Return To Lan Darr (9 page)

Chapter
10

The Really Creepy Tunnel

Allan turns his torso around and looks at the unfamiliar world. Lan Darr had been full of life and color. Okay, it was also full of danger and mystery, too. This place is entirely different: darker, grayer and harsh. Allan turns a complete circle. He’s on top of a large round hill. It’s one of many hills that surround the tall pointy volcano. The lava slowly leaks from the peak, drawing red veins down the steep slope of the mountain, and eventually finds the sea where it bursts into a constant cloud of steam. It’s a ways off so it doesn’t worry Allan. What worries him is that he feels utterly alone and he’s on the wrong world entirely. This world has a different color sky and a visible sun. That was the proof Allan hadn’t arrived on Lan Darr. Lan Darr’s sun could not be seen with the naked eye.

Allan covers his eyes as he shakes like a frightened Chihuahua.
Stop being a chickenshit!
he roars in his head. He’s got two flowers and food and water for a few days. He can explore this place. It might be fantastic.

After a few deep breaths, Allan looks up. There is a smokiness in the air, like the smell of a campfire. Can someone be camping nearby? Or is this how the whole world smells? He’s not on Earth anymore so even his best guess is probably far off the mark. He might not even be in the same solar system.

“
I’ve made it! I’m somewhere else! This is all real. That means that what happened to me last year is real too!” His arms reach toward the sky, his fingers outstretched.

Dr. Brooks would say this is a delusion. She’d want Allan to try and debunk his senses, prove the hallucination so he would wake up. He looks around.
This is no dream.
But just in case, he’ll test his senses. Allan removes his trigger claw and scoops up some gray sand and pours it into his lap. His fingers touch the gritty substance and it twinkles. Upon further inspection he sees the sand is as clear as glass.

He picks out the largest of the clear grains of sand. It reflects the light when he turns it. The reflection is a prism.
What if the sand specks are diamonds?
Allan’s veins fill up with an electric energy. A handful of diamonds could make him rich, and a large one could make him famous. He laughs out loud and starts searching for another, larger clear rock.

Allan is excited, worried, amazed, and confused all at once. It’s a dizzy feeling, but welcome. He reaches with the claw and picks up a large stone as big as one of those jumbo bubblegum balls. It’s heavy and cold and covered in gray dust. Allan wipes it with his shirt, revealing a clear stone, as clear as glass and just as reflective. Allan hugs the stone like a pirate holding pearls.
Oh, the place I’ve found!

This planet is real, and the Hubbu pollen is his ride through the cosmos. That means Lan Darr is just as real. It proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that Allan isn’t crazy.

Allan remembers the cruel note tapped to the van. If only his classmates could see him now. But wait! The pages of the kids’ book were also taped to the van. It illustrated so many of the creatures that lived on Lan Darr. Does it mean that the author, Adam Boldary, had gone to Lan Darr? Yes. Adam must have traveled by Hubbu, met the same strange aliens and creatures, and returned home to write about his experiences and draw the creatures into kids’ books. All the creatures in the
Morty’s Travels
books were real! It was Adam Boldary’s way of sharing the experiences and memories he made on other planets.

Allan couldn’t believe it; it seems too fantastical, too surreal. He shakes his head. But Adam Boldary wrote his books over fifty years ago. Could traveling by Hubbu pollen affect time? Einstein’s Theory of Relativity says that planets with different gravity, or near gravity wells, experience the passage of time differently. Are the creatures on Lan Darr the same now as they were fifty years ago?

But where is Allan now? This planet has a similar atmosphere to Earth and there's liquid water. Whether it has intelligent beings is yet to be seen. Asantia said that different color Hubbu flowers are connected to different planets, so Allan must have gone to a new planet altogether.

He needs to gather evidence of this world and go back to show Laura. Maybe she’ll come with him next trip. He smiles.
Mac might want to come also.

Allan tucks the large clear stone in his pocket and finds another clear stone and pockets it as well. They will be the first two souvenirs from another planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. He’ll clear his name at school and with Laura. Allan looks up to the gray-blue sky. Laura won’t think he’s an idiot anymore.

Allan tries to roll down the hill, but his wheelchair tires sink and stiffen. Allan yanks on his wheels as hard as he can, forcing them through the loose sand. It isn’t a problem, he has rolled through dirt and mud during hikes. The wide, all-terrain, Kevlar re-enforced tough-wheels and the electric motor will get him through anything. Other than water, of course. “Thank you, Rubic!” Allan blurts out. Rubic had spent a lot of money on this chair, and Allan spent a lot of time practicing and never feared going anywhere by himself. It helped him forget, sometimes, that he was handicapped at all.

Allan pushes a button on the side of the right armrest. The electric motor turns on, forcing the large wheels to turn. Allan builds up speed then turns the motor off. He continues downhill, passing larger and larger stones, some of which are quite clear and beautiful. He sees a reflected image of himself in some of the stones. He’s smiling ear to ear. Like Lewis and Clark, Columbus, Polynesians in canoes, Asians crossing the Bering Strait, he’s an explorer now. Exploring for all the humans on Earth, and it will change the course of history.

The farther down the hill he goes the larger the stones get. Some tower over his head. More and more of the stones are shiny black, like basalt. They have round edges from erosion and imbedded crystals freckling their smooth surface. They’re cool to the touch and more reflective than the clear stones.

Allan rolls himself around a stone as thick as a redwood tree trunk, only to be blocked in by other stones. The shadows down here are darker and colder, and Allan turns to backtrack.

