by Jack Porter
At this, Sydney finally did favor me with a smile. “That’s better,” she said.
At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder. The predators we’d come across so far had been formidable enough, but that didn’t mean there weren’t bigger, stronger, scarier predators we hadn’t yet encountered.
All I could do was hope we would be ready for them if or when those larger, more dangerous predators surfaced.
I was still contemplating that thought when the earth began to rumble beneath my feet.
“Jesus fuck, now what?” Jayloo exclaimed.
As much as I didn’t necessarily agree with Jayloo on much so far, on this occasion, her thoughts and mine were in sync. I cursed under my breath even as I took a wide stance and lowered my center of gravity.
I was the only one standing at that point, but both Uma and Deeve lurched to their hands and knees, both of them ready to bolt if the situation warranted it. Where they would go, I couldn’t have guessed, but couldn’t fault their reflexes either way.
As quickly as the tremor had begun, it faded into nothing.
“I hate this fucking planet!” Jayloo exclaimed, and some of the others murmured in agreement.
For me, it wasn’t exactly the worst place I’d ever assessed, but at the same time, it was far from the best. I found myself looking up toward the various misshapen moons hanging in the sky.
“That one’s new,” I said, pointing to a smaller, bright red object that was far from round.
“So what?” Jayloo said.
It was Sydney who answered. “It’s passing in front of the bigger one. Adam thinks the change of gravitational forces might have something to do with the tremor.”
I shrugged. “Or it might be no more than a coincidence. It’s moving quickly, though, by the looks. I guess we’ll know more as time passes.”
There wasn’t much else to say. We each climbed back into our harnesses, even those of us who were injured, and resumed our journey as best as we could.
For two solid hours we trudged along, slowly eating up the miles, and in that time, nothing untoward came out of the distance to make our lives difficult beyond a couple more tremors. We weren’t attacked by any monsters, the skies remained blessedly free of wind-borne sand, and if the tremor was a sign of things to come, then those two hours gave no indication of it at all.
Toward the end of that time, the red moon moved away from the larger one, and the tremors stopped.
Then the landscape shifted again. Instead of being barren and empty, we found ourselves walking through what appeared to be another graveyard, this one not of beasts, but of trees.
Or at least, dry and wind-blasted stumps that were made of this world’s equivalent of real wood. How long they’d been standing there, how long they had been dead, I couldn’t tell.
Either way, their presence filled me with good cheer. There were indeed trees on this world. Or at least, there had been.
The only question was why this desiccated forest had grown so far out under the endless sun. Had it always been like this? Or was there a time when this part at least had been cooler and wetter?
I had no way of knowing.
At the edges of the tree graveyard, the trunks were too worn-down and sparse to be of any assistance. But further in, they began to provide a little bit of shade.
“We’ll rest here,” Uma said, and there were no objections.
Once more, we gathered around the supplies, drinking our fill and eating the dried nutrient bars that were keeping us alive and strong.
I was grimly aware that we’d already drunk a good portion of the water, and we hadn’t found anything with which to replace it.
That said, it wasn’t as if we had much of a choice. In this heat, under the burning sun, we would have had to drink significant amounts even if we weren’t hauling all our supplies along with us.
The situation wasn’t yet dire, but in just a few days, it would be.
The good news was that our shadows were already significantly longer than they’d been at the start.
“This is a smaller world,” I said. “We should reach the edge of this daylight within just a few more days.”
Most of the girls didn’t respond. They were mostly just weary, and aware that we still had a long way to go. Of them all, Deeve seemed to be the fittest, with the exception of perhaps the Commander herself, and me. She had more energy to spare than the others.
“Do you think this would burn?” she asked, gesturing at the wind-blown tree stumps. “Should we gather some for a fire?”
It wasn’t a bad thought. A fire might help keep some of those predators away when next we stopped to sleep. But…
“Do you really want to add the weight to our supplies?” I asked.
At my words, it wasn’t just Jayloo who let out a groan.
“We don’t know how long this forest graveyard reaches,” I added. “Perhaps we will still be walking through it when it’s time to stop. If so, then we can build a fire, if you like. And if not…” I shrugged. “Maybe we’ll gather some wood before we leave the forest behind.”
It was a good enough compromise, and everybody seemed happy with it.
Once more, we rested just long enough for everyone to regather their strength, before setting off again.
Chapter 17
We settled back into our informal routine. Two hours, give or take, hauling the supplies up and down low hills, between boulders and the corpses of trees, occasionally lurching to a halt as the makeshift sled got caught on a rock or other hidden obstacle.
Then we would take a break for half an hour or so, to eat, drink, take care of any essential bodily functions, and basically do what we could to recover in advance of our next session.
By the time we’d completed four such sessions, the women were beginning to struggle.
They were exhausted. Even the fittest of them, Deeve and Uma, looked as if they were near the end of their endurance. As for me, I’d taken more and more of the sled’s weight, and the makeshift harness had been digging into my shoulders for long enough that it was starting to rub my skin raw and bruise the flesh underneath.
