Gunther Muck's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Galahja pocketed Gunther and walked fast. The trench narrowed. Then she stopped and swore. A low scrape came from behind them, wet and heavy. The crud-eater had found the trail again. Its snout worked the air where Gunther had lain shivering on the tin. Its ribs showed. It was hungry, and Gunther, small and leaking, was easy meat. "It smells you," Galahja said. She set Gunther down on a flat scrap. "You can't outrun it. I can't carry you fast enough." Her dog growled low beside her boot. "You need mass. Now. Something to sit on the pain and mask the smell." Gunther could not roll straight. His empty gut cramped in waves. He rocked on the tin and tried to see past Galahja's leg. The crud-eater's shadow slid along the trench wall. Galahja looked around. She grabbed the nearest thing standing in the muck: a short wooden post, its wood painted with faded frogs, vines nailed around it. A trail marker, someone's old joke. She snapped it over her knee. "Eat this. Wood dulls the ticking. Wood dulls you." She shoved a splintered chunk against Gunther's seam. He drew it in. Bitter sap flooded his core. The cramps eased at once, muffled under the soft weight. She fed him another piece. His skin firmed. His scent thickened into something dull and green. But wood was not metal. He was heavier now, not stronger. He would never fly on painted pine. The crud-eater rounded the bend. Its head swung low. Galahja stepped in front of Gunther and raised a hand. Above her, snagged on a bent pipe, hung a cracked lamp shaped like a green moon. She yanked it down and hurled it past the creature's head. It struck the trench wall and burst in a green flash. The crud-eater flinched and wheeled toward the light. "Go," Galahja hissed. She scooped Gunther up. Her dog snapped at the crud-eater's heels and drew it further off. They ran. Around the next bend, a pilot's crate sat open in the mud. Inside stood a tall glass full of layered red and orange juice, a paper straw bent at the lip, a slice of fruit hooked on the rim. Someone had traded it here and forgotten it. Galahja tipped it over Gunther. Sweet punch soaked his skin. The sugar and pulp buried the last of his scent under something the crud-eater did not hunt. She waited, breathing hard, until the scraping faded up the trench. "Alive," she said. She weighed him in her palm. "And heavier. But it's wood and juice. Junk weight. No spark in it." Gunther felt it too. He had survived. He was also further from any starship than before. His next meal would have to be metal, and soon, or the trade he had just made would cost him the sky.