LITMIR.BIZ

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pertinent thing in society from government to ethics to art to technology. It was by his tomes that the colony had thrived. Abstel had led many expeditions away from the colony into the jungles. On one such expedition, he had discovered the crashed ship.

      Winkle had studied under Abstel as a young Ice Beetle. In time, Winkle had been permitted on a top secret exploratory detachment to study the crashed spacecraft in person. The old philosopher had told Winkle, “Someday I will be gone. This extra-terrestrial technology must not fall into the wrong hands. Keep it secret. Explore it. Learn it. Study it. But for the protection of your family and the rest of the colony, don’t speak of it.”

      “We’re close now,” Winkle said, glancing at the screen of his tracker. “If we move quickly, we should make the ship in less than ten minutes.

      The five of them clodded on, cutting a path through the jungle. When they came upon the ship, Chi, Winkle, Stig, and Goorn stopped cold in the majesty of its girth and advanced technology. The hulking space vehicle towered over them, all metal, all shapes, squares, triangles, circles, a conglomeration of symmetry, plastic, chrome, and glass. The Ice Beetles’ eyes widened in incomprehension.

      Winkle approached the vessel, clicking off the tracker and dropping it into his exoskeletal pocket. He moved to the mammoth marvel of machinery and architecture. He rested one rake on its skin and turned to the others, an illustrious smile gracing his face. “My warrior friends, I present to you the source of so much of our technology, the discovery of the great Abstel, father of philosophy, politics, and science. I give you the secret of the Ice Beetles.” He patted the ship’s hull with his rake a couple of times.

      Goorn looked up at the strange writing on the side of the ship, an odd pattern of curvy lines, dashes, and symbols. “What does it say?” she asked.

      “It’s the name of the vessel. It’s called the USS Arlington.”

      “What does that mean?” Goorn asked.

      “It comes from a planet called Earth.”

      Goorn tried to form the word with her mouth, Earth, so difficult to pronounce.

      “Come aboard. I’ll show you around,” Winkle said. He moved to an airlock on the side of the ship. He raised a rake and punched a code into an on-board keypad, each button marked with one of the odd, curly symbols. The USS Arlington issued a hiss and a clunk. The airlock yawned open and a ramp unraveled down to the ground.

      Chapter 12

      Winkle led a tour of the Earth vessel. They walked a series of long corridors, past perfectly symmetrical entryways, all metal, plastic, and fabricated glass. Chi and the others gawked at the gaudiness of the vessel. The creatures of planet Earth must be rich beyond the grandest dreams of even the most wealthy Ice Beetle in order to amass the metal it took to create such a magnificent ship.

      They stopped at the end of a long hallway. A key pad similar to the one on the outside of the hull was seated in the wall next to two large, sliding doors. Winkle turned to the others, a knowing smirk traced on his face. How he’d longed to share knowledge of the ship. He had proposed full disclosure to Nichang on a few occasions, only to be denied for the sake of protecting the colony from its own greed for metal.

      “My friends,” Winkle said, spreading two of his rakes expressively. Red light from fixtures mounted in the ceiling highlighted the edges of his form. “I now take you into the heart of the Earth vessel, the USS Arlington. The room in which we are about to enter is like the brain of this vessel. It is also the sum of my life’s studies. I have learned their language and their ways. Now I share them with you.”

      Winkle punched a code into the keypad. The door panels clunked and slid into the walls, revealing a room full of buttons, controls, lights, meters, indicators, and any number of other foreign devices. As the Ice Beetles entered the bridge of the USS Arlington, their eyes flicked around, taking in every detail, every nuance, every part of the room’s structure and function.

      Goorn focused on a gigantic bay window at the front of the bridge. She looked out into the jungle. Her world appeared so primitive through the thick glass. A frigg traced its way across the sky, its skin wings dipping and spreading. It glided lazily on the breeze, searching for food in the treetops, perhaps eggs, perhaps hatchlings on which to dine. As Goorn watched the frigg make its way across the sky, she realized that she was living out the last few moments of her life on Hull. Everything was about to change. She didn’t know whether to cry or to embrace the future.

      “What’s this?” Stig said from the back of the room. He pointed at one of the control stations. A dried out corpse sat at a panel of buttons. An orange, fine woven canvas covered the creature. The mummified beast had only four major appendages and no rakes. Its head--Stig assumed the jutting orb on top of the creature was its head--dangled at the end of a lanky sleeve of flesh, completely open to predator attack.

      “That is the remains of an Earth creature,” Winkle said. “Don’t be disturbed by it. There are many of them on board. They are harmless.”

      Stig reached out with one of his rakes and poked at the corpse’s head. It lulled to the side and its mouth fell open. “Inferior bio-mechanical makeup,” Stig said.

      “It creeps me out,” said Goorn. “I don’t like it.”

      “I want them off the ship,” Chi said.

      Winkle turned to Chi. “And why is that? I find them interesting.”

      “Death in any form dampens our spiritual connection with Tyche the God of Ice.” Chi turned to Stig and Gnasher. “Search for a suitable place to bury them. When you find a dignified spot, Goorn and I will be along to help.”

      “Can’t we just dump them in the jungle,” Gnasher asked.

      “They are creatures of Tyche the God of Ice just like us. They deserve our respect. We will bury them.”

      “We’ll need access to the rest of the ship,” Gnasher said. “To find them and take them to the jungle.”

      “I will spend the rest of the afternoon training you on how to get around and function in this vessel. It is powered by a long-term decaying energy source. If we are to try and get this ship off the ground, I am going to need days of uninterrupted research.”

      “You will have it,” Chi said.

      “Very good, now lets continue the grand tour,” Winkle said.

      Winkle directed the small company around the ship, demonstrating how the hydraulic airlocks worked, disclosing codes he had cracked to get into more secure areas. He showed them the med unit, a room with beds and equipment created for the biology of earth creatures. He showed them an entertainment room, fitted with chairs not suited for Ice Beetle anatomy. An enormous screen hung at the front of the room. Winkle remarked that if he could gain access to the entertainment database, this room might aid them in understanding some of the customs of Earth creatures. He led them to a cafeteria, still pristine, washed with antiseptics, swept and kept immaculate. Not even the expected micro-layer of dust speckled the long, white tables. Gnasher wondered what Earth food tasted like as he looked at the long tables. Were they meat eaters? Worse yet, were Earth creatures insect eaters? He shuttered at the thought.

      After giving the others an understanding of the ship’s layout and a rudimentary knowledge of how the engines functioned, Winkle left them to their orders and went to the bridge to access the ships power source and to see if there was even a slight chance he might be able to get the vessel out of Hull’s atmosphere. In theory he knew how to navigate the vessel. But all too often, a large gap existed between theory and reality.

      Chapter 13

      Gnasher, Stig, and Chi spent the day carrying Earth creature corpses from the ship to a serene spot in the jungle. They used tools they had found on the vessel to dig holes and place the mummies into the ground. They covered the remains and scattered seed from ground creeper cones Goorn had found nearby over the graves. Within weeks the makeshift cemetery would disappear into the jungle.

      As Chi stood over the graves,

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