Space Rocks! (13 page)

“Great!” said Hollins, rubbing his injured leg. “After we get some food and sleep back at camp, we can come back first thing in the morning!”

“What? But I'm only eight, maybe nine percent done here!” cried Nicki. It ran contrary to her nature to walk away from an unsolved problem right in the middle of it. She wanted to stay and work on the starships. Little Gus wanted to stay too. He was nervous about leaving the iridium hangar unattended so that anyone could just steal it.

In the end, they relented and agreed to return after we'd eaten and rested. Together, we headed back up the winding staircase toward camp. It had been an eventful day; we were all tired and hungry.

At last, we climbed out the entrance onto the rocky shore beside the stream.

“Say, Chorkle,” asked Little Gus above the roar of the waterfall. “How come you went all camo again?”

I looked down at my skin. It had again changed to the exact same shade as the rocks around us, an autonomic response to the threat of a nearby predator.

“Oh no,” I said, my is'pog sinking. “Another thyss-cat!”

T
he group froze. Something inside me, some ancient tingle on the edge of awareness, had once again detected the presence of an ancestral predator. This reflex had turned my skin a dappled gray.

“Another thyss-cat?” groaned Becky. “Seriously? Two in one day? That's excessive.”

“Maybe it's just a giant spider,” I said hopefully as I scanned the rocks around us.

“And that's better . . . how?” asked Nicki.

“Everybody stick together,” said Hollins, folding knife now in hand. “Don't get separated.” He knew better than anyone just how dangerous a thyss-cat could be.

I swiveled all my eyes, scanning the spaces between the rocks for signs of the beast.

“There!” I cried, pointing about fifty meters down the shore. I saw a patch of blue fur hunkered down between two boulders. The humans strained their eyes, but, as usual, they couldn't see that far.

Just then, we all heard a fearsome—meow?

“Huh. This one . . . doesn't sound quite as big,” said Hollins.

We followed the sounds of mewling. Among the rocks we found a tiny thyss-cat. It was just a cub, only a few weeks old. Even I, the natural prey species of this animal, had to admit it was adorable. A little blue fur-ball with a pink tongue and huge yellow eyes. Its high-pitched distress squeaks pushed its lovability beyond all reason.

“Want hug,” said Little Gus, reaching his arms out toward the cub. Apparently its cuteness level had garbled
his
human language skills.

“The big one was probably its mother,” said Nicki, shaking her head. “Now she's . . .”

“We should—we should probably leave it here,” said Hollins. But I could tell that even he wasn't immune to the little thyss-cub's charms.

“If we leave it, it will starve,” I said. Immediately, Little Gus bent down to offer the cub a bit of dehydrated chicken cacciatore that he'd been keeping in his pocket. It sniffed at the strange reddish hunk. And then it sneezed.

“Awwww,” we all said in unison. All except Becky, that is. Her judgment remained unclouded.

“Oh no,” said Becky. “You all saw what happens when these things get bigger, right? Unstoppable killing machine. Remember? Nearly ate Hollins? This animal isn't nice.”

“C'mon,” said Little Gus. “If we hadn't—if I hadn't done what I did, its mom would still be alive right now.” He was right. Although, I'd almost been killed and eaten by its mother, so I had a bit of trouble empathizing.

“I don't know,” said Hollins. “Look at its little feet. They're like baby mittens.”

“Six baby mittens,” said Nicki softly as she bent down to rub the cub's left middle paw with her fingers. It squeaked.

“You've all lost your minds,” cried Becky. “That's it! I'm assuming command here. Executive order: No alien kill-beasts as pets!”

“Please,” said Little Gus. “It will be my responsibility. I'll clean up after it.”

“What? Dude, we're not even talking about that! Look, when our parents come back for us, there's no way they're letting you bring that thing with you,” said Becky. “You can't even take a pineapple through customs at the airport. You think you're going to get a space puma back to Earth?”

“Reeeeeowr,” said the baby thyss-cat, suddenly and adorably.

“Did you hear that?!” cried Little Gus. “It just said ‘Little Gus'! Everyone heard that, right?” Everyone nodded except Becky.

“Hopeless!” cried Becky, and she stalked off toward the rope, still dangling by the waterfall.

“Becky stopped arguing,” said Little Gus.

