Page 79 of Caveman Alien's Heat
I take out my switchblade. “Remember what we said. They won’t take us alive.”
“They won’t,” Nator’ax says flatly. “But not all of them will return to their village, either. If we’re through to the saucer, can you try to talk to it?”
I try to process what he said. “Talkto the saucer? Why?”
“It sometimes does things by itself. Melting its way down was its own doing. It must be alive somehow.”
I think of that unripe Plood that must still be inside, either dead or alive. I never had much affection for those guys. “Maybe.”
The Gar men calmly make their way up the glacier, spears in hand. Their white bone masks makes it impossible to tell who they are, except one of them, who has only one arm.
There’s no doubt about what they have in mind: kill Nator’ax and capture me. This time they won’t bother with sham trials or councils or things like that. It’s not even worth talking to them. They know that we know why they’re here.
“Stay at a distance,” Nator’ax says tightly. “When a man tries to grab you, surprise him with your knife. Aim for the face. The eyes. Do your best to blind him.”
“Do it fast,” I urge him. The point of that spear is blunt, and I don’t relish the idea of being run through with it. But rather that than what the tribe has in store for me. “Right through the heart.”
Nator’ax looks me up and down, eyes cold. “Open the fur at the chest. Just a small opening. I can aim well with this.”
The reality that I’m about to die hits home for real and makes me gasp. For a split second I afford myself a thought about the girls, and how they will never know what happened to me. How they lost the saucer forever, and all hope of ever going home to Earth.
Then I fill my lungs with cool air. “I wish we could be together longer, Nator’ax. But if this is all we get, I’m grateful for the days I had with you.”
“As am I,” he responds, shifting the grip on his spear. “But we’re not quite dead yet. Talk to the saucer.”
Yes. Of course. Spend my last moments begging a buried flying saucer to listen.
I drop to my knees and lean over the hole, pushing my head down as far as I can, towards the whitish-blue light that the saucer always gave off.
“Can you hear me?” My voice comes out tighter than I expect. “It’s Riley. We need you. Can you come back up?”
Nothing answers. Just that dim, steady light.
Or… no. It changes. Barely. A faint brightening, like something stirring.
I swallow and lean closer. “Please,” I say, more urgently now. “Come up. We have to leave.”
The light deepens by a shade, then steadies again, as if whatever lives inside the hull is listening without deciding. The saucer itself, or that Plood in the hidden compartment. I don’t know which.
Behind me, leather boots grind against ice. The scrape carries clearly in the cold air. They’re closer.
“I need more than a flicker,” I whisper down into the hole, pressing my shoulder against the rim to reach deeper. “You moved before. You melted your way down. Do it again.Please. Come up to me.”
A shadow passes across the ice beside me. One of the Gar men has broken ahead of the others, testing the distance, circling for an angle.
“Stay back,” Nator’ax warns him, voice carrying with a hard edge that makes even me flinch. “Another step and I will put this through your chest.”
The man keeps coming. “Come and get your sword, jungle man. It’s in our village.”
I force my voice steady. “If you can understand anything, understand this. They will open you. They will break you apart. I won’t let them take you.”
The blue light pulses again, stronger this time, a slow throb that seems to answer the urgency in my voice.
“Riley,” Nator’ax says with a calm, friendly tone that has something final in it, “if it isn’t working, give it up and come here.”
My fingers dig into the ice at the edge of the hole. “I’m trying,” I breathe, lowering my face closer to the glow. “You’re not just a machine. You chose to move before. Choose again. Come up. Please.”
The light flares, brighter and deeper, and the ice beneath my hands gives the faintest, trembling move. I wonder if it’s trying. But it’s not trying hard enough.
