Escape from the Pipe Men!

by Mary G. Thompson

  I realized that no one was paying attention to us, and I knew what we had to do. I quietly took Becky’s hand. “We’re going to run past Grav-e, into the rift, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Follow us,” I whispered to Gript and the Xaxor.

  “In there? We don’t know where it goes,” whispered Gript.

  “Do you want to save your family?” I whispered.

  Hon-tri-bum was still glaring back and forth between the pack and the Hottini.

  Gript glanced quickly at his pack, who appeared to take no notice of him, then nodded at me.

  “Now.” I ran past Grav-e, pulling Becky. It only took a few seconds to reach the rift, and I didn’t look back. I kept running right through. Right into something hard.

  “Ow!” Becky had hit it, too.

  Gript knocked into my leg.

  “You’re on me again!” Becky cried.

  That accounted for the Xaxor.

  I looked down to make sure I didn’t kick Gript, who had now made it to one side of me. Then I took a small step backward. I was staring at something smooth and metal. It seemed about twice as tall as me, and to my left and right, it curved away, as if we were outside of a great cylinder. There was enough room to walk between the cylinder and the wall, but only just. Behind us, the wall was moving slightly, meaning the rift was still as open as ever.

  “Come on,” I said. “We have to move before they decide to come after us.”

  Nobody needed a translation. Gript was already walking down the passage, on two legs, claws up. The floor was made of something like wood and gave a little under our steps. On our left, the portal was still there, its blackness swirling as we turned in a circle, and the cylinder opened up to reveal a round room, in the middle of which two Hottini in black coverings like Grav-e’s stood in front of a panel of glowing instruments. Behind the Hottini, a passage several feet wide led up into darkness.

  Before I had a chance to do anything, Gript lifted his dart gun and shot both of the Hottini.

  “Don’t move or I’ll pull you through the portal,” said Gript. “It didn’t work out so well for your friends.”

  The Hottini barked at each other for a few seconds. One pointed to something on the display with a bootless, fingered foot. The other attempted to step backward, but seemed unable to move more than an inch. He shook the leg in which the dart was lodged as if trying to shake off a fly.

  “How do those darts work?” I asked.

  Gript showed his teeth to the immobilized Hottini. “Larger objects create a certain force. The dart directs that force along the line back to the weapon. So the stronger the victim, the easier it is to hold.”

  Becky poked me.

  “He said the dart works by using the bigger victim’s force against him.”

  “What if we used it on the Brocine? I mean, we’re bigger than them,” she said.

  I didn’t quite want to ask Gript that question, so I just shrugged.

  “What is this place?” asked Gript.

  The Hottini looked at each other for a few seconds. Then one spoke. “Experimental bok lab.”

  “Close the portal,” said Gript.

  “We have tried,” said the same Hottini. He tugged at the dart planted in his leg, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Open one now, because they’re coming,” said Becky.

  She was right. I heard footsteps somewhere. I pulled out the calculator.

  “No!” shouted the two Hottini together.

  “Why not?” I asked, holding my hand next to the place I rubbed to turn it on.

  “It will make the rupture worse! We designed this to latch on whenever that device creates a portal anywhere within a thousand-light-year range of any of our sensors,” said the one on the left. It stared at me with earnest light purple eyes. “There’s a sensor right here in this room!”

  The footsteps were getting louder. It sounded like a whole company of heavy-booted Hottini soldiers.

  “We have to get out of here, and we’re not going back,” I said. “If you don’t want me to use this”—I waved the calculator in the air—“you’re going to have to get us a thousand light years away!”

  Two Hottini heads appeared in the passage. Though it was dark behind them, I saw the outline of more. They barked at the two at the controls. The two at the controls barked back, waving their tethered legs and pointing at Gript and me. All pointed several times at the calculator, which I held up, showing I was ready to use it.

  Finally, the controller on the left turned back to me. “We will give you a ship.”

  “They say they’ll give us a ship,” I said to Becky.

  “It’s a trick,” she said.

