It felt like falling. That’s that.
This wasn’t like bouncing around the inside of the pod. No, my brain felt like I was falling really slowly. It wanted to scream because I felt, somewhere deep inside the back of my head, that I was miles in the air over a small city that was the All Tree.
Then I gulped air and calmed down.
“You have to come with us,” Rada said. I looked back at the pod, wobbling and feeling slightly sick as I did so. Again, even though I knew I had been actually thrown away from it I still felt like I was falling. I couldn’t see Rada in the shadows of the door. “If Alan catches you, if he finds out what is going on, then what happens? So I’m sorry, you have to go with us. Come on Sita.”
I heard Rada grunt, and saw both her and Sita leap out from the doorway.
“Oh crap,” Sita said. “That just feels all wrong.”
“Don’t look down,” Rada said. “Just look straight across at the top of the other clade. It’s easier.” Her voice sounded strained. She wasn’t enjoying the sensation either.
I was angry with her. Every foot I fell further away from the pod was a foot further away from being able to help a friend.
I twisted and looked down at the All Tree, ever present below me as I hung in the open space between the two nearest clades. This is what a superhero flying between the buildings of a city would feel like, I thought.
The All Tree’s surface was covered in all sorts of stuff. Some things looked like pipes, but they were probably large enough to be subways or tunnels running around the ship. Maybe they moved atmosphere, or aliens, or supplies.
Boxes and cylinders and other protuberances dotted the miles of artificial landscape. Maybe they were other machines. Or maybe they were smaller buildings. Or maybe sensors for navigation.
I was pretty sure I saw what looked like antennas and satellite dishes randomly dotting the surfaces at the tips of the other clades, but I couldn’t be sure that was even what they really were.
Looking back at Rada and Sita, I saw something flare orange from down near the tip of Nisky Clade.
I squinted.
A small figure. Hard to see against the shapes.
There: it lit up again. It was someone with a tiny thruster of some sort, shooting toward us.
“You guys see that?” I asked.
“What?” Sita asked.
“Beneath you. Look underneath you, back toward the clade.”
I saw Rada’s helmet swing down. “I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Keep watching,” I said, looking on.
The flare reappeared. “There!” Sita yelled. “I see it.”
“Someone’s coming after us,” I said.
But there was nothing we could do but coast. In the vacuum, with no air, we couldn’t flap our hands to move faster. I could only keep going as fast as Rada had thrown me. She could only move as fast as she and Sita had jumped.
And whoever was coming after us with the thruster, could move much faster.
The seconds ticked away as we continued to fly, and I turned my attention back to the clade I was moving toward. Jessica had said there would be someone waiting for us.
Closer now, I could see only that the clade was covered in what looked like barnacles: small crusty cones in different colors and hues dotted the top third of the clade in patches.
I wondered if space crud grew on the outsides of the All Tree, just like crud grew on the bottom of boats left in the water too long.
Twisting back, I could see the figure with the thruster grow closer. He wore an old school spacesuit, I could see, and had his back to me. Looking back over my shoulder, I could estimate how fast he was closing versus how fast it was going to take me to get to the clade.
He was going to get to me before I got to the clade.
“If anyone’s out there, we could use some help now,” I said hopefully.
The sound of static and random beeps filled my ears, and then a split second later, a toneless voice came through. “Are you Kadie?” it asked.
“Yes! Yes, I’m Kadie. We need help.” I couldn’t see anything near the clade that looked like help, though.
“The two behind you chase you?” the voice asked.
“No, no, they’re with me. It’s the one in the white suit, with that thruster thingey.”
“Thruster thingey…” the voice mulled that over. “Thingey…”
The person in the white spacesuit approached quickly, and spun around. I couldn’t see the face, the mirrored gold fishbowl only reflected me in a black, body-hugging fabric with my insect-like helmet.
I was grabbed in a great big bear hug which I tried to fight off. But no amount of kicking and wriggling broke the grip. My arms were pinned to my side.
My captor then spun me around quickly, and pulled out a loop of rope from a pocket.
“Well,” said the flat sounding voice. “We do not know what thingeys are, but we’re coming out!”
And as I was spun around, I saw several barnacles detaching from the clade.
If they looked like barnacles from here, I realized they had to be as big as I was.
Maybe they weren’t just barnacles.
