All the next day, the camp was buzzing about the show. Kids said I ought to go to Hollywood if I could do special effects like that. That annoyed Melanie, who felt she ought to go to Hollywood after her wonderful acting. I told her that anyone who could work a computer could do special effects, but not everyone had acting talent like hers. It wasn’t true, but it cheered her up.
Nothing could cheer me up, though. I’d really messed up big time.
I wanted to run out and help, but I didn’t know how. My last glimpse of Vraj was her sprinting after the flying Duthwi, but I hadn’t a clue where they were now. And I didn’t know if the mysterious Duthwi menace came when they were newly hatched or if they had to grow up first. All I could do was wait for Vraj to contact me.
At Nature Nuts I just grunted when Opal gushed privately about our wonderful acting dinosaur and my great star effects though she couldn’t figure out how I’d done it. I kept mysteriously quiet. When rest time came, I slipped alone into the woods.
There, everything was quiet and peaceful. Only a few birds chirped sleepily, and even the insects sounded soft and drowsy. The air smelled spicy with pine and warm earth. I walked and walked without paying attention to where.
Slowly I noticed that something felt different. The drowsy quiet had slipped into uneasiness. Birds cried sharply overhead. I stared around and realized the trees here looked like they’d been blasted by lightning or hit by a tornado. Splintered wood lay everywhere. Trees rose halfway up, then ended in jagged spears.
What could have caused this? The patch of destruction was maybe thirty yards wide, and beyond it, the regular forest took up again. I was picking my way through the mess when suddenly the explanation was in front of me.
A hole had burned right through a tree trunk—a hole the shape of a star.
That’s what Sorn had meant about environmental danger. Duthwi ate trees. They destroyed them. And I’d loosed a bunch of them on the world! If they spread and laid more eggs, think of the damage they’d do! Oh, well done, Agent Zack.
I spotted a little brook running through the blasted patch, half choked with splintered wood and pine needles. Listlessly I followed it down the hill until it ran into living forest again. Then I sat on a mossy rock and stared gloomily into the silvery water.
Time passed. Gradually I realized the light and shadow on the stream had shifted. Ripples made one of the sunlit rocks look like it was moving. I stared. It was moving! It looked like a lumpy potato, and one of those lumps was throbbing.
Slowly I reached out and grabbed the thing. It was warm in my hands. I watched as parts bulged in and out and little cracks snaked over the surface. The whole thing shuddered, and bits of the surface fell off. Orange stuff underneath wiggled like jelly.
Suddenly it shook like a wet dog, and chunks of shell flew everywhere. An orange blob burst upward and splattered onto my cheek. It stuck.
“Mama!”
“I’m not your mama!” Was this thing talking to me? I didn’t hear any sound, but the translator in my ear was tingling.
“Mama, Mama, Mama!”
I reached up and tried to pull the thing away. Its gooeyness was beginning to harden—into the shape of a star.
“Mama, Mama, Mama, where are others?”
“Wha … what … ” I stuttered. “What others? Oh. The other Duthwi?”
“Brothers and sisters. Miss them. Lonely.”
“I don’t know where they are, but if you get off my cheek, I’ll get you something to eat.”
Instantly the thing dropped into my hand, a little orange star about the size of my palm.
“Hungry!”
“Right.” I picked up a piece of tree bark and put it in the middle of the little star. Its points closed around the chip, and in seconds the bark was dust.
“More!”
I fumbled for a larger chunk of bark and laid it amid the wiggling orange arms. They snapped closed, and soon that piece was gone too.
“Sleep now.”
The star closed in a tight ball and stopped wiggling. Astonished, I stared at the little thing. It must think I’m its mother because it saw me before anything else. I decided I’d better keep little Starry happy until I could find Vraj.
I put the little orange ball in my jacket’s roomy pocket and added some shredded bark.
Picking up a few more chunks for backup, I hurried back to camp. Rest period was just ending. I slipped into the cabin as the others left, pulled my pack from under the bunk, and transferred the sleeping Duthwi inside. Then I stuffed all the bark I had into the pack, shoved it back, and hurried off to afternoon Nature Nuts.
