Chapter 3

Returning to a lotus position-it was so weird, no up or down, or left and right--Kellie removed the backpack and set it in her lap. Very carefully, observing the rules of weightlessness, she rummaged the bag’s interior, removing and inspecting each item in turn. One in particular caught her eye: a small blue and white box. Well, she thought wryly, you hit that one on the head, didn’t you, Professor. She wondered how he knew. She wasn’t about to ask.

“Still with me?” she asked.

“Right here, Kellie.”

“Everything has military labels.” Brandishing a foil-packed, freeze-dried meal, she noted the contents were roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and a cherry cobbler desert. Alongside her floated two others, one containing powdered eggs and pancakes, the other meat loaf and string beans. She counted nine in total, and stuffed them back into her backpack.

“Military surplus. Bought yesterday afternoon after leaving the mall. The meals range in caloric content from 1140 to 1380 calories each, so the supply should last six days, possibly nine, if you didn’t mind going a little hungry.”

“Do they need water to work?” Her supply was a scant six bottles, twelve ounces each, giving the backpack heft. That would last three to four days, max, she thought. Not so good.

“Just push the button on the pack. The contents reconstitute via the included water packet. The meals may leave a bit to be desired taste wise, but do supply all the required nutrients for an 1800-calorie a day diet. Just please wait to make landfall before you eat. I’d hate to consider the consequences of breadcrumbs the size of a super galaxy-cluster. Any signs of life yet?”

Kellie glanced about. “Nada.” Zipping the backpack closed, and returning it to her back, she questioned: “What about the random bits of dust and lint and stuff off my clothing? Once it gets away from me, it stops shrinking, right?” She laughed. “God help if I sneeze or fart out here. I’d hate to think what that would do to the intergalactic medium. Wait.” She squinted, observing peripherally. “I’m starting to see lights again.”

“Things should progress exactly as they did before,” Grove advised. “No doubt the purity of the globe-being’s aluminum cube was vastly superior to my own, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find you encounter predominantly 13-planet systems in this go-through. It should be tremendously more consistent. How are you holding up, by the way?”

“I’m tired,” she admitted. “I haven’t slept in, how long?”

“Would you believe a scant eight hours?”

Kellie started in surprise. “No way!”

“From when I injected you with Part B, until now. It’s a few minutes after 10 a.m. Good thing it’s Saturday, otherwise you’d be late for school, girl.”

Kellie chuckled caustically. “Fucking asshole. You might consider slowing down the process before you come. Two and a half hours per planet is kinda ridiculous, Doc. But then again...” She recalled her desire, walking northward along the coast, to get the hell out of town. Maybe fast wasn’t a bad thing at all.

Individual clusters and super-clusters of galaxies resolved. She informed Grove.

“Test your propulsion system. See if it’s controllable by will. If so, you can remain in intergalactic space until the last moment. The previous damage was unavoidable, but we have to become smarter, Kellie. We gotta learn from our mistakes.”

“Like I don’t regret it,” she grumbled.

Directing the thought inward while she spoke aloud, Kellie instructed: “Move me ten feet in that direction, please.” She pointed directly ahead, was relieved to feel the thrumming return to her bones. The resulting movement closed a quarter the distance to the nearest super-cluster.

“Now back me up to where I was before, please. Keep me positioned here, away from everything. Thank you,” she added, as Shrinx complied.

The surrounding super-clusters grew larger. The closest group expanded to encompass her position, and then she was one of many large objects within it, shrinking ever smaller. A particular spiral galaxy caught her eye, and unbidden, Shrinx guided her slowly in that direction, approaching only once she had reduced to a size of an outlying solar system.

“I’m about to go in. Every system I see has the same configuration, by the way: a single yellow-white star, and thirteen surrounding planets. The one I picked has outlying gas giants again, and rocky inner planets.” She squinted. “My likely planet is the fourth one out, in the bio-zone. It has lots of water.” God, she thought, squirming. I need to go pee. “This could almost be home,” she marveled.

She counted two large, and four smaller continents. A huge north-south pair, joined by a narrow isthmus at the equator, divided the planet in two. Ice-shrouded terrain extended into, and covered both the north and south poles. This super-continent comprised more than half the visible landmass. Kellie detected no signs of life anywhere. Of course, that meant nothing.

She relaxed as Shrinx matched speed with the planet. Again, it brought her in feet first, landing her just at the edge of the dual-continent’s west coast. She grinned, imagining herself a West Coast girl. Boy did she need to go pee.

