Page 63 of Caveman Alien's Bride

When all the Borok men are back inside, the gates slam shut.

Korr’ax jogs over to me. “There’s nothing you can do here, my wife. Get to the Mount, climb to our cave. You’ll be safe there.”

I grab his forearm. “What is going on, Korr’ax?”

“The Krast tribe has gone to war against us. They must have been waiting outside the village to catch us returning. But they were too late or too sleepy to catch you— to catchus.”

“This is all aboutme, isn’t it?” I can’t suppress the quiver in my voice.

“And Piper.” He grins, fangs glinting. “Don’t worry. We’ll fight them off. They’re far from their turf. Now go.” He kisses my hair and turns to organize the battle.

I do as he says and run up the stairs to the ‘penthouse’. Halfway up my legs are so tired I have to slow down, my breath raspy and wheezing.

Still I check on Piper’s cave, hoping against all reason that she’s there again. But the cave is more empty than ever. Someone has even cleaned out all the skins and furs. Maybe the tribe now considers that cave bad luck, and nobody will sleep there again.

When I finally get up to the chief’s cave, I have to rest again.

From here, the view is as beautiful as ever. In the far distance, the ocean glitters in the morning sun.

That must be where Piper is. My guess is that she returned to the beach, which is the only home she’s known.

And if our abductors ever return in their flying saucer to take us back to Earth, that’s the one place they’ll expect to find us. Piper always wanted to get home.

There’s angry yelling from below. It sounds like the Krast warriors.

I walk over to the edge and look down. The Borok men are lined up right inside the gates, and there’s easily hundreds of them.

Korr’ax is in front, saying something in a calm voice. The whole army suddenly laughs at something he said, which has to annoy the angry enemy outside. I can’t see the Krast men, but I can’timagine there’s as many of them outside the gates as there are Borok men inside.

“You guys need to invest in some bows and arrows or some catapults,” I mutter.

Or maybe the planet is better as it is, without an arms race.

I get my mirror out and try to focus the reflection of the sun in a spot on the wall. But I’m so far away, the tiny trembles of my hands translate to huge moves and I can’t keep the little bright spot within the same square yard, much less in a spot as small as a caveman’s eye. I’d need some kind of stand or tripod for that, and then it would be too difficult to adjust as the target moved.

But I think there is one thing I can do.

Searching the cave, I find a small ax that looks like some kind of toy. But it's sharp, and it's made of heavy metal. The back of the axehead is nicely rounded.

I arrange pieces of leather on the ground and place my big mirror on them. Then I start banging the back of the ax on the reflective side, trying to hammer it into a shape like a shallow bowl. The metal is thin enough that it lets me shape it, and it seems to keep the shape too.

“I don't want it too deep,” I mutter to myself as I concentrate. “Just deep enough to focus the light.”

I'm not sure if this will even work. It must be something I read a long time ago which is still lingering in the murky depths of my mind.

“Something about making a fire if you don't have matches?” I wonder out loud, hammering the shiny side of the mirror. “Could come in useful for that, if nothing else…”

It takes me a good while to make the mirror a symmetric bowl shape. When I'm satisfied, I get the finest-grain sharpening stone I can find from the shelf and start grinding the inside of the bowl to make it shiny again.

When I'm satisfied, I go out of the cave and experiment with the mirror, trying to catch the sun and focus it on a piece of wood. Not much happens until I stand about a hundred feet from it, getting dangerously close to the edge of the rock. When I focus it from there, a wisp of smoke immediately starts to rise from the wood.

Walking over to check on it, I find that I've burned a shaky black line into the wood.

“This is a freakingdeath ray,” I mutter, happy with my success. “But it needs the exact right distance.”

I try to focus the light on the distant wall again, but now I can't even see the spot of light. The focal point is somewhere between me and the wall.

No, I won’t be much help in this battle. And it crosses my mind that this exact thing is what Korr’ax should be able to protect me against without any help from me. After all, that was the deal.

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