“Did you really think,” she said, “that you were the only one who was worried about returning to Earth?”
“I guess I did.” He felt embarrassed.
“Maybe if you’d talked to more of the others, you’d have known you weren’t alone.”
“Emil, do you feel the same?” Max asked.
The boy shrugged and looked away. “I guess it’ll be interesting.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “If we get back.”
Lucinda said, “You told me you were afraid.”
Emil glared at her. “You don’t have to say it in front of him.”
“I was afraid, too,” Max said. “Maybe I still am.”
Emil looked at him dubiously. “You’re just trying to make me feel better. You’re friends with her now, so you have to be nice to me. If we weren’t in this mess together, you wouldn’t think you had to get along.”
“But I want to be your friend anyway, if you’ll let me.”
“I don’t get it. You never really liked either of us.”
Max took a deep breath. “So I was wrong about you both,” he said, surprised at how easy it was to say that now.
“Look at that!” Lucinda shouted.
Something long slid out of the waves onto the beach, moving like a giant black snake, except that it was segmented into joints. It stood up for half its length and swayed back and forth as if searching for something.
Emil stood up, trembling.
“It’s seen us,” Lucinda said.
“Come on!” Max cried, pulling Lucinda to her feet.
The snake lowered itself and slithered across the sand as they backed away toward the rocky area above the beach, then rose up again and examined them with eyes that were clusters of lenses on each side of its head.
“Why should it want us?” Lucinda asked, gasping for breath as they turned and scrambled across sharp rocks and slippery seaweed.
“Food!” Emil blurted. “Maybe we’re the same size as things it lives on.”
Max glanced back. The snake threw up sand and weeds as it slid between the rocks. They reached the outcropping, and Max saw for the first time that there were two openings.
“Which one?” Emil cried, tripped, and hit his head on a rock.
“Left, the larger one!” Max shouted. Lucinda helped him with Emil. “Inside!” They dragged him between them.
“I’m okay,” Emil said, pulling free.
They ran through the cave tunnel. Max imagined being swallowed by the long black body and digested for weeks; he had once read that snakes did it that way. He was sweating as they sprinted the last few meters and rushed through the black passage. It seemed to take forever to come out. Max felt that he was swimming in a black, oily substance. It slowed him down, but finally he burst out into the yellow station.
“It’ll come after us,” Emil said, squinting in the bright light. Max noticed the bruise on his forehead. Lucinda took a closer look.
“Does it hurt?‘“she asked, panting.
“Not much.” Emil winced, gulping air.
“Doesn’t look bad.”
“Leave me alone!” he cried.
She turned to Max. “Maybe it went into the other cave, and wasn’t after us at all.”
Max shook his head. “It was after us,” he said as his breath came easier. “Let’s go. If it comes out here, it won’t know which one we took.”
He faced the next square and went in, with Emil and Lucinda right behind him.
Max came to the exit, peered out into a blue-white station, then stepped out on the hard floor. Emil and Lucinda came out and stood at his right.
“The color’s right,” Emil said.
They stood to one side of the dark exit, ready to flee, but there was no sign that anything was coming through after them.
“Maybe this is our station,” Emil said hopefully. “Unless they’re using the same color twice.”
Lucinda laughed. “No reason they shouldn’t.”
“Okay,” Max said impatiently, “I’ll go out in a widening circle. If I don’t spot the habitat in ten minutes, I’ll come right back. It can’t be far if this is our station.”
“You’re assuming,” Emil said, “that there’s only one column in the station from which we started. There may be others, far away from our habitat, even if this is the right station. And wouldn’t it be better for all of us to go out?”
“I won’t be gone long,” Max answered. “The habitat is too big to miss.”
“Don’t be so bossy,” Lucinda said.
Max flushed, stung. “I wasn’t trying to be,” he replied.
As he marched away through the blue-white glare, he thought about how Lucinda used words to mangle people, and how much Emil enjoyed watching her do it. He looked back and saw her waving at him. The glare distorted her figure, making her look taller, exaggerating her shorts and dark hiking shoes. He waved back, then noticed that the column behind her and Emil was nearly invisible now, just about the way it would look if he were near the habitat.
