by Scott Baron
“Then stop yapping and give me a hand,” she said, wedging her fingers into the narrow space.
Charlie put his shoulder up against hers and added his strength to the equation.
“Okay, on three.”
“Screw three. Just pull!” Rika commanded, the muscles in her arms straining with the effort.
Charlie pulled with all his might as well, and the heavy stone did budge, but not nearly as far as they’d hoped. He repositioned, bracing his foot against the adjacent rock’s uneven face and tried again, pushing with the powerful muscles in his legs as well as his arms.
Slowly, the stone began to pivot.
“It’s working. Keep going!” Rika urged.
They pulled even harder, fingertips turning white from the effort. With a soft grating of stone on soil, the rocky obstacle pivoted free at last, releasing a gust of cool, wet air. The opening was tight. One meter high and less than half that in width.
“We can fit,” Rika said, slipping through the gap. A light popped on inside the opening. “Come on, Charlie! You’ve got to see this!”
Charlie shoved his upper body through the gap, scraping his elbows as he forced his way into the space. “What the hell?” he gasped upon seeing where he stood.
They were in a long passageway with flat stones lining the floor, longer, arched ones curving overhead. Every four meters or so, perfectly carved sconces adorned the buckled walls, long vacant their illumination. The walls themselves bore designs in the stone, looking as if the smooth lines had been a natural part of the rock rather than carved.
“This is...” Words failed him.
“This is proof of intelligent alien life,” Rika said, breathless, her eyes aglow with excitement.
“Something happened here, Rika. Something bad. A civilization is gone. What could have done that?”
“It might have just been time, for all we know. But look,” she said, turning off her light.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Give it a second, your eyes will adjust.”
Sure enough, they did, and that was when Charlie saw it. “There’s light up ahead.”
“Yep. I saw it when I first crawled in. Super-faint, but something’s illuminating whatever’s around the bend down there.”
Charlie felt a flash of hesitation course through his veins. A moment of fight-or-flight. This is stupid. I just survived a spaceship crash on an alien world. What more could I possibly have to be afraid of?
“Come on, Rika. Let’s go see what surprises our alien friends left for us.”
Chapter Nineteen
The subterranean cistern was vast, the vaulted ceiling miraculously intact despite a spiderweb of cracks from whatever cataclysm had ravished the surface many years prior. Light reflected off of the pale stone, a radiant glow spread across the chamber by the iridescent, silent waters.
A power was present. Far more than the tiny puddle they had found above, its contents thinned and weakened over hundreds of meters of slow filtration through tiny fractures in the stone beneath the wasteland’s surface. In this place, the true potency of the waters was readily felt.
Charlie crouched low and gingerly placed his right hand beneath the calm surface.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“We’ve both already touched it. I don’t think it’s going to hurt us.”
Rika, though she agreed with him, nevertheless placed her scanner into the water.
“It’s pure. Perfect.”
“I know,” he replied. “Can you feel it, though? There’s something to this place.”
Without thinking, Charlie slid from the shore into the glowing pool, the dirt and aches of their ordeal washing away in an instant.
“Oh my God,” he gasped. “Rika, you have to come in.”
She didn’t require any further motivation, and was, in fact, already out of her boots when she took his invitation and stepped into the water. Her body felt alive, her skin tingling with energy as the waters stripped her of dirt and pain.
“It–it’s amazing,” she managed to say. “I can feel my muscles unknotting. And my sunburn, it’s gone.”
“I know,” Charlie replied, his eyes wide with amazement, reflecting the water’s faint glow. “There’s some compound in this that doesn’t show on our scanners. Maybe a topical analgesic combined with, what? Something that triggers cellular regeneration? The science is beyond me.”
“We need samples. This could change medicine!” Rika blurted before the reality of their situation reared its head once again. “Oh yeah, we’re stranded on an alien planet and no one knows we’re here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Charlie said. “What if we could figure out what exactly caused the phenomenon?”
“You mean wormhole.”
“Tomato, tomahto. What I’m saying is, the drive control systems and power cells are located in the top of the ship. It may take a hell of a long time, but now that we aren’t going to die of dehydration, perhaps we’ll be able to backtrack the glitch and reverse engineer it.”
“That ship will never fly again and you know it.”
“Obviously. But we don’t need to fly. We just need to get a message home.”
Rika pondered for a moment. It was an incredibly long shot, but as good as the waters had her feeling, she was beginning to think maybe it just might be possible now that their deaths seemed less imminent.
“Maybe, Charlie. Maybe. But for the moment, we really should get some of this back for the others. It’s so much more potent than what we found in that little pool.”
“I agree. Unfortunately, we filled all of our containers back on the sled, but we can empty the one we were carrying with us and fill it with this water. We’ll drink our fill before heading back, anyway.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said, swimming lazily to the smooth stone shore.
Charlie followed, enjoying the feel of the water on his body one last moment before their trek back through the dust and grime.
“Here,” Rika said, offering her hand, pulling him up from the water.
