After escaping from Nathaniel’s parent-entity (named The Mama-And-Daddy) and the agents of the evil Fun Toy Syndicate several weeks ago, the boys travel the stars. For a while, they avoid heavily trafficked planets for fears that the authorities were still looking for them. They are now extremely bored with skimming only the outer edges of inhabited solar systems, looking for interesting planets to explore. They have found nothing but boring, airless balls of rock and ice – until now. “The guidebook doesn’t mention any planets,” Doctor Bill reports, twitching his long, yellow ears. “But what else could it be?” Haticat asks, scratching his whiskers with one hand. “Whatever it is, it’s awfully small and close to the star. It’s possible the surveyors just missed it,” Captain Nathaniel reports, peering through the scope at the tiny world orbiting the red dwarf star Tizin. “Well, if that’s so, Haticat just discovered a new planet,” Doctor Bill says. “Yaaay!” Fred exclaims, jumping and waving his stubby arms. The planet is small, the force of gravity on the surface only one-eighth that on Earth. It has a thick nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. There are no oceans or forests. It seems to be mostly a desert. The tiny ship lands in the soft dirt. The red sun peeks above the horizon as it rises, the hills casting long shadows, bathing everything in a dim, red light. Nathaniel’s normally bright green feathers appear brown. The boys get out and look around. “It’s very dry here,” Nathaniel remarks. “Yup,” Haticat replies, bouncing around in the low gravity on his thin legs. The boys explore for a while. There are only a few wilted plants. There seems to be no signs of animal life at all. There are no footprints, no droppings, and no partly chewed leaves. Except for a cool, light breeze, the desert is perfectly still. “This is a boring planet,” Haticat says, “I need some fun or I’m going to implode.” “I know, me too,” Fred says. As important as fun is for Captain Nathaniel, it is even more important for his crew of Stuffians. Stuffians (also known as Gruezhlings, since they come from planet Gruezhe) are psychosymbiotes that do not ingest food, but instead feed off the energy of either boy-play or girl-play, depending on gender-type. When deprived of fun, entertainment, and social interaction, Stuffians rapidly descend into unconsciousness and there remain until some other kid of the appropriate gender comes to play with them. Deciding to leave, the boys climb back into the circular spacecraft and close the hatch. Fred checks the available engine power. “Hey, there’s not much power left. What happened?” Fred complains. “What?” Nathaniel says and runs to check. He looks over the readings. “There isn’t enough to take off!” “How did that happen?” Haticat asks. “How much power did you use to land?” Nathaniel asks Haticat. “It takes power to land?” Haticat says. “Yes! You have to decelerate so we don’t break up in the atmosphere!” Nathaniel says. “Oh, that’s how it works,” Haticat says. “Ugh! Now we have to wait for the solar panels to charge,” Nathaniel complains. After calculating their wait time to be in excess of thirty-six hours, they prepare to head into the wilderness to look for food, taking thirty-six hours of supplies with them. They walk and walk and walk but see nothing other than dirt, rocks, and distantly-scattered specimens of the same three plant species over and over. Eventually they all get tired. “How long have we been walking?” Haticat suddenly asks. Nathaniel checks his pocket-clock. “Four hours, fifty-one minutes,” he answers, “Why?” “The sun hasn’t moved,” Haticat says. Doctor Bill, Fred, and Nathaniel turn to look at Tizin. “It moved a little bit. It was lower before,” Nathaniel says. “Not much,” Fred comments. “The days must be longer here, but how much?” Haticat asks. “I don’t know,” Doctor Bill says. “We can measure shadows to find out,” Nathaniel says. They measure shadows before lunch and then again an hour later. A quick calculation reveals the day-night cycle to be 189 hours. “With such a long day, and so little moisture in the air, this planet probably gets very hot at noon and very cold at midnight,” Doctor Bill reasons. “That’s it; we’re going back,” Nathaniel declares. “I won’t let us die on our first voyage. We’ll have to send out a distress beacon and hope we are found by boys and not adults or girls.” They turn around. They return to find the ship smashed! The hull is so badly dented that it has torn in three places. Bits of the ship – including the landing struts and thousands of shattered solar cells – lay scattered about. “What?” Nathaniel gasps, running around the ship. There are giant footprints in the dirt on all sides. “Look, the footprints go the same way we went before. I think it’s following us,” Haticat points out. “What kind of creature makes footprints that big?” Fred asks. “They look like gorilla prints but they’re as big as those of a T. Rex.” “I don’t know,” Haticat answers. “This is bad. I don’t think our stupid gas guns will hurt a creature that size,” Nathaniel complains. “It’s worse. It will take a very long time to fix this damage with only the tools we have,” Doctor Bill says. “This expedition is a disaster! We’re too stupid to be explorers!” Nathaniel yells. “I’ll charge the scanners and send the distress beacon,” Doctor Bill says. The boys hand their scanners to Doctor Bill and proceed to scavenge the ship for additional