Forty-One
With each slow-poison breath, color flooded back into my vision.
I’d come out in the best and worst possible place.
The tunnel emerged right in the lagoon, not five meters from shore. The tranquil opalescent water looked inviting as a tourist brochure. I could walk to shore from here. A tortoise-bot was working the bottom of the stairs right now, not twenty meters away. Run up. Seize it. Flip it on its back to drop it into maintenance mode. Breathe deep the whole way back to the water, to get my blood going, and plunge back into the tunnel.
The aliens, all eleven of them, stood right there.
When I’d been in my pressure suit, they had seemed large and strong, but reasonable.
Outside my pressure suit? They were huge. I’m not a big person, and they were big men.
And they smel
