Chapter Two

You Probably Ate Them Thinking They Were A Carrot

       It had an atmosphere. It rotated on its axis twice every hour and twenty minutes, which made it very interesting to watch something fall. Walking felt about like walking after spinning around and around with your eyes shut and then stopping suddenly and opening them.

       Charlie had a hard go of it for the first ten days or so that he was there. The entire surface was covered with live volcanoes. At least they were volcano like phenomena. The heat from them was omnipresent. But the gasses that they belched definitely did not contain noxious chemicals. In fact, they gave off a very clean and most pleasant smell.

       The wind was what made walking in the open the hardest of all. It never fell below a hundred miles per hour and had gusts up to a hundred seventy. And then there were the wind storms. He had almost been killed two days into his trek around the continent on which he had landed and intended to explore. That was when he met the Phili (pronounced phee-lee).

       The Phili were the oddest intelligent life that he had come across so far in this odd odyssey. Like all of the other life on this planet, they had no eyes. Never the less, they always new exactly where they were and where everything else was at all times. They also had a language of which Charlie was only able to make out a few phrases. He didn’t think that they used words in a structured manner like most earth languages. He thought that they spoke in concepts. At least, they rarely seemed to make more than one sound at a time.

       The day that he met them, and the term “day” he used very loosely as there was no sun to rise, he had been leaning into the wind, trying to make it to a small lake of some kind of liquid that he’d seen with the lights of his craft as he was landing at this particular spot. It was only about twenty yards away, and he didn’t think he’d have that much trouble going that distance if he was careful. Besides, he was going stir crazy cooped in that overgrown RV he called a “space craft.” “No-space craft” was more like it after two months of cruising through the galaxy looking for a planet that could support his kind of life. He had gone about ten yards by leaning hard into the wind, and he had fallen twice, slipping on the rubbery stuff that passed for vegetation. The wind combined with the darkness and the Corealis effect of the planet’s incredible rotation was extremely disorienting. He had fallen a third time and was contemplating just crawling the rest of the way when a creature about three feet tall and shaped sort of like an airplane wing appeared in the beam of his headlamp in front of him.

       Its edge was pointing into the wind, and its stubby arms were held close to its sides. From it came a noise that sounded like a one syllable word uttered while submerged in water. But it seemed like the wind had no effect on the sound of that word. It came right to his ears and rang his ear drums like a gong.

       It said the word again and then gestured like it wanted Charlie to follow it. “What’s the matter, Girl? Is Timmy in trouble?” It was all he could think of to say, and his words were whisked away by the wind. He doubted that the creature heard him anyway. “Ok, but I hope that you don’t mind if I crawl.” He crawled a step toward the creature, and then it turned and glided gracefully away, zig zagging like it was tacking in the wind. “Hey! Wait up!” Charlie called. The creature was already thirty feet away and gliding fast, barely visible even in the super charged light beam. It hesitated, and then it turned and came back to him. Charlie thought that it stared at him for a few seconds even if he couldn’t detect any sort of eyes on its slick, rubber-like skin, and then it turned away again. This time it was as though the wind had died down to about a quarter of its strength, and he was able to stand and trot after the creature.

       Charlie was dutifully amazed. He had no idea how it did it, but he was pretty sure that the creature was responsible for his sudden ability to run in spite of the gale force wind that had been hammering him down only moments before. In only about a minute, the creature disappeared from his headlamp. He was only about five feet behind it when it disappeared. He tried to run faster to catch up, but he suddenly fell into a hole in the ground. It was about ten feet deep and six or eight feet in diameter. Charlie hit the bottom with his feet and the far wall with his face at the same time. “Oof, hunh!” Charlie wuffed out as he hit. Then he crumpled to his knees. There was the creature, standing, if that’s what it did, and leaning against the opposite wall of the hole.

       Charlie wheezed, and flailed weakly, trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him. The creature just watched, sort of. Charlie’s breathing slowly returned to normal as he returned the creature’s “stare.” “You lookin’ at me? You must be lookin’ at me. I’m the only one here.” Of course Charlie didn’t expect the creature to understand his language, much less recognize lines from a movie. But he thought he ought to say something. “Hey, Wingy, what are we doing down here?”

