Snatched from Earth

  FOR SEATON MCLEAN AND TED RILEY, VISIONARIES

  CHAPTER 1 [TIM]

  STOWAWAYS

  It’s late, and the others are asleep.

  Judge Wingler’s assistant came in a while ago to pick up the material we had already written, all the chapters telling how we first got involved in what the galactic media are calling “The Earth-Based Catastrophe That Nearly Ended Life as We Know It.”

  I would have liked more time to work on my chapters. I was completely honest about how upset I was when Pleskit’s friend Maktel came to Earth for a visit, but I’m afraid I didn’t sound very mature.

  On the other hand, given what happened to Linnsy, maybe it’s just as well I’m not all that mature. If I were, I might be in her situation right now.

  The weird thing is, sometimes I almost wish I were.

  The pages we finished covered the first half of the story, beginning from the time Maktel arrived on Earth from Hevi-Hevi for a visit with Pleskit and started driving me nuts. The chapters talked about our suspicions regarding Ellico vec Bur, the strange two-part being who’d arrived on the same ship with Maktel to visit Pleskit’s Fatherly One, Meenom Ventrah. We got right up to the point where Pleskit, Maktel, Linnsy, and I sneaked onto Ellico vec Bur’s ship to see if we could find any clues to what the Trader(s) were up to.

  I still remember the horror I felt when Ellico vec Bur came aboard. We quickly hid in a storage space, hoping the Trader(s) would leave before they found us.

  They left all right, but not in the way we’d expected. They blasted off and left the planet—with the four of us still hiding on the ship! I have always wanted to go into space, but I never planned on making the trip by being snatched from Earth by someone(s) who seemed to be total villains.

  I’m too wound up to sleep. I guess I might as well keep writing.

  * * *

  It was pitch black in the storage room until Pleskit’s sphen-gnut-ksher began to spark. Its purple light illuminated the terrified faces of my companions.

  Linnsy was standing directly to my right. I felt bad that she had gotten dragged into this mess—though if I had a choice of who I’d want to have by my side when I was in trouble, she would be the one.

  Next to her stood Pleskit himself, his pet Veeblax clinging to his shoulder. I could tell the little animal was as scared as I was, since it couldn’t choose a shape to settle in but kept shifting from one form to another.

  Next to Pleskit was Maktel, his face wide-eyed in horror.

  I wondered if I looked as frightened as he did. I sure felt that way.

  “What are we going to do, guys?” whispered Linnsy.

  I’ve known Linnsy since before kindergarten, so I could tell how hard she was working to keep the quaver out of her voice. Her nervousness increased the fear wringing my own gut. I realized it was possible we might never see Earth again.

  Earth? Heck, I wasn’t sure we would live to see another day once Ellico vec Bur found out we were aboard.

  “This is all your fault, Maktel,” said Pleskit bitterly. “If you hadn’t insisted on checking Ellico vec Bur’s ship, we would still be back at the embassy with the rest of the class, enjoying the party.”

  “And if you had believed my suspicions to begin with, I would not have needed to insist on that checking,” replied Maktel, sounding equally bitter. “I did say those Trader(s) were up to something, didn’t I?”

  “Actually, we still don’t know if they’re up to anything,” I pointed out.

  “Stay out of this, Tim!” snapped Pleskit, which was so totally unlike him that I blinked and took a step back. I might have backed up more, but one step was as far as I could go in the tiny chamber we were trapped in.

  Of course, in a way I had been feeling trapped ever since Maktel had arrived from Hevi-Hevi—trapped by the nagging fear in my gut that I would be left out of things when he and Pleskit got back together.

  Well, I’d managed to keep myself included—and look where it had gotten me!

  A sudden movement at my shoulder distracted me. I put a protective hand on the mesh pouch I wore there. Inside the pouch was a “purple pickle” that, with luck and proper care, might turn into a Veeblax like Pleskit’s. I suddenly wondered if the stress of blasting off would be bad for it.