“Professor, I’m down.”

Grove acknowledged, wanting details. Kellie looked about, saw nothing but unbroken forest for hundreds of miles inland. It looked primordial.

Cautiously, stepping lightly, she bore northward. Nothing detectable moved in the water, lurked in the forest’s depths, or rushed her from the distant horizon. Of course, that meant nothing either. She needed to go pee.

“Not yet,” Grove warned.

“Why not?” she complained, squirming like a 3-year-old.

“At your present size, you’d cause irreversible pollution. You forget how big your bladder is, how much liquid it holds. We’re talking thousands of gallons, Kellie. You’d flood the landscape with toxin-laden urine, poisoning everything around for dozens of miles.”

Kellie felt like she held thousands of gallons. Popping the button holding her jeans closed, she unzipped her fly two inches in protest. “Can I step outside this damned field myself?” she grumbled, looking around for distractions.

Far to the north, a high plateau, maybe half her height, marred the otherwise unbroken sea of green. A wide yellow river wound sluggishly across the surface, disappearing at the foot of another smaller, narrower plateau. Spotting nothing else of interest in the immediate area, Kellie continued north along the shoreline, footprints slowly shallowing behind her. How long would nature take to erase them, she wondered.

“Any marine life?” Grove inquired.

Kellie glanced to her left, spotted nothing but slowly undulating waves, clear to the horizon. No glauwakus keeping watch; no indication of ocean life at all. Remembering the whale-like creatures spotted upon her earlier landfall, she asked: “Is it possible this world’s totally uninhabited?” She halted as her thrumming returned. “I’m being watched, Professor.”

The plateau. Chest-high to her now, maybe twenty Kellie-yards distant, it appeared suddenly menacing. Cocking her head to listen, she scanned the craggy, broken face for movement.

“Be careful, Kellie,” Grove cautioned.

“Careful is my middle name,” she muttered.

Unevenly spaced openings in the cliff-face proved to be caves, many partially obscured by undergrowth growing from the rock. Kellie blinked as a tiny figure swathed in skins appeared at the mouth of one, advancing in a crouch. The dweller brandished a crudely made bow and arrow in one hand, cautiously moving forward with the other hand against the cave wall.

“Wow,” Kellie whispered. “A cave man!”

At Groves excited urging, Kellie described the creature in detail: aboriginal, hairy, stoop-shouldered, and filthy. Her watcher appeared both terrified and enraged at her presence. Judging her distance to be within range of the bow and arrow, she took a judicious step back, and then another.

“A humanoid!” Grove marveled. “What are the odds, on only our second landing!”

“It walks upright ... sorta. It’s smart enough to make a bow and arrow, which thankfully it’s not pointing at me right now.” A female joined the bearded cave man at the entrance. Kellie knew the second figure was female, because it had breasts.

“A female? You spotted a female? Do you see any children?”

Kellie raised her hands in what she hoped was a placating gesture. Mr. Cave Man raised the bow at her movement, slowly lowered it again as Mrs. Cave Man’s urging. Kellie tried to put a name to the creature’s appearance and finally came up with the term hominid. Grove grudgingly affirmed.

“I find it interesting the female advocated restraint,” he mused. “I wonder if that could that be a universal constant.”

“Don’t read too much into it,” Kellie cautioned. In bordering caves, two heavy-breasted females had appeared, one carrying a club fashioned from a large knobby bone, the other with a bow and arrow. Held at the ready, a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, the female urged Kellie back an additional step.

“Time for me to go, Professor.” The plateau had reached chin-level, and additional natives appeared in adjoining cave mouths.

“Make certain you don’t trample any kinfolk on your retreat. Hunting parties could be about.”

Alarmed, Kellie lifted her boots one at a time, inspecting the treads, and then the crushed foliage below. Mr. Cave Man gesticulated and jabbered at the cave mouth. Some distance inland, obscured by thick undergrowth and lazily drifting fog, she detected fleeting movement amongst the trees.

Were those tiny shouting voices she heard? More cliff dwellers broke into loud jabbering. Kellie resisted the urge to back away.

“What is it, Kellie?”

Kellie shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly. It looks like...”

Squatting, she detected a dozen racing figures, shouting and dodging between tree trunks, scrambling toward the cliff-face, the front-runners extolling the ones behind to get their asses in gear. “Crap,” she muttered, as something besides tiny shouted voices reached her ears. Her eyes flew open.

“Holy shit, Professor!”

