Halley
“This isn’t another farm,” I say, stepping onto the ramp leading from the spaceship.
Sand dunes stretch out around us to the distant horizon, but there isn’t a building in sight, not even a barbed-wire fence sectioning off part of the desert into paddocks.
“I thought you’d accepted another farm job. ”
“That’s for tomorrow.” Eot gestures for me to continue down the ramp, for once not wearing his axe—because he’s got no intention of working today? I hope that’s the case.
Rin darts around him and grabs my hand. I don’t think I’ve seen her this excited before.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask, and she nods but doesn’t say anything—because she doesn’t feel like talking today or because she doesn’t want to ruin the surprise?
I stumble after her as she innocently pulls a little too hard on my arm. At the risk of a dislocated shoulder, I don’t scold her, not wanting to do anything that might displace the gleam in her eyes.
It’s the same gleam that’s in Keelo and Eot’s eyes, even though Eot’s the only one of the three who’s really smiling. It’s a forced sort of smile that I know doesn’t come naturally to him but which he’s doing for my sake.
I raise my brow in question.
He shrugs. “This was Keelo’s idea.”
“Keelo?” I glance back at the other alien. There’s a flush around the base of his neck, where his golden skin has turned almost bronze. He’s blushing! And it’s adorable.
“Where are we?” I’m wishing Rin wasn’t pulling quite so hard so that I can close the distance between Keelo and me and kiss him. Last night…it feels almost like it was a dream. Like if I think too deeply about it, I’ll realize none of it actually happened.
Except, of course, for the delicious ache between my legs.
“Halley.” Keelo’s warning is a growl, and I purse my lips to keep from grinning. He must be able to smell me, despite the fact he’s still standing on the ship’s ramp and I’m tripping over sand as Rin pulls me farther into the desert.
“What?” I feign innocence, knowing my teasing will infuriate him. And knowing how much he’ll enjoy being pissed off.
“There,” Rin declares triumphantly. “Halley’s Canyon!”
I turn to face the front, looking to where she’s pointing.
“No way!” The ground drops away sharply, as if a giant swung his axe and split the rock in two. “We’re back.”
Even when it’s blurry, I recognize what’s left of the trikon’s body at the base of the ravine and the dark entrance to its home cave.
“You wanted to explore more,” Keelo says, stepping up beside me. “We don’t have to worry about frightening the wildlife with our ship’s engines anymore, so we thought we’d take a detour.”
“This is amazing. Thank you.” I stand on my tiptoes and finally kiss his cheek, chaste because Rin’s watching.
“You’re the leader,” I tell her. “I’ll follow you down.”
She darts along the animal trail that cuts down the ravine wall. A few loose stones slip out from under her feet and smash on the ground below, but Rin’s gracefully long legs and her natural strength make up for the fact her boots are sizes too large, and she reaches the bottom long before I do.
I'm significantly less skilled at climbing, and I end up on my hands, feet, and ass, doing a crab imitation.
If Eot or Keelo think I look ridiculous, neither dares comment, and when I reach firm ground, I brush dust from the seat of my shorts that rises up like a cloud around me and sets me coughing.
“I swear it’s dryer than it was three days ago.” I flap my hands in the air to get the dust out of my face.
“At least it smells better,” Eot comments with a nod toward the trikon. It’s halfway to becoming a mummified husk already, despite the protection of the ravine’s walls against the dual suns.
I keep a wide berth nonetheless and follow the narrow riverbed of hardened mud. It’s barely wider than the length of a school ruler, and when I step experimentally on the mud, it doesn’t squish underfoot as it had last time.
“I can’t believe there’s no water when there’s clearly been a river here for thousands of years. It doesn’t make sense, does it, Rin?”
“No.”
“No,” I agree. We hike east along the ravine, stopping every while to check the mud for moisture. There isn’t any—unless you count me. I’m sweating again and remembering all the reasons why I hate the heat.
It’s hard not to get annoyed at myself when we round yet another bend and see nothing of note—more bleached animal bones scattered over the shale and the occasional dead bush.
“This was a silly idea,” I confess when my stomach’s rumbling, hungry for lunch, and I’m holding my braids on the top of my head to give the back of my neck a moment of fresh air.
“Who am I to say there has to be water? I’m not an expert on alien environments.
Perhaps there’s not a drop of water anywhere on this entire planet. ”
“You know that isn’t true,” Eot says, nudging me lightly with his elbow.