  “This won’t hurt the oog-slama, will it?” I asked nervously.

  Maktel puffed out his cheeks in a Hevi-Hevian sign of exasperation. “By the Seven Moons of Skatwag!” he snapped. “We’ve got more to worry about than that stupid Veeblax in the making!”

  “Will you shut up!” I hissed. I kept my voice low so that Ellico vec Bur wouldn’t hear us—then remembered that the Trader(s) couldn’t hear us anyway, since the room was soundproof.

  Maktel looked at me angrily.

  His sphen-gnut-ksher began to spark.

  I pressed myself to the wall, wondering if he was about to zap me.

  CHAPTER 2 [LINNSY]

  WAY-OUTWARD BOUND

  I couldn’t believe tim and Maktel were about to get into a fight. What a totally boy thing to do—waste time fighting when what we really needed to do was figure out how we were going to survive!

  It made me wonder if males are the same everywhere in the galaxy.

  “All right, that’s enough,” I said sternly, stepping between them. “You too, Pleskit. I don’t care whose fault this is, or how stupid each of you thinks the other is. What I want to know is: What are we going to do now?”

  Pleskit blinked. “Sorry, Linnsy,” he said softly. “You are correct. I was exhibiting inappropriate behavior.”

  I was so surprised, I probably would have fallen over, if there had been enough room. Obviously males across the galaxy were not all alike. I can’t imagine any Earthling guy I know settling down so quickly—much less apologizing that way.

  “You and Pleskit are correct,” Maktel said, bowing his head. “I apologize for my sharp tongue.”

  Tim looked from one to the other, then back again. He closed his eyes and shook his head, as if trying to make sense of this. “Uh, I’m sorry too,” he said at last. Then, quickly, as if he found the act of apologizing supremely uncomfortable, he said, “Okay, let’s try to think. What do we actually know about our situation?”

  “Well, we know that Ellico vec Bur have kidnapped us for nefarious reasons of their own,” said Maktel.

  “Actually, we don’t even know that,” said Pleskit mildly.

  “What are you talking about?” cried Maktel. “Didn’t they just snatch us into space?”

  “They certainly did,” said Pleskit. “But did they do that on purpose, or did we just happen to be aboard when they took off? The real question right now is, do we try to let them know we’re here, or do we wait until the ship lands and try to sneak off, hoping we can find some way to get back home?”

  This was a tough one. The longer we delayed letting the Trader(s) know we were on board, the farther we got from Earth. But if we did manage to let them know, who was to say they wouldn’t just zap us, or fling us into space, or something?

  When I brought this point up, Pleskit said, “I’m sure they are far too civilized for that.”

  “Pleskit, you are a dreamer,” said Maktel, shaking his head. “The members of the Trading Federation are not as universally upright and moral as you would like to think.”

  “Based on our experiences since you came to Earth, I’d have to say Maktel is right,” said Tim. I had to give him credit for saying that, since I knew it would gall him to admit Maktel was right about anything, much less take his side in a dispute with Pleskit.

  “Let me check something,” said Pleskit. He went to the door of the little room where we were hidden. When he turned back, his face was grim. “We’re still locked in.
I had hoped that once takeoff was complete, the lock would do an automatic release.”

  “So we couldn’t tell Ellico vec Bur we’re here even if we wanted to,” I said. “All right, what do we do instead?”

  “Let’s start by listing what we know,” said Tim.

  Unfortunately, the answer to this question turned out to be: almost nothing. Sure, Ellico vec Bur were a suspicious twosome, and Maktel was convinced they were involved in some horrible plot. But if so, what was it? Not to mention: Where were we going—and how long would it take to get there?

  I glanced at my watch. It had been fifteen minutes since we took off.

  “Don’t count on that for an accurate display of time,” said Maktel. “The ship is going fast enough by now that time will be passing differently for us than it does back on the planet.”