       “CAROOM” the creature intoned. Charlie just stared back. The wind was getting stronger up above the opening to the hole. In fact, in was getting a lot stronger. Within seconds it was howling, and the dirt was flying everywhere around and in the hole. It became so strong that the very breath was being sucked out of his lungs. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose and shut his eyes. For a second, he thought he was going to be sucked out of the hole, but just as suddenly his butt sank back into the dirt a couple of inches, and he felt very heavy. “Hey, Wingy,” he shouted over the howl, “are you doing that?” He was beginning to think the impossible was happening. Either this being was telekinetic, or it had some sort of control over gravity. He was more inclined to believe the former because he had seen some proof of the existence of telekinesis. He had been taught that gravity was not to be controlled. Of course, he had also been taught that inertia couldn’t be harnessed, and what a load of bull that was. He would have chuckled if he had had any extra breath, but he didn’t so he didn’t.

       Wingy suddenly said “HOOMBA!” And a second later the wind died back down to its former lion’s self. Man, that alien’s voice really bounced around deep into Charlie’s head. He stuck his little finger into his left ear and wiggled it fiercely.

       “Hoomba?” Charlie asked.

       The creature seemed to shudder, although he had no idea if that was what it was doing, and repeated, “HOOMBA.”

       “Storm’s over?” Charlie queried. As if in answer, the creature used its stubby arms, and Charlie noticed for the first time, something like fingers only all wiggly to climb out of the hole. “You gonna throw me a rope or what” Charlie said. None was forthcoming, so he stood up and dug his fingers into the dirt that made up the side of the hole. To his surprise, it was easy to grip and didn’t crumble in his hands. It took about three minutes, but he eventually made it over the edge. Wingy was waiting for him. You’d think that it met alien life forms every day. “I need to check on my craft” he said to the creature as he pointed back the way he had come. It didn’t move. “Come on, it won’t take but a few minutes with you helping me to cross the wind.” It still didn’t move. Charlie shrugged and turned toward where he believed that his craft was and hoped like hell that it had weathered the wind storm alright.

       He had only gone about two feet when the wind hit him hard again. For a second he thought that it was another storm, but he quickly realized that Wingy was no longer influencing either him or the wind. Which, he wasn’t really sure. The wind was coming at him from the side this time, but he just kept slowly chugging along. Why didn’t I noticed when it changed direction he thought to himself. Or maybe I just got confused when I started following Wingy. Yeah, that must be it. He turned his head to shine his light around as he stumbled forward. He should have been able to see his craft by now. He didn’t go more than sixty or seventy feet all total from it, and his light could penetrate this black soup for better than thirty feet. He continued on for another fifty feet with still no sign of the S. S. Carter.

       Suddenly, the wind died away. He immediately looked behind him and saw what he expected. “Hey, Wingy, where is my craft?” Wingy shuddered. “You. Know. My. Craft.” He gestured grandly with his arms and spoke with an exaggerated slowness as if this would help Wingy to understand him better. Wingy said nothing. “Crap! I can’t believe that I lost my space ship!” He looked at Wingy. “No, I didn’t eat it!”

       Wingy gestured the “follow me” gesture and headed off into the blackness. “Well, what the hell. Maybe it knows where it is.” Charlie bent down, reached into his pocket and took a small device out. He dug a shallow hole with his hands and buried the device. Then he stood up and pulled something out of another pocket and pushed a button on it. It gave a satisfying beep beep, so he turned the device off and shoved it back into his pocket. He then began jogging after Wingy. When he caught up with the creature, he said, “That was a homing beacon. I don’t want to lose the spot where I lost my craft, if you know what I mean. What? Yes, my craft is equipped with one … no, I didn’t bother to turn it on because I was only going forty feet away or so. I didn’t expect it to get up and walk away. Yeah, I know. Expect the unexpected. Well, maybe next time.” Charlie trotted into the darkness after the alien not having any idea where he was going or if he would ever see his craft again.

       After fifteen minutes, Charlie was winded. After all, he’d been cooped up in the Carter for the last two months, and there wasn’t enough room to do any but the most basic exercises. Make a note of that, Charlie old boy he thought to himself. Ok, ‘Note to self: get a bigger craft and install a rec room.’ “Hey, Wingman, hold up,” he said between pants, “I gotta rest for a minute or two.” He stopped and plopped down. The little alien slowed down, then stopped.

