In 500... (or less)

Quite the Conundrum

The sand next to the sampling machine seemed to ripple for moment. It wasn't my imagination.

"Did you feel that?" I asked Sadie. She shook her head in the negative. I was certain I felt a rumble under my feet. Then there was another one.

"That I felt," Sadie said. "What is it? An earthquake?"

Couldn't be, I thought. First, we'd have to be on Earth for an actual earthquake.

"This place is supposed to be seismically dead." 

Then again, we were sampling in a new spot, hoping to find water on this overgrown potato-of-a-moon. There was a good chance we caused the tremor we felt.

We shut down the equipment. The shaking seemed to grow nearer, as if something were coming toward us.

Sadie jumped and screamed in terror.

"What was it!?" I yelled.

"I saw something, like a tentacle or something. Over there!" She pointed toward a patch of sand that seemed almost liquefied. Then the sampling machine blinked into the ground with mind-bending speed, leaving no trace it ever existed.

"Don't move!" Sadie said. "They must feel the vibrations in the ground."

"C'mon," I said. "This isn't like that ancient movie with Kevin Bacon in it."

"What does 'Footloose' have to do with this?" The irritation in Sadie's voice could not be mistaken.

"Not that one, the one with the worms in the ground."

"That comic book one?" Sadie asked. "I thought he was some kind of energy-absorbing guy."

"There are no worms in X-Men: First Class." It was my turn to be annoyed.

"Was it the one with that guy?" Her non-specificity was supposed to be a joke, but in the moment I did not find it amusing.

"Seriously?!"

Sadie laughed. "I remember reading that people used to play a game connecting any actor to Kevin Bacon in less than six films."

We both stood frozen, but I could not get my mind to focus on the danger below the ground. I really needed to think of the name of this movie.

"You know the one, they're in the desert, there are these big worms..."

Sadie shrugged. "Maybe I never saw that one."

"What are you talking about!? You watched it with me on the trip from Earth!"

"We watched the one where he's an Army lawyer, umm, 'A Couple of Good Men'."

"A few."

"A few what?"

"Ugh, nevermind. It wasn't that one. I just can't think of the name of it."

"Don't ask me," Sadie said. "You're the movie buff."

The titles went through my head over and over, the same few wrong ones. I thought of a title, then remembered the plot and dismissed it. It just wasn't coming to me.

"They couldn't walk on the ground without the worms feeling it," I pleaded with Sadie, hoping to ring a bell.

"Yeah, I remember that part now."

"And?"

"Still don't remember what it was called."

A hideous alien burst from the ground between us, tentacles waving furiously. I wanted to run, but couldn't.

"TREMORS!" the alien shouted. "The movie was Tremors! I hated it, the bad guys won in the end."

Tremors, that's it.