Juanita woke on the deck in the rec room, the lights still dimmed for the night, the blankets that the rock alien, Korta, had brought doing nothing to pad the hard, cold metal. She had no idea what time it was, but judging by how much her body ached, she’d probably sacked out for at least eight hours. There hadn’t been much else to do after the men returned them to the rec room. Tala had paced and railed about the captain while Juanita had explained the weird situation to the others, but eventually, everyone had gone to sleep.

Juanita almost cried out when she rolled onto the shoulder she’d injured the day before. It was so stiff and swollen that she immediately looked around for Tala. Nobody had taken that doctor’s medical kit from her. Surely there were some painkillers in there?

But her gaze snagged on the holographic sphere still displaying the view in front of the ship. She’d missed the final landing because of the trip to the brig. When she and Tala had been brought back here, the view had been stationary, looking out on a lake hemmed in by trees, including trees growing out of the water. Moss smothered the trunks and branches like green shag carpeting. Fish jumped in the water, creating ripples. Some of those fish were the size of dolphins. Or sharks.

Uniformed men walked in front of the camera from time to time, and a few hoses were visible, going from the ship out to the water. A rumbling sound reverberated through the deck, and Juanita couldn’t decide if she heard it through the display or through the walls of the craft.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Angela whispered from beside her. She sat propped against a wall, her blanket pulled up to her shoulders as she gazed at the display.

“Other than the green sky, it reminds me of the Pacific Northwest,” Tala said from Juanita’s other side.

Her blanket was laid out flat, and she’d pulled all of the items out of the medical kit and was examining them.

“I’ve never been there,” Angela said. “But when the sun came up, the sky was purple and green.”

“That’s less like the Pacific Northwest,” Tala said. “What I’d really like is an instruction program to walk me through what this stuff is and how to use it.”

“An Emergency Medical Holographic Program?” Juanita smiled, thinking of the doctor on Star Trek: Voyager.

“Whatever.” Tala held up a tool, flicked it on, and a laser beam came out. “Is this their version of a scalpel?”

“It could be a mini light saber.”

“If that’s all the help you’re going to be, you can go back to sleep.”

“Aren’t doctors supposed to have good bedside manners?” Juanita asked.

“I’m not treating you.”

“You are at my bedside.” Juanita patted her blanket.

Tala gave her a flat look.

“Are you still angry because the captain took you to see that guy only to watch him die?”

“I’m angry at this whole situation.” Tala pointed the laser scalpel—or mini light saber—at the display. “You realize that if these people can’t get their ship fixed, we could be stuck on this weird purple and green planet that’s supposedly in an entirely different solar system, for the rest of our lives?”

A distant screech came from somewhere outside, or maybe there were holo speakers somewhere to go with the holo display. The sound reminded Juanita of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

“The rest of our very short lives,” Tala grumbled, turning her attention back to the tools.

Juanita didn’t know how to address that pessimism. This still seemed like a grand adventure to her, albeit it would be a more comfortable adventure if people weren’t getting killed left and right.

“Is there anything in there that might be aspirin?” Juanita waved to the kit.

“Probably, but I can’t read the writing on the ampules for the jet injectors.”

“Hyposprays.”

Tala’s eyebrow twitched.

“Too bad the ear translator doesn’t do anything for reading,” Juanita said.

“Maybe if I tried to read with my ears.”

“Was that… a joke?”

“Sarcasm.”

“A sarcastic joke?”

“Call it whatever you like. I wouldn’t feel safe guessing at what in here might be the equivalent of aspirin.”

Juanita watched someone walk in front of the lake, but it wasn’t anyone she recognized. She wondered if Orion was out there helping those people or if he was in a cell. Probably not the latter. He’d still been walking around free when Tala and Juanita had gone to the brig.

“I ate the steak,” Angela announced randomly.

Juanita couldn’t decide if she sounded triumphant or disgusted. Maybe both.

“Did you like it?”

“God, no. I was just so hungry that I was shaking. I thought it would help. I’m not sure it did. I still feel kind of shaky. And I’ve got a headache. I think that’s caffeine withdrawal.”

“Drink a lot of water,” Tala said. “Assuming you can find some that’s safe.”

