What Benny saw took his breath away.
They were still thousands of miles from the planet, rushing ever closer toward it. Still, Jupiter loomed larger than he could have possibly imagined, an immensity striped in shades of orange and beige, with occasional wavelike crests of blue. He knew little about the planet other than the fact that it was gaseous and the largest one in the solar system, but seeing it now, with his own eyes, it was hard to even fathom that such a giant was real.
“Holy whoa,” he murmured.
“Max whoa,” Ramona said, hurrying up the stairs to join them, disregarding her HoloTek for once.
“Yeah,” Drue said, his voice only a whisper. “Same.”
“Over eleven times the size of Earth,” Jasmine said. “What we’re seeing are mostly cloud belts. Underneath, a liquid surface.”
“Kinda makes you feel insignificant, huh?” Hot Dog said.
“It is a sight,” Vala agreed. “Though if this lone planet calls significance into question, one wonders how humanity would react to experiencing the true vastness of the universe.”
“There,” Trevone said. “That dark swirly part. That’s the Great Red Spot. It’s a storm that’s been raging on the surface of the planet for over four hundred years.”
“That we know of,” Jasmine said, scarcely able to hide the excitement in her voice.
“It used to be at least forty kilometers from end to end.” Drue said, “but it’s been shrinking over the centuries.”
Hot Dog glanced at him.
“What?” he asked. “It’s like you guys forget I know stuff, too, and never-ending storms on giant planets are kind of cool to learn about.”
“Elijah couldn’t race across its surface,” Ricardo said. “So I’m not sure he ever saw Jupiter this close.”
Kira took a few steps toward the window. “I wonder if we’ll ever know what all Elijah’s seen.”
“We have planets like this in our system as well,” Vala said. “Beautiful. Enormous. But completely incapable of habitation. At least for those like us.”
“Makes you wonder what could be living down there,” Hot Dog said.
“Yes,” the commander continued. “Though, in our history, we have discovered that often this is an inquiry best left unanswered.”
Benny gulped. He kind of felt like he needed to start a running list of all the follow-up questions he had about things that Vala casually mentioned.
“Um,” Jasmine said. “Which of the moons are we landing on? I have to admit that I wasn’t very familiar with Jupiter’s satellites since there are over seventy of them. But according to the info on my HoloTek, a lot of them are very icy and, uh, well, full of volcanoes.”
“My people are on the largest of the moons,” Vala said.
“Oh, good,” Jasmine nodded. “One that I actually know. Ganymede. At least, that’s what we call it on Earth.”
“So, are we freezing to death or melting?” Benny asked.
“Freezing,” she answered. “It’s basically a giant ball of ice with rock—and maybe even water—underneath. But Ganymede is one of the places in our solar system that scientists believe could be made to support life one day, though that would take a lot of work, planning, and resources. It’s also far larger than our moon. The biggest one we know of.”
Vala nodded. “We were interested in what lies beneath the moon’s icy surface.”
There was a subtle jolt on the bridge, the feeling of the room shifting slightly around them.
“Uh, should we buckle up or something?” Benny asked.
“Do not worry,” Vala said, taking a seat on her throne behind them. “We are only slowing for the landing. I’ll try to make it as smooth as possible.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, a new shape filled the mineral window—the polished surface of Ganymede, a steely gray with darker, carbon-colored patches.
“All that’s ice?” Benny asked. He was already shivering and they hadn’t even landed yet. An entire lifetime spent in the Drylands hadn’t prepared him for anything like this.
Trevone nodded. “It’s believed to be the smoothest natural surface in the solar system.”
“We shoulda brought skates!” Drue exclaimed. “Rocket skates!”
“I’m beginning to think we could use some coats, too,” Hot Dog said. “These space suits are only so warm. Didn’t Elijah have any parkas lying around? The man was really into faux fur for a while.”
“You’ll find that our camp here is comfortable for you. The temperatures our peoples thrive under are very similar.”
“Another reason you want Earth,” Kira said, glancing at the commander from the corner of her eye.
Vala merely nodded. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to concentrate.”
As they shot toward the moon Ganymede, Jasmine’s nose almost pressed up against the see-through rock wall. “That’s odd,” she said, pointing at a greenish blip on the surface of the moon.
“It almost looks like it’s glowing,” Trevone said, stepping up to her side.
It took a moment for Benny to see what they were talking about, but, sure enough, the point they seemed to be flying toward was different from the rest of the landscape. He stared at the location, finally taking a sharp breath once they were close enough for him to recognize exactly what he was seeing.
Alpha Maraudi rock.
“They’ve dug into the ice,” Jasmine said.
“What does that mean?” Ricardo asked.
“That they’ve made some kind of base here,” Trevone said. “They’ve found a way to live on this moon. At least temporarily.”
Jasmine smiled a little. “Underground. They’ve probably created an entire livable environment down there.”
Griida yelled something from behind them.
“I will take it from here,” Vala called back in English.
