Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble (Noah Zarc, #1)
Page 7
I woke shivering several times that night when the fire died down. My nose felt like an ice cube. The wood was piled near my head, and each time I woke up I stoked the fire back to life and drifted back to sleep.
The next morning I woke to mastodon sizzling on the fire. It smelled delicious, but I wondered how long I’d be able eat the same thing three times a day.
Then I laughed. “PB&J three times a day keeps the doctor away.”
After breakfast I went looking for Adina and was told she was out gathering firewood. I found her along the trail back to the ship.
“Come on, I want to show you something,” I said.
Adina laid down her bundle of sticks and followed me.
“Did you sleep well last night?” she said.
I shivered, even though I was dressed in my warmest coat with my hood zipped up around my face.
“It was pretty cold, but I did all right.”
She giggled. “At least you came in the summer. Come winter, when the wind howls through the canyon, it’s all we can do to keep the fires burning. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night buried in snow as deep as I am tall. But if you don’t think about it, you can get back to sleep and dig yourself out in the morning.”
I stared at her, but she didn’t look like she was kidding. A few minutes later we reached the clearing.
Adina gasped. “Where’s your ship?”
I moved forward, hand extended.
“Here, feel this.”
Adina held up her hand next to mine, and brushed against the hard surface of the Morning Star. She recoiled.
“Your ship?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. It’s just hidden.” I lowered my arm. “You don’t want to touch them when they decloak—it’d give you a bit of a shock.”
Adina stepped back even further.
“Morning Star, decloak.”
The trees shimmered. In moments, we stood before the external hatch of the ship.
Adina gasped. “Where did it come from?”
“The ship was here all the time. We just have a way to hide her so no one knows she’s there.”
“This would sure make it easy to hunt.” Adina tentatively reached a hand out and touched the hull of the Morning Star. “As long as we were upwind, our prey would never know we were there.”
“Come on,” I said. “I want to show you inside.”
Adina backed up again. “Is it safe?”
I laughed. “Of course it’s safe. You’re in the presence of one of the greatest pilots on planet Earth.”
She looked at me as though I’d grown an inch.
“So there are more of these pilots all over the land?”
“Right now, just me and my dad.”
She kept looking at me for a couple of seconds, then broke into laughter and socked me in the arm.
“At least you’re in the top two.”
I moved to the hatch and said, “Open please.” The door whooshed upward, and I walked in.
“Can anyone enter your ship? Couldn’t another tribe steal her from you?”
“The Morning Star is keyed to our family.” I reached in my coat pocket. “If we wanted to let someone else in we’d give them one of these.”
I held out my hand. In my glove was a small blue ball.
“It has a magnetic signature the ship will recognize. I always carry one when I leave because I don’t trust the ship to recognize me. What if something happened to me and I didn’t look the same?”
Adina peered inside the ship. Very cautiously.
“It’s so dark, Noah.”
I slipped the orb back in my pocket.
“Sorry, lights please.” The interior of the ship lit up with a cool blue light.
“You have the sun inside your ship!” She let out the breath she’d obviously been holding. “And it shines on your command.”
I pointed to a long glowing tube. “Nah, it’s just a light bulb. It has something like fire inside that makes it glow.”
I opened the secondary airlock door, and Adina followed. A small, circular stair led up to the cockpit. When we entered, the instrument panels came to life with flashing lights and screens.
“Sit down.” I pointed to the pilot’s seat. “This is where I drive.”
Adina sat in the chair, her back stiff.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she said. “What if I break something?”
“You won’t—it’s coded to only recognize commands from someone in our family.”
I turned toward the windows, which had dark shields over them.
“Blast shields up.” The steel covers over the windows opened to reveal the morning sun. “We don’t really need these open to fly, but it sure makes the view a lot better.” I pressed a few buttons and saw the status of the ship. Cabin unfit for pressurization. Flight not recommended.
“I wish I could take you up in her. There’s nothing greater than rocketing over the ground at mach two.”
“That’s fast?”
“Really, really, really fast,” I said, grinning. “She can actually go much faster than that, but then you can’t make out anything below you—it goes by in a blur.”
She looked out the window for a while, then turned to face me.
“Could the ship take me…” She stopped and looked back out the window.
“Take you where?”
“It’s silly.” She didn’t look at me. “When I was little, they used to say my mother and father had crossed a great ocean to a land where it’s always warm, where they would be happy and never again worry about food or cold.”
A small tear rolled down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away.
“I never understood why they would go there without me.”
I tried to think of something to say. I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with losing anyone I’d loved. My pet white mouse who died when I was little didn’t really count.
“I can’t take you to your mom and dad,” I said. “But maybe somewhere warm.”
“If the ship worked that is,” I mumbled.
We sat in silence for a while.
“Do you want to meet my brother and sister?”
Her face brightened. “That would be great.”
I activated my wrist-comm. “Hamilton, Sam, where are you?”
“Better be an emergency, Noah.” Sam’s voice sounded like she’d still been sleeping.