The wind picks up, forcing Allan to dig his sweater out of his backpack. He is glad he thought ahead. His mother would be proud, if she were alive. Allan searches and finds a stone the size of a large egg and picks it up with his trigger claw. He dusts off the surface, revealing its clarity. He’ll give this one to Laura.

Allan goes back a ways then turns around another stone. It, too, is a dead end. As he turns, his eyes catch a glimpse of something flickering behind a smoky crystal that towers high into the sky. Allan rolls closer, realizing the dead end isn’t a dead end but an illusion. The reflective stones mask a large, dark tunnel. He sees the flicker in the dark again and nudges his chair closer. The flicker might be a light, possibly from a torch.

Allan pulls out his headlamp and straps it on his forehead. The light illuminates a rough-cut stairway that leads down.

Allan can’t turn back. Where there is light, there is hope. Where there are stairs and tunnels, there are intelligent beings. If he gets stuck or lost? He’s got the remaining Hubbu flowers in his pack. They should take him back home.

Allan pulls a lever on the side of his chair, extending the small back tracks to the ground.

Allan puts on his fingerless gloves, cracks his knuckles, and grips his wheels. He leans back in the chair. “Now or never,” he mumbles and rolls down the first step. Thankfully, the step is wide and the stairway not terribly steep. Dark stones line the stairwell and reflect his headlight beam like a hall of mirrors.

Allan bumps down the next step, and the next one. He descends into the tunnel and stops at what created the light. It’s a glowing stone. When Mizzi had built Allan’s mechanical legs back on Lan Darr, he’d used a stone that had some kind of power in it. It looked like the same strange stone. Same color, same energetic interior surrounded by foggy crystal. Allan thinks about pocketing the light so Mizzi can make him another pair of mechanical legs, but doesn’t. That would be stealing from whoever built these stairs and would not be a good first impression to make. “I come in peace, just ignore how I just stole your energy crystals,” Allan mutters with a smile. Maybe they’ll give him one as a gift. It could be a third souvenir and more of a convincing one.

Allan continues down the stairway as it descends deeper and deeper. He passes more glowing stones. The tunnel around him opens up to a cavern so huge the light doesn’t reach the other side.

The stairway continues from the cave wall and over brick archways that disappear into the darkness. Allan rolls to the edge of a platform and peers into the void. He hears noise. A ticking and a bang echo around like hypersonic ping-pong balls. Something breathes heavily near him; oh, it’s his own breath. His eyes water, forcing him to furiously blink.
Be brave.

Allan looks back the way he came. Now is the time to turn back, if there ever is a time. He wants to go back, and the thought sits on his frontal cortex like a bully. The gloominess of the space is so threatening it could be his hollowed grave. A shadow moves, or he thinks it moves. Another sound disturbs the darkness. Is it cackling? Like a witch’s laugh? Or is it some kind of clapping? Maybe it’s the snapping of bones as some gargantuan creature devours its victim. The stale air tightens Allan’s lung passageways, and a full-fledged panic attack is about to envelop him. He wishes he’d brought a broadsword or a Taser or his pellet gun. 

“Hello?” Allan calls out. The sound and echo of his own voice releases the tension building in his brain. “I come in peace.”

The answer to his statement is only a much softer echo of his voice, “I come in peace… come in peace… in peace.”

Allan listens. There is no further sound. If Lan Darr taught him anything, it was that he can handle a lot of pressure and push through the fear. He can choose to think how dangerous this place must be, because it is dark and shadowy, or he can think it is mysterious and worthy of discovery. He can sit here and panic, or man up. He can live an adventure or die trying.

Allan rolls to the stairs that continue over the deep and dark cavern. He shines his headlight on the stairs. It’s not as bright as he’d like, and he doesn’t have replacement batteries. Reluctantly, he turns and rolls back to the stairs leading up and uses his trigger claw to grab the lightstone sitting on a sconce on the wall. “I’m not stealing your light thingy, I’m borrowing it!”

“I’m borrowing it… borrowing it… borrowing it,” replies the cave.

Allan clicks off his headlamp to save battery power and tucks it in his pack. He moves forward, carefully, methodically. His fingers grip the push-ring on his chair so tightly he should be bending it out of shape. The crunching of sand under his wheels is loud and makes Allan feel insecure about his traction. Every time the track motor kicks on, he jumps. Sweat soaks his hair and his shirt.

It occurs to Allan that the manufacturers of his All-Terrain chair hadn’t tested it on other planets. The thought makes him smile, and he continues down the steps with care. The movement has a powerful effect on his brain. The momentum silences his chirping anxiety, giving his brain important balancing orders. Allan continues down the stairway that crosses the cavern.

The muscles in his arms tire, but that is the least of his worries. There are no walls on either side anymore, just an abyss. However, the stone’s light shines in all directions and is much brighter and more comforting. “I’m keeping this stone, finders keepers!”

“Finders keepers… finders keepers… keepers.”

“Your echo is annoying!” Allan yelps, feeling teased.

“Is annoying… annoying… annoying.”

“Stop it!” Allan gets agitated though he knows it’s ridiculous.

A moment after the last echo comes another sound, like the sound of flags snapping in the wind. A breeze brushes his cheek. Feeling exposed, he hurries down, clumping, clumping, clumping.

A dark, flying thing swoops over Allan’s head, close enough he can almost see the shape. It’s hairy and charcoal black.

Allan holds up his hands. “Ahh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to steal your light crystal.”

“Your light crystal… light crystal… crystal.”

Another whoosh races over his head, closer this time.

A pebble pops out from under the small front wheel. The chair falls to the left, and Allan’s weight follows. He can’t stop his sidelong momentum. His chair tips.