“That’s the kind of superior medical advice you get from someone who spent eight years in doctor school,” Juanita informed Angela, smiling.

But her smile turned to a frown. Angela did look a little pale, even in the poor light.

“Your liver is probably running low on its glycogen stores,” Tala said, ignoring Juanita’s comment. “You may get some symptoms of hypoglycemia until it realizes it has to switch to gluconeogenesis to create glucose from fat and protein. It shouldn’t take long. You should feel better in a couple of days.”

“Should,” Angela said, looking worried.

Juanita didn’t think that had sounded like anything to worry about, but then, she hadn’t understood half of what Tala said. She thumped Angela on the arm, trying to make her feel better, or at least distract her from her concerns.

“Maybe if you have a smart liver, it’ll do that thing faster than normal.”

“I’ve never noticed any of my organs displaying notable brilliance,” Angela said.

“No? I’m pretty sure I have a clever gallbladder.”

“Do you know what the gallbladder does?” Tala asked.

“No, but mine does it cleverly.”

Angela still looked worried. And pale.

“Do you have any pre-existing medical conditions?” Tala asked her.

“I had asthma as a kid and was sick all the time. Getting out of my parents’ old house and not living with their cats all the time helped. I’m allergic to cats. And lots of other things too. Juniper is evil.” Angela sniffed experimentally. “My sinuses have actually been super clear here.”

“I didn’t notice any juniper trees in the corridors,” Juanita said.

“The ship seems free of dust bunnies and cats,” Tala said, “and if there are environmental allergens out on that planet, I imagine they’re so different from what we have in Arizona that your body will consider this a lovely vacation. It usually takes a couple of years to develop new allergies in a new environment. That said, I wouldn’t put anything out there into your mouth.”

“I wasn’t planning to go exploring.” Angela closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “Not until this headache goes away.”

“Make mine go away too,” muttered someone nearby who must have been listening. Indigo. She was lying on her back with an arm flung over her eyes. “Or bring some coffee. Can that alien rock make coffee?”

A few more longing murmurs for coffee came from around the room.

“Some electrolytes might help you feel better,” Tala said. “In addition to water.”

“There are those tablets in sickbay supposedly,” Juanita said, eyeing the holo display. “Maybe we should go hunt for them. And maybe along the way, we’ll stroll past a door that’s open to the planet, and we can take a look outside.”

Tala gave her a sour look. “You’re like those clueless girls in horror movies that hear a noise in the basement and then go down to check.”

“Does that mean you’re not coming?”

“Yes.”

“Angela?”

“I’ll go with you. Maybe there’s coffee out there.”

Juanita shucked her blanket and stood up. “At the least, I bet there are fewer crabby doctors out there.”

Tala sighed, and Juanita expected a lecture.

“I’m sorry,” Tala said.

Juanita nearly fell over in surprise.

“I have a caffeine headache too,” Tala said, smiling faintly. “And I can’t see this like an adventure the way you do. My mother texts me every day. She’ll be worried about me. And I have a cat. I didn’t get a chance to ask a neighbor to feed it or anything before getting yanked away from my life.”

“Oh,” Juanita said. “My parents will be worried too. You don’t have kids or a husband, do you?”

Tala had never spoken about either, but it seemed that by her age, she should be married.

“No. There was never time. My job was so busy that it wasn’t conducive to meeting people outside of work. And inside work, well, I had some unpopular opinions. Nobody was sad to see me go.”

“Oh.” Juanita noted her one-syllable response as less than adequate, but she didn’t know what else to say. “I’m trying to sell one of my novels, so I don’t have to work in a workplace and worry about people’s opinions.”

“If you publish a novel, won’t you have to worry about everybody’s opinions?”

“Well, only the opinions of those who read it. And those will be my peeps.”

“Like they’ll know what a light saber and a tricorder are?”

“Exactly.”

Angela shifted her weight and looked toward the door.

“We’ll see if we can find something like coffee to bring back,” Juanita said, waving and heading for the exit. “We may not make it very far if that ensign is outside,” she warned Angela.

“Maybe he’ll get the tablets for us.”

“That won’t get me to a door where I can look outside.”

“I see my welfare is your top priority here.”

“Naturally.” Juanita stepped in front of the door, fearing it would be locked and wouldn’t open for her, but it slid aside as easily as a supermarket door back home.

