“Thanks—”
“But Story Book, the distillation of it is, I have discerned how to force us out of orbit. Then we can test my theory on the Space-Fold mechanism.”
“Blitz!” I exclaimed. “Can we do it now?”
“Why yes, I suppose.” She flicked a tentacle at the co-pilot’s chair. I’d been demoted.
I sat, buckled myself in. “Okay...” I rubbed at the sleep in my eyes. “So do it.”
She nodded, one tentacle caressing my leg. “This might be our grand solution.” She was smiling, animated. More than I’d ever seen her.
I could still taste that horrid paste on my tongue. “There’s only a few more replications left for the nutrients, so we’ve got nothing to lose.”
Shrtz turned back to the control panels, her tentacle tips tapping at various locations until the screen appeared with an outline of the ship. She hit more buttons and I felt some powerful engine gear up. My seat began to rattle.
I looked over at her hopeful expression. “Do it,” I told her, gripping the caressing tentacle in my hand. She suctioned it onto me and pushed another sinewy almost-finger upward against a portion of the screen, as the console lit up to reveal the numbers by the slider.
A terrible rumbling shook my chair, and gravitational compression shoved me back against the seat. I closed my eyes.
Engines moaned, the navdeck shook, and it seemed to go on forever. I thought it was never going to stop. I held on and thought about my family. Wondered what they may have gone through at the hands of the Militia. I wasn’t even sure which prison planet they had been taken to, or if they had been executed.
I thought about Cassio, wondering if she was one of those poor souls ripped from the pod room. If so, I lamented, her last moments of life were spent inside the cramped suspension pod, drifting through oblivion. I hoped she was one of those who got away at Double Zero that night.
I thought about Shrtz, and the tentacle sex that had completely altered my view of cephalosapiens. At least I had known carnal bliss once more, before my life was gone from the universe.
As another tentacle slid onto my arm, steadying me, my jaw clamped down, for fear my teeth would vibrate right out of my mouth. Then the big hand rattling us finally let go.
I felt like we were coasting again.
I opened my eyes. Shrtz looked over at me and sat forward, studied the console, looked out the clearshield. On the ship schematic, Uranus was far behind us.
“It worked?”
“All indications are...affirmative.”
I unbuckled and jumped up to fall against her, my mouth finding hers in a kiss she seemed ill-equipped to handle. When I pulled back, she said, “This is kissing, yes?”
“Yes.” During our carnal encounter, I realized we had never kissed.
“Might we do more of that later?”
I smiled. “We’ll do plenty more, Shrtz. Now shoot us toward Earth, will you?”
She nodded, and her tentacles replaced me in my chair and buckled the belt, even as she was punching in the settings for the space-folding dinger-donger with other appendages.
Another few buttons and the compression pinned me to my seat again and the jostling was even stronger and longer, the lights flickering on and off in the cockpit, the colors beyond the clearshield changing from blue to white to yellow to red and back again. Blue. White. Yellow. Red. Blue. White. Yellow. Red. I tried not to think this time. Tried to just find my quiet spot in all the chaos, but all I could think about was dying. All I could feel were the cold fingers of fear clenching at my throat.
Through gritted teeth, I said, “I thought you said we shouldn’t feel anything?”
“It’s an old ship,” she explained, doing little to make me feel better.
Out the clearshield, I didn’t see stars zipping by, only a nimbus of white light around the ship.
It went on so long, and so violently, I thought maybe we would be trapped in that cosmic netherworld of violence for the rest of our short days. The ship creaked and jostled, moaning as if it were in the throes of death. Which didn’t bode well for either of us.
Panic had me wishing for a quick death. Anything would be better than that endless, terrifying earthquake all around me.
But with a popping sensation, we were adrift again, and the control panel beeped and lit up once more.
Touching my chest to be sure by sternum wasn’t somewhere in the seat behind me, I leaned forward, still catching my breath. “So where...are we?”
Shrtz tentacled the console until the galactic map reappeared. She took the yoke and managed to bank the ship right until the planet came into full view.
It was beautiful. Blue and green. It seemed nothing like a dead planet. It was vibrant. The most breathtaking thing I’d ever seen. “Is that Earth?” I whispered.
“That. Is. Earth.”
“You’re a genius!” I unbuckled and jumped up to hug her again, half-falling, when my legs wouldn’t support me, and all eight arms came around me, preventing my fall.
With great effort, I stood upright again, just gawking at that gorgeous hunk of green and blue rock.
Shrtz punched a screen display for the cosmic clock. “The day and month are still trying to calculate...but according to this...” She seemed taken aback. “It’s the year 2122.”
“Wait. That’s...what? A hundred fifty years in the past? We actually traveled to another time?”
“It appears so. And 50 years after the colonists left Earth for Scorpius.” She tapped more buttons. “It appears that the SpaceFold mechanism really did work, though I did not anticipate a TimeFold as well. I thought it might have been merely a more powerful hyperspace.”
She seemed befuddled. But it didn’t matter. “I don’t care. “Look.” I gawked at the beautiful glowing sphere in front of us. I studied the shapes of blue areas, the green areas. “That does not look like a dead planet.”
