Into the Wormhole

by Keith Robinson

  The sound of cracking, splintering wood continued from the grave of Judith E. Chambers. If there was such a thing as an afterlife, Liam wagered she wouldn’t be happy right now.

  “Could have picked a fresher body,” Madison muttered. “I guess these little aliens can’t read dates, though. That corpse must be past its prime by now.”

  “Aren’t all corpses past their prime?” Ant said.

  A long silence followed. What was the creature doing down there? Liam imagined it had pulled open the coffin and was—what? Examining the bones? Trying to ascertain the Earthling form? Making notes and scraping off samples?

  Despite the weirdness of the situation, Liam was enthralled. “I’m glad you moved in next door,” he said after a while.

  Madison looked sideways at him. “I’m glad you’re being so cool about this. I’ll show you my journal tomorrow. Once I know my scribbled messages are accurate, I copy the information across and add notes about what I saw. We need to come up with a name for these guys.”

  “How about short-rounds?” Ant suggested.

  “Or munchkins,” Liam said.

  Madison stifled a laugh. “Maybe we should be more serious about it. It’s just hard coming up with names for all these different aliens. I wish we could just ask them.”

  Liam and Ant shared a glance.

  She noticed immediately and grew serious. “I’m kidding. Obviously we’re not going to ask them any such thing. They might be dangerous.”

  “Maybe not,” Liam said. “I mean, they’re only little. And they might be like harmless professors or something. They might be more scared of us than we are of them.”

  “And they might have ray guns that can melt our brains.”

  She had a point. Still, Liam couldn’t help feeling a little wistful. “So you’ve never approached any of these aliens? You’ve just watched from a distance?”

  Madison stared hard at him. “Okay, so this is where I pull rank. This is my discovery, and I’m older and wiser than you both. We don’t know anything about these people, and we won’t get a chance to watch them long enough to find out. Once they’re gone, we probably won’t ever see them again. Next time it’ll be a different bunch of aliens, and we won’t know anything about them either. So we’re here to observe only. Got it?”

  The idea of Madison being peeved was enough to bring him in line. He nodded. “I was just asking,” he mumbled.

  She relaxed and sighed, then turned to Ant. “That goes for you too, Ant. You’re my guests, okay? I’m in charge here.”

  He stuck his bottom lip out but gave a nod. “You’re the boss. But I can’t help wondering what’s on the other side of that wormhole.”

  “It’s a gateway,” Madison said. “And I wonder all the time. But I’m not dumb enough to find out. There could be twenty of them waiting on the other end.”

  “There might not be any,” Liam said.

  The gravedigger appeared suddenly, hoisting his short, fat body out of the hole and climbing to his feet. He was grimy and bedraggled but had a curious expression on his face, his mouth twisted up at the edges into what Liam supposed was a grin. He ran pudgy fingers through his fine brown hair, pushing it back over his head, and poked around in an ear for a second as if he’d got something lodged in there. Then he called out to his companions. This time his voice was loud enough that his words were discernible, though still meaningless.

  “Badrakka fah pahlassa,” it sounded like.

  He stalked away, picking a route past the headstones back to the lopsided cemetery gate. His buddies were deep in the woods by now, apparently engrossed in their research. Gravedigger was heading off to find them.

  As he was climbing over the gate, Liam looked toward the swirling wormhole. It was unattended. Nobody was around. There was nothing to stop him running over there and getting a closer look, perhaps even standing under it and getting whisked up into the vortex. He could be the very first human to set foot on an alien planet, if only for a moment. These creatures treated it like a simple corridor. He could too. He could pop through, take a quick peek, and pop back again. Heck, he could even snatch a few pictures with his phone’s camera . . .

  The temptation was great. His heart thumped just thinking about it, a surge of adrenaline rather than abject fear. To leap into that wormhole would be foolish, crazy, downright stupid—but if he didn’t, he might regret it for the rest of his life.