“Never happened before,” said Nicki. “I guess that means you won?”

“So I can keep it!” he cried.

“For now,” said Hollins.

“My new best friend!” said Little Gus, and he reached down to pick up the cub. “Sorry, Chorkle, you just got bumped to the number-two slot. You should have been cuter.”

“It's okay,” I said, shrugging. I was secure enough to admit that the thyss-cub was significantly cuter than me.

“So what should I call the little monster?” he asked, stroking the cub's fuzzy chin.

“Manitou,” said Hollins.

“Eigenket,” said Nicki.

“Our Future Murderer,” shouted Becky back toward us. She was already halfway up the rope.

“‘Zhyddmor' means ‘hunter' in Xotonian,” I offered.

Little Gus nodded thoughtfully at all our suggestions. “Hmmm. I think I'm gonna name it . . . Pizza!” he said.

“Pizza?” asked Nicki, crinkling her nose. “Why?”

“Because. I. Love. Pizza!” he cried, and he lifted the thyss-cat cub above his head in triumph. Now and forever, the beast would be known as “Pizza.”

“This is way better than an ostrich,” said Little Gus, cuddling Pizza close to his chest as he walked back toward the dangling rope.

Nicki turned to Hollins. “You know, Becky's probably right. It probably isn't safe to let him keep it,” she said quietly.

“I know,” said Hollins. “But I think he needs this. Gus has had a rough couple of days. We all have.”

Nicki nodded, and Hollins turned and limped toward the rope.

“A
nd then the guy from the phone company was like, ‘I'm sorry, miss . . .'” said Becky, pausing dramatically. “‘But we traced that phone call . . . and it's coming from inside your own house!'” Becky leaned back. The light of the campfire danced on her face, turning her eyes into wells of deep shadow.

This was apparently the end of her story. None of the other humans seemed impressed.

“Nobody has land lines anymore,” said Hollins.

“A few people still do,” said Becky. “Anyway, this story happened a long time ago. When everyone had a land line.”

“If you call your own phone number, don't you just get a busy signal?” asked Nicki.

“Not back then,” said Becky.

“What happened after the phone-company guy traced the call?” asked Little Gus.

“Uh, the girl got out of the house just in the nick of time,” said Becky. “That's what I heard.”

“So no harm done,” said Little Gus.

“No, the whole thing scared her very badly,” said Becky. “Imagine getting a bunch of really spooky, threatening calls. In fact, those calls scared her so badly that—that she died.”

“How does that work?” asked Hollins.

“Heart attack.”

“You're telling us that a healthy teenage girl died of a heart attack?” asked Nicki. She sounded highly skeptical.

“Yeah. I mean, maybe she had, like, a condition before that . . .” Becky trailed off.

“And why did the mysterious caller do all this?” I asked.

“Oh, come on. Not you too, Chorkle,” she said, sighing. “Look, I don't know. Maybe the dude was just crazy. I'm tired of answering questions. Someone else can tell a story, and I'll fact-check it.” Becky scowled and crossed her arms.

We had all just eaten a meal of fried r'yaris—all five that Becky had caught earlier. After a brief, informal ceremony in which Becky was declared to be the winner of the contest with Hollins, Little Gus tossed them into the pan with a sizzle.

His culinary skills were evidently improving. He did a surprisingly good job of cooking them. He'd used salt, pepper, and just a hint of “synthetic lemon juice–like substitute.” Everyone enjoyed the meal, even as they tried to forget that they were stuffing themselves with “brains that can swim.”

“From now on, can we just refer to these things as ‘tilapia'?” Hollins had asked as he chewed (apparently this was an aquatic species on Earth). All the humans agreed that a little wishful thinking would improve the experience.

Now we sat by the campfire in the philiddra forest, four human stomachs and one Xotonian z'iuk full of food. Pizza was snoring peacefully on Little Gus's chest. Even the thyss-cub had eaten its fill.

Apparently, proximity to an open fire will inspire a group of young humans to start telling what they call “ghost stories.” Generally, these are implausible legends hinging on some morbid surprise or twist ending. Often, like the story of the mysterious caller, they involve no ghosts at all. And each of them seemed to know a few.

“Have you guys heard the story of the haunted mini-fridge?” asked Little Gus.

