Space Rocks!

by Tom O'Donnell

  He was outpacing us now, receding into the distance. The little river was widening and becoming foamier and faster.

  “Seriously, if you guys ever get a chance to have an oversized alien fish pull you down a river,” cried Little Gus, his voice now faint, “I suggest you take it. Life’s too short, you know.”

  “Gus, let go of the pole!” cried Hollins.

  Little Gus yelled something back, but his voice was just a murmur over the roar of the rushing water. His head was a red speck, intermittently visible on the uneven surface of the now rushing river.

  “Oh no,” said Nicki, and she pointed up ahead of us. Little Gus’s head slipped out of sight. He’d gone over a waterfall!

  We raced to the edge, Hollins on one bank, Nicki, Becky, and I on the other. Ten meters below us was a pool ringed with jagged rocks. Little Gus was nowhere to be seen.

  Across the river, Hollins was frantically searching for some way down the cliff. Its surface was slippery and sheer, impossible for a human to climb.

  “Humans can’t breathe underwater, right?” I asked.

  “No!” cried the duplicates.

  “Then Little Gus needs help,” I said.

  “Yes!” they both screamed.

  I took a deep breath. Then I somersaulted off the cliff and landed on a thin ledge halfway down. I somersaulted again and dove right into the pool. As I said, Xotonians are good climbers.

  Unfortunately, we’re terrible swimmers. I hit the water and flapped all four of my thol’grazes frantically. The pummeling force of the waterfall pushed me down to the bottom of the pool.

  It was too cloudy to see much of anything, so I groped around blindly. Sometimes I’d grab a thol’graz full of silt. Sometimes nothing. Once I felt something disturbingly squishy. The waterfall was loud, even underneath the surface. I was starting to forget which way was up. Where was Little Gus? He must be down here somewhere.

  Something flashed in front of my face. I reached for it but missed. I reached again and caught it. Desperately, I began to paddle in the direction that I thought was toward the surface and toward the shore, pulling whatever it was along with me.

  I popped above the water, gasping. Somehow I was still holding on to what I’d found down there. It was a boot. Attached to a leg. I was holding Little Gus.

  “You got him!” cried Becky from the top of the waterfall.

  I pulled Little Gus onto a rocky shore a little further downstream and slumped to the ground beside him. I was thoroughly exhausted.

  “Hollins went back to camp to get the rope,” said Becky. “In the meantime, you need to check to see if Gus is breathing.”

  “How?” I said.

  “Feel under his nose,” said Nicki.

  I did. Nothing. His skin had a bluish cast to it.

  “I don’t think he is,” I yelled.

  “Then you need to do mouth-to-mouth,” yelled Nicki.

  “What? I don’t have a mouth,” I yelled back. “I have a gul’orp!”

  “Good enough!” cried Nicki. “Take a deep breath and put your . . . ‘gul’orp’ over his mouth. Then breathe out.”

  I did. Nothing.

  “Do it again,” cried Nicki.

  I did. Nothing. Then a sputter. Little Gus sat up, coughing out river water. Nicki and Becky cheered from the top of the waterfall.

  “Where am I?” asked Little Gus, dazed.

  “In a river in a cavern on an asteroid called Gelo,” I said.

  “Cool,” said Little Gus, still coughing. Slowly he sat up. He looked back at the waterfall.

  “Did I go over that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Gus, are you okay?” yelled Nicki.

  “I think so,” he yelled back. “Maybe I should have let go of the fishing pole.”

  “You think?” asked Becky.

  “Thanks, Chorkle,” he said. “You saved my life. Again.”

  I shrugged.

  On the shore around us were piles of fallen boulders and more circular ruins of Xotonian buildings. Apparently this river had run right through the ancient settlement.

  “Hey, check it out,” said Little Gus, walking over to two rocks at the edge of the water. The broken half of the fishing pole was wedged between them. Little Gus grabbed the pole with both hands and pulled hard. With all his strength, he hefted a big wriggling r’yari—almost his size—right out of the water. It was thoroughly tangled up in the fishing line.

