This was apparently the end of her story. None of the other humans seemed impressed.
“Nobody has land lines anymore,” said Hollins.
“A few people still do,” said Becky. “Anyway, this story happened a long time ago. When everyone had a land line.”
“If you call your own phone number, don’t you just get a busy signal?” asked Nicki.
“Not back then,” said Becky.
“What happened after the phone-company guy traced the call?” asked Little Gus.
“Uh, the girl got out of the house just in the nick of time,” said Becky. “That’s what I heard.”
“So no harm done,” said Little Gus.
“No, the whole thing scared her very badly,” said Becky. “Imagine getting a bunch of really spooky, threatening calls. In fact, those calls scared her so badly that—that she died.”
“How does that work?” asked Hollins.
“Heart attack.”
“You’re telling us that a healthy teenage girl died of a heart attack?” asked Nicki. She sounded highly skeptical.
“Yeah. I mean, maybe she had, like, a condition before that . . .” Becky trailed off.
“And why did the mysterious caller do all this?” I asked.
“Oh, come on. Not you too, Chorkle,” she said, sighing. “Look, I don’t know. Maybe the dude was just crazy. I’m tired of answering questions. Someone else can tell a story, and I’ll fact-check it.” Becky scowled and crossed her arms.
We had all just eaten a meal of fried r’yaris—all five that Becky had caught earlier. After a brief, informal ceremony in which Becky was declared to be the winner of the contest with Hollins, Little Gus tossed them into the pan with a sizzle.
His culinary skills were evidently improving. He did a surprisingly good job of cooking them. He’d used salt, pepper, and just a hint of “synthetic lemon juice–like substitute.” Everyone enjoyed the meal, even as they tried to forget that they were stuffing themselves with “brains that can swim.”
“From now on, can we just refer to these things as ‘tilapia’?” Hollins had asked as he chewed (apparently this was an aquatic species on Earth). All the humans agreed that a little wishful thinking would improve the experience.
Now we sat by the campfire in the philiddra forest, four human stomachs and one Xotonian z’iuk full of food. Pizza was snoring peacefully on Little Gus’s chest. Even the thyss-cub had eaten its fill.
Apparently, proximity to an open fire will inspire a group of young humans to start telling what they call “ghost stories.” Generally, these are implausible legends hinging on some morbid surprise or twist ending. Often, like the story of the mysterious caller, they involve no ghosts at all. And each of them seemed to know a few.
“Have you guys heard the story of the haunted mini-fridge?” asked Little Gus.
“Ugh,” groaned Hollins. “Everyone’s heard that story. And everyone knows it didn’t happen.”
“Did too!” said Little Gus. “My uncle’s tax lawyer knew a guy who once saw the mini-fridge. And, friends, I don’t want to scare you, but . . . it was still covered in green ectoplasm!”
“That was probably just rotten hummus,” said Nicki. “And I’m sure the so-called groaning noises were caused by the buildup of gases inside airtight food containers.”
“No way! They were the restless souls of all the victims the mini-fridge had claimed!” protested Little Gus.
“And you people thought my story was dumb,” said Becky.
“Jeez, okay. I guess nobody wants to hear about the haunted mini-fridge,” said Little Gus. “Every time you put yourself out there, it’s a risk, Pizza,” he said to the thyss-cub, who—as far as I could tell—was still asleep.
“There is one story I would like to hear,” I said.
“What story is that?” asked Hollins.
“I would like to know how four young humans came to live on an asteroid far from their own blue-and-green world.”
“Booo-ring,” said Little Gus in a singsong tone.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s boring,” said Hollins, scratching his chin. “Its not very scary, though. At least not until we were confronted by a strange alien being and we nearly suffocated to death. Meaning the parts you already know, Chorkle. Still want to hear it?”
“Totes,” I said, trying out a little human slang.
“Well, I guess our story starts back on Earth, with something we call a ‘multinational mining company.’ Specifically, the Nolan-Amaral Corporation. See, for a long time, we’ve known that asteroids contain certain elements that are especially rare on our own planet.”
“Like iridium,” I said.
“Yup. Platinum too. And because of their rarity, these metals are very valuable to us. Extracting them from the crust of the Earth is Nolan-Amaral’s whole business, worth billions of dollars a year. But not too long ago, the company decided it would be feasible—and profitable—to launch a manned mining mission to space.
“So they spent a few years building a spaceship and scoping out asteroids to mine. Eventually, they found one that seemed to fit the bill. A C-type asteroid with the exciting name of 48172-Rybar.”
“Gelo,” I said.
Hollins nodded.
“Why is this asteroid perfect?” I asked.
Here Nicki cut in. “Well, first off, 48172—er, Gelo, has ample iridium and platinum. That’s the most important thing to a mining company. Gelo is big for an asteroid, over eight hundred kilometers in diameter. Big enough that you could call it a planetoid, even. And it has a super-dense core that gives it a similar gravity to Earth’s. That means that a lot of Nolan-Amaral’s existing mining equipment would need only minor modifications to work here.”
“Anyway, the company pulled together a crew of experts,” said Hollins. “They recruited my mom to be the commander of the whole mission. She’s an astronaut. And they got my dad involved too, because he’s an aeronautics engineer.”