       It gestured ‘follow me’ to Charlie and then boomed, “ONNNNNNnnnnnnn!” Then it turned back and started gliding again. The vibration of that ‘N’ sound made Charlie’s teeth itch. Suddenly he felt like he was losing his grip on the ground. No, he actually felt like he was falling from the ground! He flapped his arms trying to regain his balance and grabbed for the vegetation, but it did no good. He was floating. The lack of being anchored to the earth combined with the crazy Corealis spins and his headlamp gyrating like a disco light made him feel sick to his stomach. Thankfully he hadn’t eaten in several hours. Wingy was hauling him along like he was baggage in a baggage cart.

       He was able to turn so that he was at least facing the direction that they were going. He wanted to shout “Put me down!” but he didn’t because that’s what all of the helpless chicks screamed in the movies. Ok, he had to figure this one out. His alien buddy obviously had some sort of control over gravity. How and in what form it came he had no idea. He could see the vegetation rushing by in the beam from his lamp. Man! They were really traveling! It was hard to gauge the speed because of the tricks the shadows played, but if he was a betting man, and he was, he’d bet that they were cruising at least seventy or eighty miles an hour. Maybe more. The landscape was mostly flat, with huge, irregular shaped boulders scattered about. Wingy easily and smoothly slid between this one and that one without even slowing down.

       After twenty minutes or so, it started to get really cold. There were ice crystals forming on the grass. Charlie had decided to call it that because it looked slightly similar, and he was tired of thinking of it as ‘vegetation’. Although it was very blue instead of green. Oh well, with no sun for photosynthesis, he guessed that it didn’t matter much what color it was. He began shivering in the bitterly cold wind, and his ears and fingers started going numb. He figured that they must be in between volcanoes and out of the heated air.

       A couple of minutes later, they began to slow down. Then they abruptly came to a halt, and Charlie was dumped rudely on his arse. Wingy practically jumped to the ground and lay very still, just shuddering ever so slightly. Charlie didn’t know what was up, but he sensed tension in his little friend, so he lay still and hugged the ground too. Within a matter of seconds, the ground began to vibrate. It went through him like electricity through copper wire. He could even feel it in his teeth. Then a huge monster of a shape loomed above them, and Charlie was scared for the first time. The animal was swaying back and forth, giving off the terrible vibrating sound. Poor Wingy looked like he was taking it on the chin, not that it had a chin. It was scrunched up as close to a nearby boulder as it could get, and it wasn’t making a sound, even though it was shuddering more than he had ever seen it.

       Charlie about panicked when he remembered his lamp. Well, too late now and besides, without it, and being this far from the glowing embers of a volcano, it would be pitch black. He slowly moved his hand toward his back pocket, and his 9 mm. pistol. He hadn’t even given the gun much thought the whole time he’d been here because he’d never felt threatened, but he always, always carried it no matter what.

       The beast froze for an instant, and then it centered on Charlie. Charlie froze too. He could see it full on in his light now. It had a head, a huge, long, snake like torso, two appendages that must serve as arms, though they ended in vicious looking hooks, and no legs. It slammed one of its hooks into the ground not more than ten inches from his head, and then jerked back the hook.

       Wingy was up in an instant. “CAROOMMMmmm!” it howled. The beast slapped at it with one of its giant meat hooks immediately, connecting with a glancing blow. Wingy went flying backwards and smacked into the boulder that it had been trying to hide under just moments before. It crumpled to the ground like a broken kite.

       That was all the time that Charlie needed. He grabbed for his gun in his back pocket, but his fingers were so cold he fumbled a bit. The beast swung at him again, and Charlie rolled a foot to one side, making the beast miss again. It drew its hook out of the ground and drew it back to swing again. Charlie finally got his fingers to cooperate and grabbed the pistol and pulled it from his pocket. He didn’t need to aim. The damn monster was so big and so close that it nearly filled his whole line of sight.

       “BOOM!” went the pistol.

       “Ka-whoom” went the beast as it exploded and spewed gore everywhere in a fifteen yard radius.

       “H-holy c-crap,” yelped Charlie, shivering like mad. Everything had happened so fast that he was momentarily confused. Then he saw his alien friend lying at the base of the boulder in a heap, and all other thoughts left his mind. He crawled over to Wingy and reached out and touched it. Its skin felt like rubber. It wasn’t shuddering or moving at all. “Damn,” he muttered under his breath. He had no idea what to do. He didn’t even have a clue as to what signs of life to look for. He did, however, see ice crystals forming on Wingy’s skin, if that’s what it was. He gently picked his little friend up and cradled it close to his body, hoping to give it some of his body heat. “Hoomba, little guy. The danger’s past. All clear.”