The Eye of Zoltar

He smiled again, convinced that he had somehow managed to secure a valuable commodity with minimum effort when in fact he’d negotiated away his own strong position for something of zero value.

After he had gone, I closed the door and bolted it, then took a deep breath. Curtis was out of my hair for a while, but now I knew he would use violence to get what he wanted, I’d have to keep a careful eye on him. But if Addie was right and he was along for the trip only to make up the fifty per cent casualty rate, I half hoped he would hurry up and become a statistic. I then felt guilty for half hoping he would die, then felt stupid for feeling guilty about half hoping he would die. This might have gone on for a while, so I pinched myself out of the emotional-guilt feedback loop and set out my bedroll on the bed.

I lay on my back and stared out at the night sky through the skylight, and listened to the jangling of the perimeter fence as the night creatures stalked over our camp. Something bad was going on back at home. Moobin was suggesting I use ‘Every Effort’ to regain Perkins and despite the fact that Moobin had been against looking for the Eye of Zoltar, he was now asking me to carry on with all due determination. Something wasn’t right. I was still trying to figure it out when I fell fast asleep.

Slow boat to the Land of Snodd

When I awoke the sun was up, but not by much. I had been disturbed twice in the night. Once as a Tralfamosaur herd moved through in a noisy manner, and then again when Ignatius found a gherkin-sized flesh-eating slug sucking on his toe as he lay asleep in bed. He screamed and dislodged it, which was a relief as we then didn’t have to help him.

I unbolted the door of my pod and cautiously looked out. A ground fog had crept in, which offered good cover for a Hotax attack, so it would be wise to remain vigilant until the fog cleared. I folded up my bedroll, tidied the pod, collected my belongings and then signed my name in the visitors’ book before descending the pole to get the breakfast going, all the while keeping a wary eye out.

The half-track had been shoved a few feet sideways by a clumsy Tralfamosaur, but aside from a small piece of bent armour plate, no damage had been done. There were Snork Badger footprints aplenty, and here and there were the shiny trails of flesh-eating slugs. If we wanted to earn a few moolah we could have scraped up the trails and sold them to any glue supplier, as slug slime is that gooey substance you find in glue-guns.

‘Ook?’ said Ralph, appearing from the brush, seemingly unharmed by his night out in the open. He would have been more used to sleeping with dangerous creatures all about him, even though most of the nasty creatures he might have known would have died out by the end of the Pleistocene.

‘Sleep well?’ I asked, and he stared at me in an uncomprehending sort of way.

‘G-ook,’ he said, making an effort to emphasise the ‘G’. I think he was learning to speak. Or relearning, at any rate.

‘L-ook,’ he said, and showed me the flint knife he had been making.

‘May I hold it?’ I asked, putting out a hand, and after looking at me suspiciously for a moment, he gave me the knife. It was well balanced, with a carved bone grip in the shape of the half-track. The blade was finely curved, dangerously serrated and was so thin as to be almost translucent. I smiled appreciatively, and handed it back. He gave an odd half-smile and placed it in a large ladies’ handbag he had found somewhere, then hung the bag over the crook of his arm.

‘Jennifer,’ I said, pointing at myself.

‘J-ookff,’ he said, then pointed at himself and said: ‘R-ooff.’

‘You’re getting it,’ I said with a smile, then nodded as he pointed at various things around the campsite, the small part of what was once Ralph’s brain attempting to speak through an Australopithecine voice box.

‘Hfff t-Ook,’ he said, pointing at the half-track. After a while he settled down by himself, practising pronunciations, and eating some beetles he’d collected.

I had noticed with dismay that Perkins’ and Addie’s ladders were still down, indicating that they’d not returned. I also noticed Ignatius’ ladder was down, so checked his pod – it was empty. I found a few slime trails and oddly shaped footprints at the base of his pod pole, but no evidence of Ignatius himself. It was only on a search for a fireberry with which to cook breakfast that I found Ignatius. He was huddled – wedged might be a better word – in one of the wooden rowing boats, which, as previously noted, were lighter than air because of the Thermowizidrical fallout, and were dangling straight up, tethered to earth only by a frayed rope tied to the jetty. Ignatius was alive, awake, and was staring at me with a shocked expression on his face.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘No, I am not okay,’ he said. ‘Several large creatures, two small ones and a slimy thing tried to eat me in the night.’