Even so, I could have kept going. Could have kept walking for as long as it took. But I couldn’t do it alone. Not for long.
We’d reached, if not the edge of the dead forest, then at least an area where the dried remnants of the trees were spaced further apart.
“Is this as far as we go?” Uma asked the others. “Or should we keep going for a bit longer?
Sydney and Jayloo were both lying down on the sandy ground, obviously exhausted. Kia was sitting with her back to one of the stumps, chewing on a ration stick, much as I was doing myself.
The only one standing was Deeve. The tall, athletic woman was staring off into the distance, looking first back where we had come from, before turning and looking on ahead. We were near the top of a low rise, which meant she could see over the worn, dried tree stumps.
“What does it matter either way?” Jayloo moaned. “As soon as the water runs out, we’re going to die. Who cares if it’s here or somewhere else?”
“Nobody’s going to die,” Uma said, but she did glance toward Kia as if seeking conformation.
The psychic woman hesitated. “There’s pain to come in our future. I see… sadness. But there’s hope there, too.” The large eyed woman made a gesture of helplessness. “I can’t see any details. I cannot tell if we are all to survive or not. For the next few days, we should be okay. Beyond that—I do not know.”
“That’s just great,” came Jayloo’s surly response. “We should survive for the next couple of days.” She sat up and glared at me. “How long is our water going to last? A couple of days, right? And beyond that, there’s no certainty one way or the other.”
“There’s never any guarantee of survival,” I said calmly. “Doesn’t matter if you’re safe at home in your own bed or out on some wild world like this one. You think life is consistent, but every one of us is a sin
gle heartbeat, a single breath from death at any moment.”
If anything, the woman’s expression grew harder. “Well. Aren’t you just a box of rainbows and puppies?” she said.
I had to smile at the statement. I hadn’t meant my words to sound fatalistic, but that was apparently how she’d taken them.
Before I could correct the impression, Deeve turned back toward us.
“Nobody’s going to die,” she said, unconsciously echoing Uma’s earlier statement. “At least not of thirst. Adam was right. Look, in the distance. There are rain clouds.”
Deeve’s words were enough to get everyone back onto their feet. With normal vision, it was difficult to confirm what she’d said, and I was certain that the shorter women could see pretty much nothing. But when I toggled the settings on my visual sensors to their maximum, it was clear that Deeve was right.
“I see them,” I said. “Rain clouds. Complete with the odd flash of lightning.”
I had to admit, the sight was a relief. The way we were going through the water, I hadn’t been sure there would be enough.
“How far?” Uma asked.
“Still a good couple of days,” I said. Then I gave her a grin. “If days mean anything here. Perhaps a little less if we walk for a bit more now.”
The news was enough to breathe some life back into Jayloo and Sydney. Everyone agreed that we could climb back into our harnesses for one more effort before making camp.
We did so, dragging the supplies behind us, finally breaking free of the forest graveyard within the next hour.
In the end, we didn’t stop to gather any of the wood. It wasn’t a decision that we made consciously. Instead, when the last of the dried, desiccated trunks were behind us, we just kept on going.
Perhaps we thought there would be more somewhere up ahead of us. Or perhaps we were just enthusiastic, and wanted to reach the rain clouds as quickly as possible.
Either way, we emerged into the driest part of the landscape we’d seen until then. It was a vast, open field of nothing, but even that wasn’t enough to dampen our spirits. Without the forest graveyard blocking our view, every single one of us could now see the dark clouds up ahead.
We charged into that dust bowl with vigor, not even pausing when a few gusts of wind worked up a dust devil or two, little eddies of wind that skittered about before dissipating into nothing.
All that mattered was bringing the clouds closer, to perhaps lie beneath them and let the rain wash the dust and grit of our travels away.
Because of our collective enthusiasm, perhaps we would have kept going a little longer than normal. But we soon came across something that forced us to stop.
It was a crevice. A huge crack in the earth. A canyon that seemed to stretch for miles in either direction, cutting us off from our goal. The six of us paused at the edge and looked out and over to the other side, some distance away.
“Fuck,” I muttered to no one in particular.
Chapter 18
“Okay,” Uma said. “So, what are our options?”
I knew that we’d been more than lucky so far. That it was only a matter of time before we reached some point where towing our supplies behind us was no longer an option. Yet when it finally happened, that knowledge did little to cushion the blow.
The girls were tired after a couple of long, endless days of walking. With no obvious way across the chasm, we had once more set up our canvas shelter with the intention of getting some much-needed rest.
But that didn’t mean we couldn’t at least discuss the problem we faced.
“Go back to the crash site and wait to be rescued,” Jayloo suggested, her tone no longer surly, but more simply despondent.
Uma shook her head. “There is no rescue coming. We all know this to be true. And even if we chose that option, do you really think we could find it again?”