  “Look!” he yelled triumphantly.

  “Look!” cried Nicki.

  “I know,” said Little Gus. “That’s what I’m saying: Look.”

  “No! Look!” screamed Becky. “Look behind you!”

  Little Gus and I turned. Creeping out from among the rocks was a thyss-cat. And it looked hungry.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Little Gus dropped the r’yari on the ground with a wet squelch. We both stood perfectly still as the thyss-cat crept toward us, muscles rippling under glossy blue fur. The big r’yari flopped around helplessly on the rocks by Gus’s feet.

  “Chorkle,” he said very quietly, “what is that thing?”

  “Thyss-cat,” I whispered.

  “And would you describe it as ‘nice’? Or . . . ‘not nice’?”

  The thyss-cat is an apex predator in the subterranean ecosystem of Gelo. The top of the food chain. The king of the cavern. It is as big as three Xotonians put together. It can move in total silence. And it is powerful enough to bring down an usk-lizard by itself. The thyss-cat has six legs, each ending in five wicked claws, and jaws that are quite capable of crushing a Xotonian skull. Occasionally, it uses them for that very thing. The most common adage about the beast is that if you’ve seen one, it is already hunting you.

  “Not nice,” I said.

  “Hey! Chorkle! Hey, where’d you go?” asked Little Gus. He kept his voice quiet, but he sounded terrified.

  Unconsciously, my skin had camouflaged itself. It was an autonomic response to the threat of a nearby predator. I was now exactly the same shade as the mossy rocks around us. Had the thyss-cat seen me or not?

  “Camouflaged,” I said. “Don’t move.”

  “Camouflaged? What am I supposed to do? I don’t have any natural defenses,” whimpered Little Gus. “I don’t even have quills. . . .”

  The thyss-cat moved toward us. It was close enough now that I could see the yellow slits of its eyes.

  “I think—I think it wants to eat me,” whimpered Little Gus. “I never even got to see Paris. . . .”

  Just then the giant r’yari flopped across the rocks toward the thyss-cat. Quick as lightning, the huge beast pounced.

  Little Gus and I got a gruesome preview of what might soon happen to us. The thyss-cat tore the r’yari to bits and gulped down the meat. In a matter of seconds, nothing was left of it but a spatter of purple blood on the rocks.

  “Maybe it’s full now,” said Little Gus hopefully. The thyss-cat turned back toward him. It did not look full.

  One pounce now, and it could cover the distance between it and Little Gus. I was paralyzed with fear.

  “Run,” I whispered.

  Little Gus turned on his heels. In a flash, the thyss-cat hunched down like a coiled spring, then sprang high into the air. It was going to land right on top of him and bury its claws in his back. But just at the peak of its jump—a flying blur slammed into it!

  “Get away from him, you ugly, six-legged son of a b—ch!” cried Hollins as he sailed through the air, kicking the beast aside. He was clinging to the rope—the other end was tied to a stalagmite at the top of the waterfall. By swinging down just in the nick of time, he’d saved Gus!

  The thyss-cat rolled away but was back on its feet in an instant.

  Hollins let go of the rope and landed on the shore. He pulled the folding knife from his bel
t and flicked it open. Now he stood between the thyss-cat and Little Gus. The beast still hadn’t seen me.

  “I’ll hold it off!” he yelled to Little Gus. “You climb back up!” Gus grabbed the rope and started to scramble back up the rocks to the top of the waterfall. Nicki and Becky began to pull the rope at the top, hauling him up.

  The thyss-cat roared and then charged at Hollins. He dodged sideways and swung the knife. The cat yelped in pain and scrambled backward, a trickle of blood across its muzzle.

  The cat was circling him now. Hollins had surprised it twice, and it seemed to be showing some caution. But in a long fight, it had every advantage. It was bigger, faster, and stronger than him. The folding knife looked awfully small compared with its fangs and claws.

  The thyss-cat swiped again, catching Hollins across the leg. He grunted in pain. Now he was dripping blood too, from five wicked claw marks.

