Within the Water

Word Count = 1,985

Within the Water

     A white, with shimmering red and blue small streaks streaking around it, wall about three inches thick suddenly appears between the two rock poles. Walking out of that whiteness were four individuals who appeared to be about ten to thirteen years old. Three of the four were Aliens. A minute later that wall disappeared.

     Once out they split up. Chaud, a Vorian, stayed near the rock poles. Stanna, the human, headed for the water. She looked like she was naked. No seams appeared on her Skin Suit. Quinim, a Klain, floated past Stanna on his way over to the rocks on the other side of the water there. Pavi, an Ulon, walked toward the large hill in front of the rock poles. Her suction cupped feet squeaked with each step she took.

     Chaud, twelve, touched an image of a small empty box on his shirt. That palm sized box disappeared from it – and appeared in his other hand. He started scanning the area in front of him. It beeped every few seconds. When it did he glanced down into it. Chaud looked up at a spaceship hovering about two miles above them. “We don’t need a force field around this moon. It’s not the best air for all of us. But we can all breath it.”

     “How can there be air?” Chaud could barely hear the young female sounding voice that sounded like it was right in front of his face. “There shouldn’t be any there. Why didn’t we detect it when we scanned the surface?”

     “I don’t know why – yet. It is here though.”

     “It could explain why there is water here.” Pavi, ten, glanced back at Chaud but kept walking.

     “Actually, I’m not surprised there is water there. A lot of moons have it on them.” A male sounding voice could be heard that time. “The same is true about the air. All planets, moons, comets, meteors etc. has air. It depends on who you are as to whether you can breathe it or not.”

     “How long can you breathe the air there?” The female voice spoke again.

     “We should be able to last at least one day here. Two days at the most. That should be more than enough time for us to find it.”

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     Nacce, a Jackim, sat in a large high-back chair in the center of Control Central. She could see the four off-ship individuals on the main monitor in front of her. “Any idea how long it will take to recover it?” That voice belonged to the young female Claud and Pavi were talking to.

     “It’s not going to be easy to find as we thought. According to the Scanner it is here. The only problem is it keeps moving. I don’t understand how it’s doing that. There’s nothing here but this water hole. But it is.”

     “The same thing happened when we scanned for it from here. That’s why we had no choice but to send you down there.” Volvin, a Zorran, sat behind a small monitor several rows of colored buttons underneath it. But at the moment he faced Nacce. His male voice spoke to Chaud and Pavi. Volvin, twelve, looked human – except he had blue skin that changed shades whenever he spoke. “I thought there was something wrong with the computers onboard the Victory. Only I was wrong.”

     Nacce, thirteen, stopped looking at Volvin and swiveled back toward the main monitor. Her see-through skin could be seen where she had no clothing. “Any ideas on how it could be moving without you being able to see it.”

     “Stanna thinks it landed in the water somewhere. The water waves are causing it to move around. I don’t think that’s the reason. According to the scanners it’s moving around the rocks.”

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     Scooping on the edge of that water hole Stanna held a scanner similar to the one Chaud had. Only hers had a small tube sticking out one end of it. Stanna dug her fingers of one hand into a tiny opening in the rocks. Then leaned over the edge of the water hole. With her other hand she tipped the small tube into the water.

     The clear tube quickly filled with the dark gray water. After a few seconds Stanna pulled the scanner out. She tipped in up so the water could drain into the scanner. Stanna looked at the empty box. “The water is safe. There’s nothing in there that can harm us. I’m going in.”

     Stanna, eleven, stood up. She placed the scanner on her hip. It disappeared. Stanna stepped onto the water. For a few seconds she just stood there. Then slowly she sank into that water. Chaud walked over to the water hole. His beeping scanner still being swung around him. Quinim, thirteen, was turned toward stanna when she went into the water. Pavi continued walking up the side of the hill backwards so she couldn’t see what was going on with Stanna.

     Within that water Stanna blinked her eyes rapidly to adjust to the almost complete darkness she floated in. Stanna couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her. She put up her hands in front of her. Twisting them all around she tried to see them – but couldn’t. Stanna slapped the other hip. A scanner exactly like Chaud’s appeared beside her. She had to search around her until she found it.

     Pushing a small button on the side of that scanner a light laminated the water in front of her. Stanna flashed that light all around her. She still couldn’t see too far. As she started to float down Stanna shined her light below her. Stanna only got a few hundred feet when she suddenly stopped. She started shaking one of her legs. Her other leg she started jabbing in the water below her.

     Suddenly Stanna shot out of the water. Stanna floated a few feet above the water for a few seconds before she settled down on its surface. She walked to the edge with a petrified look on her face. “There’s something alive down there. Something just grabbed my leg. Tried to pull me down.”

