Alan Diver's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Alan Diver heard the rats before he saw them. Three days since the Valdris broke open on this planet, three days of taping cracked ribs and sketching trails in a notebook, and now a chittering wave was closing on the ridge behind him. He had been working east, toward where he thought the ship's medic might have crawled from the wreck. The plan was simple: find the medic first, then the others, then a place they could defend. The plan did not survive the sound of claws on stone. He ran. Every breath stabbed under the tape. The rats came over the ridge in a knot of brown fur and pale caps, mushrooms sprouting from their backs like crooked crowns. They tracked by scent. He knew that already from two nights of watching them work a deer carcass in a circle, noses down, eyes half-blind. He spotted the dead beast at the bottom of the slope. It was the size of a truck, ribs open to the sky, flesh gone soft and gray under a crust of fungus. Alan crawled inside the cage of bone and pulled rotted hide over his legs. The smell punched the air out of him. He pressed his hand over his mouth and counted the rats' feet drumming past above. Then something inside the carcass scratched back. A wet, deliberate scrape against the inside of a rib. Alan rolled out the far side and ran again, retching. He almost missed the obelisks. Two slabs of black stone stood split in a clearing, crawling with vines and heavy purple fruit. The smell hit him from ten paces out, sharp and foul, like onions left in standing water. The rats hated smells that weren't meat. He tore a handful of berries down and crushed them against his neck, his chest, the tape on his ribs. Juice ran into his collar and stained his hands black. He grabbed more and smeared them through his hair, then jammed a wad of pulp into the seam of his jacket where his sweat had soaked through. The pack came over the rise as he stumbled away from the gate. The lead rat skidded, snapped its head side to side, and turned toward the carcass instead. The others followed. Alan kept moving, lost his footing on loose scree, and went down the slope on his back. His ribs screamed. He slid maybe thirty feet and hit something that did not move. It was a wall, but it was not stone. Pale light pulsed under his palm. He pushed himself up and found a hollow shell of crystal half-buried in the hillside, openings worn into its sides like windows. Inside, the light was steady and soft. There were chambers. There was a floor. There was room for six people, maybe more. Alan stood in the doorway, hand pressed to his ribs, and started counting cots in his head.