supplies, filling their pockets and their backpacks to overflowing. Nathaniel grabs a handbag and fills it with crackers. He pours water into anything that will hold it. Doctor Bill reports. “Bad news: The energy ports are ruptured. The power’s completely drained now. I can’t recharge our scanners or our spacesuits’ cooling systems or even send out the distress beacon.” “Ugh!” Nathaniel yells. He jumps and kicks the sand. “Okay, we’ll take turns with the scanners, using one at a time until they shut down. We’ll only make a scan for water every ten kilometers or so, so we don’t waste power by overlapping our scan ranges much. We’ll leave our spacesuits here and we’ll figure out how to make another beacon later.” “Yes captain,” Haticat says. The boys take off into the desert again in a different direction. They walk for hours and find no water. Nathaniel’s legs are sore. His pants chafe against the feathers at the base of his tail. Doctor Bill anxiously watches behind them. Three hours and fifteen minutes into their trek he sees a moving black speck in the distance. “There’s something out there,” Doctor Bill announces. The other three boys turn to look. It is hard to judge its size at that distance without a scale of reference, but it must be very big. As they watch, the black speck stops moving. “What’s it doing?” Nathaniel asks. As if in response, the speck starts to move towards them very fast. “Run!” Nathaniel yells. The four explorers run across the plain of hard dirt as fast as they can. Fred and Doctor Bill fall behind due to their short legs. Nathaniel takes the lead. The boys don’t know where they are going; they know only fear at this point. Although he is the fastest, Nathaniel is also the first to tire. He unwillingly slows down, allowing the others to almost catch up. His lungs feel like exploding. Topping a ridge, Nathaniel sees a large cluster of thick vegetation in the distance. “Let’s hide in those bushes!” he gasps. The monster is no longer a distant speck. It is gorilla-like, running on its hind legs, eleven meters tall, and carrying a translucent amber club over its head also eleven meters tall. When it gets closer, the boys see that it has not one head, but twenty-four heads arranged into a cone-shaped cluster facing in all directions – though the boys are too busy and distracted to count them right now. Nathaniel reaches the patch of brush first, his companions lagging behind, just as the gorilla-monster tops the ridge waving its club. Hiding is not easy as the monster storms through the brush, sweeping its club through the vegetation. The boys scatter in all directions, moving deeper into the vegetation. Soon, Nathaniel sees a pond at the center. It is an oasis! Moving closer to the shore, he takes cover under some hairy bushes. The monster cannot find him and gives up. Soon after, the explorers are discovered by a band of monkey-like creatures. Each has a large, slightly upturned horn in the middle of its chest that it uses to hunt. They wear pants, hoods, and neck collars, and carry bags. Except for The Gorilla, which is also a visitor to the planet, they have never seen beings from outer space before. They ask many questions and are asked many questions in return. Nathaniel teaches them about roller-coasters, refrigeration, and clocks. The monkeys teach him how to catch mud worms. The monkeys sleep all night and are up all day and are surprised that other planets have quicker rotations. The explorers also learn from the monkeys that The Gorilla often makes surprise raids, breaking things and flattening people or animals with its club. Nobody knows why. After building a hole to shelter them from the heat, a quick sleep, a hunt, some more exploration, and another sleep, the explorers sit around talking with the monkeys. Suddenly, Doctor Bill feels a tingling sensation in his pocket. “That’s strange,” he mutters, removing his electromagnetic scanner and looking at it. “What is it?” Haticat asks. “My scanner just turned itself on – and it’s fully charged again,” Doctor Bill says. “Strange,” Nathaniel remarks. “Scan for an inductive energy source.” Doctor Bill presses several buttons. “There’s a microwave anomaly north of here. Wait, it seems to be moving,” he reports. Doctor Bill, Haticat, Fred, and Nathaniel are so focused on the scanner readings that they do not hear the approaching footsteps until the monkeys let out a scream. Looking up, they see the eleven-meter-tall gorilla with twenty-four heads smashing its eleven-meter, translucent, amber club on the ground. It flattens three monkeys in rapid succession, killing them while it dances around trying to keep its legs from being stabbed by the chest-horns of all the other monkeys. One monkey charges The Gorilla, pushing his horn deep into a calf muscle. It howls in a chorus of all its twenty-four mouths (a very strange sound) and reflexively kicks, flinging the bold monkey through the air and splashing into the pool. Every monkey charges The Gorilla at the same time now, some climbing up the backs of others to reach The Gorilla’s thighs and then climb up its back. The Gorilla yells as it is pierced in the back and sides. Staggering, it wipes the climbing monkeys off itself and then accidentally steps on one, horn up. Staggering backwards and howling, it then takes off running. The monkeys are too slow to catch it. A war party is formed and nearby monkey tribes join in the search. Eventually, they find The Gorilla. Nathaniel