I lifted his shirt. The protrusions strained his human skin, showing signs of the violescence beneath. Tiny swirling needles poked out of several of the mounds, squirming and searching like the arms of a strange alien sea anemone. My heart pummeled. My muscles tensed.
He tugged his shirt down. “I don’t think they’d get through the cotton. I would have stopped if they did.”
I sat back. “So that’s how you, umm, attach?”
He ran his fingers along my bare stomach. “Our females aren’t soft like this. Their skin is thick, like a hide. This part of me is made to … Umm … ”
“I think I get it.” A thousand little needles ready to rip into my skin and hold on for dear life, like a leech biting down and …
David cringed.
Leech—very bad analogy, Jess. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
I pulled my top back on. “There you go. Double protection.” Some couples used condoms, we’d use shirts. Problem solved. “But next time you tell me if it starts to hurt, okay? We can take a break.”
Blue tainted his cheek.
“What’s wrong?”
“You make me feel … ”
“What?”
“I can’t find a word in English.”
“Closest thing?”
“Warm. Cared for.”
All the things he didn’t get from his good-for-nothing father. My dad was a pest sometimes, but at least he cared. I’d never take him for granted again.
If I had the chance.
I laid down and closed my eyes.
David eased next to me and snuggled me to his shoulder.
“We’re going to save him,” David whispered.
“I know.”
29
The sound of David’s shallow, rhythmic breathing cradled me on the edge of sleep. Someday I’d wake like this on a Saturday morning with no worries whatsoever—some day when the world didn’t need saving.
A shriek jolted me awake, followed by a weight thomping on my chest. Three blurry black eyes loomed above me.
“Edgar?”
Another warbling trill filled the room as his mandibles gnashed a few inches from my face. David sat up beside me.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“How would I know?”
Yawning, David stumbled to the control panel. Edgar jumped off me and bounded past him, sinking his front two legs into the giant vat of gelatin. The walls burst into flashing, quaking light.
David nodded. “I see it.”
“You see what?”
“Our passengers are in trouble.”
He moved to the back of the room and tapped on the wall. The couch dissolved into the floor as I stood. Edgar scurried across the tiles and poked his leg into the swirling surface beside David. The walls flashed again.
“Give me a second,” David said. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
I moved to the back of the room and stood beside them.
Edgar chortled, his back legs tapping against my side of the console. The walls continued to flash.
“I know.” David sat back in his chair. “I just can’t get to them.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The pressure is destabilizing. The rear enzyme inhibitors have backed into the reflux system.”
I chewed on that for a second. “And I take it that’s bad.”
He nodded. “Lack of pressure to them is the inverse of too much pressure on us. We would get crushed, but they can’t hold together … just like when Ruby was helpless on the rocks.”
“Not good. Are they okay?”
“Right now they’re all unconscious.” His gaze perused the wall. “There is a juncture in the reflux system that acts like a valve. It needs to open and close every few seconds to keep the pressure stable in the tanks holding our friends.” He rubbed his face. “The enzymes have clogged the valve.”
“Can we unclog it?”
“Normally, yes, it’s no problem. All it would take is going down there and turning a knob, but I reinforced the hull all around those tanks so the liquescent fortifications wouldn’t burst under the strain of all that water.” He pursed his lips. “The walls can’t be liquefied, and neither can the maintenance tubes. I can’t make them big enough so I can get down there.”
Edgar reared up on his hind legs.
“Can Edgar fit?”
“Yes. There’s only one problem.”
Edgar raised his front four legs, waving his pointy feet.
“No opposable thumbs.”
I flopped into my chair. “Why would they design part of the ship that a grassen can’t manipulate?”
David smiled. “Simple. Enzymes are organic and good eating. It would be like waving those potato chip things in your face and telling you that you couldn’t open the bag.”
Potato chips. He had to remind me that the last thing I had to eat was seaweed.
David’s eyes narrowed. He plucked a silvery package out of a wall beside him and threw it to me. I popped it open and leaves fell out. Figures. I guess a hamburger was too much to ask for.
The walls flashed five times before Edgar jumped up on my back and pawed at my shoulders, cooing at David.
“I’m not sending her down there.” David turned and tapped on the console.
Edgar growled; his eyes set on me.
“Wait. Would I fit?”
“Probably. But you don’t know how to navigate a liquescent environment.”
“I thought it was a tube.”
“It is, but you have to get through several liquescent walls first, and remember, the only place with air breathable is this chamber.”
I set the leaves on the console. “Can I wear a mask?”
The muscles in his neck flinched. “You don’t even know what you’re looking for.”
“Edgar can show me. All you need are my thumbs, right?” I wiggled my fingers. “Well, I have two. Let me help.”
Edgar jumped beside David. The walls shimmered in a new set of colors.
David ran his fingers through his hair as his gaze bore through Edgar. “You don’t understand. If anything happens, I won’t be able to get to you.”
