Page 32 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

Thunder rumbles, a low sound that rises and then fades.

Screams erupt within the group.

“What was that?” someone shouts.

“Where did it come from!?”

“What’s happening?”

The entire caravan comes to a halt as the shipborns crouch, moving closer to each other, casting worried looks into the sky. I try to find Elder in the crowd, but he’s too far away.

“What are they going on about?” Chris asks. Around us, the people on Phydus show no reaction to the thunder, but Kit is wide-eyed and terrified.

“It’s just thunder,” I tell Kit. “It’s nothing to worry about; it just means it’s going to rain. ”

She nods but still looks scared.

“These people have spent their entire lives on a spaceship,” I explain to Chris, already breaking through the crowd, trying to find Dad and Elder. “They don’t know what thunder is. ”

The trees rustle, showing the undersides of their leaves, and the wind picks up, chilling my skin, made slick with sweat from the humid air. This storm is moving fast.

“We have to keep moving!” I say as I push through the crowd.

“What if it gets us?” someone near me asks.

“What if what gets you?”

“The thing in the sky?” I don’t know if he’s talking about the reptilian bird or the thunder, but either way, standing here will do no good.

“Come on!” My dad’s voice is frustrated and loud. “We need to keep going!”

Elder catches my eyes from across the mob of people. I see the same fear in them that I see in all the other shipborns. They are more scared of the thunder, which is harmless, than the alien life that might kill them.

I push through the crowd to reach Elder. He looks grateful as I approach but scowls when Chris moves behind me.

The fear I saw in him before evaporates. He calls out to his people to keep going and leads the charge himself, striding farther into the woods.

The sky continues to grow darker.

The shadows in the trees seem to have eyes, the stillness of the forest before the storm reminding me of the silence before an attack.

16: ELDER

There’s desperation in the way we march through the trees now. The shuttle is far enough away that, even if we could somehow make it past the locked doors, we wouldn’t be able to return to it before the storm hit, and the trees seem as if they’ll never end.

“How much farther?” I ask. I don’t like the way it’s so humid here—the air seems to steal my breath away.

“We’ve gone nearly a mile,” Lieutenant Colonel Bledsoe says beside me. Colonel Martin is looking at some sort of instrument, perhaps a compass, and picking out directions. Amy and Chris are behind me, but at least they’ve stopped flirting. “The probe sensors indicated that water would be near here,” she continues. “If we can find some sort of shelter near that, it would be ideal. ” Bledsoe’s accent is so strong, I’m grateful that she’s still speaking slowly for my benefit.

She looks down at me, waiting for me to contribute my thoughts, and it hits me that if I’d met her before Amy, I would have been scared of her. Honestly, I’m a little scared of her right now. Her eyes seem too big, as if they know too much; and it puts me on edge. Despite the fact that this woman slipping through the forest is both graceful and beautiful, I cannot shake the feeling that she’s also dangerous.

No. I shouldn’t think that way. I saw how Amy was hurt when others flinched away from her, and I don’t want to do that to anyone. I know the way Eldest, who looked just like me, was so quick to hurt others, and I know Amy, who looks nothing like anyone on Godspeed, never hurt any of them.

“How sure are we that the probe is accurate?” I ask.

“Pretty sure. ”

It’s humid here in a way I never felt on Godspeed. The air feels thick and damp, like I could swallow