The commander’s hands were clasped together in front of her chest, holding the red ball that was usually spinning around in her hair. Tentacles tipped in gold shot out, touching the sides of the quartz-like throne. Suddenly, the inside of the chair—covered in the same golden metal—began to glow. And then this light spread, until Benny could see webs of it flowing through the floors and walls of the ship like circuitry, little gleaming currents.
“Wow,” he whispered as the ship slowed, hovering just above the surface of the moon.
Somewhere far below them, there was a rumbling sound, and then the entire ship shook, just slightly, before going still again.
“It is done,” Vala said, her tentacles weaving around her head once again. “We are now one with the rock below.” She gestured to the clear wall in front of them. “Welcome to Ganymede. I believe you are likely the first humans to set foot here.”
6.
Once the ship landed, everything was in motion very quickly. Commander Vala’s harmonic voice rang through some sort of intercom system on the ship, instructing the few members of her people that remained to begin the process of assessing the vessel and its supplies. After a brief discussion, Benny and the Pit Crew decided it would be best for the EW-SCABers to remain on the ship for now, where they had plenty of space and resources. Reluctantly, Ricardo and Kira agreed to stay behind with Pinky to help maintain order. Trevone, the member of the Pit Crew who specialized in science and calculations, joined Benny, Drue, Hot Dog, Ramona, and Jasmine as they followed Vala down several flights of stairs, stopping only once, at the hangar, to pick up a few of Dr. Bale’s stealth drives.
Eventually, Benny found himself in the lowest chamber of the alien mother ship, an empty room the size of his suite back at the Lunar Taj, all stone and glowing rivers of energy. Vala stood in front of him.
“This temporary base is home to a dozen of our wisest scholars and science officials,” the commander said. “They know you are coming. You have nothing to fear from them. If anything, I believe they will be interested in studying you.”
“Cool,” Drue said. “As long as we don’t end up as lab rats.”<
br />
“On the contrary,” Vala said, nodding to Benny, “they should be able to help you in both creating a way to communicate with the Earth forces and, with any luck, finding a way to track down this superweapon.”
“The exterior of the ship fused with the base that was already here?” Trevone asked, looking around. “Interesting. It alleviates the need for any secondary connections or airlocks.”
“And creates an instant fortress,” Jasmine added.
“Well,” Hot Dog said. “I guess now’s as good a time as any to check out a secret alien base underneath the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons. Just a normal . . .” She paused. “I have no idea what day of the week it is on Earth. So, how do we get in?”
Vala turned to the wall and waved a gold-tipped tentacle, causing the stone in front of them to fall away, revealing a dark staircase leading beneath the surface of Ganymede. Another flick of the appendage and a webbing of green circuitry began to glow on the walls, illuminating their path.
“Dude, Benny,” Drue whispered. “You gotta get better at using that glove of yours.”
Vala stepped through the newly opened doorway. “You may follow me.”
“This reminds me of that staircase underground at the Taj,” Jasmine said as they filed down the steps. “Remember that? Back before we knew about the Alpha Maraudi or that Earth was about to be destroyed?”
“The good old days,” Hot Dog muttered.
“I don’t know,” Jasmine continued. “If it hadn’t been for us discovering the underground city, I never would have seen my life flash before my eyes dozens of times. Starting with the way you drove that mine cart.”
Hot Dog gasped a little. “We survived.”
Drue let out a boisterous laugh. “Jazz! I knew you had a sense of humor in there somewhere.”
“I’m only sort of joking,” Jasmine said.
“Could’ve been worse,” Benny added. “Could have been Drue driving.”
“Hey!” Drue raised a hand to his chest dramatically. “I’m hurt by that, Benny.”
“Thin skin,” Ramona said. “You’d never last in online forums.”
“I have no idea how the five of you ended up as the driving force behind everything that’s happened in the last few days,” Trevone said, shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad. But it seems to me like you all should have died several times already.”
“There’s always tomorrow,” Benny joked, not really thinking about what he was saying. He immediately regretted it. The comment hung in the air as they continued their descent in silence.
“How far down does this go?” Jasmine finally asked.
“We needed to dig below the many layers of ice,” Vala said. “The moon is at its warmest here, but the surface is still thick.”
“And did you find anything interesting?”
Vala nodded toward the dead end they were fast approaching. “You will see.”
The commander waved a hand and the wall melted. A rush of cold air shot through the stairwell, but Benny’s force field helmet still hadn’t deployed—however this base was built, it was running its own artificial environment, just as the ship had. Still, he couldn’t help but shiver.
As they stepped out of the narrow corridor, all the humans took deep breaths, eyes wide and trying to take in the sprawling oasis in front of them.
The telltale grayish-green alien rock spread from the doorway and covered almost the entirety of a giant cavern that extended so far up Benny could barely make out the shimmering stalactites above them. Huge glowing boulders dotted the stone floor, providing ample light. Across from where they stood, half a dozen pillars of jet-black rock jutted out of the ground. Several Alpha Maraudi were gathered around them, scanning the outcroppings with instruments and bringing chunks of the mineral to nearby workbenches. Giant alien plants were thriving in one corner, surrounded by more illuminated stones. There were hallways leading farther back into the rock walls, where Benny assumed other rooms must have been located. But the most awe-inspiring thing—what caused the goose bumps to form on his skin—was the farthest side of the cave, where the alien rock gave way to walls of silvery ice and the floor sloped down, leading to a dark pool of water. Melting icicles from the ceiling rippled its surface, each drop echoing through the cavern—an underground lake on Ganymede.
