“It’s the simplest reason in the whole universe.” He smiled and pointed his spoon toward Hollins, carrying a load of philiddra branches back toward camp.
“You’ve got a lot to learn about humans, my little friend,” said Little Gus.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We made our way up a steep tunnel. The path was thick with a fungus that we Xotonians call spiny dralts. In some places it grew as high as the humans’ waists. Spiny dralts are covered in long thorns. These thorns had a tendency to prick sensitive human skin wherever it was exposed.
I kept a bit ahead, scouting for obstacles or danger, trying to pick the easiest route for the group. Every so often I’d hear a loud “Ow!” or “Ah!” or any of a few other human words—words that all of them told me not to repeat too often. I would look back to see one of the humans sucking on a finger or waving a hand around that they’d accidentally spiked with a wicked dralt thorn.
The humans were still tethered together with their safety rope, which meant they could only move as fast as the slowest walker. Usually this was Little Gus, whose legs were shorter than those of the others. But other times it was just whoever happened to be the most tired. And the humans got tired often. I wasn’t even tethered to them, but I was still limited to their plodding pace.
When we reached the top of a rise in the tunnel, all four humans begged for a rest.
“Strange how the alien is the prisoner, but we’re the ones tied up and being led around,” grumbled Becky.
“Kind of a fair point,” said Hollins. “Where are we anyway, Chorkle?”
“We are in the Unclaimed Tunnels,” I said, dodging his question. We weren’t lost exactly—one hundred twenty-one turns back to Core-of-Rock—but I had no idea where we were. I’d never been in these caverns before. Even the fungi looked different here.
“Why do we have to keep walking?” asked Becky. “Where are we even going?” She sat on a rock, rubbing her foot.
“It is safest to keep moving,” I said.
“What if we just relaxed here for a while?” asked Little Gus. He slowly leaned back, his eyelids drooping. “Maybe we could take a fifteen-minute—ow!”
Suddenly he was wide awake, sitting upright and rubbing his neck. He’d accidentally brushed against a spiny dralt.
“Dude. Is there anything on this asteroid that doesn’t want to kill us?” he asked.
“Me,” I said, shrugging.
“Debatable,” said Becky.
“It’s been nearly three days,” said Nicki. “Our parents will be coming back soon. If they can’t find us, they might assume the worst.”
“We should have stayed near the entrance to the surface,” said Becky.
“No, it would not have been safe,” I said. “That entrance is well traveled. Very dangerous.” The Xotonian Observers who watch the sky must have seen the pod’s emergency landing. Others would probably be investigating the site by now. That would mean a lot of coming and going by the entrances nearest to the human settlement. I couldn’t risk it.
“You’re worried about others finding us. I get that,” said Hollins, reading my mind. “But we can’t just keep on walking around forever. We’re running out of food.”
He was right on both counts. Unfortunately, I hadn’t come up with a better plan yet. Leading them to breathable air had earned me a certain amount of trust with the humans. Now I could see that trust was starting to wear thin.
“Chorkle, are there any other Xotonians like you?” asked Nicki. “Who would give humans the benefit of the doubt? Who would help us get back to our parents? Maybe we could find them somehow and—”
“I do not understand,” I lied.
“Really?” asked Nicki. “You somehow learned our whole language in a couple of days, but suddenly you don’t understand what I’m asking?”
“I do not understand,” I said, and I shook my head and shrugged and tried to seem as stupid as possible. Nicki looked skeptical.
There probably were a few Xotonians who wouldn’t want to kill these humans on sight—Hudka, for one. Linod too. But enlisting their help meant returning to Core-of-Rock, back to where Kalac was. I was terrified at the thought of explaining myself—especially my role in botching the asteroid-quake plan and potentially endangering our entire species—to my originator. Kalac would probably disown me.
So we continued onward. After a few more hours of walking, the tunnel began to widen and descend. Its contours became less irregular.
“Hey, what is this?” asked Nicki during another rest. She had scraped a bit of yellow mold from the cavern wall.
I was about tell her that I had no idea, that it was impossible for anyone to know the name of every single fungus we passed and would she please stop asking. But it wasn’t the mold she was talking about. It was what was behind it.
Carved into the cavern wall was an intricate . . . fixture of some sort, a regular star-shaped hole surrounded by patterned carving.
“Did Xotonians make this?” asked Nicki.
“I think so,” I said. It did look Xotonian to me. But it seemed older somehow. After a bit of digging on the floor beneath it, Little Gus found a shard of transparent crystal. We all began to look for more—an excuse for the humans to prolong their break. One by one, we found more shards and fit them back into the fixture on the cavern wall. It was like a kind of puzzle. At last Becky completed the star by popping the last broken piece of crystal in.
And all of a sudden, the star bathed the tunnel around it in a soft, yellow glow. It was a wall light.
“Chorkle, are you sure nobody lives here?” asked Little Gus, looking around nervously. The caverns were silent, save for the distant sound of dripping water. It looked to me like the fixture hadn’t been touched in hundreds of years.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. But just in case, I popped the crystal pieces out of the wall, dimming the cavern once more.