     “What? It was probably just water weeds you got tangled in.” Quinim floated over to where Stanna and Chaud were. Even Pavi started walking toward them.

     “It wasn’t weeds. Weeds don’t have fingers or heads.”

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     Standing between the two chairs behind the main monitor Nacce put her hands on the shoulders of the male and female Aliens, both ten, seated in those chairs. Nacce quickly withdrew her reddish slightly smoking hand for the male. She shook it to get rid of the smoke. “I keep on forgetting you don’t have normal flesh skin but acid skin.” The female alien had a human face, but her head and hands had feathers instead of hair or skin.

     Nacce didn’t take her eyes off the main monitor. “What’s going on?” She looked over at Communications. “Why did we lose contact with them?”

     Avvid, another human, swiveled around in his chair. “I don’t know. It all stopped right after Chaud shouted ‘You look like you’ve seen your father.’ while Stanna was walking toward him. Maybe it went out because he shouted. He’s does that a lot. I keep telling him to stop doing that. It keeps interfering with communications.”

     “I don’t care why it happened. How soon before we get it back? It looks like something is going on down there we should know about.”

     “If shouting is the reason why it should be back any time now.” A beeping sound began behind Avvid. Avvid, eleven, swung around and pushed a blinking blue button to turn it off – and stop the beeping. We are back in contact with them.”

     “Good. Nacce to Chaud. Can you hear me now? We had some communications problems. Give me an update on what’s happening there. Is something wrong?”

     Nacce could see chaud look up at them as he spoke. “We might have a big problem. It appears it did go into the water. That’s not the problem though. What might be is that according to Stanna there’s something alive in that water.”

     “I don’t think a fish person is living in there. There is one. It tried to grab me.”

     “What does this creature look like?” Nacce asked with a shocked look on her face.

     Now Stanna was looking up. “I don’t know that. My Scanner fell out of my hand when it grabbed me. That might be another problem we may have. I didn’t hear that Scanner hit bottom. There might not be one.”

     Nacce looked at everyone in Control Central one at a time. All of them were now staring at her with shocked look on their faces. “I think we need to scan the rest of this moon.” Nacce looks back up at the main monitor. “Chaud, what are you going to do down there?”

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     “We are going in there and find this fish person. That creature is probably the reason I was getting all that beeping on the rocks. The water here must fill the core of this moon. And the core is very close to the surface. That fish person has it. It might not know that. But that creature has the SpaceGem.”

     Chaud stepped off the edge of that water hole and joined Stanna who had already started walking onto the water again. Quinam joined them a few seconds later. It took Pavi a few minutes longer to get them because of her feet – and her distance from them. She started walking toward the water hole as soon as Stanna returned suddenly.

     Once all there they floated into the water. Just before they did they activated their scanner lights – including one for Stanna. As soon as they entered the water the scales covering the arms, ears and nose on Chaud puffed out. His scaled mouth remained closed. Chaud’s scale eyes stayed open.

     Both Quinim and Pavi had difficulty in that water too. Quinim because he had no legs or arms. His head didn’t have any of the normal features. Just light green skin like his body. Other than that he looked human. He floated down the fastest. Pavi floated the slowest. Her cupped feet and hands pulsated every second. The smaller cups where her ears, nose, mouth and eyes were didn’t. She also looked human otherwise.

     Within that water it didn’t take them long to find their SpaceGem. It was on the ankle of the fish creature. The creature had the head of a fish. Its mouth facing upward. Other than that it looked human too – except or its slimy blackness dripping off its pale brown skin.

     Pavi was the first one who saw the creature hiding among the rocks above it a few hundred feet below the surface. “There it is.” She pointed her hand toward it.

     The creature faced them. Only it’s flapping foot reveal the SpaceGem a few seconds later. “We have found what we stole from Ganghadan.”

     “Good. I thought we lost it when the SpacePatrol showed up.” Nacce’s voice could be heard clearly under the water.

     “Luckily, I shot it onto that moon when they weren’t looking. If I hadn’t we could have gotten caught for sure this time.” Volvin couldn’t be heard as clearly.

     “That’s one problem solved. Now all we need to do is solve a few more – like how the adult on Victory all died and why we haven’t aged in almost thirty years.”

     “I thought we were going to postpone finding the solution to those problems for another thirty to forty years.” Avvid could barely be heard.

     “We did. They are still problems that need to be solved though.”

     Using his head to point below him Quinim spoke. “I don’t think this problem is over just yet.” His head was pointed at a very large city several thousand feet below him.