1942664419 (S) (21 page)

I let my lashes flutter closed and cuddled deeper into the crook of his arm, more at ease than I’d ever been.

24

Crack.

My eyes bolted open.

Crack.

I blinked the sting from my eyes. How long had I been asleep?

Crack.

I rolled toward David, and a pang jettisoned through my chest.

The leaves beside me lay empty.

Crack.

And something was outside.

I grabbed the branches over my head and lifted. But what if those twigs were all that was protecting me from the toxins outside? I released the leaves and set my palm where David had been. No warmth remained in the soil. How long had he been gone?

Crack.

“David?”

Something shuffled outside. I trembled and scuttled to the rear of our hideaway. The branches shifted overhead before opening. I cringed, until David’s smile stole my fear away. The planet’s odd green atmosphere lit him up like an Irish God.

“Good morning.”

I grabbed my chest and released the breath lodged there. “What are you doing?”

He pulled me from our safe haven and handed me a strip of something that looked like a Clark Bar without the chocolate coating.

I flipped the hard, brownish block over. “What is this?”

“Breakfast.”

Yum. I guess the bacon I’d been fantasizing about was too much to ask for.

I took a bite. The dry, crackery substance tasted a lot like a rice cake. Or cardboard. Same difference. I tried to withhold my grimace as I swallowed.

He squatted and handed me a canister. “Here. Drink. It helps to moisten the food supplements.”

I sat, sipped from the container, and handed the water back to him.

Interacting like this seemed so natural. It was almost hard to believe that only yesterday I was fumbling through these woods alone.

“How did you find me?”

His eyes deepened, the color swirling. “I could find you anywhere. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Maybe I did. When we were on the ship, and I’d closed my eyes, I had to concentrate to
not
sense David. His feeling, his resonance, screamed over everything else.

And last night, something drew me further into the trees. Always in one direction. Deep down, I think I knew he was alive, searching for me. “You can sense where I am, can’t you?”

He nodded, dragging his hand down the side of my face.

I grabbed his wrist, holding him there. “I thought I was going to die.”

David raised his free hand to my other cheek, cradling my face. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

Our foreheads touched, and a jolt of energy swirled across my skin before shooting through me, cascading through every inch of my being. My head eased back, and a sigh escaped my lips as the sensation settled in my chest, building in pressure.

I leaned into him, frightened, but driven to reach for more. I whimpered, straining, needing to burst what built inside me. Something cracked, and a wave of bounding energy shuddered through my veins. I gasped, releasing a moan with each subsequent tumble of energy. My body trembled until the sensations slowly ebbed away.

Breathing through the last of the tremors, I opened my eyes. David released me and sat back, looking at his hands.

It seemed an eternity before he returned his gaze to mine. “I’ve never done that before. It was supposed to feel good.” His shoulders leveled. “Did it?”

I blinked as the last of the sensations drifted away. “Are you kidding? That was amazing.”

He lowered his eyes. “Oh.”

“David, what’s wrong? I loved it. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

A sadness coated his eyes. I reached for him, wanting to blot that expression off his face forever.

He stood, moving away. “If we can figure out a way to attract that
grassen
back to the nerve center, we might be able to get part of the ship back together.” He brushed his fingers through his hair. “Every time I get near him, though, he attacks me.”

His stark change in subject cut a hole in my heart. What had I done to disappoint him?

David kept his gaze from me. “Do you really think it’s following you?”

“Well, he drank water out of my hand.”

David turned, raising his brow. “Be serious.”

“I swear. He even tried to give me something to eat—a dead animal.”

“I think you were hallucinating when you ran out of air.”

I folded my arms. “I’m telling you, he’s friendly. He may not like you, but he certainly likes me.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I let my arms fall to my sides. What was wrong with him? Maybe I shouldn’t push. “How would Edgar be able to help rebuild the ship?”

“
Grassen
herd the particles of the ship together, keeping them close enough to the nerve center so the ship acts like one solid entity, instead of millions of pieces moving independently. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The
grassen
feed off the expended energy of the ship’s molten components, while they keep the microbiotic elements from drifting off in space to die alone.”

“So, your ships, they’re actually alive?”

“They were.” He picked up a dull, black blob not much bigger than a grape. “The components won’t survive long scattered like this. They need to be together, like a family. Apart, they’re weak.” He picked up another bead and placed them together. When they tapped, the balls disintegrated and wafted through his fingers as dust.

“That can’t be good.”

“It’s not.”

I set my water canister down, but it slid off the rock. Two glugs of water trickled into the grass before David grabbed and handed the container back to me.

“Huh.” He poked a ball within the miniature puddle. The orb’s dull tone brightened.

“Huh, what?”

He picked up another dull, oblong bead from the ship and swirled it in the spilled water. The opalescence returned, and the slightly flattened oval sprang back into a ball. “Maybe the smaller parts are dehydrating?” He glanced at the cloudless, green sky. “I guess rain would be too much to ask for.”

I dribbled some water over the particles that had turned to dust. A soupy dust-mud puddle formed at my feet.

Oh well, it was worth a try. I guess dead was dead, even for alien metal.

“What happens if too many particles die like these?” I asked.

He looked down. “We don’t go home. The nerve center needs enough particles to form a ship around it.”

I rubbed my face. “So we need Edgar to get us out of here, huh?”

He nodded.

“Then I think you better let me do the talking.”

25

The sun had moved to the opposite side of the sky. Probably about four o’clock by Earth standards. After biting David three times, Edgar lay hidden under a pile of leaves.

David massaged the fang marks on his hands. “If you have any ideas, I’m up for them.”

I tried to hide the smirk from my face. “I told you to let me do the talking.”

