Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"Trying!" Arrou clawed for grip on the slippery ceramite.

The heavy lifter was losing altitude, a trail of sparks blowing out behind it. Karr worked furiously, shutting down the malfunctioning thruster, which put the flying craft in a tight, downward spiral.

"Brace yourselves!" Karr warned. "We're going down!" Karr did his best to clear the island. Tree pompoms whipped at the lifter, snagging on its leading edge and exploding into blinding sprays of leaf matter. The flying slab shot out over open ocean, losing altitude and splashing down. The hull slid thirty yards, water spraying up in the sideways light of sunset, before coming to a stop. Karr, and the boxes under his butt, hammered forward into the dash. Arrou fell into the water.

Bruised and aching, Karr staggered out of the cockpit and threw a line overboard. Arrou was already stroking back, a flurry of sharkworm splashes honing in on him. He closed both forepaws on the cable and heaved himself over the sidewall.

"Not hurt," the alien sputtered.

Karr then helped Jenette free of the wreckage. "That was exciting," she said, brushing herself off.

"Too exciting," Karr agreed distractedly. He broke off and followed a trail of soot across the deck, then pulled up a strand of charred microfiber.

"Braid shorted out," Arrou panted.

Karr's voice was full of self-reproach. "I must have spliced it badly. This was my fault."

"Don't beat yourself up," Jenette said, already thinking about the Feral encampment. "You couldn't know this would happen and we all agreed to go up."

"It's not about agreeing," Karr spat. "It's about choosing and consequences. I'm a Pilot. If my choices lead to personal injury and the inability to locate my ship, that's gross dereliction of Duty. I cannot allow that to happen."

"Point taken," Jenette allowed; not wanting to get into an argument over it. "Don't let it happen again,"

she added, which seemed to mollify Karr.

"Flying fun," said Arrou.

"Hush," said Jenette.

The sun, swollen into a wide orange ember on the horizon, disappeared before they could speak again and an unwanted howl called attention to the fact that they had come to rest scant yards from Feral Island 716.

Howrrraaaaaaaoooooouuuuu!

The single cry ululated from the depths of darkening green jungle. Another voice took up the call, and then another and another. Arrou went stiff, sniffing and listening.

"Ferals?" asked Karr.

"Many Ferals," replied Arrou.

Karr frowned. "They must have followed us down."

"Are they close?" asked Jenette.

"Wind funny. Not know." Arrou abruptly leaped the five yards between lifter and shore. "Back soon."

"Arrou, get back here," Jenette demanded.

But Arrou bounded off into the foliage. "High good," he called, "see lots."

"Where is he?" Jenette hissed, straining to see in the lowering light.

"There." Karr pointed to a shooting-star palm fifty feet in from the shore. Its trunk quivered, and then Arrou climbed into view, rimmed by the fading glow of sunset. "Third tree on the left, above the deep red leaves."

"This is stupid," Jenette cursed. She wanted her next encounter with Ferals to be on her terms, not theirs.

Karr called out Arrou's actions. "He's looking around. Checking for trouble? ."

"I see him."

"He's coming back down," Karr continued, but the four-legged shape suddenly stopped and turned the same color as the leaves of the trees. "He just went invisible...?"

"Bad news," Jenette decided.

The shoreline seconded her opinion. The foliage was alive with the sounds of unseen movement. Karr picked up the Gattler and pulled Jenette behind the crawler as, rapidly, the unseen menace became ominously visible. As far as the eye could see, stretching beyond the island's curve in either direction, the twilight shore was lined with Ferals.

Ferals stacked up, two and three deep, along the shore. Karr waited for an attack, bracing the Gattler

on the hood of the crawler. The Ferals saw them clearly, a mere spring away, but for some reason held off a final rush. They stood, staring, with unnerving, unblinking eyes, skins perfectly matching the deepening indigo sky.

"Why don't they attack?" Karr whispered.

"They are not inherently violent," Jenette hissed. "Maybe it's some sort of greeting ritual."

Karr did not lower the Gattler. The last greeting ritual he had participated in consisted of snarling and chasing.

For a while, the Ferals made no noise. The forest made no noise. Not even buzzers or peepers dared break the eerie quiet.

Then, a peculiar thing happened.

One by one the horde of Ferals bowed down on their forelegs, facing their chameleon backs outward from the island. Like a spectator wave sweeping across a stadium, they blacked out, discernible only as blacker shadows against dark jungle. Except for the gentle roll of the island on water, the scene was motionless. The minutes drew on. No one and nothing stirred.

"Creepy," said Karr.

Karr's predisposition to assume the worst about Ferals annoyed Jenette. "I told you," she insisted,

"they are not inherently violent."

When ten minutes elapsed with no immediate attack, Karr's attention switched from the Ferals to the inoperative thruster. "I'm going to fix that," he decided, shoving the Gattler into Jenette's petite hands.

"You hold them off."

"Forget it," Jenette objected. Whatever the Ferals were doing, they were calm and she was not about to jeopardize that by brandishing a weapon. It was perfect. She had intended to search out the Ferals from the encampment? instead they had come to her.

"They respect a show of force," Karr insisted. "I know that much. Here. Hold it like this."

"Don't tell me what to do," said Jenette. "I know how to hold a gun and I know how to shoot? but I'm still not taking it."

Karr saw that further argument was futile. Laying the Gattler in plain sight on the crawler, he squirmed into the cab and, trying not to make too much noise, fumbled in the toolkit. Then he felt under the dash for more microfibers. "How's Arrou?" he asked, fingertips closing around a braided strand.

"They haven't spotted him yet," Jenette responded. "I think he snuck back into the treetop." She wished he was beside her, both for his protection and knowledge. She reviewed her vocabulary of Khafra words, preparing to speak. It was a big gamble and she wanted to get it right. No one knew how Ferals would react to a human speaking their own language.

Karr sighed after crimping a few strands. Night fell fast on New Ascension and the cab interior was pitch black. Strangely, though, he could see Jenette's face above him, mouthing silent words in a faint red glow. "Where's that light coming from?"

"The horizon ... that way," Jenette pointed, her mouth going slack.

Karr recalled the aura he had seen on the previous night. "Southwest?"

"Yes," Jenette mumbled. "I guess."

"So it's not colony lights."

"No. That's the other way. Oh, my...."

From the floor of the cab, Karr saw a spray of light across Jenette's features. Glistening rainbow reflections frolicked in her eyes.

"What is it?"

All Jenette could say was, "Wow."

Karr sat up.

The Ferals were glowing. Hundreds of motionless bodies lit up the shoreline with a dance of ghostly colors, shimmering will-o-the-wisps. Karr stared, entranced. "What is it?" he asked again.

"Don't know," Jenette muttered. "Never seen anything like it."

The luminescent phenomenon was not restricted to FI-716. Karr saw that wherever island silhouettes loomed on the ocean, firefly dots of alien light blinked in the night. It was beautiful in an eerie, elegant way

? so beautiful that Karr forgot about the microfibers in his sweaty hands. As he watched, the ground-bound aurora began to build in intensity. Ferals near the lifter absorbed one another's patterns, each adding its own splash of color as the radiance bled from one alien to the next. A sameness spread along the shore, and the more same the light became, the more powerful it became. Yet, it was not bland, safe sameness, but the sameness of an avalanche, of many differences reveling in a rush down a mountainside. The light sang, intoxicating. Karr felt as though he was being swept along in the light, riding the front of the radiant avalanche, following it around crests and valleys of darkness....