Cypher’s head swam. “Mm hmm…”
“He said I could even hold on to it,” said Senshi.
Hold on to…? “Hold on to what?”
“The book, Dad.”
She laughed. He managed a smile. She had that effect on him. Cypher stared at his daughter, so full of life and possibility, her future like a flower that barely had begun to bloom.
“Did they really kill these whales?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cypher said. “For their oil. And they almost disappeared. Just before the age of carbon fuels…”
Then it wasn’t Senshi he was talking to anymore. It was Kitai’s voice he heard saying, “Dad, you there? Over. Dad?”
Cypher took a steadying breath against the pain, which was beginning to bring on delirium. He cleared his throat and collected himself before he spoke.
“Copy, cadet.” He turned again to the holographic displays. “The Earth’s rotational cycle is shorter than back home. You have six hours to reach the first geothermal site. Over.”
Cypher imagined Kitai’s expression as he absorbed the information. Then his son said, “Roger.”
At that point, Kitai was moving through a valley, alongside a deep, jagged fissure in the ground. Rocks jutted up from the darkness below as if someone had cracked the surface of the Earth like an egg. The sun seemed very strong. Cypher checked his holographic display and confirmed it. More than very strong, he thought. Deadly, like everything else on the planet.
“Let’s stay in the shade as much as possible,” he advised. “Direct sunlight is intensely carcinogenic. You must limit exposure. Over.”
“Roger that,” Kitai said.
“The rain used to be acidic,” Cypher noted, “but it doesn’t seem to be a problem now.”
Cypher checked his son’s position vis-à-vis his objective. The kid was making good progress. But he needed to know the position of something else as well.
The Ursa.
Cypher checked some of the images he was receiving from his probes. Probe 11 showed him an animal he did not recognize but one that probably had evolved since the days when people still lived on this planet. The creature reared up on two legs and looked directly at the probe.
The computer sent Cypher information: Giraffa camelopardalis.
Cypher looked at the live image of the giraffe with awe. He had read about these long-necked beings, but they were extinct on Nova Prime. It was almost like seeing a live dinosaur. Then the giraffe swatted at the probe with its horned head and moved away.
More important, however, than what he saw was what he didn’t see. He hit the cockpit recorder and said, “Probe cameras unable to detect signs of Ursa in the wild.” For now.
viii
Kitai arrived at the mouth of a forested valley. Gorgeous views of green woodlands stretched out before him. He checked his naviband.
“Twenty kilometers, 184 minutes. Request breather, Da—” He caught himself. “Sir.”
“Negative,” Cypher said over the naviband. A pause. “You’ve got three hours to reach the hot spot. That’s plenty of time. Hydrate now and keep moving.”
Kitai swallowed his irritation, flipped up a hydration tube from his backpack, and drank. Then he moved deeper into the forest. As he progressed, the trees around him grew taller and taller. Over a hundred meters high, he estimated. They were wide, too, maybe seven meters in diameter. At that size, they blotted out most of the sunlight. Kitai had to move cautiously through the shadows, peering into the foliage every few steps.
Suddenly, he realized that his lifesuit had changed. It had become jet-black. Harder, too. And it had the kinds of bumps one might find on body armor. Concerned, he stopped walking and said to his father, “My suit’s turned black. I like it, but I think it’s something bad. Over.”
“Your suit’s made of smart fabric,” came the reply. “It has motion sensors. I’m tracking a life-form moving near you from the west.”
Kitai felt ice climb the rungs of his spine. When he spoke, he tried to keep the fear out of his voice. “The Ursa? Over.”
“Negative. It’s smaller. Biosigns read only a meter and a half long.”
Kitai stood motionless. Behind him? Where was it?
He wasn’t comforted by the word only. “I’m a meter and a half long! Over.”
“It’s closing rapidly from the west,” Cypher told him. “Do not move! It is what it is. Relax. Get ready. Try to give me a visual.”
Kitai wished he could give himself a visual. But if he wasn’t allowed to move…
“Creatures on this planet have evolved from the ones we have on record because of radiation bursts,” Cypher said as calmly and clinically as if he were lecturing a class of cadets. “It’s at fifty meters, forty, thirty…”
Kitai found that his breath was coming in gasps.
“It’s slowing down. Twenty… ten…”
Kitai balanced himself, trying to be as ready as he could be. He could hear plants snapping as the life-form got closer.
In a whisper, his father said, “It’s right there, Kitai.”
Where was there? Kitai bit back his panic and whispered back. “I don’t see it! I don’t see anything.”
“Relax, cadet,” Cypher said. “Recognize your power. This will be your creation.”
Then Kitai did see it. It emerged slowly from the undergrowth: a small baboon-type creature. But like everything else on Earth, it seemed to have evolved. Its face was hauntingly human, but it walked on all fours.
“It’s fine, Kitai,” his father said. “Be still. Let it pass. Do not startle it.”
Easy for you to say. Kitai picked up a rock and made a motion as if he meant to throw it at the creature. He could feel his pulse racing.
“Back up!” he yelled at the baboon creature.
It reacted with a loud screech.
“Don’t do anything!” his father insisted, a note of anger in his voice. “Kitai, no!”
Kitai heard the words but continued to threaten the thing with the rock. He couldn’t help it.
“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled.
“Kitai, stop! Over.”
Kitai couldn’t catch his breath. He was gasping like crazy. Unable to tolerate the presence of the baboon any longer, he threw the rock at it. It glanced off the creature, but it had the desired effect. With a last look at Kitai, it turned and left. But his breathing was out of control. Beads of sweat ran down both sides of his face. For a moment, between blinks, it felt like he was back in that box. A scared little boy. A coward.
Cypher studied his holographic readout. His son’s vitals were spiking.
“You are creating this situation!” he insisted. “Be still. Over.”
Suddenly, his monitor showed him something else to worry about. A cluster of dots—maybe fifteen of them—began moving toward Kitai. Moving rapidly.
“Damn it!” Cypher breathed. Then, louder so that his son could hear him, “Cadet, get control of yourself! Listen to my instructions.”
Despite everything, Kitai was pleased he had gotten rid of the baboon—until he heard a rustling and saw six more of the creatures blasting through the foliage. Screeching bloodcurdling war cries, they surrounded Kitai.
As he had been trained, he tapped a pattern into the handle of the cutlass. Instantly, the weapon shifted shape, but not into the one Kitai wanted. Instead, the fibers on the end of the cutlass retracted into the handle and disappeared. Panicked, he looked up at the baboons. Try it again, he thought, and tapped out another pattern.