2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Page 11

  Esperanza couldn’t hold back tears, but she kept herself from sobbing.

  “Can you at least try to get the generator back on before you go?” Mamá said. “It’s getting dark.”

  Papá took three bricks of blastique out of the safe then closed it. He nodded. “Mija, come with me to hold the flashlight while I try to fix the generator.”

  As Esperanza and Papá stepped out the kitchen door, he suddenly grabbed her arm.

  “What?” she said, then she heard the cheeping.

  In the twilight, Zamba staggered toward them on his middle and back legs. His front legs dangled uselessly.

  “Back inside,” Papá said. They stepped back into the house. Papá bolted the door. “Maria!”

  Mamá entered the kitchen. “What is it?”

  Zamba came close to the diamondglass wall and banged against it with his pincers.

  Mamá gasped.

  Esperanza couldn’t believe this was happening. Zamba was still cheeping at her like he did when he was sorry for something, yet here he was attacking the house. “Go away,” she yelled. “I hate you!”

  “I need something sticky,” Papá said to Mamá. “So I can stick the explosives to it.”

  “I’ll find something,” Mamá said. “Give me the flashlight.” In a moment, she was gone.

  Zamba lifted his left pincer to his beak and bit at the nanofiber band. It resisted at first, but then tore and the pincer was free. He then did the same to the other.

  Esperanza watched in horror as he used his pincers to tear off his front legs. The holes in his shell where the legs had come out sealed up.

  With his pincers, Zamba reached up to the roof, grabbed ahold, and began to pull. Above them, something creaked and then snapped.

  “Into the living room,” Papá said.

  They hurried in the dark, almost slipping and falling in their rush. Mamá and the flashlight joined them in huddling behind the couch, right after a huge crashing noise from the kitchen.

  “Superglue,” she said, handing a tube to Papá.

  “That’ll do,” he replied. He began working on the explosives while Mamá held the flashlight for him.

  Something stung Esperanza’s ankle. She reached down and felt the shell of a small creature. She brushed it away.

  “Ow,” said Mamá. The flashlight wavered, and for a moment Esperanza thought she saw the floor moving. Was Zamba somehow digging under them? That couldn’t be possible, could it?

  “Mamá,” she said, “shine the light on the floor.”

  “Why?”

  “Please.”

  Mamá turned the flashlight down.

  The floor was a seething mass of tiny creatures like the one that had bitten Esperanza just before Zamba went crazy.

  “What are those? Where did they come from?” Mamá asked.

  Papá stayed focused on the explosives.

  Esperanza could see some of the creatures crawling up Mamá’s legs. She reached down and swatted at them, knocking most of them off. One grabbed onto her hand and bit her finger. She could feel more bites on her legs.

  With a tremendous crash, Zamba tore through the kitchen wall and into the living room. The ceiling collapsed behind him. He cheeped at them.

  Papá stood up, a brick of blastique in his right hand.

  “Wait!” Esperanza shouted. “He was trying to save me. From the swarm.”

  Papá hesitated. “What swarm?”

  “Look down,” Mamá said.

  Papá looked down then began stomping with his boots.

  Esperanza came out from behind the couch. “I’m so sorry, Zamba,” she said. “I didn’t understand.”

  “What are you doing?” Papá said. He still held a brick of blastique.

  Esperanza knew she was right. She had to be. She rushed toward Zamba, who reached out with his pincer and grabbed her by the waist.

  “Espe!” Mamá cried.

  Zamba lifted Esperanza up and onto his back.

  “See?” Esperanza said. “He couldn’t use his pincers, so his mouth was the only way he could carry me.”

  Zamba reached out his pincers toward Mamá and Papá. After a brief hesitation, they came around the couch and Zamba lifted them onto his back.

  Zamba turned and lumbered out of the house, heading east.

  Everywhere Mamá shone the flashlight on the ground, the swarm writhed. “Our crops,” she said. “We are losing everything.”

  “Not everything.” Papá hugged the two of them close. “Not the most important things.”

  Once Zamba reached the river, he waded out a couple of meters and then stopped.

  “Of course,” Esperanza said. “The swarm would be swept away if it came into the river. That’s why he was bringing me here.”

  The three of them stayed on Zamba’s back all night, huddled together for warmth. Esperanza didn’t get much sleep, as crashing sounds in the wild country across the river kept startling her awake.

  As the sun rose the next morning, they could see the result of the swarms – for there must have been another swarm across the river. Not a tree was left standing, and the surface of the land glittered with tiny moving shells. Various larger animals, including some lobstersauruses, roamed about, feeding off the tiny creatures.

  As for their farm, blanketed by the swarm, none of the crops remained. Parts of their house still stood, though, diamondglass and metal glinting in the sun.

  “What I can’t understand is why the survey robots never reported on these swarms,” Papá said. “They were here twenty years before we arrived, and they never saw these things.”

  Esperanza remembered something she’d read in her science studies. “Maybe they’re like cicadas, and only come out after many years underground.”

  “The seeds!” said Mamá. “This is why all the native seeds have such tough shells. If every few decades a swarm eats all the plants, then the seeds still survive.”

