The Displacement - Ch. 6

6. Planet X

              The grass was pink.

              That was the first thing Nes noticed about his new environment. When the glass lid of his pod finally clicked open, he took in a second detail: the pod itself was completely destroyed. The long fall through the trees had scratched it like ten thousand unforgiving keys, and the final impact with the grassy ground had reduced it to a warped, sorry hunk of metal. He soon realized, however, that the branches of the colossal, towering trees had broken his downward plummet, and when he had hit the ground, the grass had made for a soft cushion to finally land upon. Mother Nature had saved him. He didn’t dwell on that thought for very long, though; as he continued to look around his impact site, he was growing strangely curious about his new surroundings, horrified as he was by them, for by then it was clear -- the world he was on was not his own.

              Still seated within his pod -- for he had not yet found the strength and courage to rise to his feet -- Nes reached gingerly out and ripped a clump of the pink grass out of the ground. The fragile roots of the plant gave way instantly. He settled back into the seat and held the grass up close to his face for a look. The blades were long and wispy, and a few of them had tiny pink tufts on the end. The odd plant smelled saccharine, like cotton candy. In fact, it even looked like cotton candy. He was slightly tempted to eat the handful of alien grass, but he resisted his urge -- he was on some alien planet, after all. Nothing good could come from just eating odd plants.

              A voice from the inside of the pod suddenly grabbed his attention. It was coming from the same internal speakers that Dr. Pillar had spoken through, but the voice was not Pillar's. It sounded robotic and synthesized.

              “Congratulations!” it said, speaking in an almost overly cheerful tone. “If you are hearing this message, it means you have been successfully transported through use of the Flumes. Please repor--”

              The voice was instantly cut off, replaced by an abrasive static that eventually faded into nothing as the pod's processing unit died down. The crash had not been as kind to the pod’s inner workings as it had to Nes. The mechanical voice wasn't going to be doing any more talking. And there would just as well be no more communication from Pillar.

              “Hello?” he asked, frantically tapping the pod. “Pillar? Coral? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?!” There was no reply. Fear grew inside him as he realized that the worst imaginable thing had happened -- he had lost all contact with Earth. He was stranded.

              He sat back in the pod, staring up into the canopy of trees and trying as hard as he could to focus on his breathing. A chilly breeze was blowing, and even with the planet’s peculiar bluish sun beating down at full blast from the top of its orbit, he found himself shivering. He was in no way dressed warmly, still wearing nothing but the trousers and shirt that Pillar had given him. He wondered if this planet was always this frigid. If it was, then however much time he was going to have to spend there -- which very well could have been the rest of his life, for all he knew then -- he was going to spend it shivering in the cold. But now was not the time, he knew, to gripe about the weather. He was lost in an alien wilderness, and no one was going to help him. If he didn’t want to die, then now was the time to take matters into his own hands. And, with God as his witness, he -- Nes Garrow -- did not want to die. He was a survivor, and he was going to get through this -- for his family, for Roseanne. He would see them again, he knew it!

              The first step, he knew, would be to get up to his feet. In his state of shaky unbalance, it took nearly all the strength he could muster to rise from his seat, but he managed it, and once he was standing up in his pod, he took a moment to stretch -- he had been in that cramped pod, after all, for quite a bit of time. As he raised his arms over his head, he noticed that he felt strangely light and airy, as if he would rise off the ground if he took a step forward. When he made an attempt to stand on the tips of his toes, he felt himself losing his balance, and immediately he returned his feet to the ground. He stumbled a bit as he steadied himself.

              “Whoa,” he said, allowing himself a slight chuckle. “Better not try that yet.”

              Instead of taking the risk of moving again, he decided to continue looking around at his environment, hoping it would help to relax him. He examined every detail that he could; every second brought another discovery. And, to his surprise, every bit of it seemed more normal than he had ever thought an alien environment should have been. The landscape was a far cry from the cartoonish depictions of purple, crater-ridden planets full of walking, talking squid-men. If anything, it looked no different than a typical coniferous forest from Earth. The sky above him was blue, the trees were not strange in any way, and the planet's atmosphere, much to his thanks, seemed to be completely breathable. He’d only noted a few truly different things about the new planet as of then: the pink grass, the blue sun, and that odd, airy feeling that he still couldn’t yet explain. If he was going to be stranded here for God only knew how long, he could live with a few things like that. In fact, he was beginning to think that even a little bit of cold wouldn’t be too terribly bad. It was better than little green men asking him to state his directive.

