Terra

by Robert Turnbull

Now only scattered trees that looked like the African grasslands they had seen in the old records stood between them and the rolling hills where the wheel laid in ruins still nearly a half mile away. Dar stepped out into the waist high grass to scout and have a quick look around now that they were so close to this sad, yet exciting find.

  He barely moved ten feet when six men stood and aimed their guns at him. A loud click caused him to turn his head to see a seventh man standing there with the barrel of his rifle within inches of his forehead. The man with the rifle snarled as he nodded to his men and their guns.

  “Partner, I have seven reasons for you to fear me…one of them this rifle.”

  “Jesus, maybe he don’t speak English Luke.” the other said.

  “He speaks rifle, Clark.” The dark haired, thirty year old grinned as his dark eyes flashed a wink to his crew. “Now, as I was saying, perhaps if you do understand a slow easy nod to let us know you understand us would be in order.”

  “I understand.” Dar muttered softly, but obviously frustrated that he’d fallen into a trap so easily.

  “Good! Then you will understand to fear us.” There was a click behind Luke’s left ear as Sky’s pistol pressed against his head.

  In a voice loud enough for all to hear she replied boisterously “I have two reasons for you to fear me, so lower your weapons.”

  Luke slowly turned to look at the stunning woman that held his life in her hands.

  “Easy there little lady, you’ve only two guns, I’ve got seven. So I’d say my seven reasons are better than your two.”

  Sky gave him a laugh and leaned toward his ear, yet kept her voice loud enough for all.

  “Oh, these guns aren’t the two I was referring to.” With that she put two fingers to her lips and blew. A loud shrill whistle reverberated through the plains and then with a sudden burst of green, Dash and Lady shoved their massive bodies through the trees and stopped as Sky walked out between them and the group of new comers so they could see her. She gave them the hand signal to guard and turned to face the trembling men.

  “These are our babies and if you harm us, I really think they’d object. So I would suggest that your weapons are lowered slowly and that you all smile at us because nothing that you have will stop, nor hurt our kids.”

  Sky hadn’t even finished before the guns were shouldered and holstered, and as her words floated on the breeze, out came huge nervous smiles. Nodding and bigger exaggerated smiles broke out as the seven slowly backed away…until Sky stopped them.

  “Whoa! You mean to tell me that all of you were ready to chat as long as you had the odds? And now that we hold all the cards…”

  “What’s ‘cards’ Miss?” the redheaded Clark asked. The lad couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but Sky figured could be younger.

  “Tell ya later Clark.” Luke muttered all the time keeping an eye on the ‘kids’ “I’m guessing that if you wanted us dead, you’d set them on us already.” he forced his grin even wider as sweat broke out on his brow in the typical hot, humid tropical day. He wiped his forehead and then his hand on his worn shirt that appeared to be woven out of some fibrous plant material. Slowly as he kept glancing at the huge rexes, he slowly extended his hand. Lady took a huge step forward before Sky waved her back.

  “Jesus, Miss, you really do control them don’t you? Sorry, I’m Luke and my brother here is Clark, I’ll introduce the rest later.” he pointed to his men that had been slowly retreating.

  Sky shook his hand and smiled “Raised them from babies. Now I’m going to send them off to hunt, but I should warn you that they will come hunting for us and if anything has…”

  Clark stepped forward and as sweat dripped from his chin he grinned and spoke loudly “Ooohhh, no…nothing will happen to your momma and daddy.

  Dar began to chuckle and Sky motioned a quick series of signals to which the rexes stepped forward and leaned down to carefully look at her. She reached up and patted Lady’s jaw and smiled.

  “We’ll be fine girl, come back and find us when you and Dash have eaten.” Lady stood erect and looked at Dash. A few low grumbling grunts and they were off as the ground beneath their feet shook and slowly lessened as the rexes slowly became smaller in the distance and there were loud bursts of sighs from the men that had been holding their breaths.

  “Looks like they spotted lunch.” Sky smiled “They’ll return to make sure we’re ok when they are done.”

