Project U.L.F.

by Stuart Clark

  “You want me to go with you?” she asked.

  “You heard me.”

  “But that’s crazy!” argued Chris. “You’re taking her and leaving me here?”

  “I told you, kid,” Wyatt’s voice was flat and firm. “We need you here. You’re the only one who can repair the ship and you have two injured people to look after. You have a responsibility to them as the medic.”

  “But…but…but she’s not even qualified as a trapper,” Chris continued.

  “And neither are you!” Wyatt snapped. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, calming, “But pointless bickering will get us nowhere.”

  The truth was that Wyatt would rather have taken Chris with him but Chris was needed here. Not just by Bobby and Par, by all of them. He had to repair the ship or none of them were going back to Earth. So it was the three of them. Kit, Kate and himself. He sighed to himself. It was not an ideal situation. He had to take Kit with him; he was the only other qualified trapper among them who was still fit and able to make the trip, and yet by taking Kit, he felt it necessary to take a third person. The only other fit member of the crew who didn’t already have her hands full was Kate.

  He didn’t like to do it. He had seen the hungry eyes that Kit had watched her with and he suspected that the big man harbored intents that weren’t entirely respectable, but while he worried for her safety, he was also concerned for his own. Kit was an unpredictable man at the best of times. The fact that he and Wyatt did not get along made the situation all the more precarious. He was bringing Kate along for his own safety. With her around Kit was less likely to make a move against him. Not only that, she would also provide him with another pair of eyes with which to look for danger, both from Kit and creatures of other kinds.

  Is that it? he asked himself. Is that the only reason I’ve asked her along? Inside he knew it wasn’t. He liked her. He enjoyed her company and he wanted her close to him.

  * * * * *

  Par was nudged awake at first light. In the gloom of the shuttle’s interior he could see Wyatt crouched over him, insistently nudging his arm.

  “We need you. The alien will only come on sight of you.”

  Par looked around him, dazed for a second, and then with a groan he lifted himself off his temporary bed and pulled his U.L.F. fatigues on over his shorts and T-shirt. Wyatt, Kate and Kit watched him in silence.

  Outside, a fine mist had crept in under cover of darkness, only now being revealed by the first of the suns’ light. The moisture hung like a veil over the forest.

  Wyatt and Kit helped Par out of the shuttle, where they joined Kate. They stood then in silence, scanning the trees for any sight of the alien as the forest came alive around them, foreign cries and calls saluting the new day. After a time, the shadowy form of Gon-Thok emerged from the drizzle, its skin shining with wetness, transparent membranes blinking across its bulbous eyes to wipe away the excess moisture. Kit reached for his gun but Wyatt motioned for him to leave it in its holster. They needed this creature as a friend, not as an enemy.

  “Gon-Thok.” The creature turned at Par’s call. “It’s me, Par.”

  “Bar,” it croaked in semi-recognition, both of the alien word and his alien friend.

  The others looked at each other in disbelief.

  “My friends here need to get to the other ship,” Par said slowly, all the time gesticulating to himself, the others and the shuttle behind him to emphasize his point.

  “This is crap! You’re telling me this thing understands you?” but before Par could answer Kit’s outburst, the alien had done it for him.

  “Chee-men-wi. Mi-greb,” it said, looking at the shuttle behind them. It almost seemed to frown.

  “Other ship,” Par said quietly under his breath. He looked behind him and realized what was causing the misunderstanding. He was essentially asking Gon-Thok to do something it had already done. Find the other ship. They’d found the shuttle. How could he now communicate that they needed to get back to the DSM?

  “Chee-men-wi,” he began again, then with his fingers, motioned walking. “Mi-greb.” He lowered his arms “Mi-greb,” he said again, straining as if he were carrying something enormous, emphasizing the enormity of the ship he was trying to describe. Still no sign that the alien understood his meaning. He stopped and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. This was getting them nowhere. “Ban-chi,” he said finally, throwing his arms wide as if flinging open a cape. Gon-Thok visibly started, its eyes widening.