              “Guess I can get used to this,” he thought to himself. “It's better than what I thought Planet X would be like.” But it was on saying these words that the truth of his situation came rushing back to him, a truth that he had been blissfully ignoring. In that instant, his calmness flew out of him at full speed.

              “Dear Christ,” he said aloud, his whole body shaking. “I'm on another planet!”

              In his mind, he yelled at himself for giving in to panic. Panicking was not good; he had learned that lesson already. If he was going to survive, he knew he would have to keep his composure. Once again he managed to distract his brain, this time by making several attempts to take small baby steps. But this, due to both his pounding heart and that awful airy feeling, was a harder task than he had assumed it would be. He couldn't keep his balance, and after the fourth step, he tripped, fell, and landed on his stomach in the sweet-smelling pink grass. After he’d righted himself, he fell once again after his first step. Once he had risen to his feet for the third time, his mind had already changed. He was never going to get used to this place.

              He turned back toward his pod and stared loathsomely at the metal contraption that had brought him to this horrid planet. “Pillar Enterprises... DAMN YOU TO HELL!” he shouted, as if Pillar, Coral, or anyone else from that cursed, nutty organization were there to hear him. “This is why we do tests on RATS!”

              He raised his foot to kick the pod out of sheer anger, but as soon as his shoe collided with the hard metal, his whole body seemed to be pulled forward as he tumbled down. He flew almost five feet forward along with the launched pod before he landed on the ground. The pod wobbled and came to an abrupt stop as it fell back onto the forest floor. Nes, however, did not stop. He continued to roll forward as if being pulled by some invisible force, somersaulting ungracefully and bouncing like a rubber ball. He rolled like this for several seconds, crashing down a small hill on the way. And all the while, he cursed and cursed and cursed and cursed.

NOTE FOR RESEARCHERS:

The planet Skaylia is considerably smaller than Earth; not by a lot, but definitely so. The lessened gravitational pull is just enough to throw off the balance of someone who is used to a pull of greater magnitude. Changes in gravity often bring about very unsightly blunders in the movements of their unfortunate victims. In this situation, said victim was Nes Garrow.

              Nes finally came to a stop once he had collided with a red-leafed bush, which he was shoved painfully up and over by the momentum he had gained. This, however, eliminated the rest of the force that was pulling him forward, and once he had cleared the bush, he came to a stop. His world spun around him from the tossing and turning, and as he lay there, he felt as if he might retch. But then something else caught his eye; something that took his mind completely off all thoughts of his dizziness. On the right of the shrub, something had moved -- something alive. Something animal.

              Nes’s heart stopped. Perhaps there really were aliens on this planet! Praying with all his might that the thing, whatever it was, wouldn’t be hostile, he turned his head slowly around toward where he had seen the movement.

              But, to his surprise, what he saw was not an alien; or, at least, it didn’t look like one. Crouched behind the foliage was… a man.

              He had ruffled hair the color of raw sewage and wide eyes that gave away that he was just as surprised to see Nes as Nes was to see him. He had been facing backward before Nes had slammed into the bush he had been hiding behind. Nes saw that he had something in his hand, but he couldn’t make out what it was. The man hurried to his feet and shouted, panicked.

              “F-freeze!”

              It was then that things turned horribly sour.

              From all corners around Nes, men with large guns leapt into standing positions from behind thick clumps of brush and trained their odd-looking weapons directly on him. Reacting instantly, he scrambled to his feet and held his arms in the air. He certainly didn’t want to be shot. Frantically, he looked around, eyeing each one of the gunmen for a brief moment before moving on to the next. There were four men and four guns in total. He was surrounded, and he was defenseless. If any one of them shot, things would not end well for him.

              The man that Nes had first crashed into spoke again. “Hold it!”

              Nes held it, although he allowed himself to turn his head around to see the face of the man who had spoken. The man was lean and tall, with the tiniest bit of muscle to him. His greenish hair stuck straight up, as if he were holding his hand to a Van de Graaff generator. He was in no way an intimidating figure, but the gun he held made Nes think twice about what he was capable of doing to him. It was the size of a sub-machine gun, but it looked more like an oversized pistol than anything else. The main difference that Nes noticed was its barrel -- or lack thereof. Instead of the usual open end, from which a bullet would fly, the large gun had a semi-transparent nib at its end, which tapered out into a point. This was certainly not a weapon that used bullets of any kind, and that could only mean one thing.