  The Xaxor put its tablet in front of me. It’s a trick, it read.

  “I know,” I said to Becky, “but what happens if I try it here? We won’t get anywhere, and we’ll just make things worse.”

  “Okay,” I said to the Hottini, “but we’re keeping these two until we get on safely.” I looked pointedly at Gript, and he nodded, teeth bared.

  Becky and the Xaxor eyed each other, then me.

  “I know, but what else can we do?”

  Becky shrugged.

  “Okay, then, let’s go.” I took Becky’s hand and led the way past the Hottini controllers.

  The ones in the passage had turned and were clomping their way back up, all except for the two in front. They glared at me coldly, but as soon as I got near them, they also turned and began clomping up.

  Becky and I followed them into the darkness, walking up a smooth slope. The Xaxor followed us, and Gript came last, towing the Hottini controllers, who barked at each other quietly in their language. I didn’t like that at all, but I tried to put it out of my mind. There was no point in worrying about what they were saying, because it wouldn’t change anything.

  The passage went up and up and up, and before long, it began to turn inward and spiral. I was starting to sweat.

  “I’m hot,” said Becky.

  “Me too,” I said. Both of our hands were sweating so much that it was hard to hang on to each other. “I wonder if it’s because of the portal.” Supposedly, the Hottini planet was now too hot because it was too close to the Brocine suns. I still didn’t understand how that could be, but I couldn’t deny how I was feeling. I turned around and saw that the Xaxor was laboring, Gript had sweat dripping off his fur, and the Hottini controllers had shaken off their coverings, exposing matted, dripping blue hair. The Hottini who had been leading us were now too far ahead to see.

  “I want to sit,” said Becky. She pulled against my hand, but I lifted her up again.

  “We’re almost there,” I said. “Look.” There was a light ahead of us, and the outlines of the leaders’ backsides were just visible. Their tails were sticking up, and as we got closer, I saw that they had shaken their coverings off, too. My clothes were so stuck to me with sweat, I wasn’t sure if I could have gotten them off. When we reached the Hottini leaders, they stepped forward, allowing us to come out of the tunnel and into the sun—or suns.

  We were in a brilliant meadow. Everything was bright Technicolor green, contrasting strangely, yet in a way that appeared perfectly natural somehow, with the bright blue of the Hottini manes. There were grasslike things, some with flowers of a deeper green, and thin trees with wild, thick green plumage on top. There were smooth metallic paths through the meadow, leading out into the distance, where miles away, a brilliant blue metallic city rose out of the ground. But there was something wrong with the green plants. All of them seemed to be wilting, falling over on themselves.

  The sun was so bright that I had to hold my hand over my eyes, but I could see a wall of black surrounding the metallic dome we had just come out of. The structure went only about ten eyes above our heads, but above the top of the dome, the rift rose far up into the air. The blackness blocked out everything behind it.

  “Ask them if they have water,” Becky croaked.

  I was thirsty, too, bu
t before I could ask, a grinding filled all the space for sound. In front of us, maybe fifty yards out, the paths broke and shifted, and a hole opened up in the ground, widening slowly into a gaping circle. Out of the hole, a platform emerged, lifting a structure up. It was round and nondescript, only the size of my bedroom at home, and dull amid the shininess of the paths and the city in the background. Dents riddled its hull.

  Becky tugged on my shirt.

  “Do you have water?” I asked.

  One of the Hottini lifted its booted foot and pointed at the structure that had risen out of the ground. “The ship has supplies.”

  “That’s our ship?” I exchanged disbelieving looks with Gript.

  The Xaxor hummed and stared at the ship with all three eyes.

  “It will go one thousand light years,” said the Hottini.

  “Wait a minute. I don’t know much about spaceships,” I said, “but one thousand light years sounds like a long way. Are you sure that old thing can make it?”

  “You want us to give away our best ship?” the Hottini snapped, letting his boot fall with a thump.

  The Xaxor typed furiously on its tablet. If this is the Hottini home planet, then there is a tunnel that will take us about 800 light years. We will need to travel only a few hours to a tunnel that will take us 400 more.

