Space Hostages

by Sophia McDougall

He started climbing downward, which was good, except my fingers were going numb and I started to worry about falling on his head, and meanwhile Krnk-ni-Plik swung onto a ladder across on the other side of the semicircle, and she was climbing up.

  Krnk-ni-Plik investigated the third and fourth levels, and Tlag-li-Glig tramped around on the ground, and the sewage-worker Krakkiluks waggled their eyes anxiously, and I tried not to move my head and got colder and colder and colder. And then they went. The sewage worker Krakkiluks seemed almost as relieved as we were.

  Then I couldn’t hold on to the ladder anymore and fell off.

  It felt like I had a very, very long time to watch the vat of sludge coming closer and think about drowning in alien poo, and then Thsaaa whipped an invisible tentacle around my wrist and caught me.

  Hanging on to something invisible is really, really weird.

  Also, I guess I kind of screamed a bit when I fell. I didn’t mean to. But I didn’t want to die in the vat of poo. Because of the angle and the loops of pipe, I don’t think the sewage-worker Krakkiluks could see me, dangling there perfectly visible in midair. But they definitely heard something. And I heard them clattering and rustling in their capes as they came to take a look.

  Thsaaa threw me onto the second level with a flick of their tentacles and then launched themselves sideways like an invisible flying squirrel. I only knew about that when they landed on top of me like a heap of invisible snow, hiding me.

  The Krakkiluk sewage workers scuttled around and crunched at each other, like maybe, “Did you hear that?” and, hopefully, “Yes, but it was probably just a pipe creaking or some steam escaping or something, oh my adorable darling.”

  I think, if they’d been soldiers, they’d have been more thorough at looking around, but they were poor overworked sewage workers who Krnk-ni-Plik and Tlag-li-Glig hadn’t been very polite to, and they were probably tired and they’d never seen invisible things before.

  Well. Not seen. But you know.

  But anyway, they did look, and one of them went over to the panel again and crunched into it, maybe asking for help or instructions, meanwhile I managed to scramble down the next length of ladder in a much more reckless, Carl-like way, or maybe it wasn’t exactly reckless, just committed. Anyway, it was faster, and then when we got to the first level from the floor, Thsaaa picked me off the ladder, lowered me down as far as they could with their tentacles, and dropped me the rest of the way.

  And then we were on the ground. I was so cold I had to sit by a hot pipe behind one of the horrible vats for a little while, to warm up. While I was doing that, a loud bonging noise sounded, and the two Krakkiluk workers pulled off their capes and made for the big set of doors. Thsaaa threw the invisibility gown over me again and we trip-shuffled off to catch up with them and sneak through alongside them. And at last we were on our way again.

  Which, I remembered, a bit late, wasn’t necessarily a good thing. We were maybe a bit closer to the Helen now, but also probably a lot farther away from the others. But we couldn’t go back if we wanted to, because the doors had shut behind us and there was no way to open them.

  After that, there weren’t quite so many locked doors. We passed through a cargo bay, I think; there were lots of bundles hanging like honeypot ants in a nest or flies in a spiderweb from more diamond meshwork on the domed ceiling.

  Also there were these large balls, stacked on the ground in big crates like eggs in egg boxes. They were kind of irregular, a bit like what a dung beetle makes, but made of this kind of flaky-looking whitish-gray stuff. One ball had been taken out to rest on the floor, sawn in half. I could see long fibers bristling on the inside, and the scrape marks where some of it of had been gouged away. It gave off a strong sharp smell that made the back of my throat feel all burny, but it wasn’t exactly bad. At least not the way the sewage was. Kind of resiny, but way too strong.

  “Is that what they eat?” I wondered.

  “I think,” said Thsaaa, “that perhaps that is Takwuk.”

  I got upset then, because I thought that if Carl was there, he’d want to try licking some of the Takwuk to see what would happen. Or he would make a joke about “gigantic balls.” And he wasn’t here and I knew he was on the planet and fine, but still I couldn’t help thinking what if he wasn’t, what if he was never around again, acting like a maniac just because he could.

