Space Rocks! (7 page)

I
awoke to the sound of sobbing.

It was dark, and I couldn't move. This time it wasn't just a face-ache. I had a pretty good everything-ache going.

“Help,” said someone above me.

The lights flickered on, and I could see clearly. The room was on its side. I was half buried in a heap of loose objects against one wall. My face was pressed against a round viewport. Outside it, all I could see was Gelo dirt.

The whole pod, I realized, was lying on its side. I tried to get up, but I couldn't. I was still bound as tightly as ever.

Hollins and Becky were helping Nicki out of her seat on what was now the floor. Or maybe it was Hollins and Nicki helping Becky out of the seat. I couldn't tell. In the crash, Nicki must have lost her vision lenses. Now the duplicates were eerily interchangeable.

I realized where the crying was coming from. On the far wall—now the ceiling of the sideways room—hung Little Gus. He was still tightly strapped into his foldout chair, and every tuft of his red hair was standing on end. He looked terrified.

“I'm gonna get you down,” said Hollins. He jumped straight up as high as he could. But he was nowhere close to reaching Little Gus.

“Can help,” I said in human, startling them all.

“Help? We don't need your help!” cried Hollins, suddenly remembering that I existed. “You caused all this!”

“No cause,” I said. “Not want.”

“Yes cause!” said Hollins. “You're the ‘class G foreign organic material' that the computer detected. That's why the ship dumped us back on the asteroid. We should be up there with our parents.” He pointed to the spot where the viewport should have been, but that was now actually the floor.

“Bad computer,” I said.

“Our computers are just fine!” said Hollins. “Don't you talk about our computers, Martian.” He was shaking with anger.

“Hollins, I can't believe you're losing an argument with an alien,” cried Becky. I could tell it was Becky because her duplicate had thankfully recovered her lenses.

“You can't reason with it,” she said. “It wants to rip your face off and lay its eggs in your lungs. We have to—to kill it!”

“No, we can't lose our heads. We need to assess the situation calmly,” said Hollins. He sounded pretty far from calm.

“I'm sorry, but that thing sprayed me with poison!” Becky was still strongly redolent of Xotonian stink and not happy about it.

“We don't know it was poison,” said Nicki. “It could have just been waste.”

“Great. Thank you, Nicki,” said Becky. “Yes, it could have been waste. That makes me feel so much better.”

“I mean, the stuff it sprayed at you smelled bad, right?” said Nicki. “What? Just thinking out loud, here.”

“Hey! I'm still stuck on the ceiling!” moaned Little Gus.

“Can help,” I said. “Can help Gus.”

“Oh God,” said Becky, burying her head in her hands. “It knows our names. How does it know our names?”

“Just keep quiet, Martian,” said Hollins. He rummaged around in the heap on the floor until he found the red paddle. Then he pointed it at me.

“Where are our parents? Are they coming back?” whined Little Gus.

“Pod impact assessment,” said the ship's computer voice. “Warning. Critical damage to communications and life-support systems detected. Oxygen leaks in tanks three, four, five, seven, nine, and ten.”

“What?” said Becky.

“Three hours thirty-one minutes of oxygen remaining,” said the computer. “Please commence emergency evacuation.” All the humans moaned in unison. Little Gus was crying again now.

“The pod must have gotten damaged in the crash,” said Nicki.

“Okay. Okay,” said Hollins. “First we get Little Gus down. Gus, can you unfasten your seat belt?

“It's stuck,” said Gus pitifully as he tried to disengage the metal buckle.

In frustration, Hollins again tried to jump toward the ceiling. Again he was at least a meter short.

“Maybe you two could lift me up to him?” said Nicki.

Hollins and Becky each hoisted one of Nicki's feet and pushed her up toward the ceiling. She stretched to her full length, but her fingertips were still a few dozen centimeters short. She strained even further and upset the balance of the three-person pyramid. Becky wobbled, and they all fell into a heap.

“It's okay, Little Gus,” said Hollins as he sat on the floor, panting. Gus wailed.

“Can help Gus,” I said. “Can climb.”

All four of them turned and stared at me.

“I don't know . . . maybe we should let it try,” said Nicki at last.

“If we set that thing free,” said Becky, “this whole thing ends with face-huggers flying out of our stomachs! You know that, right?”

“Please,” said Little Gus. “I have to pee.”

“Martian. Alien. Whatever you are,” said Hollins, “if I let you go, you have to swear that you won't try to escape.”

“Great. The honor system,” said Becky. “The honor system will save us all.”

“Do you swear? On your mother's life?” said Hollins, and he stared right into my eyes.