“I’d say from the amount of mold, whoever made it is long dead,” said Nicki. “The real question is what—or who—killed them?” Everyone frowned at her.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I was just thinking out loud. . . .”
Now as we walked, we all began to notice identical fixtures on the cavern walls. Some were broken. Others were worn away or almost entirely covered. They seemed to appear at regular intervals.
The undergrowth of spiny dralts soon began to thin—much to the humans’ relief—and we came to the entrance of a huge chamber. A gnarled forest of philiddra grew here. Their branches blocked most of the light from the glowing zhas on the ceiling high above and cast strange shadows upon the cavern floor. Curls of mist hung in the air between their trunks.
“You’ve been here before, right?” said Hollins, shining his flashlight out into the dark chamber.
“Of course,” I lied. In truth, even I found this place eerie. I couldn’t imagine how the humans might feel.
“Nicki, say you’re in a place—hypothetically, let’s say an asteroid—where there aren’t any people. Is it scientifically possible for there to be ghosts?” asked Little Gus, his light darting around.
“I think it’s unlikely that ghosts exist. But the universe is so complex, I wouldn’t say impossible,” said Nicki. “For example, we didn’t believe there were aliens until—”
“Come on, sis,” said Becky. “You’re scaring him.”
“But if you accept the proposition of human ghosts—which, as I said before, I don’t—then it wouldn’t be illogical to assume that the Xotonians have their own restless dead spirits,” said Nicki.
“Nobody needs to worry about ghosts,” said Hollins. But his voice sounded uneasy.
We pushed onward into the forest. The humans were keeping closer together now. The weak beams of their flashlights were soon lost in the mist.
We came upon a mound covered in thick rust-colored mildew, a loose pil
e of stones in a circular shape. As we got closer it became apparent to me: This had once been a dome-shaped Xotonian building.
I spotted something dark among the stones. Using a fel’graz, I gently brushed aside the dirt and detritus.
It was a charred Xotonian skull!
Startled, I somersaulted backward and collided with Hollins.
“Whoa!” said Hollins, lifting me back to my fel’grazes. “Hope that wasn’t a friend of yours.”
We saw more mounds now. Here and there, a blackened, crumbling wall still stood among the philiddra. The occasional broken stone column jutted out of the ground, worn almost as smooth as a stalagmite. This strange forest was growing in the ruins of what must have been a second Xotonian settlement.
We were many turns from Core-of-Rock—at least, if we retraced our steps. I had never heard of Xotonians building anything outside the Stealth Shield—not even from Hudka, who loved to dwell on the past. If the elders knew of these ruins, they hadn’t bothered to tell us younglings about it.
Perhaps it was the dreary atmosphere of the forest, but the mood of the group became glum and anxious. We set up camp in silence, beside a river that snaked its way across the chamber’s floor. It wasn’t wide, but it was deeper than it looked. Pale r’yaris flitted about below the water’s surface.
In an effort to boost morale, Hollins reminded Becky of their r’yari fishing bet.
“I’m going to get that fat one right there,” said Hollins, pointing to a large r’yari near the surface. “Mmm-mmm. That’s good eatin’.”
“Whatever, Hollins,” said Becky. “I’m tired and I don’t care. I concede. You win.” She seemed particularly sullen. It wasn’t like her to shrink from a challenge.
Hollins was a little taken aback. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll catch at least twenty. I don’t mind sharing one with you, if you ask nicely. Dehydrated beef is the secret!” he said as he pulled a wad of brown flakes from a small silvery packet.
“Yo, don’t waste that stuff!” said little Gus. “We’re running out. Little Gus Stew won’t be the same without it.”
“Really?” said Hollins hopefully.
“I mean that it will be worse!” said Little Gus.
“Don’t worry. I’m not wasting it,” said Hollins. “I’m using it to get us more food. Force multiplier.” And he walked off to find a prime r’yari fishing spot downstream.
“Speaking of Little Gus Stew, I need to find something to substitute for dehydrated potatoes. We’re out of those too,” said Little Gus.
“I think I saw some purple puffballs a little ways back,” said Nicki.
“That sounds perfect!” said Little Gus, and the both of them disappeared the way we had come.
It was just Becky and me now. She sat on the ground, quiet and scowling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Great, now the alien wants to talk about feelings,” said Becky to no one in particular.
“You know, to me, you are the alien,” I said. “Your people came here from outer space and started taking all the iridium.”
“Yeah, I guess that was kind of crappy,” she said at last. “We probably should have asked or something.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You didn’t even know we were here. We were too scared to even show ourselves.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been mean to you, Chorkle. I know you’re trying to help us. It’s just that I want to go home,” she said. “I miss my parents and my friends and my planet. And I’m—I’m scared.”
“I’m scared too,” I said.
“Really?”
“But I can’t go home. I disobeyed my origi—my ‘parent.’ I can’t imagine how disappointed Kalac will be with me.”
“I know what you mean,” said Becky. “Both my parents are scientists. Which twin do you think they’re more proud of?”
“Maybe you could wear a pair of vision lenses and then they wouldn’t be able to tell the two of you apart,” I offered.
