Project U.L.F. (39 page)

With a sigh, this time hopefully loud enough that Byron would hear, Par crawled into the tunnel after him. Byron made no attempt to move out of his way so Par had to climb over his legs and force himself a new path through the compaction of plant stems. When he got clear he pulled himself up alongside Byron and then he too was stunned by the sight before him. He let out a whistle. “Wow, man, you did it,” he said quietly, not taking his eyes off the ship and its trail of destruction. “You found it!” he said, his voice full of excitement. He playfully rubbed the back of Byron’s head who lay next to him, face down in the grass. Par thought nothing of it, maybe Byron had just closed his eyes and buried his face in the grass, either from exhaustion or relief or a combination of both. Maybe he was just saying a silent prayer of thanks.

“Look at the way the rock…” Par began, pointing. He brought himself up short. There was blood on his hand, the same hand that he had used to ruffle Byron’s hair.

“Byron?” he asked, nudging his colleague. There was a quiver of fear in his voice. “Byron?” he said again, this time giving him more of a playful shove. Byron didn’t move. “Quit joking around,” Par said nervously, trying to laugh but failing. There was still no movement from Byron.

Par put a hand on Byron’s shoulder and attempted to push him over on to his back to see what was wrong with him. He only got halfway.

Byron’s face was just a mass of tattered flesh. His eyes were gone, the sockets just empty, hollow holes in his head. Par recoiled quickly, horrified and repulsed. It was then that the call came again.

Hey Par! Come here and take a look at this.” The voice had come from over his head. Slowly he rolled over onto his back.

Hanging about four feet above him was what looked like a black chrysalis. As he watched, stunned, the outer layer began to peel off until he realized what he was looking at was actually a pair of huge, leathery wings. The wings opened wide and a crested head, which so far had been tucked away inside the cocoon, swung down to bring the bloodied tip of a long, narrow beak inches from his face. A pair of eyes flicked open and regarded him with cold, avian malice.

Par’s mind raced. He had seen something like this before, but he couldn’t remember where. Then it came to him in a flash. He knew this monster, or its relatives, at least. He had read about them as a kid. The thing that faced him now could be one of their kind—a relic from a bygone age. It was the closest thing to a real live Pterodactyl that he had ever seen, but it hung itself upside down like a Catchida.

The beak moved slightly, revealing two rows of tiny sharp teeth, and Byron’s voice came out. “Come here and take a look at this.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus, no!” Par screamed, and without thinking he pushed himself away from it. He put a hand behind him and found nothing but air. With that he was sent tumbling and cart wheeling down the rock face, creating an avalanche of stone that followed him. He glanced off the top of the DSM and heard and felt his leg crack. The excruciating pain told him it was broken. He saw sky, then stone, then crashed into the side of the ship again before starting off on another tumble.

He thought that he would lose consciousness but the pain in his leg prevented him from doing so. When he eventually came to a stop he immediately sat up to cradle the injured limb in his hands. Despite the pain he looked up to make sure that the thing had not taken flight to pursue him. It hadn’t, but something else had. The stones and rocks that he had dislodged now all tumbled towards him with frightening speed. They fell erratically, rolling, then catching an edge and being flung high in the air as they descended towards him. He watched, helpless.

For a fraction of a second the pain in his leg was forgotten, and then a fist-sized rock struck him on the temple and the stars disappeared from his night.

CHAPTER

Night came early to the small party who had stayed with the shuttle. Storm clouds swept in from the east, their black faces grumbling with the thunder they carried inside them.

Wyatt heard the first drops of rain spatter on the leaves above him and picked himself up to make his way towards the shuttle and the shelter it represented. He saw Kit look skyward and then do the same. The drops of rain quickly became a shower and then a deluge. What had begun as a leisurely stroll out of the weather became a race for the shuttle door.

Once inside, Wyatt turned to see Kate emerge from the trees. She covered her head with her arms in a vain attempt to keep dry. “Come on!” he yelled at her, waving with his arm. She ran for the door, Furball bounding along at her heels. He helped her inside and turned his attention outside again. They had all been soaked in a matter of seconds and as they shook the water from their hair and rubbed it from their faces, he hoped that his friends had made it to the cover of the mining ship. He would not like to be caught out in weather like this.

As puddles began to form on the ground outside he watched the warm and colorful day turn into a gray and miserable night.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

Something smacked into Par’s forehead. He felt it and he heard it. Rather like a dull slap. He guessed whatever it was must have been doing it for ages, because his head hurt. He moaned and tried to move, and that was when the pain in his head was superseded by the pain in his leg. The agony froze him. It set him rigid until he felt it die slightly and then he relaxed again.