He sighed. “I’m trying to be a gentleman. I didn’t want you to get hurt. I have a fake epidermis he has to bite through before he draws blood. You don’t.”

I picked up a few glistening orbs. From the number in this area, it seemed Edgar had already started herding them. With a gentle flick, I rolled the orbs toward the
grassen’s
den. Edgar snatched the bait, pulling the orbs beneath the leaves.

Well, that’s a good start.

I poured some water into my hand and held the drink close to the hole.

“What are you doing? That thing will bite your thumb off.”

I reached closer. “I don’t think so.”

“Jess, don’t.”

Edgar edged out. His fangs hung close to my fingers, but I didn’t budge. I crouched down to his level as he slipped his fangs into the water.
Good boy.

“The ship we all came on kinda blew up,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady. “David might be able to fix it, if we get all the pieces back together. Do you think you can help?”

“That thing is not listening to you,” David said. “They’re not intelligent like that.” He stood, and the spider whisked back into the burrow.

“You scared him.”

David slumped to the ground and threw a rock into the trees. I sat beside him.

“You didn’t seem so negative about the
grassen
back on the ship. You called Edgar out of the wall like it was nothing.”

“Because before then I’d never been bitten by one.” He glanced back at the burrow. “I honestly don’t know all that much about them. We kind of take them for granted. In a pack, they’re predictable. They always do what we prompt them to do. I never had to deal with one with a bad attitude.”

I wove my fingers into his. “Maybe you two just need to get to know each other?”

Something shifted beside my thigh. I froze as a silvery leg maneuvered a small black glob beside my hip. “David,” I whispered.

His eyes widened. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”

Edgar scurried into the trees and nudged three more orbs toward us. The four balls flew together like magnets, becoming one larger, shiny mass.

I smiled. “Still think he didn’t understand?”

“I don’t believe it.”

Edgar reared back on his hind legs, chittered, and ran into the bushes. He returned and looked at us. My reflection sparkled in his center eye, David’s likeness in his left.

I stood and approached the huge spider.

“What are you doing?” David eased up from the ground.

“He wants us to follow him.”

David tilted his head. “How do you know?”

“Haven’t you ever had a dog?”

“No.”

I reached out my hand to David, pulling him the rest of the way up. “Trust me on this one.”

We wove through the trees. I crinkled my nose over the thick smell of scorched earth.
Can you call it earth when you’re not actually on Earth?
I shook my head. Who cared?

Edgar stopped before a thick outcropping of trees and tapped his two rear feet together. David stepped back.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“The last few times it did that it charged me.”

“Maybe he smells your fear.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Yes, you are.

I smirked, following Edgar around the base of five humongous trees that had grown together into a solid wall. As I turned the corner, the sun shone down on a reflective surface, blinding me. I shielded my brow and moved further toward the trees to get the glare out of my eyes.

David gasped as he joined me. A ball of liquid metal looming far over our heads swirled, casting streaks of color into the trees. Edgar worked busily on the ground, herding a few baseball-sized orbs toward the mass until they absorbed into the larger body.

“I don’t believe it,” David said.

He walked toward the sphere, giving Edgar a generous leeway, and ran his fingers through the liquid metal. His features darkened.

“These particles are too warm.” He turned to me. “We have to get this material back to the core.”

26

The giant orb inched forward, breaking into three pieces to get through the trees. Edgar cooed into the air. Like mice drawn to the Pied Piper, blobs of metal in various sizes of spheres and ovals tumbled toward the mass and absorbed into the larger body.

“Good boy.” I patted Edgar’s head.

David walked beside us with his arms folded.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He picked up an egg-shaped rock. As he handed it to me, the stone disintegrated. “That was part of the ship. There’s an awful lot of material that has already died from exposure.”

I scanned the scattered rocks littering the grass. Not good.

“I know this mound seems like a lot, but I’m not sure we have enough to make the ship run.”

Edgar herded the orb through the brush, coaxing more particles into the larger mass. The blob seemed to swirl faster, reflect brighter with each addition to its gelatinous form. The pearlescent monolith crept through the green forest in a slow, steady roll: a vision both eerie and beautiful.

Maybe David was right. Maybe we couldn’t save enough of the ship to make a difference. But we had to try. We couldn’t just sit there and let all of those scattered particles die.

As we turned to our right, the glow brightened, and we stepped into the blackened, circular indentation I had fallen into earlier. It looked like someone had scooped out part of the planet with a giant ice cream spoon, leaving a scattering of burned and toppled trees littering the edges of the formation.

When I was hanging on for dear life, I didn’t digest how large the crater was.

My mouth fell open. “Did your ship leave this big a hole when you crashed on earth?”

“No. On Earth I wasn’t carrying an explosive payload.”

“The powder?”

He nodded. “This is only a fraction of what it would have done if the ship’s reactor didn’t blow. It was hot enough to obliterate the powder before the secondary reaction ignited.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the planet is still here.”

Ho-lee-crap.
I eased my arms under his shoulders, pulling him closer. “You crashed the ship on purpose.”

He ran his fingers through my hair. “Once the reactor ruptured, I shot off in the other escape pod. I got lucky.”

The crater took up acres. He wasn’t just lucky. He was damn lucky.

His gaze remained fixed on the immense hollow below us. “I had to make sure the powder imploded. It was the only way.” He pointed out over the desolation. “What’s left of our ship is over here.”

We trudged through the ashes, making our way to a glowing, pulsing spiral hidden just inside the tree line: a miniature version of the staircase the
grassen
had attacked us on in the center of the ambassador’s ship. Small pools of liquid ebony dotted the terrain. The shinier droplets rolled toward the larger mass of their own accord. Edgar busied himself gathering the weaker spherical entities and bringing them back to the fold.