We trooped on past the crevasse, shoulders slumped, feet shuffling. The sun was almost below the high peaks, throwing deep shadows over our twisting path.

  If we don’t find them soon, we’ll have to stop for another night. And then what? My throat closed at the thought of giving up. But what if that really was their transport? What if Horizon was wrong and Nirah had been dead all this time? All the people back home hoping their loved ones might be coming back across the channel with us would be crushed when we returned alone. And Dad will die on a dead ship in a black sky.

  “Hey guys?” Kintan’s voice echoed in the rocky pass. “Get up here.”

  I followed him up and around a corner and found him standing on top of a rock, looking into a little valley. It was nowhere near as big as Carthage. It wasn’t green and fertile, but brown and scrubby like the hills we’d been climbing through for three days. And sitting right in the middle was the hulking, dull metal shape of Horizon Alpha Transport Eight.

  Chapter 10

  Caleb

  We ran straight into Mr. Chen. He was almost at the bottom of the path around a blind corner in a shadow, digging under a rock with a small metal pick. I had taken the lead of our little party and stumbled right over the top of him. He screamed and jumped back, raising the pick in defense.

  “It’s me,” I said, hands up. “Caleb Wilde.”

  He dropped the pick and stared at me. His mouth opened in silent shock and he sank to his knees, tears bursting from his eyes.

  “Oh, stars, are you real?”

  I knelt next to him and picked up his tool. “We’re real. We’re here. How many are you?”

  His hands were gnarled as he grabbed my arm, squeezing as if to test whether I was flesh or some kind of mirage. “We’re . . . There are twelve of us now. Where have you been? We’ve waited so long. We thought there was nobody else left.” He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt, eyes darting among us.

  I helped him stand and handed back his pick. “Let’s go find the rest, okay?”

  It must have been such a shock to him. After three years alone up here enduring who-knew-what, we’d just appeared out of literally nowhere. My party had known we were looking for survivors up here. His party thought they were the only ones on the planet.

  We followed him down into the valley. Someone must have seen us coming, and by the time we reached the plain, eleven other people were waiting. They rushed up to greet us, laughing and crying. A deep, joyous noise escaped Fernando’s throat as he embraced a young woman, picking her up in a tight hug and swinging her around.

  “Carmen! You’re here!”

  Fernando’s sister squealed, wrapping her arms around her brother’s neck. My eyes felt hot and I knuckled away my own tears, remembering the days on Horizon Alpha, which seemed like a million years ago. Shiro would sure be glad to see Carmen.

  I scanned the little crowd until I saw the object of our search. Nirah Saffar. She looked older and more tired than I remembered from Horizon. I was just a little kid then, but she was one of my father’s officers, in charge of everything mechanical on Horizon Alpha. Her dark hair was shot through with gray, but her eyes were steel.

  “Where have you come from?” She took both my hands in hers. “Who is still alive?”

  “There are almost a hundred of us now,” I said, smiling. “We live in a huge green valley, and we’ve come to take you there.”

  “Did you lose your leader?”

  I misunderstood her question. “We’ve lost a lot of people. Sam Borin is our current leader.”

  She looked behind me up the hillside. “Is he coming?”

  Oh. She meant, who’s leading this little party.

  “No, he’s back at our valley. I’m the leader of this rescue mission.”

  A gust of wind blew Nirah’s hair into her face. “You are? I remember you from the ship. You’re, what . . . sixteen?”

  Heat flushed my face. “I’ve spent more time in the wilds of this planet than anyone. I’m part of the Carthage advisory council. And yes, I’m sixteen.”

  She shook her head and frowned at the dimming sky. “Let’s get back to the ship. You must be hungry.”

  We followed them back to their transport which lay on the hard ground, its nose partially buried in the dirt. None of our landings had been easy. Transport Eight’s appeared to have almost been disastrous.