He was cold. Freezing cold. He knew this because as much as he tried to hold his leg still to stop the pain, he couldn’t. He was shivering.

The rain fell in drops the size of peas and it was this, Par realized now, that had been smacking into his face and forehead like a hundred tiny hammers. He ran a hand across his jacket and felt that it was wet to the touch. He was soaked through. He opened his eyes and saw a figure standing over him, a silhouette against the night sky. The figure’s eyes twinkled, two stars in a humanoid night.

“Byron,” Par managed, relieved. “You made it. You’re all right.” But even as he said it, dazed as he was, something nagged at him. In the back of his mind he knew this couldn’t be. If everything had been a nightmare or a horrific hallucination he would not be lying on his back in the rain and the darkness with pain shooting up his leg.

He tried to open his eyes wider to identify the figure that stood over him but a drop of rain fell into one eye, causing both to close reflexively. The water blurred his vision when he opened them again and he hurriedly wiped the moisture away. His hand shook from cold and fear.

For a moment Par thought that he’d found a survivor, or rather, that a survivor had found him. If so, then it truly was a miracle that the other man had not only survived the crash but that he’d also found Par in his desperate time of need.

“Help me,” Par said, stretching out with a hand to reach the dark and silent figure. Apart from a slight turn of the head, there was no response. “I’m hurt, god dammit! I can’t walk.”

Suddenly the figure dropped to a crouch and half-walked, half-crawled to where Par lay. It brought its face up close to his and it was then that he knew that this definitely was not a survivor, nor was it Byron or any of his other colleagues for that matter. A pair of bulbous green-gold fish-like eyes looked at him with curiosity. They glittered in the darkness like gems.

Par recoiled in shock and tried to push himself away from the creature. The white-hot pain shot through his leg again, and he screamed in agony.

When he opened his eyes again the creature was no longer peering at him. It had gone and he pushed himself up onto his elbows to take a look around, wincing with the effort. It was about fifteen feet away from him, a dark form in the night, sniffing the air and checking the area with quick, jerky movements of its head.

Par wondered what it was that had made the creature so nervous. He couldn’t see or smell anything and it was only when the thing began to make its way stealthily back towards him that he knew that there was no other threat. It was him. He always did forget that the sounds that humans made meant nothing to the creatures they encountered. Similarly, they could mean anything. This thing had no idea that he had just cried out in pain. His scream could have been a call to others to attack.

Satisfied that it was in no immediate danger, the creature made its way back to where Par lay. It drew itself up close for another look at its peculiar find. As it looked at him, Par had a chance to take a good look back.

Its eyes were its most striking feature. They were circular, huge and bulbous and set far apart so they seemed to be placed more to the side of the head than on the front of the face. The irises were rings of golden-green which shone with a luminescence in the darkness. The pupils, dilated in the dark, were slicks of alien black.

The mouth was wide and very pronounced. It projected forward from the rest of the face, forcing the skin below eye level to slope forward to meet it. The top lip covered what was clearly only bone where the palate met the front of the skull and the bottom lip came up to meet it, turning the sides of the mouth down to give the thing a permanent look of sadness. Above the mouth were two tiny nostrils. A grooved elastic gullet formed the throat and Par guessed that whatever it ate, it ate large meals and swallowed them whole. The throat pulsed rapidly as the thing breathed.

It was humanoid in its basic structure but its features gave it a distinctly amphibian look.

It brought its face even closer to his and Par, slightly repulsed by the features, brought his hands up to stop it coming any closer. “No,” he said, trying to pull his head away. To his surprise the creature did exactly the same, mimicking his action. He caught a glimpse of its hands. They had six fingers, five quite clearly well developed while the sixth was hardly more than a short stub aligned with the fifth. Each was crowned with a single tiny black claw. Between each of the five well-formed digits was a thin membrane of skin which stretched from the palm of the hand to about the first joint on the finger. The hands showed signs of webbing.

Par brought his hands back down again. The creature did the same. “No,” he said again, bringing his hands back up. Maybe he could teach this thing some simple gestures. The creature put its hands back up and then in a bassy, throaty tone, barked “Ro!”

It was a start, but Par could hardly get excited about it. He needed to get out of the rain before the effects of exposure and hypothermia set in. Then, unexpectedly, the thing spoke to him.

