Chapter 34: Conflicting Coordinates
"Alright, remember how when you were back on Little Boy the coordinates of our parents' location conflicted with the coordinates of the Yolkian planet?" Libby asked.
Jimmy unclenched one of his fists and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Yes, I do. What is the bad news?"
"Well, I had been set up the computer to run scans for our parents every five minutes, in case they were moved to a different location. I track their positions anymore because the satellite dishes on Little Boy were destroyed. But I finally got around to checking the last searches that the system completed. Following me?"
"Yes. Keep going."
"Well," she continued, "after I got those conflicting coordinates a couple of days ago, I instructed the computer to also scan for the Yolkian planet's location. Unfortunately, the satellites needed to be fairly close to the Yolkian planet to get its location. Only the last two searches were in the necessary proximity to scan for the Yolkian planet."
"Alright, so what is the bad news?" Nick asked.
"Both searches confirmed that the parents are not being held on the Yolkian planet. You were wrong, Jimmy. The coordinates weren't different because the planet was in orbit. From what the scans have told me, your parents are on a mother ship of sorts. At your rockets' speeds, it is six hours closer to you than the Yolkian planet."
Everyone paused as they let Libby's words sink in. "So, you're saying our parents aren't being held on the Yolkian planet, but rather a ship?" Nick asked. He turned to Jimmy, clearly confused. "And that's bad news how? I mean, we're getting there sooner than we thought."
Jimmy slammed his hand into his forehead and slid it down his face. "Nick, sneaking up on a rocket is a hell of a lot harder than sneaking up on a planet. We could sneak into the Yolkian planet by flying our rockets onto a vacant part of the planet. A ship, on the other hand, has radar and security systems."
"Oh," Nick dejectedly said while looking down at the ground and lightly kicking a rock.
"Libby, thanks for the heads up. We've got a bunch of work to do here. Neutron out." Jimmy turned his headset off and clipped it to his jeans once more. He stroked his chin while pacing around in a circle.
"Well, this may not be completely bad," Jimmy finally said. Everyone was standing around him in a giant circle, listening intently. "I mean, there has got to be a lot less enemy soldiers on a single ship than there are on the planet. And hijacking a ship to escape in will be a lot easier, since we'll already be on one. But getting into the ship will be considerably difficult and dangerous."
"So, what's your plan?" Ike asked while shoving his way to the front of the crowd.
Jimmy glared at Ike, and he stepped back and hid himself within the crowd. Jimmy closed his eyes and tried to think, but he could tell that everyone was staring at him. It was impossible to concentrate with that kind of pressure.
"Cindy, lead everyone a kilometer or so out and continue training them. Train everyone, not just those who were selected to carry guns. Nick, gather all of the supplies and organize them for me. Then meet me back here so that you can help me gather food and water. Let's move, soldiers."
"Sir yes sir," Cindy and Nick answered while saluting Jimmy. They nodded at each other before splitting up and heading off in separate directions. Cindy led the kids south to their new training area, and Nick started organizing the supplies that he had thrown into a pile earlier.
An hour and a half later, Jimmy was lying underneath Nick's rocket. He struggled to grasp two wires in the darkness and reconnect them. Suddenly a loud smashing sound came from above him. "Ow!" Jimmy shouted while crawling out from under the rocket to see Nick knocking on the steel frame. "That echoes, you know," Jimmy grumbled while standing up and brushing himself off.
"Yeah, I know," Nick said while smiling a devilish grin. "How's it going?"
Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck. "Fairly well, all things considered. I honestly can't do much with these rockets. I don't have any tools. I'm mostly just fixing cosmetic damage and reinserting wires."
Nick nodded. "Well, better than nothing, right?"
Jimmy reached down and grabbed his water bottle that was lying near his rockets. He took a sip and then quickly resealed it. "Anyway, are you ready for a little hike?"
"Sure," Nick answered.
"Where'd you put all of our supplies?" Jimmy asked while cracking his knuckles.
"This way," Nick told him while leading Jimmy a few hundred yards west of the rockets' resting place. "I've done a little more…in depth tallying," he explained. "We've got thirteen water bottles and seven bags full of clothes. Plus the Band-Aids and guns."