  Better to regret something you did than something you didn’t, his dad liked to say. Of course, his dad was talking about mundane things like asking a girl out, not stepping across the universe to an alien planet. Still, the sentiment was sound. If Liam passed up this opportunity, he would forever wonder what he might have seen.

  On the other hand, if he did this, he might conceivably die.

  He realized Madison was watching him. She raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead. I’ll wake your parents in the morning and tell them their son is on another planet and won’t be back in time for breakfast. Or lunch. Or ever.”

  Liam felt the adrenaline ebbing. The thumping of his heart began to ease. He knew the moment was slipping away. He was losing his nerve.

  Madison pulled out her phone and thumbed the button on the side. The screen lit up, revealing the time as 2:33 AM. It was hard to believe they’d been watching these aliens for only twenty-two minutes. It had felt like an hour or more.

  “We have about seventeen minutes left,” Madison said. “The gateways stay open for just under forty minutes. I have no idea why, but they collapse and vanish, kind of expire. It’s the same every time, and the aliens always head home before then.”

  “Seventeen minutes,” Liam repeated. For some reason that emboldened him. Seventeen minutes wasn’t long, but it was far better than not knowing at all. His heart started racing again. “We can do it.”

  “Liam, no,” Madison said, gripping his arm.

  He shook her off. “I’ll be there and back in no time. Just a quick peek, that’s all.”

  “Liam—”

  He had time to register Ant’s wide-eyed expression before he jumped up and raced across the grass, hurdling a headstone as he went. He thought he heard Madison whispering loudly at him, but it might have been the wind in his ears.

  He’d already checked to see if the coast was clear. The cemetery was as dark and silent as ever, the three squat geologists somewhere in the woods. He had time. It would take only a minute, perhaps less.

  Rounding the open grave, he cast a look down. Earth was scattered all over the place, a fine coating that had turned everything brown, and Judith E. Chambers’ resting place was wide open, the coffin lid upright. It was hard to see the mass of dirty material and bones within, and Liam was glad.

  The tug of the wormhole was strong before he was anywhere close to it. Hovering a little beyond Judith’s headstone, it pulled hungrily at Liam as momentum carried him stumbling toward it.

  Suddenly terrified, he changed his mind at the very last second—but it was too late.

  A powerful force yanked him off his feet. The tunnel swirled around him as he shot along at breakneck speed. He miraculously avoided hitting the walls no matter how much the vortex twisted and turned. Direction seemed to have lost all meaning. Was he being pulled or pushed through the wormhole? Or was he simply falling now? Either way, he wished he could position his feet first so he wouldn’t brain himself when he fell out the other end. In the back of his mind he remembered how the short alien had been sucked into the wormhole head first yet had emerged feet first both times. Was there a knack to that?

  As terrifying and breathless as his journey was, it was painless and oddly silent, the only sound his own yelling. Gasping, he tried to calm his nerves and count away the time. He couldn’t have been gone more than five or ten seconds, probably less. How far across the universe had he traveled?

  Light exploded all around, and he yelled and hit something hard, hurting his shoulder as he skidded across a polished floor. He distinctly heard the squeak o
f his shoes as he scrabbled onto hands and knees and spun around.

  The wormhole was still there, only he was someplace entirely different and new. A room with a hard metal floor, cavelike rock walls, a rounded irregular ceiling with lumps hanging down here and there, four dim light globes dangling from wires, a couple of very short desks and chairs . . .

  Liam took it all in at a glance as he sweated up a storm and took in deep, ragged breaths. He fumbled for his phone, thinking of taking pictures, but his hands were shaking far too much and he quickly gave up on the idea.

  Still on his knees, he spun around again in case more aliens were lurking in the shadows. Seeing none, he climbed to his feet and stood there with his knees knocking, amazed at how short the desks were, almost childlike. Though the cave was at least fifteen feet high, the light globes hung low enough to bump his head on.

  The two desks were gnarled and wooden, but the equipment set out on top was anything but primitive—an array of gadgets and, most notably, shimmering squares of light hovering over each, alien computer screens filled with gibberish.

