the woods instead of in a clearing and the sun.

  “To be fair, we only have three data points on that. And really, in all three cases, the giant, man-eating creatures were not even close to the first creatures to evolve, so it’s not exactly true.” Iris replied. “Also, we aren’t entirely sure the caterpillar things actually eat people. So far, we only know they seem intent on killing people who happen to stumble upon their rookery.”

  “That seems to be a distinction without a difference. And, for the record, I don’t want to find out if those caterpillar things also eat people. I’m content knowing they want to kill us,” Beryl said. “And, also, yet more for the record, we don’t know whether the dinosaurs back on Earth would have eaten people, either, but I am pretty sure we could all agree that they would have been man eaters.”

  “Do you remember anything on the list of animals that suggested there were giant, maybe man-eating insects on this planet?” Vlad asked.

  “Nothing that struck me when I went through it. I do wish I would have put that list on my personal memory, though.” Iris was the only one in the group standing; even Camp had taken the chance to lie down on the ground, content to take a break so long as he could do so while near the scent he was tracking.

  Around them, the woods remained alive with the sounds of animals. They still weren’t showing themselves, but at least Beryl and the rest of them now could hear that they were there. Beryl loved having the noises with them again. It felt more like Columbina this way.

  That they had not been hearing the animals while they were walking from Whit’s compound to the rookery suggested that the caterpillar creatures had been nearby that entire time.

  This was not a comforting thought to Beryl.

  Neither was the nagging thought that the giant caterpillars might not be the worst things around. It seemed to Beryl that giant insects who seemed to nest underground would easily be able to dig under the fence her father had erected around his compound.

  If that was the case, the fence was meant to keep out something else entirely.;

  Beryl decided not to mention that thought to the rest of the group, though she was sure Iris had been thinking the same thing. Hopefully no one else had considered it.

  “Well, as we have no idea what Whit was calling them, I think we should be able to give them a name of our choosing. I’m definitely not going to spend however long we’re out here in the woods with them calling them ‘those giant caterpillar things that nearly ate us,’” Heming said. “I suggest we call them Snakipedes.”

  “That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard,” Vlad shot back. “They are clearly Spikers.”

  “Are they playing volleyball? That’s just as dumb as Snakipedes. How about Centilegs?”

  “Isn’t that the same thing as Centipede? Maybe Spikipedes.”

  “I feel like you’re stuck on volleyball references. What about Flailipedes?”

  “What in the world does that mean?”

  “You know, a flail? One of those medieval sticks with the spiked ball on the end of a chain?”

  “OK, I’m sorry, we can’t call anythin
g a name that requires an explanation of Earth history to make any sense.”

  “Those names all suck,” Iris had apparently decided her suggestions were necessary to keep the naming from getting out-of-hand. “Obviously, we’re going to call them Leg Monsters.”

  “You’re the smartest being in the world, and the best you can come up with is ‘Leg Monsters?’” Heming rolled his eyes. Iris flipped him off. “Even Flailipedes is better than that. And at least the volleyball references bring to mind women in bikinis.”

  “I know what we should call them.” Fawn raised her hand. Beryl thought she looked like someone who knew that what was about to come out of her mouth was far superior to anything else that had been suggested. “We should call them Caterkillers.”

  There was a brief pause before anyone spoke.

  “OK, that’s fucking brilliant.” Heming high fived Fawn, who now blushed with the praise. Everyone agreed with Heming’s assessment, though not all with the same emphatic cursing. Iris, though, kept quiet. She rarely agreed with their choices of names, though she almost always let them name the creatures and plants they discovered. Beryl was pretty sure Iris was still upset she had agreed to let them name anything “Velociraptors on Steroids,” particularly when the creature they had given the name to had immediately become the most talked-about creature in the entire known-universe.

  And Velociraptor on Steroids was the best of the names they had come up with.

  The group sat around for a few minutes, complimenting the choice of name by Fawn and just enjoying the late afternoon rest.

  “What’s the plan?” Behind Vlad, the sun was descending toward the horizon. Even through the thick woods that was obvious. Beryl guessed they had maybe two hours before it set. “I don’t want to keep walking for the sake of putting miles behind us.”

  “I think putting miles between us and those Caterkillers seems like a most excellent option.” Iris tapped Heming with the tip of her boot, but he did not move from the spot where he was sitting on the ground.

  “Because you don’t get tired.” Heming pushed Iris’s boot away. “I’m with Vlad. Give us a plan. That way, I can at least look forward to something and get my mind off of whatever might be lurking in these woods and looking for a human-sized snack.”

  “How about we walk for another hour and set up camp wherever we are at that point. If we find somewhere ideal to camp before then, we’ll stop for the night. Is that OK?” Around her, Beryl saw everyone nod along with her at Iris’s suggestion. Slowly, each of them got up, rubbing dirt off of their pants and preparing to get started again.

  Beryl shouldered her backpack and rubbed Camp’s left ear. Other than Iris, he was the only one who looked like he wanted to get back on the trail. Had Iris suggested they camp right where they were for the night, Beryl would not have objected, and she didn’t think anyone else would have, either—at least, not any of the humans with them.

  Thirty minutes of walking later, Beryl heard something ahead of where they walked.

  “Did anyone else hear that?” The group stopped at Beryl’s words, listening to the sounds around them. Besides the now constant chattering of insects and the whistles and chirps of a few unseen birds, a faint, familiar sound could be heard in the distance, ahead of where they were walking.