“It most assuredly does not.” She tentacled more buttons on the navcomm. “As we draw closer, I’ll be able to take more specific readings.”
I sighed, feeling the pressure in my bladder. “Well I have to visit the loo. I nearly wee’d myself on that last jaunt.”
A tentacle patted me as I got up.
On my way down the corridor, the Merkel in hand as always, I had to give my legs a little time to work properly again. I was so tired. So hungry.
I remembered the guard. If we were lucky, he’d just hang himself in the makeshift cell.
10
Back on the Bridge, I dropped into the co-pilot’s chair, happy to be the second in command. “So let’s get to it. How do we land?”
“I am afraid it is not that simple. I must still discern how the beacon works, and surmise our landing situation.”
It never occurred to me that Shrtz wouldn’t know how to get us down to terra firma safely. She’d figured out the hyperspace foldy-who-whats-it. And the fuel mystery solved by Uranus. “How long will that take?”
“I have no way of knowing. Perhaps hours, perhaps days. Maybe longer.”
“I’m not sure we can survive that long. The food is gone.” I had misjudged even the paste.
She sighed resolutely. “I am searching for an autopilot algorithm, keyed to the beacon signal.”
Longingly, I stared at that beautiful blue and green globe. So close, yet so far away. I knew the blue was water, and hoped the green meant lots of plant life. There was precious little of either on Pangea. Maybe Earth had vegetation so abundant that it made the planet look half green. If so, there would be plenty of breathable air. We could be safe there. If I could have sprouted wings, I would have flown down there myself, if I wouldn’t have burned up on entering the atmosphere.
My thoughts went to the glitch in the plan. “By the way, Shrtz. What are we going to do with the guard?”
She sighed. “Perhaps we should let him go.”
“So he can steal the ship, and go get reinforcements?”
“Well then, maybe we can pre
vent that aspect. Allow him to make his own way on the planet.”
“So that he can stalk us and kill us in our sleep?”
“It is a conundrum....” One tentacle scratched her bald head, probably because it itched, and not because she was outgunned by a puzzle. More likely, she just wanted to give me something to figure out on my own.
“Maybe we should just space him.”
She gave me her direct attention. “That would make you no better than he.”
“Well then, what are we going to do?”
“I will give it some thought, as I hope you will. Then we will discuss it further.” She went back to the console, and tapped around, looking for more beacon information.
“I was already thinking about it. There’s a shuttle in the starboard bay...”
She lifted the hairless ridges over her eyes. “And?”
“And we could put him in it, now, and he could pilot it to the surface, and fend for himself. Then when you get the beacon fluffage going, we’d probably be on a completely different spot on the planet. He’d never find us. That’s a lot of real estate down there.”
A tentacle poked up in the air. “But could he not use the shuttle to fly around and search for us?”
“He could, but sooner or later, he’d run out of fuel and be on foot.”
She nodded contemplatively. “That might be a solution.”
“Here’s another thought. If he doesn’t know we’re landing as well, he won’t be looking for us. We can tell him we’re going home.”
She smiled. “You are more intelligent than I first imagined.”
“Gee thanks.”
11
A light on the navcomm lit up. The symbol on the button was a vertical line with a halo of lines extending from the top. Shrtz said it looked very much like a beacon symbol. She noticed that it was the button with the least wear and tear on it, meaning it was used very little, if at all. “I suspect that it was not used because it never worked. Perhaps they didn’t know what it was for. Perhaps--” Her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “--it only works here. Near Earth.”
We both agreed she should engage that button. She did, and other things lit up, and the yoke to steer by descended into the console.
“What’s going on?”
“That seems to indicate we are not to pilot the ship now. Which means...” She checked some other areas on the panel. “We are on autopilot.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I think it is very good. We seem to be heading directly for the planet.”
“To land?”
“Yes.”
“Well then...” I had to shove down my excitement. There were other things to consider. “If we’re going to put the guard in that shuttle, we should do it now.”
“Agreed.”
She got up and together we headed down to the small pod bay. My legs were now being powered by hope, and by the possibility of being rid of Cleet for good.
Once he was revived from a snoring slumber and sitting up, I said, “Good news, Cleet. You’re being released.”
He frowned up at me from his seat on the grimy bunk. I had not made it a priority to provide him with fresh bedding. No telling what sort of germs were making camp on it.
He came peacefully, probably because he didn’t want to screw up his chances.
In the stern bay, we pointed him to the shuttle. I knew that shuttles had emergency kits and supplies, even though there was no food. I’d already raided it. We didn’t have food either; I’d been sharing our fuckering food with him the whole time, so why should he have more than we did? Still, he had what he needed to survive, unless he was really too dense for words.
His bushy eyebrows found several locations on his face, before settling. It did not compute in his mind. Why would a captor ever set a prisoner free?
“Get in the shuttle, and be on your way. You can land on the planet.” I motioned toward the window and he walked over to peek out. His eyes went wide. “Where the blork am I?”
“That’s Earth.”
He turned with a more confident scowl. “Earth is dead.”
