Peter David - After Earth

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 .

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.

This time the weapon did what he intended it to do: separate into two parts. The fibers flattened out at the ends, making two distinct batons. Kitai swung his new weapons in every direction, figuring that would drive the creatures back. But it didn’t. They began charging and jumping backward, mimicking Kitai’s moves. Before long, they were picking up sticks and clubs from the forest floor and using them to mimic the two ends of the cutlass.

“To your rear, cadet! Out to your rear!”

Through his gathering malaise, Kitai recognized the voice as his father’s. He looked behind him and saw that there was indeed an opening. Using it, he escaped the circle of baboons and took off into the forest. But the creatures gave chase.

Kitai was feeling faint, but he couldn’t let them catch him. He slashed and darted his way through the forest, trying to shake the creatures from his trail. Still, it seemed to him they were getting closer.

No, he thought, redoubling his effort. Instead of running around the rocks he encountered, he ran over them and launched himself over long stretches. He began putting more distance between himself and his pursuers.

But they switched tactics, too. They took to the trees. And up there, among the thick, plentiful branches that blocked the sunlight, they were in their element.

He glanced back over his shoulder: The creatures were gaining on him again. They began snatching branches and large pinecones from the trees and hurling them at Kitai. And they were growing in number. If there were six of them before, there had to be fifty now, all swinging and jumping from branch to branch, throwing whatever they could find at him.

Suddenly, Kitai felt something hit him in the middle of his back hard enough to send him flying forward. But he didn’t dare go down or they would have him, and so he let his fall turn into a forward roll and came up running again. No sooner was he on his feet than he heard his father’s voice.

“Cross the river, cadet! I repeat, cross the river!”

What river? Kitai asked himself. Then he saw it up ahead. It wasn’t just a river. It was a torrent punctuated with gouts of leaping white water. It’s going to be hard as hell to get across , Kitai thought.

Then he realized: That’s the point .

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the baboon creatures advancing through the trees. He took just long enough to secure his cutlass to his back before he dived headlong into the roiling water. As he swam, he saw the surface of the river explode with a relentless barrage of tree branches. But none of them reached him.