  Nirah led us into the dim interior and someone pulled the door shut behind us. The transport’s solar power still worked, and the interior was lit. They had pulled out all the seats and turned it into a bunkhouse of sorts. Old seat cushions were laid on the floor of the passenger area. It smelled of old, sour sweat and drying meat. The hatches to the cargo area behind and the cockpit ahead were closed and we all crowded together on the cushions.

  “Why do you close the outside door?” I asked. “Is there anything that hunts here at night?”

  Nirah shook her head. “No. There are a bunch of reptiles that hop around the hills. A wide variety of small mammals, all of which we can eat. But nothing we’re afraid of until the flood.” She cocked her head to the side. “Why? Is there something that hunts at night where you live?”

  She doesn’t even know. How can they not know? But there weren’t any big ‘saurs in the hills. We hadn’t seen any fliers since we’d gotten into the higher mountains, either. If they’d never ventured south into the jungle, how would they know?

  Adam beat me to the punch. “Oh, nothing much. Just dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dinosaurs.”

  That got the reaction he must have been hoping for. The next hours were spent telling our respective stories.

  They had been here since they landed, never venturing far from the transport. They had been as far as the channel we’d crossed to the southeast, and a short way west, which was just more brown, dry hills. With no satellite signal, they had no idea where to begin searching for other survivors, and assumed there weren’t any. They had seen the wreckage of Transport Three in the crevasse and thought we had all likely met the same fate. It was a hard existence here. Food was hard to come by, and the streams only flowed during the rainy season. But they were safe. Despite the odds, they were alive.

  Something Nirah had said bounced around my brain.

  “You said you’re not afraid of anything until the flood? Does this valley flood when it rains?” I couldn’t imagine enough rain to fill this whole area, but there wasn’t much soil to absorb it.

  “Not a water flood,” she said. “It’s a—a migration, we think. First full moon every year after spring equinox. Should be . . .” She thought for a moment. “In about sixty days. Right after Tau Ceti e rises this year. Don’t you get them where you live?”

  I shook my head. We were sitting propped up against the wall of the transport eating some kind of dried, crunchy bits out of a bowl made from an old helmet. I didn’t really want to know what I was eating. Probably bugs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But you live in the mountains, right? I can’t imagine they don’t come where you are.”

  Kintan said, “We’ve only been there a couple of months.”

  She nodded. “Well, you need to be ready. Borin will have to figure something out, and fast. Near as we can figure, they nest around the hot springs up north. At some point the little ones hatch. They come over the mountains all together—hundreds of thousands of them. They eat everything they find. The first year . . . we had no idea they were coming. Almost seventy of us had landed here, and by the time the Flood came we’d only lost eight people. They killed over forty of our people before the rest of us could get inside and lock down the transport. It’s just a swarm. Tiny reptiles, so quick. Like a plague. They swarm everywhere for days, moving on past like a flood.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “The second year we only lost five people before we realized what was happening. We hadn’t stockpiled enough food, and it was an awful week, locked in here while they streamed around the portholes. Last year we were ready and didn’t lose anyone.”

  Adam’s eyes were wide. “Where do they go? We never saw them in the jungle.”

  Nirah shrugged. “They disappear south. We’ve been far enough to see there’s a river down there, so that’s probably where they go to breed. Very likely they have a specific migratory pattern, like birds back on Earth did. If they didn’t come through where you were, thank your lucky stars. When they come back through a few weeks later, they don’t eat anything. Their numbers are less than half, and they’re fat and slow, full of eggs. Pretty tasty, actually. We think they go back up north, lay their eggs, and then probably die. There were apparently Earth insects that did that kind of thing.”

  “But these aren’t insects? They’re ‘saurs?” I nodded, thinking how sad Sara would be not to get to study them.

  “I wouldn’t call them dinosaurs, no,” she said. “But I guess they must be. No bigger than your palm. But thousands. Absolutely devastating in numbers.” She waved toward the front of the cargo hold, where strips of dried meat were piled high. “We’ve got a good enough stockpile for this year.”