And Ensign Bystrom wasn’t standing outside. Nobody was.

“Nice,” she purred, striding out. “I was worried I’d have to flirt with him and compliment him on his tight ass so he would let us go explore.”

“Are you good at that? Flirting?”

“No. That’s why I was worried.”

“That one guy, Orion, seems to like you.”

Warmth flared in Juanita’s cheeks as she remembered the kiss. “Maybe.”

“I guess there’s no point in flirting with anybody. We’re going home soon, right?”

“I imagine so. Tala has to feed her cat.”

“Hopefully, someone will go to her apartment when the police and everyone realize we’re all gone.”

“Yeah.”

At the first intersection, Juanita paused, looking left and right. There was the ladder well they’d used the night before. But she didn’t want to go to the brig now. She wondered if that man had ever been questioned, the first officer.

There weren’t any plaques or maps on the walls to direct them.

Juanita cleared her throat. “Computer, which way to sickbay?”

Angela shot her an incredulous look.

“It works on Star Trek.”

“Sickbay is on Deck 1 aft,” a man’s mellow voice came from the wall.

Juanita bounced on her toes, pleased. Though she wasn’t entirely sure that voice had been computerized. What if one of the Star Guardians had answered her from the bridge? What if they were being monitored?

“Are you the ship’s computer?” Juanita asked.

“I am Eridanus. I am the ship.”

If that was a computer, it had a very dry tone.

“Is Deck 1 up or down?” Angela asked.

Juanita looked at her.

“Oh, like you know.”

“I was going to assume down.” Juanita also figured that if there was a door to the outside, it would be on the first floor. Assuming the ship didn’t have transporter beams. That had always seemed a little farfetched.

“Deck 1 is down,” the ship said, sounding even dryer than before. “Do you wish me to light the passage to show you the way?”

“Yes,” Angela said as Juanita said, “No.”

“Yes,” Angela said more firmly, “and if there’s coffee on this ship, we’d appreciate you lighting the way to coffee.”

“I do not know what coffee is.”

“Damn, I was afraid of that.”

A green circle appeared on the deck to their right. They started walking toward it, and it moved ahead of them, leading them to a ladder, then turning holographic and three dimensional to bounce down the rungs. When they didn’t follow promptly, it bounced back up, then bounced more slowly down.

“I think the ship thinks we’re stupid,” Juanita said.

“I’m not sure it’s wrong.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Noise like a vacuum cleaner or maybe a pressure washer rumbled on the first deck. As they followed the green ball, now appearing flush with the deck again instead of in a three-dimensional form, Juanita caught a whiff of some damp vegetation. It smelled nothing like the juniper and pine from home, nor did she recognize it as anything else familiar.

They came to a T-intersection, and a breeze whispered in from one side. The sphere led off toward the right, but a door stood open at the end of a corridor to their left. Light and trees were visible through it.

Juanita jumped up and down. “There it is.”

“That doesn’t look like an electrolyte tablet or coffee,” Angela said.

“It’s an alien planet. I have to record this.” Juanita touched her phone in her pocket. She hadn’t used it since her quick check the day before, so she should have some battery power left.

“I don’t.”

Juanita waved her toward the sphere, which jittered back and forth impatiently as it waited for them.

“Go, find sickbay. Get some tablets for the others, too, please.”

“How will I know which ones are the right ones? Doc Tala couldn’t even find aspirin in her kit.”

“Ask the ship.”

“Eridanus,” the ship corrected in that same dry tone. It seemed to be the only one he—it—had.

“Eridanus will help you.” Juanita jogged toward the exit, not looking back.

“Tala is right. You’re totally that horror movie girl.”

“I’m not going outside,” Juanita called back. “I just want a look.”

Even if she had wanted to go out and explore, she doubted she could get far with all those men working outside. They would inevitably catch her and tote her back to the rec room.

But when she reached the door, a big heavy hatch that reminded her of an airplane door, Juanita didn’t see anyone. The ship had landed in something that looked like a peat bog with clumps of bladed vegetation similar to grass rising here and there. Trees rose a hundred feet away, and the lake she’d seen was off to the right, as was the front of the ship.

