The Shrieking Lands

The Gorilla With Twenty Four Heads chapter 7

At last it is dawn. The red light of Tizin blends with the blue-white glow of the crystals. Haticat, Fred, Nathaniel, and Doctor Bill carefully slide down the banks of the gulley and climb up the other side, struggling to carry all their curtain-blankets and spears. Keeping between the creek bed and the crystal forest, they run north.

Walking very close to the crystals at times, the boys now see a remarkable change. Where the crystals remain in shadow, they appear unchanged, but where touched by direct sunlight, they melt rapidly, dripping down back into the porous rock below. In places of especially rapid melting, the fluid collects faster than the rock can absorb, forming sparkling clear pools that reflect the sunlight up at the crystals above.

“This chemical is clear when a liquid, but becomes colored when crystallized – and it appears that the same liquid is capable of forming into all the different types of crystals we’ve seen. It must have to do with the mode of tessellation, the nucleogenic substrate initiating one of many patterns,” Doctor Bill comments.

“Hmm,” Haticat remarks.

Always curious, Nathaniel takes his crystal from his bag and holds it out in the sun. It immediately begins to drip. “The light makes it melt, but not the heat; it was hotter than this just in my hand or when my bag was near the fire,” Nathaniel observes.

“Yet its own light doesn’t melt it. It’s something in the light of Tizin,” Doctor Bill says.

“How does that happen?” Haticat asks.

“The bonds in the lattice must respond only to a very narrow range of wavelengths,” Doctor Bill says. Nathaniel quickly puts the crystal away again.

As the boys continue north, the last remnants of ice melt, the tiny creek flows with meltwater, the last tiny clouds disperse, and animals begin to crawl out from under rocks. They see numerous fern stars, grass urchins, and an ekiki. They see a red star with long, stilt-like tube-feet. They see a trio of small, yellow, urchin-like creatures with spines a meter long. They roll quickly across the sand by pivoting these spines in a coordinated way. Next, they see several iguana-like animals sunning on a rock. They have the same skull ring design as potamuxes. Unlike potamuxes, their backbone zigzags much more, holding a flap of skin attached to the back and running down the tail. The bumps of the individual vertebrae are clearly visible.

Closer to the creek, the explorers hear soft humming. This sound is traced to burrowing animals appearing to be halfway between urchins and stars. Their spines are short, thick, and blunt. They pop out of their burrows to vibrate and hum, but retreat in silence whenever one of the boys gets close to them. They prove impossible to catch.

There are strange plants along the banks of the creek as well. Most of them have thorns and zigzag stems, including some very tall stalks with red, wrinkled cones and zigzag leaves. Nathaniel picks up a fallen cone from the ground. It smells like nachos. Most of the plants here smell like either French fries, pizza, chili cheese fries, or various styles of nachos. Nathaniel stays a while, smelling all he can.

“We should go before it gets too hot,” Haticat says,

“Wait! I just need to decide which smell I like best,” Nathaniel says.

“Bring the plants with you,” Haticat suggests.

“I’m almost finished,” Nathaniel says. Nathaniel isn’t usually this indecisive, but these plants all smell so good it is very hard to choose – almost as if they are a trap designed specifically for him. “I can’t decide!” he moans.

Fred discovers some plants with leaves each with a long needle running down the middle. “These must be really dangerous to eat unless one is careful to only nibble from the sides,” he says.

Haticat finds leaves with no spines, but with thick, chewy rims running around the edges. “The only way to eat these leaves is by folding them to start in the middle; only smart animals can eat them,” he says. There are also several round-leaf bushes in the area.

Suddenly, there is a loud noise. “What’s that?” Nathaniel asks. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill look around in all directions. The noise stops. Three seconds later it starts again. It is a sort of hollow-sounding screech-moan beset by popping and crackling. The sound begins and ends abruptly, with no fade-in or fade-out. Haticat and Fred take out their guns and look around. There is nothing but flat land for almost a kilometer. After a few moments, Haticat tentatively turns over a nearby stone with his foot, looking underneath. Nothing is there.