  Luke smiled and nodded toward the shattered wheel “Such as it is, that’s home…” he turned and started to walk “Come on, I’ll introduce you two to the rest.”

  Dar looked at the overgrown wreck “You…live there? What about protection? What about…” Sky gently laid her hand on his arm.

  “Easy Dar, there’ll be time for questions later…when the kids bring us some dinner, we all can eat and chat.”

  Clark sputtered “those things feed you?”

  Dar laughed “Better than feeding on us.” Everyone got a chuckle from that, but Sky noticed that Luke’s men still kept a wary eye in the direction the ‘kids’ had gone.

  Now it was just a matter of finding out what the hell was going on…and just how long they had been there. Sky prayed that she had not misjudged these new people that were leading them to…what?

  Chapter 8.

  They were led through a gap in the aged and dingy hull that had been covered in flowery vines and into a large split in the once gleaming outer hull. This wheel was so unlike the bright clean hull of their own Wheel 7. Luke turned as they passed through the last section of hull and into the open center of the massive wheel…and back into the sunlight. He smiled “Welcome to Wheel 3!”

  Like their own inner wheel, there were large crops, but they were scattered among the rocky ground and as they neared people dressed mostly like Luke, stopped and walked toward the strangely dressed new comers.

  There were the introductions to most of the important people, but Sky was disappointed to hear that there were only a little less than one thousand. Upon the main command module where all the major power and electronics were housed Sky, Dar, Luke, and Clark crawled out of a top hatch that was actually on the side of the command module, to look over the massive wheel.

  Their Wheel 7 had landed intact and settled in a grassy plain far to the north and east of where they stood now. She had read that they, the wheels, were all one mile in diameter. Each had five spokes that ran to the command module that was in the center. The wheels themselves were two to three stories high using the second story for maintenance and storage, while the top and bottom were used for living area, growing, and other necessities on some wheels.

  During the space voyage everyone had been put in stasis save a few crew. That was the extent of Sky’s knowledge as a meteor storm had crippled their command module before landing. That was where most of the data banks were stored. Her wheel had Earth’s past, but not a lot about their voyage and even less about the disaster that had struck them.

  Now lying in scattered ruins was the remainder of the Wheel 3, one of many that had been lost. One of the ones that Sky and Dar had been sent out to find, without knowing that it actually existed. In her mind Sky knew that at least some of the rumors had been true.

  They looked over the vast inner circle of the broken wheel and scattered rocky rises that some parts sat on. Luke shook his head slowly as he looked at the two pilots.

  “We don’t know a lot about the reasons, but what we, our ancestors, could salvage off the data banks was; there was a meteor storm that punched holes in our wheel…killed hundreds. We had to separate from the other wheels and attempt a landing. Some of the wheels started coming apart as we neared the planet’s atmosphere, and ours finally broke apart as we landed because we came in at an angle instead of straight down, hundreds more died upon impact and the ensuing months. Oh, many managed to survive and dinosaurs that picked off many more that first year. Finally our ancestors cut wood, built barricades, and winches to drag large section
s of the spokes over to where the wheel had broken to form large gaps.”

  “So that’s why the area inside the wheel looks larger than ours.” Dar muttered without thinking “Gave you a much larger area to farm even with all the rock outcroppings.” He stopped “Oh, sorry…didn’t mean to imply the crash was lucky or…”

  Clark smiled softly; the ginger haired lad was much wiser than his sixteen years of life.

  “We know, Dar, we didn’t take offense. As you see we allowed some trees to grow unimpeded to provide some shade for areas where we needed shade, and fliers didn’t seem to care much for flying a zig-zag route between them. We used the seed bank to grow some fruit trees and all the flat areas are gardens. Of course without the Parker generator running a charge through the hull, our ship has fallen into disrepair and started to disintegrate and rust.”

