Space Rocks! (5 page)

K
alac, along with the few other Xotonians who had any knowledge of ancient technology, spent the next few days poring over the Q-sik manual.

The heavy tome turned out to be a collection of meticulous notes, written and placed inside the Vault by Great Jalasu Jhuk itself. No one had much time to dwell on this remarkable historical discovery, however. Kalac and the others were too busy trying to understand the workings of the Q-sik enough to fire it.

Now came the day of the asteroid-quake mission. Kalac, Hudka, and I were eating breakfast (rild-sauce over cold svur-noodles) together in our dwelling. Tensions were high. Well, higher than normal.

“Mark my words,” said Hudka. “You're making the biggest mistake in Xotonian history. Even bigger than the time we declared it legal to raise giant spiders for food inside city limits!”

“I'm not having this discussion again,” said Kalac. “There was a Grand Conclave. I seem to recall that you were there, Hudka. There is no turning back now. We reached a decision as a society.”

“A bad decision,” said Hudka. As a rule, Hudka never let Kalac, or anybody, have the last word in an argument.

“But what if the humans aren't evil?” I asked, slurping down a gul'orp-ful of svur-noodles. “Maybe we could work with them instead of against them?”

“You've brought this up before, Chorkle,” said Kalac wearily. “And I have told you that the stakes are simply too high. I'll admit that I don't know for certain that the humans mean us harm. And I'll grant that there might be a small chance that diplomacy might work. But suppose it didn't. What then?”

“Just because the right thing to do might not work doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do,” said Hudka. “And we're supposed to guard the Q-sik. Removing it from the Vault is a mistake.”

“Now is not the time!” snapped Kalac. My originator's nerves were running high. In just a few hours, it would be leading the asteroid-quake mission.

“You two give me more trouble than all the humans combined,” said Kalac, rising from the table. “I have to go. There are still final preparations to make.”

“But there must be something we can do!” I said. “To make sure that the young—that no humans are needlessly hurt in the quake.”

Kalac stared at me, surprised. I don't know that I'd ever confronted my originator so directly.

“Chorkle,” it said slowly, “the success of this plan is crucial to the very survival of our species. If humans are hurt or, yes, even killed, that is the price that must be paid. Do you understand this?”

I didn't say anything.

“Do you understand, Chorkle?”

“Yes,” I mumbled.

“Good,” said Kalac. “Now I must go.” And my originator walked out the front door of our dwelling. The next time I saw Kalac—at dinnertime, I supposed—the human problem would be solved.

I looked at Hudka. On most days, it would have had the hologram game out the instant Kalac was gone. We both would have been gleefully stomping evil mushrooms or racing motorized vehicles in endless laps in a human city called “In-dee-uh-nap-oh-luss.”

Not today, though. My grand-originator sat at the breakfast table, staring at the wall. Hudka looked as small and worried as I'd ever seen it.

“I don't want anyone to get hurt,” I said. “I mean, if the human race came up with hologram games, then they can't be all bad, can they?” It was an odd defense of an entire species. Hudka stared at me.

“Nobody is all bad,” said Hudka. “Not Xotonians. Not humans.”

“I think—I think I should do something.”

“Then do what you need to do,” said Hudka.

Twenty-seven turns later, I stood at the entrance to the surface.

I
walked across the surface of Gelo, running through human phrases in my mind. Red T'utzuxe hung heavy in the sky.

Up ahead, I saw their mothership for the first time. A huge metal globe squatting on the surface of our asteroid. Rusted and pockmarked, bristling with spiny antennae, emblazoned with the flags of many Eo countries. I recognized a few of them from a particular hologram game in which two teams of human males attempted to kick a white ball into the net of their opponents.

A series of smaller pods radiated out from the mothership, each connected back to it via a flexible tube. I guessed this configuration allowed the humans to travel among the various pods, using the mothership as a central hub.

In the distance, big mining machinery sat parked in silence. If the human workday was over, then at least no one would be underground when the mines collapsed.

Why was I even here? Was I going to warn the humans somehow? Had I come as some sort of self-appointed Xotonian diplomat? Even if the young humans turned out to be friendly, who knew how their adults would behave? What if they took one look at me and decided to shoot me with their primitive—yet still quite lethal—projectile weapons? Standing this close to a bustling hive of them, I felt far from safe.

I checked my chronometer. Still three hours until the asteroid-quake. Then, if Kalac's calculations were correct, the ground here would begin to shake and churn, possibly destroying the human mothership. I didn't want to be here when that happened.

Something crackled over the Nyrt-Snooper. It was a human voice I didn't recognize. It sounded female. I heard it command another human called “Danny” to remove . . . something from their pod, immediately. Then there was a grudging yet affirmative response in a familiar register. It was Crackle-Voice!

So Crackle-Voice was named “Danny.” Or at least I thought so. My human language skills were still pretty bad. “Danny” might actually be the human word for “digestive ailment.”

I scanned the pods. There was movement inside one of them. The small light outside its airlock changed from red to green. I snuck closer, my skin a perfect Gelo blue-gray.

The pod's airlock slid open with a hiss. It was Danny. He was wearing a spacesuit, and he had two large metal cylinders with him.

He hefted one of the cylinders, walked about a hundred meters away from the spacecraft, and dumped it out on the ground. Its contents seemed mostly to be rotting organic matter. Human garbage.

Did humans really just dump their waste right next to where they lived? Perhaps there was some truth to the Xotonian stereotype that they were a pack of filthy slobs.