  After that we weren’t so lucky at finding places with hardly any Krakkiluks about; in fact, the next place we bump-shuffled into was a huge bath area, and there were at least seventy of them, all splashily enjoying the hot water. They weren’t any more naked than they normally were; all their decorations seemed to be waterproof. The two Krakkiluk sewage workers were there, gratefully sinking into a hot tank in the floor where a few other Krakkiluks were already bathing, crunching at each other in a friendly way or wallowing blissfully under the water. They were all much more pinkish than normal, and I couldn’t help thinking weird thoughts about my aunty Marikit boiling shrimp with chili for sinigang na hipon back home, and getting kind of hungry.

  The steam was full of the smell of Takwuk, and I guessed this was how they used that stuff—I suppose if you didn’t have clothes to take off and put on, you could have a bath break for your nice Takwuk as easily as humans have a tea break. We couldn’t exactly help breathing the steam, and I wondered nervously what it was going to do to us. We waddled past the pools, trying not to slip, and I seemed to be okay. But Thsaaa’s tentacles flashed reds and pinks so bright they were nearly fluorescent, and they started going “Eeeeeee” and “Mmmmmmm” under their breath.

  “Shh!” I begged them.

  “You wooorry too much,” said Thsaaa, flailing invisible tentacles.

  “No I don’t,” I groaned.

  “All will be well, Noeeeell,” Thsaaa said grandly. “We can find the Helen. We can rescuuuuuuuee the others. We can do it. We can dooooooooo anything.”

  “That’s the Takwuk talking,” I said.

  “Noooooo. It iiiiiiissssn’t,” Thsaaa insisted, their words getting particularly long and slow. “Y’aaaaaaaaaare wroooooooong. ’Bout maaaaaaany things. But still I consider you . . . v’ryyyy fiiiiiiiiine human.”

  “Aww, thanks,” I said, rather pleased even though I knew Thsaaa wasn’t quite themself.

  They were still wheezing and mumbling away when we shuffle-bumped into the first of several workshops where Krakkiluks were mending, or recycling, their scary zappers and other stuff. There were quite a lot of open doors here, so we picked one at random, and after doing this a few times, we found another lift shaft. But the lift itself wasn’t there—there was just an empty hole, and the shaft was lined with the diamond mesh for climbing.

  “We’d better go down,” I said, though I wondered if maybe we should wait for Thsaaa to sober up first. But it seemed quieter on the floor below, and going down would take us closer to Helen.

  I slipped out of the amlaa-vel-esh and quickly lowered myself into the shaft.

  “Caaaaare,” said Thsaaa’s voice anxiously. “Caaaaareful. You are very bad at climbing, you have toooooooo few aaaaaaaarms. And you are not invisible.”

  Maybe I had been a teeny bit affected by the Takwuk after all, because I thought I was getting loads better at climbing, personally. In fact it was getting to be sort of fun—so fun that I couldn’t help giggling as I slithered down extra fast, both to show how good at it I was and so I’d be safely invisible again sooner.

  I landed in another steamy room. And there was a big Krakkiluk standing there, staring right at me.

  13

  “I know you’ve always wanted to do Space Archaeology, Jo,” Carl said. “But, maybe like sometime when we’re not being slowly poisoned?”

  High above the worrying depths of the gorge, Josephine was crouched on the peak of a stone arch, scraping enthusiastically at the red coils of root that entangled it. “They’ve got wings!” she said. “They’ve got wings! They don’t need streets. Look at these struts. They’re as comfortab
le hanging upside down as standing upright!”

  “You’ll bring that whole thing down,” I moaned, though it wasn’t the first time I’d said something along those lines and she hadn’t listened.

  “But this is useful!” she said.

  “I don’t see anything here’s going to fly us home,” Carl said, sitting in a coil of root and swinging his legs, while a troop of little scarlet-and-tangerine things swooped down from the clifftops and perched irreverently on the statue’s head, chittering.

  The city was in ruins. Golden moss grew from the cracks between blocks of stone, and overflowed into foamy hanging masses. The towers bristled arms like candelabras—many of them were smashed. The arches were broken backed—whatever had dangled from those broad struts had long since fallen away. It was all sinking into the forest as if the land had dreamed the city and was gradually forgetting it. There was nobody here.

