2/3 Human

Alienation (Cont'd)

Rewll mustn't have gotten much shut-eye either, because he was already wide awake when Gerine came to visit the next morning. She found him hunched over with his torso concealed inside the mouth of his ship, chatting away with some unseen associate.

"An incoming shuttle? Are you serious? But that's impossible, there's no way they could have gotten a warrant that quickly!

"...No, I can't, I told you my ship is wrecked!

"Look, just send someone down here to pick me up-

"What? Too risky?

"Oh, you're afraid of getting captured? Well that's all fine and dandy, but what about me, huh? You're just gonna abandon me on this shyzt-hole?!

"...Hello? Hello?!"

Bereft of a response, an outraged Rewll slammed his meaty fists down on the dashboard, nearly rolling over his whole pod in the process.

"Shyzten-Galldahyzten!!" he roared.

"Who are you talking to?" asked Gerine.

Rewll jumped, banging his head on the upper ridge of the door hole. Gerine was afraid he might be mad at her for startling him —and maybe he would have been under different circumstances—, but as it stood, he was delighted to see her!

"Gerine, thank Gallda you're here!" Rewll rasped, clamping his hands around the young girl's forearms and rocking her back and forth. "Your mother came here from Earth, which means there must be a spaceship around here somewhere! Can you go out and find it for me?"

"I-already-told-you-" Gerine said shakily. "-I'm-not-sure-what-she-was-or-where-she-came-from!"

"Oh, cut the act, you know as well as I do that she was a human being, and so are you!"

"B-But even if that's true," Gerine reasoned, wrenching herself free. "I've scouted out every inch of this planet in the past and not once have I come across this supposed spaceship."

Rewll regained a hint of composure, and with it returned that sense of self-assurance that swayed Gerine to believe what he'd said so far.

"Maybe you just didn't know what to look for."

He crawled back inside his ship and rooted around for a minute or two before re-emerging holding a small metal box with numerous knobs and split-ended wires sticking out from all sides of it. Gerine was about to ask him what this contraption was, but luckily Rewll already accounted for her cluelessness.

"This is a radio receiver, capable of picking up inaudible signals called "waves", If your mother was a human, and she wound up stuck on this planet like I did, then there's a good chance that she activated the distress call on her ship's black box. Even if the ship has lost all power since then, the black box should still be emitting waves in the hopes that a recovery crew will someday stumble upon its remains. All you need to do is get close enough to pick up on those waves and the receiver will guide you straight to the landing site."

Gerine stared suspiciously at the radio in Rewll's hand, then up into his multi-layered eyes. "Yeah, I don't know about all that."

Rewll thrusted the device into the girl's hand anyway and clutched her wrist roughly.

"Come on, you've gotta help me out here! Are you scared that I'll leave you? Is that it? Well you don't have to worry about that, you can come with me if you want! But we need to hurry!"

Gerine couldn't have been more confused. Why was Rewll suddenly so desperate to leave Lianhua? But even more so, she was excited. She had been afraid of what Rewll might say when she asked if she could come with him. (more specifically, she was afraid he'd say "no"), but now here he was proposing the idea to her! How could she refuse?