looks around as seven hundred plus monkeys close in from all directions. The Gorilla is trapped, but does not stay trapped for long. With a few swings of its club, it sweeps away hordes of monkeys from its path and charges through the weakest point of the perimeter. The monkeys are too slow to catch up with it. They all stop and take a rest. Nathaniel checks the power level on his scanner. It had been running down for hours while tracking The Gorilla, but now is fully charged! “Doctor Bill, I think it is the microwaves from The Gorilla that is inducing energy to charge our scanners. Every time we get near it, the scanners are charged again.” “Hey, you’re right; that makes sense,” Doctor Bill says. “Maybe we can somehow use The Gorilla to charge our ship,” Haticat suggests. “Maybe, but it might not work once it’s dead,” Nathaniel muses. “Still, we may not have a choice but to kill it anyways.” The sun is low in the sky now and the evening winds are beginning, blowing the sand around. They finally catch up with The Gorilla as it sits in the sand, leaning on its club. The monkeys quickly surround it. It is now sunset and everyone is tired. After a quick deliberation and a snack, the monkeys charge at The Gorilla from all sides. Standing, The Gorilla shows it has some energy left after all as it pounds monkey after monkey into the ground with its club while letting loose a fearsome roar. As the monkeys close in, it desperately kicks them away with both feet. One monkey manages to climb into the back of its left knee and stabs it with his chest-horn. The Gorilla grabs the offending monkey with its free hand (always the right hand – it always holds the club in its left) and hurls it upwards perhaps as high as three hundred meters in the low gravity. No longer able to stand, The Gorilla is quickly overrun and covered in hundreds of stabbing monkeys. Even though exhausted by the heat, Nathaniel runs in to help and is barely missed by the previously thrown monkey returning to the ground with a loud thud. The monkeys throw something called “drying powder,” causing a quarter of The Gorilla’s heads to shrink to half their former size. It makes strange squeaking noises. Before Nathaniel can make his way through, The Gorilla reacts by rolling over and over back and forth, squashing many monkeys and scattering the rest. Nathaniel runs away. Struggling to its feet, it stumbles away, dragging its left leg. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill climb out of the dirt and brush off where The Gorilla has rolled over them and pressed them into the ground. Being Stuffians, they are uninjured by mere pressure, fortunate enough not to have been speared by one of the monkeys’ chest-horns. In all, seventy monkeys are dead and another hundred are seriously injured. They are tended to by the others as they all plan to settle for the night. All the monkey leaders are angry. “Auuuugh! It got away; now it will heal!” the supreme leader yells. “Then we’ll have to start over!” a second monkey leader yells. “And we have even less warriors now!” another monkey adds. Captain Nathaniel quickly rounds up his Gruezhling crew and forms a plan. “We need to follow The Gorilla and learn more about it. I want to know where it goes and how it heals!” The boys walk over craggy ravines and broken rocks, taking much more time than The Gorilla would with its longer stride. Fortunately, the sunset lasts eight times longer than on Earth; these ravines will be dangerous in full darkness. As it is, the long shadows distort the shapes of everything. All the boys are tired from tracking and fighting, but they just keep pressing on. Finally, they round a hill and see a small amber light in the distance. At first, Nathaniel assumes it to be a reflection, but soon realizes it is a glowing object. He checks his scanner. “The Gorilla is straight ahead, two hundred eighty-eight meters,” he says. The boys cautiously approach, looking all around them. Eventually, they see that the light originates from The Gorilla’s club, standing on its fat end in the sand. It glows with eerie amber light. “Where’s The Gorilla?” Fred asks quietly. “The microwave signal is coming from the club. I guess it was all along. I can’t tell where The Gorilla is,” Nathaniel whispers. The boys spread out and surround the club, looking it over. Nathaniel hands the scanner to Doctor Bill so he can make a more detailed analysis. Suddenly, there is a crackling noise and a hole opens up in the side of the club. Out pops an arm! With nowhere to hide for at least a hundred meters, the boys lie down flat on the sand. The arm stretches out further and grabs the top of the club. Following the arm, the rest of The Gorilla emerges, expanding and unfolding as it does so. It appears completely healed. It stretches its limbs and blinks all forty-eight eyes. Picking up the club, which is rapidly growing dimmer, it walks away into the night. The explorers return to camp where the monkeys are already asleep. Nathaniel and his Stuffians find their supplies, retrieve a blanket, and cuddle together under that, taking very little time to fall asleep themselves. When Nathaniel wakes, he feels much better than he ever has since landing. It is completely dark except for the magnificent array of stars across the sky. All of the monkeys appear to be in deep hibernation for the long night. It is much cooler now with the sun down and the temperature continues to drop. They decide to return to