He turned around and searched for it, then went on to his left, still hoping, but saw only bare floor. Disappointed, he started back.
Emil looked downcast.
“It could be over to the right,” Lucinda said.
“I’ll go again,” Max said.
They sat down against the column as he hurried away, resenting the forces, blind or deliberate, that had put them in this situation. They might have died in the flooding gorge, or been eaten by the alien snake. What was the point? He was beginning to suspect that they had been lured out at random into an automatic trap of some kind, one with a purpose set so long ago that it wasn’t working right any more.
He stopped, peered ahead, saw only the endless floor, turned and went back.
Lucinda was alone at the column. “Where’s Emil?” he asked.
“Searching, because he wasn’t sure you’d made a wide enough circle. Tell me, doesn’t the color of this station seem just a bit lighter?”
Max sat down next to her. “You’re right. It’s the wrong station.” He closed his eyes, feeling tired.
“Max…” she started to say.
He opened his eyes. She was gazing at him as if he had become someone else.
“How long have we been gone?” he asked. “I don’t remember when we started.”
“Nearly fifteen hours by my timer.”
“They’ll be looking for us by now.”
“They’ll find the column and go through,” she said anxiously.
“Maybe not. They’ll search the habitat first, then go outside. That may take a day.”
“But if other people have been lured out, they’ll go looking immediately. It would be terrible if people got hurt trying to find us. We’ve got to get back as soon as possible!” She fell silent. Max closed his eyes and drifted.
“Max?”
“What?” he mumbled.
“Do you like me?”
He opened his eyes. “Sure,” he heard himself say as he noticed a bruise just below her right knee.
“There’s no reason you should,” she continued. “I mean, the way I’ve acted toward you. Sometimes I can’t stop myself even when I know I’m being a real bitch. But I was always a little afraid of you.”
“Of me?” he asked in surprise.
She nodded. “You’re Max Sorby, too high and mighty to have anything to do with the rest of us. You always seemed so happy off by yourself, as if we couldn’t possibly be of any interest to you. You acted as if we were all silly. I guess I liked chipping away at you sometimes.”
Max shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t mind being by myself, and maybe…well, I talked to my parents a lot, and the rest of the time I didn’t really feel I needed anyone. It never occurred to me that anyone would resent me for that.” He looked directly at her. “There’s got to be more than that.”
She looked away as if he’d uncovered her deepest secret. “I always thought you were very smart, but you didn’t seem to want to do much with it. It made me mad. You wouldn’t get very far being by yourself all the time. Maybe if you’d had a brother or sister, you’d have had to get along with them, and that would have made you friendlier.” She paused. “Not that it exactly worked that way for me, having a brother.”
“I really
like
being by myself.”
She sighed. “You’re a little shy, Max.”
“No, I’m not.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He stared at her, then turned away.
“See? But it doesn’t matter here,” she whispered, slipping her hand into his.
“You worry about Emil a lot, don’t you?” he asked.
“I do,” she said, looking at him grimly. “My mother lost her brother when she wasn’t much older than I am, so she makes me look out for Emil. I think she’d go crazy if anything ever happened to him.”
“I know,” Max replied. “My father told me about the quakes on Mercury. My mother told me he tried to save your uncle. Dad doesn’t talk about his bad times much.”
“My mother’s never forgotten. She’s made me feel that if I don’t look after Emil, the same thing might happen to him.”
“What does your father think?”
“I overheard them arguing once. He told her to go easy on me, to let the dead rest. He was very angry.” Lucinda’s eyes glistened. “Oh, Max, she must be worried sick about us by now!” Her hand tightened in his.
Feeling a wave of concern and tenderness for her, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. A rush of warmth went through him as her green eyes looked at him. Her face, soft and flushed suddenly, did not belong to the Lucinda he had known or imagined. She leaned closer to him.
“I see you!” Emil called out as he approached. He came to the column and stood over them, grinning. “There’s steam coming from your ears, Max.”
“Oh, shut up,” Lucinda said, glaring at him.
“You found it!” Max shouted, getting to his feet.
Emil’s smile faded. He grimaced and gave Max a sad look. “Nah, we’re in the wrong place again.”
