“What do you mean, what do I mean?”
I would throw up my hands if they weren’t currently coveting the last of my brownie. “Don’t you like dessert?”
“I… well.” He shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t usually…”
“Do you want some of mine?”
His eyes swing up. The pause that follows is… surprised. Tinged with uncertainty. Heavier than the moment warrants.
“Thank you,” he replies, “but no.”
We return to our meals. The silence isn’t awkward, exactly, but it feels different. Charged, somehow. I get the sense that whatever is said next could change the entire trajectory of our (admittedly shaky) relationship, but since I don’t want to bear the consequences of that responsibility, I dive into my tuna sandwich with vigor.
I’m polishing off the last bite when I feel a soft quiver. At first I think it’s me, like I’m shivering or something, but then it happens again, stronger this time. “Did you feel that?”
Lament is still picking at his bread. “Feel what?”
“I don’t know. An earthquake?”
“Purvuva is a stagnant lid planet.”
“Ah.”
He gives one of his sighs. “It doesn’t have tectonic plates.”
Of course he would know that. “So no earthquakes?”
“No. Although”—he squints into the distance—“I suppose seismic activity is still possible. You can have volcanism on stagnant lid planets if there’s enough heat and pressure, and carbon dioxide escapes from the planet’s core—”
The ground rumbles again, more violently this time.
“Okay.” I’m gripping the PPM box to my chest. “Tell me you felt that.”
Lament looks a little bloodless. “Yes.”
“You were saying something about carbon dioxide?”
“This … isn’t that.”
“Okay?”
I wait for him to explain what he’s thinking, but all he says is, “We should get to the caves.”
My blood is buzzing, my fingers straining toward my ray gun. In my head, I scroll through possibilities, but all my thoughts are nonsense. Ogres and dragons and trolls. Fairy-tale stuff. And yet, if it’s not an earthquake making the ground tremble, then what? What?
The wind bites at my skin, the last of the day’s sun stretching long on the horizon. I grab the emergency pack, and Lament snags the useless radio, and together we hurry back toward the caves. We’re halfway there when the earth gives a true quake, the ground rolling like someone’s shaking out a rug. I stumble and catch my footing, glancing back just in time to see our spacecraft being sucked up by the earth. It shifts, and heaves, and then it’s just—gone. Like the sand opened its mouth and swallowed.
Lament shoves me. “Run.”
I run. My arms pump, my boots kicking up dirt. Lament is right beside me, but I can’t tell if it’s him making that gasping sound or me. The caves seem impossibly far away, and my thighs are on fire, and there’s sand in mymouth and in my eyes, and suddenly a shadow crosses my vision, revealing the towering dark body-double of a head and what appears to be a dozen waving tentacles. My stomach seizes and my throat clicks and there is nowaythat shadow belongs to an actual giant octopus.
I look behind me.
It’s an actual, giant octopus.
Its head is a bulbous gray mass, its arms adorned with pulsing suckers. It rears back to reveal a circular mouth lined with teeth spinning like razors on a power saw. I hear Lament make a startled sound as the creature gives a screech, moving along the sand’s surface as if through water. We keep running, but even if we make it to the caves in time, I can’t see how that’s going to help. That thing hasarms.
I yank my ray gun from its holster, take aim, and pull the trigger.