the oasis to retrieve their blankets and further dig their hole to stay warm during the long night. It will be a long walk. They soon figure out, however, that they did not keep close track of their compass heading during the day and it is too dark to recognize any landmarks at night. The starlight is only just bright enough so that they don’t walk into things. “We’re too stupid to be explorers!” Nathaniel complains. Not knowing where they are, they continue to walk anyways. Eventually, they see some strange, short structures. Running closer, they see that the structures are stone and mud huts. This must be one of the cities! They tentatively enter one of the huts to investigate. The Hornchest Monkeys live very simply. A group of five sleeps huddled in one corner. The boys explore the sprawling city, learning about how the monkeys live and examining their tools. They gather some blankets to replace their own. It is very cold now. A little rain falls and promptly freezes. Next, they come to an especially large hut and decide to investigate. The shelves of this hut are stacked with cloth books. Many of them consist of only a single page. Others have as many as a hundred. There are several subjects represented, including ways to cook mud worms and berries, the structure of the local government, facts about isosceles triangles, and records of marathon winners. Nathaniel investigates several pieces of cloth on the table. They are partly scribbled on. “Oh, maybe this is what they use for writing and drawing paper. Maybe it’s hard to make new cloth so they reuse it by washing the ink out in the water to erase it,” Nathaniel suggests. “That makes sense. Pencils don’t always work on cloth – or carpet or windows for that matter,” Doctor Bill says, “I once reviewed a treatise on extralinear coloring that addressed this very subject. I think it was titled: Color Outside The Lines – Drawing On Unconventional Surfaces When The Adults Aren’t Looking.” Later, they light a fire to keep warm. They roast some tubers and play games. Then, out of Nathaniel’s peripheral vision, he sees some of the stars suddenly blotted out. It must be an awfully fast-moving cloud! Looking up with both eyes now and so able to perceive depth, he clearly sees that the strange cloud is right next to him and extends to ground level. “Huh?” The Gorilla raises its club and brings it down swiftly. Nathaniel runs out of the way. His scream alerts Doctor Bill, Fred, and Haticat, who scatter in all directions. Regrouping on the other side of the fire, they proceed to run through the city. “The monkeys told us The Gorilla never went into the cities,” Haticat yells. “Maybe it only visits at night,” Fred suggests. “Yeah, the monkeys wouldn’t know if they were sleeping,” Haticat reasons. Nathaniel leads his crew between two close rows of huts and then cuts right, zigzagging through a tight cluster of them. In the dark, Nathaniel stumbles through a cold fire pit and winds up covered in soot. Still, The Gorilla gains on them. Nathaniel runs into one of the huts and sees a group of maybe twelve sleeping boys. “Hey!! Wake up!” he yells as loud as he can. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill each grab a monkey and shake vigorously, yelling. The monkeys continue sleeping. Nathaniel tries tickling them, but even that doesn’t work! The Gorilla stops outside. After pausing a second, it brings its club down onto the roof of the hut. The ceiling cracks and bits of rock and pulverized clay fall down. The boys run to the opposite doorway, but do not make it before The Gorilla hits the house again, this time collapsing it. The hardened clay, mud, and stones fall onto the sleeping monkeys. Other pieces of the walls and ceiling fall around Nathaniel and his crew, falling against each other in such a way to remain propped up. They all squeeze through the door just as The Gorilla smashes the ruins of the hut again, sending pebbles flying. One hits Doctor Bill in the back of the head, knocking him over, but he is uninjured. “This must be the first time The Gorilla has fought inside a city, or else the monkeys would have noticed the damage whenever they woke up,” Nathaniel says. “Maybe it followed us here,” Doctor Bill suggests. “Should we split up?” Haticat asks Nathaniel. “Yes! Split up!” Nathaniel says. The boys split up and The Gorilla decides to follow Fred. He runs through another hut. The Gorilla knocks a hole through the roof with its club and reaches inside, but Fred has already escaped through the back door. Pulling out a handful of girl monkeys, The Gorilla angrily throws them away. One of them bounces off a roof and lands in front of Nathaniel, forcing him to run around her. She sleeps through the entire event. Seeing Haticat in the open, The Gorilla moves towards him instead. Nathaniel runs closer to try to distract it. He runs in circles around The Gorilla, taking shots at it with his gas gun. The exploding pellets hit The Gorilla around the waist, making it flinch, but causing no injuries. It swings its club at him and misses. While it is distracted, Haticat charges it, taking a digging spear and driving it into its big left toe. Roaring, The Gorilla leaps up and pulls the spear out of its toe as the boys escape. Now with a big head start, Nathaniel says, “Follow me, I have an idea.” Nathaniel leads his crew across a clearing and into a large hut with boys, girls, and adults sleeping in separate piles. The adults snore. Nathaniel snuggles in next to the boys. “Pretend to be asleep,” he orders. “Good idea,” Haticat whispers. