AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES

 

Chapter 10: Dry Channels

As the moon rose steadily higher, the cast settled steadily lower. Tomorrow they would set out across the Channel Country of Australia, that vast expanse so criss-crossed with multitudes of mostly dry riverbeds of all sizes. Even Mars did not have so many dry channels as Australia. Who knew they had the same engineers?
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Making the excellent time only available in epis, the fleet of SUVs, Himself driving the lead vehicle, arrived at the edge of the Channel Country. The lusher greenness of the eucalypt forests, the Play Dough hillsides, all were behind them now as they entered the vast, flatter area spider-veined with endless channels. This was part of the Great Artesian Basin of Australia, that famous washtub molded so long ago by Ozzie Art.

The cast was in a happy mood for the most part, so many of them being native Aussies and glad to be back in their homeland despite death and dismemberment, suicide attempts and blindness. As he drove, Himself's mind ran down the list of his Aussies: Johnny, Andy, Kim, Colin, Egan, East, Lachlan, Jeff, Corbett, Hando, Terry. Yes, it was good that he had brought them all home. Well, at least that the eagles had, anyway.

 

With four cast members to a vehicle, there were quite a number of black SUVs, their windows darkened, speeding west northwest. To an outsider, observing from some height, they might have seemed even...menacing... somehow in their appearance.

 

 

And, as it was, they were, in fact, being observed. Yesterday the channel engineers had returned for the first time in 400,000 years to check on the dust-fill levels of their channels. Timing, as has been mentioned before in epis, is everything. Zlorb was disturbed. Surely nothing innocent would travel in such a manner as the dark, snaking line approaching the first of his channels?

 

"Glork!" he called quickly, pointing a two-foot long finger at the invaders. "Do think you that might they channels fill selves with?" (Sorry for the inept translation, but it's the best that can be done with current technology and catches only the vaguest sense of the meaning of their words, not the intricate patterns of their actual textual speech.)

 

 

Zlorb's worst fears of channel-filling were realized right in front of his eyes, all seven of them, when the second vehicle suddenly swerved off the road and down a small incline, coming to rest smack dab in the middle of the first channel.

 

 

"Ack" Zlorb acked, thereby proving the interglaticness of some important, universal words of great value.

 

"Damn!" Cort exclaimed, fighting the steering wheel to maintain control of the vehicle as a tire blew. Terry, driving the car behind them, honked his horn loudly to alert Himself to stop, then ran down the slope to see if the occupants of the enchannelled car were all right.

 

Sue the Vile, riding shotgun, narrowed her eyes as the clouds of dust settled. Sure, she liked the dust and all, but she had not yet recovered from the unmentioning of herself and her young sheriff in the previous couple epi and figured, now that they were in this new, stranger scenario that she would, of course, pay some price by being a lead character in an effort to make it up to her. She would have none of it! She wanted to cuddle in the moonlight, not fight off alien invaders! No wonder her mood was more vile than even usual! And, as well of course, Hando and the former Welshwoman were in the backseat. Who would have expected anything else?

"Everyone OK?" Terry asked, pulling open Sue's door, not knowing she was leaning her elbow on it in her fit of pique so hard that she would, then, fall out into the dust and make rather of a *SPLATTING* sound.

"SUE!" Cort cried, running around the front of the car, his bootfalls kicking up adorable puffs of dust that she would, in other circumstances, have found irresistible. She lay there on her back, spitting dust out of her mouth, as he knelt beside her. Raising her eyes to his face preparatory to making some probably vile remark, she was taken aback by the delightful way his hair swung so dustily forward and completely forgot what she had intended to say. She smiled instead. How could she not smile?

 

Ando, still in the backseat, remarked to her young Melbourner, "You realize, of course, that after an epi like this, that she will most likely kill someone off in the next?"

