Space Rocks! by Tom O'Donnell Read Free Book Online Page B

hundred meters away from the spacecraft, and dumped it out on the ground. Its contents seemed mostly to be rotting organic matter. Human garbage.
    Did humans really just dump their waste right next to where they lived? Perhaps there was some truth to the Xotonian stereotype that they were a pack of filthy slobs.
    Danny replaced the first cylinder and went to empty the second. Something seized me. I still don’t know what. But before I thought better of it, I darted into the airlock and climbed up the wall onto the ceiling. I hung there, my skin now the warm beige of the ship’s interior.
    To one side of the airlock were the four personal rockets I’d seen the humans riding in Jehe Canyon, heaped together in a sort of standing pile.
    Danny returned to the airlock. He walked over to a glowing console and punched a button. The outside hatch slowly rolled closed. Once it had formed an airtight seal, the inner door slid open with a whoosh as oxygen-rich human air rushed in. Air, I noticed, that was very similar to that in the Gelo caverns.
    Danny took off his spacesuit and stuffed it inside a small metal box—one of several beside the airlock—then ambled off down the hallway. He never once looked up.
    There I was, inside a human spacecraft.
    I was inside a human spacecraft!
    I crept along the ceiling. The pod was warm and cramped. All blinking consoles, tangled wires, and inconvenient angles. It had a central hallway that gave access to six individual chambers. At the far end I saw what appeared to be another airlock, this one attached to one of the tubes that led back toward the mothership.
    I waited for Danny to return. He didn’t. The pod was empty. I dropped to the floor and touched one of the doors. It quickly slid open with a pleasing hiss. I stepped back. It hissed closed. I stepped forward. It hissed open again.
    By Jalasu Jhuk, these humans sure had it figured out! This—this was an achievement on par with the hologram game. Why must Xotonians constantly be forced to open our own doors? I wondered. What drudgery! Imagine the time we’d save over the course of a lifetime if our doors simply had the good sense to open themselves.
    I mean, obviously our great ancestors had intended us to have self-opening doors. I remembered the ancient door of the Vault opening of its own accord once the correct combination was put in. Why hadn’t we heeded their wisdom?
    After making the human door open six or seven more times, I entered the chamber beyond. It was messy, even by human standards. A big overstuffed couch dominated the space. It faced a deactivated tele-visual console on the wall. Behind the couch was a green table marked with white lines and divided in half by a short vertical mesh. On the table were two red paddles and a little white ball. Beside them was a box.
    I took a closer look. The box was covered in human language characters. I tried to read them, but I could only make out the human word for “ice.” The box bore the picture of a juvenile human male, grinning grotesquely and consuming a bright pink bar of . . . something.
    I reached into the box. It was full of bar-shaped things, each covered in a shiny, crinkly protective coating, almost like a tiny human spacesuit. I pulled one out and tore away the coating. Sure enough, a sticky pink bar inside. I sniffed it. Organic, mostly. Not ice, though.
    I took a bite. The taste was heavenly. No, beyond heavenly. Sweet. Gummy. Delightfully unnatural! I finished the bar. And another. And one more after that. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to consume the whole box. All the boxes. Were there more boxes anywhere?
    Self-opening doors, hologram games, personal rockets, and now these pink bars. In that sugary euphoria, I was ready to admit the cultural superiority of humankind. If there were just six thousand more of these delicious bars—one for every Xotonian—I was sure there could be peace between our two