Danny replaced the first cylinder and went to empty the second. Something seized me. I still don't know what. But before I thought better of it, I darted into the airlock and climbed up the wall onto the ceiling. I hung there, my skin now the warm beige of the ship's interior.

To one side of the airlock were the four personal rockets I'd seen the humans riding in Jehe Canyon, heaped together in a sort of standing pile.

Danny returned to the airlock. He walked over to a glowing console and punched a button. The outside hatch slowly rolled closed. Once it had formed an airtight seal, the inner door slid open with a whoosh as oxygen-rich human air rushed in. Air, I noticed, that was very similar to that in the Gelo caverns.

Danny took off his spacesuit and stuffed it inside a small metal box—one of several beside the airlock—then ambled off down the hallway. He never once looked up.

There I was, inside a human spacecraft.

I was inside a human spacecraft!

I crept along the ceiling. The pod was warm and cramped. All blinking consoles, tangled wires, and inconvenient angles. It had a central hallway that gave access to six individual chambers. At the far end I saw what appeared to be another airlock, this one attached to one of the tubes that led back toward the mothership.

I waited for Danny to return. He didn't. The pod was empty. I dropped to the floor and touched one of the doors. It quickly slid open with a pleasing hiss. I stepped back. It hissed closed. I stepped forward. It hissed open again.

By Jalasu Jhuk, these humans sure had it figured out! This—this was an achievement on par with the hologram game. Why must Xotonians constantly be forced to open our own doors? I wondered. What drudgery! Imagine the time we'd save over the course of a lifetime if our doors simply had the good sense to open themselves.

I mean, obviously our great ancestors had intended us to have self-opening doors. I remembered the ancient door of the Vault opening of its own accord once the correct combination was put in. Why hadn't we heeded their wisdom?

After making the human door open six or seven more times, I entered the chamber beyond. It was messy, even by human standards. A big overstuffed couch dominated the space. It faced a deactivated tele-visual console on the wall. Behind the couch was a green table marked with white lines and divided in half by a short vertical mesh. On the table were two red paddles and a little white ball. Beside them was a box.

I took a closer look. The box was covered in human language characters. I tried to read them, but I could only make out the human word for “ice.” The box bore the picture of a juvenile human male, grinning grotesquely and consuming a bright pink bar of . . . something.

I reached into the box. It was full of bar-shaped things, each covered in a shiny, crinkly protective coating, almost like a tiny human spacesuit. I pulled one out and tore away the coating. Sure enough, a sticky pink bar inside. I sniffed it. Organic, mostly. Not ice, though.

I took a bite. The taste was heavenly. No, beyond heavenly. Sweet. Gummy. Delightfully unnatural! I finished the bar. And another. And one more after that. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to consume the whole box. All the boxes. Were there more boxes anywhere?

Self-opening doors, hologram games, personal rockets, and now these pink bars. In that sugary euphoria, I was ready to admit the cultural superiority of humankind. If there were just six thousand more of these delicious bars—one for every Xotonian—I was sure there could be peace between our two peoples. But secretly, I knew the truth. If there were six thousand more, I would eat all of them.

Just as I was finishing my fifth, I heard footsteps in the hallway. Someone was coming. I replaced the box and looked around for somewhere to hide.

Across the room was a grate at floor level. I slid it aside and hid in the metal air duct behind it.

Four juvenile humans entered the chamber with great noise and commotion. It was Danny and the three others I'd seen before!

Here they were, not three meters away, the whole reason I had come. But just what, exactly, was I going to do? I imagined leaping out from behind the grate.

“Hello, young humans!” I would say in accented but passable human-ese. “I've been secretly observing you, and I just wanted to let you know that my originator is going to cause an asteroid-quake that might kill you and all of your families! I hope we can still be friends.” And that was honestly the best I could come up with. So what I actually did was stay hidden and keep my gul'orp shut.

All four plopped down onto the couch. Red-Fur jostled for space at the end. From their conversation, I deduced that his human name was “Little Gus.”

And, strangely, they referred to Danny as “Hollins” instead. Perhaps “Danny” was merely a title. Like “Custodian of the Council” or “Master of Nyshves.”

Anyway, Hollins and No-Lenses, whose real name was “Becky,” immediately started bickering with one another. Lenses, or “Nicki,” intervened and helped them to make peace. I got the sense that Hollins had ultimately won this round.

Hollins remotely activated the tele-visual console. The screen lit up. What were they about to watch? A transmission from their leader, perhaps? Some important scientific or moral lesson to be imparted upon them?

What followed was a ninety-minute broadcast of fistfights, shootouts, and fiery explosions, only interrupted by brief, unrelated transmissions that showcased human consumer goods.

The children watched as one adult male—who called himself a “homicide detective”—embarked upon a bloody quest for vengeance against those responsible for the death of his partner. In practice, this meant shooting half the people in the city. The young humans laughed and applauded at the bloodiest moments of on-screen carnage.

By the end of the broadcast, I was horrified. Maybe these aliens weren't like me at all. Maybe Sheln was right. Maybe they were bloodthirsty. Evil.

Oog-ball is a brutal sport that many Xotonians love. But even the most ardent oog-ball fan wouldn't want to see an hour and a half of murder!

An hour and a half. The asteroid-quake! I looked at my chronometer. Only thirty minutes left until the asteroid-quake! Then the very ground beneath the mothership could collapse. I had to get out of here, and fast.

I had come to warn these humans. Only now I was even more terrified that if I revealed myself, they would all pull out guns, like the man on the screen, and riddle me with bloody holes! But even if I'd wanted to leave without warning them, they were blocking my only exit.

So I panicked and I did the only thing I could think of: I discharged my stink-gland.