  I knew—mostly from Tim babbling about his science-fiction shows—that the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time actually passes for you. But I hadn’t really thought about that weirdosity applying to us.

  “How much time has really gone by back on Earth?” I asked, feeling a new surge of panic as I wondered if our classmates were now in tenth grade or something.

  “It’s hard to say,” answered Pleskit. “Reality is a tricky concept. It’s possible a few years have passed. More likely it has not been more than a few hours. It depends on how quickly the ship has been accelerating.”

  As I was trying to wrap my mind around this idea, and wondering how old Jordan would be when we got back (assuming, of course, that we did get back), the ship began to vibrate. A sudden shrieking sound seemed to split my head. My body felt like it was picking up the ship’s vibrations, as if I were some giant tuning fork.

  Then I felt a stretching sensation, as if I had been turned into elastic and some huge creature had grabbed my head, while some other creature had grabbed my feet, and now both of them were running in opposite directions.

  I heard Tim screaming.

  Then I realized I was doing the same thing. “Whhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaat’sssssss goooooiliiiiinnnnnngggggg ooooonnnnnnnn?” I cried.

  CHAPTER 3 [PLESKIT]

  TRILLIONS OF MILES

  I was already near kleptra about having been snatched away on Ellico vec Bur’s starship. But my fear and despair doubled when I felt the undeniable stretching sensation that indicated the ship had entered an urpelli.

  The Veeblax leaped to the floor and began changing forms so rapidly, it was impossible to keep track of what it was becoming.

  Urpelli jumps are very distressing for shape-shifters.

  Actually, they can be distressing for anyone, so I wasn’t surprised that Tim and Linnsy were screaming in terror. After all, they had never experienced a time/space jump before. I considered screaming too—not because of the sensation but because of what I knew it meant: when we left the urpelli, we would be trillions of miles from Earth.

  It is impossible to have any sense of time during a time/space jump—it is like a split second that goes on forever. (If that seems hard to understand, it’s even weirder to experience!)

  “What’s going on?” cried Linnsy—though, of course, she did not look like Linnsy at the moment, since she was so stretched out. Her words were also stretched out, which made it hard to interpret what she was saying.

  “We’re going through an urpelli,” I said, my own words stretching out in the same way.

  “You mean one of those holes in space you were telling us about?” she demanded.

  “That’s a close enough description,” I said, “though it’s more like a tunnel than a hole. The main thing is, we’ve just sidestepped the problems of light-speed travel by stepping outside of normal spacetime. We’ll drop back in soon, but I have no idea where we’ll be when we do.”

  “So we’re not about to die?” asked Tim hopefully.

  Before I could answer, the jump was over, and we snapped back into our normal physical shapes.

  “Nope, guess we’re not about to die,” said Tim, holding out his hands to study them. “Kind of a relief. For a minute there I was wondering if we were dead already.”

  “Dead is not the problem,” said Maktel. “The problem is, since we’ve made a time/space jump, we are now several trillion miles from Earth—which is going to make it a lot harder for us to get back.”

  Tim blinked. “But… but…”

  “That is only part of the problem,” I said. “What makes this particularly distressing is that there is no charted urpelli this close to Earth.”

  Maktel looked stunned at this news. “But an uncharted urpelli…” He let the words dangle in the air. We both knew what he was saying.

  “Well, at least we have an idea of what this is all about now,” I said at last, still stunned by the idea.

  “You may know what’s going on,” said Linnsy. “I’m still totally mystified.”

  I glanced at Maktel. He hesitated, then nodded, a signal that he agreed I should explain to our friends what this meant. We were both aware that we had stumbled into something far bigger than we’d first realized. It was appropriate for Tim and Linnsy to understand this as well.

  “All right, here’s the situation,” I said. “An urpelli this close to Earth makes the planet enormously more valuable as a trading spot than the Trading Federation understood when they granted the Fatherly One the franchise. Tim, I’m sure you remember the words you found so exciting in that secret note Maktel’s Motherly One wanted him to deliver to my Fatherly One.”

