Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

“What about them?” he asked, surreptitiously pointing a thumb.

Peabody and Raven followed his gesture.

Raven looked grim, and Peabody shrugged his good shoulder.

“I wouldn’t make any long-term plans for them,” Peabody said.

“Perchance poor Dundry was the fortunate one,” Raven said. “An he found shelter, he might outlive us all; an he died, at the least it was quick.”

“Dundry was the other one, the one in green?”

“Aye,” Raven said, “Alella’s son, by her first husband.”

“I met Grummetty, but not the others,” Pel said. “That’s Alella, there?”

“Aye,” Raven said. “Grummetty’s wife.”

“So Dundry was-I mean, is Grummetty’s stepson?”

Raven nodded, making no comment on Pel’s initial use of the past tense.

Pel took a surreptitious look at Grummetty.

“You know,” he said, “Grummetty was in my basement for maybe ten minutes before he started getting sick. Really sick. He’s been here longer than that, hasn’t he? And he looks all right so far.”

“Raise no hopes, friend Pel,” Raven said. “Mayhap the death is slower here, for ‘tis plain truth that this realm is not your own, but death is certain, all the same.”

“Unless you can get them back through the… the warp in time, anyway,” Nancy suggested.

Pel looked at her, and realized that Rachel had fallen asleep in her mother’s arms.

“Do you want me to take her for awhile?” he offered.

“No, that’s all right,” Nancy said. “We’re fine.” She hesitated, then asked, “ Can you get them back through the warp in time?”

Raven looked at Captain Cahn; he wasn’t listening. He was discussing something else entirely with some of the others.

Pel looked at Peabody.

“Doubt it,” he said, frowning. “I don’t know just where the hell we are, even with the name, but if I never heard of it, it’s got to be at least a week, probably a lot more, from Base One. If those gnomes could last a week here, we’d probably have caught a few of them alive sometime.”

Pel’s jaw dropped.

“A week ?” he shouted.

“Yeah,” Peabody said.

Pel turned and grabbed Raven by the front of his embroidered jacket. “A week ? I can’t spend a week here! I didn’t even want to spend an hour ! I have a business to run! I left the lights on, and the cat-what’s going to happen to our cat?”

“I’m sorry, Pel Brown,” Raven said, pulling Pel’s hands away from his garments with surprising ease; he was even stronger than he looked.

“Pel,” Nancy said worriedly, watching Grummetty and Alella, “this isn’t our space any more than it’s theirs. Are we going to be all right here?”

Pel glared at Raven.

“I know not, my lady,” the nobleman said. “But I see no reason to fear. My people and Messire Peabody’s have lived in each other’s lands for months, even years, and suffered no ill; likewise, the neither took harm from our stay in your own realm. ‘Tis only the creatures of Hrumph and Shadow and Elfindom, the creatures of magic, that cannot abide here.”

“Sure, lady, don’t worry about that,” Peabody said. “You’ll be fine.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry about your cat, though. Maybe the neighbors’ll do something?”

“Yeah,” Nancy agreed, stroking Rachel’s hair. “Maybe. He’ll have water, at least, if nobody closed the bathroom door.”

For a few seconds they were silent, sunk in gloom; then a joyful shout, audible even in the thin air, roused them.

“Aircar on the way!” Prossie called. “No Imperial ships are available, so they’re sending a car. Be here in a few hours!”

A ragged cheer went up, and quickly faded.

“We need to put up a marker, so it can spot us,” Prossie added. “I’ll tell them what it is.”

That brought on a puzzled silence, followed by disjointed muttering, until finally somebody thought to start collecting the dead monsters, and fragments of monsters, into a heap.

“Should really show up, against all this white,” Peabody remarked, wincing, as he used his injured arm to help steady a mashed spider-thing before heaving it onto the growing mound.

Pel, dragging something resembling a saber-toothed wolf, nodded. He hesitated, and then said, “I’m sorry about that man Cartwright,” he said. “Was he… Did you know him well?”

Peabody turned away from the pile and shrugged. “Well enough,” he said. He sighed. “It’ll probably be me has to tell his wife back on Terra.”

“Wife?” Nancy, still seated holding Rachel, looked up, startled.

Peabody nodded. “Cute little thing. Her name’s Maureen; last I saw she was about seven months pregnant, probably had the kid by now. She and Pete have a place in New Dorset, in North Columbia.”

Pel looked uneasily at Nancy; she stared at Peabody in horror.

“They sent him out there with his wife pregnant?” she demanded.

Peabody shrugged again. “Sure. It didn’t look all that dangerous. It was supposed to be a diplomatic mission, after all-we didn’t know we’d wind up fighting monsters in the middle of nowhere.” He gestured at the surrounding landscape. “And we didn’t expect to wind up here , either, but this doesn’t look too bad.”

Pel glanced around, at the cold white sand, the various people with torn clothing, bloodstains, and improvised bandages, the pale sun and too-close horizon. He stared for a moment at the heap of fanged, clawed, and tentacled horrors, all of them dead. He took a deep breath of the warm, thin, oddly flavorless air.

“Well, no one’s attacking us, anyway,” he said.

Peabody grimaced.

“At the moment,” Pel added.

“Hours,” Nancy said, looking at the corpses. “She said a few hours?”

Pel frowned and nodded.

“I’m going to get some sleep, then,” Nancy said. “It must be after ten back home, and I’m tired.”

Pel looked at his watch, and saw nothing; the display was blank. The light came on when he pushed the appropriate button, but had nothing to illuminate.

He shrugged. “I don’t think it’s really that late,” he said, “but sure, if you like.”

Nancy lowered Rachel gently to the sand, arranged her comfortably, then curled up beside her. Pel watched them silently.

He sat up himself for awhile, but eventually, for lack of anything better to do, he joined her.

He was awakened by Peabody jostling him. He blinked, sat up, and looked where the crewman pointed.

At first he didn’t see anything. The sun had crossed the sky and was descending toward the western horizon; the air had progressed from warm to hot, while the sand on which he lay had also warmed, though far less. He peered out over the sand and rock, and finally spotted it.

A glittering object had appeared over the horizon and was coming quickly nearer.

“Oh, my God,” he said, tensing. “Now what?”

“It’s okay!” someone shouted. “That’s our ride!”

Pel relaxed slightly, but remained wary as the thing neared. Someone-in the dimming light it took Pel a moment to recognize Mervyn-had improvised a small torch, somehow, and was waving it enthusiastically over his head, signalling to the approaching craft.

The vehicle was roughly the size and shape of a car, but had no wheels; instead it cruised along at roughly the height of Pel’s head, with no visible means of support.

“It is just like Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder,” Nancy said, sitting up.

Pel looked at her questioningly. “Prossie said they had cars with anti-gravity-aircars, she called them,” Nancy explained. “And I told Rachel they were like the one in ‘Star Wars.’ And they are , see?”