  I looked around the transport. “So you just hide in here while they pass?”

  She nodded again. “You can hear them all over the transport. A few of them get in, but a few of them isn’t a problem. Do you have enough transports in your valley for everyone to be safe when they come?”

  “We don’t have any transports. We live in the caves.”

  Her face paled. “Oh, no. You can’t go in the caves.”

  Kintan scooted in next to Nirah. “We know. But our caves don’t have the bloodsuckers. The Birdmen exterminated them.”

  Nirah paused. “The . . . Birdmen?” She glanced around at the rest of her people, all hanging on our words. Her expression clearly indicated that she thought we’d been climbing in the hot sun too long.

  We told her what we knew about the alien species that once tried to colonize this planet. Everyone was huddled together, the mystery food forgotten.

  Nirah smiled. “Seems there’s a whole lot more to Ceti than we ever dreamed.”

  Chapter 11

  Caleb

  We talked into the night, sharing our stories. The people of Transport Eight were divided about coming back to Carthage with us. Some of them felt they were doing all right where they were.

  “We’ve got food, water, and shelter,” one of the older men said. “We don’t have dinosaurs or whatever these bird people are. Why should we leave here just because these kids want us to come?”

  Nirah frowned at him. “You’re right, Ed. We do have what we need to survive. But look around. We thought we were the only humans on this planet. That we’d live what was left of our time, and die here alone.” She looked around at her people, all thin and hollow-eyed. “There’s no future here for us. When we’re gone from here, we’re gone. At their colony, though . . .” She looked at us with hope, and a little doubt. “Maybe we could do more than live out our days. Maybe we could be part of the future.”

  Nirah glanced over at Carmen Orellana, Fernando’s younger sister. She was leaning against her brother, and dropped her eyes at Nirah’s look.

  Nirah gave a small, sad smile. “Maybe Carmen wants a future.”

  She didn’t have to elaborate. There weren’t enough people from Transport Eight to create a viable colony on their own. They needed us just like we needed them.

  In the end, the vote was almost unanimous. Two of the older men voted to stay in this valley, and everyone else voted to join us.

  They were electric in their hope. We had brought them a dream they had never thought possible since crashing on this planet alone.

  Looking around at their faces, I was struck by the weight of their newfound optimism. Let’s just get back safely. All of us. I pushed my doubts aside and welcomed the future citizens of Carthage.

  In the morning we packed up most of the meat they’d stockpiled, and the few tools they’d made from the remains of their transport. Theirs was one of the first transports loaded and launched in the chaos of Horizon’s evacuation, and it was only meant to transport humans. Other transports had been packed with supplies, but the people of Transport Eight had little more than the clothes they were wearing, whatever personal items they’d managed to grab on the way out, and the basic life-support standard on the ships.

  Nirah was shocked to learn that anyone was still alive on Horizon. “Guess that’s our good luck then, isn’t it?” We stood at the edge of their valley looking back at their wrecked ship. “If you hadn’t made contact with them, you’d never have known we were here. Never come to look for us way up north.”

  And honestly, if we didn’t need you to fix our last shuttle to go get them, we would never have risked the channel crossing to come find you. I didn’t say that aloud, of course. But there was no way we would have braved that water if Nirah hadn’t been our best hope of rescuing the remaining survivors.

  Thank the stars there were no babies or old people among the Transport Eight crew. I had been dreading what we might find, fretting over how we’d get the very young or infirm over the high, rocky hills back to the channel, and then over the mountains into Carthage. At least everyone here was strong enough to make the journey. There weren’t enough canteens for everyone to have one, so now I worried that we’d run out of water before we got back to our side of the channel.

  “Everybody try not to drink if you don’t have to,” I cautioned before we set out. “Hopefully we’ll find some running streams along the way, but it’s three days back to the channel, and we can’t cross until dusk.”

  We hadn’t made a big deal about the dangers that lurked in the channel. No sense worrying them unnecessarily. I felt a bit guilty about that, but there was no reason to share my fears about the journey and the crossing. It was a weight I could carry alone.