It was now easier to avoid being latched onto by Opal, because after the play she’d become almost popular. So I had all the mental time I wanted to worry.
Before dinner, I checked on Starry. It was sleeping again after eating all the bark. I went outside to scrounge up some more, put that in the pack, and went off to dinner. My plan was to sneak out that night, taking the little Duthwi to the lone pine tree in hopes that Vraj would show up.
Of course, those plans did not work out.
Before going to bed, while the others were trooping to or from the latrine, I pulled out my pack. It was empty except for a star-shaped hole on one side. Frantically I looked under the bed. No Duthwi. But there was a star-shaped hole in the cabin’s wooden wall. One hundred percent failure.
In agony, I lay in my bunk until my cabin-mates were finally asleep. Then I managed to sneak out. I half wanted to find Vraj at the tree and half dreaded it. But she wasn’t there. I sat and waited. Shivering in the chilly air, I gloomily watched the stars. The sky across the lake was lit by a faint display of northern lights. Cool maybe, but I wasn’t in the mood to be thrilled by nature. Even Opal’s chatty presence would have been welcome. But I was totally alone, and the more alone I felt, the more I began to worry about Vraj.
Sure, she was a conceited grouch, but she was also a lone alien given a tough job on what to her must be a completely strange and dangerous world. Besides, she was just a kid. Finally, though, even worry couldn’t keep me awake. I slunk back to the cabin and into a restless sleep.
The next day, everyone at the camp seemed a little down. It was the last full day of camp that session, and even those kids who’d been homesick at first didn’t want to leave now. An extra-big campfire was planned for that evening, but I wasn’t in the mood for even thinking about fun.
In the afternoon, I trailed behind the others on our last nature hike. I didn’t feel very chummy either. Suddenly something slammed into my head.
“Mama!”
“Starry!” I cried from the ground, where I was sprawled with a starfish thing plastered to my forehead. It seemed to have grown.
“Mama, found brothers and sisters. They trapped. Bad people trap them. Got to help!”
Its vocabulary had grown too. “OK, OK. I’ll help. But you’ve got to let loose. And don’t fly off, you need to show me where to go.”
“OK, I stay. But hungry!”
It peeled itself off and walked down my face like a big, fleshy orange spider. Swinging my patched knapsack off my back, I stuck in some bark and twigs and urged the little Duthwi to crawl in. I’d just reshouldered my pack when Opal and Walt, the kid who’d given the talk about nighttime animals, came walking back down the trail.
“We just noticed you were missing,” Walt said. I was glad to see he’d gotten chummy with Opal.
“What’s that big red mark on your forehead?” she asked.
“Oh. I ran into a branch. I have an awful headache. I think I’ll go to the nurse.” I avoided actually looking at Opal. I knew that if she guessed this was a cover story, she’d want to go along. But with Gnairt involved, things could get dangerous. Anyway, this was my mess to clean up.
At the nurse’s I complained of a migraine headache. My mom gets those, so I knew how to fake one. I said light hurt my eyes, and I saw lots of glowing wiggly lines. The nurse had me lie down in a dark room and said
no one was to bother me for several hours.
Once she left, I reached into my pack. Most of the bark and twigs were gone, but the warm little star was still there.
“Go help others now?”
Before I could say anything, it had scrambled up my arm and under my shirt, settling onto my shoulder. It didn’t really hurt, having the Duthwi stuck there, but it tingled like when my mother rubs smelly ointment on my chest when I get a cold.
“Right,” I said. “We’re going to help now. But where are they trapped?”
“Other side. Big water.”
At the window, I pushed aside the curtains and looked out. This was the back of the nurse’s building, facing the woods. Unlatching the window, I pushed it open. Then I spied some crayons and paper on a table and scrawled a quick note, saying I felt better and had gone to join the other campers. That way no one would look for me for a while.
In the woods, I avoided paths, but when I reached the lake, I realized my clever planning had petered out.