“Mother . . . not have,” I said. I wasn't articulate enough to explain what an originator was.

“Oh, come on!” cried Becky. “It's just pretending to be an orphan for sympathy!”

“Do you swear on—on something really important?” said Hollins.

“Yes,” I said. “Swear. On Jalasu Jhuk.”

“Three hours twenty minutes of oxygen remaining,” said the computer voice.

Hollins sighed. Then he crouched down beside me and untied my ropes. I flexed my thol'grazes a bit. It was a relief to be free.

I stood up. Hollins, Becky, and Nicki all jumped back. The way they were acting, you'd think I was a feral thyss-cat, not a terrified young Xotonian in way over its head.

“One false move, and I'm making alien soup,” said Becky, hoisting a broken chair leg above her head for use as a bludgeoning weapon.

“Coming,” I said to Little Gus, trying to reassure him.

“Hold on a second, guys,” said Little Gus. “Maybe I don't have to pee that bad.”

But it was too late. I had already leaped up to the ceiling and was clinging there upside down. We Xotonians are excellent climbers, capable of finding a grip on most surfaces. It's necessary when you spend 90 percent of your life trying to get around in slippery caves.

Slowly I crept across the ceiling toward Little Gus's seat. He leaned as far away from me as possible.

“You know what, I think I'm fine here, actually,” he said. “Maybe just toss me up a magazine to pass the time or something.”

Gingerly, I put my thol'graz on his arm. He flinched.

“Please don't eat my face,” he whimpered quietly. Still clinging to the ceiling with my fel'grazes, I began to fiddle with the snap. Little Gus was right. It was stuck tight.

“Need cut,” I said.

Hollins sighed, then pulled a metal object from his pocket. He unfolded it to show me what it was: a small knife.

“Seriously? Now you're giving the alien a stabbing weapon?” cried Becky. “Hey, maybe it needs a machete and a couple of grenades too.”

“Odds are that its species already has way more advanced weapons than us anyway,” said Nicki. “A knife isn't going to matter.”

“You really know how to set my mind at ease, sis,” said Becky. “I think it's that special bond that only twins share.”

Nicki shrugged, “Thinking out loud.”

Hollins refolded the knife and tossed it up to me. I caught it and went to work sawing through Little Gus's strap.

It was slow going, but at last I heard a pop. Little Gus swung free from the seat and dangled from my thol'graz. Becky and Hollins strained to reach his feet and lower him safely to the floor.

“I'll be back in a second!” said Little Gus and he scrambled through the chamber's sideways door into the sideways hallway beyond.

Hollins, Becky, and Nicki looked up at me. I was on the ceiling, out of their reach. And now I had a weapon. I turned the blade over in my thol'graz. It would keep them back. Maybe just long enough for me to escape?

I dropped to the ground and handed back the knife.

“Thank you,” said Nicki.

“Thanks,” mumbled Hollins.

“You're still our prisoner,” said Becky. “And you're not luring me into a false sense of security.”

“Whew. That's much better,” said Little Gus as he returned through the sideways door. “Bathroom's crazy though. Everything's sideways. I, er, wouldn't go in there—”

Just then the tele-visual screen flicked on. It was the male and female adult humans from before. The video was staticky, often freezing for moments at a time.

“Danny? Kids?” said the female adult. Both of the adults were crying.

“Mom! Dad!” cried Hollins, leaping over debris to get closer to the now sideways screen. “Can you hear me, Mom?”

“Commander Hollins! Mr. Hollins!” said Becky to the screen. Apparently both of these adults were called Hollins too. Perhaps most humans were named Hollins?

Becky continued, “Commander, do you know if our parents—”

“Kids, if you can hear us,” said Commander Hollins, “please don't panic. We're fine here. If there really is an—an alien life form there with you, do not approach it. Leave it alone. If you can, lock yourselves in a different room within the pod.” She was trembling. The pain and fear in her voice were obvious, even to a member of another species.

“Mom!” cried Danny Hollins. But the woman on the screen couldn't hear him. The transmission was one-way.

“Nicole, Rebecca, your mom and dad are fine. Augustus, your father is fine too,” said the adult male Hollins. “We've already been in contact with—with some military people, scientists. They're analyzing the footage from your transmission. They're trying to figure out what that creature—what it is we're up against.”

“See,” said Becky, “it's a war.”

“Our ship was seriously damaged during that quake,” said the female Hollins, apparently Commander. “We must make some repairs and refuel before we'll be able to land on the asteroid again. Our engineers are saying it will take at least six days. If there was any way we could come back for you right now, we would.”

“Six days?” said Little Gus in disbelief.

