Astro Equinox's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Astro climbed deeper into the ravine with the cat pressed to their chest. The rocks pitched and shifted underfoot. Then the cat's ears split apart. One swung left toward a tall spur. The other swung right toward a low gap. Both held firm. Astro stopped cold. For six days the ears had always agreed. Now they pointed two ways at once, and the sky device was almost here. "Which one?" Astro whispered. The cat turned its head. The ears did not settle. Above them the sky pulsed faster, a beat only Astro could feel, pressing down like weight. The sound was homing in. Astro had minutes, not hours. Pick wrong and they would climb away from the source while the sky fell on empty rock. Jeta Halo scrambled up beside them, his green hands scraped raw. He had followed Astro from the lab across every mile of this. He looked at the cat and his black eyes went wide. "It's split. Both ears locked." He gripped a stone to steady himself. "The signal's bouncing. One path is the device. One is the echo off the cliff." Astro's three fingers tightened in the cat's fur. An echo. A false return thrown back from the rock wall. The true bearing and its ghost, and no way to tell them apart by ear. Then Astro remembered the trick that started all of this. You cancel the known layer to reveal the true one. "Cover one ear," Astro said. "Block the bounce. The real one stays." Jeta Halo cupped his hand over the cat's left ear, muffling the spur. The right ear quivered, then drove hard toward the low gap and stayed. The cat leaned its whole body that way. "That's it," Astro breathed. "The gap. The echo was the cliff." They turned and ran toward the low opening, the cat straining ahead in their arms. They burst through the gap into a flat basin. In its center stood a squat machine half sunk in the dirt. It was old, older than the lab, built of the same metal as Astro's own skin-tools. A dish on its top turned slow circles. This was the thing broadcasting the bearing. This was what the sky had been answering for who knew how long. Above, the sky tore open with light. The homing signal had arrived. A disc dropped fast, silent, straight down the line toward the machine. Astro stood frozen between them. Then the warning came back, the one from the woman in muddy boots who had pressed the cat into their hands. Reach the device and the sky lands on you. "Down!" Jeta Halo shouted. He pulled Astro behind a rock as the disc struck the old machine. There was no fire. The two devices locked together with a hum that filled Astro's whole body. The braided signal, upper rhythm and hidden bearing, poured out as one clear voice. And Astro understood it. It was not a weapon. It was a call home. The old machine was a listening post, left on this planet long ago by Astro's own kind. It had waited, counting, broadcasting its place. The sky device was the answer, come at last to collect what the post had recorded. The terrible thing the woman feared was only this: whoever stood here when the two met would be taken up with the message. Astro rose slowly. They could step into the light and go home with the signal they had chased for so long. Jeta Halo watched them, his hand still on Astro's arm, waiting. Astro looked at the green face that had climbed every rock beside them, and at the cat that had led them true. The signal had never been a secret to crack. It had been a door. Astro lifted the cat and set it on the ground. They reached into their tool belt and drew out the small recorder they had carried since the lab, its microphone grille catching the light. They pressed record and held it toward the joined machines. The voice filled the little device, every layer, the whole message, saved. Then Astro stepped back from the light. "I came to listen," Astro said. "Not to leave." The disc pulled free and rose, taking the old post's long record with it. The basin went quiet. The sky stilled. The frantic beat that had driven Astro for eleven days was simply gone. Astro stood in the dirt with the recorder warm in their hand and the signal finally decoded, held safe in their own grip. Jeta Halo let out a long breath and smiled. The cat wound around Astro's ankles, both ears calm at last, pointing nowhere, because there was nothing left to find.