The two bumped into one another, standing close, face-to-face. Charlie could feel the heat of her body, radiating through their wet clothes. Impulsively, she pulled him in and kissed him, and much to her pleasure, Charlie kissed her back.
“Whoa,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Me either,” he replied, cheeks flushed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to––”
“It’s okay. I-I mean, it must be the water. It makes everything feel good.”
“Yeah. We, uh, should probably, uh, get going,” Rika blurted.
She made no move to leave.
“Uh, okay, if you want,” Charlie replied after an uncertain pause.
Rika stared at him a long moment, gears turning. “You’re right. We’ve been gone long enough.” With that, she turned and headed for the passageway to the surface.
Stupid, Charlie! What were you thinking? ‘Okay, if you want?’ My God, way to kill the moment, idiot. He silently kicked himself, then poured out what remained in his container and refilled it with the pool’s rejuvenating waters. “Hey, Rika. Wait up!”
They crawled back to the surface, drying off quickly in the heat of the afternoon suns, the dry air wicking the moisture from them in no time.
“We should keep this from the elements,” Charlie said. “Even with that much water, we don’t know how long it’ll have to last us.”
“Agreed. Let’s slide the rock back in place and pack dirt over it to seal the cracks. Now that we know where it is, we can pretty easily find this particular pile of rocks and dig it up as needed.”
“Yeah. And maybe we can rig something less heavy when we have a chance. Like a pair of plastic sheets to seal the entrance. That’d be a whole lot easier to move, especially if you consider that we may be here a very long time.”
“That’s a good plan, Charlie,” Rika said, a teasing hint of
the curiosity and warmth she’d shown in the cavern flashing in her eyes. “You know, you’re really thriving in this,” she said, gesturing at the wasteland surrounding them.
“Just trying to keep us alive, is all.”
“Well, you’re doing a good job. Stepping up. Not everyone would, you know. Most would fall apart from the pressure.”
“Don’t worry, I’m falling apart on the inside,” he joked.
“Somehow I doubt it.”
Again, with that look.
“Okay, enough pep talk. Let’s get back and put some of that water to work. I know you’re as curious as I am to see how it will affect more serious injuries.”
“You know me so well,” he said with a laugh, his spirits higher than they’d been in days. Maybe even longer. It had been a while since he’d felt so good. “Lead the way, madam,” he said with a little bow and a flourish.
“Why, thank you, good sir,” she replied with a warm smile, and took the lead for the long trek back.
Chapter Twenty
It had been a surprisingly short walk, with Rika and Charlie quickly covering the distance from the hidden cistern to where they had left the sled in no time. Their spirits as well as their bodies were humming with good energy.
They retrieved the sled and trekked back toward the others. Charlie’s skin had remained unharmed, even before his dip in the healing pool, so he deemed the potato likely to be edible. They’d experiment further with the lone tuber upon their return to camp.
Loaded on the sled were a few semi-functional pieces of diagnostic and scanning equipment, which, while pretty banged up, Charlie hoped to salvage for parts. Also weighing down the sled were several containers of the restorative water, one of which happened to be particularly potent. Despite the load, Charlie’s legs felt great.
“Hey, Rika.”
“Yeah, Charlie?”
“Do you think all of those other piles of rocks could be ruins?”
She looked out across the barren expanse, small––depending on distance––clusters of stone dotting the landscape. With the red sun falling lower on the horizon, the mysterious mounds seemed to somehow stand out as the spectrum shifted.
“I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, given what we now know, it seems highly likely there were other stone buildings at one time or another, so could those others be ruins from long ago? I don’t see why not.”
“Wild,” Charlie said with an appreciative whistle. “We not only met our first alien––”
“I shall call him Mr. Tuber,” Rika joked.
“Yes, Mr. Tuber. And then we found an alien swimming pool.”
“I really doubt that was a swimming pool.”
“I know, but just go with it, okay?”
Rika laughed, and a warm happiness filled Charlie’s heart.
“You know what?” he said. “I’m starting to have a good feeling about our odds out here.”
A shadow fell over them, moving quickly past.
“What the hell?” Rika said, looking skyward.
A strange craft with a smooth bottom shell and no visible means of propulsion glided over their heads, dropping down toward their crashed ship. The vessel was forty meters long, thirty wide, and twenty tall, with the front only slightly more tapered than the rear.
It made no sound as it flew by.
“Charlie! Aliens!”
“I see them,” he replied, suddenly very much not sporting the good feelings of moments prior. “But what’s driving that thing? There’s no wake. No thrusters. I can’t see any engine systems at all.”
“I don’t know. But they’re actual aliens, Charlie!”
He looked closely as the ship dropped lower near their camp a mile ahead. As the dust rose, it seemed as if there was a faint orange glow surrounding the ship.
My eyes aren’t that good. How did I see that? Charlie wondered. Maybe it was simply that the water’s healing properties that had given him better than 20/20 vision. In any case, the odd craft had settled down into a low hover just beside their ruined ship.
“We’ve got to get back,” he said. “Come on!”