“Ugh,” groaned Hollins. “Everyone's heard that story. And everyone knows it didn't happen.”

“Did too!” said Little Gus. “My uncle's tax lawyer knew a guy who once saw the mini-fridge. And, friends, I don't want to scare you, but . . . it was still covered in green ectoplasm!”

“That was probably just rotten hummus,” said Nicki. “And I'm sure the so-called groaning noises were caused by the buildup of gases inside airtight food containers.”

“No way! They were the restless souls of all the victims the mini-fridge had claimed!” protested Little Gus.

“And you people thought my story was dumb,” said Becky.

“Jeez, okay. I guess nobody wants to hear about the haunted mini-fridge,” said Little Gus. “Every time you put yourself out there, it's a risk, Pizza,” he said to the thyss-cub, who—as far as I could tell—was still asleep.

“There is one story I would like to hear,” I said.

“What story is that?” asked Hollins.

“I would like to know how four young humans came to live on an asteroid far from their own blue-and-green world.”

“Booo-ring,” said Little Gus in a singsong tone.

“Well, I don't know if it's boring,” said Hollins, scratching his chin. “Its not very scary, though. At least not until we were confronted by a strange alien being and we nearly suffocated to death. Meaning the parts you already know, Chorkle. Still want to hear it?”

“Totes,” I said, trying out a little human slang.

“Well, I guess our story starts back on Earth, with something we call a ‘multinational mining company.' Specifically, the Nolan-Amaral Corporation. See, for a long time, we've known that asteroids contain certain elements that are especially rare on our own planet.”

“Like iridium,” I said.

“Yup. Platinum too. And because of their rarity, these metals are very valuable to us. Extracting them from the crust of the Earth is Nolan-Amaral's whole business, worth billions of dollars a year. But not too long ago, the company decided it would be feasible—and profitable—to launch a manned mining mission to space.

“So they spent a few years building a spaceship and scoping out asteroids to mine. Eventually, they found one that seemed to fit the bill. A C-type asteroid with the exciting name of 48172-Rybar.”

“Gelo,” I said.

Hollins nodded.

“Why is this asteroid perfect?” I asked.

Here Nicki cut in. “Well, first off, 48172—er, Gelo, has ample iridium and platinum. That's the most important thing to a mining company. Gelo is big for an asteroid, over eight hundred kilometers in diameter. Big enough that you could call it a planetoid, even. And it has a super-dense core that gives it a similar gravity to Earth's. That means that a lot of Nolan-Amaral's existing mining equipment would need only minor modifications to work here.”

“Anyway, the company pulled together a crew of experts,” said Hollins. “They recruited my mom to be the commander of the whole mission. She's an astronaut. And they got my dad involved too, because he's an aeronautics engineer.”

“Both of our parents are geologists,” said Becky.

“And my pop does something with computers, I think,” said Little Gus.

“His father is one of the foremost computer scientists on our whole planet,” sighed Nicki. “He developed the Zaleski Theory of Artificial Intelligence.”

“Zaleski? Hey, that's my last name. Cool,” said Little Gus, thoroughly distracted by playing with the newly awakened Pizza.

“And are all of you also experts in some field?” I asked. The humans all looked at one another.

“Well, I hope to be a scientist one day,” said Nicki. “Either biology or computer science, like Gus's dad. But I've got to finish middle school first. . . .”

“Becky won the World Arguing Championship three years running,” said Hollins.

“Ha ha,” said Becky. “No, we're not highly qualified like our parents. Not yet, anyway. We're just kids. The fact is, we're mostly here as a publicity stunt.”

“Hey, c'mon,” said Hollins. “That's not fair.”

“Oh, you know it's true, Hollins,” said Becky. “You see, Chorkle, Nolan-Amaral doesn't exactly have the best reputation back on Earth. The company is as famous for cutting down rain forests and propping up Third World dictators as it is for mining. So when they decided to undertake the mission, they thought up an angle that they could really sell to the public: kids in space.”

“A less cynical interpretation would be that Nolan-Amaral didn't want to separate a bunch of parents from their children for a whole year,” said Hollins.

“So you didn't have a choice?” I asked.

“I think we had a choice,” said Hollins. “I wanted to come.”

