Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

I give my order to the computer: open doors.

It works. A cracking sound echoes throughout the bridge. I grab the control panel to steady myself—but my disorientation isn’t from the shuttle moving. It’s from the window breaking open. Just as I once saw the ceiling of the Keeper Level split in half, the honeycombed glass of the window lifts on one end, rising like a hinged lid.

The individual glass pieces were held together by metal solder, but now I realize that the metal is actually a part of an intricate mechanical feature. The hexagonal segments of glass move and shift, forming a ramp down the right side of the ship. The angle is steep, but the glass is long enough to stretch out past the burnt ground to the yellowish earth beyond.

I step past the control panel, brushing my hand along the exposed edge of the shuttle. The metal between the glass serves as a grip—I can easily walk down the sharp ramp formed by the window pieces and set foot on the new world.

A warm breeze blows past, filling my nose with the scent of ash and dirt, lifting the edge of my hair. The air is thick and humid, but the wind is as soft as Amy’s shy kisses; and although it barely touches my skin, it spurs me just as deeply. I race down the ramp, skidding to a halt only when my feet touch the ground of the new world. The sandy soil shifts underfoot, making me feel as if I could plant myself into the earth as surely as one of the twisty trees.

My vision drifts up. How could I have ever thought the blue-and-white painted steel plates of the roof of the Feeder Level emulated the sky? They don’t. They don’t look anything like the gradient blues and grays above me, the wispy strands of clouds that move before my eyes. I’d never understood how Amy could miss Sol-Earth so much, how Godspeed was never enough for her. What’s the difference between air from a spaceship and air from a planet?

Everything.

The two suns overhead beam down, so bright that staring at them makes me blink black dots. Two suns. Centauri-Earth is in a binary star system, unlike Sol-Earth, which had only one sun. The big sun is slightly higher in the sky than the littler one. The smaller sun has an orange-red color, a color that reminds me of Amy’s hair, actually, and the bigger one is bright white, reminding me of her skin.

A high-pitched ringing pierces my ears, and I whip my head around to the forest. Something dark moves in the shadows, but as I try to squint through the tree branches, I hear another sound.

A horrific, bestial cry ringing across the sky.

I spin around, looking up at the direction of the sound.

And I see the monster Orion warned us of.

The bird-thing lands only a few meters in front of me, but it’s so heavy that I can feel the thump of its body reverberating on the sandy ground. The creature towers over me, its long, pointed head tilted to the sky before peering down and opening its hard beak, exposing saw-like teeth. Green leathery skin that’s so dark it’s nearly black gives way to scaly claws and membrane-like wings. It’s a horrible monster that seems cobbled together from creatures on Sol-Earth—a dinosaur head atop a lizard’s body with raptor claws and bat-like wings.

My first instinct is to jab my finger into my wi-com and get help, but of course that doesn’t work.

The thing stretches out its wings—each twice as long as I am tall and adorned with two-fingered hooked claws on top of the sharply angled joints. The claws spread apart and grasp at the air in my direction. The beast’s feet grip the sandy soil as it leans forward, opens its mouth, and emits a piercing, ringing scream at me, a high-pitched shriek that feels as if it is vibrating my bones. Even though the creature is far enough away that I couldn’t reach it, I can feel its hot breath on my skin, see its sliver of a black tongue raised as it screeches at me.

I fumble for the gun, the grenades, anything.

The creature launches up, pushing off from the ground and slamming into me with its hard, boney head. I crash to the ground, the monster on top of me, its body so heavy that I can’t catch my breath.

It bends its long, snake-like neck toward me, its jaw opening, the black, saw-edged teeth foaming slightly as it nears my face.

A shot cracks out.

The beast whips up its head, startled. A bullet whizzes past, nicking it in the back. Its claws clench, and my skin rips along with the cloth of my shirt.

Another gunshot and the bird-like thing launches up, pushing against my rib cage as it leaps to the trees. I gasp for breath as it claws its way up one of the trees and takes off, flapping its voluminous wings as one final gunshot echoes after it.

“Get inside!” Amy shouts from the bridge of the shuttle. “Hurry!”

I scramble up. Blood drips from my chest, and my shirt is ruined, but the wounds are nothing compared to what could have happened. Amy grabs my arm as I reach the top of the ramp and jerks me into the shuttle.

7: AMY

As soon as the door slams shut, I spin Elder around, looking for wounds. All I can think is, I almost lost him. Every other thought—excitement about the planet, anticipation for my parents’ return, fear of the monsters outside—all of that is gone as my eyes and my heart focus on the blood leaking down Elder’s chest. He knocks my hands aside, taking off his shirt and using it to blot out the blood on the scrapes. They don’t look deep, just jagged and rough. I grab some of the disinfectant Kit had me using to help with the stitches and spray Elder down.

“How did you know to come outside and help me?” Elder asks, still breathless.

“I heard that pterodactyl-looking thing scream—it sounded so much closer than before. ” I pause. “What was that thing?”

Elder shakes his head, looking at his ruined shirt. “One of Orion’s frexing monsters, I guess. Did you see anything in the forest?”

I shake my head. “What was in the forest?”

“I . . . I don’t know. ” Elder finally meets my eyes. “Think one of those things knocked into the side of the ship when we were landing? It was big enough to throw us off course. ”