  “Okay, seen enough, time to go,” Liam said aloud in a shuddering voice. But his attention fell on a slender tripod standing not two feet behind him. Though he hadn’t noticed earlier, he must have come close to knocking it over during his dramatic entrance.

  The tripod was unremarkable, similar to any number of camera tripods he’d seen except for a stubby cylinder fixed underneath. On top of the assembly stood a small, slim object, silver in color and about the size and shape of a pen. Liam bent to look at it, noticing tiny dials around its tip.

  He snatched at it. It came loose, but not before knocking the tripod over with a dull crash. Gripping it tightly, he turned back to the swirling wormhole, swallowed, and took a deep breath. It was time to go home.

  Four steps forward brought him in sucking range of the vortex. It pulled at him, and he leaned back, allowing it to drag at him. He imagined he would slide across the floor if he weren’t wearing rubber soles.

  Suddenly off balance, he tumbled forward and was yanked upward. Once again he spun and yelled, the tunnel walls rushing by, and again it took him a moment to get a grip on his fear. Only then did he appreciate the dreamlike quality of the wormhole, the oddly comforting solitude and—

  He shot out the other end and landed face down in a pile of dirt in front of Judith E. Chambers’ headstone.

  Chapter 7

  Relief at being back home on Earth flooded through him. He didn’t care that his nerves were fried and he was covered in dirt. He’d done it! He’d visited an alien world!

  Rising to his feet, he checked to see that all was clear—and was shocked to find it wasn’t. All three of the short geologists stood frozen thirty feet away, staring at him. Apparently they’d started heading back right after he’d hurled himself into the wormhole.

  The moment stretched on. Liam glanced toward the five headstones where his friends hid. He could see their faces peering through one of the gaps, but only because he knew where to look, otherwise they were nicely hidden.

  One of the aliens shuffled forward, spouting something in his growling, meaningless language. He was pointing at Liam and sounded agitated.

  Liam’s heart was hammering even harder by now. Which way to run? Could he hurdle the iron railings? Or did he need to dart around the three aliens and use the busted gate? These guys were short and fat, probably unable to waddle after him for long. He could make it. He could dash across to the far side of the graveyard, leading the visitors away from Ant and Madison, and then double back and escape through the gate.

  The lead alien—the gravedigger, still plastered in dirt—called to him, his words unintelligible. A hint of urgency gave Liam pause. There was no menace or threat, just concern, perhaps even panic. He was pointing at Liam, jabbing his fat finger toward him.

  No, Liam realized. Not at me. He’s pointing at this thing I stole.

  He still gripped the silver, penlike object in one hand and was absently holding it aloft as though wielding a knife.

  The alien’s concern became clear. He wanted the device back. Liam instinctively understood it was important. After all, it had been set up on a tripod in the middle of the floor directly in front of the wormhole opening. Perhaps it was the ‘wormhole machine’ Liam had imagined earlier. If so, it was extremely valuable. He could use it to open more wormholes and visit other worlds . . .

  The three aliens spread out, clearly tense and preparing for some kind of takedown. They really wanted their device back.

  Liam snatched another glance toward his hiding friends. They still cowered behind the headstones.

  “You want this back?” Liam said, returning his attention to the gnarly-faced creatures before him. The gravedigger edged closer. “Okay, fine. I’ll . . . I’ll put it down right here, okay? You can have it. I don’t want any trouble.”

  He was waving it around as he spoke, and the gravedigger’s beady eyes widened. As Liam tried to decide where to place the device—on a headstone, or perhaps on top of a small mound of dirt—the alien reached into a concealed pocket and rummaged around. He withdrew something shiny, something that looked very like what Liam held.

  At only fifteen feet apart, both Liam and the unearthly visitor wielded penlike weapons as though preparing for battle. Yet the alien was already advancing, moving slowly, offering his device while holding out his other hand palm upwards.

  Liam suddenly understood. “You want to swap? I’m fine with that.”