  “It sounds like flowing water.” Iris started walking again, catching up with Camp. The dog had not stopped with the rest of them, but continued following the trail. They all followed the dog toward the sound, now anxious to see something other than the woods that had been their near-constant companion all day.

  As the sound of the water grew closer the jungle began to open up. Beryl looked skyward to see a bright red bird flit overhead, the first actual bird she had seen since they had landed on the planet, even though their sounds had now accompanied them after the fight with the Caterkillers.

  Heming and Camp pushed their way through the last of the woods, and the group found themselves on the shore of a rocky river. Beneath her feet, Beryl saw river stones, some sharp but most worn away by the powerful water that stretched out before her into smooth, oval rocks.

  Blue water tumbled over the rocky ground. The river in front of them stretched at least 1,000 feet across, a wide swath through the jungle. Although the water was moving quickly, it was shallow, at least it was as far as Beryl could see. Near the shore on which they stood, the water would only have come up to Beryl’s ankles, and it didn’t look much deeper further out. On the other shore, a jungle like the one they had just emerged from came up almost to the water’s edge, with mountains situated in the distance behind it.

  Camp sniffed at the shoreline, but did not venture into the water at all, either unwilling to proceed through the water or unable to find the scent he had been following. Without his translator working, Beryl had no way to know which it was.

  Beryl turned to her dead phone anyway, the product of years of habitually looking to it in any and all situations.

  “Do you think Whit crossed here?” Vlad asked.

  “Camp seems to have lost the scent at the shoreline.” Iris walked to the edge of the water, but she did not touch it. “I would guess he crossed here. It must be shallow enough to walk across, because I doubt he dragged something all the way here he could use to cross a river.”

  “Maybe he stored something here before he had to flee,” Fawn suggested.

  “It could be, but I think we would see whatever it was on the other side of the river,” Iris said. “I don’t see anything on the far side that looks manmade, let alone like something you could cross this expanse with.”

  All of them were now carefully standing at the water’s edge, but none of them so much as touched the shallowest of the water. Years of living on a planet where a swim in any of the natural bodies of water would likely result in a quick and unpleasant death had made them all wary of anything other than a pool when it came to swimming. Add to that, that it hadn’t been three hours earlier when they had been fighting an infestation of giant bugs. The plants and animals on Libertas may have been new to them, but they were definitely the sort of plants and animals none of them wanted to mess with.

  “Is there any way to tell if there’s anything in the water?” Beryl asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Not with what we have with us, and not with the lack of technology we’re working with here on the surface. I suppose we could go back to the Bird, then see if we can do any analysis from there, before returning to cross. Or, better yet, we could have the Bird drop us off at the other side of the river. We wouldn’t need an analysis then.”

  “Another day of hiking back to the Bird through Caterkiller infested woods? I’d rather not,” Heming said, and Beryl guessed she wasn’t the only one who agreed with him. “Besides, won’t Whit get further and further ahead of us if we do that? Plus, it seems that another day off of the trail will lead to it fading away. Camp is doing great, but I’m guessing he is going to have a hard time picking up the scent on the other side in two days, because we have no idea where Whit came out. Not that I am excited about the prospect of crossing this river without knowing what could be in it.”

  Iris eyed the water, seemingly considering their options.

  “How do you all feel about camping here tonight?” Her question got a whoop of happiness from Heming and nods from everyone else. “I think perhaps a good night of sleep will help us figure out what to do. Because I sure as hell have no idea myself.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Vlad had hoped to wake up refreshed and with a sense of hope the next day.

  Unfortunately, in the beautiful light of a Libertasian morning, Vlad thought their situation looked even more hopeless than it had the night before.

  “I do have one other idea,” Iris finally said, after a breakfast spent discussing their options. The group sat on rocks, watching the river flow in front of them. They hadn’t voted or even discussed the situation, even though he knew it was the only thing on all of their minds. St
ill, Vlad could see that no one wanted to cross the river. At the same time, no one really wanted to go back and get the Bird, either. However, if Vlad had been forced to choose, it seemed to him that it was a better option to potentially lose the scent on the other side of the water by taking the time to get the Bird than it was to risk a potentially horrifying death at the teeth of whatever lurked below the surface of the water. “I can go in the river with food and see if anything comes after it. It’s not a perfect idea, though. If there is something poisonous, it isn’t going to affect me when it might affect all of you.”

  Everyone considered this option silently. Vlad didn’t love the idea, but he liked it better than the option of trekking back the way they had come and losing another day of pursuit. Yesterday, with the Caterkillers, it had been easy to forget that the giant bugs weren’t the only things in the woods that they knew of that could thwart their plans. Somewhere on the planet, it was likely there were other humans attempting to find the same person they were looking for. If they found Whit first, all of what they were doing would be worthless.

  “I say we go for it,” Heming said. “What’s the worst that could happen? We all die? We’ve been through that worst case scenario so many times at this point, it almost seems normal.”

  “That is a point. Not a good point, but a point,” Vlad responded. “I’m with Heming. Let Iris test the waters, then we start across.”

  “I’m in,” Fawn nodded.

  “So am I.” Vlad looked at Beryl. She wasn’t looking at any of them, but instead on the other side of the river. She held her emerald in her hand, the blue aquamarines of her new bracelet catching the early rays of the sun on her wrist. Beryl was worried, even though she would never say so. She nodded her assent to the plan.

  Iris pulled something that looked like beef jerky out of her backpack.