Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue) (10 page)

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, you are right, Alan.”

“Good. Now take some deep breaths.” That was what my mother had always told me to do to calm down from a situation.

She complied, her face still shining with a confused happiness and tears.

“I’m having a baby,” she breathed.
 
“But we’re stranded in deep space,” Samantha said. “What if we die here? I’ll never get to meet my baby.”

I shook my head. “Maybe; maybe not. The captain would have sent off a distress call as we were going down. It’s standard protocol.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“They’ll send rescue ships for us.”

“So we will live, then?”

“It took us five weeks to get here. It will take any rescue ships that long to get here as well, unless there are any ships closer by.”

“And there aren’t. We both know that.” Her face fell. “So I was right: we are going to die.”

“We will live if we can survive until then.” I said, but my tone was completely blank. I stared around us at the blank world of rock, everything a shade of uniform gray. We did not have much chance on a world like this of surviving until the rescue ships came. There were no plants or animals and no water at all as far as my eyes could see.

Surprisingly, Samantha’s mood had gone from pessimistic to optimistic after hearing my words.

“So all we have to do is find sustenance until then? Can we look for it, or do we have to stay by the ship?”

“We can wander; they will scan the whole planet for survivors when they get here. It’s standard procedure.” I still had my wrist communicator; they could find me easily once they reached Coriolanus.

“Good.” She paused. “Perhaps I will enjoy this.”

 
“Really?”

“I’m a scientist. It is in my nature to find these sort of things fascinating.”

“You’re a scientists who works with chemicals in a lab. How could scrounging for food on an alien world be fascinating?”

“I’m intrigued by what the natural flora and fauna of this place could be, as well as any odd chemical compounds we run across. Who knows; we could find something here that would cure all manner of ills back home!”

I didn’t share her enthusiasm, but I was glad she had made peace with our predicament.

By now, the
Indomitable
was nothing but a smoking cinder, so we wouldn’t be able to go back for more supplies. What we had with us would have to last as long as possible.

 
“So pick a direction and let’s start walking,” I said to Samantha.

She pursed her lips in thought, then pointed. “That direction. Perhaps we will find food as we near the planet’s equator.”

If
there was even food on this planet. I didn’t have much hope for that. I knew that whatever we carried in our backpacks was what was going to sustain us. The lighter they got, the closer we would get to starvation.

I hoped they stayed heavy forever.

Chapter 15

I knew I had gone crazy.

It had been three weeks since the crash of the
Indomitable
: three long, uncomfortable weeks of walking over the craggy wasteland of this planet. Three weeks of rationing our food and water. Three weeks of slowly losing hope as we discovered nothing but more bare rock; not even a stream.
 

Days on this planet were twice the length of those on my home planet. Or maybe they weren’t; maybe it just felt that way.
 

Samantha had taken to singing to her baby in the evenings, as we sat around the fire I made each night with the fire kit and fuel we had found in one of the backpacks. It was supposed to be used to cook food, but there was no food to cook, so we used it as a comfort at night. It felt good to fall asleep around the fire, like camping.

As Samantha sang, Leo would lie down at her feet, watching her mouth move with his golden eyes. He seemed to sense her sorrow.

We had run out of water yesterday, though I had tried to ration it as much as possible. We had run out of food this morning. Our backpacks were unsettlingly light; I had already cast aside two of them along the way once they were empty.

All we had left was a first aid kit.
 

We would all be dead far before Samantha’s baby would ever be born. The rescue ships would find our bodies and know of our desperate struggle for survival.

Other than the fact that it was starving us, I thought the planet wasn’t that bad. It didn’t have the toxic air of Mitio the prison planet where I had nearly died; Coriolanus’ air actually felt clean and was on the warmer side. But Mitio, for all its horrors, had food. This world didn’t.

But today I discovered something else wrong with this world: it drove us crazy.

We had just crossed a rocky ridge and for the first time, we saw what was on the other side. There, in a valley below us, lay the most beautiful oasis I had ever seen.

The glimmer of a body of water peered out from a cluster of green, tropical trees. The whole oasis was probably a mile across.

I stared at it for a moment, wishing it could be real. But no, I was going crazy instead.

Then Samantha gasped, pointing to it.

How could she see my hallucination?

“Alan, that appears to be verdant land of some kind. An oasis.”

“You see it, too?”

“Of course.”

I blinked. It all looked so real: the palm fronds dancing in the breeze; the glitter of the water. Could it be real?

“What if it is a trap?” I wondered.

“Then we stay away from it and die a slower death by starvation and dehydration.”

I couldn’t argue with that. We headed for the oasis.

As we drew nearer, I could see brightly colored fruits hanging from the trees. The rocky ground slowly gave way to white-gray sand, and the shade under the trees looked tempting.

I moved faster towards it, and the others did the same.

We reached the trees and gratefully entered the oasis, their shade above us. Immediately, we were surrounded by greenery. It was almost a shock after the weeks in the outside world of gray rock.
 

Leo flung himself down back first, belly in the air, rolling around in the fine sand. He began to purr in delight, his golden eyes narrowed to happy-looking slits.

Taking off my boots and socks, I buried my toes in the sand.

Though the tree canopy above us was so dense it left us in the shade, the sand felt warm on my bare feet.

“I wonder how many of them are edible,” remarked Samantha, staring at the fruit that hung heavy and ripe on the trees.

There had to be dozens of varieties. Small red fruits hung like bunches of grapes. Large white orbs that looked like melons sprouted among the aerial roots of another tree. Dark blue fruit, long like cucumbers, hung on some of the lower branches of a different tree.
 
Small peach-colored ovals hung from vines wrapped around a large tree that held what looked like purple dates. And that was only a few varieties. The fruit trees went on forever, stretching deep into the forest in hundreds of varieties.

