Space Rocks! 2: For the Love of Gelo! - Softcover

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Chapter One

The red-furred alien stood with his back against the wall and performed the ritual. Carefully, he traced the top of his head with a strange and wondrous technological device from his home world—a “pencil,” he called it.

Then he turned and regarded the measurement with satisfaction. To my eyes, it was indistinguishable from the previous mark, made just a few days earlier.

“I’ve grown a full four centimeters in the last three months,” he said. “I really think I could be called Medium Gus now.”

“It could just be the gravity on Gelo, Little Gus. It’s a tad lower than Earth’s,” said another human, this one a female named Nicole García. “You’re still only in the fifth percentile for boys your age, though.” She was comparing his height to a sloping human growth chart that shimmered in the air above her holodrive.

“Top five percent,” said Little Gus. “Not bad at all.”

“Dude,” said Rebecca García, the perfect duplicate, er, “twin” of Nicole, “you’re about as good at math as you are at piloting.”

“Thanks, Becky!” said Little Gus, failing to detect the insult.

“Do all humans want to be tall?” I asked them in their own language. I’d become quite fluent in human. These days, when I spoke to them, it no longer felt quite like I had a gul’orp full of rocks—at most, just one or two small pebbles.

“Nah,” said Becky, “but it’s still nice when you’re taller than your sister.”

“You are only two millimeters taller than me!” cried Nicki.

“Still counts,” said Becky.

These aliens had been living with my family since the great battle three months ago. They had helped to defeat the dark forces of the Vorem Dominion and save my civilization from certain destruction. By Xotonian standards, it was a pretty crazy weekend. The months since had been quiet, though, and a sense of normalcy had returned to the underground city of Core-of-Rock.

Just then, the fourth human arrived. Daniel Hollins, the oldest and largest of them, burst into my dwelling. He was accompanied by Hudka, my grand-originator, a wrinkled little old Xotonian barely taller than me (yet much crankier).

“Xotonian burritos!” cried Hollins, plopping a big sack of food down on the table. “Fresh from Sertor’s stall in the market!” Burritos were one of the few Xotonian foods that the humans actually seemed to enjoy (though I had still neglected to tell them that they were actually fried cave slugs).

“So Hudka didn’t help you order?” asked Nicki, taking her burrito out of the bag.

“Nope,” said Hollins. “I did it all by myself.”

“I heard my name,” whispered Hudka in Xotonian. “What did Becky say?” My grand-originator’s human language proficiency was nowhere near mine. It had only managed to learn the two most important phrases: “Save game” and “Play again?”

“Not Becky,” I corrected. “That one’s called Nicki. Remember the rule? Check the lenses.” I pointed to Becky: no glasses. I pointed to Nicki: glasses.

“Whatever,” said Hudka. “I get it right nearly half the time.”

Nicki frowned as she bit into the burrito. “Um, I don’t mean to complain but . . . mine seems to be full of rocks.”

“Mine too,” said Becky, shoving hers away. “I think I chipped a tooth.”

“Hang on,” said Hollins, “isn’t ‘oitra’a’giv’ the Xotonian word for ‘extra cheese’?”

“Nope,” sighed Nicki. “That’s the word for ‘full of rocks.’ You should consider doing the vocabulary homework sometime.”

“Huh. No wonder Sertor was acting so weird when I ordered!” said Hollins. “I thought it was giving me the stinkeye because I didn’t have the correct amount of x’yzoth crystal change—”

Suddenly the lights of my dwelling dimmed. An instant later, an earsplitting boom ripped through the air. The walls shook and wobbled, causing little cascades of dust to pour from the ceiling. A particularly ancient—and fortunately very ugly—vase fell from the mantle and shattered.

The humans and I stared at one another, startled. I poked a frib into one of my ringing ear cavities. I felt like my internal organs had been rearranged.

“If I wasn’t deaf already, I am now,” said Hudka as the dust settled.

“What was that?” asked Becky.

“A Vorem attack?” said Nicki. “Or another asteroid colliding with Gelo? Maybe this system’s sun just went supernova!”

Her comrades frowned at her.

“Sorry,” she said, “just thinking out loud here.”

“Maybe these terrible rock burritos have angered the food gods,” shuddered Little Gus as he threw his into the garbage.

“Whatever it is, it sounded like an explosion,” said Nicki. “We should—”

“Follow me!” cried Hollins.

In an instant we were outside, racing through the streets of Core-of-Rock. Whole sections of the city were totally dark.

Another explosion flashed in the distance! Away to the east, a plume of sparks rose thirty meters above the city. For a moment, the blast lit Core-of-Rock in angry red. This time, we covered our ears before the thunderous boom reached us.

“This way!” I cried.

We passed the Hall of Wonok, formerly the seat of Xotonian government and now the most heavily guarded building in the city. Dozens of city guards stood outside, their usk-lizards snorting and stamping in agitation. The guards wanted to help too, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t leave the hall unattended, even for a moment.

The Hall of Wonok was now a prison. The thirty-two Vorem legionaries who had been captured during the epic battle were all locked inside. The city guards watched them day and night.

In the past few months, we had learned much about our Vorem prisoners. To our surprise, we found that beneath their scaly black battle armor, the Vorem were very human in shape. Nicki suggested this may have been an example of “convergent evolution” in which two unrelated species gradually evolve similar traits.

In any case, the Vorem did have two arms, two legs, and two eyes. They even had humanlike fur on the top of their heads (incredibly disturbing to the average Xotonian). But unlike humans, their skin was a pale shade of purple, and their eyes were red. Their hands were clawed, and their mouths were full of sharp white teeth.

I recognized a guard captain standing outside the hall. “Eromu,” I called out, “do you know what’s happening? Have any of the Vorem escaped?” It was hard for me to imagine that our ancient enemies didn’t have something to do with the explosions rocking the city.

“Absolutely not,” it said. “All thirty-two prisoners are accounted for!”

“Thanks, captain,” I said.

“Whatever’s happening,” said Becky, “at least it’s not the Vorem.”

We hurried through Core-of-Rock toward the site of the explosions. At the edge of the city, near an exit to the Unclaimed Tunnels, we came to a dense jumble of dwellings. This neighborhood was called the Farrago, and it was on fire.

Soot-stained Xotonians led their offspring from smoky buildings. Others watched in a daze as...