Jimmy nodded as he stooped down to stare at the backpacks, water bottles, and canvas bags in front of him. He took one of the backpacks and emptied the clothes out of it. He threw all of the nearly empty water bottles into it. He then emptied one more backpack and two canvas bags. He tosses two bags to Nick and slung his two over his shoulders.
"Libby sent me a rough map to the place where she believes there's a spring," Jimmy said while pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket. "I traced it onto this paper from the monitor in my rocket. It's about four kilometers that way," he explained to Nick while pointing to his right.
Nick followed his gaze and squinted, but didn't see any water. "Well, then let's head out," he muttered adjusting the bags' straps on his shoulders and walking forward.
Jimmy and Nick walked the first kilometer or so in silence. They were blinded by the beauty of Minerva. As they headed out farther and farther from their landing site, the scenery got more and more colorful. The ground was splashed with blue, green, and orange. Yellow, red, and silver plants sprouted out of the ground and towered high above them. Small flowers of every color in the rainbow were splotched across the nearby hillsides.
"Damn, this place is sweet," Nick muttered while looking all around him, thoroughly amazed. "This planet got a name?"
"Minerva," Jimmy answered. "It's called Minerva."
They continued walking in relative silence for another few minutes until Jimmy abruptly came to a halt and grabbed Nick's arm. "Dude, what the...?" Nick tried to ask, but Jimmy held a finger up to his lips and motioned for him to be quiet. He pointed to his left, and Nick gazed in that direction.
A creature the size of a squirrel was slowly walking along several dozen yards to their left. It was orange and covered with fur. It vaguely reminded Jimmy of a cat. "Nick, do you have any of those hypodermic syringes?"
Nick shook his head. "No. Why?"
"Damn it," Jimmy muttered while starting to walk again. "I wanted to get a blood sample from it. Add it to my catalogue of extraterrestrial life."
Nick followed Jimmy and frowned at him. "Hey, Darwin, I'd be glad to escort you on a nature hike after we've killed Goobot, but can we focus on the mission at hand?"
"Sor-ry," Jimmy apologized while taking out the map that would lead them to their source of water. "Putting aside our conflicting scientific interests, I think we're around halfway there. Let's keep moving."
They pressed onward, engaging in occasional small talk. They continued staring at the beautiful scenery around them. After twenty more minutes of walking, they arrived at the place marked on Jimmy's map.
"This is it," Jimmy explained while stopping and looking at his map. "This is the most likely spot where we'll find water on the planet."
Nick spun in a circle, looking around. "Dude, I'm not seeing anything."
Jimmy walked a few more yards forward and came to the edge of a small cliff. It was a twenty foot drop to a pond beneath. Nick stood beside him and stared over the edge with him. As far as they could tell, there was no way to walk down there.
"It's smaller than I thought," Jimmy muttered while twisting the few whiskers on his right cheek into a knot. "There's no way that a little pond like that could supply enough water for all of this plant life."
Nick shrugged. "It's a different planet, Jimmy. They probably don
't need water to survive."
Jimmy nodded. "True, true. But if they don't need water to survive, why is there water here?"
Nick took a step back and unbuttoned his shirt. "Dude, we don't need lava to survive, but there's plenty of it on Earth."
Jimmy shook his head. "That's a horrible metaphor. Lava is merely melted…"
"Dude, we need water, and there it is. I really don't care why it's here. Now unless you want us to suck down the motor oil in our rockets, I'm diving down there and filling up those bottles," he explained while dropping his bags to the ground and unbuttoning his shirt. He took it off and tucked the loose strands of hair in his face behind his ears.
"We don't know how deep the water is. You could get hurt," Jimmy sternly told him.
Nick shrugged him off and balanced at the edge of the cliff. "Do you really think fate would be so cruel as to have me survive flying through an asteroid belt but die diving into a pond?"
Before Jimmy could answer, Nick jumped off of the cliff and fell down into the pond below. He clutched his knees to his chest and formed himself into a ball. Jimmy looked down just in time to see the water erupt around Nick as he fell into the pond. He nervously bit his bottom lip for a moment, but let out a sigh of relief when Nick surfaced.
"Are you ok?" Jimmy shouted down.
"Peachy keen!" Nick answered while flipping himself over and backstroking across the pond.
Jimmy stared at him for another moment before taking the bags off of his shoulders and starting to take his shirt off as well. "Don't come down!" He heard Nick shout.