  I was pretty sure that the Xaxor hadn’t mentioned those tunnels when we were making the map. But now wasn’t the time to point that out. I showed the tablet to Gript. “It says it knows how to get far enough and we only have to go a few hours in this thing,” I said to Becky.

  “It knows,” said Becky, rolling her eyes. “It’s probably going to try to sell us again.”

  “Well, they said there’s water on the ship.”

  She scrunched up her face.

  “Look, we don’t have to trust the Xaxor or the ship, okay?” I certainly didn’t trust the ship, but the Xaxor? I thought it was sorry. “We’ll just open a portal the second we’re far enough away. We’ll be back on O-thul-ba. You still have the antidote, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. See? Everything’s going to be fine.” I tried not to look at the ship. Sweat was still dripping off me in buckets. The plants were looking even more wilted than they had a minute ago. I was starting to think that we’d better take any chance to get off this planet. “Let’s go.”

  The ship’s door fell open with a clang, revealing a ramp studded with reassuringly solid-looking treads. We all headed toward it, Gript bringing up the rear, towing the two reluctant Hottini, who attempted to look as haughty as possible while being jerked along by tiny darts. As soon as we got to the ramp, the Xaxor scampered up it, waiting for us near the top. I pushed Becky in front of me and followed partway, waiting for Gript.

  “I am infinitely sorry,” said Gript, bowing a little, and he released the two Hottini. The dart gun popped as it sucked the darts back up into the tube.

  Everything happened at once. Becky fell toward me, pushed by a single Hottini who appeared through the ship’s hatch. The Xaxor jumped on the Hottini, who tried to buck the Xaxor off. I caught Becky, but she threw me off balance, and we both went tumbling down the ramp. Gript was screaming something, but I couldn’t see him.

  Twenty-Five

  I ROLLED THIS WAY AND THAT, reaching for Becky but not finding her. Finally I scrambled to my feet, trying to get my bearings, and found I was facing back toward the dome. The rift was now lined with Pipe Men. They were mostly facing it. Some held calculators like mine in their top-holes, while others were using their top-holes to roll assistant wires out of the rift. Others held pens and were poking calculators held by their comrades.

  I stuffed my calculator into my bag, out of their sight. I had no idea if they cared enough to “rescue” us from the Hottini, and I didn’t want to wait to find out. I turned toward the ship, just in time to see Becky and the Xaxor push an unconscious Hottini out of the hatch. They pushed him hard enough that he missed the ramp entirely and fell to the ground with a thud.

  “Come on, Ryan!” Becky yelled, waving frantically at me.

  “Where’s Gript?” I looked around, and finally I saw him. The two Hottini controllers, whom Gript had recently held hostage with his darts, were now holding him between their boots. It did not take two Hottini to hold one Brocine, but they appeared to be enjoying themselves, squeezing him and whispering into his twitching ears. Gript’s nose twitched too. The other Hottini had retreated back toward the dome and were engaged in a heated conversation with two Pipe Men, one of whom was pointing at least some of its eyes in my direction.

  “Put it down,” I said.

  The two Hottini stopped whispering to Gript and looked at me. “You want it?” said one.

  “Ryan, come on!” yelled Becky.

  Both of the Pipe Men were looking my direction now.

  I walked up to the Hottini and grabbed Gript, tearing him from their grasp.

  I held poor Gript with his back flat against my chest as I ran up the ramp toward Becky. As soon as I got to the top, the hatch slammed shut. The shock tossed me to the ground.

  Gript squealed and rolled off me.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “How do we know this ship will even fly?” Gript asked. “Clearly they never intended to let us take it.”

  For answer, the ship began to groan. I stumbled to my feet, holding on to a bulkhead for support, and saw the Xaxor at the controls. One of its legs was wrapped around a lever, another poked at a series of buttons, and a third waved wildly at Becky, who was pushing on another lever with both hands, her face red and scrunched with effort. I ran to help her, and together, we pushed the lever up until it caught in the top of a dashboard full of seemingly random screens and incomprehensible symbols.