  The marks we had painted on the rocks helped us on the way back. Kintan’s pathfinding had been pretty spot-on, and looking at the mountain peaks we skirted, I realized he’d brought us the most direct way possible.

  Carmen walked in front of me, just behind Fernando. She spoke over her shoulder as we climbed. “So . . . how many people did you say are at your valley?”

  “Almost a hundred,” I answered. “We just got your brother’s group a little while ago from where they landed. And the rest of us all landed together.”

  “So . . . who all is there?”

  I knew exactly who she meant by “who all.” But I decided to drag it out a while. “Well, my brother Josh made it, and my mom and my little sister. My mom just had a baby, so that’s cool, too. And Mr. Borin, Brent’s dad . . . we just elected him Mayor.”

  Carmen’s foot slipped on a rock and she cursed, scrambling at the sharp stones. “I remember Brent. How’s he doing?”

  Fernando reached down and pulled his sister up to the ledge he was standing on. “Brent’s not there.” He must not have heard the whole story of that final mission into the jungle.

  “No,” I said. “Brent didn’t make it. He died trying to save us all.” It was the same thing I’d told Brent’s dad.

  “Save you from what?”

  “Um . . .” I hopped up behind them. “You remember I said there were dinosaurs here, right?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, we’ve seen a bunch.”

  I grinned. “Little ones, yes. Once you get out of the hills, there are . . . bigger ones.”

  We followed the rest of the group on up the climb.

  “So . . . is Shiro around?”

  Oh, thank the stars. She hasn’t forgotten him. I was certain he hadn’t forgotten her. I thought about stringing her along for a while, but that would just be cruel. “Sure is. He wanted to come on this mission, but we didn’t want to bring any more people than necessary.”

  She paused on the rock and I was shocked to realize she was crying. Fernando met my eyes and we shared a “What’s going on?” expression. In a few moments she composed herself. “It’s just . . . I lost everybody. Everybody. And now you’re here . . .” She smiled up at her brother. “And Shiro’s alive. It’s just a lot to take in.”

  Fernando hugged her and I felt a bit of moisture in my own eyes. Don’t let it fall. We can’t afford the water. “I get it. Felt the same way when I realized my dad hasn’t been dead for the past three years.”

  We climbed for the next two days, not making much actual distance, but covering a lot of vertical ground. The strips of dried meat got harder and harder to chew as the hours passed. On the third morning we found a small drip of water, a rivulet dripping through a crack in the rocks. We took turns sucking at the moisture on the rock, but there wasn’t enough flow to fill our canteens.

  The next morning we were well into the descent. Our progress had been faster than I anticipated since we were able to follow the marked path. It was still early in the day when we paused on a wide ledge. Kintan was kneeling next to a couple of big rocks, and I recognized the glint of the Birdmens’ silver egg-thing.

  “Well, it hasn’t exploded, so I guess it’s not a bomb.” I crouched next to him and Nirah, who was running her fingers over the markings.

  “They’re obviously numbers,” she murmured, looking like a child with a birthday gift. “It has to be a code of some kind.” She turned to me. “There’s writing on the back?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but I can’t read it. Only Sara can.”

  “Sara Arnson?” Nirah smiled. “No wonder you’re all still alive. That’s one smart lady.”

  “She says the same about you.” I called up the photo of the writing from the backside on my sat trans. “See? It’s definitely their writing. It’s all over our caves. And we figured out it was numbers. We think the diagonal slash is a zero.”

  Nirah stared at the shining silver egg. “Is that the way they usually write numbers? With nine little lines to mean ‘nine?’” She shook her head. “No way they would do math like that. They’re space travelers. Physics we never dreamed of. Why would they write it like this? And what’s this symbol?” She touched the perfect circle with the straight line bisecting it. Unlike the numbers and the little X, it didn’t light up when she touched it. “A circle,” she muttered. “Why is this here?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20