Lake Takhamasak was not small. But somehow I had to get to the other side and rescue hungry little aliens from bigger nasty aliens who probably had terrible weapons. My only ally was a snotty alien dinosaur who I hadn’t seen in days. The Gnairt might have even killed her by now.
No, this was not a fun summer, I said to myself as I started trudging along the shore.
Waves lapped gently against the sand as I marched along. I stepped over a groove left earlier by a canoe, then stopped. I could canoe across the lake!
I looked back along the shore. The camp’s dock wasn’t far. And I knew how to canoe. Sort of.
Keeping a wary eye out for counselors or campers, I trotted back. The canoes were pulled up on the sand and turned over. The first one I came to was wooden and looked heavy as a tank, but the next was light. I flipped it over and hauled it to the water.
“What doing?” The tingly voice filled my mind. Starry must have been sleeping on my shoulder.
“I’m borrowing a boat so we can cross the lake.”
“Hurry. You so slow!”
“I’m going as fast as I can. I can’t fly, you know.” I shoved the canoe half into the lake, then looked it over. “Can’t canoe either. No paddle. I’ll have to go look for one.”
“No time. I paddle!”
“Oh sure.” I’d just spied a broken paddle on the sand and decided to take it rather than risk anyone catching me in the boathouse.
My feet got soaked when I launched the boat, but soon it was gliding into the lake, screened from the camp by a rocky point of land. Sports Sprite Scott would have jeered to see me handling the canoe. I kept switching the stubby broken paddle back and forth to keep us in a slow, crazy zigzag.
“Too slow, Mama!”
Like an itchy whirlwind, Starry crawled out of my shirt and down my arm. It examined the paddle, took a huge bite out of the blade, and then crawled along the side of the canoe to the back.
“Hey, don’t eat the paddle! How am I supposed to make this boat move?”
“I paddle.”
And it did, sort of. Starry climbed down the boat’s stern to the waterline, held on with two arms and began kicking with the others. Slowly we moved forward. It kicked faster and faster until we were shooting along like a paddle-wheel steamer. I remembered how earlier I’d been annoyed that I wasn’t getting a chance to canoe at this camp. Be careful what you wish for!
My hair blowing back, I crouched low, held onto both sides, and watched the far shore come closer. Closer and closer.
We weren’t slowing down! “Whoa! Stop paddling!” Starry did just in time to send the canoe scraping way up onto the beach.
Shakily, I climbed out. “Thanks. I’ll walk now.”
“I fly. Hurry!”
Starry spun in the sand then shot into the air like a small orange helicopter. In moments it had disappeared over the trees. Some guide.
Leaving the pebbly beach, I walked through tall grass, then into the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of orange. All I saw were dark pines and shafts of late afternoon sun.
Abruptly the trees stopped. I found myself standing at the top of a cliff looking down into a landscape as bare as the moon’s. It was a wide, gray valley dotted with piles of gravel, rusty machinery, and a few small buildings. Surely even Duthwi couldn’t make a place this bare. It was an old gravel quarry, I realized.
Just then, a small pine branch crashed down beside me. I looked up. My friend was snacking through a tree.
“Hey! I thought you were in a hurry.”
In a shower of sawdust, Starry landed on my head. “Paddling hard work. Need food. Hurry now. Follow me!”
It sailed into the air in front of me, maybe fifty feet above the bottom of the pit.
“No way!” I muttered, looking down the sheer cliff. But there was a way, and I knew it. The problem is that it’s easier to accept the idea of being an alien as long as it’s just an idea, as long as you’re not doing weird alien things.
I sighed and lowered myself over the edge. I just had to let my alien instincts take over. “Don’t think, don’t think.” I chanted Agent Sorn’s words to myself as I climbed down. Somehow toes and fingers found tiny chinks in the rock, and in moments I was at the bottom. Lizardman strikes again.
An orange speck dropped from the blue sky, buzzed over me, shot off to where the gravel pit turned a corner, and then disappeared. Keeping to the cliff’s shadow, I ran in the same direction.