  “But if we know something about the people before we meet them . . . ,” Josephine said. “Don’t you realize humans have never had that before, with an alien species? The Morrors, the Krakkiluks—they both turned up knowing our languages, knowing who we are—and we didn’t know anything. And that’s gone badly for us. But this time the balance of information will be in our favor. We’ll be less helpless.” She peered down at the stonework she’d cleared. “There’s writing here,” she said happily. “Goldfish, can you scan this?”

  “Oh, good, let’s Google the translation,” said Carl.

  “Well, when we meet them—” began Josephine.

  “Maybe they’re all dead,” Carl said. “Maybe the Krakkiluks exterminated them.”

  “Carl,” I said, starting to get a bit exasperated.

  He shrugged. “I’m just saying. These fruit-bat guys aren’t here, are they?”

  I looked around nervously, in case a lot of annoyed fruit-bat people emerged from the undergrowth.

  “The Krakkiluks could have killed everyone on Aushalawa-Moraaa and taken it back that way, but they didn’t,” said Josephine. “I don’t think mass extermination is how they operate.”

  “What they did do was pretty bad,” called Carl, as Josephine scampered recklessly over the arch to the far side of the gorge.

  “I’m not defending them!” she yelled back.

  “You’ve got to stop running around and breathing,” I moaned.

  But Josephine had found what looked at first like a length of root, stretching out along one of the struts. Inside, it was bristling with wires—wires so corroded and rusted they were scarcely recognizable.

  “This is copper. Like we used to use on Earth. Electricity cables,” said Josephine, delighted now. “They weren’t just . . . stonecutters, they were . . . advanced. Light, and computing, probably—they might have had space travel already.”

  “Time didn’t do this,” Josephine said, looking at the broken masonry. “They didn’t just leave. Someone invaded.”

  “Well, we know who,” I said.

  “I want to know when,” said Josephine. She began muttering to herself under her breath, “Copper would oxidize faster in this atmosphere . . . but estimating a rate of two picometers per year . . . Goldfish, can you help me with a measurement here?”

  I amused myself by picking blue bead flowers and flicking them at Carl.

  “Two hundred years,” she said. “The Krakkiluks have been here two hundred years. At least.”

  I shivered a bit, because it made me think of the war with the Morrors and how it could have turned out. The Morrors had planned to cram us all onto Mars and have the Earth to themselves, and after two hundred years of that, who knows whether we’d even have known where we came from?

  “The people here won’t remember anything different,” I said.

  Josephine looked at the huge statue of the warrior bestriding the gorge, brandishing its sword. “I don’t think the people who made that would forget,” she said. “And I don’t think they’d give up. Not completely.”

  “If they’re alive at all,” insisted Carl. “This is a ruin. There’s no one here now.”

  “Look,” I all but screamed. The blue sun was sinking into streaks of turquoise, and three moons shone palely visible in the sky. And far away, beyond the warrior’s raised sword, was the trail of vapor from a distant flying machine.

  After that, Carl wanted us to hurry off toward the plane, or whatever it had been, as fast as possible, and maybe find the plane it had taken off from. But it was getting dark awfully quickly.

  “I think we should spend the night here,” I said. “We can’t just walk all night. There’s nothing but this mossy stuff for miles, and those big purple flying things maybe coming and landing on us in the middle of the night. At least it seems safe here.”

  “I agree,” said Josephine.

  “You just want to stay because it’s an ancient alien city and you think it’s cool,” said Carl.

  We did stay. We found some intact buildings—like great stone wasps’ nests bulging out over the gorge—their oval doors and windows opened to the air above the depths and there was no way in, unless you could fly. But we climbed down a tangle of roots onto a round platform where Josephine thought some kind of structure had once stood, and padded it as best we could with lumps of the golden moss stuff.