“It feels like it might be true.”
We trudge on.
Just one more bend, I promise myself. Just one more corner. Then I’ll give up on trusting gut feelings once and for all.
“Hey, what’s that?” I point ahead to a blurry outcrop of…boulders? Caves? Whatever they are, they’re in too much shadow for me to see properly.
Rin cups a hand over her eyes, squinting across the distance. “Rocks.”
“A lot of rocks like these?” I wave a hand at the ravine floor, where there’s a light scattering of rocks varying in size from “it will fit in my pocket” to “I could wrap my arms around it but it’d be too heavy for me to lift.” “Or are they really big rocks?” I ask.
“Really, really big rocks.”
The closer we get, the more they come into focus. And soon even I’m not so shortsighted as to miss exactly how huge these big rocks are.
“Holy hell. Part of the wall has collapsed.” I speed up, eager for a closer inspection, Rin at my side.
If the ravine reminds me of a cut made by a giant’s axe, then the rockfall looks like a giant has stepped on the ravine’s edge, crushing much of the stone.
Boulders half the size of houses block our path.
If we wanted to keep traveling, we’d be best placed to scale an intact section of the wall and walk along the top edge of the ravine, rather than risk trying to scale the rockfall itself.
“Do you think it’s got anything to do with the missing water?” Eot asks, when he and Keelo join Rin and me, their long legs no match for our renewed enthusiasm.
“Maybe… I mean, probably.” A quick survey of the area shows me that the ground around the edge of the rockfall is more dried mud. And some of it even squishes when I step on it.
“I can’t imagine the river extends beyond this point, though. If it did, the trikon wouldn’t have walked two days in the complete opposite direction to the farmer’s homestead.”
“We could leave the ravine,” Eot suggests, “and continue east through the desert to see if we can find more river.”
“Yes.” That’s not a terrible idea, but it doesn’t make sense to test a weak hypothesis when there’s a better explanation.
“If the river was being fed by groundwater, there’d have to be a natural spring from which the water was leaking.
” That’s river logic 101. “The spring could easily be here, under all these stones. In fact,” I say, extrapolating on my idea and liking the sound of it more with every second, “maybe that’s why there was a rockfall—because the water made the land around it unstable. ”
I press a hand to the closest rock, hunting for more evidence. This boulder’s nearly twice as tall as I am, with limited handholds, making it impossible to scale even if I wanted to.
Kneeling, I start digging in the mud. It’s still mud more than an inch below the surface, and the deeper I dig, the more saturated the soil is with water.
Rin crouches beside me.
“Do you see this? The rocks must have fallen recently, and they’re blocking the spring. That’s why the river dried up. And that’s why the trikon died.”
“What are we doing to do?”
“Do?” I sit back on my heels, studying her earnest face. “I don’t think there is anything we can do.”
She frowns, her brow wrinkling. “So why did we spend so much time working out what had happened?”
“Well, for science. For our own personal knowledge.” I glance back at the guys, hoping one of them is preparing to jump in and save me from my pathetic answer, but they’re too busy holding hands.
Their shift happens in the time it takes me to blink, and then I’m staring up at a nine-foot-tall giant.
My mouth drops open. I might have seen them shift before, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to how breathtakingly amazing it is. They can literally meld their bodies together.
It’s not until they’re striding past Rin and me that my brain catches up with what’s happening, and I jump to my feet.
“Don’t you dare! It’s too dangerous.” But my order does little to stop them scaling the boulders, and in a matter of moments they’ve reached the top of the rockfall.
“Oh, hell.” I grab Rin’s arm, yanking her backwards, and together we scramble up the ravine wall, the part that hasn’t been destroyed.
As soon as we’re clear, Tornado puts their strength behind a boulder and pushes it off the pile. It rolls down the rockfall and smashes on the ground below with a bang that makes me jump and that shakes the earth.
After that, everything devolves into chaos, with Tornado pushing, shoving, heaving, and throwing boulders off the rockfall.
Rin presses her hands over her ears, wincing at the loud noises, but she won’t look away, and I’ve got to keep yanking on the back of her tunic to remind her to stay away from the edge or risk falling.
It takes hours. It wasn’t a small rockfall. In fact, it’s such a large job that, back home, it’d probably take some serious earth-moving machinery and a lot of high-vis staff several weeks’ worth of work to clear.