“What is it, Kellie? What’s the matter?”

“They have dinosaurs here!”

The animal stood fifteen feet tall and was close to twenty foot long, sporting a blocky rectangular head, huge jaws packed with curved yellow teeth. Dark red splotches and incongruous yellow stripes marred the coarse green hide. Powerfully muscled legs ended in clawed feet, which tore away clogs of earth and vegetation with every forward lunge. The beast quickly closed the distance between itself and the cave dwellers.

“How big?” Grove gasped. “What does it look like?”

“Big and ugly!” Kellie answered. It hadn’t escaped her attention that the chicken-sized dinosaur could play hell with her jeans and might savage her calves if it chose to attack. The thing hadn’t spotted her yet--or hadn’t recognized what she was with its primitive brain--but that could change any moment. She prepared to stomp the thing if required. Her previously overpowering need to go pee was forgotten.

“Kellie!” Grove pressed her insistently. “What’s going on?”

Quickly describing the creature, she then offered a blow by blow of the unfolding drama. A handful of stampeding hominids halted their headlong flight and, with unexpected agility, scaled a pair of trees bordering the path. The bellowing dinosaur widened it considerably in pursuit of its lunch.

“What are you doing?” Kellie questioned. A pair of natives, one in either tree, crawled outward along thick, overhanging limbs. Kellie realized with a start the inhabitants had lashed the limbs together with sturdy vines, directly above the trail. Bound to the limbs via twin sets of thick black vines, a pair at the front, another at the rear, hung a twelve foot long stake fashioned from a tree bole. Kellie laughed. “They set a trap for you, Rex!”

Two feet thick at the rear, the stake taper to a deadly sharpened point. Encircling the center, adding considerable weight to the device, were a ring of doughnut-shaped, rough-hewn stones, each a foot in diameter. The natives had chiseled holes in the center to facilitate vines passing through, binding the stones firmly to the trunk. Additionally, thick vines secured the rear of the stake to another set of overarching tree limbs above. In its “cocked” position, the stake pointed straight down. She quickly apprised Grove of her observations.

“Holy cow,” he answered, laughing. “The sneaky bastards.”

Twenty feet shy of the trap, Rex halted. Panting, huge chest bellowsing with every breath, the animal canted and swung its head slowly back and forth. Snorting like a horse, it clawed the ground and comically bobbed up and down. It gazed suspiciously into the trees, squinting large yellow, reptilian eyes. Not so dumb as you look, Kellie thought. She almost laughed when Rex stamped a huge right foot and bellowed in rage.

“What is it?” Grove insisted. Kellie explained. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he marveled. “I wouldn’t think the creature’s brain capable of logical thought. Considerably more advanced than our own brand of dinosaur, I’d think.”

“Maybe,” Kellie muttered.

Having finally noticed her, Rex’s eyes roamed her face, to the overhanging trees, and then back to her face again, trying to determine if she was part of the suspected ambush. The tiny ambushers had noticed her as well, staring upward in fear and consternation. Rex snorted in aggravation, and roared loudly again.

“Oh, shut up,” she grumbled. “If you were a chicken, I’d wring your scrawny neck.” Bravado, of course, as the dinosaur’s thickly muscled neck was anything but scrawny. Kellie wondered if her slender hands were even capable of such a feat. Rex would probably claw and bite the hell out of her unprotected wrists and forearms.

Rex backed away. Not an option it undertook often, evidently; Kellie watched him retreat with amusement, snorting and glancing awkwardly over the shoulder. Put in mind of a new driver, backing dad’s SUV down the driveway, she felt empathy.

Twice more, Rex gave an indignant roar and then turned in preparation of leaving. The natives were having none of it.

Startled, Kellie blinked at their sudden, strident shouting. Waving and beating hands and feet against tree limbs, those previously taking shelter in the brush poured out to join the fray. Rex appeared undecided, almost anguished, Kellie thought, seeming to know the wee folk had nefarious plans. Huge tail swishing back and forth, battling instinct, it obliterated shrubbery and small trees either side of the trail.

“Don’t do it,” Kellie warned.

“Don’t do what?” Grove demanded.

“Be dumb, and fall into the trap.”

Grove laughed.

Changing stance, Rex gazed up at her defiantly, and then roared.

“Hey!” she protested. “None of my doing, here, buddy. Blame them!”