“We have to keep going,” Max said as he and Lucinda got up.
“What if that snake is waiting for us somewhere?” Emil asked with a laugh. Max saw that the younger boy was trying hard not to sound afraid.
Lucinda gave him a stern look. “We have no choice. Odds are it didn’t follow the way we came. Maybe it never entered the column at all.”
“You hope,” Emil replied. “It may be waiting for us anywhere. Maybe it’s even gone home ahead of us.”
“Don’t be silly,” Lucinda said, looking to Max for help.
Max tried to sound cheerful. “He’s only joking.”
Emil looked at him warily. “But we can’t be sure!”
Max laughed. “That snake wasn’t too bright. Probably went back into the ocean.”
Emil nodded hopefully, and took a deep breath. “I’m getting hungry.”
“We’ll only get hungrier,” Max said. “Let’s go.”
“Max,” Lucinda said, “do you think we’ll have to retrace our steps exactly to get back?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do we have to go back to the ocean world, to the gorge world, then back to that big dome, and then pass through back to where the habitat is trapped?”
Max frowned. “Maybe there’s a direct portal back. We can’t tell. All we can do is to keep trying them one by one.”
Emil looked unhappy. “Which one now?”
“Over here, to the right of the one we were sitting by.”
“Don’t worry,” Lucinda added, “we’ll get back.”
Emil stepped aside. Max went into the blackness and followed the S-curve to his right. Suddenly he imagined that he had entered the snake’s mouth and was marching into the creature’s stomach.
“There’s the exit!” Lucinda shouted.
Max came to it and peered out. “I think we’re back in the yellow station.”
He stepped out. Emil and Lucinda came and stood on either side of him. “No snake,” he said, pointing to the next portal. “Let’s keep going.”
He went in. Lucinda came up beside him in the alien darkness and took his hand. They moved forward together.
“I don’t see the exit,” she said. “This passage seems longer than the others.”
“Let’s go back!” Emil shouted.
“We’ve got to be sure,” Max insisted. Lucinda’s hand tightened in his. His throat felt dry. Finally, he began to see light. The square exit became visible. They came to it and peered out.
The sky was full of stars. A warm breeze blew across the cave exit, creating a low howl. Max saw a forest of bulbous trunks and giant leaves. Two moons seemed to be floating through the twisting branches. One orb was bright yellow, the other bronze.
“This isn’t it,” Emil said. “Let’s go back.”
“We need water,” Max replied. “Maybe there’s some around, and there’s no telling when we’ll have another chance.”
“I am thirsty,” Emil said.
“It may be nearby,” Max said, stepping cautiously out on the moss-covered ground. The air was warm on his face. He looked up at the starry sky and wondered how far from home they had come this time. How were distances measured through the curving passages? Once again he was awed by the power of the civilization that had made these star-spanning stations.
As his eyes adjusted to the night, he saw away through the forest. “That way. Maybe there’s a lake or a stream.” He looked back at the outcropping of rocks from which they had emerged. The cave entrance was partly hidden behind bushes.
Lucinda touched his arm. “Listen!”
Max heard something like a cricket chirping, then a low humming. He took her hand and led the way through the trees. Glancing back, he saw that she was holding onto Emil.
“I heard water running,” she said suddenly.
They hurried ahead. A stream cut across their path.
“It may not be safe,” Lucinda said.
Max got down on his hands and knees, stuck one finger in the water and sniffed the drop. “It smells strange,” he said, getting up. “Better not risk it. We have to get back before we get really hungry and thirsty.” The flowing water tempted him. He saw the look of disappointment on the pale, moonlit faces of Emil and Lucinda.
Something grunted far behind them.
Emil looked around. “What was that?”
“It’s coming closer,” Lucinda whispered.
They hid behind one of the bulbous trunks and waited. Max heard another grunt, louder this time. He watched the trail.
A dark shape appeared, at least two meters tall at the shoulder, moving on what seemed to be four legs. Max watched, fascinated. Emil gasped behind him.
The bearlike shape stopped and snorted, as if suddenly aware of them, then reared up on its hind legs, three meters into the tree, and began to munch on the big leaves. Max stood perfectly still and stared at the creature’s belly.