  I wished we could build a campfire, but we didn’t want to cause any more explosions. And if we had, it would just have drawn attention to how we had no food to cook over it. All we could do was drink water and huddle and watch the stars come out as the night creatures trilled and the little blue hovering things buzzed relentlessly around the Goldfish’s glow until the poor thing darted into one of the wasps’-nest houses to hide.

  But soon it wasn’t the only light in the ancient city. Specks of bright red and blue began to glimmer around us and we started up, wondering if we’d found people after all. But the lights, small as candle flames, rose from tussocks of golden moss dangling from ledges within the gorge, and drifted into the air like so many tiny Chinese lanterns, blue and indigo and scarlet, and humming softly.

  “Like glowworms,” said Carl, and he smiled for the first time in a while.

  “I wish I had my tablet. No, I wish I had my harmonica,” said Josephine, lying back and trailing her hand through a glowing cloud of the little creatures, leaving an eddy of swirling light behind.

  “When we get home, you’ll write a song about them,” I said.

  But Josephine’s expression darkened at that, and I wished I hadn’t said anything at all.

  It wasn’t easy to sleep out there, with all the light and the humming and the hunger and the fear. Still, the next day started okay, kind of. We had a breakfast of water, and Josephine danced across an archway and called, “Come on then, this way!” from the other side of the gorge. “Well, do you see a better way over the river?” she demanded when we didn’t instantly follow.

  Carl grumbled, but we picked our way over the arch and struggled on through the root forest, until it thinned to golden moss lands again, and the sea glittered ahead under the grass-colored sky.

  But we got so, so hungry and there was nothing we could do about it. Inevitably, Carl tried eating one of the bead flowers to see what would happen. It didn’t kill him, but it did give him stomach cramps. Josephine grew quieter now that she didn’t have a ruined alien city to play with: first she stopped talking and then her mouth went all tight and gradually she stopped looking at people. And Carl, well—Carl moaned.

  “Stupid, poisonous planet with nothing we can even eat on it,” he said, to no one in particular, as we trudged on. “And we don’t even know that wasn’t a Krakkiluk plane. Oh, good, gigantic roots everywhere again—climbing through those’ll be fun.”

  Josephine sighed heavily and didn’t say anything.

  “It could have been a lot more poisonous,” I somehow felt obliged to point out.

  “Well, that’s great, isn’t it,” Carl growled.

  “We’re not doing that badly. We’re not dead, it’s not rainin
g, I think my foot’s only slightly broken, and like Josephine says, there might be fruit-bat people rebels.”

  Josephine did glance at me then, and she smiled with one corner of her mouth, but she looked back down at her feet again almost at once.

  We made it across the peninsula and back down to the sea, by which point the sky was getting unreasonably dark again and we still hadn’t found any people.

  “It can’t be night already,” said Josephine. She squinted at the sky. “Is that . . . so how long a day has this planet got?” she asked the Goldfish, too tired and worn to try to work it out for herself.

  “I make it seventeen hours and thirty-four minutes,” said the Goldfish. “We’ve been here twenty-five hours, gang, and look at all the amazing things we’ve seen and learned already.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” said Carl heavily, not even bothering to actually complain.

  So that was only twenty-six hours we’d been without food and overdosing on oxygen, and not thirty-two.

  My legs were getting kind of shaky anyway, though.

  We collapsed on the beach and drank from the little funnels growing there, and that made us feel a little better, but not much.

  “You guys need to rest,” said the Goldfish, hovering there above our panting bodies, annoyingly immune to needing to rest at all. “When you’re tired and stressed, a rest is—”

  It broke off.

  “Best?” I supplied, because the unfinished rhyme left me feeling all itchy.

  “Well, yeah, Alice! That’s right! But I guess I was thinking . . . maybe you don’t need a song right now.”

  “Oh,” I said, unnerved. The song had been annoying, but I couldn’t remember the Goldfish ever being the least bit concerned about that before.

  “You can sing, if you want,” I said, sort of furtively, because I wasn’t sure how well that would go down with the others.

  “We can’t stop here,” Josephine said, gulping down another funnel’s worth of water. “The oxygen . . . we have to keep heading toward where we saw that plane.”

  “Who says she’s in charge?” Carl muttered.