“This is insane,” Benny whispered.
“Wha . . . How?” Jasmine stuttered. “Is that . . . ?”
“Those rocks . . .” Trevone said. “Water? But . . .”
“What is this place?” Hot Dog asked.
“Our scans found this hollow pocket far below the surface,” Vala explained. “We mined down to it, reinforced it with our own elements, and created a temporary environmental system. The lake is full of saltwater that’s bubbling up from ever deeper depths. Since we raised the temperature to make us comfortable, the surface of the liquid does not freeze.”
Benny shook his head, marveling at the sight. It was strange enough that he was in a cave hundreds of feet below the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons and that it was full of aliens—not to mention the fact that they’d turned it into a space where he could stand and breathe normally. But there was something else that leaped out at him, something that weeks ago, sweating in the Drylands, he never could have fathomed. “I’ve never seen so much water and ice like this before,” he said quietly.
“Oh, man, that’s right,” Drue said. “This must be blowing your mind. I mean, it’s blowing my mind and I didn’t live in the desert my whole life.”
“Wait,” Benny continued, trying to refocus his thoughts. “If you can turn an ice cave into a livable place, can’t you do that to, like, a whole moon or planet?”
Jasmine shook her head. “This is a self-contained environment. Like how the Grand Dome worked. To do something like this for an entire planet would mean creating a synthetic atmosphere. It’s theoretically doable, but . . .”
“But you’d need impossible amounts of specific gasses and the perfect balance of gravity,” Trevone said.
“They are correct,” Vala said. “This is a temporary solution for a small number of my people.”
There was the now-familiar sound of the alien language from somewhere to Benny’s left. He turned, expecting to see yet another tall Alpha Maraudi, but the alien running toward them was small compared to every other stretched-out extraterrestrial he’d faced—a whole head shorter than he was, in fact. It wore a silver tunic and no mask over its eyes. Four waist-length tentacles swung behind it, the tips of them an inky black.
“Oh my gosh,” Hot Dog whispered. “It’s a squid kid!”
The small alien stopped a few feet away from them, all three eyes scanning the group, and then turned to Vala. The two of them spoke back and forth a few times, the child’s alien words quicker, more excited than the commander’s—or at least, Benny was pretty sure that was what he was hearing. Finally, Vala seemed to smile, and placed the glowing red ball that she usually kept wrapped up in her tentacles into the kid’s hand.
“Okay, I still have questions about that thing,” Hot Dog said.
“This?” Vala asked, pointing at the ball. “In what way?”
“We thought maybe it was how you controlled the ship or something,” Benny said.
Vala stared at him for a beat. “It is merely a child’s toy. Something I take with me to remind me of what is waiting for me elsewhere in the universe.”
The smaller alien barked something, and then turned to Benny and his friends. When it spoke again, it used English. “I am not a child. I’ve seen seven star festivals!”
“It talks!” Hot Dog whispered.
Drue leaned in to Benny. “So . . . seven years old?”
The alien let out a snarl. “I was chasing Bazers back on Calam before you’d even crawled out of your newborn nest.”
“I have no idea what that means, but point taken,” Drue said. “I think.”
“This is Zee,” Vala said. “He is of my famil
y.”
“He’s your . . .” Benny started. “Kid?”
“Not exactly. Though I have been entrusted with his care for many cycles.”
“You’re like a foster parent,” Jasmine said. Her lips pursed as she rolled this thought around in her head. “Fascinating.”
“I can’t believe I’m looking at actual humans,” Zee said, his glowing blue eye radiant. The alien’s tentacles whipped back and forth as he continued. “I always hoped I’d get to meet one before Earth was depopulated. I have so many questions! Why is your music so simple? How do you really see anyone without a third eye? Is it weird to get a haircut? Does it hurt?”
“Zee has been very . . .” Vala started, “interested in Earth since he learned that it would be our new home.”
“I’ve been swallowing all the materials I can find about your planet,” Zee said.
“You’ve been . . . eating research?” Benny asked.
Zee’s tentacles drooped. “Swallowing’s the wrong word? Maybe . . . chewing? Is that right?”
“I think you might be looking for digesting,” Jasmine suggested.
“Or bingeing,” Hot Dog said. Then she put a hand on her hip. “It’s a little creepy to get superobsessed with humanity right before your people come to wipe us out, don’t you think?”
“You should take it as a . . .” Zee thought for a moment. “The opposite of an insult?”
“A compliment?” Jasmine asked.
“If you say so,” Zee continued. “You have many faults, but I’ll admit the Space Runners your people love so much look way colder than most of our ships.”
“Cooler,” Drue said. “And if you think normal SRs are awesome, you should’ve seen the Galaxicle I was on yesterday.”
Space Runners #3 Page 6