by Jack Castle
So angels exist, too. Why not? Harry had seen little gray men inside a giant spaceship, crash-landed on an alien planet, and had his hand cut off by a giant samurai-like mountain gorilla. Why couldn’t this vision before him be an angel?
While the second giant samurai held Harry firmly from behind, she grabbed him by the chin. Instinctively, Harry yanked his face from her grasp, and another samurai quickly removed his sword as well.
“Ey’och!” the wispy angel cried again. She glanced angrily at the samurai with a sidelong glance, and he sheathed his blade.
Her curious eyes focused on Harry once more. With her hand under his chin, she turned his head back and forth, examining him as a rancher might inspect a horse at market. Her own head turned side-to-side as she did so, like that of an inquisitive bird.
Harry felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. He’d lost too much blood. The furry giant released him, and he fell onto the soft tundra.
Captain Reed knew he was going to die whether the giant samurai finished him or not. Giving in to pain and shock, he closed his eyes and waited for heaven. After seeing the angel, he figured he was halfway there.
Chapter 8
Crash-land
When Commander MacKenzie O’Bryant awakened, she lay on her back with a bandage wound tightly around her head. Still groggy, she found herself looking up at three moons in a green-tinted sky. The air was so clear and pure that it seemed possible to see every contour of the moons surfaces, that is, until the underbelly of an enormous island glided in the way and obstructed her view, just like a cloud might drift lazily across the sky back home.
She heard water lapping against something solid and felt ocean spray on her sun-baked face. Where did we land? she wondered, feeling alarmed. Sitting up, she discovered that she was lying on the underbelly of the Explorer II, which floated upside down on a multi-tinted ocean.
After sitting up too quickly, she realized that her head throbbed. She felt that her head was bandaged, but when she raised her fingers to examine her wounds, Leo stopped her.
“Don’t touch it!” he said. His smiling face appeared before her, blocking out the sunlight. “You’ve got a concussion, but I’m glad to see that you’re awake.” The young lieutenant turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Brett! Mac’s awake.”
Mac turned and saw Brett and Stein standing on one of the Explorer’s partially submerged wings. Each held a piece of tubing and stared intently at the water. Brett handed Stein his tubing and tapped him on the back before making his way over to Mac and Leo.
Leo followed her gaze. “If it weren’t for the commandos, we probably wouldn’t have gotten out before the cockpit flooded.” He added somberly, “I know I wouldn’t have.”
“What happened?”
“Well, that depends. How much do you remember?” Leo tried to regain his cheerful tone.
“You mean after we broke orbit?” she asked. When Leo nodded, she replied, “Not much. Bright light. My daughter.” She shrugged her shoulders. “That’s about it.”
“Well, that’s not what happened!” Leo said. “In case you haven’t guessed, we were sucked back through the wormhole and spit out above this alien planet. Without main power, we couldn’t sustain orbit for long and dropped right through the atmosphere. When we first cleared the lower atmosphere, we couldn’t get a proper altitude reading; the computer couldn’t figure out where ground zero was. That’s when we first discovered these floating islands, and we navigated right through ’em.” Leo pointed skyward. “We set her down on one of those islands up there but ran out of land and teetered off. The ocean was about ten thousand feet below us. If Tae hadn’t gotten the antigravity generators back online, we would’ve pancaked on the ocean for sure.”
Mac looked up once more at the floating continents and then back at her co-pilot.
“I tried to set it down for a nice easy belly landing on the water, but we hit a freak wave that flipped the Explorer right over on its back.”
Mac ran the events through her mind as Leo told her about them. It couldn’t have been easy for the junior pilot. “Sounds like you did one heck of a piece of flying up there, Lieutenant. Good job.” She saw the young man’s chest swell with pride.
“Thanks, Commander. Feel free to tell Emma about it when we get back home.” Leo grinned. With genuine concern in his voice, he added, “Hey, I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Brett came over with his medical kit and knelt down next to Mac. He pointed a pen light in each of her eyes and asked, “How ya feelin’, Mac?”
“Right as rain, considering.” She left out the part about her head feeling like it was about to combust spontaneously.
“Well, your eyes look good, and the bleeding’s stopped. I can give you some aspirin for the pain.”
“Who said I was in pain … uh … ouch.” A wave of lightning zipped through her brain, cutting her off and causing her to grimace. Frowning, Brett tapped out two shiny pills from a small plastic bottle and offered them to her. Leo passed her a bottle of water to wash them down.
As she downed the pills, Mac attempted to gather her thoughts. Think, Mac, think. Ship and crew. Although it seemed callous, Mac knew that the ship came first; without the ship, the crew wouldn’t last long. The Explorer II shifted slightly beneath them — not much, but enough to send the water bottle skidding across its surface.
Mac took in her surroundings. The Explorer II floated upside down. Fortunately, NASA had designed the shuttle with built-in floatation devices that deployed in the event of a water landing. As long as the bulkheads were sealed and the main cargo bay doors were closed, the shuttle could probably float indefinitely. Mac doubted that NASA’s engineers had ever imagined the crew would actually use the floatation system on an ocean on another planet, or, for that matter, in another universe.