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill hide among the boys and hold very still and quiet. Soon, The Gorilla walks by. It bends down to peer through the doorway. It holds very still for several seconds, apparently listening. Finally, it rises and continues walking. The boys remain still for several minutes until The Gorilla can no longer be heard before very quietly sneaking back into the night. It worked! Returning to their still smoldering fire, the boys play before finally settling down to sleep for real. It is eight hours later. Still half asleep, Nathaniel inches closer to the last glowing embers. The air is biting cold, the difference in temperature between his half facing the tree remains and the half facing away is substantial. An icy mist hugs the ground. His tail is curled up between his legs and up to his neck. He worries that the tip may already be frostbitten. His claws and teeth ache. This is a tough planet to live on. Suddenly, he jolts awake to full consciousness. He is so uncomfortable. The combination of the cold temperatures and hard ground won’t let him sleep well. He is used to waking quickly, being either fully conscious or fully unconscious, but this planet’s harsh climate has been getting to him. He is so tired and groggy that his Gruezhlings cannot properly feed on his play-energy and it takes them a long time to get up. The perpetual darkness isn’t helping either. Exploring isn’t always fun. He quickly checks his clock to see how many hours are left until dawn. He is relieved to see that it is less than twenty hours. He will survive after all. Gathering his Stuffians up and wrapping them in a curtain, he carries them on his back and looks for food. At last, it is dawn. The boys walk a long time without seeing anything but dirt and rocks. They continue walking until reaching a frozen creek. They follow it east for a ways. It is not long before the explorers are met by a troupe of monkey scouts running south. “We found the aliens!” one monkey declares. “Hi, aliens,” another monkey says. “I have a plan!” Nathaniel blurts out before the monkeys have a chance to say any more. “Bring me to the leaders.” Shortly, Nathaniel and his crew are brought before all the monkeys. He discusses his plan. “The Gorilla needs the club to heal. If we can get the club away from it, we can wear it down and kill it,” he says. “It heals using its club?” a monkey leader says. “It opens a hole in the club and climbs inside. When it comes out, it’s all better,” Nathaniel explains. “This is a good plan. We tried to get the club away from it before only so it wouldn’t be able to hurt us as much, but we gave up too quickly because we didn’t know it was a healing club,” another monkey leader says. “One group should climb up The Gorilla’s arm and stab its wrist. Another group should bite its fingers,” another monkey leader says. “Let’s go look for The Gorilla right away. Fifty of us can stay here to take care of the injured. The rest should be enough to fight it,” the first monkey leader proposes. “Okay,” all the other leaders agree. Within five minutes, they round up over five hundred troops and head south. Captain Nathaniel leads the monkey warriors south, scanning for The Gorilla. Finally, he detects it and moves to intercept. When it is less than half a kilometer away, he directs the monkeys to split into two equal groups and run around a tall hill in opposite directions. “The Gorilla is on the opposite side. If we approach from two directions and spread out, we can trap it before it runs,” he says. The monkeys enthusiastically obey. The Gorilla plods slowly until it sees the first group of monkeys. It impulsively charges toward them, club held high. It smashes its club onto the closest monkeys, missing some and squashing others. As monkeys continue to round the hill in great numbers, The Gorilla realizes it is outmatched and starts to retreat. It is too late. The second group of monkeys closes in behind it. The Gorilla runs to slip through the gap in the ranks, but the monkeys are too fast. The Gorilla frantically sweeps scores of monkeys away at a time with its club. Then it bends over and expels smoke from its bottom. The thick cloud of green-grey smoke rapidly expands, overtaking the monkey troops. Three or five of them faint. From a distance, Doctor Bill scans the cloud. “The Gorilla has arsenic farts!” he reports. “I wish I had that power!” Haticat declares. In the confusion, The Gorilla pushes his way through the monkeys on the opposite side and runs up the hill. “Stop him!” Nathaniel yells. He is not the only one. The monkeys, seeing the situation, run back around the hill to cut it off and then close in from all sides at once. Nathaniel and his Stuffian crew follow. While the hill top offers The Gorilla the advantage of higher ground, the convex surface more easily allows the monkeys to form a denser perimeter. For a minute or so, the monkeys hold their position. Then, a few bold troops charge forward and the rest instinctively follow. The Gorilla swings its club into the leading monkey of one of the advancing columns as if it were playing golf, transferring the force all the way down the closely-spaced line. The monkeys fall like dominoes. The Gorilla immediately follows up by smacking the second advancing column the same way and then farting out a huge cloud of arsenic