Hando found himself wondering if she might already have killed off Arthur as he certainly had been no where to be seen in epis of late. He had, of course, been around despite the lack of dialog. He had stood in the shadows of a yook, watching as Hando had been plucked from the innards of the strange tower, totally unable to suppress his smile as his rival dangled like a hooked trout. His feelings for his compatriot remained unchanged. Someday, somehow, he and Ando would return, branding irons in hand, to the beaches of Wales. Just you wait and see!

Zlorb watched as the vehicle was emptied of its small infestations and the round black object was replaced with another. Perhaps they did not intend to block his channel after all?

"Here!" Himself called, tossing down some rope to Terry, who tied it to the front bumper. Terry got behind the wheel of the car Cort had been driving and with some expert steering as Himself's SUV pulled and Hando and Cort pushed, managed to get it up out of the channel.

Glork, watching as well, was encouraged that the second segment of the snake-thing had been removed.

"Live then might they?" he asked his Commander.

 

 

Zlorb was not so sure about that as was his aide-de-channel. "Not probably," he snapped. He felt very protective of this area of the Third Rock. After all, it was the most like his home in both terrain and temperature. He would watch them carefully and if they dared enter the sacred Biloa Marea Claypan or even get anywhere close to Mumbleberry Lake (ah, HA! caught you thinking I made those names up, didn't I? Check out a map of Australia...so there!), well, then, their doom would be sealed.

                                                

All afternoon Zlorb and Glork hovered above the fleet of SUVs in their invisicraft, only swooshing down for a landing once when some small dark object was flung from the rear window of the second vehicle. Bending, Glork picked up the small thing, handing it to Zlorb, a puzzled look on his face.

"What is think you?"

Zlorb took the wrapper from the Hershey bar with almonds in his hand, turning it over and over in his long fingers. "Message secret," he announced at last. "Stuff bad up they to, fear I."

"Drat!" Ando exclaimed. "That was the last of my chocolate from the factory." She tapped repeatedly on Sue the Vile's shoulder with one finger. "When do we stop for lunch?"

Sue sighed. Travel with Ando in one's backseat could be very trying. "Himself said we could picnic on the edge of Mumbleberry Lake."

An hour later Ando poked her again. "Are we there yet?"

As Sue still had dust particles well-lodged between her upper incisors, not to mention the lower, left quadrant of her molars, she was more easily irritated than usual. "When we get there, the car will have stopped." Her tongue was getting sore from all her dislodgement efforts and talking was painful.

Fifteen minutes later Ando poked her. "Are we there yet?"

Slowly she turned her head, wishing hard she had learnt how to project lasers from her eyeballs, "I told y...," she began, but just then Himself turned off to the side a bit and stopped his car.

"Oh, boy!" Ando cried, leaping out of their car, her eyes scanning for a restaurant, perhaps even a snack bar. Instead, stretching out for miles, lay the perfectly dry bed of a lake...nothing else. Oh, a few scattered rocks, perhaps, but none of them seemed to have chocolate for sale."Drat!" she exclaimed again, as after all, this was an epi and her usual language had been thoroughly washed as they crossed the Artesian Basin.

"We're gonna have to eat...here?" she muttered. "You said we were gonna eat by a LAKE!" she confronted Himself, thinking of how lakes in Wales looked.

Himself grinned. "There are lakes and then there are lakes. This is a Channel lake."

"But...but...but...there IS no lake!" she protested.

Himself's eyes narrowed a bit. Was she finding fault with...with...AUSTRALIA??
                                 

Several of the cast members had slid down the slope of what would have been the shore of the lake had there actually been, um, a lake, and were walking about on the dry bed. Glork gulped. Zlorb was turning from his usual chartreuse into shades of puce. This was not a good sign of inner peace. Indeed, the last time his Commander had reached this level of puceosity was right before he'd ordered the total destruction of the Drogosian battle tower.

If anyone had been paying particular attention, they might have noticed how a large area of sand suddenly became somewhat concave as though a great weight had settled down upon it. (No, you're wrong...it was not because Jeffrey had decided to sit.) Zlorb watched the strange activities of the infestations through his large Trekkianistic viewscreen. Lights beeped and blooped in neat rows both above and below the screen.

