Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,48

leave in peace… take what is needed… all must support Averie… Earth of the most vital importance...”

“Will the portal be open? Can we come back?”

The orb goes dull and blank. Then the ordinary lights come on all around the immense hall.

I lower the phone. “I think that was it. Zaroc, was that an Elder?”

He shakes his head, thick, black locks waving in the air. “I doubt we will ever know.”

“‘Take what is needed,’ he said. Did he mean, take what we need of the stuff in here?”

Zaroc leans the Elder gun onto his shoulder. “If not, the statement was meaningless.”

“Yeah. I guess we shouldn’t go crazy, just take the things we really need. Anything else would feel like robbing a grave.”

“We will only take what we need,” Zaroc confirms. “And I know exactly what that is.”

- - -

In the end, we leave the center of the moon Verv with Zaroc’s gun, a handful of objects that he claims are extremely valuable, and the bracelet that I spotted when we first came inside.

“Are you sure this is a weapon?” I ask, turning the bracelet around my wrist as we walk to the portal.

“Almost completely,” Zaroc says. “When I looked around, that room was clearly divided into sections. In the weapons section, there were only weapons. And that bracelet was in the middle of it. It could be extremely powerful.”

“But I have no idea how it works,” I protest. “I wouldn’t want it to be a bomb, and then it goes off if I move my hand the wrong way.”

He gives a very male sigh. “Then either put it in one of your many pockets, or don’t move your hand until we find an expert who can tell us more.”

We reach the portal. The steel door is still open.

“I’m not even sure why I’d need a weapon that only looks like jewelry. I have the ray gun already.”

“A discreet weapon can be the most valuable thing you own. I want you to be well-armed. Are we ready to leave, probably for good?” Zaroc stops right inside the door.

I turn and look at the immense center of the moon, filled with alien artifacts of all kinds. In the far distance I can make out the sphere, now the same white color as when we arrived. This whole place looks most of all like a mausoleum, serene and beautiful and dignified. But I don’t think the entity we talked to was dead.

“Goodbye,” I call, waving. “And thanks!”

Zaroc steps outside the door. I follow, and when I’m safely through it slides shut.

“Oh,” I immediately exclaim and turn around on my heel, walking a step back. But this time, the door stays closed.

“What?” Zaroc inquires, worry on his face as he grabs my hand and examines the nails.

“It’s just… I left my bra in there.”

19

- Averie -

“What are you two so happy about?” the artificial Koyanara creaks when we’re back in the ship. “Don’t tell me you actually found a doctor down there?”

“Not as such,” Zaroc says and sits down, starting up the ship. “But close enough.”

“And those coy looks you’re exchanging – something else happened, didn’t it? No, no, there’s no need to tell me. I don’t even want to know. Not the details, anyway. Are you healed, Averie?”

I hold all my fingers up to her camera and flex them like I’m playing an invisible piano. “Good as new. Thanks to you and Zaroc.”

“Remarkable,” Koyanara marvels. “The Elder moons are quite surprising. I never actually expected anything could heal you.”

The ship takes off and shoots out of the moon, into the stars.

“Koyanara,” I ask, “do you know anything about Earth’s Moon? Is it an Elder moon?”

“Let me check. Hmm. Earth is in my databanks, but it’s a recent entry. It is registered as having an unusually big moon, though. But that’s all I can find. If it is an Elder moon, that might not be discovered for a good while yet. If there’s no obvious entryway, it could take centuries to find. And mostly the mechanism to open a moon like that is discovered by accident when someone starts to develop the moon to live on or to mine or whatever. Always with great loss of life. Why, do you think it is?”

“We have reason to think it might be,” Zaroc says, flying us away from the moon Verv. “But right now we have other concerns. Grandmother, did you keep an eye on the sensors while we were gone?”

“I was sleeping, to tell you the