by Mark Zubro
“A big deal?” Mike asked.
“A very big deal.” Hok handed each of them a package that looked to Mike like a flat, gray, four-inch-by-four-inch rain poncho. Hok patted the flat thing. “Open these out and put them on. We’ll be as dry inside these as we would in here.”
When he unwrapped all the layers, it looked to Mike mostly like cling-wrap. Hok and Kench showed them how to put it on. It not only looked like cling-wrap, it kind of felt like it. For a moment he worried about his dad’s lectures about not putting a piece of plastic over his face.
Hok addressed the fear without him having to ask the question. “You’ll be able to breathe. It’ll be like a second skin. You’ll hardly feel it. The breathing parts of it work automatically.”
Mike was surprised that when fully encased he felt warm and comfortable instead of closed in and claustrophobic. Unlike Earth space suits, it was not bulky nor did it make you look like someone in a low budget science fiction film. You could walk and move normally. Mike thought of it as a semi-space suit.
Hok said, “It provides oxygen and warmth or cooling as necessary and has a built-in communication system. You talk and everyone in your party can hear you. You make adjustments here.”
Hok showed him a panel the size of a communicator on the right wrist. “You can make any adjustments, who you want to talk to, the temperature, whatever.”
Mike had his aura but it was easier to wear the semi-space suit than keep the aura activated against the elements. If he had to, he would use the aura.
Their boots, of some kind of galactic rubber, were amazingly light. Hok had assured him, “They give perfect traction no matter what the terrain.”
Encased in their protective cover, they re-hefted their backpacks. The group climbed the last set of stairs. In the tunnel they could hear the drumming of the rain. At the entrance Mike looked out for a moment at the falling grayness. Following the other two, he and Joe squared their shoulders, stepped from under the shelter, and plunged into the rain.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The four of them stepped outside. It was about noon.
Mike gasped.
A vista of limitless beauty greeted them. They stood on a ten-foot shelf. On their half of the valley rain poured down. Opposite them, the other half glowed in vibrant sunshine. The moons of 6743-0A were a slice of shadow in the sky where the clouds had cleared.
Mike was reminded most of the Chesley Bonestell art work “Saturn from Titan” which had originally appeared in Life magazine in 1944. It was that spectacular and more. And he was the only human who had ever seen the view this close to reality.
In front of them was a Grand Canyon of peaks and valleys of rainbow-hued beauty. Mike recalled the view from his prison cell when he was first on Hrrrm. Only in this case the colors were more vibrant as if someone had thrust cascading rainbows across the landscape. The colors rose and swirled around and over a landscape of mountains and valleys. And this time he was in the middle of it, not looking down on it from on high.
“Why are the sides of the valleys those colors?” Mike asked.
Hok said, “Minerals in the soil.”
“Like gold and jewels? It’s worth millions?”
“More like sand and rock worth nothing,” Hok said.
On their right, the path led up onto the mountain.
Looking down Mike could see that most of the plain was still covered with water. A veritable Mississippi flowed down the center of the plain.
The storms in the mountains rumbled in the distance. In the first days on the colony the distant nightly lightning displays had become their entertainment. He’d never been this close.
Mike was amazed and comforted to find that the outer gear he wore did, as Hok promised, keep him completely dry.
For days they trudged under gray skies with the black and gray storm clouds raging high up in the mountains above them. They followed the weather up as the storms receded higher and higher. They still had brief downpours at noon.
Most of the time the ground sloped up, but they had little cause to use climbing equipment. The ascent was gradual rather than sheer and treacherous. So far there had been no climbing up perilous mountainsides or rappelling down sheer cliffs, although they had equipment for such.
Mike had always been in good shape, running and working out regularly on Earth, and the physical labor here kept his abs as flat as a porn star’s and his biceps hard as rocks. He didn’t much care, although he was glad he looked good for Joe.
In daily briefings, Brux and his crew reported the usual deliveries and daily grind. Mike kept his communicator on at all times. If they got trapped, they could be tracked and rescued. Most of Brux’s reports were, “It’s dull and boring. We dig. We eat. We sleep.”
In answer to the most important question, Brux said, “No, the signal has not been renewed, and we’ve had no other communication from the Leavers.”
The first day, Mike asked, “How do we pick where to stop for the night?”
Hok paused on the path and pointed to the rocks upon rocks building to great towers above them. He said, “We can just sit down on a rock or sit on the ground. As for sleeping, we can do that anywhere with these suits.”
“We won’t be washed away or blown off a precipice?”
Hok said, “We can dig a shallow cave that will keep us safe.”
When they made camp the first night, Hok and Kench showed them how to merge their two space suits into one tent blanket that kept them quite comfortable. They smoothed away all the stones and used their packs for pillows.
Hok had them each eat an energy ball three times a day. He filled their water bottles on rivulets coming down off the rocks. He made sure they all drank.
One night after a week of climbing, as Joe and Mike lay together talking, Joe said, “The higher we go, the more nuts I think they must have been.”
