Chum Bucket

Mr. Carlson died in the crash; Tom told us it was instantaneous. Both pilots lost their lives, too. Of all of us, the littlest one, Naciel, had a concussion, possibly, thrown against the metal lock when we hit, and most of us had some minor bruises and pains.

Finnick thought it was a crack in the Pipeline that sucked us out. He’d always been the brains of our class, interning for Carlson since summer, all his other courses AP, so we naturally deferred to whatever theories he suggested. In retrospect, though, Tom was our leader. When he agreed with Finnick, so did we.

Problem was, the scuttle’s batteries were all but dead. The indicator hovered in the red, just above the criss-crossed black zone. Too low to run diagnostics. Which essentially meant any troubleshooting to be done would have to be done by our brains. Finnick scoped two other kids, Mai and Ron, and at Tom’s command, they dissembled the navigatrix tapes to try to discover what went wrong.

Why the navigatrix computer, we asked, and were told, simply, because we had no idea where we were. Nor did CLAXON, our homeship. The first night on the planet, under unfamiliar stars in unfamiliar patterns, we huddled together around the bonfire, all twelve of us, scared, tired, hungry (the restitutor was shot), and guessed possible names of the overhead suns. Finnick and his two assistants loudly offered theories. The best they could hope for is that we were still in the general line of the pathway to Arcturus, and that somehow the MSC had shot out a beacon before we crashed. The worst, well, we tried not to think about that.

Maxowell did, though. No one particularly liked him, but he was big and built, an excellent addition to the school mungi team. So I surmised his best friend was Tom, but Tom was busy everywhere, getting us shipwreckers into organized survival mode. That freed Maxowell to gripe, ever more vocally, that the crack in the Pipeline shot us all the way to the other side of the galaxy. He also offered his own theory that we were thousands of years into the past or the future to anyone within hearing range.

I could understand his panic. I felt a similar panic deep within me. It was difficult to keep it buried. In fact, in an unspoken way, we all did. I swallowed mine, sick to my stomach, and kept busy with the busywork Tom gave me. Me and Sylvia combed through debris that four or five others removed from the dead hulk of the scuttle. Separating equipment into big circles: one for the science equipment, one for food and the restitutor and recycler, one for the communications equipment, one for miscellaneous odds-n-ends we could possibly rig into a shelter.

Early the first morning, as we all pretended to sleep, we first heard the far-off, warbling howl, and its answer. Minutes later, we separated the odds-n-ends into another pile: that which could be used as weapons.

Maxowell didn’t take that howl well. Something in him … shifted, broke. I must admit shivers kept traveling up and down my spine. The cry sounded far off, but that was tough to tell, not knowing the geography or the atmospheric density of the planetoid. Finnick placed it at five kilometers. The crash site was surrounded by tall wavy grasslike stalks, punctuated with large boulders of varying size and unknown composition, limiting our vision to only a few dozen meters in any direction. Near or far, didn’t matter to us, especially the younger ones. Powerful and deep, something big had to emit it, and the echoes took way too long to die down. And – it called out to something else, a something else that responded.

Before we could even scrounge for breakfast the howl repeated, silencing us in fear for more than a few minutes. Then, the arguing, first in hushed whispers, then in more passionate voices, as to whether the creature responsible was approaching. And then, at the mere suggestion of “approaching”, panic, cold and clammy and short of breath, broke out.

Immediately Tom herded us all from the smoldering bonfire to the shelter of the burned-out scuttle. He ordered two others to bring the scrapped equipment closer, to set at least a rudimentary perimeter, and set a couple more on watch. No one went back to sleep, nor complained of growling bellies, as the strange blue-tinged sun rose that morning. An hour went by, then two, then we stumbled about yesterday’s tasks, little zombies, and even managed a small communal meal. As sunlight washed over us those eerie cries became unimportant, almost laughable, a distant memory. Some braver boys heckled Maxowell. But all glanced now and then at the blue sun, and with dread we watched as it sunk below the horizon.

One of Finnick’s chosen, Glenda, managed to get the biometer working; this device could be used to assess chemical properties of everything from atmosphere to dirt to plant life to animal tissue. It had been thrown roughly around in the crash, and rattled when you shook it, but tests proved it worked. Tom made two of the younger girls forage out in ever-widening circles around the crash site, testing plant life for food potential, and to look for signs of water.

Towards evening, when we finished the last of the last of the prefab foodstuffs, the great stalks of grass surrounding the crash site parted, and the girls spilled out into our arms.

“IT’S HERE!” they screamed in utter terror.