At the rocky corner, I peered around into another section of the gravel pit. This wasn’t quite as deserted. There were several sheds, a cinderblock building, and a few empty gravel trucks. There was also, quite clearly, a spaceship.
Not that I’d ever seen a spaceship before, but there are some things you just can’t mistake. Also, several creatures were moving near it, creatures that looked like they ought to be near a spaceship. They also looked like creatures you didn’t want to see up close if you didn’t have to. I had to, of course.
On hands and knees, I crept for a ways behind a low rock spur that finally gave out near the remains of a rusty mobile home. Peering around the wreck, I could hear the creatures near the spaceship talking, but I couldn’t catch what they were saying.
To get closer, I slithered snakelike through the dust until I was crouched behind a stack of metal barrels. It was still nothing but gargling until, with a sharp pain in my ear, the translator kicked in. The first voice was high and oily. I shivered. A Gnairt.
“Eighty is the number of Duthwi we have to offer. Not a full hatching, perhaps, but more than you’re likely to get a crack at in any hunting park, legal or illegal. Give us the money, and we’ll release them. In a few hours they’ll be dispersed and will be as challenging a hunting game as you’ll find anywhere in the universe!”
The next voice was watery and deep.
“The challenge is alluring, but what about the Galactic Patrol?” A horrid gurgle that must have been a laugh. “Not that we Flaaa have any problems with breaking the law, we just do not relish getting caught. It is an annoyance.”
“Would we allow our best clients to be annoyed?” Another Gnairt voice. “Should the Patrol appear, which is highly unlikely, we have the means to keep them at bay.”
A gurgle rolled into words. “How? Your ship does not appear heavily armed.”
“No. But as always, we Gnairt are armed with cunning, and that has given us two weapons to use. First, we have captured a Galactic Patrol officer, apparently the one they sent here to reclaim the eggs. Should the Patrol arrive and forbid your hunting, we simply threaten to kill her unless you are allowed to complete your hunt and depart without pursuit.”
So that’s what happened to Vraj! Captured by these slime.
The Flaaa grumbled. “But perhaps they would be willing to sacrifice one Patrol officer. Eighty is a fortune in rare, succulent Duthwi.”
“Which is why we have a fallback. Should the Patrol continue to trouble your hunting pleasure, we have native hostages as w
ell.”
“Indeed? Are they imprisoned here too?”
“No need. See the weaponry mounted over there? It is trained on the far side of this lake, on a summer encampment of native young. Nearly a hundred of them. And remember, this planet is approaching the time of its invitation to join the Galactic Union. Mass slaughter of their young by aliens would not be a good introduction.”
Flaaa laughter sounded like someone throwing up. Or maybe that image came to mind because that’s what I felt like doing. Leaning against a barrel, I forced myself to think calmly.
OK. Vraj, the operative I was supposed to help, was captured and in danger of being killed. Bad. The Duthwi hatchlings I was supposed to protect were going to be killed for sport. Very bad. The place where my friends and fellow campers were staying might soon be blown off the planet. Very, very bad.
When I’d first realized that this was going to be a bad summer, I didn’t have a clue just how bad bad could be.
The sky above the quarry glowed with sunset. Not that I could admire it at a time like this, but it told me I’d be losing light soon. Whatever I was going to do, I’d better do it now.
I crawled along the wall of barrels for a better look at the speakers. Immediately I wished I hadn’t. Through a gap, I saw two Gnairt and one creature that must have been the Flaaa. Gnairt I’d seen before—none too handsome, but they look basically like fat, bald humans. Flaaa, however, were why the word “ugly” was invented.
This guy was a large puke-colored slug. Lumpy arms bulged out of his body wherever he needed them and then sank back in while another arm popped out somewhere else. Mostly those come-and-go arms seemed to be juggling a weapon-looking thing or scratching patches of undulating skin.
If I’d had time, I would have been sick right there.
I had to find where they were holding Vraj and somehow free her. Slowly I crawled backwards. I’d almost reached the shelter of a rusty piece of machinery when something grabbed my shoulder.
“Mama!”
Good thing I was too petrified to scream.
Camp Alien Page 5