“Or desperate,” Mike said. “Blindness to reality is not limited to nutty people on Earth or the Religionists on this side of the galaxy. Maybe stupidity was imprinted in the DNA of the universe at the first instant of the Big Bang at the creation of the universe.”
Mike remembered the old bumper sticker, “The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.” He wondered if they weren’t equally stupid chasing after and/or trying to rescue these people.
Just as Mike was falling asleep that night, Joe asked, “Could this be some kind of trick of Bex’s?”
Mike shrugged. “For what purpose? To get me alone to attack me? That doesn’t work.”
“To get someone to push you off a cliff.”
“It would require elaborate planning. He’d have to know the Leavers left, presume you and I would go after them, have someone he trusts as a killer. A lot of what ifs and maybes in there.”
Joe said, “I don’t think a lot of what’s happened to us has much of a purpose except to be vicious and malicious. I mean I know the exile is planned hatred and hoped for death. He’s done what he could to make us suffer. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Mike considered this for several moments then said, “I wouldn’t either, but we’re always careful. We’ll just have to see. They can’t kill us easily because of my implant. After that, beats the hell out of me.”
Hok and Kench slept next to each other in their own cocoon of safety. Mike didn’t bother to be curious to find out if they were making love. He was busy enough with Joe. He wasn’t worried about them watching him either. They could take pictures for all he cared. He just wanted to be close to Joe. At one point, with the frenzy of each mounting thrust as Joe pounded into him, he remembered the first time he’d done so in his apartment on Earth. This was even more glorious and exciting.
Often at night, when they finished and Joe had drifted off to sleep, Mike lay on his back. He could look out from their small shelter. Sometimes, he got a brief glimpse of stars before clouds rolled back in. They could see and hear the thunder and lightning as a distant reminder of peril
that drew closer each day.
At night, Mike felt the dirt under him, touched it with his hands. Somehow touching the earth here in this amazing grandeur made the reality of all that he’d been through come that much clearer. He felt overwhelmed. He was on a mad adventure in an unreal world, doing things he never dreamed of. At those flashes of memory, if he could have any wish, he’d be transported home in the next instant and wake up in his own bed in his own home in Chicago with Joe next to him.
It was at these moments, alone together with Joe, when uncertainty threatened to overwhelm him and he began to tremble, he’d move closer to Joe and spoon into him. His husband always put a drowsy hand around him to pull him close. Soon they’d both be asleep.
Most nights, in the middle of the night, they awakened to a crashing of lightning as the midnight storms raged around them. Their shelter and spread-out space suits kept them safe and dry.
On the tenth night when a lightning bolt hit ten feet above them, Mike’s aura flashed and repelled it. Mike doubled over. He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach by a muscle queen.
Joe knelt over him. Hok and Kench rushed over and looked at him in awe.
Hok said, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t have seen it.”
Joe asked, “You okay?”
“I think so. That was close.” After taking a few minutes to relax his muscles and catch his breath, Mike said, “We’ll be safe.”
Hok said, “You can beat lightning.”
Mike remembered Joe’s last battle with Vov on Earth.
“Hell of a thing,” Mike said. He concentrated on returning his breathing to normal. At the moment of the flash, he felt at one with the elements of the universe and the synapses of his brain in a way he hadn’t before.
His mind was torn between exhaustion and exhilaration. Joe held him close, but they foreswore sex. Mike remembered that on Earth Joe had needed a great deal of medical attention after his battle with Vov, and Joe had used the lightning for far longer than the brief flash Mike had encountered.
What have I become, Mike wondered? I kind of like it. And it scares me. Vast power connected to the fundamental elements of the universe. He thought like Dorothy, I’d rather be in my own home in my own room in bed with Joe.
His physical weariness overcame his racing mind and falling asleep that night was easy. Joe’s arms around him had never felt better than that night.
The next day his muscles protested more when he had to exert them. He gritted his teeth and marched on.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
As they climbed higher, the wind hammered at them for several hours in the middle of every day. At the same time, thunder roared nearly continuously in the distance. During the days, but especially at night, they could see the spectacular flashes of lightning among and between the peaks above them.
Several times a day, they encountered the remnants of landslides, the largest of which was over two miles across. If they could, they found a way around them, often having to detour miles to do so.
Twice they had to cross over them. Mike thought it was most like trying to walk on soap in a bathtub. He guessed he would have slipped if he hadn’t been wearing the extra-cleated sure-grip sticky-bottom shoes. Once they had to spend half a day finding their way around another slide that had obliterated what looked like their most easy and accessible way forward.
“What causes these?” Mike asked at one point.
Hok said, “Sometimes mountains just get old and things come loose. Up here, they might also get beaten and pulverized by the lightning. Or who knows what makes the last speck of dirt let go, followed by half a mountain or, hell, all of the rest of the mountain?”
Mike glanced up at the towering peaks around them. He shook his head from the vision of one of them crashing down upon them.
After ten days they were hit by their first total deluge. The rain made it difficult to see more than five feet in any direction. Mid-days were the worst for these. Each day they stopped to let the worst of the weather pass.
