Chapter Forty-Three
Our young must always learn the most important lessons of life firsthand. It has been this way since time immemorial, and always will be.
—Mutati Observation
Two of the passengers on board Woldn’s podship were Acey Zelk and Dux Hannah, the teenage Humans who had escaped from Timian One. Crowded with others at the membranous portholes, they saw a large debris field outside.
“Where are we?” Acey asked, as he and Dux tried to maintain their spot by a porthole, while an assortment of creatures pushed for better views.
“I have no idea,” Dux said.
With difficulty the boys held their position. Only a small percentage of the passengers were Human, or even humanoid. In close proximity to so many different races, Dux picked up odors he’d never experienced before. Not all of the smells were unpleasant, though some certainly were. He also picked up a musk odor from the skin of the podship.
A pale-skinned Kichi woman beside them gasped as body parts floated by, most of them Human … arms, legs, and heads with crusts of blood frozen on them. One completely intact body drifted into view, a young woman fully clothed in layers of unsoiled skirts, her face frozen in a broad smile, as if someone had pulled her picture out of a photo album and put a three-dimensional form to it. She showed no signs of trauma, which seemed remarkable to Dux in view of the obvious violence that had occurred here. He wondered what could possibly have caused such a catastrophe.
“Might have been a merchant prince planet,” a man said.
“It was,” another said. Dux saw a Jimlat man standing taller than the throng, his blockish head shaved. Blinking his tiny gray eyes, the Jimlat studied a brassplax instrument. “They called it Mars.”
“Mars?” Dux said. “Then it’s completely gone, destroyed?”
“That’d be my bet. Course, some of it remains.” With a facetious smile, he nodded toward the nearest porthole. “Out there.”
“Maybe you’d like me to climb up there are rearrange your ugly face,” Acey said, making a move toward him.
Dux grabbed his cousin’s arm to restrain him. “What are his fighting capabilities?” Dux asked in a low tone.
“If you let go of me, I’ll find out.”
“Don’t chance it. We don’t need to look for trouble.” He looked around, at the hostile gazes of some of the aliens, and their gleaming eyes. Obviously, they wanted to see a fight, and probably didn’t care if Acey got hurt … or worse. A number of races around the galaxy resented Humans for the financial and military successes of the merchant princes, so the young men had to be on constant alert for potential trouble. Acey lost his temper too much, didn’t always think through the consequences of his actions.
Hearing a thump beside him, Dux looked at the porthole, and recoiled in horror. A little Huluvian girl screamed, and was consoled by her mother. The bloody face of a man bobbed against the outside of the window, seeming to stare into the passenger compartment. The face, and its torn body, drifted away.
The podship, still moving slowly, proceeded through the shocking milieu, passing floating fragments of what had once been a vibrant world on one of the main merchant prince trading routes. Machine parts, building fragments, and many shredded body parts, some of them so small that they must have belonged to children. Dux could hardly bear to look any more but did nonetheless, in horrified fascination. Around him, hardly anyone spoke anymore. Most of the noises were sobbing sounds, and whimpering cries of disbelief, even from non-Humans. An alien in a business suit said the planet must have been hit by a meteor, and several onlookers agreed.
After only a few minutes that seemed like an eternity, the podship changed course. It headed away from the debris field and picked up speed. Soon they flashed by star systems, spiral nebulas, and glowing asteroid belts. For a fraction of a second, a comet seemed to try to keep up with them, then fell back.
The podship resumed a normal route, making its regular stops, as shown on route boards at both ends of the passenger compartment. Some of the passengers moved away from the windows, but many remained standing, numb with shock. Along the way, the various races disembarked, and others got aboard. Odors changed. Dialects drifted through the cabin. New passengers heard the terrible news about Mars, and no one understood what could have happened.
Finally the boys disembarked at Nui-Lin in a remote sector of the galaxy, an exotic world they had heard about in their travels, where they hoped to secure jobs. They had with them the address of a residential construction project where the pay was said to be excellent, and the name of a man who had put out a call for workers.
The shuttle was unlike any they had seen before, resembling a broad green leaf with a tiny bubble of a cabin on the underside. The craft descended, and when it reached the atmosphere the engines shut off and it drifted down, landing gently on the black pavement of a spaceport.
The terminal building abutted a thick jungle, draped with vines. They caught a jitney driven by a long-eared Cogg, one of the natives of this world. They told him where they wanted to go, as did many the other passengers as they boarded, and he promised to let the new riders know when he reached their various destinations.
He was not a very good driver, though, or didn’t seem able to talk and drive at the same time, as he insisted on delivering a monologue about the various types of flora and fauna as he sped past them. Some of them he scraped with the vehicle, and once he very nearly drove off a precipice into a tree-choked crevasse. Those passengers who were Coggs didn’t show any fear, but other races were on the edges of their seats, and some demanded to get off. Ignoring their pleas, the driver refused to stop. In some places a thick canopy of trees overhung the road, creating a tunnel effect that required him to turn on a bright headlamp.
They passed through a town that looked like a village in a fairy tale, with narrow cobblestone streets and quaint homes that were not constructed entirely straight, or which had fallen into a pattern of leaning to one side or the other for what might have been centuries. The majority of the Coggs and the most fearful foreigners got out in the town, and then the jitney continued on its way, along a narrow highway that skirted a silvery sea. Immense birds soared out over the water, with sunlight glinting off their golden wings, making the birds look as if they were really built out of gold, and should be too heavy to fly.
The driver kept chattering, babbling like a tour guide. Then he began talking about galactic politics, and his comments about the Merchant Prince Alliance were less than complimentary. This surprised Dux, since Coggs were supposedly neutral. He shrugged. This must be an oddball, an eccentric fellow who was out of step with his people.
“This is it,” the driver announced, as he pulled levers on the dashboard to squeak the bus to a stop. Carrying their bags, Acey and Dux stepped off at a narrow path, which the driver told them to take. “The construction site is just a short distance,” he said, pointing toward a cluster of one-story buildings in a clearing.
The boys found signs written in the common galactic language of Galeng, telling them where to report to apply for work. Inside a large, open-walled hut, they located the very Cogg whose name they had been given far across the galaxy, Bibby Greer. As the long-eared work supervisor introduced himself to them and shook their hands, he smiled in such a friendly fashion that Dux thought he would be the best boss they ever had. He could not have been more wrong. The experience would, in fact, be exactly the opposite.
Suddenly the tentacles of a plant darted in through the open walls and wrapped themselves around the boys, so that they could not escape. Before their eyes, the Cogg metamorphosed into a tremulous mound of fat, with a tiny head and oversized eyes. A Mutati!
Dux felt a sinking sensation.
“Welcome to our fly trap,” Bibby Greer announced with a nasty grin.