Juanita leaned out, peering in that direction, expecting to see the men that had been working out there earlier. There were hoses leading from the ship to the water, but she didn’t see the people.

A screech sounded, similar to the one she’d heard earlier from inside. It was much louder out here, and all the hairs on the back of her neck rose. The noise seemed to come from the trees straight ahead of her.

“I am definitely not going outside.” No horror movie endings for her, no thanks.

She pulled out her phone and recorded the vista. The trees growing up out of the soggy land, with water lapping at their raised roots, didn’t look much different from mangroves, but the green sky visible above them was definitely different. The water of the lake had an emerald green cast that she had never seen, either.

After recording the area, she experimented with taking a picture of herself in front of the background. The picture of her standing in the hatchway wasn’t that exciting, so she turned around and leaned out as far as she could to get one with the green sky above her.

“Is that some kind of ritual unique to humans of your planet?” a voice asked from below.

Startled, she fumbled her phone, and it slipped from her fingers. Afraid it would fall in the water, she lunged, trying to catch it as it fell. Her foot slipped on the hatchway, and she tumbled backward. Even though the ground was only a few feet down, she flailed and twisted ungracefully, afraid she’d hurt herself.

But she landed in someone’s arms.

“Orion,” she blurted.

Belatedly, it occurred to her that the voice had been familiar.

“You remembered.” He smirked, his teeth white and grinning above his goatee.

“A ritual, yes.” Juanita turned in his arms, trying to see where her phone had landed. “It’s called the selfie. It’s extremely important to humans of all ages on my planet.”

“Are you looking for this?” He shifted so that he held her up with only one arm—an impressive feat—and showed that he gripped her phone in his other.

“Yes!”

He handed it to her.

“You’re my hero.” She grinned and kissed him on the cheek.

She hoped for a smile in return, but the humor faded from his face, and he set her down.

“My brother informs me that’s a problem.”

“Your flint-ass brother can sit on his thumb and rotate.”

He blinked a few times. Juanita wondered what the translator had done to that phrase.

“He is fairly flexible,” Orion said.

The screech came from the trees again. Was it closer this time?

Juanita rested her hand on Orion’s bare forearm, glad he was here now. And also glad he carried that big bolt bow and his full collection of knives. Did knives work on pterodactyls?

“Those are fire falcons. The birds of prey that this ship is named after.” Orion nodded toward the craft.

Juanita hadn’t seen the ship yet from the outside—Hell, she hadn’t seen much of the inside, either—and decided she would have to walk out a ways to get a better view of it, but there was a wing sticking out of the side above them, and it reminded her a little of the Klingon Birds of Prey, except that it was a fiery orangish-red instead of gray or green.

“It’s probably more likely to get pulled over and given speeding tickets,” she murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. Are your people familiar with this planet? You must be if the ship is named for the birds.”

“Named and designed after them, but no, actually. This planet is in the database, but this system hasn’t been explored thoroughly. It used to be a cul-de-sac since the gate leading to your system was dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, there are lots of dead gates out there. Usually, as near as our cartographers have figured, ones that are very far apart. We think it was once possible to take a single gate from one side of the galaxy to the other, but those are dead now. If you fly through one, nothing happens. Most of the locations closer together work, so crossing the galaxy is still possible. You just have to take a lot of shorter trips. And because the wormholes weren’t placed in convenient and linear ways, it takes months to traverse the entire galaxy.”

“No non-stop flights, huh?”

His forehead wrinkled.

“Never mind. Interstellar drift?”

“What?”

“I assume if the gate system is really old, the stars will have drifted apart since it was created. The changes would be less significant with systems closer to each other.”

He was staring at her now, his forehead still with a crinkle to it. “Your people don’t have spaceflight. How can you know that?”

Juanita thought about mentioning that it had been explained in an episode of Stargate SG-1, but said, “I’m smart,” instead, and winked.

His eyebrows arched.

She really was bad at flirting.

“What I don’t understand, however,” she said, “is how people—and aliens—could have been cruising all over the galaxy for—you said centuries, didn’t you?—and we never saw signs of it back on Earth. Gaia.”

