Page 10 of Caveman Alien's Heat
Outside, there’s nothing. No trees. No animals. No huts. Just endless white ice and snow stretching out between towering blue walls of frozen water. It’s a glacier, if ever I saw one. This isn’t somewhere people live. This is like the middle of Greenland.
And if the saucer can’t fly again…
I shake my head and force myself to keep sorting through the pile. That’s when my eyes drift to the storage compartment along the curved wall.
The one Theodora closed carefully.
My stomach drops a little. Right.That.
For a moment, I just stare at it. Then I climb over and open it. Soft blue light spills out.
The proto-Plood lies inside, on its side, having taken no visible damage. We need it to fly the saucer. The thing won’t budge without a Plood inside. Or a proto-Plood, dead but with the potential to come alive. Or so we think—these things are growing all over the jungle now, in their thousands.
And I swear this one is not the same size anymore. Its pale blue-white body presses against the sides of the compartment, smooth and shiny like some kind of horrible underwater fruit. It has a round body with a big head, as well as protrusions where the legs and arms would be. The eyes are matt black orbs among translucent skin.
One of them twitches.
I freeze. Did it just...
Another slow movement ripples through the other eye. Then the whole alien jerks, as if trying to stand upright.
A shiver crawls up my spine. “Oh great,” I whisper. “He’s coming alive.”
I slam the compartment shut faster than I meant to and lean my forehead against the cool metal wall.
Nator’ax should never see that. The cavemen already hate the Plood. Just the mention of them makes their faces twist with anger. If he finds out I’ve been carrying one around inside the saucer this whole time…
Yeah. That conversation would not go well, I think. Despite the fact that a Plood is as necessary for this saucer to fly as a key is for my old car to start. But I’m not sure how much Nator’ax knows about Hyundais.
“Probably not a whole lot,” I mutter. I exhale slowly and glance toward the hatch. Through the tilted wall screens of the saucer, I can see Nator’ax outside, climbing the steep icy side of the valley. His dark shape moves steadily upward against the blinding white.
He’s trying to see where we are. Trying to figure out how bad this situation really is.
Something tells me the answer isn’t going to be good. Because a glacier like this isn’t going to be surrounded by an oak forest or a golf course. It’s going to be a desolate, frozen wasteland for hundreds of miles in every direction. For all I know, this could be the planet’s South Pole. Or North, whichever’s worse. And if so… well, we’ll probably freeze to death, unless the saucer has good internal heating. Even if it does, this is a terrible place to spend much time. It was bad enough when it was the right way up, but on its side, it’s practically unusable. We’ll survive, but for what? Who’s going to save us? Nobody knows we’re here. And if we start walking in this cold, we’ll both die within a day.
“Heat,” I mutter, as an involuntary shiver goes through me. “We need heat. Make this saucerwarm.”
The hatch hisses open again, and Nator’ax drops down inside the saucer with a bundle of sticks and twisted branches under one arm.
I scramble up from the pile of supplies. “Well?”
He dumps a brace of dry wood on the floor and rubs his hands together. “We will not freeze to death.”
Relief rushes through me so fast my knees feel weak. “There are tree?”
“Yes. Not close, but not too far either.” He brushes snow off his shoulders. “There are also tracks.”
“Big?”
He nods. “Tracks of Smalls and Bigs.”
Of course there are. I sigh. “Dinosaurs.”
“Hm?” He raises his eyebrows as if we’re having a casual conversation in a coffee shop.
“Bigs are danger,” I say. “They will come?”
He crouches and begins breaking the branches into shorter pieces with efficient, practiced movements. “Yes. There are many tracks. Very big, but I don’t know what kind of Big they are.”