“Where did that come from?” Nathaniel asks.

It sounded like it came from all around at once,” Doctor Bill says.

“Maybe they’re invisible,” Haticat says.

“Maybe they’re underground,” Fred says.

Haticat turns over another stone. There is nothing there either. Nathaniel looks up and searches the whole sky. It is completely clear. The last tiny cloud dispersed long ago. Doctor Bill pulls out his scanner, but finds nothing. The sounds have already stopped. “That’s very strange. They must be very tiny creatures we can’t see. Maybe they crawled inside our ears,” Nathaniel says.

“Maybe,” Haticat responds. He looks inside Nathaniel’s ears, but sees nothing. Doctor Bill looks in Fred’s ears. All the boys eventually relax and move along.

“I think I like the pencil-shaped cones the best. They smell like habanero bacon pizza,” Nathaniel declares.

The boys walk a long time without seeing anything but dirt and rocks. They continue walking until reaching a sharp bend in the creek. They follow it east for a ways, but stop when it gradually starts to turn south. “I think maybe this isn’t the same creek as before. Maybe this one flows east to west and the one we crossed to the north flows west to east parallel to it,” Nathaniel suggests. He looks up at the mountain immediately north of them.

“Or maybe the creek just goes around the mountain,” Haticat suggests.

“Either way, we should be able to find it again if we cross over this mountain and then head northeast. We’ll have the greatest chance of running into it,” Doctor Bill says.

“How do we get across the creek? I can’t jump that far,” Fred complains.

“Me neither,” Doctor Bill complains.

“I’ll throw you,” Nathaniel says.

“Yeah!” Fred cheers. The boys carefully climb down the bank of the creek. Haticat jumps across while Nathaniel throws Fred and then Doctor Bill. They giggle and holler. Nathaniel finishes throwing over the equipment and then jumps over himself. “Throw me again!” Fred says.

“Okay,” Nathaniel agrees. Nathaniel throws Fred, Doctor Bill, and Haticat back and forth across the creek several times. With gravity one-eighth of that on Earth, this is a relatively easy way to have fun. “This is fun, but we should try to find the other creek before it gets too hot,” Nathaniel says.

“Throw me more,” Fred says.

“Me too,” Haticat says.

“I’ll throw you up the mountain,” Nathaniel says.

“Yeah!” Doctor Bill, Fred, and Haticat cheer. Nathaniel runs up the mountain, tossing equipment and Gruezhlings ahead as he comes to each. Several minutes later, one of the backpacks rolls sideways down a slope into a shallow cavern. Nathaniel runs down to retrieve it. Haticat follows close behind. There are still crystals in here – and whipstars. Four whipstars sit in one corner of the cavern. Their whips twitch a bit, but otherwise do not move or seem to notice Nathaniel’s presence.

“These animals probably sleep during the day,” Haticat whispers from the mouth of the cavern. The whipstars all sleep with their mouths downward and their jutting bony protuberances sticking up out of their backs. Nathaniel inches closer to investigate and notes that no eyes are visible. All the creatures’ eyes seem to be on the underside now. Nathaniel and Haticat quietly retrieve the backpack and leave.

“There are thorny whipstars in there. They sleep upside-down,” Haticat announces, “or at least upside-down to the way they walk, but upside-up to other stars.”

“Huh?” Doctor Bill says.

“They sleep with their mouths down,” Haticat clarifies.

“Oh,” Doctor Bill says.

“I wonder if they drool like Mammals,” Fred says.

“I didn’t see any,” Haticat says.

The boys return to climbing up mountain. It quickly becomes too hard to continue throwing the equipment due to the layout of the land, however. Before getting very far, the loud, popping, screech-moan sounds again. Doctor Bill pulls out his scanner right away this time. It repeats several times at irregular intervals and for irregular durations. “There is a mix of radio wave frequencies being produced,” he reports.

“From where?” Nathaniel asks.

“Underground,” Doctor Bill answers after a pause.