Five giant shells puffed what looked like smoke to propel themselves right at us. As they got closer I could see spirals and whorl shapes in the shells, as well as complex glittering patterns. They looked like the mollusk shells I found on the beach, but ten feet wide instead of hand-sized.
We were all going to collide. Hard.
“Hello!” the voice shouted happily, and I saw armor-plated, bony tentacles snap out from the opening of the shell. An explosion of mist hit us and the shells slowed down just before two of them struck us.
That smacked the breath right out of me, and as I gasped I heard “Well done!”
“Why thank you,” said another voice.
The impact set us spinning: all I could see was a blur of black space, then All Tree clades whipping past me, then space, then triangular clades.
A burst of mist came from the side of the giant spiraled shell, then another small burst. We stopped spinning.
Whoever was in the white suit struggled. Just as I had. But those massive, plated tentacles wrapped around him firmly, then flicked him off into space. We jerked and tumbled as a result of the throw.
“For every action, an opposite reaction,” the shell muttered, and I saw another burst of mist that stopped our slow spin.
Another shell jetted by and snagged the spacesuit out of the sky, then stuck it on the back of its shell. There was some sort of sticky surface there, because even though the person struggled and waved around, the suit remained stuck fast.
“I think this little creature looks wonderful as a shell ornament, don’t you?” the voice asked.
“I think it’s fetching,” said another voice. “I do like it very much. I think it might wiggle free though, it seems very active.”
I snorted despite myself. “It’s a human, like me, and you shouldn’t wear us.”
“Yes,” said the voice of the larger shell that held me. “We’ve heard all about you humans. Very dangerous, very fatal. Trying to destroy the All Tree. Trying to steal the food, the light, and all the good times. You’re not popular, you know that?”
I could well imagine. “Not all of us are bad,” I said. “The three of us are trying to help the All Tree.”
“We understand. Not all of you are the same as the rest. The avatar of the All Tree briefed us on this. Which is why we are helping you, little human. But as for the creature that tried to catch you, that one, we will play with it as we please.”
“Yes, we’ll play catch with it!” another voice added.
“We will toy with this little creature from clade to clade, throwing it about.”
“And if someone misses it, and it keeps going, then maybe that is just as well.”
I shuddered, imagining being trapped in a space suit, being thrown around from giant alien shell to giant alien shell, waiting for my air to run out.
The other two shells had caught Rada and Sita, I saw.
“Rada, Sita? Are you okay?” I asked, suddenly worried.
“Yes…” Rada said, sounding dazed. “Just… more aliens.”
As we approached the tip of the clade I could see that hundreds of shells had attached themselves to the surface of the clade. Occasionally one would jostle around, break loose, tentacles dangling from the front of its carapace, and find a new spot to reattach to.
“Oh, splendid, the avatar got food working!” an excited voice said.
The shells all clustered around a large funneled spout, and now I saw why: a cloud of green mist burst out from it, and the hundreds of shells kicked loose from the surface of the clade. Space was suddenly filled with bumping shells, waving plated tentacles, and net-like tongues deploying to scoop up the mist.
“A shame we have to take you to another clade right this moment,” the alien said. “Hopefully there will still be food for us when we return!”
We launched into the dark abyss between the great heights of the clades with puffs of mist and waving tentacles. Like insects flying among the metal trees of some giant forest, we picked up speed.
So many clades, I realized. And if each clade was like Nisky, it meant at least one or two species would be inside. As we drifted along, the vastness of the All Tree settled on me, making me feel so very insignificant.
I was just a human, of a handful of humans who’d been invited to live on the tip of one of these many spiky clades, on an entire alien zoo the size of Manhattan. And that structure flew from alien world to alien world, across distances that I almost literally couldn’t imagine.
The aliens eventually deposited all three of us inside an airlock on a clade a third of the way down the spine of the All Tree. They nudged us into the middle of it with those giant, plated tentacles, and then shut the airlock door behind us. “Warm travels!” they chorused.
Air rushed inside, but we kept our helmets on until the inside door opened and the familiar voice of Mimir filled our helmets. “It’s safe to breath. You can take off those smelly things off now please.”
I looked down and saw that the mist the aliens had expelled to move around was dripping off my black spacesuit.
I didn’t want to know what the mist was. I pulled everything off and tossed it aside as quickly as possible.