“Ee-choo-mo-na-doch-ra.”

Par looked at it in surprise, the cold forgotten for the moment.

“Ee-choo-mo-na-doch-ra,” it said again in its deep tone.

The thing was actually trying to communicate with him. He couldn’t believe it. For a second the idea completely blew him away.

“Gon-Thok,” the creature said.

“Gon-Thok,” Par repeated. What was that? Its name? Regardless, it got a response. The creature was clearly excited about something. “Gon-Thok,” he said again to himself. He was actually talking in an alien tongue. This was a whole new language!

 
“Gon-Thok,” the creature said again, bobbing its head erratically.

“Par,” the Swede replied, attempting,
hoping
that he was returning the gesture. The thing just looked at him vacantly. “Par,” he said again, patting his chest to indicate he meant himself.

“Bar,” it croaked back at him.

“Well, at least we know what to call each other,” Par muttered. The creature seemed to nod, as if it too acknowledged that it understood that much at least, and then it began picking off the few stones that had landed on top of him. When they were cleared it attempted to pick him up. Par yelled in pain again.

This time Gon-Thok did not run. It looked at Par quizzically. The noise, it knew, was not a call to others, the creature made this noise every time it tried to move.

When Par felt able to talk again, he turned to the alien. “Broken,” he managed through gritted teeth, pointing to his leg. It looked down at his leg, then back at him, no comprehension evident on its features. “Bro-ken,” Par said again, accentuating each syllable and snapping an imaginary object in the air in front of him. With that, the creature stood, turned its back on him and disappeared into the night. “No, wait!” Par shouted after it. “Gon-Thok! Come back!” But Gon-Thok had gone.

The cold, forgotten until now, seemed to attack him again with venom and he shivered uncontrollably. He let his head fall back on the rocks behind him and closed his eyes, feeling the large cold drops of rain slap into his face. He, like Byron, was going to die here.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

He had no idea how much time passed, he just knew that his head hurt, his leg hurt and now, oddly enough, his gums hurt from the wild chattering of his teeth. The world around him sounded tinny in his ears and he felt himself drifting towards unconsciousness. The tide of blackness came in waves, creeping up on him like a sea creeping further and further up a beach. Each wave reaching further. Each wave claiming more of him than its predecessor. He fought against it, knowing that if he succumbed then he would dream the dream of death.

“Bar.” The deep voice sounded hollow and distant. “Bar,” it came again. It was another voice in the darkness and he wondered what had made him think of it. His semi-conscious mind had taken him on a roller-coaster ride of imagination and fantasy, piecing together a collage of images, sounds, ideas and memories in the most haphazard fashion.

Memories. The key was there somewhere.

“Bar.” The inhuman croak came at him through the blackness.

He forced his mind to function. He remembered only one thing calling him by that name. The alien he had met once on a doomed mission. Gon-Thok. The name struck his mind like flint on flint, the spark of hope banishing the darkness, leaving only a brilliant image of the amphibious humanoid. Was he really still here? Still fighting for his life?

“Gon-Thok,” he murmured.

“Bar!” The voice sounded excited in his ears.

Par struggled to open his eyes and found the alien peering over him again. Looking down he could see that it carried a gnarled but reasonably straight length of wood in its hand. Had it not been raining then, the tears of relief would have shown on his face.

He looked at the piece of wood again. Had this creature really understood him? Did the alien mean for him to use the wood as a splint, or did it think that his mime had been indicative of his wishes and it had brought it for him to snap in two? The answer was irrelevant. It was exactly what he needed. With some effort Par managed to sit up and remove the small, tatty pack from his back. He rummaged around inside it with a hand. There must be something inside that he could use. His hand closed around a small coil of rope buried deep in the bag. He pulled it out with effort and looked at it in relief. He might just make it out of here alive after all.

He took the length of wood out of Gon-Thok’s hands, being careful not to snatch it in his eagerness or make any sudden movements. The creature gave it up easily as if that was what it had expected.

Par laid the stick against his leg and bound the two together hastily. With a grimace he pulled the rope tight and then, with effort, he struggled to his feet. The splint helped. It stopped his cracked bone from moving and causing pain in that respect, but he still could not stand on the leg. He gingerly tested the injured limb and winced in pain every time he put weight on it. He realized that his leg was still as good as useless to him. He looked to the black sky as if wondering why God had cursed him so. He was so close to being able to literally walk away from this chapter of the nightmare, but yet still so far. How quickly fortunes changed.