The two wasted no time, running as fast as they could while still staying relatively out of sight, ducking behind small rock piles until they were able to cross the crashed ship’s debris field and trench, placing their ruined vessel’s mass between themselves and the aliens as they approached.
Out of sight, blocked by the wreck, they picked up their pace, the sled bumping behind them, until they reached their ship’s crumpled hull. Then they listened, silently, but there was no sound to be heard around the ruined craft’s bulk.
“We should go see what they’re doing,” Rika urged. “Our friends may need us.”
“We won’t do them any good if the bad guys catch us too.”
“We don’t know they’re bad. We don’t know the first thing about them,” she said, making for the front of their ship. “I’m going to take a look.”
“Rika, wait!” Charlie hissed. “We should wait until dark.”
She looked at the lone, yellow orb still in the sky. “Dark is nearly two hours from now. There’s no time.”
Dammit, he grumbled, then followed as she crept toward the bow.
“They look almost human,” Rika said.
Indeed, the beings were bipedal, and human in build. They wore a patchwork assortment of iridescent clothing bundled with coarser fabrics, almost as if they’d dressed themselves from a pile of castoff materials.
Their hair seemed to have a greenish tint to it, which went with the distinctly green tone to their skin. Their ears, Charlie noted, were rather elongated and somewhat pointed.
“They’re kinda like dark elves,” he said.
“Dark what?”
“Elves. I’m not saying they are. Just that’s sort of what they look like.”
A pained voice cried out, and the nearest of the alien elf creatures turned to investigate.
“That was Siobhan. I’m going to see what’s happening.”
“Rika, wait! We should wait until dark.”
“They may be hurting our friends, Charlie. I won’t sit back and wait around.”
“It’s not tactically sound. It’s almost dark, just wait that little bit.”
“Sorry, Charlie,” she said, her gaze lingering just a moment longer, then she turned and darted around the ship, crouching behind a stack of supply crates they’d been using for a windbreak.
She surveyed the scene and made a choice. It was not one that Charlie approved of.
“I am unarmed,” she said loudly, rising from behind her cover. “I am Rika Gaspari, acting commander of this crew. We mean you no harm. We have come to your world by accident and are stranded. We are a peaceful race. Will you help us?”
What is she thinking? There’s no way to know if they’re hostile or––
A pair of the green-tinged aliens rushed for her, grabbing her arms firmly and dragging her to the camp with the others. A third alien, a large one clothed in an even more hideous hodgepodge of patterns, made for the front of the ship.
Shit!
Charlie scrambled backward, but there was nowhere to run, and nothing to hide behind. The alien would round the ship in less than a minute.
Think, Charlie!
His eyes darted left and right. The debris was too small for cover. There was, however, a rut at the side of the ship where it had settled upon landing.
If I could squeeze in there and pull some soil on top of myself––
He wasted no more time thinking and set right to work acting, diving into the small rut and frantically pulling dirt on top of himself. He only hoped it would be enough.
Chapter Twenty-One
Charlie hated the feel of the dry, red soil creeping into every nook and cranny, but he remained mostly buried for nearly two hours in his impromptu hiding place, pressed against the ship’s hull. It was uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but he waited until he was absolutely sure the threat had passed.
> After the first few minutes of discomfort he tried to slow his breathing like a Zen master, only to realize it was hard to do with a mound of dirt pressing down on top of him, and a Zen master he was not. It was a long wait.
Finally, as the yellow sun set below the horizon, he dug himself out and slid free of what had begun to feel uncomfortably akin to a self-made shallow grave. The greenish aliens were nowhere in sight.
Charlie pulled the tools and lone tuber from his pocket and left them in the divot against the hull so he could move more quietly and freely, then crept silently around to the front of the ship, dropping to the dirt and belly crawling the last few meters.
Carefully, and ever so slowly, he peered around the curvature of the wrecked craft where the dirt met the hull. It was a good thing he did, because one of the oddly clothed aliens was looking in that direction. A pair of eyes hidden at ground level, however, didn’t catch his attention.
Charlie slid back slowly, then made his way to the rear of the wreck in a crouch, just in case prying eyes were watching from another direction. He dropped down into the trench dug by the craft and quietly scrambled his way up to the other side. The alien ship was still there, silently hovering inches from the ground on what appeared to be a thin cushion of some sort of glowing golden energy, barely visible to the eye.
A dozen of the tall alien elf-looking creatures had camped out in a small group beside their craft. Most had shed several layers of their patchwork clothing in the heat. Their underlying outfits were actually quite clean and orderly, the outer garments apparently mere protective gear.
Shit. Where’s Rika? Charlie wondered as he scanned the area. He could hear occasional sounds of human chatter, but the survivors were held somewhere just out of his line of sight. A cry broke the quiet, Omid’s voice clear through the dry air.
“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she is injured,” Omid yelled. With his broken ribs, it must have been incredibly painful.
“I’ll be okay,” Siobhan said, but Charlie could hear the effort in her voice. Whatever was going on, she was working hard to keep the agony of her broken legs in check.