  “Not just seeds,” Papá said. “All the land animals have shells. Of course – hardly anything without a shell would survive.”

  “We don’t have shells,” Esperanza said. “Without Zamba, we might be dead.” She rubbed her hand over Zamba’s shell, and he made a low, almost purring sound. “But what do we do now? We can’t stay on Zamba’s back forever.”

  “With the food exhausted,” said Papá, “my guess is the swarm will mate, dig down to wherever they lay their eggs then die. And the cycle will be over for however many years until the eggs hatch. We’ll have to bring down more seeds from the ship and start over.”

  “And this time we’ll have to figure out what to do before they come back,” Esperanza said.

  “Someone will figure something out.” Papá winked at her. “Maybe even you.”

  …………………………

  Because Earth species provide no real nutritional value to Arcasian animals, the swarmers that fed on colonist crops mostly failed to reproduce after burrowing. Thirty-seven years from now, the eggs that do hatch under areas that were already cultivated during the swarm fifteen years ago will be reduced by over ninety-five percent. This suggests that strategy of mass cultivation of Earth crops in the year before each swarm might be highly effective in reducing future swarms in that area.

  —Esperanza Vega, master’s thesis in Biology

  The Journey of a Thousand Miles

  C.J. Daring

  C.J. Daring, alter-ego of the evil William R.D. Wood, lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in an old farmhouse turned backwards to the road. C.J Daring pens works of mystery and adventure for readers of all ages. Some are set in the far reaches of space. Some in the murkiest depths of time. And sometimes, when you’re not looking, maybe even your own back yard! Check in and see what coming next at www.williamRDwood.com.

  David held the testing center door as his older classmates exited. The air in the courtyard always smelled fresher, even though it was the same air everywhere on the ship. A couple of students glanced down at him as they passed;
one of the girls even gave him a smile. Not a single one said thanks. Mom said they treated him that way because David was as smart as them, but four years their junior, and no kid liked having a blipsqueak in their class. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that in a few years he’d be an engineer just like his parents.

  “You’re welcome,” he said to their backs.

  The courtyard was crowded today. A projection of the captain played on the sky. He was talking about his visit to one of the primary schools this morning.

  “…our young people today are carrying on in the best traditions of our forefathers,” the captain said. “Obeying the rules. Offering a helping hand. And never being afraid to do the right thing. We’re teaching the generation who are going to stand in gravity, folks. Let’s get it right. The journey of a thousand miles…”

  The captain let the words hang as the projection faded into drifting clouds, knowing everyone was finishing the phrase in their heads. The overhead sunlights were turned up to mid-afternoon, and the temperature was regulating to the warmest summer level they’d enjoyed this year. David took a deep breath. A few kids his age were throwing a ball on the far side of the light fountain. David smiled. Today he was going to ask if he could join them.

  A shrill voice pierced the serenity. A little girl’s voice.

  “No,” said David. “Please, no.”

  But the voice was unmistakable. Mom was right about the older kids. He knew just how they felt sometimes. With a final glance at the kids across the courtyard, David jogged around the corner toward the commotion.

  Abby, his little sister, squared off against a monster of a kid named Elliot. Fists at her side and head thrown back, Abby glared up at him. Elliot towered over her and had her by thirty kilos easy, but his little sister didn’t understand those sorts of things.

  “Am not!” Abby shouted.

  The scene was comical, and David was tempted to let it play out. But he had responsibilities.

  “Yelling isn’t going to make it so, runt,” said Elliot.

  Abby kicked Elliot in the shin. Elliot yelped, drawing back an arm. David pushed between them just in time to throw Elliot off balance and stop his swing. With his own arm, David moved Abby behind him.

  “Better keep her outa my face.” Elliot bumped his chest into David’s face.

  “Or what?” said David pushing back. “You afraid she’s gonna kick your butt? Then everyone’ll know you got beat up by a five year old.”

  “Yeah.” Abby giggled. David had to sidestep to keep her from coming back around.

  Elliot balled his fists, his face flushing red.

  A shadow moved over their trio and a familiar voice asked, “What seems to be the trouble, citizens?”

  “C-captain,” Elliot sputtered as he stumbled back. “N-no trouble, sir. No trouble.”

  “Is that true?” asked the captain, looking directly at Abby.

  Abby pointed an accusing finger at Elliot. “He said—”

  “Everything is fine, sir,” David interrupted. “Just headed to our quarters. Chores and studying to do.”

  The captain looked down at them, one corner of his mouth turned up. His uniform was clean, but a pair of dirty work gloves hung from his belt. Dad said he did this for public relations, to show he didn’t mind getting dirty.

  “You were the little girl from the assembly this morning,” the captain said to Abby. “The one with all of the questions.”

  “She’s always like that, Captain,” Elliot blurted. “Too many, if you ask me.”

  The captain pulled a glass wedge, his phone, from a pocket and quickly scrolled until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, yes. Abigail Salvadore. Phillip and Kiyomi’s youngest.”

  Abby nodded.

  “Your parents are two of the best engineers we have. So good they’ve earned a permit for a third. You children knew already? I hope I didn’t let the air out of the lock.” His smile was infectious.