The walls flashed yellow and a hint of green.
David slammed his fist on the edge of the panel in the wall. “What do you mean what could happen? It’s me and Jess. Something always happens!”
I turned from him. “Come on, Edgar.”
“Where do you think you are going?”
My hands shot to my hips. “To save our friends.”
David closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“Then help me with that mask and let’s get going.”
***
I breathed deeply through my nose as the mask formed around my face. How insane was it that I was starting to get used to all this crazy science fiction stuff?
“Just please, stay with Edgar. Don’t fall through any walls.”
“I won’t.” Of course, I didn’t think I’d fall through a wall two years ago on the Ambassador’s ship, and that certainly led to no good.
David half-smiled and brushed his thumb against my cheek. “I just want you safe.”
“I want me safe, too.” I flashed an I’ll be fine grin and followed my little arachnid buddy into the wall.
The chill of the liquescent metal hit my cheeks. I’d always wondered how David could stand the cold inside these partitions. He acted like he couldn’t even feel it. So much about his people was still a mystery. One I’d like to unravel if he’d stick around long enough—and if my planet was still in one piece when we got back.
I shivered. Thoughts like that certainly weren’t helping.
Blind in the murky dark, Edgar tapped my ankles, guiding me through the void of frigid nothing.
I oozed out of the goo into a plain, gray space not much bigger tha
n my closet. Edgar chittered beside a hole in the wall about two feet in diameter. My stomach plunged into my socks.
I had to go in there?
You can do this, I told myself. Ruby and Silver need you.
Edgar disappeared into the shadowy orifice as I got to my hands and knees and slithered inside. The grassen’s glowing eyes lit up the passageway, shadowing his rear and his spindly legs. Four years ago the sight of a giant spider’s rear-end in the dark would have horrified me. Now I found his spindly legs and hairy, segmented shape oddly comforting—like crawling into a pit with my best friend.
My hair skidded along the top of the tube, and if I shifted more than an inch or so to either side, my shoulders bumped the rounded walls. I tried not to think of the little creepy crawly things that might be hiding in there with me. Didn’t David say once that grassen ate rodents? Were these tunnels where alien rats hung out?
Definitely time for a new train of thought, Jess.
Dragging along with my elbows and shimmying my hips, I followed Edgar further inside. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, ducking as the tunnel seemed to dip and tighten around me. My heart began to pound within my ears. The tunnel shrank, pressing closer.
Oh God. I was going to get stuck. What was I thinking‽
Holding my breath, I inched further and closed my eyes. Trickles of strength seeped into me. David?
Yes, it was definitely David. I drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and opened my eyes. The walls weren’t closing in. It was my imagination. Was this what he meant by drawing on each other’s strength?
I looked down the tunnel, this time with no fear. Edgar spun and chirped at me before continuing on his way. We were going to make it, but it occurred to me that unless this tunnel opened up some, I’d have to reverse-shimmy to get out. That didn’t sound like fun. But I could do it. Piece of cake.
Edgar stopped, clicked his mandibles, and shone his laser vision on a slick protrusion in the wall.
“Is that the knob?”
He bobbed his head up and down in an adorable replica of how he’d probably seen David and I respond to each other.
Okay. This was what the primate was here for. “Let’s do this.”
I reached over with my left hand and gripped the knob. The handle shifted, sinking into the wall with my fingers still attached.
“Was that supposed to happen?”
Edgar raised two upturned feet. That must have been the grassen version of I don’t know.
Great. Just great.
Completely off balance, and unable to find any leverage, I worked my fingers around the knob.
“Why did it sink? I thought this part of the ship wasn’t liquescent anymore?”
A click reverberated in the walls.
“Jess, get out of there.” David’s voice boomed through the tube.
“What? Why?”
“Something’s wrong. The walls are softening.”
“So what?”
“There’s an artificial ocean a foot to your left. If that wall gives, you’ll be flooded.”
And these breathing masks don’t work if they get wet. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
“Can I still turn the knob? Will it still help?”
“I don’t know. We’re looking at complete systems failure. It’s the water. Without the extra pressure holding that room together, the weight per square inch ratio is too much for the liquescence. We’re losing molecular stability in that section.”
“Is that like losing cohesion?”
“If you are right there when it happens, it will be pretty close. Come back now. We’ll find another way.”
And in the meantime, Ruby and Silver, Earth’s only chance of survival, were suffocating on the other side of that wall.
No. I couldn’t let them down.
I shoved my arm deeper into the wall and found the slick knob again. It was more like the rounded end of a cylinder than a doorknob like I’d expected. My fingers slid across the surface, doing a whole lot of nothing.
“Jess, why aren’t you moving?”
“We can still do this. Give me a chance.”
“You’re out of time. Get out. Edgar, get her out of there!”
My little buddy tapped his one silver leg beside me, but didn’t move.