                                      
 

"Lights blasted OFF turn!" Zlorb snarled at Glork, disliking rather obviously their distraction. He needed to concentrate, make decisions.

Maximus took Joimus' arm, carefully leading her to the small bit of shade offered by the twisted trunk of what had once been a tree.

"Describe it to me," she asked, indicating the space in front of them.

"There is nothing to describe," he said. "There is simply... nothing... there."

"But surely there is something?" Joimus protested.

He squinted his seagreen eyes in the bright sunlight, staring to the horizon. "There is a dip in the land and a few scattered rocks. Oh, and a bit over to the left is a secondary dip within the lakebed."

Thusly, he became the first to be aware of the impression left by the Decade Canary, a much different space vehicle than our good Mr. Solo's. One must not, howsomever, let its somewhat less prepossessing name generate any laxness of attitude regarding its military capabilities. No, indeed! It had the combined firepower of 10 star destroyers and its cloaking device far surpassed that of any Bird of Prey, not leaving the slightest quivering of the air to reveal its location.
                                  

To amuse themselves, several of the characters had found sticks and were playing a wild and fierce game of cricket with a cupcake Colin had snatched out of the mouth of an iguana on the Galapashires and never gotten around to eating. It was quite petrified by now and the repeated *thoink* *thoink* of it as it was whacked about the lake bed began to drive Zlorb wild.

 

 

Quickly donning his invisisuit, he slipped out the top hatch of the Decade Canary. He would investigate these infestations himself! He stood there a long moment next to the Decade Canary, just watching the *thoinking*, frowning horribly, not at all sure how long he could endure the desecration of Mumbleberry's bed. Had they any intelligence at all these pitiful life forms surely would have known this was no dry lakebed, but the very depression caused by the landing of the large mother ship 400,000 years ago. But, no, they ran carelessly about its surface, attacking some small pink object. He studied their method of warfare, curling his side lip in disdain as one after another of them attempted to destroy it, always with no effective result. Indeed, there were many odd floppings about and even stranger noises erupting from the ugly facial openings of the attackers. Every one of the life forms seemed to be engaged in this display in some way or another except for two over to the edge.

"Hey, Maximus, toss the cupcake back!" called Zack.

The General said, "I'll return quickly," and walked out about 20 yards onto the lakebed to pick up the wayward cupcake.

While he was engaged in so doing, Zlorb zooped over next to the life form remaining alone. She sat at the top edge of the slope, her face turned toward the others, but her visual orbs covered by a thin layer of pink flesh. He had noted none of her fellows kept a layer of flesh over their orbs in such a constant manner. He studied her. Perhaps she was...defective? Perhaps that was why she did not join in the attack on the pink object? Fascinated, he watched as a small, glowing thing made its way out from under the bottom edge of the pink layer.

Joimus heard the crunch of Maximus' boots getting further away and she was suddenly enveloped with the sadness of the thought she might never behold his face again, might never watch the swing of his glorious cape as he walked. The thought caused a large lump in her throat that traveled upwards, till pressing against the reservoir of her tears, a single drop overflowed and slipped across the darkened surface of her eye.
                                     

Zlorb had never seen such a thing. Without solid walls, the glowing thing hung there, sparkling, the sunlight making rainbows in its depths. It was... beautiful ... magical. His mind filled with the eldertales of long ago times, times so ancient that memory had faded into legend, times of the great "wet" when something he'd heard described very like this glowing thing, only in vast amounts beyond counting, had filled the channels of his homeland. He reached his long finger out, drawn to touch it.
 

           
 

"Who's there?" the life form suddenly said, becoming aware of a presence nearby. The pink layer opened.

Joimus saw something, but only the faintest, greenish blur in a field of black. "Maximus? Sid?" she breathed excitedly.