“Centuries, yes, and the Zi’i were out there for tens of thousands of years, according to them. But they originated on the far side of the galaxy and didn’t learn how to use the gates until recently. We actually showed them, inadvertently.” He tilted his head. “If your people haven’t been out here in spaceships using the gates, how would you have seen our worlds and learned of life out here?”

“Well, we have big telescopes, and we’re always looking for signs of life in space. We’ve been sending out radio waves for decades, hoping for a response.”

“Radio waves? Maybe in a couple thousand years, we’ll get your message.”

“Oh, right.” Juanita knew the size of the galaxy and that they were looking into the past when they looked out onto the other stars, but she tended to forget about such things when she was imagining Kirk, Spock, and McCoy zipping from solar system to solar system at Warp 5.

She looked toward that green sky, wondering if her own sun might by visible among the stars when darkness came here. She was on the verge of asking Orion if he knew how far they were from her home now, and also where in the galaxy his home was, but another screech came from the trees, distracting her.

He turned in that direction, his hand on his bolt bow.

“Are fire falcons deadly?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. I’m sure the Star Guardians wouldn’t have designed their ships after tame birds.”

“Where’s the Star Guardian crew now?” Juanita pointed toward the lake as a fish at least as big as she was leaped out of the water, caught an insect, or maybe that was a bird, and disappeared with a splash. “And why are the fish so big here?”

“A lot of the predators here are large.”

“Are fish considered predators?” She didn’t truly know if fish was the right word, since she hadn’t gotten a good look at that thing. Were fish, as she knew them, universal? Did they evolve all over the galaxy wherever there were lakes and oceans?

“These ones are,” he said grimly. “As for the crew, I’m not sure where they went. After I woke up, I came out here to see if I could help, since I’ve been forbidden to offer you tours, and I came out to this.” He waved toward the hoses, then walked toward the front of the ship. “People were here recently, but everybody’s gone. I don’t know why.”

Juanita hesitated, not sure if she should walk after him. It wasn’t as if she had weapons, and she’d already vowed not to be the stupid Earth woman who heard a noise and wandered off on an alien planet to get eaten.

“Just to the front of the ship,” she muttered.

Besides, standing next to him seemed safer than standing by herself.

There were boot prints all over the muddy ground between the ship and the lake, and dirty handprints on the wide white hoses that were presumably pumping water into the Falcon 8’s tanks.

Juanita didn’t know exactly why the ship needed water, but she’d definitely gotten the idea that the slavers had sabotaged things. She could hear pumps running somewhere behind the hull, but there was nobody out here minding the refilling.

“Maybe they set it up and went back inside?” she suggested.

“I don’t think so.” Orion walked along the shoreline, moss covered mud slurping at his boots. “A lot of tracks head off that way, into the trees.”

“The trees where those loud screeches are coming from?”

“Yes.” Orion glanced back toward the ship, then paused and took a longer look. “Odd, the ship’s not on dry ground. Look, the nose is sunken into the mud near the lake, almost as if this was an emergency landing, and they had to take what they could get. That’s not like Zakota. Or the captain.” He frowned, then looked to the tracks again. “People look to have been out here in combat armor. Big, heavy boot prints. I could see a few people getting kitted out to guard the engineers setting up the hoses, but it looks like everybody out here was in armor.” He paused, staring down at the mud. “There are a lot of tracks. I can’t tell if one group was tramping around a lot, or if there were more people out here than makes sense. Why did so many of the crew come out to suck water out of the lake?”

Juanita crept up beside him. Something had left huge three-toed paw prints—or maybe those represented talon marks?—in the mud next to all the human boot prints. No, wait. She squinted for a closer look. The alien creature had trampled over the boot prints.

“Were they chased into the woods?” she asked.

“Good eye,” Orion said, “and it does look that way, yes.”

The praise warmed her, but she frowned at Orion. “If big predators came out after them, why would they have gone to the woods way over there instead of into the ship?”

“A good question. And I don’t know.” Orion gazed toward the trees and then toward the ship. He brought his wrist device to his mouth. “Falcon 8, anyone at the comm?”

Nobody answered.

“Sage,” he said, presumably calling a different number, or maybe the device did that automatically. “What’s going on here?”

Again, nobody answered.

Orion looked at his watch. “Oh. That explains it.”