“Both of our parents are geologists,” said Becky.
“And my pop does something with computers, I think,” said Little Gus.
“His father is one of the foremost computer scientists on our whole planet,” sighed Nicki. “He developed the Zaleski Theory of Artificial Intelligence.”
“Zaleski? Hey, that’s my last name. Cool,” said Little Gus, thoroughly distracted by playing with the newly awakened Pizza.
“And are all of you also experts in some field?” I asked. The humans all looked at one another.
“Well, I hope to be a scientist one day,” said Nicki. “Either biology or computer science, like Gus’s dad. But I’ve got to finish middle school first. . . .”
“Becky won the World Arguing Championship three years running,” said Hollins.
“Ha ha,” said Becky. “No, we’re not highly qualified like our parents. Not yet, anyway. We’re just kids. The fact is, we’re mostly here as a publicity stunt.”
“Hey, c’mon,” said Hollins. “That’s not fair.”
“Oh, you know it’s true, Hollins,” said Becky. “You see, Chorkle, Nolan-Amaral doesn’t exactly have the best reputation back on Earth. The company is as famous for cutting down rain forests and propping up Third World dictators as it is for mining. So when they decided to undertake the mission, they thought up an angle that they could really sell to the public: kids in space.”
“A less cynical interpretation would be that Nolan-Amaral didn’t want to separate a bunch of parents from their children for a whole year,” said Hollins.
“So you didn’t have a choice?” I asked.
“I think we had a choice,” said Hollins. “I wanted to come.”
“Me too,” said Nicki. “I figured there would be a lot to learn up here. And I wasn’t wrong.” She held up a plastic zip bag containing a withered fungal sample.
&nb
sp; “I could’ve stayed with my uncle in New Mexico,” said Little Gus, “but his whole house smells weird. Kinda like cabbage. So I came to space instead.”
“I just thought it meant we would get to skip a year of school,” said Becky. “Little did I know that these sadists would prerecord fifteen hundred hours of the seventh grade and force me to watch every single day. And that’s on top of all the astronaut training we had to do.”
“I barfed in the centrifuge,” said Little Gus.
“The training wasn’t half as bad as going on all those talk shows,” shuddered Nicki.
“I barfed on the set of Good Morning, Ottawa,” said Little Gus.
“What’s a talk show?” I asked.
“Well,” said Hollins, “it’s this thing where two people—a host and a guest—talk to each other. And this happens in front of a lot of other people who don’t talk. But sometimes these other people clap . . . Wow, when you think about talk shows, they’re really weird.”
“The talk show circuit was simply exhausting,” said Becky.
Nicki snorted loudly with laughter. “Oh please, sis,” she said. “You couldn’t get enough media attention! You even framed the cover of that awful tabloid because they said the dress you wore to the Kids Boom! Awards was a ‘fashion yes.’”
“Well, I’m not the one who tried to date celebrities,” said Becky, grinning.
“That wasn’t a date!” said Nicki sharply.
“It wasn’t a date,” said Hollins.
“Young Hollins here was seen by paparazzi getting ice cream with teen pop sensation Eryss,” said Becky. I didn’t know what “paparazzi” or a “teen pop sensation” were, but before I could ask, Hollins had to respond to the allegations.
“It was just some dumb thing her publicist set up with Nolan-Amaral,” he said sheepishly. “She contacted me through Joynyt.com—sorry, Chorkle, that’s a social networking site on Earth.”
“What is a social networking site?” I asked.
“It’s a virtual space where people post messages about themselves—and their cats—to other people,” said Nicki. I nodded. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Anyway,” said Hollins, “yes, I got an ice cream with Eryss. No, it wasn’t a date. She wasn’t even nice.”
“Was it a Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream?” I asked.
“Wow, you really know how to cut to the heart of a story,” said Little Gus.
“Chorkle, I think you’ve got astronaut ice cream on the brain,” said Hollins. “I’m worried about you. I think you’re addicted.”
“Yeah,” said Becky. “This is an intervention. We’re cutting you off.”
“Sorry, I already ate them all,” I said. I was lying. I was still hoarding a box and a half. But I certainly did intend to eat them all.
“Anyway, that’s the story of how we came to be here with our parents,” said Nicki. “In retrospect, it kind of seems like a really terrible idea.”
“Yeah,” said Becky. “Kids in space isn’t such good publicity if the kids get marooned on an asteroid and die.”
“Hey!” said Hollins. “Our parents are coming back. Nobody’s going to die.”
His last word hung in the air. The group fell quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
Even if these young humans eventually made it back to their parents, would they be able to explain that Xotonians weren’t hostile? Would the humans even care? In fact, we’d already attacked their colony indirectly. And they were coming back with soldiers. If our two species did fight a war, then surely some people—human and Xotonian—would die.
Hollins sensed that the mood of the group had changed. As usual, he took it upon himself to try to boost everyone’s morale.
“Hey, Gus,” he said, “how about you tell us the story of that haunted freezer?”