The purple-haired woman didn’t look happy. “I guess not,” she sighed.
I didn’t bother to tell anyone that I was pretty sure I could find the wrecked transport again if I had to. Even if the landscape had changed, even if the sandstorms had piled sand into dunes that hadn’t been there before, I could navigate by the position of the sun and the broken moons above.
“We check the edge, looking for a way down,” Sydney said. “The sides of the canyon seem pretty sheer. I saw a couple of places where it might just be possible to climb down, but we need to be able to take the sled.”
I wasn’t sure that she thought it to be the best suggestion. To my mind, she was just trying to offer Jayloo–and the rest of us—some kind of hope.
“We don’t know how extensive this fissure is,” Deeve said. “Maybe it’s possible to walk around it?”
“Maybe,” Uma replied.
There was silence for a moment.
“Anyone else?” Uma asked.
I had a few thoughts, but wanted to wait to see what the others might come up with. To my surprise, it was Uma herself who came up with the next suggestion.
“We could leave the supplies behind,” she said. “Carry as much as we can, but the big things? We could leave them here and go on without them.”
At this, both Sydney and Jayloo expressed their disapproval, and not even Deeve seemed to like the idea.
“The supplies are all we have!”
“How can we live without our food? Water?”
“Isn’t that the same as giving up?”
Uma raised her hands and waited for the babble to die down. “It isn’t about giving up. And I’m not suggesting leaving everything. Just those things we can’t carry. But consider this. We can see the rain from here. Do we really need to carry the water container the rest of the way? I mean, how far away is it? Another day? Two, maybe? All we need to do is survive that long, and we’ll have all the water we need.”
“What if that the rain stops before we can get there?” Jayloo asked.
It was Sydney who answered. “I’m not sure it will. If Adam is right, if this is a world without rotation, then the weather patterns should be stable. Maybe that area is like the tropical rainforests back on old Earth. Maybe it rains there all the time.”
“And maybe it doesn’t,” Jayloo said.
All in all, I thought Uma’s option was reasonable. Risky, because we would effectively reach the other side of the canyon with nothing. But if we didn’t have any choice…. It was worth considering.
The others seemed to know it as well. Beyond their first objections, Jayloo, Sydney, and Deeve grew silent.
Uma nodded to herself as if the decision was done. But she looked first toward to Kia, and raised her eyebrow as if asking for the psychic woman’s input.
In turn, the big-eyed woman turned toward me.
“Adam?” Uma said.
“I think I might have an idea,” I said.
“Well? What is it?” Uma said.
“We have plenty of cord salvaged from the transport. It wouldn’t be that hard to use it to lower the supplies, one piece at a time, to the bottom. Then we haul it over to the other side, and carry it all up the same way.”
It was a simple solution, but the girls all looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’ll take a bit of time, and we’ll need to find somewhere on the other side where we can climb up. But it should work.”
“The water container is too heavy,” Uma said, and I understood then the key reason why none of the woman had brought up this option.
All by itself, that water container would have been beyond them. But it shouldn’t be beyond me.
I shook my head. “Heavy, yes, but not impossibly so.”
With a way forward agreed upon, the girls settled themselves down once again to sleep.
As I’d done during the sandstorm, I again took it upon myself to sit watch, and couldn’t help but be disappointed when Deeve chose to sleep instead of joining me.
All too often in the past, my job had meant long periods of isolation. And when
I finally did get to enjoy the company of others, it was usually between transports and the long emptiness of cryo sleep as I journeyed from one star to the next.
Such a life didn’t easily lead to long-term relationships, so I tended to take what I could get, whenever I could get it.
And Deeve was very much my type. So, I’d been looking forward to this time in the hope of replicating the previous night.
Instead, I found myself once more sitting with my back to the supplies, canvas stretched over my head, two metal poles giving the shelter shape so I could look out over the crevice on one side and the empty wasteland on the other. For long minutes, there was nothing more than the gentle sounds of female exhaustion keeping me company.
I figured Deeve was just tired. She’d gotten less sleep than anyone else other than me.
Then Kia seemed to wake with a start. She shook her head as if to clear it, then rose from her spot, a little away from the others, and came over to me.
Without saying a word, she placed one foot on either side of my legs, sat herself down on my lap, and to my complete and utter surprise, leaned in, pressing herself against me, and kissed me on the lips.
She did it with far more confidence and passion than she’d displayed in most other things, acting for all the world as if it was the natural thing to do.
I responded by instinct, closing my hands around her narrow waist and kissing her back.
For long moments, she stayed as she was, then broke away with an audible sigh.
For some reason, it felt as if she might be sleepwalking, and at first I was reluctant to break whatever spell she might have been under.
In the end, I couldn’t help myself. “Kia?” I said gently.
The psychic woman hadn’t really been looking at me. But at the sound of her name, she looked up and met my eyes, and I swear I caught an expression not just of genuine affection, but of relaxed acceptance, as if her actions were the result of an established relationship.