  “What did you say?” Kate asked, both surprised and a little encouraged by the creature’s reaction.

  “The Ban-chi was the thing that attacked us. At least that’s Gon-Thok’s word for the creature.”

  “And how’s that gonna help us?” Kit said dejectedly, still unimpressed by it all.

  “Because…” Par turned on him, his patience waning rapidly, “I’m hoping it will associate the Ban-chi with where it found me. He turned away, muttering under his breath.

  “What did he say?” Kit demanded of Wyatt.

  “I didn’t hear.”

  “Don’t disrespect me, man,” Kit warned, “I’ll hurt you real bad if you disrespect me.”

  Wyatt figured Kit would have another and better reason to hurt Par if he knew what Par had done to him, to them all. “I have no doubt of that,” he said to Kit, “But let’s just drop it for the time being, shall we? We’ve all got more important things to focus on.”

  One of those things was the alien, watching their altercation with curiosity. When they stopped it gave a sharp jerk of its head and turned away from them, heading for the forest, stopping only to look back at them when they didn’t follow.

  “What’s it doing?” Kit demanded.

  “Does it understand? Does it want us to follow?” Wyatt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Par said, shrugging “But I think so.”

  “You think so?” Kit rounded on Par again.

  “Well I guess there’s only one way to find out,” and Wyatt stepped away from the new confrontation and towards the alien. Seemingly satisfied with this, Gon-Thok turned away and trudged back towards the trees from whence it came. Kate followed Wyatt, leaving Kit to fume in Par’s face which he did for a moment longer before turning and following.

  “It will disappear at times,” Par called after them. “Just like you need to rest, so Gon-Thok needs to revitalize. It will go to find water. It needs to keep its skin moist in the heat of the day. It is amphibian, after all.” He watched them to the tree line and then hobbled back to the shuttle where Chris helped him in.

  * * * * *

  Shortly after they set out, Wyatt sidestepped and let Kate pass him, falling back behind her. She frowned at him as she walked by, wondering what he was doing, but knew better than to question his reasoning.

  Personally, he thought his logic was obvious. He wanted Kit and Kate apart and used himself as a physical barrier. This way he could keep an eye on her and know that Kit could adequately look after himself bringing up the rear. Kate’s frown made him question his action though. Maybe he was over-reacting. Maybe Kate didn’t perceive the threat from Kit as much as he did. Maybe he was just being over-protective.

  Regardless, this was the best order for them to march. Kate, the least experienced, would do well to follow the creature. Native here, its eyes and ears would be attuned to the surroundings and if there was a threat, Wyatt had no doubt that it would identify it long before even his years of experience alerted him of the same. He must have been right, he noted, for their encounters with other creatures were few, and of these, none could be called dangerous. In their alien guide they had found an expert in the ways of the rainforest around them.

  They took lunch soon after mid-day. No one was particularly hungry—all too focused on the task they must complete for themselves and their injured friends who had stayed behind at the shuttle—but it was a convenient time to stop and eat. The alien had turned to them and motioned in Par’s sign language for them to stop, two webbed
hands thrown up in mock surrender and the best it could manage at a look of abject terror. It was comical and Wyatt nearly laughed, but they were communicating, albeit primitively, and there was something almost magical about that. The laugh never came but the smile remained on his face for a long time, long after the alien had disappeared to find the nearest water source like Par had said it would.

  Kit perched himself on a large rock. “Where the hell is this thing taking us?”

  “To the other ship,” Wyatt told him.

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “Well no, but it’s our best guess. Besides, it’s our only hope.”

  “How do we know Par can even talk to this thing? That whole circus show back there proved nothing.” Kit stopped and thought for a while. “What if he’s got ideas of his own? What if Byron wasn’t attacked at all and that was all some bullshit story to throw us off the scent?”

  “What are you suggesting?” Wyatt turned to face him squarely, his voice flat.