  He took a step closer to the gravedigger, mimicking the other and offering his stolen device while holding out a hand for a replacement. He would have given his up for free; he was, after all, just a twelve-year-old boy and had no business owning such a powerful contraption. But to have another device offered in its place seemed like a perfectly good deal.

  The exchange went without a hitch. Their empty hands simultaneously clasped the proffered devices while releasing the others. Liam heard palpable sighs of relief from the two aliens to his left and right while the gravedigger gave a nod and pocketed his treasure.

  After that, they stared at each other for a long time.

  Liam felt the tension lifting. He relaxed a little, shifting his feet and rolling his shoulders. He licked his lips before speaking.

  “So, uh . . .”

  Words failed him. He had a million questions that jostled for priority, but in the end they blurred together into one big noise in his head.

  Something beeped. The gravedigger visibly jumped and raised his left hand. Under his sleeve was what looked like a wristwatch. Liam almost laughed out loud. It seemed so absurd, an intergalactic alien wearing a wristwatch. As it turned out, though, the beep seemed to be a warning of some kind, and the gravedigger tapped the watch and gestured to his colleagues.

  The three of them converged on Liam, and he backed away.

  Feeling the tug of the wormhole at his back, he panicked. He did not want to get sucked up again with these three following him through. They could trap him at the other end and cart him off to some lonely dungeon on an asteroid, or worse.

  Madison suddenly leapt up from her hiding place and yelled at him. “Let them pass, you idiot! The gateway’s about to close!”

  Realization struck, and Liam edged sideways away from the wormhole. This action seemed to please the aliens. They grunted and nodded, then rushed forward eagerly.

  One by one, the vortex yanked them off their feet and into its yawning, swirling maw.

  Liam stood aside, amazed. From where he stood, at the foot end of Judith E. Chambers’ open grave, the wormhole tugged ineffectually at his clothes and hair. It began to flicker and warp as though someone had thrown in a wrench and knocked it off balance. He wondered what would happen if a traveler tried to make it through during such a perilous stage. What if it ceased to be? Would the traveler end up floating in deep space?

  He backed away. Even more awe-inspiringly terrifying than a wormhole was an unstable wormho
le.

  He became aware of Ant and Madison appearing at his sides. Nobody said a word, but they all watched in silence as the vortex flickered and brightened, then began shrinking, closing down. No longer swirling, the tunnel stilled and died and eventually broke apart in a display of silent flashes.

  About five seconds after it had completely vanished, Madison punched Liam on the upper arm and then, as he yelled out, shoved him so hard that he toppled backward and landed on his backside. His precious alien device dropped from his grasp.

  “You idiot!” Madison screeched. “What were you thinking? You might have gotten stuck someplace else! You might have been killed!”

  “Not cool, man,” Ant added, sounding shaky.

  Liam crawled around on his hands and knees, searching the long grass while trying to ignore the throbbing pain on his arm. It was going to bruise. “Sorry, sorry. I just . . . I just had to, you know? And I’m here, all safe and sound. No harm done, right?”

  “Not from them,” Madison said, lifting her foot and giving him a hard shove on the rear that laid him out flat on his face. “Of all the moronic things to do. Did you even think about what might have happened?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Liam said, flinching as she took another step toward him. “I almost didn’t go. Look, I get it, okay? I’m an idiot. I’m a moron. I totally agree, and I’m sorry.” He knelt there on the grass, looking up at a furious Madison and a mildly ticked-off Ant. “Really, I’m sorry. It was stupid. I won’t do it again.”

  As those last words tumbled out, he knew it was a complete lie. He would do it again. And it was probably best to correct his statement now rather than later.

  “Well, not without talking about it first, anyway.” He found the silver penlike object and held it up. “And look. A genuine alien artifact.”

  “So you can write in alien ink now?” Ant said. “Was it worth the risk?”

  Liam swallowed. His friends’ glares drilled into him, and he looked down at the ground for a moment. They were right, of course. He’d been an idiot, and a selfish one at that. He’d deliberately gone against Madison’s wishes just to satisfy his own reckless curiosity.