“Me too,” said Nicki. “I figured there would be a lot to learn up here. And I wasn't wrong.” She held up a plastic zip bag containing a withered fungal sample.

“I could've stayed with my uncle in New Mexico,” said Little Gus, “but his whole house smells weird. Kinda like cabbage. So I came to space instead.”

“I just thought it meant we would get to skip a year of school,” said Becky. “Little did I know that these sadists would prerecord fifteen hundred hours of the seventh grade and force me to watch every single day. And that's on top of all the astronaut training we had to do.”

“I barfed in the centrifuge,” said Little Gus.

“The training wasn't half as bad as going on all those talk shows,” shuddered Nicki.

“I barfed on the set of
Good Morning, Ottawa
,” said Little Gus.

“What's a talk show?” I asked.

“Well,” said Hollins, “it's this thing where two people—a host and a guest—talk to each other. And this happens in front of a lot of other people who don't talk. But sometimes these other people clap . . . Wow, when you think about talk shows, they're really weird.”

“The talk show circuit was simply exhausting,” said Becky.

Nicki snorted loudly with laughter. “Oh please, sis,” she said. “You couldn't get enough media attention! You even framed the cover of that awful tabloid because they said the dress you wore to the Kids Boom! Awards was a ‘fashion yes.'”

“Well, I'm not the one who tried to date celebrities,” said Becky, grinning.

“That wasn't a date!” said Nicki sharply.

“It wasn't a date,” said Hollins.

“Young Hollins here was seen by paparazzi getting ice cream with teen pop sensation Eryss,” said Becky. I didn't know what “paparazzi” or a “teen pop sensation” were, but before I could ask, Hollins had to respond to the allegations.

“It was just some dumb thing her publicist set up with Nolan-Amaral,” he said sheepishly. “She contacted me through Joynyt.com—sorry, Chorkle, that's a social networking site on Earth.”

“What is a social networking site?” I asked.

“It's a virtual space where people post messages about themselves—and their cats—to other people,” said Nicki. I nodded. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Anyway,” said Hollins, “yes, I got an ice cream with Eryss. No, it wasn't a date. She wasn't even nice.”

“Was it a Feeney's Original Astronaut Ice Cream?” I asked.

“Wow, you really know how to cut to the heart of a story,” said Little Gus.

“Chorkle, I think you've got astronaut ice cream on the brain,” said Hollins. “I'm worried about you. I think you're addicted.”

“Yeah,” said Becky. “This is an intervention. We're cutting you off.”

“Sorry, I already ate them all,” I said. I was lying. I was still hoarding a box and a half. But I certainly did intend to eat them all.

“Anyway, that's the story of how we came to be here with our parents,” said Nicki. “In retrospect, it kind of seems like a really terrible idea.”

“Yeah,” said Becky. “Kids in space isn't such good publicity if the kids get marooned on an asteroid and die.”

“Hey!” said Hollins. “Our parents are coming back. Nobody's going to die.”

His last word hung in the air. The group fell quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

Even if these young humans eventually made it back to their parents, would they be able to explain that Xotonians weren't hostile? Would the humans even care? In fact, we'd already attacked their colony indirectly. And they were coming back with soldiers. If our two species did fight a war, then surely some people—human and Xotonian—
would
die.

Hollins sensed that the mood of the group had changed. As usual, he took it upon himself to try to boost everyone's morale.

“Hey, Gus,” he said, “how about you tell us the story of that haunted freezer?”

“Haunted mini-fridge,” Little Gus corrected him. “Well, it all started with a strange scratching noise coming from the vegetable crisper—”

“Wait,” said Becky, “did anyone else just hear something?”

“C'mon. Stop trying to scare everyone,” said Nicki.

“No, really! Be quiet. Listen.”

We were silent. Each pop and crackle of the fire was now amplified to the volume of a footfall. And the strange shadows of the gnarled philiddra forest seemed to push in against the light. I couldn't stop thinking about the Xotonian skull I'd found buried in the dirt before.

“I don't hear anything,” said Hollins at last.

“Yeah,” said Becky, “I guess I was just imagining—”

Crunch. We all heard it this time. The sound of something—or someone—away in the distance, moving through the forest. Another crunch. We stared at one another. Whatever it was, it was coming toward us.