Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

“Nothing yet,” said Greg. “Let me give ’em another try.” He was gone a minute, then came back with, “Nope. Still silent.”

“All right. I’m bettin’ that’s them, though.”

Trent concentrated on driving. The terrain rose and fell, taking them out of sight of their target at least half the time, and when they would pop back up over a rise it would invariably be to one side or the other of where they thought it should be, but they drew steadily closer, and eventually they found themselves on a long flat stretch of grass and wild-flowers that led straight to the downed ship.

Calling it a “ship” was a courtesy, earned only because it had made the jump between planets. It looked like it had started out life as a water tank, and that life had apparently been long and hard. Long streaks of rust ran down its sides, and several irregular patches of varying age had been welded to it. If it had ever held air, it didn’t now; it had come down tilted and the side that had taken the brunt of its weight on impact had crumpled like an accordion, splitting its seams wide open.

Its glittery silver parachute lay limp on the ground, stretching off into the dark beyond it. The silvery foil was such a sharp contrast to the rusty tank that Trent would never have guessed they belonged together if he hadn’t seen the tank descending beneath it. Whoever built this rig must have spent all their money on the hyperdrive and the parachute, and made the spaceship out of the only thing they had on hand.

A white blob of fur with irregular black spots ran out to bark at them when they drew close. Trent normally didn’t like dogs much, especially the kind that screeched more than barked, like this one did, but with wild animals out there in the dark, he was happy to see this one. Then he noticed how many legs it had: at least six, plus a couple of tentacles that waved back and forth from the top of its head. That was where it kept its eyes.

A bigger creature stood atop the tank, waving a flashlight enthusiastically at the pickup. It was about four feet tall, scaly and glisteny brown rather than hairy and white, with thick, snakelike arms and legs that ended in sharp claws. It stood on four of its six legs, bending upward in the middle like a centaur. Its head was a narrow triangle with the pointy end aimed forward. It looked like it might be smiling, but then again, its mouth could just be a permanently curved slit full of fangs. Trent let off the juice and let the truck coast to a stop a couple dozen feet away.

“Oh, boy,” he said softly.

Donna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They could be perfectly nice.”

“Uh-huh.” He drove a little closer to the tank and parked, leaving the lights on. “You stay here until we know for sure.”

When he opened his door and stepped out, the alien shouted something like “Baki!” and waved the flashlights beam in an arc around the curved side of the tank. Did he want Trent to go around to that side? Trent reached up onto the seat for his own flashlight and, keeping an eye out for hoodlums, followed the aliens light around to a ragged hole in the side of the tank. The furry mop on the ground kept pace with him about five feet away, screeching the whole time, while the alien above yelled “Gabat!” from the top of the tank. Trent hoped it was just trying to quiet its dog, because if it was shouting at Trent, he had no idea what it wanted.

It took him a second to realize that the hole in the tank wasn’t part of the accident. Someone had made a doorway with a cutting torch and not bothered to file the edges smooth. It was only about four feet high, but it started two feet off the ground; Trent only had to lean down a little bit to keep from hitting his hat.

The inside of the tank looked like somebody had taken a moving van and shaken it, which was about what had happened, he supposed. Boxes and wooden crates and sacks of stuff were piled hip deep, and more stuff was tied to the walls and hanging from the roof. There were easily identifiable things like shovels and rakes and pitchforks in a pile near the door, with less familiar twisty things and squiggly jiggers mixed in. Some of the crates held animals—though not any animals Trent had ever seen. A three-foot yellow tentacle stuck out between the slats of one crate, weaving around in the air and blinking the eye at its tip, and the hisses, honks, and croaks coming from the other cages didn’t sound much more reassuring. The air didn’t smell so great, either.

It took a second to see the owners among all their possessions, but Trent waved his flashlight around and finally saw a bigger version of the scaly creature on top of the tank standing over another one who was lying flat on its back on a pile of blankets, and two more small ones hiding behind the standing one. These guys at least had eyes in more or less the right place, even if their limbs were more tentacles than arms. The one on its back had a bad gash on the left side of its head, still wet with dark purple blood. The standing one didn’t seem hurt, but one of the kids—if that’s what the little ones were—was cradling one of its tentacles protectively with its other one. An even smaller child hid between the standing parent’s legs, and at the sight of Trent it began to cry out in long, ear-piercing wails.

“It’s all right,” Trent said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “I’m here to help.”

The standing parent—Trent guessed it was the mother—said something in a rapid-fire voice full of t’s and k’s. Trent missed about half of it because of the screeching mop-thing outside and the crying baby inside, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t speak whatever it is you’re talkin’.”

He felt something at his side and whirled around, banging his head against the ragged edge of the doorway, but it was just Donna. The alien mother snorted, but whether it was laughter at Trent or alarm at Donna, he couldn’t tell.

He caught his hat before it could hit the ground and wedged it back on his head. “Damn it, I thought I told you to stay put.”

Donna said, “Until we knew they were friendly. They didn’t blow your head off when you stuck it through the door, so I figured it was okay.” She edged past him. “Do they need as much help as it looks like from outside?”

He moved aside to let her have a look, keeping his flashlight pointed in through the door. She leaned in and said loudly, “Are you okay in here?” Then, softer, she said, “Oh. No, it doesn’t look like it, does it?”

The mother said something else fast, waving one of her snakey arms at the hatch that had plugged the hole and was now lying on the only bare patch of floor. It was just a big slab of metal with rubber door molding around the edge and a broken gate hinge welded to one side. The mother pointed at the hatch and then at the gash in her mate’s head.

“Got it,” Trent said. “The door broke loose and clocked him one.”

The father—if that’s what he was—had left a big puddle of purplish blood on the floor, and the side of his head was colored with it, too, but it looked like he had quit bleeding. Trent watched the alien’s chest to see if he was still breathing, and was happy to see it rise and fall in slow, even rhythm. Of course that might not be normal for one of his kind—the mother was breathing about four times as fast—but then again she had reason to be excited.

Donna squeezed in through the hatch and crawled over a pile of farm tools to the father’s side. “How’s his pulse?” she asked. “Heartbeat? Thumpa-thumpa?” She whacked her chest just left of center, then held up her left arm and put her fingers across the wrist. “Do you guys normally have a pulse?”

More rapid alien speech, barely audible over the baby and the mop. The mother picked up the baby and tried to shush it with little clicking sounds, but it kept crying.