Juanita peered over his shoulder. The device had an interesting screen that somehow projected everything on it to a flat holographic display the size of a tablet computer back home. Despite being holographic—she assumed that was what it had to be—it looked solid. She had no trouble seeing all the icons and words on the screen, but she didn’t understand any of them.

“No service,” Orion said.

“I have the same problem with my phone,” Juanita said. “It’s hard to get a cell signal from another solar system.”

“Yes, we can’t comm home from here under any circumstances, since there’s no way to send radio waves through the wormholes, but the ships have their own local networks with enough power to transmit across a planet or even a small star system. I shouldn’t have any trouble contacting the bridge from fifty meters away. We better go inside and see what’s up.”

Orion headed for the door Juanita had come out.

“Should we get a team together to find the missing people?” she asked.

“We?” He smiled at her.

“Well, you. I don’t have a weapon, and that thing with the three toes looks big.”

“I’ll let the XO know what’s going on, but ultimately, I’m just a guest on this ship. I don’t get to make decisions.” His voice lowered. “Especially now.”

Despite his words, he gazed toward the trees again, his hand brushing his bolt bow. He looked like he wanted to help.

“If you did something heroic, maybe your brother would be more likely to include you in the decision-making.”

“I could risk my life doing something I believed was heroic, and I doubt Sage would even notice. Or he would think I’d done something idiotic and risked myself for no reason. All he ever sees me as is his screw-up little brother who never fit in with the rest of the family—or the rest of the planet, for that matter. I’m surprised he even agreed to bring his ship out to help when I stumbled across Cutty’s plan to kidnap you all. He does like rescuing people and being the big hero, but he didn’t seem enamored by my plan for infiltrating the slavers.”

“I liked your plan.”

He smiled and touched her shoulder. “Thank you. Are all Gaian girls so supportive?”

Gaian? It seemed a weird way to be identified, but claiming to be an Arizonian wouldn’t mean anything to him. “No, I’m special.”

He snorted. “I believe it.”

They reached the hatch on the side of the ship. It was closed now.

“Huh.” Orion climbed up the hull, having some trouble on the ship’s smooth exterior. The inset latch didn’t look that easy to access, either.

Juanita had a feeling people weren’t supposed to be able to let themselves in. He tapped at the hull beside the hatch, then stared at it.

“There should be a glowing keypad that appears here.” Orion reached for the inset latch, trying to turn it manually. It didn’t turn.

He jumped down, propped his fists on his hips, and glared up at the hatch.

“This isn’t the part of the movie where the ship takes off and strands us on the planet, is it?” Juanita asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that to me, but you’re a guest.”

“A guest who was supposed to stay in the rec room. Maybe they don’t know I’m out here.”

“I had a feeling you weren’t supposed to be hanging out the hatch taking pictures of yourself.” He smiled at her again. “I’ll check the other entrances.”

That involved jogging around the ship to a much larger hatch, probably for loading cargo, and then climbing to the top where there must have been something akin to a submarine hatch. Orion checked both, then slid down, landing in the mud with a splash beside her.

“Everything is locked up. What’s odd is that none of the keypads light up. It’s almost as if there’s no power to the exterior of the ship. That shouldn’t be the case unless it was damaged at some point.”

“Could it have taken fire in the battle with the slaver ship?” Juanita asked.

“Nobody told me about it, and there wasn’t evidence of anyone doing repairs. All I heard about was some weird algae contaminating the water, hence the need for this side trip.” He grimaced and poked at his watch again. “Apparently, I was inadvertently responsible for that.”

“What? How?”

Orion was looking at his screen and didn’t answer. “There isn’t power to the exterior. According to my logostec’s sensor, there’s no power coming from the ship at all. Hells, did that algae mutate into something that could affect more than the water tanks?” He looked at the hull, his eyes concerned.

“I was just in there, and I didn’t hear any alarmed yelling or see anyone running around.” Juanita scratched her cheek. “Actually, I didn’t see anyone at all. Not even the green-haired ensign who was standing guard for the rec room yesterday. Is that weird?”

“Something’s definitely gone wrong.”

A knot of worry started forming in Juanita’s gut. Could something be happening inside the ship? Was everyone in there in danger? Angela? Tala?

Another screech came from the trees.

