Attanasio, AA - In Other Worlds

Carl's bare feet stunned onto the rocky terrain, and the salt air gripped him. His rusty hair and the loose material of his hospital gown jumped with the clap of wind that followed the armor's shutdown. A stink of soured flesh slicked by, and he reeled backward at the sight of the unarmored zotl that appeared before him. The male and female zotl were not together. The bulging sac of the female was an arm's length away, the orange slug-mawed crown drooling its vomit stench as it gilled the planet's thin air.

Carl looked swiftly about for the male. It was hovering just behind him, and as he turned, it slashed forward. Its blade-curved beak gouged his scalp, and the hook-spurred legs dug into his face and neck. Carl beat the spidershape with his lance, and it sprang loose and jumped over him. He dodged instinctively, and the.

creature's sharp beak hacked the air just above his ear, its jabbering mouthparts flaying his scalp and chewing mad sounds in his ear. He batted it away and swung toward the barrelshaped female.

The male dove at Carl in a frenzied attack, cutting the flesh on his right hand and making him drop the lance. The jointed legs dexterously retrieved the .lance and flung it away.

Carl-tackled the female, pulling the thing over by the shocks of its ape-thick hide. It took him down with it, and the male's legs ripped into his, shoulder while its feedtube desperately lanced at his throat, seeking the carotid. His right arm was pinned under the female's bulk and his left hand cramped with pain as it reached up and lay hold of the frantic sticklybacked thing.

The hot blood spilling over his face blinded him, and he squeezed shut his eyes and contorted the length of his body to avoid the spider's scissoring jaws and razored feedtube. With terror's adamant strength, he tore the zotl from his flesh. He held the mad, writhing shape in his gory grip, away from his face, as he heaved the female over and freed his right arm. Its cries throbbed in the air.

Carl clenched a handy rock, the earth's first weapon, and pounded it into the spiderbeing. Spurts of black blood slapped him, and a haggard wail bawled from the female. It was rolling and twisting, spewing putrid ichor in long convulsive arcs. Carl picked up a flat, two-handed rock and used it to crush the zotl.

The work was ugly. The inside of his face was scalded with the sick smell, and the gash wounds on his body screamed with pain. The rock slab beat down hard on the. split chiton and jumping viscera of the monster until his armor snapped on with a crack of lightning.

He recovered the lance and bathed himself with anesthetizing pulses. The armor directed the lance, and the wounds were sonically cleansed and cauterized. Miraculously, no tendons or major bloodways had been

cut. Then with the sun spread out on the horizon like a red river, the armor lifted him and ricocheted him off the sky.

Ames, Iowa, was untouched. A few of the townspeople had seen needlecraft arrowing through the sky that night, but none had landed and none had been seen since. Carl's armor detected no zotl activity any-, where. He was glad for the miles of unsullied land that surrounded Ames. He was sick from the zotl killing and was grateful that no humans had been killed, including himself.

The sight of the lynk warehouse was a relief. Carl was sure it would have been a target, but the zotl in the short time before his armor was returned had obviously never found it.

He touched down before the partly open sliding door. His wounds were glossy, lacquered with the first sheen of scabs.

"Zeebo!" he called out as he entered. Beer-colored klieg lights gushed from the arched ceiling over the expansive interior. The living quarters looked lived-in: The giant TV was on, glowing with coverage of the worldwide UFO sightings.

He turned the screen off. "Zee-where are you?"

Carl roamed through the kitchen and sleeping quarters to the back of the warehouse. The lynk field tingled over him as he approached the hill of tarpcovered pig dung. He rounded the far end of the mound and was frozen by what he saw.

A bloated human figure was bent over a zotl female, face forward in its ooze-bubbling mouth. The male was clasping the back of the bruise-stained head. The body jerked upward and pivoted about. Through the blue-puffed features and the gangrenously swollen body, Carl recognized his friend. It was Zeke. The

agonized eyes nailed him, and the-turgid body careened forward.

Carl glimpsed a hip-high parabola of glassy metal--a lynkre he dodged Zeke. A silvergreen light streamed through the parabola; which he could just see beyond the stout shape of the zotl female. He fired an inertial pulse at it, and the barrel shape burst apart.

Before he could fire again, Zeke grabbed him. They struggled across the floor of the warehouse to the back wall.

Zeke had Carl in a headlock, and Carl was hooking back with his legs, trying to trip him. He beat the lance against Zeke's sides, not wanting to fire on him. Their locked forms smashed against the back door of the building, and it burst open under the impact. They fell through, and Carl twisted out of the powerful grip and rolled to his feet.

Zeke was on his hands and knees, cumbersomely rising.

Carl fired a carefully aimed pulse to the back of Zeke's head, and the zotl spider fell away, its feedtube sliding out of the skull slick with blood chime.

Carl rolled Zeke over. The blue thick face was crazed, the eyes yellowed, unfocused. The lance magnetically soothed the brain and sheathed the body in a flux of vitalizing energy.

Soon Zeke's gaze was focusing and his voice mouthing toward sound.

'16d--lynk," Zeke rasped.

"I know," Carl reassured him. "I saw it. I'll go back in and destroy it."

Zeke clasped a black-fingernaded hand on his arm, .his bruise-quilted face gasping to speak. Before be could, the air shocked to an icy brilliance. The warehouse was filled with an enormous light. The radiance seeped through the cracks of the walls and streamed in great beams out of the windows and the back door. Then darkness.

The armor filled Carl with understanding: The

zotl lynk had inadvertently provided the necessary inertia to lynk the pig manure with the Werld-two weeks early. The armor also inspirited the news that unless he got himself into the warehouse within the next few minutes, while the lynk echoes were still strong, he would be unable to lynk at all. He would be permanently stranded on earthtwo.

He peered down at Zeke, whose tormented face was relaxing toward the semblance of a smile. "Go-" he husked. -He wanted to tell Carl so much-about the. marvels of pain the zotl had revealed-about the supernatural calm inside the emptiness of the spirit where only pain can go-but his mouth barely worked. "Youcan't do-anything for me." His lips hooked toward a smile. "Go-"

Carl used the lance to radio for help. He made Zeke as comfortable as he could, laying him in paineasing currents from. the lance. If only he could take Zeke with him-but his friend's inertia belonged to earthtwo, not the Werld. Carl's insides were jumping with the eagerness to go, but he still had to force himself to turn away from his friend. At the back door, he looked around and waved. Zeke's finger twitched. Carl walked into the warehouse.

A moment later, the door and windows flashed with a majestic fulgor. The darkness that settled back was salty with tiny lights for a long time afterward.

Carl appeared for a few seconds in Rataros. The black flames were frozen, still as megaliths, and in this pitch dark, the animal in him was close. He felt fear like a wetness inside him, cold and electrical. He was alone with that fear within the vacuum of himself. The armor had been taken away again.

Suddenly, horizons of red clouds appeared. Great strides of clouds! He tumbled into a gulf of skyles and cloudlanes, falling from lynk to lynk on his lightsecond-long journey to the eld skyle. The lance was still in his hand, and he clutched the weapon close to his body. He noticed then that he was garbed in a leather finsuit and strider sandals.