“It came back to life over the last few centuries. Before your lord and master D’Lanod tried to kill it. There is no more fuel to return. You’ve been reborn, though I prefer the idea that you were never born in the first place. So you better make the best of it. That’s your ride out of here.” I pointed at the shuttle.
He frowned again. It was nice to see that someone else was a little slower on the uptake than me.
Shrtz helped him out. You have an opportunity to start fresh, have whatever life you choose.”
He squinted at us, unconvinced.
“Or,” I added with genuine joy. “We could lock you in here and open the bay door, and you can become space food.”
Clarity hit him all at once, and he scrambled toward the shuttle and got in, closed the hatch. Soon, the engines roared to life and we stepped out and sealed the door. When Shrtz opened the outer bay doors, Cleet swept the shuttle out and shot like a trace laser toward Earth.
I was jealous. I turned to Shrtz. “It’s our turn, now.”
We hurried back to the Bridge.
12
Buckled in on the Bridge again, I watched as the ship steered itself around the globe and redirected toward a large splotch of green.
“That landmass there—” Shrtz pointed out the clearshield, then to the map. “That’s North America. It’s where our ancestors were born.”
The blinking light on the map drew my eyes. I leaned closer. The beacon was taking us to a place with no name.
“Prepare yourself, Story Book,” Shrtz warned. “We are about to enter the atmosphere.”
Again, we endured the shaking and light changes and pressure, before breaking free and coasting toward the beautiful chunk of ground. We were at the mercy of the ship’s autopilot and some program that a scientist created over two hundred years ago. All things considered, I was okay with that.
Soon, the ship glided almost parallel with the surface, over great swells of mountains, the likes of which I had only seen on Ambient screens.
The ship hovered for long moments here and there as panel lights blinked on and off in different locations, and that’s when something popped on the console and flames licked the air hungrily. We both leaned back, but the fire was too hot. I released the restraint and Shrtz did too as we moved back away from the fire. The ship tipped to one side, forcing us into a dumping roll to slam against the wall, and with a skipping couple of bangs, we slid and came to rest with a violent jerk.
Pushing herself up, Shrtz hit a button with a flame on it and a foam spewed out from above, dousing the fire on the console.
The engine sputtered and died, and we stood, coughing in the acrid stench of burning wires and components, waving at the smoke as it dissipated.
I gawked out the clearshield
There were trees
Hundreds. Thousands of them. Real trees. And beyond them, a sky so blue and clean that it made me want to cry.
Suddenly Shrtz stood next to me, a tentacle extended to keep me steady. I fell into all eight arms. “Oh Shrtz, you saved us. We’re here. We’re on Earth. You saved us.” I hadn’t cried in many years, but now I let those tear ducts cleanse themselves, while my beloved ceph friend held me, stroked me, saying nothing.
Gathering myself, I wiped at my eyes. “Is it safe? I mean can we go outside?” I scanned the soot-covered console for information, but the backlighting had gone out.
She peered at the console. “I have no way of discerning the air quality. We require an ideal of seventy-seven percent nitrogen, 22 percent oxygen with trace amounts of argon.”
I stared at her. “I have no idea what that means.”
She smiled. “It dictates whether or not we may open the hatch and step outside.”
“It looks clean.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
“What choice do we have?”
“Indeed.” Shrtz seemed suddenly jolly. “I believe that nature has a way of thriving when there are no humans about to interfere.”
“Well there’s only one way to find out. Let me get my boots.”
Boots on, Merkel in my hands, we gathered our packs and cautiously opened the hatch.
The air greeted me, sweet enough to weight my eyelids closed as I reveled in its purity.
Shrtz closed her eyes and took a deep breath and smiled, sweeping a tentacle out. “After you, Story Book.”
My legs trembled beneath me as I stepped out and down the ramp with the Merkel gripped tightly, my feet landing on Earth with a crunch.
I looked down at the tiny brown needles blanketing the ground. I pressed my boot onto the needles again, watching them bend. I looked up at the tree and wondered if those green needles were the same as these brown ones.
Lifting my face to the blinding glow of the sun, I noticed the smells first. Pleasant, but completely unfamiliar.
Then I heard the sounds. Tittering in the trees. I looked closer and saw tiny creatures skittering about in the greenery. “Oh!” One of them burst off its place on the parts that poked out from the larger parts of the trees and flapped those strange arms, taking to the sky and disappearing over a tall mound that rose up so high. “They’re real....” I whispered.
“Birds,” Shrtz said.
I turned to her in wonder. “Does that mean there are...deers and bears and rabbits...all the rest?”
She nodded. “I would guess as much. We must be vigilant, however. Some of them are a danger to us.”
I gripped the Merkel tighter, but none of this came close to feeling as dangerous as every day of my life up until that moment. I continued to stand there, inhaling, listening, and feeling the gentle breeze on my face. Tears fell anew down my cheeks.
Shrtz was concerned for me. “Why are you sad, Story Book?”
“I’m not...I’ve never cried from being happy, but I am so happy right now.” I advanced on the tree, touched its rough skin. Pressed myself against it, inhaled its delightful perfume. On the ground, was a brown oval object made of other tinier bits, held together as if by sorcery. I picked it up, pressed it to my nose. That was one of the smells I smelled.
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