smoke. The monkeys are forced to retreat again, leaving behind several of their unconscious friends and brothers. The monkeys wait for the cloud to dissipate. On the outside of the group, Nathaniel and his crew get a slight whiff in the breeze that smells less than friendly. While they wait, The Gorilla lets out a loud howl. The twenty-four heads are turned such that twelve voices meet and reinforce each other forty-five meters to the front and the other twelve voices meet and reinforce each other forty-five meters to the back. The Gorilla turns in a slow circle, disorienting and stunning several dozen monkeys and deafening about ten. All the others cover their ears, as do Nathaniel and his crew. “Ow!” Nathaniel exclaims, bending over and then kneeling on the ground. Getting up, he finds his ears are ringing. The monkeys fall back still further. “I don’t wish I had that power,” Haticat says, his ears ringing as well. “I’d hurt myself.” The Gorilla then tries to make a run for it, plowing through the crowd. The monkeys, however, are not all as disoriented as Nathaniel and they react swiftly. Several grab onto its passing feet and begin climbing and gouging. The Gorilla is forced to slow down to wipe the monkeys off with its free hand. The other monkeys sweep around to block its path and climb up its front. The Gorilla continually tries to wipe its legs with its right hand while smacking the ground with its club. It staggers around randomly. Before Nathaniel realizes it, The Gorilla staggers right near him and his crew. They all run back and forth dodging the club. Thinking fast now, with Dromaeosaur adrenalin pumping, Nathaniel leaves his spear and backpack with Haticat, anticipates the landing of the club, gets a running start, and races right up it when it hits. Reaching The Gorilla’s wrist just as it violently raises the club up again, he grabs on. Busy with other distractions, The Gorilla seems not to notice and continues to swing up and down. It hits Haticat, breaking Nathaniel’s spear and guns. Haticat is squashed but uninjured as his stuffing absorbs the blow. Blood rushes in and out of Nathaniel’s head as The Gorilla’s arm swings up and down. This is worse than space travel. Finally, The Gorilla switches to swinging side-to-side. Feeling much better, Nathaniel climbs from the wrist to the inside of the elbow and bites through The Gorilla’s thick hide, ripping out the vein. Clear blood squirts everywhere. The Gorilla instinctively closes its arm and screams, trapping Nathaniel inside. Nathaniel manages to force his snout into the open air, but the pressure on his lungs is so great that he can’t breathe. Fortunately (but not for The Gorilla), this stops its club from swinging for long enough that the monkey hordes can advance and in seconds The Gorilla is covered with them. More than fifty monkeys climb onto its left arm alone, stabbing it in the wrist and biting its fingers. Frantic now, The Gorilla straightens its arm to wipe the monkeys off. Close to passing out, Nathaniel falls out and hits the ground gasping. The Gorilla keeps clearing its arm of monkeys, but enough stab it in the wrist, damaging nerves and tendons, that it loses its grip on the club and drops it. The monkeys cheer. With both arms free, it clears itself of attackers and chases after the club, but some seventy monkeys guard it. “Keep it away from the club!” one yells. “Roll it away!” another yells. The seventy monkeys roll the heavy club down the hill. The Gorilla howls loudly again, but the heads are now out of synch with one another. With so many monkeys guarding the club and so many others either injured or dead, a thin spot develops in their perimeter. The Gorilla lets out another fart cloud – smaller than the others – driving the monkeys back before it plows through their weak point. It outruns the chasing monkeys and stops to rest at the base of the hill. “Everybody guard the club!” Nathaniel yells. The monkey leaders repeat the order and soon every monkey has heard. They fall back to guard the club and The Gorilla walks away slowly into the desert. Still full of adrenalin and anger and now recovered from his ordeal, Nathaniel joins the offensive to chase down The Gorilla. He removes his boots, hoping to use his foot claws. Doctor Bill, Fred, and Haticat follow him. The Gorilla does not run, but walks – and only when the monkeys get too close. In this way, it stays just ahead of them, leading them four kilometers away into a field of large stones. Here, it sits and waits, allowing the monkeys to surround it. “Attack!” the monkey leader shouts. The monkeys thrust out their horns. Fred and Doctor Bill hold out their guns. Everyone runs in. Without looking back (with twelve hind-facing heads it has no need), it runs in the direction of its club. The Hornchest Monkeys and Stuffians are too slow to keep up, but Nathaniel keeps just behind it. Just as it reaches the hill, the monkeys guarding the club and still pretending to sleep jump up and rush it. The Gorilla collapses in a heap of exhaustion and hopelessness and is immediately covered. It thrashes its arms and legs, but cannot get up. It releases one more fart cloud so feeble it only kills the monkey standing immediately over its bottom. Dragging across the sand and stretching out its left arm, it manages to reach the club in spite of the monkeys, but its fingers can no longer grasp due to the severe nerve damage inflicted by the monkeys’ chest horns. After another