  Luke nodded “On the other hand, our Trollium power core is still functioning because we use so little power, its lasted this long. Oh we have lights and air conditioning…heat when we need it…”

  “And all our filters, waste disposal, and other utilities work great…where we could restore them that is.” Clark added that he was happy to have someone new to talk to.

  Luke tugged at his patched clothes “Of course clothes and other things we get from our surroundings…our forefathers vowed that we’d never do to this planet, that our forefathers had done to Earth.”

  Sky smiled and nodded “It is the same with us.”

  Dar grinned “Sky’s daddy is our leader and commander.”

  Both the men looked back to Sky as she waved Dar off “He was elected, not that I come down the line from the first commander.” She looked as if she was trying to recall her teachings “From what my father said, our wheel commander was killed trying to save some of the data banks that were destroyed. The mission commander was, uh…Gilbert walls…”

  “Wells, Sky, Gilbert Wells.” Dar corrected.

  Sky nodded in agreement “Yes, Wells. He was in our wheel to temporally take command as most of the bridge command had been killed by a second and third strike. Commander Wells’s wife Sue, was in the main command ship that was attached to the front of the wheels and somehow managed to steer us out of the debris field or whatever it was, but by then irreparable damage had already been done to many of the wheels. The wheels had been connected end to end at the center control cores and the debris field hit us broadside. Some of the wheels had to detach. We also know that due to this emergency we had to land early and our wheel pilot brought us down where it sits today. Our problem is that our ship never had the Trollium power core, ours was added too late and had to settle for what could be supplied, so we pretty much run off of wind, solar, and some water generated power.”

  Dar looked puzzled about something and Luke asked him about what. Dar thought for a few seconds and then just spit it out.

  “Ok, why let this ship fall into such disrepair? Sure we have our ship protected by constant current flowing through the hull to keep it clean and rust free, but you have enough people and…”

  Clark looked like he was about to take offense, but Luke just smiled “The vines and foliage that grows all about us and on our wheel, keeps the raptors out. Our forefathers found that while hunting and being chased by raptors, they ran into a group of trees that were covered in these vines. The beasts refused to enter the area where those vines grew which saved their lives. Of course that brought out the curiosity and tests were performed. Turns out living vines and a few of…” he pointed toward plants with huge purple and red flowers “those, both drive off predators. Unfortunately the omnivores love them, so we have to keep a watch to make sure we scare them away if they get too close. Over the decades, those most natural to this area have learned to stay away. It’s the nomadic ones we have to worry about.”

  Dar looked at Sky with a worried look “The kids? Will it keep them away too?”

  Sky looked a touch worried herself “If it does, where will they stay? I don’t like the idea of leaving them…”

  She never got a chance to finish her thought as alarms and shouts from the north wall sounded and they all ran toward the commotion. If the kids were on their way to find mommy and daddy they had to stop them before they got shot…they were still babies and had not developed the adult skin that was nearly indestructible. Worse yet, they may attack these people if they didn’t see Sky and Dar.

  The people of Wheel 3 had built wooden platforms all along the tops of the various pieces of their broken wheel and even spanned the gaps. Scattered about the top were tall lookout posts to shelter the lookouts with a large one toward the way they had entered, and to this one the four ran. Sky saw the kids headed toward the wheel and yelled at the top of her lungs not to shoot. Luke followed with the order to lay down their weapons and not to shoot, and to trust him. Reluctantly they followed his orders, but either stepped back toward the inside of the wheels outer ring, or simply went inside.

  Sky put her fingers to her lips and blew a whistle so loud that everyone still around looked at her…and then back at the huge creatures that were running at an angle to where she and Dar stood. As everyone ducked low and kept one eye on the new comers, the other on the fast approaching rexes. Sky and Dar began giving arm signals. This time they waved full arm signals and the creatures slowed and walked over to the side of the wheel. At thirty feet or so high, they didn’t quite reach the top of the wheel, so the pilots climbed down to pat their friends and to reassure them they were ok.

  Lady sniffed the vines and snorted her disapproval, while Dash looked like he tried to spit on the vines and flowers. Lady snorted and grunted to her sibling and he snorted back loudly as Sky laughed.