“Sorry, I wanted to introduce you to Adina. We’ve been up for hours.”
“I’m in the galley,” Hamilton said.
Adina and I headed that way.
“How about some hot cocoa?” I said.
“What is it?”
“Trust me, you’ll love it.”
Hamilton was finishing breakfast when we came in.
“Hamilton, this is Adina.”
He pulled his Triple-B out of his pocket and placed it in his ear.
“Hello, Adina. Welcome aboard the Morning Star.”
“I’m not sure I believe something like this exists, even though I’m standing here.”
She took off her bulky furs and laid them on a chair. “The elders tell stories of ships that float on the water, but never have I heard of one that flies through the air.”
I went to get cocoa while Hamilton offered Adina a seat.
“You surprise us as well,” Hamilton said. “All the books say you should be far less advanced than you are.” He sat back down and sipped his orange juice.
“Books?” She frowned. “These are your wise men?”
“Not our wise men but words written down by them.”
She nodded but still looked confused.
“Don’t worry.” I set two steaming cups on the table. “My brother has a habit of talking about things in a way no one else understands.” I slid a mug in her direction. “Be careful, it’s hot. Hope you like marshmallows.”
She reached out, touched the mug, and sniffed the chocolate. Slowly she took a sip. She swallowed. Her face split with
a huge grin.
“I like, I like.”
I laughed and took a drink of mine. “If you blow on it, you can drink it quicker.”
Within minutes Adina’s face was covered in sticky chocolate and marshmallow.
“I can’t believe this tastes so good! Even the water of our cave doesn’t have this much flavor.”
Sam walked in. “What tastes so good?” She already had her Triple-B in her ear.
Adina looked up, saw Sam, and gasped.
“Sam, this is Adina,” I said. “Adina, Sam.”
“Nice to meet you.” Sam smiled at her but looked at me and raised her eyebrows. Adina sat and stared, her mouth open.
“Did you eat?” Sam said.
“We did,” I said.
Sam walked over to the food prep center.
“I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful,” Adina whispered.
I looked at my sister and nearly choked. “Sam?”
She stood at the counter, ordering breakfast from Le Chef. Her long hair was pulled up in a ponytail. She wore a jumper and stained shirt.
“I’m not sure the translator’s working quite right.” Hamilton snickered.
Sam came back to the table, her plate full of pancakes with syrup all over them.
“What’s wrong with the translators?
“Nothing,” I said.
“Just a misinterpretation of a word,” Hamilton said.
“Oh well, you can talk to Dad about it.” Sam looked at Adina. “So my brother didn’t kill you with the ship yesterday, huh?”
Adina looked at me and grinned.
“Oh, no. He’s one of the best pilots on planet Earth.”
Sam laughed. “In his mind, he’s the best pilot in the solar system.” She reached in her pocket, pulled out a small silver box with a screen and buttons on one side, and placed it on the table.
“Ham, I found the ECL, it was right where it was supposed to be in the ship’s workshop.”
“The ECL?” I picked it up and turned it over in my hands.
“Electronic Chip Locator,” Sam said. “You use it to find relay chips. If it locates a faulty chip, it emits a magnetic pulse to disable the circuitry.”
Hamilton plucked the locator out of my hands.
“The right ailerons are malfunctioning,” he said. “I think there’s a short in the system.”
Sam sighed. “Once we get that fixed we should be able to get out of here tomorrow—no offense, Adina, but I’m freezing.”
Adina set her empty mug on the table. “Right now I think I’m the warmest I’ve ever been in my whole life.”
After we finished our cocoa, I showed Adina the rest of the ship. Even the simplest things amazed her—running water in the sink, doors that open and close automatically, things I took for granted every day. As I watched her take it all in I kept wishing there was some way to help my new friend live a better life.
The last room I showed her was the small sleeping quarters.
“We don’t usually go on long trips on the Morning Star, but if any of us ever needs to lie down, this is where we do it.” I tugged on a strap dangling from a bunk. “Of course we need to strap ourselves in, otherwise we’d float around the room.”
Adina’s eyes grew wide. “Float?”
I thought for a minute. “In space, you don’t stick to the ground, you float above it. Kind of like my chair.”
She scrunched up her eyebrows. “So how do you walk?”
“You don’t. You fly.”
Adina just shook her head. “I think I would stay strapped in the bed.”
I laughed. “Maybe, at first. But trust me, there’s nothing better than floating in space.”
When we left the ship, Adina was still shaking her head. She just didn’t seem to be able to get her mind around the idea of flying, but that was okay. Maybe someday she could try it for herself. I smiled as we walked down the trail toward the cave.
The rest of the morning, Adina and I gathered firewood and helped dig up vegetables, a tough-looking type of potato and things that looked like some kind of onion. I also helped slice up the mammoth meat for better storage. Around midday, Adina asked Dad if she could take me to see the Mammoth’s Tusk, whatever that was.
“Back before sunset,” he said.