"Why not?" Jimmy asked.
"I don't see a way back up. That cliff is going miles left and right. I'll need you to help me get back up there. Just toss me down the water bottles and I'll fill them."
Jimmy nodded and unzipped the backpack with the water bottles in them. "Two coming down!" Jimmy shouted while tossing two of the bottles over the cliff's edge. Nick caught them, one in each hand. He put one in between his legs and used his now free hand to take the cover off of the other.
"Taste the water to make sure it's not dangerous," Jimmy instructed him.
"Don't you have an invention to check it?" Nick asked while tossing the full bottle back up to Jimmy.
"Yeah, back at the lab and in the hypercube that we lost," Jimmy answered while catching the bottle and setting it down behind him.
Nick filled the second water bottle and stared at it for a moment. He then reluctantly took a large sip, swirled the contents around in his mouth, and swallowed it. He refilled the bottle to the top, put the cap on, and tossed it up to Jimmy. "It tastes fine."
Jimmy reached out to grab the water bottle flying up towards him, but missed it. It fell back down to Nick, who caught it. He threw it back up to Jimmy, who caught it that time. "Two more bottles coming down," Jimmy warned while dropping two more empty bottles.
The two boys continued this cycle of Nick filling two bottles, throwing them up to Jimmy, and Jimmy dropping two more bottles down until all thirteen of the water bottles were fill. Jimmy made sure each cap was tightened before putting them in his backpack.
"Nick, do you see any fruit or anything?" Jimmy asked while getting down on his stomach and leaning as far over the edge of the cliff as he dared. He squinted and tried to get a good look at the plant life surrounding the pond, but he was too far up to examine them properly. He crawled back away from the edge.
"Your turn to taste something!" Nick shouted while hurling a squishy blue ball up at Jimmy.
Jimmy caught it and stared at it for a moment. Finally, he took a bite out of the fruit and chewed the soft contents. The juices seemed to swirl around his mouth by themselves and created a tingling sensation, but he did not feel sick in any way. On the contrary, it was one of the best things that he had ever tasted.
"Fill up the bags with those fruits and others like them. They're good," Jimmy told Nick while tossing the three bags down to him. Nick nodded and began picking as many of the fruits as he could from the nearby trees. As each bag was filled, he spun around and hurled the heavy loads up to Jimmy.
"Alright, now how do I get back up?" Nick asked once he had tossed the third and final bag up to Jimmy.
Jimmy stared down at Nick. Climbing straight up a rock wall was not going to be easy. "Do you see any footholds?" Jimmy asked.
Nick stared at the wall in front of him for a moment. "Um, a couple. Enough to maybe get halfway up. Maybe. After that I don't know."
"Well, get up as high as you can," Jimmy told him.
"Easy for you to say," Nick angrily mumbled while sticking his right foot into the first foothold. He slowly climbed his way up the wall and stopped after he was around twelve feet above the ground.
Jimmy stared down at his friend, who was plastering himself against the cliff's face. "Do you see any more footholds?"
"Do you see me moving?" Nick shouted.
"Go back down and find a place where the footholds go higher up," Jimmy told Nick.
Nick let go of the rocks and calmly fell back into the water. For the next half hour he continually tried, and failed, to climb up different areas of the cliff's face. Just as he was about to give up and walk along the cliff's face until he could find a way to walk up, he finally spotted an area of the wall filled with footholds.
Jimmy grabbed Nick's hand as he finally reached the top of the cliff. Jimmy dug his feet into the ground and yanked Nick up and over the edge. They both fell onto the ground.
"Thanks," Nick muttered while quickly jumping up and dusting himself off. He walked back to where he had left his shirt and put it back on. "I'm ready to head back to camp."
"Ditto," Jimmy agreed while slinging the bag of water bottles and a bag full of the alien fruit over his shoulder.
As the two of them set off on their long hike back to camp, Nick finally asked Jimmy what had been plaguing his mind for the last few hours. "Jimmy, you said that the fact that our parents are on a ship instead of a planet will change things. So what exactly is your plan?"
Jimmy sighed as his shoulders began to become strained from the heavy weight of the bags. "You'll find out soon. I want you and Cindy to bring everyone to this spring at exactly eight o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll explain everything then."