by D. W. Vogel
I shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be that often. Anything’s better than what we have now.”
The epoxy was a two part resin and I mixed it in my hands, sticking it to the back of the dish. We wedged it into a crack in the rocks and filled around it with epoxy. I wiped my hands on the legs of my cargo pants, leaving sticky brown smears.
“My fingers are stuck. Can you do the wiring?”
Staci connected one end of the wire to the dish while I spat on my hands to rid them of the residue. I pulled my palm-sized trans out of my pocket and checked the signal. Broken sounds crackled from my trans, automatic transmissions from Horizon. A voice was audible for a few seconds, half-heard words cracked with dead air.
“Anybody . . . hear . . . there . . .”
I spoke into the unit. “Carthage Valley? It’s Caleb Wilde. I hear you.”
Silence on the line. Then a distant echo, a female voice that sounded maddeningly familiar. “Caleb?” Then silence.
I stared at the trans. “Who’s got a trans in the valley?”
Staci handed me the coil of wire, one end spliced onto the dish. “Lots of people. Why, who was talking?”
The voice rattled around in my brain. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t. Not after all this time. The heat and altitude must be messing with my head. “I don’t know. Probably just the busted up reception. And wishful thinking. Because for a minute there, I swear it sounded like my cousin Ryenne.”
Chapter 3
Ryenne’s Diary: Year 1, Day 3
Well, that didn’t go like we thought.
I’ve been on Tau Ceti e for two days now and future humans, be glad you weren’t here.
Everything went wrong.
Only three of our twenty satellites got launched right. The fourth one exploded while it was still inside Horizon. It destroyed the whole launch system so none of the rest could get out, and worse, it started a fire. The sirens went off and everybody started shouting.
I pulled on Rogan, trying to get him to come out of our secret passage but he was stuck in place from all the noise, and it took me forever to get him moving. We were assigned to Transport Six, which was clear across the ship. Mom would be freaking out waiting for us. I had my backpack and so did Rogan, and I hoped Mom had the rest of our stuff ready to go.
There should have been more people. The farther down we got, the more scared I got. Rogan’s panic attack must have taken longer than I thought. Almost everybody else was gone.
Transport Six was gone.
Mom was gone.
Officer Halsey came running up and grabbed my arm. She wanted to know which transport we were supposed to be on, and where our mom was. I wanted to know that too. She started to pull us down the hallway in the wrong direction.
But as we ran down the corridor I realized that all the other transports were gone, including ours. She herded us onto the pantry ship, the last one still attached to Horizon Alpha.
There were about thirty other people crammed into it by the time she pushed us through the doors and pulled them closed behind us. There weren’t even any seats, just shelves and shelves of packaged food. The whole ship jumped as we let go of Horizon, losing gravity as soon as we weren’t attached to its spinning edge anymore. It should have been fun to float around but we weren’t buckled in and my stomach felt horrible.
Officer Halsey yelled for everybody to grab onto the shelves. She was gripping the metal food racks that were bolted to the ship’s walls, with her feet sticking out, just hanging there. She looked as sick as I felt.
Somebody threw up. That made somebody else throw up, and that made me throw up. And it was really awful because it was just floating there, not even falling down. I’d eaten algae paste for breakfast like every day and algae paste wasn’t pretty the first time it went down. Coming back up didn’t help it one bit.
I didn’t have much time to worry about that before the ship windows were on fire.
Officer Halsey was yelling at us to hang on, and everybody in the ship was screaming, including me.
We bumped and shook and I thought the whole thing was going to explode.
And then suddenly it was over. We got heavier and heavier as we fell into gravity. All the packaged food fell everywhere. All the puke fell, too.
I didn’t see any of the other transports.
We were supposed to be together. Even I knew that.
I wanted to see out but I couldn’t even get up. Everything was just so heavy.
The ship was heavy, too. We were off course and going down hard. Officer Halsey told us later that no other pilot besides Rafael could have landed the ship without killing us all. But he did it somehow.