  “ ‘Earth is more important than you realize,’ ” replied Tim, quoting them instantly.

  “Well, now we know why. Earth is indeed more important than any of us had realized. In fact, the presence of this urpelli means your planet has the potential to become a galactic crossroads. Now I understand better why the Fatherly One has faced such opposition. Some beings obviously know about the urpelli, and therefore know that the trading franchise for Earth is worth far more than any of us had imagined.”

  Tim looked sick. “So what do you think Ellico vec Bur are up to?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, the door of our little hiding place slid open.

  CHAPTER 4 [MAKTEL]

  DISCOVERED

  Ellico vec Bur stood in the doorway, their faces twisted with astonishment and fury.

  It was not hard for Ellico vec Bur to have two expressions at the same time, since they were a veccir—a two-part being composed of separate but cooperating species. This meant, among other things, that they had two faces.

  The larger face belonged to Ellico, who would have looked almost like an Earthling if not for the fact that his skin was blue and where most men would have a beard, he had writhing tentacles. According to Tim, they looked as if they had been transplanted from an octopus. I wondered if he knew that octopuses were not native to Earth.

  If Ellico’s beard looked like it came from an octopus, the Bur part of the Trader(s) looked totally crablike, with a hard, golden-bronze shell and a small, flat face. Bur fit on Ellico’s head like a cap, though I doubt you could have pried it off if you tried. The symbiote had two long legs—well, they look like legs, but they’re actually called tweezikkle—mounted just behind its face. They extended back and down, locking themselves into Ellico’s ears and forming a connection to his brain.

  Ellico provided transportation and a large, active body. In exchange, Bur provided enhanced brain power and sensory ability. They claimed it was a very useful combination, but the very sight of them always made me uneasy—even when they weren’t mad, which they definitely were at the moment. In fact the icy fury in both sets of eyes was so terrifying, I feared I might slip into kleptra right on the spot.

  “What are you four doing here?” snarled the Ellico portion of the Trader(s). He did most of the talking, though he always claimed that when he did, he was speaking both their thoughts. The blue tentacles on his chin twitched with anger.

  I was startled by his words. Why would the Trader(s) be surprised to find us
here if they had abducted us?

  “We… we… we…,” said Pleskit, rather uselessly.

  “We were looking for the Veeblax,” said Linnsy. “Poor little guy got lost, and we had to hunt all over the embassy for it. I think the noise from the party scared it. I know we shouldn’t have come onto your ship. But we had no idea you were going to be taking off so soon, and we were really worried about the little critter. And see,” she said, gesturing toward the Veeblax, “we found it!”

  “That story would make more sense if you had let us know you were here when you heard us come aboard, rather than hiding as if you were guilty of something,” sneered Bur in its squeaky, scratchy voice.

  “We were frightened,” said Tim quickly, hauling the story back somewhat closer to the truth. “We knew we didn’t belong here, even though we weren’t really doing anything wrong.” (Well, so much for truth. I was glad Tim wasn’t connected to a fib-finder when he let loose with that phwooper about not doing anything wrong!) “We figured you were just coming in to pick something up and would be leaving soon—uh, leaving the ship, not the planet. Can we turn back now?”

  Ellico vec Bur looked at him in astonishment, as if the idea that we might want to go home had not occurred to them until this moment. Bur closed its eyes, and I knew it was communicating with Ellico.

  “We are not turning back,” they said coldly, “so there is no point in even thinking about it. Setting aside the fact that the cost in energy would be worth more than all your lives combined, things are too… delicate right now for us to even consider it.”

  “Can you at least contact the embassy to let my Fatherly One know where we are?” asked Pleskit desperately.

  “We will consider it. Doing so may be dangerous.”

  “How could that be?” I asked. “Won’t you need to contact them to set our ransom?”

  “Ransom?” squawked the Bur part of the Trader(s), sounding astonished.