  “That Par did away with him, and that he’s sending us away on some wild goose chase too!”

  Knowing what he knew now about Par, Wyatt was reluctant to answer, but he didn’t need to. Kate leapt to Par’s defense. “That’s a preposterous idea!”

  “Is it? Why’s that?”

  “Well…because…” she was floundering. Faltering in her argument. So quick to challenge but not quick enough to reason. The imperfection of youth. “Because,” she said defiantly, latching on to an idea, “You saw the way the alien reacted when Par mimicked the thing that attacked them.”

  “That was natural,” Kit defied her, “He threw his arms out wide and intimidated it. Most creatures would back away from you if you did that. It looks like threat posture.”

  “Well then, if not that, then because you’re a team.”

  Kit laughed. “There’s nuthin’ ‘team’ about it, girlie-girl. The sooner you learn that the better. It’s every man for himself.”

  “That’s not true!” Wyatt stopped him.

  Regardless, there was something in the way Kit had said it, the emphasis on the words, that sent a shiver down Kate’s spine. She shot him a look of disgust and knew that he caught it before she turned away.

  They sat in silence then, until Gon-Thok returned, and now the alien’s sun-baked, clay-red skin was once again chocolate brown and the texture of clammy leather.

  They trudged on through most of the afternoon without a word said between them. Kate and Kit, it seemed, were no longer on speaking terms, and Wyatt was lost in his own thoughts, mulling over what Kit had suggested. Countless times he tried to cast the thought out of his mind, tried to tell himself that this was Par’s way of trying to right the wrong he’d done to all of them. But Par had betrayed them once already and, try as he might to convince himself otherwise, that thought played on Wyatt’s mind. Maybe Kit was right. Maybe this was all still part of an elaborate plot against him that Par had only alluded to.

  It was nearing dusk when they stopped again. The alien needed to find water again. Its usually moist leathery skin was showing the effects of the heat and the sun. Gon-Thok was the color of parchment and its skin was now cracked and flaking. In places it looked to Wyatt as though the alien were bleeding and he guessed it must be in some discomfort. Whatever toll this climate was taking on them, it was affecting the alien much worse. So when Gon-Thok turned to communicate to him that it was about to leave them briefly, he nodded instantly to show that he understood and shooed it away with his hand to go and locate the water that it so desperately needed.

  With the alien gone, the others dumped their packs with groans of gratitude and sat themselves on nearby logs and branches. After twenty minutes the alien had still not returned and Kit was growing restless, suggesting the alien might have left them there.

  “Give it a rest, Kit,” Wyatt said. “You saw the state it was in, it’s having just as hard a time of it as we are. Besides, it’s always come back before.”

  “Maybe.” Kit got up and strode away.

  “Where are you going?” Wyatt called after him.

  “Anywhere. I just can’t sit here and do nuthin’.” and with that he was gone and the rustle of bushes became quieter as he disappeared into the forest away from them. Wyatt let him go. He was not in the mood for an argument.

  When the creature had still not come back some time later, Kate stood and put her hands on her waist, pushing her hips forward and curving her back with a groan. “I’m stiff, do you mind if I go for a wander to blow away the cobwebs too?”

  Wyatt pondered the request, clearly not happy about it, but relented. “Okay, but don’t go far. When Gon-Thok returns we’ll be moving on immediately. We have to make it to the mining ship tonight.”

  She nodded her understanding.

  “And be careful. We’re by no means safe here.”

  “I will be,” she smiled. It was funny, days ago she would have resented him saying that, thinking that he thought that she was incapable of looking after herself. Now she knew better. He just cared. She looked at him for longer than the exchange warranted but he had already turned away and was oblivious to her. She looked at him in a different way now. She didn’t see his tanned skin or the creases round his mouth when he smiled or laughed. She didn’t notice the scars on his forearms or the dark patches of sweat on his fatigues. Now when she looked at him, all of his physical being seemed to dissipate into an ethereal peripheralness, and she looked at the soul directly behind the eyes. Who are you, Wyatt Dorren? she asked herself before she turned away, and she realized that she really wanted to know.