  David nodded but Abby just looked on, her mind somewhere else. Probably working out how to kick Elliot again.

  The captain knelt before them. “You should be proud of them. They’re doing important work out on spar one-eleven for the next couple of days. We’ll be at Gliese in your lifetimes, you know. We have to make sure the ship is ready.”

  The kids all nodded.

  “They follow the rules set down by our forefathers because those rules have gotten us ninety percent of the way across the Big Gulf. They’ll take us the next fifty years too, but we have to follow them, don’t we?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Elliot. “I follow the rules. Mrs. McNamara always says—”

  “Abigail,” said the captain. “You’re going to follow the rules better, aren’t you?”

  Abby’s focused on him, brow furrowed. David bumped her shoulder lightly. “Yes, sir.”

  “You promise?”

  David bumped her again. “I promise.”

  “Me, too, Captain,” said Elliot.

  The captain’s phone chimed, and he turned to listen to it as Abby and Elliot sneered at one another. David sighed, ready to get back to their quarters and out of the sunlights.

  “Just initialize the peripheral hybridizers,” the captain was saying into his phone, his voice hushed enough the crowd couldn’t hear, but not enough the three of them couldn’t. “Yes, I know it’s not protocol...look, I’ll call you right back. You children have a great day. Remember, the journey of a thousand miles...”

  “Begins with a single step,” said David and Elliot in unison and the captain walked briskly toward the nearest lift.

  “It ends with a single step, too,” said Abby.

  The captain paused in the lift doors long enough to give Abby a wink. Then he was gone.

  …………………………

  David leaned over the ship’s schematic displayed on the dinner table in their quarters. Engineering commentary looped quietly from the speakers as sections illuminated. The ship was kilometers long, home to fifty thousand people, and the details were lost at this scale. He just needed to know the basics for the test on Friday. Drive sections, power plants, habitation rings—which parts rotated. And the major cargo pods. Some had been repurposed, their contents used up along the journey, but most were empty and left to their own devices.

  His stomach rumbled. He glanced up at the clock.

  19:49.

  Had he really been absorbed in the schematic that long? Abby must be starving. If she told Mom and Dad he hadn’t fed her or he’d ignored her, they’d never leave him in charge again. They might even decide David wasn’t old enough for his own phone and sign it back into Stores.

  “Abby?”

  Abby didn’t answer. David heard quiet sobbing from down the hallway.

  Great. He could kiss his phone goodbye.

  Muting the tabletop, David moved to Abby’s bedroom. The room was dark except for the soft red spokes from the baseboard safety lights. Abby lay on the bed, face buried in her pillow.

  “You hungry, Abby? I could heat up some piggen.” If anything would get him out of reclamatory with her it was piggen nuggets.

  She shook her head.

  He had been a lousy brother, so focused on reviewing for the test, he hadn’t even noticed when she’d stopped brooding on the couch and went to her room. Worse, he hadn’t talked to her on the way to their quarters. He wasn’t mad. He just had to score as high as the bigger kids or they would make fun of him and tell him he should go back with kids his own age.

  “Come on and let me make some for you.”

  The crying stopped, replaced by sniffles. Abby rolled over. “You’re not scared, are you?” She was using her baby voice, like the time she asked Dad for reassurance the air wasn’t going to run out. She’d learned about the ship’s reclamatory systems in kindergarten that day.

  “No, Abigail. I’m not scared.”

  “Don’t you want to know what of?” Abby’s voice was stronger now, a little less hard on his older, more mature nerves.
He’d overheard Mom speculating to Dad that nature had given human offspring squeaky voices so their parents couldn’t ignore them. It was the only way the race survived to expand to the stars on generation ships like theirs.

  Must work on big brothers too.

  “Sure. What?”

  Abby sat up and whispered, ““The Bogeyman.”

  David stifled a laugh. “Is that what you and Elliot were arguing about?”

  “He said I was scared. But I’m not.”

  “Well, you don’t need to be. He’s just glitching with you. There’s no reason to be scared of something that doesn’t exist.”

  “He said the Bogeyman lives in Repo One, and he’s gonna come and get us little kids and use us for parts.”

  David enjoyed tormenting the younger kids as much as the next guy, but the Bogeyman? Really? “Abby, that’s just stupid.”

  “Is not.”

  “He’s just telling you a bunch of dumb stories about Repo One.” Repository One was the largest of the cargo storage pods and had been the first depleted. Crews had repurposed it early on as an oxygen farm and arboretum, but that had been abandoned – except by the automated systems – for over two hundred years.

  “He’s thirteen.”

  She said Elliot’s age as if it were a decree from the captain. The journey of a thousand miles would not be possible without Elliot Higginsbotham. His every word is truer than truest truth!

  The truth was that Elliot was a jerk. “You can’t believe someone just because they’re older.”

  “You can’t?”

  “No. Being older makes you smarter, not honester—more honest. And, honestly, even smart people lie sometimes.”

  She paused. “Do Mom and Dad lie?”

  That went aft fast. She was good at piecing things together, that was for sure. “No. At least not to us.”

  The room was silent except for a rhythmic squeak from a ceiling ventilator. “Would you ever lie to me, Davie?”