Or were she and Orion in more danger since they were stuck out here?

“If the power went out,” she said slowly, “would they be stuck inside?”

“There are panels you can open to physically unseal the hatches and get out in an emergency. They may simply be so absorbed with their problems inside that they haven’t tried to go outside yet.” Orion shook his head and looked toward the sky. “This is not good. If an enemy were to come by, the ship would be an easy target. And even though the Star Guardians tend to be adored and even worshipped by the good people of the galaxy who appreciate what they do, they’ve made a lot of enemies among those in the underworld. Like slavers. There are those who would take advantage if they found a helpless Star Guardian ship.”

“Could those slavers have friends out here?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t hear if Sage managed to interrogate that first officer yet. If he did, I wasn’t invited.”

“Neither was I. I guess we’re both outcasts.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You’re not an outcast. You’re an uninformed guest.”

“I’m not sure that sounds more flattering.”

“Perhaps not.”

“I’ve been an outcast for plenty of my life, if that makes you feel better.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows rose. He looked intrigued. “That’s hard to believe.”

“My family is very traditional, and I’m… well, I grew up with a crush on Daniel Jackson and wanted to go through the Stargate with him and Captain Carter. She was so smart. I wanted to be like her. And I wanted to go to the stars with Kirk and Spock. And I wanted to go back in time with Marty McFly. I think if I’d become an aerospace engineer or a rocket scientist, my parents would have been proud, but I, uhm, live in a house with three roommates, and buy groceries with the money I make from my YouTube sponsorships. I’m trying to get my first novel published, but right now, I can’t afford a car or health insurance, or anything really. My parents want me to come home to work at the restaurant, but that’s not my dream. But nobody in the family gets my dream.”

She found herself looking out toward the lake and the jumping fish. She hadn’t meant to rant to him. She usually saved that for when her roommates were all home and also in the mood to rant, and they did so while standing around the kitchen and eating ice cream.

“It’s tough when your family doesn’t understand.” He still had his arm around her shoulders, and he gave her a squeeze. “It’s also tough when you’re locked out of your brother’s spaceship.”

“If I were an aerospace engineer, I could probably find a way in.”

“Then we wouldn’t have this time alone together.” He waggled his eyebrows, though his heart didn’t seem to be into the flirtation, and he soon looked toward the trees again.

A high-pitched scream came from them, something different from the screeches he’d said belonged to fire falcons.

“There’s nothing more romantic than a deserted swamp full of crazy predators. What’s making that noise? The three-toed things?”

“Possibly. The brief entry I read on the planet mentioned a lot of large birds, some that fly and some that prefer to run on foot. The forests are full of them.”

“Can they kill people?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So we should avoid them.” Juanita didn’t imagine sitting down in the mud, waiting for this situation to resolve itself, would be very exciting, but what else could they do?

“I…” Orion looked toward the spot where the giant bird tracks had trampled over the boot prints. “I do not wish to leave you here alone, but I also want to go look for the men. They may need help.”

Juanita also did not want to be left there alone. She had the thought that she might be safe from animals if she climbed up on top of the ship, but then she remembered that large birds were a threat.

“I guess I’m going with you then,” she said. “Do you have a weapon I can borrow?”

He blinked at her. “Do you know how to use any of them?” His hand strayed toward his big bolt bow, and then toward a more gun-like weapon on his belt.

“No, but if you show me what to grab and squeeze, I can probably manage.”

“I suppose this wouldn’t be the appropriate moment to turn that into an innuendo.”

Juanita blushed as she considered her words. “Well, we did decide that swamps full of screeching things are romantic.”

“Indeed. Tell me about this Daniel Jackson. Do I need to be worried about competition from your home world?”

“Uh, no. He’s, ah… not someone who ever would have shown up in my parents’ restaurant, looking for me.”

“I would have.” Orion smiled, but it faded quickly as his face sobered, and he handed her something that looked like a fat flare gun with brass knuckles on the backside. “Put your fingers through the holes, then squeeze them into a fist to fire.”

“I understand.”

He led the way along the lakeside, following the tracks toward the dark, ominous woods.

Juanita took a deep breath and told herself she hadn’t been a fool for wandering off to take pictures. She wasn’t quite sure she believed herself.