  “Ok what was that all about?” Clark muttered.

  “Dunno,” Dar chuckled “but Dash doesn’t like what she said.”

  “Sooo, you’re telling me not only you talk to them, they talk to each other?” Luke asked from above the two climbing on the vines. He scratched his head in disbelief, but he was seeing it with his own eyes.

  “They do,” Sky replied as she climbed back up to the perch, pulled the thirty year old Luke next to her and put her arm around him. She stroked his cheek and smiled as she nestled her head against his neck.

  “Ah, ok…don’t get me wrong Sky, but you’re a bit young for me.” he chuckled nervously as she continued her puzzling behavior.

  “Easy there good-looking, I’m not coming on to you, just letting the kids know that you’re friends.” She stopped and walked over to Clark.

  Clark was young, but the idea if this beautiful woman rubbing all over him, he knew that his body would betray him.

  “Ahhh, uh…let Dar do it.” he muttered.

  “I should tell you that I prefer males to females lad.” he chuckled as Sky softly laughed at his confusion.

  “Huh?” Luke leaned in and whispered to him, his eyes widened and Clark blurted out “Oh, like Peter and Rollo?” Luke nodded “And James and…wait!”

  “You call me lad?” Clark laughed at Dar “You’re not that much older.”

  Dar chuckled “Point taken Clark, but once you’ve been out there for a while, somehow a being tends to feel much older.” And that brought out smiles on everyone…they could only guess…and not that they hadn’t faced their own problems since birth.

  Sky smiled as he looked at one and then the other…and Clark walked over to Dar and laid his head on his chest.

  “I’d rather give him a hard on, than have you give me one…” his face turned beet red and he stammered “Oh shit! I mean, no…I…”

  Dar pulled Clark to him and stroked his hair “Relax lad, you’re not my type…and start smiling so the kids can see ya.” Sky went back to stroking Luke’s hair.

  It was done and the pilots released the two as they looked down at the rexes looking up as they strained to see what was going on with these strange humans. Both were giving the low rumbles that Dar called purring and knew if their friends accepted these strangers, then th
ey would too.

  It was then Lady took a bite out of one of the massive vines that netted the wheel. She chewed it, made horrible faces that humans would have thought impossible and swallowed. After a few minutes she repeated it. Lady gagged several times, took a break and walked back over to the side of the wheel…and sniffed.

  She turned to look at Dash, who had stepped away from the wheel, and they began to converse.

  Sky laughed “whatever the hell she is saying, Dash doesn’t like it.”

  Lady took her head and nudged him toward the side of the wheel, and Dash resisted. Finally Lady did a 180 and smacked Dash with her tail and bellowed so loudly that the insides of the humans shook…she was pissed! But as usual the smaller Lady insisted and he gave in.

  Dash walked over and took a small bite of vine, chewed and swallowed. Lady roared again and Sky could swear that Dash gave a huge sigh and took a much larger bite and looked as if he wanted to spit it out…Lady roared again and he swallowed.

  Sky roared with laughter “See!” she chuckled “We gals always get our way.”

  Dash pretty much followed the same steps as Lady had done and even managed to hold it down when he gagged. During the process he had wandered a good fifty yards away, he now slowly wandered back and sniffed at the vines, and then some of the flowering plants that grew on the side of the wheel. He sniffed again and looked at Lady, then to the humans…and leaned against the wheel and purred.

  “What the hell?” Clark muttered.

  Sky stood there shaking her head “I think they just made themselves immune to those flowers…sorry, about the vines guys.”

  “Can they do that?” Luke asked “I mean how on Terra do they…”

  Clark looked a bit paler as he stammered “Gods, I sure hope they don’t teach that trick to the other rexes.” While Dar assured him that their rexes did not take up with other rexes very well.

  Sky just shook her head “We didn’t teach them that, must be imbedded within their genes.” She looked over to Luke, “Can we bring them inside tonight?”