“Stop,” I gasp, because he keeps coming toward me, and his hand is on the hilt of the sword. It hangs from a wide belt over some kind of thick skin wrapped around his hips. That means most of him is bare, displaying thick muscles everywhere. His hair is dark with golden highlights that I think must be natural, but his dense beard is dark brown, shot with gold here and there.
He’s not a beauty, mostly because of the strange proportions of his face. He’s too manly—the chin too strong, the cheeks too hollow, the eyes too clear and too deeply set. And every instinct in me screams that he’s just as deadly as any dinosaur.
He doesn’t slow down, so I stagger backward until I turn to run the six yards over to the saucer and into the hatch. Just as I reach for the button to close it, the caveman grabs my arm and yanks me back out.
“Hey!” I yelp as I grab one of the spears that are leaned up against the saucer.
The caveman lets go of me, ducks his head, and steps into the ship. His big, bare feet leave dirty footprints on the metal-like deck. He’s walking into our home like he owns it.
The first shock gives way to fury mixed with panic. “Get the hell out of there!” I push the sharp tip of the spear against his rib cage from behind, not being too gentle.
The caveman grunts and grabs the shaft behind him, then yanks the spear out of my hand and tosses it out of the hatch without even looking.
Fury flares in me, but under it there’s something else, too. Something warm and wrong.
I grab one of the other spears, but I don’t touch him with it. The last thing I want is an actual confrontation. He’s three times my weight and has a long sword, so the outcome is a given. But I’m not going to give up without a fight. This saucer is the center of my existence right now.
“Hey! Get the hell out of here, you brute!” Changing my mind, I poke him with the blunt end of the spear. “This is my home! Get out!” Of course, he won’t understand English, but the meaning can’t be misunderstood. I follow him as he makes his way into the control room, where some of the instruments are showing dim lights.
He stops and looks around, head bent to not hit it on the ceiling. “What is this place?” His voice is deep and resonant.
“It is my home!” I seethe in cavemannish. “You go out! It is not yours!”
He gives me a blue glance. “Your home? You live here? It is very strange.”
“It is strange,” I agree, “and taboo! Holy place! It is very bad you be in here. The Ancestors be angry! Go out!” Cora and Sprisk taught us a good amount of caveman culture, although they didn’t seem to believe in any of it. But they assured us that the cavemen tribes do. Some believe it very much. As a last resort, they told us we could pretend to be the Woman, some kind of mythical creature that they all look forward to meetingin the jungle. On this woman-less planet, simply seeing a girl must seem absolutely magical. But this guy doesn’t seem that awestruck.
The caveman bends to check out the consoles, and for a split second I start to hope that maybe he knows something about this stuff. But that’s absurd. He wouldn’t ask what this place is if he were a saucer mechanic.
He straightens as much as he can and puts his hands on his hips. “There’s no trace of any Bigs or Smalls or Tinies in here. They fear it. Only you come in here.”
“And you,” I point out. “But it is not yours. Go out now!”
He knocks on a wall like a building inspector, ignoring me. “Where are the Plood that came with it?”
“No Plood came,” I assure him. “Goout!”
“Is it safe?” he asks and looks around. “Can it move like an irox? Fly in the sky?”
“No. No thing for you here. Out!” I shake the spear at him, pointy end first.
He gives the interior of the saucer a final look. “No sign of any Bigs,” he repeats to himself before he saunters past me and goes out the hatch.
I hesitate for a moment. It would be tempting to stay in here, close the hatch, and be safe. But this is our home, dammit. That goes for the outside area, too. I have to demonstrate ownership and not just abandon everything the first time a caveman comes along. Cora warned us that this might happen, but she had no particular advice for meeting cavemen. Everything depends onwhat kind of caveman would come here. This one sure doesn’t seem like a good one.
I march after the caveman out of the saucer. “We live here,” I state as firmly as I can with a voice that trembles a little too much. “You not. Not live here. Is our village. Is for us. Us tribe. Not you.”
He stops and turns, towering over me so much he blocks out the sun. “Your tribe is small. I see tracks of six. One warrior among them. The others are small. Small, like you. Where are they?”
“They hunt,” I make up on the spot. “Soon back. Many. Not six. Not small. Many warrior.”
“Hmm.” His gaze drags down my body, slow and deliberate. My pulse betrays me, a hot stutter under the skin.
And despite my terror at being this close to an alien who could snap me in half with one hand, his extremely male gaze sends a thrill down my spine. There’s something so raw about him, so masterful, as if the jungle is his private garden. And he doesn’t seem murderous.
“No sign of many warriors,” he finally goes on. “Only one. And he hasn’t been here for days. The tracks are easy to read. He’s not used to covering his tracks. Was it he that killed the rekh?”
I recognize the caveman word for the kind of dinosaur that Sprisk killed. “Yes. Easy for him. Very strong warrior.”