She grabbed a small sack and stuffed in a couple of strips of dried meat, along with a few of the potatoes we’d dug up, then led me down a trail that went in the opposite direction of the trail to the ship.
“Come on, Noah, we’re going to my favorite place in the whole world.”
The trail slowly wound its way down into the canyon, and I felt the temperature rise the further down we went. After about an hour, I took off my gloves and shoved them in my pockets.
“You should live down here, seems like it’d be more comfortable.”
“It is,” Adina said. “But there aren’t any good caves, and the mountain cats like to hunt near the river.”
I’d been looking for signs of a river, but it was hard to see. Nearly everything was white with snow, and there was a misty fog a hundred meters or so below us.
“Are the cats dangerous?”
“Only if they catch you out by yourself.” She glanced back at me. “Sometimes if they’re really hungry they’ll attack two people at once.”
I gulped and looked around. Adina grinned.
“Oh sure, try to scare the new guy.”
She giggled. “Sorry. We do need to be cautious, but I know where they usually hide. As long as we don’t startle them, they should leave us alone.”
I caught her glancing at my legs.
“I’ve been this way since I was born,” I said. “Mom explained it was some kind of birth defect—means something went wrong with me when I was still in her belly.”
“So you’ve never walked?”
“Well, we have a suit I can wear. It allows me to walk, almost as if my legs worked. But it’s awkward and uncomfortable.” She looked upset. “Since I’ve always been this way, it doesn’t really bother me much.”
“And you have this chair you can ride around on.”
“Mom says when I stop growing I can go to Mars for an operation. They can give me new legs. Then I’ll be able to walk just like you, almost.”
She thought for a moment. “But won’t that feel wrong, if you’ve lived your whole life without doing it?”
“I guess.” I hadn’t thought about that. “I just get so frustrated sometimes. Like people don’t think I can do everything they can.” I kept my eyes on the trail.
“I think you can do anything you want, Noah. I’ve never known anyone as amazing as you.”
Warmth filled my face. She smiled and turned away, probably to hide the red in her own cheeks.
A half-hour later, I heard what sounded like distant thunder. Adina picked up the pace.
“We’re almost there.”
The trail wove through a maze of tall rock spires, many of which were slick with green moss. A cold breeze blew against my face.
At last, we rounded a corner and Adina stopped. I looked up and beheld the Mammoth’s Tusk.
“I can see how it got its name,” I said. “It’s amazing!”
Rising for nearly a hundred meters above us was a turquoise blue and white-streaked wall of ice where a waterfall should have been. Its top seemed to taper into a point. The column of ice also dropped below us and disappeared into a shroud of white mist another twenty-five meters below. Light from the midday sun gleamed and glittered along its surface. In places, I saw water rushing past the outer shell of ice.
“Is the waterfall always frozen?”
“Most of the time, yes,” Adina said. “If we had the time, we could hike to the bottom of the canyon. Most of the ice at the base has melted this time of year.”
“I can see why this is your favorite place. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Adina smiled and handed me a piece of dried jerky from her pack.
“I sometimes come he
re and imagine there’s another world beyond the ice—that if I found a way behind the waterfall I’d discover a land that was warm and green. I could go live there forever.”
“Wouldn’t you miss your people?”
She didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes.
“I suppose I would. There are those who treat me like their own child, but I know it can be hard for them. Two winters ago, when we struggled to find enough food, I remember the look in their eyes. Why should they feed me when their own children might starve?”
She looked down, hiding the pain in her eyes.
“Sometimes I think it would be better if I were gone. I do my part, but how much can a girl like me accomplish? That’s why I was out on the hunt yesterday. I wanted to try to prove my worth.”
We sat and listened to the pounding water. At last, she looked up toward the sky.
“We should be heading back. Your father was right, we don’t want to be caught out here after dark.”
We worked our way back up the trail while the sun moved toward the western edge of the canyon. Adina was quiet for the most part. I watched her, trying to understand what life must be like for a girl with no parents in such a wild place.
As we got close to the cave, my chair gliding easily behind Adina, we rounded a rock—and Adina put her hand up and froze. When I started to say something, she threw a hand back and covered my mouth. I followed her gaze up the trail.
In the deepening shadows of a boulder, something moved. Visions of mountain cats with sharp teeth and vicious claws filled my mind. Adina picked up a fist-sized rock and moved toward the boulder. I followed as quietly as I could. The hum of my chair echoed off the canyon walls.
As we drew closer, I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing but I knew it wasn’t a cat. As I tried to edge around Adina for a better look, my chair caught an outcropping of stone on the embankment and released a small avalanche of gravel and rocks. It made an awful racket when the scree slid off the trail into the canyon below.
The shape spun around and lunged at us. I caught a glint of metal just before Adina hurled the rock. A loud clang echoed through the canyon. Adina leapt forward. She grabbed a larger rock and smashed it down on the metal shape that had fallen to the ground.
I shot up beside her. It was a robot—an assassin-bot, to be specific. A small door opened in the robot’s chest.