  “Keep climbing,” yelled Hollins through gritted teeth. Little Gus was nearly halfway up the rocks, his feet kicking wildly.

  The thyss-cat leaped at Hollins, barreling him backward. Hollins fell down, and I saw the knife clatter away across the rocks and into the water. The cat was on top of him now, pinning him to the ground. He screamed.

  If I didn’t do something, Hollins was going to die. I started to run. The thyss-cat reared back to deliver the killing bite.

  “Six legs son to the b—ch!” I screamed. I was paraphrasing Hollins—fear had temporarily garbled my human language skills.

  I discharged my stink-gland right into the thyss-cat’s face. For an instant it was stunned, blinking and shaking its head and snorting. Its predator’s sense of smell was many times more powerful than that of a Xotonian. Such a concentrated dose of stink must have been painful.

  Then the thyss-cat whirled on me. I flipped backward, narrowly avoiding a deadly swipe to the face.

  I was running for my life now. The thyss-cat was right behind me, water streaming from its yellow eyes. Ahead of me was a pile of fallen rocks. I started to scramble up it. But I knew there was no way I could climb fast enough.

  The thyss-cat jumped and landed on my back, crushing me into the rocks. And then, to my surprise—the rocks gave way! Somehow we both fell right through them.

  Now we were tumbling, end over end. Spinning down into darkness in a hail of loose stones. The thyss-cat clawed at me as we fell, until suddenly—it wasn’t there anymore. I hit something hard, and I heard the cat scream, a sound that faded down into the distance until it was nothing at all.

  All was dark. All was quiet. Was I dead? Killed by a thyss-cat while trying to save a human? Had I passed to the Nebula Beyond, where I would meet Great Jalasu Jhuk of the Stars and the other Xotonian ancestors?

  After what seemed like an eternity, there came a distant voice.

  “Chorkle,” it said.

  I saw a bright light.

  “Chorkle!”

  The light grew brighter.

  I sat up, painfully. I was on the landing of a narrow stone staircase, clearly of Xotonian construction. On either side of the staircase was a sheer drop-off into darkness. I couldn’t even see the bottom, it was so far below.

  The light floated down toward me.

  “Are you all right?” the light asked. But it was speaking a language that was not my own.

  “Yes,” I answered in human.

  “Thank God,” said Hollins as he put down his flashlight. He was covered in scratches, and he’d tied a makeshift bandage around the wound on his leg. “That’s two human lives you saved today. Little Gus and I owe you.”

  “How badly are you hurt?” I asked.

  “Not so bad,” he said, rubbing his leg.

  My mind began to form a fuzzy idea of what had just happened. The stairs back up—the direction from which Hollins had come—must lead to the rocky slope near the waterfall. The thyss-cat had somehow knocked me through an entrance to this chamber—an entrance that had been covered by a rockslide long ago.

  “I think that that . . . animal went over the edge,” said Hollins, shining his light downward into the darkness.

  “Thyss-cat,” I said.

  Three more lights were coming down the stairs now: the other humans.

  “Are you two dead or not?” said Becky. I could hear genuine fear in her voice.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Becky, but no,” said Hollins.

  “Idiots,” Nicki said quietly. Then she put down her light and hugged Hollins, then me. Becky beamed.

  Little Gus came last, trailing behind the girls. His face was turned downward, as though studying every inch of the stone staircase.

  “Hollins . . . Chorkle, I, uh . . . I just wanted to say that . . . that I’m really sorry,” he whispered. I could see that he was crying. “I almost got you two killed. . . .”

  “It’s okay. I’ve never seen a thyss-cat up close before. It was very impressive!” I said, trying to make him feel better. “Plus I almost killed you when I caused your pod to crash. So now the score is one to one.”

  “It’s not a competition,” sighed Becky.

  “Anyway, I’m just really, really sorry . . .” said Little Gus, trailing off.

  “Don’t be sorry,” snapped Hollins. “Just don’t let it happen again!” He was still angry, and understandably so. He had suffered a serious injury and come the closest to death of anyone in the fight.