Zlorb's liver began to beat rapidly. He did not want to lose the precious thing, so touched it quickly with his fingertip. It flowed from her lid onto him, and he stood, turning, holding it up to the sun. It was...wet. Never having known wet...ever...yet still he knew instantly. His liver ached, tightened, then expanded. Wet! His fingertip began to pulse. Were the legends true? He had been such a warrior all the long millennia he had almost lost hope in matters of the liver. Now, here he was...him...standing at the edge of the very landing site of the mother ship, with wet on his fingertip! It was more than he could think...nearly more than he could stand...that HE should be the one to bear the wet home.

"Maximus?" she repeated, reaching out, her hand encountering...something.

He knew he must hurry, must get the wet safely back to the Decade Canary and into the secure box every ship always had on the slight chance that someday...somehow...wet might be found, might be brought home and placed atop the Dome of Delugement. Once again the channels would run with wet, once again his kind would drink, would grow crops, would...bathe.

Who was there? WHAT was there? "MAXIMUS!" she cried loudly, both hands groping the air in front of her.

Zlorb, though, had already slipped down the slope and was zooping across the lakebed toward his ship. He was looking up, his eyes on the single, precious drop of wet and collided with Jack as he raced after the petrified muffin. They both were knocked onto their backs...hard. Zlorb watched, horrified, as the wet arced up into the air. Jack, his reflexes quickened by years of close-quartered battle, bounced back to his feet, cutlass in hand.

                                 

Himself had tried earlier to convince the Captain that playing cricket with a cutlass strapped to one's waist was not, well, cricket...but what with Sid's actions of late, there was no way Jack was leaving his cutlass in their SUV. He crouched, his sword arm extended, looking for an enemy, looking for Sid. The sudden gleam of a sunsparkle caught his eye as the single drop lit on the very point of his cutlass. The blade cut the drop in twain, both halves heading for the dry sands of the lakebed.

                               

Zlorb, casting all other cares to the wind, dove for the drops. Sliding under Jack's cutlass, he managed to catch one of the halves on his finger, but the other reached the sand, instantly disappearing with a teensy *slurp* that nearly broke Zlorb's liver.

"Wh...what?" Jack said, feeling a small rumble beneath his tall black boots.

"STAND BACK!" hollered Himself. "An artesian well is going to, well, well!"

Of course that was Aussie understatement. When a Channel well welled, it might better be described as an eruption than a welling. Zlorb made it back through the hatch, holding his sparkling fingertip out to Glock.

"The box!" he cried. "Open the wet box!"

"You have...wet?" Glock exclaimed, all seven of his eyes widening to their full stretch of nine inches each.

"I have WET!" Zlorb replied triumphantly.

Within seconds the Decade Canary had left the Mumbleberry Lakebed and was twozzling past the moon. "Home," Zlorb sighed as the reddish orb grew
larger, "we're going...home."
                                  

The giant fountain of water sprayed 90 feet into the air, splashing down on all the cricketeers, spreading out across the dry lakebed. "We'd better head for higher ground," Himself said, then tipped his head back, opening his mouth wide, enjoying the cool wetness after the cricketish exertions.

Jack still had his cutlass in hand. He knew he had collided with something. His eyes sought out Sid in the crowd. Surely he was behind this...somehow. Using his left hand to wipe the water from his eyes, he saw Maximus gaining the top edge of the lakebed, dropping to his knees beside Joimus.

Her searching hands found his familiar face. "Were you just here?" she asked.

"No, I have only now returned," he replied, scanning her features. "Your eyes are open," he added. "Can you see me?"

She made out the barest bit of rust. "A little," she said, " a very little." She smiled tremulously. "You are...rust."

He smiled. "I have been only rust before...and not all that long ago."

She remembered. He pressed her to himself as the waters sprayed over them, soaking them both completely. "Oh," she said, her hands feeling his cape. "Your fur drape is getting wet!"

He laughed, gathering handfuls of her dripping pale hair. "Sometimes wet can be a good thing."

He had no idea of the fullness of what he said.