He found a huge wide sandy beach and we skidded and bumped across it forever before we finally stopped.
I crawled over to Rogan, who was curled up in crash position under one of the shelves. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to move for at least an hour. That’s how he gets when he’s really scared, and there was nothing that ever happened that was scarier than crashing in a space ship.
So I pulled myself up on the shelf and looked out the window.
There was sand and ocean, huge waves crashing against the beach right outside. I pushed my way over all the broken crates to look out the other window. The beach went on a long way and ended at a high cliff that looked like bare rock. Over to one side there was a giant waterfall crashing down into a river that dumped into the ocean.
And standing on the edge of that river, staring at us like we’d just fallen out of the sky, was a herd of dinosaurs.
Year 1, Day 20
We’ve been trying to get help. Officer Yi is on the transmitters day and night, calling out for any of the other transports that might have had better landings and could come and get us. He says that even if the big transports like we’re in are too heavy to take off, there were a bunch of smaller shuttles that should be able to fly close to us here, even if they don’t get very high. If we could find the rest of our people, they might be able to come get us.
So far nobody is answering.
Officer Yi says we need to leave the transport and go find the rest of our people.
Officer Halsey says there aren’t any people. I’m really worried she might be right.
Year 1, Day 63
They’ve been gone over two weeks.
Officer Yi took three other people out with a satellite transmitter hoping to get a signal through to anybody else that’s still alive here. We’ve been waiting and waiting but we haven’t heard back from them since they got out of local range, which was the night after they left. Officer Halsey is in charge now and she says we’re not going to send anyone looking for them. She says we’ve lost enough people. She told us she thinks if we wait another few months then the satellites might be in a different orbit or something, and maybe then we can contact the others.
If there are any others.
Year 1, Day 245
We never would have come here if we’d known.
I wish we never landed.
We have enough food. Officer Halsey says if we are careful and ration it out we could last a few years on what we have here. So far we haven’t lost anyone going to the river to get water at night, and we dug a toilet just outside the hatch, which is gross but at least it gets washed out twice a day when the tide comes in to the edge of the ship.
Something really big went by last night. Nobody saw it, but this morning there’s a huge ditch next to the transport that wasn’t there when we went to sleep. Whatever it was didn’t make any noise and didn’t leave any footprints, or if it did, they got blown away in the sand.
I hate this planet.
The only good thing about this stupid planet is that Rogan is a totally new person here. He still only talks to me, and not very often. He still has his hose, which is a broken length of rubber tubing from Horizon that he’s had since he was a little kid. He plays with it all the time, twisting it in his hands, worse when he’s upset. But he hasn’t rolled in
to a panic ball one single time since we landed. Hasn’t scratched his own skin or bitten himself. Hour after hour he’s glued to the window, watching the dinosaurs go by on their way to the river.
He’s got names for all of them. Some of them sound familiar, but most of them are crazy things I’ve never heard of, and some are like two mixed together. He’ll say, “That’s something-or-other in the body, but it has spikes like something-or-other else.” There have been a few that stumped him, but everybody in the transport is hanging on his words, like he knows everything about dinosaurs, which he does, and like that’s somehow going to help us.
But we don’t have any weapons. The satellites can’t see us. So if anyone else is out there, how are they ever going to find us?
Year 3, Day 38
We’re going to have to do something soon. There are twenty-one people still alive in this transport, but the food is only going to last us another month or two. We have no weapons to hunt with, and nothing to go fishing with, not that anyone’s getting near the ocean. There’s something huge and horrible in the ocean. Lots of somethings, actually.
Officer Halsey has gone kind of crazy. She’s holed up in the cockpit with all the remaining food and the only portable sat trans we have left. Whenever anybody comes in to get something to eat, she acts like it’s her own personal store, like we’re stealing from her. We’re all really skinny, and the only one who seems to get enough to eat is Shanna, the toddler, because nobody wants to hear her crying. She’s three and will never remember any life besides this one. She never ran down the corridors on Horizon, laughing with friends. Never went to school, which is something I didn’t think I’d miss but I totally do. She’ll never even know her dad because he didn’t make it onto this transport, so who knows if he died on Horizon or crashed somewhere else on the way down here?