“Thanks for backing me up,” I whispered.
I withdrew my hand, wiped the goop on the bottom of the tunnel, and shoved my fingers back inside. This time I met a little friction and the cylinder turned a fraction of an inch.
The wall to my left creaked and moaned. That couldn’t be good.
My hand slipped, but I tightened my grip, grunting as I turned.
“Come on, you stupid piece of crap. Turn, dammit!”
The cylinder gave, spinning until my knuckles hit a hard barrier, scrapping my skin. Oww.
David’s voice clicked back on. “You guys, you did it! The pressure is stabilizing.”
The creak to my left increased.
“Is that what I’m hearing?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s some kind of creaking noise.”
Edgar started trilling like a grasshopper on steroids. He ran at me, climbing on my hair.
“Ouch! What are you doing?”
David’s voice seeped through the walls. “What’s going on?”
“Edgar’s gone all crazy!”
I flattened myself down and let him crawl over me. WTF?
A thump echoed through the tube, and a fizzy splash hit my hand.
Water?
Water!
“David! The wall cracked. Water is coming in!”
“Get out! The whole thing is going to cave in!”
The salty draught splashed into my face. I tried to shimmy backward as the sounds of a manic jabbering grassen fought against the roaring waves. Weren’t things bad enough?
My mask stuck to my face.
Oh, no. If it gets wet …
I sucked in the deepest breath of my life and held it just before the water surged over my head.
I pushed backward, trying to use buoyancy to my advantage. It didn’t help much.
How far had we crawled? Would I be able to find my way out on my own?
The sensations of prickly hairs itched against my ankles. What was Edgar doing?
Something hard grazed my skin before a searing pain blasted through my ankle. I screamed, releasing some air. I smashed my hand to my mouth when I’d realized what I’d done. I started moving backward at turbo speed. I closed my eyes as I rolled over four times. How long could I hold on with no oxygen in my lungs? The dizziness gave me my answer. I had to inhale. I had to open my mouth.
Vise grips clamped around both my ankles, wrenching me back even faster. Rescued from the tube, I free floated in the dark until humanoid hands grasped my shoulders. David?
He ripped the mask from my face and brought his lips to mine, puffing air into my lungs. My body relished in the gift as he grabbed my wrist and propelled off the bottom and into the spongy cold of the wall. The liquid metal pressed down on us a hundred times harder than before, terrifyingly reminiscent of the walls solidifying around us as the Ambassador’s ship died two years ago.
But we weren’t going to make it this time. We were out of luck.
Stop thinking that, David’s voice boomed in my head.
Can’t breathe.
Hold on!
David yanked my arm, and we broke through the partition. He splatted to the floor in front of me. I stumbled and fell beside him, gasping. My head started to clear as the oxygen soaked into my lungs.
We inched off the slick tiles as Edgar scampered out of the wall. A splash of water spilled out with him before the partition resealed. The little grassen backed himself into a corner and shook glistening droplets from his hairy midsection. I wrung out my hair and panted, hardly believing we’d all made it out.
The shimmering i
vory partition solidified into a stiff, aluminum gray as David hopped to his feet and sprinted to the control panel. I willed myself to move, but all I could do was breathe.
Edgar flopped beside me, panting. His three long fangs slowly retracted into the roof of his mouth. I rolled up my soaking pant leg and perused the bleeding wounds on my ankle. He’d bit me and dragged me back through the tunnel. The little dude had saved my life.
David reclined in his seat, facing the ceiling and breathing heavily.
I crawled across the floor and into the chair beside him. “What happened back there?”
“The water. Too much weight. It was starting to give before you restored the pressure.” His chest rose in a huff. “I had to solidify most of the ship to keep the rest contained. It’s going to be like flying in the pre-molecular era.”
“Ruby and Silver?”
“They’re okay from what I can tell. They just have a lot less mobility in the main chamber. We need to get them out of there as soon as possible.”
“Can we still make it to Mars?”
He waved over the console, and the dark film coating the windows disappeared, revealing a huge red and blue marble hanging in space, nearly filling the glass.
“We’re here! We made it!”
David nodded. “There’s only one problem. We can’t land.”
30
“What do you mean we can’t land?”
David leaned on his knees and held the sides of his head. “These ships are made to flex when entering a planet’s atmosphere. Without a liquescent hull, there’s nothing to diffuse the friction on reentry.”
News footage of flames lapping NASA landing pods flashed through my thoughts. “How bad will it be?”
“The liquescence is part of the environmental controls. Solid, like we are now, the temperature inside will double every second.”
The red and blue planet spun gently below us, deceptively warm and inviting. “Can you make us liquescent, just until we break through?”
“Not if we want to hold on to all that water.”
The memory of Ruby’s boneless, squashed bulk on the dry rocks flashed through my mind. And with so many of them trapped in such a small space, they’d probably crush each other.
Embers in the Sea Page 23