              Nes's mind raced. These men had laser guns! As the true danger of his situation sunk in, he wished more than ever that Pillar Enterprises had done its testing on rodents. He turned himself around to face the green-haired man once again.

              “What do you...” he began to say, but the gunman cut him off mid-sentence.

              “Shut'cher trap, ya little alien kunkler!” shouted another one of the men, a slightly stockier, brown-haired fellow who stood adjacent to the green-haired one. At this, the third man, who stood next to him -- a younger-looking, shorter chap with bright yellowish hair and skin one tone lighter -- nudged the second man’s shoulder.

              “Pillar said to call them... humans,” he whispered.

              Nes froze. He had overheard the name that the man had spoken. Pillar. There was no way that it could have been a coincidence. They worked for Pillar Enterprises! Did that mean they could help him find a way off of this ghastly, freezing planet and get back home?

              “Well then, human,” said the brown-haired man. But when he prepared to go on, he was interrupted. The fourth and final man, a colossal hulk almost twice as big as any of the others and many levels more intimidating, began to speak.

              “You be quiet, Screed,” snapped Ground Commander Canterwelt. “Let me handle this.” He turned toward Nes and began to stare him down, gritting his teeth like a snarling tiger. “Our boss says there's something you need to tell us, and you'd better do it soon!”

              By then, all of Nes’s hopes had faded. These men could not possibly be friendly in any way, shape, or form. And this man, obviously the one in charge, was not joking around. Nes knew that if he didn’t say something, there was a good chance he could be fired at.

              “What... what sort of thing?” he asked, struggling to form his words.

              “Don’t play dumb!” snarled Canterwelt. “The Space-Benders! We know you know a thing or two, and if you don't spill out the sweet information that the boss tells us you've got, you're sure as crunk gonna be seeing some lasers. So open up your mouth and tell us where the Benders are! NOW! Or the guns go BANG!”

              Nes, meanwhile, was unsure of what to say. The only thing it seemed there was left to do was to start talking, but that in itself presented a problem -- he didn't know what he was going to talk about. He didn’t care what the men seemed to think, or what this boss of theirs had told them -- he didn't know what Space-Benders were, much less their whereabouts. If Pillar or the gunmen or whoever else had thought up this scheme that Nes had been thrown into had honestly thought he knew anything about them, that person was horribly mistaken!

              Canterwelt shook his gun again. “What are you waiting for?!” he shouted. “Come on! Spit it out! Where are they? We know you know! They are on Earth, aren’t they?”

              Nes had no clue what the big man was talking about, but as of then, his situation had only two ways out -- either he started talking as soon as he could or the men with the guns pulled their triggers. ‘I don't know’ would get him nowhere desirable. They wanted something real. Whatever repercussions it might have, he would have to make something up. These men didn't seem to know any more than he did about where these Benders were. There was a good enough chance that they wouldn’t be able to tell if he were lying, and that would save him from being vaporized by a white-hot laser beam -- for the moment, at least.

              He opened his mouth, slowly beginning to form his words. “Well... I think that they're...”

              “You think that they're where?” urged the ground commander, shaking his gun once again. “Just say it, slick!” But before Nes could respond, he noticed something that made him hold back his breath.

              In the woods before him, at the very edge of his vision, something was coming through the brush; sneaking up behind the men and making no sound as it moved forward. It was an animal -- a small, white one that resembled a rabbit. But this was no cuddly bunny. This thing was bigger, and it was nastier, too, with mottled, dingy fur and beady eyes, like a sewer rat. Nes couldn't take his eyes off of the thing as it approached, and he soon realized that it was coming straight for the brown-haired man.

              Without thinking, he began to mumble, still transfixed. “Mr... oh, whatever your name is, you with the gun…” He pointed to the man.

              “What?” barked Garvin Screed. “Finally ready t’ come clean, are ya?”

              “No,” said Nes. “I... I mean... there's something behind you.”

              “Ya think you're gonna fool us with that, do ya?” Screed sneered. “None of us’re gonna fall for yer little tricks! Now tell us ‘bout those Benders, fer Geoff’s sake!”

              As he spoke, the rabbit-like beast took a few steps forward, but still, no one but Nes took any notice of it. The small crunching noises of its footsteps on the pine needles were indistinguishable from the usual rustling of the forest in the wind.

              “Sir,” he said again. “I'm not kidding. You really should...”