  The whole ship was shaking, and it felt like it was lifting, but there were no windows, so there was no way to see for sure how far we’d gone. There was a crackling, and then a voice filled the cabin.

  “This is Hottini Space Control. Set down immediately, or we will shoot you down.”

  “The Masters won’t like it if you kill their prized specimens,” Gript shouted.

  “I don’t think they can hear you,” I said, hoping the Hottini would think of that anyway.

  The Xaxor turned its eyes toward me, one leg hovering over a button, another reaching up to wrap around a lever planted in the ceiling just above its head. It pointed to the lever Becky and I had just pushed up and then to another one next to it, making a pushing motion.

  “You want us to push this one up now?”

  The Xaxor nodded.

  “This is your final warning,” said the Hottini voice.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  Becky and I pushed the lever. The Xaxor pulled on the lever above its head and pounded the button. The ship shot unmistakably upward. My stomach went the other way. Becky let go of the lever, doubled over, and threw up on my boots. Gript hung on to her ankle with both front paws.

  I hung on to the lever, and it was all I could do to hold it up. I looked over at the Xaxor to see if I could stop, but it was still clinging to its lever and pushing its button, balancing on taut legs as if it were having trouble, too. This went on for what seemed like several minutes, but may only have been thirty seconds or so, until the Xaxor suddenly let go, wrapped a leg around my arm, and pulled me off the lever. The ship shook violently, and I stumbled and almost tripped over Becky, but caught myself on a pole running from floor to ceiling.

  The Xaxor moved to where I’d been and began furiously pushing buttons, watching sparks of light that moved along the dashboard. The ship stopped shaking and now felt too still. Becky and Gript both managed to get to standing, and the Xaxor, no longer pushing buttons, stared at the dashboard, legs taut.

  The ship jerked again, and the Xaxor kept watching the dashboard.

  “Did we go through a tunnel?” I asked. “Are we far enough away yet?”

  The Xaxor held
up one leg toward me and shook its top section. I remembered what it had said before, about having to go through two tunnels.

  “Is this ship going to make it?” The ship was shaking a little but seemed to be holding steady. It was disorienting, not having a window to look out of, not being able to tell anything about where we were or where we were going.

  “The Xaxor said it would take a few hours,” said Becky. “I’m going to find the water.” She began walking around the cabin, poking whatever looked like it might be a door or a cabinet.

  “Do you think they’ll come after us?” I whispered to Gript. I pulled yesterday’s socks out of my backpack and tried to wipe my boots clean.

  Gript wiggled his nose and shook his head. “We have to hope they’re too busy worrying about their planet.” He let out a squeaky laugh. “They thought they were going to get bok, but they ended up crawling to the Masters for help!”

  I tried to smile. It was nice to see those superior froms put in their place, but I was too nervous to be happy about it. Then I thought of something. “Why don’t the Hottini and the Brocine work together instead of fighting over me? You could both have bok already.”

  “I wonder that we can even sell each other spice,” said Gript. “Look at us. We’re as different as a cave and a sunspot.” He saw my confused expression. “It’s a saying we have. Our ancestors believed we were descended from gods who came from the large sun. They found the sun too hot and dry, so they traveled to Brock and lived underground in cool, wet caves. They decided they were now too cold and wet, but by then they had lost their immortality and forgotten how to return to the sun.”

  I wondered if my people, Earth people, had a myth like that. I thought it was something I should know, that I must have heard it somewhere, but I couldn’t think what it might be. It bothered me, that I didn’t know anything about my own people. Now I might never learn anything.

  “What I mean,” said Gript, “is that all the froms I’ve seen are so different.” He gestured at the Xaxor, still watching the controls. “Six legs, three eyes, no mouth. You who are big think we who are small are a joke. If not for our spaceships and our weapons, we would be gone. The Masters think all of us are deficient. Primitive, with our limbs and teeth.”