Four of the guys went out a week ago against Officer Halsey’s orders. They said we were all going to die here if we didn’t find somewhere we could live and find food, so what did it matter what she ordered? Only one came back. He said they went south along the cliffside, looking for a way through. Said they found a pass that looked like they might be able to get over, and they found a cave. Inside there were bones. Human bones. And water bottles and equipment and a sat trans that doesn’t work anymore.
The remains of Officer Yi and his party. They barely made it a day’s walk.
So far we don’t know what happened to the other three guys that went out. They got separated in the dark. I’d like to hope they’ll come back too, but I don’t even remember how to hope anymore.
Chapter 4
The climb down the cliff was harder because I was trailing the dish’s wire. Staci helped me epoxy it into the cracks of the rock to anchor it but I feared every slip of my boot would jerk it free and make this whole morning a waste of time. I doled out the wire, wedging it into the rocks as I clambered and slipped down the rock face, following Staci’s lead.
When we finally reached the ledge that was the opening into our caves, General Enrico nodded at us. I was as tall as he was, and more sun-browned.
“Success?”
I nodded. “Success. Who knows how long it will hold, but at least for now, we’ve got reception.”
General E took the remaining wire from my shoulder and motioned for Staci and I to precede him into the tunnel. He paused to look out over the jungle. “We should close this up. Too exposed.”
I shrugged. “Nothing climbs up here. No reason to.”
He turned a sharp look my way. “We’re the reason. Every time we go down to the shuttle we leave a scent trail, no matter how hard we try to cover it up. If something wanted to follow it bad enough, it could get up here. If we can climb it, they can climb it.”
“But they don’t.”
We didn’t have to say who “they” was. Only one kind of predatory ‘saur could fit through this man-size tunnel. No one had ever seen Wolves climb. But few people who saw Wolves lived long enough to say what they’d seen. Swift, four-legged, intelligent pack hunters, they were as frightening as the distant vibration of a Rex’s footfall in the night.
“They haven’t,” General Enrico corrected. “Doesn’t mean they can’t.”
We passed through the tunnel into the huge open cavern, its ceiling dripping with stalactites covered in blue glowworms. Enough wind turbines spun in the valley to power electric lights, so the worms’ glow never seemed as bright as the day I found this cavern what felt like a hundred years ago.
“Get the wire run into the communications room, and I’ll have Justine get it patched into the repeater.” The General stalked off into the cavern. It still felt strange to call him “The General.” In my mind there would only ever be one real General, and we had named our valley Carthage after him.
Shiro was on watch at the mouth of the tunnel, armed with an automatic rifle. “Did you get the dish up?”
I nodded. Staci headed down the left-hand tunnel toward her family’s rooms with a quick backward glance. I yelled, “Thanks,” down the tunnel, but wasn’t sure if she heard me.
“Can’t see why he wanted to risk you climbing like that,” Shiro said, holding the big spool of wire for me as I played it out behind us. “Not like anything’s happening out there to hear.”
“I think it’s more for weather forecasting at this point.”
I stole a glance at Shiro as he unrolled the wire. His words bothered me more than I could have explained. A few months before, he’d have been out on those rocks with me, or maybe instead of me. He’d have been first to volunteer. But I hadn’t seen that cocky, secure Shiro for quite a while. Not since we found him washed up on the riverbank. He’d broken a leg on that mission, and faced an almost-certain death when we’d been forced to leave him behind. Since then, he hadn’t told a soul what happened to him out on that lonely tree. I wished he would. What I imagined for him must have been far worse than the reality.