  Initially Kate had done as she had been told, not straying too far, always keeping Wyatt in sight, albeit through the trees. Now as she crouched to examine the bright yellow trumpet of a flowering plant, a reasonably large insect came humming through the air to settle on the sleeve of her jacket. She looked at it in wonder as it sat there, cleaning its mandibles with forelimbs, occasionally unrolling its proboscis only to roll it away again. It was unlike anything she had ever seen and she took a moment to examine it more closely.

  Its head seemed to swivel around a tiny neck every time one of the forelimbs swept over and cleaned one of the two round green eyes, each pin-pricked with a single black pupil. The thorax seemed non-existent, simply incorporated into an enlarged abdomen supported by four legs while the other two adapted limbs went about their task of cleaning. With both mandibles and a proboscis, she could only guess that it fed on other insects and plant matter as well as utilizing pollen for energy. It would need a good and readily available energy source since it had only a single wing with which to lift its relatively large frame. The wing, its most attractive feature, was opaque and shaped like a single teardrop, falling down from the back of the bug’s neck. It shone with a myriad of colors like mother-of-pearl, and if this alone wasn’t enough, the cytoskeletal protein that framed the wing looked like silver thread. It was beautiful and as she looked at it she couldn’t help but remember Bobby’s words to her. “The thrill of seeing something for the first time and knowing that you are the first person to ever see it.”

  Without warning, the wing spun into motion, describing a complete circle like a rotor as far as she could tell and lifting the insect, with some considerable effort, off her arm. “That can’t be,” she said to herself. She had never known a muscle or protein-engineered system that could sustain three hundred and sixty degree motion continuously in one direction. The wing must have been completing a near circle before going back the other way, but doing it at such speed that she could not perceive the change in direction. Still, it was remarkable, and with her curiosity getting the better of her, she followed it through the trees.

  When the bug landed again, it was a considerable distance from where she had first encountered it. She had followed it clumsily through the brush, wading through waist high ferns and grass and trampling the fungi and juvenile plants that thrived in the damp and detritus beneath. She had not kept an eye out f
or landmarks or significant or peculiar plants that would mark her way back, her eyes had been completely focused on the object of her attention. Thus, after an all-too-brief rendezvous with the insect, it took to the wing again and Kate realized as she contemplated a second pursuit, that she had strayed further than she ought to and was now completely lost.

  “Wyatt,” she called, but her voice sounded pitiful in the expanse and died quickly. She brought a hand up to her face, fingering her bottom lip uneasily while she wondered what she might do. Suddenly something came round the side of her head, clamped over her mouth and pulled her backwards through the trees. She tumbled over and fell onto whatever was behind her. She heard it grunt and it released its grip on her. She picked herself up quickly and turned to find Kit. She frowned. “Kit, what are you doing?” Then she caught the look in his eye. “No.” She shook her head. “Please, no.”

  She turned to run but he pounced on her and tackled her to the ground. He grabbed her by her hair and forced her face into the leaves and the dirt. She twisted her head to the side and tried to grab a breath of air.

  “Not a sound!” he ordered her with a hiss.

  “Please,” she whispered, “Don’t hurt me.”

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said wickedly, bringing his head down close to hers but all the time holding her hair so she could not pull away.

  “What…Uh…What are you going to do?” she struggled through the pain.

  He pulled her up until she was on her knees, then, putting one hand on her shoulder, his fingers inside the collar, he came up close behind her. “No, I’m not gonna hurt you,” he whispered again into her ear. “I’m gonna make a woman of you!”

  Quickly, his other hand grabbed the other side of her collar and pulled them down and apart. The first few buttons popped off her shirt and her T-shirt ripped to her mid-riff. Kit pulled them halfway down, exposing her breasts and locking her arms behind her at the same time. With her effectively immobilized, he let her go. With nothing to break her fall she fell heavily to the ground.