“How’s the,” she began, but her throat was dry and sore, and her voice cracked. Leo offered her more water, and she carefully sipped it. “How’s the crew?” she finally managed.
“Tae broke his forearm. Brett set it, and it hasn’t kept Tae from working. Stein, Brett and I got off with minor cuts and bruises.”
“Where’s Don — uh, General Zimmerman?” she asked.
Leo’s hesitation fueled her annoyance. She knew Leo was only trying to give her the bad news in doses, but his plan was backfiring. “Leo, focus. Where’s the general?”
Brett answered for him in a somber voice. “General Zimmerman got pretty banged up in the crash. I think his back might be broken. I’m keeping him sedated and stationary; we’ve got him secured to a door panel. As for the rest of us, only minor cuts, bumps, and bruises.”
Mac could tell by his answer that he might have been closer to the general than one would first assume, perhaps some sort of father figure? Mac felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the man.
She tried to stand up, but the pain in her head told her to lie back down.
“Maybe you should take it easy for a while,” Leo said.
Mac wouldn’t have it. “Help me up, flyboy, or get the hell out of my way.”
Leo and Brett helped her to her feet, and she looked around. She saw the general strapped to the door panel, just as Brett had described.
“What’s the status of the ship?”
“Well, it’s sinking,” Leo said. “It got damaged pretty badly when we skirted around the mountains on one of the floating upper continents. The good news is that Tae has used an EVA suit to swim down into the shuttle’s cargo bay and open the payload doors. He plans to release the cargo containers from the bay and float them to the surface. They’re airtight, so they should float right up.”
“That’s great, but for what purpose?”
“He’s going to use the soil-mover that’s stored in one of the cargo containers for a propulsion system. He thinks he can reconfigure the tires with paddles. If we string all the cargo contain
ers together using wires from the avionics bay, we’ll have ourselves a floating wagon train.”
Mac harrumphed in surprise. “That’s actually a pretty good idea.” Looking around, she saw that someone was missing — someone dear to her.
“Where’s Joan?” she asked. She shielded her eyes from the sun and tried to locate her friend.
Brett and Leo exchanged worried glances.
“Joan!” she shouted.
“Mac,” Leo said, “Joan didn’t make it. She died back in the pyramid on Europa. Don’t you remember?”
Mac stifled a cry and bit down on her lower lip. As she pushed a hand through her sea-sprayed hair, it all started coming back to her: the underwater base, the pyramid, the bullet wound, Joan’s shaking hands and gasping breath. Tears welled up in Mac’s eyes.
“Maybe you should lie back down,” Brett said. He held her gently by the forearm and attempted to steady her.
“Don’t.” Mac yanked her arm away from the big commando. “Just don’t.”
There was a loud splash as the first cargo container breached the foamy surface of the water. “I’m gonna go see if Stein and Tae need a hand,” Leo said, excusing himself. He ran over to help Stein reel in the bobbing container. Tae floated near the container in his helmeted space suit.
“So, is there anything else I should know?” Mac asked Brett. She wiped away tears on the back of her hand and sucked in a breath through her congested nose.
Clearly anxious to change the subject, Brett said, “Well, we used up the remaining oxygen in the suits to bring supplies up from the ship, so we’ll have to start going in the water without oxygen and without the added protection of the suits.”
Mac nodded and placed her hands on her hips. She was eager to concentrate on something other than her friend’s death. “This means we’re going to have to run some tests, tests on the water.”
“Right. Plus, we don’t know what kind of creatures are swimming around down there.”
“Yeah, we’ve got to take slow, calculated steps.”
“Cannonball!” They heard Leo’s distant voice and then a large splash. Mac and Brett turned to see Leo land in the water next to Tae.
“Or, we could just dive right in and hope for the best,” Brett said dryly as he watched Leo climb up the side of the floating container.
Leo straddled the top of the bobbing container like a cowboy riding a rodeo bull. He whooped and hollered to complete the illusion. Stein threw him a rope, and he caught it on the first try. Brett and Mac joined Stein to help reel Leo, Tae, and the cargo container back to the ship.
They spent the rest of the day working on Tae’s plan. First, they unloaded the remaining cargo containers from the payload area and lashed them together using scavenged wire from the avionics bay. Tae then worked to make the enormous soil-mover seaworthy. He attached paddles to the tires to jury-rig four paddle-wheels, which resembled those on old steamboats.
The following day, after a few trial runs, the cargo-container wagon train was ready to go. The group transferred the supplies to the new sea-train, and the general, still sedated and hooked up to an IV, was loaded into the last car, which Brett had fitted with a removable sunroof. By dusk, the group got underway.
The Explorer II had begun sinking more rapidly after the payload doors had been opened to unload supplies, and as the sun set on the horizon, the group watched the ship slip beneath the turquoise waves. No one said a word.
#
The next morning, Tae’s sea-train motored happily along a random course that coincided with the current. The train moved slowly — no more than about six knots — but it was something, and the solar cells would keep the motor running indefinitely. Although they still had plenty of bottled water, they rigged up canvas sheets to catch rainwater. Other than catching rainwater and fish, and keeping the soil-mover’s engine running, there was little else for the group to do.