  “Don’t let what happen again?” asked Nicki at last. “Getting towed over a waterfall by a big brain-fish?”

  “Yeah,” said Hollins.

  “What about, say, two medium-sized brain-fish?” asked Becky.

  “In that case . . . I guess . . . use your best judgment,” said Hollins. And he started laughing despite himself. So did Nicki and Becky. Even Little Gus smiled, though tears still glistened in his eyes.

  “We should get back to camp,” said Hollins. “We’ve still got a mess of five medium-sized brain-fish to eat for dinner.”

  “Wait,” I said, “I think—I think this place might be important.”

  “Where exactly are we?” asked Nicki, looking around.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Despite the close proximity to the underground stream—I realized that we must actually be under the level of it now—these stairs were dry. Unlike the ruins nearby, the construction here was totally intact. This strange chamber must have dated back to ancient times. But for the thick layer of dust that covered everything, it looked as though it could have been carved yesterday. How long ago had it been sealed off from the rest of the caverns?

  “I think we need to go down,” I said. The humans looked at one another.

  “You good to walk?” Becky asked Hollins.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “If you need help, you can, um, lean on me,” said Nicki. “Only if you want to. You don’t have to.” But Hollins did.

  The humans followed me, treading very carefully, since their safety rope was still tied to the stalagmite above. It was slow going with Hollins’s wounded leg.

  The strange staircase wound downward through the chamber with a landing every thirty meters or so, until at last it reached a wall. In the middle of the wall there was a door. It was made of solid iridium and had an eight-pointed star inset. Beside the door was a numerical keypad.

  “An iridium door?” said Little Gus in a hushed tone. “Do you know how much that thing must be worth?” At least his sense of guilt over nearly getting everyone killed seemed to be fading fast. Little Gus’s restless mind was sometimes a gift.

  I stared at the keypad. On impulse, I punched in the same numerical combination that Kalac had used on the door of the Vault: 9-1-5-6-7-2-3-4.

  The door slid downward with a rumble. Behind it stood a Xotonian, tall and handsome. It wore a strange military uniform and a fine green cloak, clasped with an eight-pointed star.

>   “Greetings,” the Xotonian said, “I am Jalasu Jhuk.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “What’s it saying?” whispered Becky.

  “Quiet!” I snapped, startling her.

  It wasn’t every day that you got to meet the quasimythical progenitor of your entire race. I was standing in front of the Jalasu Jhuk, hero of our oldest stories, the greatest Xotonian to ever live. The situation demanded some respect.

  “I am most sorry, Great Jalasu Jhuk of the Stars,” I said in formal Xotonian. “Please forgive my barbarous alien companions. They are but ignorant space hillbillies, unfit to touch the hem of your worst cloak.”

  But Jalasu Jhuk continued to speak over me, staring out into the middle distance.

  “By now, I am gone,” it said. “I left the entrance code to this chamber with a trusted few, with the instructions to open this door only if my plan failed. If you are here, listening to this message, then that likely means Gelo has been discovered and our enemies are coming for the Q-sik.

  “If this is so, you must take it and flee to the Second Sanctum. The Q-sik is a weapon of unimaginable destruction, and not just for its intended target. Even at the lowest settings, the device can create a beam of energy powerful enough to tear a hole in the fabric of space-time. It is too dangerous to exist. Yet we cannot destroy it. Not yet, anyway.

  “So you must do everything in your power to keep it from the Vorem and all others who would use it for conquest. Even those in the League. The fate of all beings in the universe—indeed, the fate of the very universe itself—hangs in the balance. You must not fail.”

  Then Jalasu Jhuk saluted, flickered, and disappeared.

  “Jalasu Jhuk!” I cried. “Where did you go, O Great Progenitor?” Frantically, I looked around. But Jalasu Jhuk was nowhere to be found.

  “It was a hologram,” said Hollins.

  My heart sank. Hollins was right. It had just been a three-dimensional projection from a tiny glass node on the wall. It was more lifelike than even the human hologram devices. Had Xotonians once been capable of creating such things?

  “A hologram. Yes, of course,” I said quietly.