              “Just shut yer trap!” yelled Screed, shaking his laser gun. “I told ya already that I'm not gonna fall for yer trickery!”

              “It's not a trick,” he confessed, a smile slowly coming onto his face. He knew what was going to happen. “There's something behind you!” He said it once more, knowing that the man would believe him no more than he had any time before. But now that was exactly what he wanted.

              “Garvin,” said Mip Marvey, pointing a shaking finger at the rabbit beast. He spoke in the drawn-out, wavering tone of last warning before impending disaster, and this was a good tone for him to use, for, in fact, a disaster of sorts was indeed impending.

              The man, of course, did not even bother to look. “For the love o’ God, Mip, WHAT IS IT?!”

              Before anyone had a chance to respond, the rabbit, in a sudden movement that startled even Nes, leapt out and sank its colossal buck teeth into Garvin Screed's calf.

              Screed leapt into the air, dancing like a jolly Irishman doing a jig, and screamed as though he'd seen a ghost. It was a loud, shrill scream that Nes would never have seen coming out of the man. As he tried for all he was worth to shake off the animal, it hung tenaciously onto his leg like a bulldog. In frantic desperation, he attempted to shoot at the beast with his gun, still screaming as he did so, but none of the lasers found any mark but the ground.

              “Mip! MIP!” he was finally able to get out. “Do somethin'! Get this bugger off me!” The green-haired man ran over to his comrade and began, in hopeless futility, to kick at the rabbit as it swung around on Screed’s leg. Marvey couldn’t manage, however, to hit the beast, and in fact, he kicked Screed's shin several times in the process, only adding to his world of pain. Soon enough, the others had rushed over; Canterwelt dropped to his knees and cursed as he tried to yank off the rabbit, while Slangan stood by and paced about frenziedly, too horrified to act.

              For the first few seconds of this perfect storm of utter chaos, Nes could do nothing but stare in awe. But soon he realized that his chance was there, as clear as day. Every one of the men was distracted. If he was going to escape, his time was now.

              Without a thought, he took off and dashed to the right, trying his best not to trip with the airy sensation still about him. He had to move in a sort of rapid stumbling to stay on his feet and make progress. He looked back only once, and when he did, he saw that only one man had noticed his escape -- the big one. He could hear him shouting, trying his best to rally his troops, but the men were hopelessly distracted. Finally, in a last resort, the ground commander raised his gun and attempted to shoot at Nes, but his target had run too far away for his aim to be any good amongst the closely-packed tree trunks. Nes turned his head back around, knowing he was safe for the moment, and continued to run as fast as he could manage.

              Nes must have run at least half a mile in the alien woods before he finally stopped. The noise of the scrambling gunmen had long since faded behind him; the men were certainly in no condition to give chase, and now that he had traveled so far away, he knew they had little hope of finding him, either. He panted in exhaustion as he stood in place. He had never run so far and so fast in his life, and that awful feeling of weightlessness had only made it worse for him. With his energy depleted, he fell to his knees, breathing heavily on the forest floor.

              “Damn this feeling!” he said to himself. “If only I knew-”

              A realization suddenly hit him like a club between the eyes. He knew exactly what that feeling of weightlessness was. It was just that -- weightlessness! By some means or another, he was lighter on this alien world, and he had a feeling that he knew why.

              “Low gravity,” he said. “This planet has low gravity.” Now he was curious. He rose to his feet with newfound energy, and then he made his first attempt yet on the planet to jump. To his amazement, he found himself flying almost five feet upward into the air. A feeling of lightness overcame him as he hung at the apex of his leap, and then, just as he was beginning to fear that he might never come back to the ground, he sank back down like a stone.

              When he hit the ground again, he was shocked for a short moment, in utter awe at what he had just done. But soon enough he was unable to resist taking off once again, beginning to move by making long, leaping strides through the air. This, he realized, could send him through the forest at a much faster pace, and with much less fatigue out of it. He was far from a master of his new mode of travel, though; in the first few minutes of his long lope, he found himself needing to grab onto tree trunks to keep from falling over forward. But as he kept up with it, he began to get the hang of the process, and soon he no longer needed to take this precaution. He was beginning to understand how this new environment worked. Just as he had promised himself, he would survive -- he knew he would!

              There was one question, however, that remained, and it truly troubled him -- was he really getting anywhere? All that he could do was hope that luck would smile upon him in some way or another, for if he ever wanted to get back home, a stroke of luck was all he had left to depend on.