The air smelled like the perfume of flowers and ripe fruit.

As I stood there in this fruit-filled paradise, the breeze blowing through the fruit trees around me and the sand between my toes, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
 

We were not alone here.

Leo, deep in the throes of his sand bath, was oblivious to what I had sensed.

I turned to Samantha, who was holding up a piece of fruit she had picked up from the ground. She was inspecting it closely, brow furrowed in thought. In her other hand was a tiny pocket computer—when had she been able to grab that from the ship?

“These are edible, Alan,” she said quietly, her voice filled with happy wonder.

Just beyond her, I saw movement in the trees.

It had only been brief, a mere flash of a movement, but I knew one thing for certain: whatever had made the movement was
big
. At least as big as a human.
 

“Samantha,” I whispered as quietly as I could.

She heard me and heard the tone of my voice. Her eyes darted towards mine, a questioning expression on her face.

There—on the other side of her—another movement!

I felt the skin all over my body crawl as they slowly emerged from the trees.

Captain Keene had been right. There were aliens here.

Chapter 16

There were five of them, all a uniform height of about six inches taller than me. Their skin was a pale shade, somewhere between gray and blue.
 

They were humanoid in shape, with two arms and two legs. Their limbs were long and graceful, their arms ending in long-fingered hands.
 

Their faces were similar to a human’s, with the same range of eye and hair color. But their features were angular and much thinner.

One of them, a female with brown hair, stepped forward. “Who are you? Your kind is familiar to me but you are not. Are you travelers?” she asked in perfect English.

Samantha gasped. “You know our language! You’ve seen humans before?”

“My name is Alan Michael Wolf. This is Dr. Samantha Selburn. The one with four legs is Leo.” I couldn’t stop staring. Aliens!

“My name is M. The ones with me are called K, N, B, and E.”

Letters? Their names sounded like letters of the alphabet!

Leo finally noticed the aliens and leapt up from his sand bath, tail bristling.

“No, it’s all right,” I soothed, holding him back. The last thing we needed was my kvyat attacking them. “Leo, shh!”

“That one is not known to us,” said M.
 

“He’s like a housecat, but… bigger. And kind of like a guard dog.” And he was about to ruin our good first impressions with these peaceful-seeming aliens.

Another of the aliens stepped forward, hand outstretched towards Leo.

“Our ship crashed,” Samantha explained. “We were going to starve to death before we found this place. We didn’t mean to trespass. We’ll only be here until our rescue ships arrive in a few weeks.”

“Not at all. As long as your intentions are peaceful and you take no more than you require to eat, you are welcome here.”

“You have our word,” I said. For almost first contact, we were doing pretty well.
 

Leo, meanwhile, had calmed down. His tail was no longer bristling viciously, and instead he was sniffing the hand of the alien who had come towards him. Then, to my surprise, he nuzzled the alien’s hand and began to purr.

“You said you had seen humans before.” Samantha said. “When?”

“It was a long time ago,” said M. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. “Come. There is no need for you to sleep on the bare rock. We will take you to our village, where you may stay with us. We have many unused houses, and we do not often have guests. My people and I would love to show you hospitality until the ships arrive for you.”

The others nodded approval, all of them sharing the same unruffled expression.

M and the other aliens led the way through the tropical forest. We followed, curious.
 

I looked for signs of hostility in them, but couldn’t find anything. The aliens looked to be the epitome of calm, and with their frail bodies, they didn’t seem to be much of a physical threat. Especially since none of them appeared to be armed, unlike me. I always kept my father’s long knife with me, either tucked inside my boot or strapped to my leg under my pants.

M and her companions kept up a steady stream of conversion as we went. I learned that there were ten aliens total here. Their names were N, M, K, B, T, C, D, E, G, and J. They were the only aliens on the planet, though the village where they lived had been built to hold at least three times their number.

The planet Coriolanus, where we had crashed, was entirely barren. This one single oasis was the only spot on the planet that held life, and it was only a few miles across. But it was a paradise: it held every type of fruit tree, several varieties of songbirds, and a wealth of hot springs. My aching muscles rejoiced at that last one—I couldn’t wait to have a long soak in one of the springs.

We reached their village, a collection of huts. Though the huts were made of nothing but stone and wood, with thatched roofs, there was nothing primitive about them. Instead, they had been constructed in a way that was more reminiscent of a luxurious resort than a barbarian village.

At the center of the village was a black obelisk which was taller than most of the trees and covered with runic writing. I saw Samantha’s eyes light up when she saw the obelisk—doubtlessly she would be studying the writing on it at the first opportunity.

Several other aliens were out and about among the huts. Upon seeing us, they came closer and gathered around us, staring.

M showed me to one of the empty huts as another alien led Samantha to a different hut.
 

The inside of my hut was fully furnished; most of the furniture was made of some sort of bamboo and the floor of polished wood. The bed was heavily cushioned and strewn with brightly colored pillows.

I couldn’t wait to collapse into it.

“Please, put your things down in here,” beckoned M. “Then we would love for the three of you to join us. It is almost time for our midday meal. We are all curious about you and have many questions, as I am sure you have for us as well.”

The other aliens murmured hearty agreement.

“I’d love that,” I answered. “I’m sure Leo and Samantha would, too.” The idea of having fresh fruit after days of rehydrated protein packs, followed by nothing at all, made my mouth water.

M and the others led us to a much larger hut in the center of the village. Inside was a long wooden table, set close to the floor, with a jumble of cushions set around it. Some of the aliens sat down on cushions around the table; I joined them. Samantha, having been shown to her hut, joined us at the table a few minutes later with the rest of the aliens.

A few of them began bringing in trays of fruit, pitchers of water or what looked like fruit juice, nuts, and what I guessed was a bowl of edible flowers.