Page 61 of Holiday with the Aliens

At first Stella thought it was a cave. She came to the opening at the foot of the hills and the cracked dark walls and animal droppings reminded her of the system she and her brother had explored on another world so many years ago. But this wasn’t Earth and she wasn’t a kid anymore.

Snow whirled outside, a storm brewing fast and strong. She was thankful for the shelter, but feared that she might be stuck here far longer than she intended. And that she might be too far away from the crash for help to find her.

It only took her a few hours to reach the hills, so she knew they couldn’t be that many kilometers away. She’d found a stream on her way and had drunk deep of the frigid water when the pocket chemical sensor she’d found clinging to one of her candy bars confirmed that the liquid was safe for human consumption. The water here tasted sweet. She’d wished that she had a canteen or something to take it with her.

As she walked into the cave, Stella immediately rethought her assessment. Yes, the entrance and outside wall were carved from the hills, but not so deep that she couldn’t see a completely flat floor and straight walls that seemed to lead along a definedpath somewhere further into the hill. This wasn’t a cave, it was a tunnel, and a man—well, alien—made one at that. It smelled a little musty, but she was still relatively close to the water and the walls of the cave provided some shelter from the cold.

Stella shivered. She needed to find an ignitor or something else that she could use to start a fire. She doubted her chances of finding a warming brick or even a blanket were very good, not if she didn’t go deeper into the tunnels. Stella wasn’t quite ready for that, not yet. Exhaustion beat down at her and she burrowed into a small indent near the floor, a good way in from the entrance to the cave. It didn’t look like anything had made a home in there, which was good for her. She didn’t want to fight this planet’s equivalent of bears or wolves for the right to sleep here.

Especially since she doubted she could win.

But once she stopped moving, the cold seeped into her bones and her teeth clattered as the rest of her shivered. Clenching her jaw did nothing but make her head hurt. Her stomach growled and she could feel those candy bars sitting heavily in her pocket. But she wouldn’t eat them yet. She’d had a meal on the ship not long before the crash, though she’d probably vomited most of that up. She didn’t know how long she’d be stuck here and she didn’t want to waste those calories on a night time meal when sleep would do away with most of the hunger pangs.

No, they had to keep until morning. Once it was daylight again she could climb further up the hill and see the extent of the damage to the ship and find out if there was civilization around here. She hoped these tunnels were a relatively recent addition and that she hadn’t stumbled onto ruins of a long dead civilization. Wherever she was didn’tseemlike a dead planet, but she hadn’t seen anything but wildlife and trees, so if there was intelligent life, it wasn’t coming out to play.

Then again, if some huge ship had crashed in the middle of Los Angeles, or even out in the hills, she probably would have run in the other direction until she knew it was safe to offer help.

The sun was starting to set outside and the dying light slowly filtered out until there was nothing but darkness and the sound of her breathing in her little hideaway. Stella wished she had a torch or something that would give her a bit of light. She’d started to worry about stray animals and the threat they might pose if they reached her. Her thoughts had already grown slow and her limbs heavy, and even if she had second thoughts about the tunnel, there was no way she was leaving it now.

Her eyes drooped closed and she drifted off on hard dirt, shivering from the cold and huddled in on herself to somehow sate her growling stomach. But the terror and horror of the day crushed down on her and dragged her into a dark and dreamless sleep.

Until she heard the clang.

Stella shot up, banging her head against a piece of stone overhang that she couldn’t see. She couldn’t seeanything.And the only thing she could hear was the echo of her breathing, the sound bouncing strangely off the walls all around her.

What was going on?

She looked towards the tunnel opening, but where she’d been able to glimpse the sky before she went to sleep, now all she saw was darkness. She could have poked her own eye out and still not seen her finger.

“Hello?” she called out, though she didn’t know whether she wanted anyone to respond. Her voice echoed away from her, spinning down the hallway she could recall seeing before she fell asleep. She couldn’t have been asleep for long. Her bones still ached with the weight of all she’d been through and her stomach was a knot of hunger. And worry.

Actually, mostly worry at this moment.

She trailed her fingers along the wall she’d just banged into and took cautious steps toward where she knew the opening to the woods must be. Perhaps the nights on this planet plunged into total darkness, the sun failing to illuminate any moon. But that didn’t seem right to Stella, not that she was any planetary expert.

Even though she couldn’t see, her other senses were in perfect working order, and she was almost certain that where there’d been an opening a few hours ago, now there was nothing but solid wall. Thus the clang. A door slamming shut.

Why?

Her fingers traced a curve in the wall and she turned, following down on careful feet. The ground had seemed mostly level earlier, but she couldn’t risk getting hurt when she had no supplies to fix herself back up and no light to see by. She walked for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, and at the pace she was moving, she doubted she’d covered more than twenty meters. But there should have been an opening, and all she felt was the wall.

Stella traced her steps back and sat down near where she’d slept, hands shaking.Okay, she thought to herself, scared to speak out loud again.This is not great. But maybe it’s on a timer. Maybe they close them at night and open them at sunrise.

If she’d been asleep for hours, that could be any time now. But it was the sound of the doors closing that woke her up, which meant she might have hours and hours of darkness until the doors opened again.

Ifthey opened again.

No, she couldn’t think like that. That way lay despair, and once she gave into despair, she might as well sit down and rot. And Stella was scared, but she wasn’t ready to die. She was going to make it out of this tunnel, off of this planet, and back to thecivilian fleet, and she was going to do it in time to watch the basketball final back home.

The decision to survive did little to stop her hands from shaking, but at least her teeth didn’t chatter any more. The closed door made the room a bit warmer—not quite pleasant, but she doubted she was at risk of freezing to death. At least she wouldn’t freeze quickly.

Shut up, she told her thoughts. If her brain wasn’t going to help, she needed to ignore it. Humans had survived through much worse conditions than a single cold, dark night. She could handle this.

Somewhere ahead of her, rocks tumbled to the ground and Stella froze.

She wasn’t alone.

Arest left the girl sleeping by the entrance to the cave alone. She was huddled in close to the wall, her skin glowing from the bright moonlight. Unlike the man back at the ship, he felt no threat from her, and when he paused to look at her, the swirling void in his head calmed into a fist of ordered chaos for a moment.

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