On the afternoon of the third day, Mac rediscovered Captain Reed’s journal in her inside jacket pocket. She took it out and fought back a sense of overwhelming grief when she saw that some of the pages were stained with Joan’s blood.
Mac leafed through the dead pilot’s journal. She saw a few strange sketches here and there and was startled to read Harry’s description of an alien planet that had floating islands — just like the ones she saw in the sky above her. But there was no way to know for certain whether the pilot had gone crazy or whether he had indeed been transported to another world, let alone the world that Mac and her crew were now on. Above all, Mac wondered what the journal contained that was worth dying — or killing — for?
Sitting in her command chair, which Leo had removed from the Explorer II’s cockpit, Mac settled in for the watery journey ahead of them and started to read.
Chapter 9
The Caravan
Harry drifted in and out of consciousness.
He finally awakened to the sounds of rain slapping a leather tarp draped over his head and distant thunder. The aroma of cooking meat greeted his nostrils, and the heat from a nearby fire warmed his skin.
The pain in his wrist was excruciating. Still in shock, he wasn’t coherent enough to wonder why he was still alive.
Mixed with the sounds of the rain, Harry began to hear groups of aliens talking amongst themselves as they milled about the camp. He decided his analogy of snapping rubber bands was definitely accurate and he couldn’t think of anything else to describe the sound of the small, light-footed creatures. The other group on the other hand, the giant gorilla lions, had a serious and threatening tone that reminded him of waves crashing against a rocky shoreline.
The light-footed creatures scurried off, and for a time, the camp was silent. But then Harry heard a third type of voice from within a nearby tent. Harry wasn’t sure if this creature was speaking or singing; her voice was that lovely. He believed the voice belonged to the little fairy nymph he had seen earlier. Desperate to see her again, he forced his eyes open, but the angel was nowhere to be seen, and the lovely voice ceased as quickly as it had begun.
Weak and moving as little as possible, Harry risked a look around. He lay in a hammock made of leather hide. It was tied to two small boulders that levitated in the air. Tents that surrounded his immediate area blocked most of his view, but he was able to see the campfire about ten feet to his left. He saw one of the fur-skinned giants sitting near it, and his blood ran cold.
The woolly beast in samurai armor sat on a log underneath a similar leather tarp and toasted something on the end of a poker. The fierce-looking giant wasn’t the same samurai who had cut off his hand. This one was much larger and was covered in mounds of sun-fire red fur that not only sprouted wildly from all parts of his armor and tunic but also framed his muzzled face.
The beast didn’t seem to notice that Harry was awake, for he continued to sit near the fire with his eyes closed and hands open in what seemed to be some type of meditation pose. Abruptly, the samurai opened his black eyes and stared at Harry through the campfire’s smoke.
Harry stared back and suddenly realized what the samurai cooked over the fire: a human hand. He would have cried out if he had been stronger. Instead, he looked at his right wrist, hoping against hope that what he saw wouldn’t validate his most recent nightmare, but bloody bandages at the end of a stump confirmed the worst: his hand had been severed.
Harry looked back at the furry giant across the campfire. The red-haired samurai slipped the freshly cooked hand off the end of the poker, hesitated to glance up at Harry, and took a bite. Even over the sounds of the heavy rain, crackling fire, and talking servants, Harry heard a loud crunching sound as the samurai bit into his blackened hand.
“Oh God!” Harry cried. His arm started to bleed through the bandages.
Another fur-skinned samurai suddenly appeared next to him and quickly took his wounded arm in its clawed hands and began unwrapping
the bandages. The captain thought that this black-furred samurai was probably female because she was far more slender than the other two (although still twice the size of a man), and her movements were nurturing, like those of a nurse.
Once the bandages were off, she grabbed a thick cloth and thrust it into his left hand. She put the cloth over his bleeding stump and applied pressure, indicating that she wanted him to hold the cloth firmly in place. Harry did so, and the samurai rewarded him with a quick, gentle stroke on his forehead. Her fur felt luxuriously soft on his skin.
The black-furred giant then removed something from a worn leather pouch that was slung over her shoulder. It looked like a root of some kind. She inserted it into her mouth and chewed it heavily, the way a dog might chew a thick bone. Her lips smacked loudly.
Just as Harry was feeling slightly relaxed, she quickly grabbed his severed forearm in both her hands and startled him. The bloodstained cloth fluttered to the ground.
She opened mouth wide and reared back her head. Harry saw her gaping maw of triangular-shaped teeth and struggled, but she effortlessly pinned him with her elbow. Her head shot forward with surprising speed but stopped short of his severed wrist. There was a loud THWOOOTTT sound as she spat a black, tar-like substance onto his bloody stump. He heard a hissing sound and felt his flesh burning beneath the tar.
Harry continued to struggle, but she held fast. He realized that she wasn’t trying to help him, as he had thought, but rather was tenderizing him. His hand was nothing more than an appetizer. She was getting him ready to be the main course.