minute, The Gorilla stops moving altogether. After a minute of jumping, dancing, and cheering, the monkeys scatter in all directions to collect firewood. “This will be the biggest victory feast ever!” one monkey yells. Nathaniel had not thought of eating it. He scans the massive creature. “This gorilla is made of normal protein and fat; I should be able to eat it. Finally something other than bland tubers and gritty worms!” “It’s rich in vitamins and minerals, too,” Doctor Bill reports, also scanning. “The arsenic seems to be located only in the guts.” The monkeys begin to cut up The Gorilla into more manageable pieces. Its internal anatomy is unusual. There are several small organs neither Nathaniel, nor his crew, nor the monkeys recognize. There also seems to be two stomachs and four hearts. Some of the organs are supported by personal sets of rib-like bones, including both lungs, both stomachs, the liver, the bladder, and certain portions of the intestines. When the hearts are removed, thick, clear blood pours from them. Doctor Bill scans the liquid, but learns little other than that it is largely amino acids and water. “I don’t understand how it holds oxygen. It has no hemoglobin or hemocyanin, but I don’t know how to interpret my scanner’s readings well enough to tell you what it does have,” he reports. Every one of the twenty-four heads has its own trachea, esophagus, and nerve cord. These form a huge interwoven mass in the upper torso. Once the fire is lit, Nathaniel and his Stuffians are happy to finally be able to rest their sore legs. While The Gorilla cooks, Doctor Bill, Fred, Haticat, and Nathaniel all take a short nap. The air and ground are starting to get hot, but they know where they are now and how to get to their shelter from here. The space explorers wake to the smell of smoked meat. The monkeys are already picking pieces of The Gorilla out of the fire and passing them around. One nearby monkey sucks on a giant finger, dribbling oil onto its fur. Nathaniel looks around. It seems the monkeys will eat almost anything except cartilage and bones. Nathaniel picks out a meaty rib from the fire. It is both the biggest and most tasty rib he has ever had. There is dancing and games. “The club is still emitting radiation,” Doctor Bill reports, “That means, if we can get the monkeys to help us roll it to our ship, we can charge it up enough to run the air conditioner and live inside while we fix it.” “Okay, we can do that later,” Nathaniel says, scraping the rib with his teeth. He drinks some water. Nathaniel is so hungry, he goes back for another rib and then sits down next to a group of monkeys just sunning and watching the barbeque smoke rise up into the clear sky. On his other side, a couple of monkeys wrestle. “Do you know how to play tag?” Nathaniel asks. “What’s tag?” the monkeys ask. Nathaniel explains and they have a good, long game. Meanwhile, ninety meters away, a lone resting monkey sits against the club lying in the sand. The club glows amber, but too dimly to be seen in the daylight. Then, a hole opens in the club’s side and an arm emerges! Unfolding and expanding, a new creature climbs out of it. The shift in weight alerts the resting monkey and he turns around. In shock and awe, he just watches. The new creature is eleven meters tall, grey, and heavily armored. Its head is a featureless dome. Scattered across its body are twenty-four large eyes, each shielded in a thick, transparent material. It has three arms – two in the usual places and a second, massively-muscled left arm above the first. This arm now grasps the club by its narrow end and raises it. Within seconds, the entire tribe has stopped playing games and turned to face the new danger. As The Creature runs into the crowd of monkeys, smashing them left and right, swarms of monkeys attack it. They attempt to climb its legs, but the grey armor is too slippery. They attempt to stab it, but the armor is too hard. Still swinging its club, the creature bends over and grabs the attacking monkeys with its two lesser arms, pulling them apart and stuffing the chunks into a circular, gaping, toothy mouth right in the center of its chest. Blood sprays everywhere. “Retreat!” calls one monkey. All the warriors scatter, leaving behind both their supplies and the injured. Nathaniel, Fred, Doctor Bill, and Haticat find each other and run away into the desert with only their scanners. The creature runs in another direction after some of the monkeys. “The club made a monster!” Haticat states the obvious. “I think The Club is the real creature and it makes different monsters to swing itself at people. It probably makes a new monster every time one is killed,” Nathaniel theorizes. “That means we have to keep killing monsters forever! That’s too hard!” Haticat says. “Unless we kill The Club,” Nathaniel says. “How do we do that?” Haticat asks. “I don’t know. We can’t try killing it without the monster hurting us, so we have to kill the monster first,” Nathaniel says. “But it’s armored,” Fred whines. “It seems that this monster was designed specifically to have none of the weaknesses The Gorilla had that allowed it to get killed,” Doctor Bill states. Eventually they meet with some monkeys that teach them how to make drying powder and collect some leaves to hold it in. Then they run north, chasing after The Creature and The Club. Doctor Bill tracks it with his scanner. Nathaniel and his Stuffians must stop several times to rest, but