We unspooled the wire all the way into the little cavern the General called the communications room, which was just a little space where the box of satellite transmitters and other bits of electronic equipment was stored. Justine knelt in the middle, surrounded by a pile of wires.
“I think we’ve got your juice,” I said, handing her the spool.
Her eyes lit up, but I wasn’t sure if she was happy to see the wired connection, or my haunted-eyed friend.
Shiro headed for his post in the tunnel and I turned back into the main hall. The cave system was huge, some natural and some carved smooth by an alien race that inhabited these caves and the valley long before Horizon was ever launched from doomed Earth. I trudged past my room on my way to the tunnel that led through the mountain and out into the valley.
My little sister Malia called out to me as I passed the room she shared with our mom. “Hey Caleb, you wanna play birdmen with me?”
I paused in the doorway. “Hey, Mali. Why aren’t you in school?” Scat it, you sound like Dad. The thought brought a squeeze to my heart. He would have loved this place.
She looked up from playing with a doll Mom had made her. It was mostly made of rags with wings made of dried leaves and a beak made of nut shells. Malia loved the images of the birdmen who carved these tunnels. “No school today. It’s Gamma Day, silly.”
Gamma Day. The day we declared a holiday to honor the five hundred humans lost when the third of Earth’s four Arks exploded before it ever got out of the solar system over two hundred years ago.
“I forgot,” I said, crouching down next to Malia. “That’s a cool birdman.”
She grinned. “The wings keep falling off, but that’s okay. Wanna play?”
I shook my head. “Can’t. Maybe it’s a school holiday, but I’m on field guard duty this afternoon. I’ll see you at the ceremony later.” Mr. Borin would probably speak at the Gamma Day ceremony. At least I wouldn’t have to say anything.
I trudged down the long staircase that led into more tunnels before finally opening onto a broad stone plateau
. The morning sun had crested the mountaintops and our valley was ablaze with light. I breathed in the clean air as the cavern’s cool gave way to Ceti’s summer heat.
It was coming along.
We’d been in the caves four months, and we’d found this valley two months ago. The people of Carthage had been busy in those two months. I looked out over the broad green fields. Large squares of it had been turned, the rich brown dirt baking in the sun. Rows of seedlings poked up through the soil, the beginnings of the crops that would feed us. Until the first harvest we were rapidly stripping the valley of all the ripe fruit we could eat, and the small grazing ‘saurs that lived here had grown wiser and much harder to hunt. There was nothing in the valley that could hurt us, so we did what humans did best, working the land to turn it to our needs. The chop chop sound of axes echoed across the fields, more trees going down to make fence posts and furniture. We needed corrals for our tiny flock of sheep, brought light years from ancient Earth, because they were trampling our crops in the night.
The valley was full of fruit trees, varieties we’d never seen in the jungle, or in our records from Earth. They were huge and overgrown but planted in long straight rows like nothing in nature could have made. We named all the fruits after different birds, because we know who planted those orchards, long before our time.
Our few remaining sheep could only be let out to graze at night because the Pterosaurs had learned they were easy prey. They were the only ‘saurs that could soar over the mountaintops, and they weren’t particular. They liked to eat our sheep. They liked to eat us, too.
I pulled my sat trans out of my pocket. No signal. Either Justine didn’t have it wired in yet, or the satellite wasn’t in range of the dish. Or the dish already fell off the ledge and crashed on the rocks below.
I crammed it back into my pocket and climbed down the plateau to join my brother and my mom on the field below.
Chapter 5
Everyone in the community headed for the Painted Hall that night for the Gamma Day memorial. Mr. Borin would probably lead it. We were having an election in a few days to formalize it, but everyone knew he was going to be our official Mayor. General Enrico didn’t seem too happy about it, but people were starting to feel a little safer in the valley. General E kept us running like a military organization, a stricter, tougher version of the kind of leader General Carthage was. The difference was that when General Carthage was our leader, we were surrounded on all sides by a jungle full of dinosaurs. Now we had mountains to keep them out, and people wanted a new leader.