Mike had seen the storms from far below. The deluges on the plains were awful. These were worse. Perhaps the winds were funneled to greater strength up or down the slopes, between the peaks, up or down the valleys. He’d read the weather charts. The strongest storms up here were twice as strong as the most violent hurricane on Earth. The rocks that stood were scored and weathered.
In the early mornings and late afternoons when the storms were least violent, they stumbled on despite the elements. They were drawing ever nearer to the line where the rain gave way to snow. Mike knew his communicator could probably make them a path through it as he’d done while on Earth. He didn’t want to exhaust himself by using his power. Using it took a lot out of him.
Mile after mile for the past few days, the drop-offs had become more extreme. At times the path they followed forced them to hug a cliff face and walk single file roped together. They could use their communicators to find the most direct path to where the last signal had come from, but it was not always the most smooth and easy way. A few times they’d had to double back and go around another way past vast arroyos with torrents of rushing water. The thin suits kept out the worst of the wilding maelstrom.
Rushing rivulets tore through the narrow valleys created by the towering, rocky tors.
On the fifteenth day, they heard a roaring ahead of them.
“What is that?” Mike asked.
Joe shrugged.
He looked to Hok who listened intently for a minute. “Waterfall.”
They rounded the next bend. A cataract the size of Niagara greeted them and prevented them from proceeding straight ahead. A narrow path climbed to the left and up the side of the mountain in an almost vertical stair.
They climbed.
Looking up at one point, Mike saw a flash of bright light that was not lightning and seemed to be only a few miles ahead of them. He put his hand on Joe’s arm.
Joe said, “I saw it.”
Hok and Kench had stopped as well. Hok said, “That was a communicator going nova.”
Mike saw a dim light wink off and on for several moments, and then stop completely. It was about the same distance away. They all stared for a moment.
“What the hell?” Mike asked.
No one knew.
They called Brux. The static interference was constant at this height, but he could still communicate much of the time. Brux said, “We saw it too. We don’t know what it was. You saw it above you and to your right?”
“Yeah,” Hok confirmed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
To their right a ten-foot slope led to a drop-off. Mike figured this was way better than the usual narrow ledge they often had to traverse, since it gave them some leeway before the edge. On their left the mountain rose high into the clouds. The way ahead was a flattish, winding slope up.
In about a hundred feet the path turned a sharp corner and became a narrow track. Hok put out his hand to steady himself against the side of the mountain.
Mike saw a trickle of rocks begin to fall from where Hok’s hand had touched the mountain. Then it was a fountain of rock and then the mountain was moving. Mike’s aura flashed. Sheets of earth surrounded him. In seconds he was twirling in his cocoon of safety. He wondered if he was going to fall off the mountain. Moments later the earth stopped moving.
Mike was buried in a small bubble of safety. He sat on a floor of mud which oozed around his aura. His mind whirled. Where was Joe? He tried pulling on the rope which had linked him to the others. It had snapped. They were no longer connected.
Using his communicator, Mike caused his power to surge outward towards what he thought was up. Moments later he saw gray sky and rain poured in on him. Thunder and lightning crashed and flashed nearby. The others had been in front of him. He caused his power to blaze forward.
The earth moved as if he was plowing a new path. He lessened the power somewhat. He didn’t want to hurt them as he unburied them or accidentally hurl the
m off the mountain or cause the mountain to slide some more. In minutes he’d found Joe and Hok. They were unhurt.
“Where’s Kench?” Hok asked.
Joe and Hok were still tied together, but like the rope to Mike, the one to Kench had been severed in the landslide. Mike set his communicator and located a signal from Kench. They fell to digging frantically. Lightning flashed ever nearer. They needed to get to shelter, Mike thought. Falling off the mountain after being fried or incinerated by lightning was the kind of two-fer that Mike wasn’t interested in. Although he figured his aura must be some protection. He hoped.
Mike pointed. “There. I think he’s ten feet down. We’ve got to get to him before he suffocates.”
Joe and Hok began to dig again. Mike said, “Wait.”
“What!” Hok screamed.
Mike sent out a narrow beam of power aimed one foot to the left of where his communicator said Kench was. In a moment there was a foot-wide shaft down to him.
“Kench!” Hok yelled.
They heard sputtering.
At least Kench was alive.
“Are you okay?” Mike called.
“I think so. Yeah. Half of me is still buried.”
Continuing to use his power like a plow, Mike began to expand the shaft down to Kench. Hok and Joe shoved dirt off the side of the mountain. Mike watched the surrounding mountainside for signs of another slide. It looked solid enough to his untrained eye. Mike hoped that if another slide started, his aura would protect all of them. Then again, they could all just be pitched over the side of the mountain.
A bolt of lightning hit about fifty feet in front of them. It split a rock. A buzz of the bolt connected to Mike and his communicator. The beam he’d been sending to move tons of rock, expanded. In a second or two all the earth in front of them and to the right slid down the mountain. Where they were, stayed put.
Mike doubled over. Again, all the breath left him and his stomach felt like an elephant was sitting on it. When he looked up, Kench was standing free. Joe was bending over Mike and had his arm around him.