eventually catch up with The Creature two hours later. They hide in the shade of a large rock when they spot it. The shade feels so good. “Okay, let’s go,” the monkey emerging as the leader urges. Nathaniel, his crew, and the other monkeys follow behind, keeping low to the ground, hoping none of The Creature’s twenty-four eyes are looking directly at them. They almost make it. Just when the last two monkeys cross the gap, The Creature freezes. After a one-second pause, it turns around and runs toward their hiding place. Crack!! It slams The Club against the rock above the boys’ heads and a piece of the rock breaks off, narrowly missing them. They scatter into the open and The Creature roars. Several monkeys throw powder-filled leaves. Only one lands in the creature’s roaring mouth. It stops to spit and then advances again. The monkey warriors run quickly to dodge The Club while still throwing leaves. The little monkey ventures too close and is caught in its arms. The Creature pulls him apart – still screaming – and devours him. With its mouth open, the monkeys are able to land four more powder-filled leaves inside. The Creature spits out the powder along with the remains of the monkey and hisses. The monkey’s head lands near Nathaniel and bounces over him. “It’s not working!” one monkey screams. “We need to put all the powder into its mouth at once!” Nathaniel says. “That’s too…” the monkey responds just as it disappears under a blow from The Club. He reappears half buried in the sand with his face cracked in three. The rest of them dodge this way and that, but it is a losing battle. Nathaniel is sad. He has been a complete failure of a captain. Here they were on their first mission of exploration and they were trapped on this harsh, boring planet and about to die. “I know what to do!” Haticat screams, grabbing some ropes. “Throw me!” Nathaniel understands. He ties a rope to Haticat and throws him over the head of The Creature. The rope catches on its shoulders and Haticat swings between its legs, coming up on the other side and wrapping up its arm. Confused, The Creature spins around, making tying it up even easier. “Now pull it down!” Nathaniel yells. Fred, Doctor Bill, and the remaining monkeys grab the rope on both ends and tug. The Creature trips and falls over. The moment it hits the ground with a thud, Nathaniel is running at top speed up its body, arriving at the chest and dumping all the drying powder into its mouth at once. The Creature hisses and sputters, then dies. “So, now what do we do with The Club?” Nathaniel asks. Fred ponds it with a stone, but only succeeds in chipping the stone. Doctor bill scans it. “It’s not even remotely combustible,” he reports. “I have an idea! We can bury it!” the monkey leader says. “If we pack the dirt really tight, the next creature will be trapped.” “Yeah,” Nathaniel says. “Start digging!” The boys get to work, quickly digging a deep trench next to The Club. When it is four meters deep, they roll The Club into it and push the dirt on top. They pack the dirt around it and push large stones on top of the dirt. Finished, Nathaniel walks with the monkeys back to the oasis, where he and his crew take a very long nap in their cool hole. Later in the long day when it is not so hot anymore, Nathaniel gets several dozen monkeys to help roll his saucer-shaped spaceship to the burial location of The Club, which still produces abundant microwaves. They plant the ship right next to it just after sunset and it recharges while Doctor Bill makes repairs. Word gets around of the demise of The Gorilla, The Creature, and The Club, and over one hundred monkeys come to see the site of the battleground and throw another party before hibernating for the night. The Creature tastes much like The Gorilla, but with a slight difference in texture of the meat that is hard to describe. Except for the head, it is organized inside much like The Gorilla, complete with individually ribbed organs. Its twenty-four tough, elastic, optic nerves run from every eye to the armored dome between the shoulders. Captain Nathaniel and his crew discuss and organize their biological, geological, and cultural discoveries before making a long log entry of it all into the ship’s computer. They take a few rock and sand samples as well. The Creature’s thick, transparent armor defies known physics. The electromagnetic scanners identify it as boron carbide, but of an allotrope that should only be possible under extreme pressures found only in the cores of gas giant planets. What exotic energies might be binding it together Doctor Bill is at a loss to answer. It takes all of the long night to repair the ship and the boys run the heater to stay warm. In the morning, Nathaniel and his crew gather food with the monkeys as soon as they wake. Nathaniel takes some of the bones and armor from the creature to trade for additional supplies at the next port, and the monkeys are happy to help him load the ship. About fifteen hours after dawn, Doctor Bill announces that the ship is ready to fly. The monkeys gather to watch in wonder as the spaceship hums loudly and rises ever faster straight up into the sky. Never stop asking questions, for learning is the true spice of life. Expand your world. Leave a comment and start a conversation. I’d love to discuss the underlying science and philosophy.
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January 2025
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