Surprised and furious at her booming voice, hominids on the ground and in trees raised and shook their fists, or primitive weapons. Their cave brethren shouted angry epithets; Kellie was forced to look up at them slightly, a discrepancy Mrs. Cave Man noticed. With furrowed brow, she gauged the distance between the top of Kellie’s head, and the edge of the cliff-face above. Trying to bring this observation to the attention of her mate, however, she was rebuffed. Things weren’t so different here than at home, Kellie thought, wryly.

Lowering its head, Rex scratched the tough hide behind its left ear. Kellie was unsettled at how intelligent the dinosaur’s actions seemed, its emotional reactions. Rex was smarter than a dog, she figured, possibly smart as the hunters baiting the trap. She fought a sudden, almost overpowering urge to bend down and pat Rex on the head.

“What’s going on, Kellie? Damn I wish I’d gone with the video option now. This is so frustrating!”

You don’t know from frustration, Kellie thought dryly. I’ll show you frustration, bucko.

“They’ve got a stand-off going on, here. Rex is aware of the trap, and trying to figure out what to do. The midgets are jumping up and down and trying to make up his mind for him. So far, neither side is budging.”

Suddenly, Rex bellowed and charged, head to the ground, gaping jaws straddling the path. Tiny hominids, the ones in imminent danger, stood frozen, bug-eyed, and drop-jawed. As a group they fled screaming, crashing into the undergrowth, one panicked individual running toward the open maw instead of away. Veering off at the last moment, the hunter missed being lunch by a whisker. Rex ignored the hominid and continued its mindless charge.

At the last moment, even as keepers slashed the restraining vines with crude but effectively sharp stone axes, Rex came to a staggering, clumsy halt. Crouching, he watched the twelve foot long missile plummet and swing harmlessly over his head. Craning, he followed the shaft’s upward progress, and then, with eerie precision, timed a slash of the tail with the spear’s return. Kellie hooted as the shattered trunk and loose stones shredded the nearby foliage.

“I’ll be damned! Rex outsmarted the little buggers!”

“What?” Grove demanded.

Kellie laughed giddily. “That was totally awesome, Rex! Way to go!” Laughing, she recounted the dinosaur’s actions.

“That’s ... simply remarkable! Falling wasn’t an accident?”

“He didn’t fall, he ducked. I don’t think anything this dinosaur does is an accident, Professor!” Her merriment was short-lived. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Rex is not happy.”

Rex moved carefully beneath the crossed limbs, twisting for a clear view of the thwarted climbers. Panicked, the vine-cutters scrambled higher into the trees, attaining the crossed limbs which previously restrained the failed missile. Eyeing the hunters with obvious relish, Rex licked non-existent lips.

“He can’t get to them,” Kellie observed. “I hope.”

“Can’t get to whom?”

Rex strain upward on its tippy-toes. Roaring in frustration, he clawed the ground with both feet, preparing to jump. Rex was not built for jumping, Kellie imagined. “You do that, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” she warned. “Why don’t you just call it a draw, little guy?”

“Don’t get involved,” Grove warned in answer. “It’s an alien environment. You have no business choosing sides, much less a wild animal against primate’s, primitive, or not, Kellie.”

“Probably right,” she agreed, waving her hand to distract Rex. Intimidated, the dinosaur shrank back, growling at her menacingly. Kellie didn’t like the idea that Rex was the size of a rooster now, rather than a hen. If Rex snapped at her, it could do some real damage. It was time to leave.

“Good idea,” Grove agreed.

Making use of Rex’s momentary distraction, the ground party advanced from all directions. Most bore a long spear, the head made from chiseled stone lashed to the end of a stout tree limb. Pointing her index finger, Kellie advised: “Better watch out, little guy. Natives gonna turn you into shish-kebob.”

Rex looked down and roared at the stalkers. His thrashing tail immediately took out four in a swipe, sending them head over heels through the underbrush. Bellowing again, executing a rough turnabout on the path, he took out two additional attackers. Cowed, the remaining dozen withdrew to a safe distance, while those in the branches railed at Kellie with clenched fists. She felt vaguely guilty, or thought she should. Grove was correct: it wasn’t right to side with the dinosaur over her fellow hominids. She couldn’t help it, though.

“You come with me,” she said, splaying her hands in a gesture of welcome. Rex eyed her suspiciously, and then eyed the advancing war party-where did they all come from so suddenly, she wondered-making the elementary deduction. Raising its arms, Rex allowed Kellie to snatch him up and cuddle him protectively against her midsection. No one need tell her how much damage Rex could inflict with those savage claws and wickedly sharp teeth.