“In the meantime,” said Mr. Hollins, choking up. “In the meantime, the asteroid's orbit is going to put it on the other side of Mars. That means no radio contact for a while. Before that happens, if there's any way you can send a message to let us know what's going on—if we just knew you were okay—”

He couldn't continue. He was overcome with emotion.

“Don't worry, children. We're coming back with a rescue team, with soldiers,” said Commander Hollins. “Just stay safe for six days. We'll—”

And then the screen went black, and she was gone.

“Three hours of oxygen remaining,” said the computer.

“W
e need a plan,” said Hollins.

I had voluntarily allowed them to retie me. Although this time I noticed that Hollins didn't tie my bonds quite as tightly.

“Okay, first off, we have more than three hours,” said Nicki, “because we have spacesuits with their own oxygen tanks. That means each of us has at least ten additional hours of air before it runs out.”

“Thirteen hours total,” said Hollins. “Still not even close to six days.”

“Really? And they say Nicki's the genius,” said Becky, her voice sarcastic.

“Becky, if you're not going to help, then why don't you just be quiet?” growled Hollins.

“Seriously? Why am I the only one who's worried about the alien in the corner that wants to murder us?” she screamed, pointing at me.

“Murder?” I said.

“See? See! It said ‘murder'!” cried Becky. But no one really seemed to be paying attention to her.

“Is there any way to fix the pod's oxygen tanks?” asked Hollins.

“I think we'd need a welding torch and something to patch it with,” said Nicki. “Stuff we don't have.”

“I can't get this thing to work either,” said Little Gus. He'd been fiddling with the tele-visual console for a few minutes. “It won't send an outgoing transmission.”

“The computer said that the communications system was damaged,” said Hollins. “I guess that's what it meant: no way to radio out.”

“Our spacesuit helmets have radios, right?” said Little Gus.

“Not strong enough,” said Nicki. “But maybe we could send a message a different way?”

“So we can't call our parents, and we're running out of air,” said Hollins.

“Couldn't we just use our rocket-bikes?” asked Little Gus. “And fly up to the ship?” I gathered “rocket-bikes” is what the humans called the personal rockets stored in the airlock.

“Nope,” said Hollins. “The bikes don't have enough power to escape the asteroid's gravity. Or any life-support systems. Even if they did, our parents are probably already thousands of kilometers away by now. Rocket-bikes just aren't meant for space travel.”

Gus sank.

“So much for being the first kids in a semipermanent asteroid-mining colony,” said Becky. “Awesome idea, Mom and Dad. Parents of the Year.”

“Come on, Becky. You liked having your picture on the news at the time,” said Nicki.

“Yeah, but this was supposed to be a year of skipping seventh grade, a bunch of parades back on Earth, and one heck of a college entrance essay. Now we're going to die with the whole world watching.”

“We're going to die?” asked Little Gus.

“No,” said Hollins. “Nobody's going to die. We'll figure something out.”

“What's the point?” said Becky, slumping down on the couch.

“Becky, in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing,” said Hollins. “Teddy Roosevelt said that.”

“Who?” asked Little Gus.

“The twenty-sixth president of the United States,” said Hollins. “He was also an explorer and an author and one of the great—”

“Stop!” cried Becky. “The only thing that could make dying worse is getting a history lesson at the same time!”

“Wait,” said Nicki suddenly. “That's it. What you said.”

“Teddy Roosevelt?” said Hollins.

“No, sorry. What Becky said! Before!”

“College entrance essay?” said Becky.

“You said the whole world is watching! Well, maybe not the whole world, but at least our parents, and probably even some people on Earth. Watching the pod, I mean. With their telescopes. From space. Until we go behind Mars.” Her words were coming out a jumble. The other humans were as confused as I was.

“Sorry,” she said, slowing down. “What I mean is that they're probably observing us, right now, to see if we're okay. So even if the radio doesn't work, we could send them a message with—”

“Morse code!” cried Hollins.

“Exactly,” said Nicki. “We can blink the lights of the pod on and off to send them a message that we're running out of air. Maybe they could send someone sooner. It's worth a shot.”

“Okay, I think my dad had an old book about Morse code around here somewhere,” said Hollins. “In the meantime, let's get our spacesuits on. If something else goes wrong, we don't want to be caught flat-footed.”

“What else could go wrong?” asked Little Gus.

“Plenty of stuff,” said Nicki cheerfully. “The computer could be overestimating the amount of air we have left. There could be an electrical fire. An aftershock from the quake could shake the pod to—”

She noticed that all the other humans were scowling at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Thinking out loud again.”