“Haunted mini-fridge,” Little Gus corrected him. “Well, it all started with a strange scratching noise coming from the vegetable crisper—”
“Wait,” said Becky, “did anyone else just hear something?”
“C’mon. Stop trying to scare everyone,” said Nicki.
“No, really! Be quiet. Listen.”
We were silent. Each pop and crackle of the fire was now amplified to the volume of a footfall. And the strange shadows of the gnarled philiddra forest seemed to push in against the light. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Xotonian skull I’d found buried in the dirt before.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Hollins at last.
“Yeah,” said Becky, “I guess I was just imagining—”
Crunch. We all heard it this time. The sound of something—or someone—away in the distance, moving through the forest. Another crunch. We stared at one another. Whatever it was, it was coming toward us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I checked the color of my skin. Its shade was unchanged. At least it wasn’t yet another thyss-cat.
“Everybody down. Put out that fire,” said Hollins quietly. All four of the humans dropped to the ground. Becky threw a cup of water on the fire, and it died with a hiss. Now the embers were just a bloody red glow.
“You see anything, Chorkle?” whispered Hollins.
With the fire out, my eyes could pierce further into the darkness. I saw something creeping through the mist, moving between the trunks of two philiddra. Then I saw another. And another. Several figures were converging on our campsite.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Four or five. They’re coming for us.”
“Four or five? Four or five what?” whispered Little Gus. “I thought you said nobody lives here!”
“Nobody does,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure anymore. I could see the shape of the figures more clearly now. The silhouettes were Xotonian.
We were camping in the overgrown ruins of what had once been a second Xotonian city. Did some lost remnant of those ancient Xotonians still inhabit this wilderness? Had we trespassed in their caverns and angered a wild, long-forgotten clan of my species?
Worse yet, maybe there weren’t any Xotonians still living here. Maybe these moving shadows were the spirits of the restless dead, stuck on this side of the Nebula Beyond, angry that we had disturbed the silence of their forgotten funeral city. Maybe, as Little Gus worried, there were indeed ghosts in this place.
“I think,” I said quietly, “we need to run.”
The young humans leaped to their feet, and together we raced through the forest, headed in the opposite direction of the approaching Xotonians. Their flashlights swung in the darkness as they ran.
Even with his hurt leg, Hollins took the lead. But it was hard for the humans to see where they were going. The terrain was slick and uneven, and the branches of the philiddra whipped at their arms and faces.
I could hear our pursuers close behind us now. As I said before, Xotonians are thoroughly suited to moving through the shadowy caverns we inhabit. It was no surprise that they were gaining on us.
From the corner of my fourth eye, I saw Nicki fall. She was tangled up in something. A net?
“Go on!” she screamed.
At this, Hollins turned his head back to look for her. Right then, a Xotonian jumped out from behind a philiddra trunk in front of him.
“Ver’sald!” it cried, the Xotonian word for “stop.”
Hollins didn’t understand, and he wouldn’t have obeyed if he had. Instead he whipped up his flashlight, shining its beam right into the Xotonian’s face. It screamed and cringed at the pain of such bright light in its eyes. In that instant, Hollins dove at it, knocking it right off its fel’grazes. The two of them struggled in the mud, turning over and over.
Nearby, Becky had been cornered by another Xotonian, her back against a boulder. I could see a blaster clutched in its thol’graz.
“What do we do?” asked Little Gus. He was beside me, clutching P
izza, who yowled pitifully the whole time.
“Up here,” I said, and I grabbed him by the arm. Then I began to climb the trunk of a huge, ancient philiddra, carrying him up with me.
I looked back toward Becky as I climbed. She was holding both her hands up in surrender now. The Xotonian had its blaster trained on her. Then, all of a sudden, she lunged and punched it hard, right in the z’iuk. The blaster fell from its grasp. Somehow Becky managed to kick it away.
“Oh crap,” said Little Gus. “They saw us!”
Down below us another Xotonian had started to climb the trunk of our philiddra. Little Gus wasn’t big as far as humans go, but he was about the same size as me. Carrying his added weight made it twice as difficult to pull myself up through the branches, and I soon felt a burning pain in my muscles.
Near the top, I yanked Little Gus with me out onto a thick branch. Our Xotonian pursuer climbed quickly. It too was holding a blaster.
Gus and I backed away from the trunk. The further out we got on the branch, the thinner it became. Now it swayed dangerously with every movement, and Little Gus was having trouble keeping his balance. There was nowhere to go now but down, I realized.
Below, I saw Becky. She lay on the cavern floor, tangled in a net. Two Xotonians stood over her.
But then there was Hollins running toward them. He was holding something in his hands and pointing it at them. A blaster! He must have somehow grabbed the one that Becky had kicked away! One of the Xotonians pointed its own blaster right back at him—a standoff.
Meanwhile, our Xotonian was stepping out onto our branch now. The added weight shook it violently.
“No!” cried Little Gus. And he slipped from the branch and fell. My thol’graz darted out, and I managed to catch hold of him. But his weight swung me around to the bottom of the branch. Now I was hanging on to the branch for my life. Little Gus was clinging to me and holding Pizza in his other hand.
The Xotonian crept closer. There was something familiar about this one.
Space Rocks! Page 12