She laughed. “I’m not sure that would work for long, Chorkle. Fact is, I love my parents more than anything, but I’m not going to be a scientist like they are. I want to be a pilot. Or a reporter. Or a combination pilot-reporter. Sooner or later, they’ll just have to accept that.”
“Do you think Kalac will accept my mistakes? Forgive me for messing up everything?”
She placed a hand lightly on my thol’graz. “Of course. I think going your own way is just part of growing up,” she said. “Otherwise, how would you figure out who you really are?”
Her words made me think of Hudka, always at odds with its own offspring. I’d never really considered it before, but Kalac must have sometimes defied and disappointed Hudka when it was younger. As much as I loved Hudka as a grand-originator, I could see that being its direct offspring could not have been easy.
I thought too of how caring Kalac could be, carrying me on its i’ardas when I was younger, taking me to the market for a fried cave slug, checking under my sleeping-veth to make sure Morool wasn’t hiding in the shadows.
“It must be hard for our parents to see us grow up,” I said.
“Yup,” said Becky. “Hard for us too. Because growing up doesn’t just mean doing whatever we want to do. It’s also doing what we have to do. Even when we’re afraid.”
She was right. I knew that I would have to return to Core-of-Rock and face my mistakes.
“I think I know how you can win,” I said.
“Win what?”
“Your bet with Hollins. To catch more r’yaris.”
“Do tell.” She was actually smiling now.
“There is a bait that might be a bit more effective than dehydrated beef,” I said. And I pulled out a silvery bar of Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Got another bite,” said Becky as her fishing line tightened. She had already caught five r’yaris. I must admit, wriggling on dry land, they did look a bit like brains that could swim.
“Seriously?” called Hollins from the other side of the river (he’d crossed using a dead philiddra trunk as a bridge). “How are you doing this?” Hollins had yet to catch anything at his “prime spot.”
“Just a simple combination of skill, talent, and dedication,” said Becky. Neither Becky nor I had let him in on the little secret of using astronaut ice cream as bait. As predicted, the r’yaris loved it as much as I did. After all, astronaut ice cream was the most delicious thing in the entire universe.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll catch something someday,” said Becky. “Just keep at it. Never give up. Follow your dreams. Stay in school. Winners don’t use drugs. Teddy Roosevelt said that.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Hollins quietly.
“Whoa!” said Becky as the pole—the thin, flexible stalk of a young philiddra with a line tied to the end of it—was nearly yanked from her hands. The r’yari she had hooked was struggling violently. Becky was having a hard time pulling it in.
“Wow, that looks like a really big one,” said Nicki, staring into the churning water. The r’yari really did appear to be about twice the size of the others she’d caught, the biggest I’d ever seen.
“Maybe this one is their king,” said Little Gus.
Both of them had come to the banks of the river to watch the fishing contest, which wasn’t really much of a contest anymore. It gave the humans something to focus on, a welcome distraction from the creepiness of the surrounding forest and burned-out ruins.
“Come on, come on,” said Becky, straining. Her pole was nearly doubled over now.
“I’m gonna fry that bad boy up and serve him with a side of warm dehydrated pickles. Little Gus style,” said Little Gus as he watched it struggle.
“Careful, Becky,” said Nicki, “it looks like your pole is about to—”
Snap! Becky’s fishing pole broke in half, sending her flying backward. She flopped on the ground with a grunt. The top half of the pole, still attached to the line in the big r’yari’s mouth, disappeared under the dark water of the river.
“It’s okay,” said Hollins, now needling Becky. “Even the best fisherman falls on his butt sometimes.”
“Fisherwoman,” said Becky, sitting up.
“Fisherperson,” said Nicki.
“Wait, there it is!” I cried. The broken pole had resurfaced a few meters upstream. It bobbed there, near the bank.
“I probably shouldn’t do this,” said Little Gus, “but even I’m tired of eating nothing but stew.” And he started to run toward the bank of the river.
“Wait, Gus! Becky already caught five of these things,” said Hollins. “You don’t need to—”
Little Gus leaped high into the air and disappeared beneath the water with a huge splash. We all stared at one another.
“We don’t even know if r’yaris are edible or not,” said Nicki, shaking her head.
At last, Gus popped up again.
“Got it!” he cried triumphantly. The broken pole was clutched in his hand.
“Dude, you’re nuts,” said Hollins.
“For the record, technically, that still counts as one that I caught,” said Becky.
“Wow, it’s pretty deep here,” said Little Gus, treading water. “My feet don’t even touch the bottom.”
“Be careful,” I said. “R’yaris are strong swimmers.”
“Don’t worry, Chorkle,” said Little Gus, “I got everything under—”
Suddenly, the pole fragment violently yanked backward, pulling Little Gus along with it.
“Free ride!” said Little Gus.
“Come on, let go!” said Hollins. And he ran after Little Gus, who was now being rapidly towed upstream. We all followed close behind.
“Just let go of the pole!” cried Nicki.
“No way,” laughed Little Gus, his head throwing up a wake as it sliced through the water. “This is awesome.”
Space Rocks! Page 9