“One question,” Makali said. “Assuming you get through…what about the rest of us? What about Dash?”
Zack thought for a moment. “Give me the screwdriver. If I make it through, I’ll start trying to widen the opening.”
Makali handed him the tool and leaned closer. “For Dash, that’s going to be a lot of widening.”
“I’m hoping this material fractures easily.” He grinned. “Hell, maybe I’ll find a big button out there that says PRESS TO OPEN BEEHIVE.”
Holding his breath, he inserted himself into the bubble-packed opening. He could feel Scott’s hands on his feet, raising him and transforming him into a battering ram. As if through cotton, he thought he heard Scott saying, “Here goes!”
He was propelled deeper into the opening…and then, just as quickly, he slid right through it, like a watermelon seed spit from a child’s mouth.
And tumbled face-first down a sloping rock wall onto a sandy beach.
Aside from a few scrapes to his palms—the rock wall had jagged edges—and a sense that he had been slugged in the midsection by some invisible assailant, Zack was unhurt. He got to his feet and regarded the scene.
The Sentry habitat had the same glowworm illuminators in its ceiling and seemed to have roughly the same shape as the human habitat. But beyond that, everything was different.
There was fog here…roiling, purplish, London-in-Sherlock-Holmes-era soup. It made it impossible to see very far, for one thing. Not that there was much else to see; the Sentry habitat was essentially a large lake. Aside from what appeared to be small islands in the distance—islands with trees and structures—the entire floor was liquid.
And no watercraft that Zack could see.
He knelt to scoop some, getting a minimal taste. Yes, water…the same brackish taste and texture as that in Dash’s pool.
Straightening up and looking back, he saw that there were structures embedded in the wall to the left and right of the Mouse Door. One was a platform that led to giant steps that marched right back down to the beach where Zack was standing.
Okay, getting back up would be easier.
The other structure, to the right of the Mouse Door, looked to be funicular—for delivery of materials? Removal of same?
There was also a ramshackle building near the base of the steps. A shed twice as tall as Zack, and clearly not in use for quite some time: flat-roofed (absent weather, why would you need a peaked roof?) and entirely open on the side toward the beach (for launching a watercraft?), it was assembled from oblong plates, some of them missing. To Zack the shed look like a worn-out gingerbread house.
Realizing that Makali and the others were probably curious as to his fate and whereabouts, he searched the place quickly, finding it filled with…junk. Discarded containers, bags of who knew what, odd bits of cabling, several exterior boards or plates, several long pieces of oxidized pipe.
All of it, to Zack’s mind, at least half again as big as it ought to be.
The pipe looked promising. He was able to heft it, though its diameter was too large to be comfortable in his hands, and the length was awkward. He felt like an out-of-shape pole-vaulter as he lugged it up the stairs toward the Mouse Hole.
“Anybody hear me?” he shouted, only then wondering just how smart that was. (A) It wasn’t likely that Makali, Dale, and Valya could hear him, and (B) if Dash was a prisoner…wouldn’t there be guards or surveillance?
Well, no one answered…and the Sentry habitat equivalent of a prison siren didn’t blare.
Zack positioned himself in front of the Mouse Hole, debating the wisdom of shoving the pipe through the bubble goo. If you do it slowly enough, they’ll know it’s you.
But then what? Would they know to start banging it on the edges of the Mouse Hole to widen it?
Would that even work? Zack scratched at one of the edges with his fingernail. It did crumble. This might work—
Suddenly the stuffing in the Mouse Hole bulged, and Makali’s head emerged. Like Zack, she was slipping and sliding, but she had Zack to catch her, though her inertia caused them both to fall flat on the platform. “There you are,” she said. “We were getting worried.”
“Sorry.”
She stood up, then went through the same reorientation Zack had, with the advantage of remaining on the platform, half a dozen meters above the beach. “Okay,” she said, “this is going to be a challenge.”
“What, getting everyone else out? I didn’t think you’d fit—”
“Nah, we can probably use your”—she nodded at the pipe—“big tool to open things up.” She waved at the habitat-sized lake.
“I’m just wondering how we get across that,” she said. “Swim?”
Extracting Dale, Valya, and Dash took hours and made Zack feel faint. It was true that the pipe was a useful tool for banging away at the Mouse Hole walls, especially when Zack squeezed back into Dash’s prison and worked from the other side. (This also had the advantage of allowing him to brief the others on this phase of “Escape.”)
It was still a tight fit for Dash, even with Zack remaining behind to push him. But eventually the Sentry was out, free for the first time in however many cycles.
The big alien immediately fell on its face on the nearest flat surface. “Well, it’s been a while since it could stretch out,” Dale said.
“I think he’s praying,” Valya said.
The posture did remind Zack of human religious ceremonies he’d seen. But he had to turn away; as arranged, Makali was poking the pipe back through the stuffing…Zack grabbed it and let himself be pulled through, marveling that with all the traffic through the Mouse Hole, and the serious beating it had taken, its weird colloidal stuffing was still present at all.
He emerged to find that Dash had now motored down the stairs to the beach and, as Makali, Dale, and Valya watched with varying levels of interest, was busy rolling around like a polar bear on a hot day at the zoo. “I think Dash is happy,” Valya said.
With their pathetic equipment—essentially Makali’s mesh bag and a pair of containers they had liberated from Dash’s prison—they descended to the beach and the shed.
“Okay, well done,” Dale Scott said. “I mean that sincerely.”
“Now what?” Valya said, likely beating Dale to the question. “Where do we go from here?”
During the hours it had taken for the tedious banging and scraping to widen the Mouse Hole, Zack had been “working the problem,” to use mission control terminology. (How he wished he had access to that back room and its great minds! Or even Harley, Weldon, Nayar, and Sasha!) He had the germ of an idea. But given his fatigue, and recent track record, he was reluctant to pitch it.
Besides, it was crazy. “Let’s ask Dash,” he said. After all, this was its own habitat. Maybe the water got sucked out every “cycle.” Maybe there were shallow places where you could walk—
Valya picked a moment when the Sentry surfaced, and put the question to it.
The immediate result was not promising. “We swim,” Dash said. It pointed down the rightward bank of the habitat.
“No way, Jose,” Dale said, not waiting for Zack or Makali to protest. “I did that fucking Russian sea training and almost drowned. I don’t do well with this much water.”
Makali was ready to argue on Dash’s behalf. “We can do this…it’s floating, not swimming—”
“Oh, bullshit, honey,” Dale snapped. Zack would have preferred more tact, but had to agree; this was a several-kilometer swim, and they weren’t in shape to do it.
Valya and Dash were having an exchange; the upshot was that the Sentry was amazed and horrified to learn that humans weren’t especially aquatic. For a moment, Zack thought the big alien would simply dive into the water and leave them.
“I think he’s pleading with me,” Valya said. “It’s as if he wants us to transform somehow….”
Zack realized that it was time for the crazy pitch. “There’s one possible alternative.”
The three humans fell silent while Dash kept complaining, which, for the Sentry, consisted of repeating the words lie and stupid and dryers, which sounded derogatory, even in the neutral voice of the translation unit.