The Ice Goblins

“It’s wild to think this region was never once explored. It isn’t in any records,” Nathaniel says.

“Then we can be the first to report our findings back to civilization. We’ll be famous,” Haticat says.

“There are at least ninety-two stars here never visited. Some of them must have planets,” Doctor Bill says.

“Let’s visit that yellow one,” Nathaniel says.

A few hours later, Nathaniel and his crew find themselves gazing in awe at a stormy gas giant. This planet is mostly carbon dioxide rather than hydrogen and helium, unusual for planets this size. It seems to have smaller storms inside larger storms. A quick survey reveals one storm inside a storm inside a storm – a great blue spot. “Wow.”

The planet has fourteen moons big enough to land on, but only one with an atmosphere. This is an ice world. It is covered in snow and glaciers. Due to volcanic contamination, there are spots of green snow, yellow snow, and brown snow. There is no sign of life.

The pool-ship lands in the green snow at the edge of a white glacier and they step outside. The air is breathable, but a bit low in oxygen, so they each bring a small tank of supplemental oxygen. It is also very cold, so they wear fur coats lined with heating wires. Doctor Bill stuffs his ears under a hat. It is not long before they find a tunnel. “Interesting,” Nathaniel says.

“It’s so smooth and circular. I wonder why,” Doctor Bill says.

They all enter the tunnel and begin to descend, curious what might be under the ice. “Hey, look at this,” Haticat says, shining his light on the wall. The ice here is so smooth and free of bubbles that they can see through it. Inside the ice are shrimp-like creatures, and they are moving.

Doctor Bill raises his scanner. “They appear to be emitting microwaves, melting the ice in front of them and allowing it to freeze behind.”

“Maybe something similar made the tunnels – like a giant worm,” Nathaniel suggests.

“Ugh! I hate giant worms,” Fred says, nervously grasping his holstered laser gun.

The shrimp appear to be fractal in design. Their antennae and swimmerets all appear to be miniature versions of themselves. A few pieces have even broken off and swum away. “The wind must blow algae around the surface of the planet that then lands and becomes covered by layers of ice after which these creatures feed from below,” Doctor Bill suggests.

Several meters further down the tunnel, there is something else in the ice. It is a colonial animal like a cluster of jellyfish with icicle tentacles. It appears to have encased several shrimp and is slowly reeling them in. “Fascinating,” Nathaniel comments.

As they walk deeper, the ice becomes barren once more. Nothing lives this deep. “Footprints,” Fred suddenly says.

Nathaniel bends down to get a closer look. Sure enough, there are imprints of three-fingered claws on the ice. They extend up the walls and across the ceiling. “No doubt their feet produce microwaves, allowing them to get a better grip.”

They continue to walk deeper and deeper. They see a few branches in the tunnel heading upwards, but decide to keep going down. The number of footprints increase, but there are no other signs of life. “It’s almost lunchtime. Let’s go back,” Nathaniel says.

The explorers retrace their steps all the way back until reaching a wall of ice. Nathaniel runs up to it and examines the seam. “The upper layers of the glacier move faster than the lower layers!”

“Can we blast through?” Fred suggests.

“It will take too long. Let’s go around and find another way,” Nathaniel says.

They jog back to the nearest intersection and turn up the side tunnel. Then they hear noises behind them. Strange chirps and scratches ricochet off the icy walls. They get closer. Eventually, the noisemakers catch up with them. Haticat shines his light on the creatures as they round the corner. They are small, bucktooth, mammalian beings, with big eyes and big ears. Upon seeing the explorers, they increase speed. There are hundreds of them. “Run!” Nathaniel orders.

The explorers run until reaching another wall of ice. There is still a gap just a little too small to squeeze through. Doctor Bill starts blasting off chunks of ice as Nathaniel, Haticat, and Fred fire into the mob of chirping, goblinesque creatures. The first few shatter immediately, sparking a feeding frenzy as their comrades cannibalize the chunks. For a moment, the creatures ignore the boys. “I’m through!” Doctor Bill announces.

They squeeze through the hole and run through the ice tunnel. One hundred meters later, they come to another dead end. “It appears that this tunnel returns to the deeper ice layer without resurfacing,” Nathaniel says.

Doctor Bill scans. “There’s only thirty centimeters of ice to get through, but we have to hurry before it slides further.”

Haticat and Doctor Bill blast away while Nathaniel and Fred stand watch. They can hear the goblins in the distance. “We’re done!” Haticat shouts.

“Just in time,” Nathaniel says, staring at the approaching stampede. They all hop into the descending tunnel and slide. Nathaniel fires a laser on wide-beam and low frequency, melting the ice in front of them, keeping the floor slippery. The tunnel gets steeper, levels out, then gets steeper again, and then goes vertical. “Aaaah!”

The four boys land in an expansive cavern. They hurt, but no bones are broken. There are stalagmites, stalactites, and columns as far as they can see. Everything is ice. They decide to explore.

They hear no goblins, but the columns cast such odd shadows that they keep thinking they see them. Soon, they find some large metal boxes engraved with mazes. Small knobs are able to be slid through the mazes as Haticat finds when he touches them. Nathaniel reads the labels. “These are environmental controls. Look, humidity, temperature, oxygen. That’s why we haven’t needed to puff our oxygen even with all this running around.”

“The temperature is set to cycle according to a thirty-hour day. This moon rotates every twelve hours. I don’t think this equipment is from here,” Doctor Bill says.

“Which means we aren’t the first to discover this world. Ugh,” Nathaniel complains.

They keep walking around the columns. There are what look like burrows in some of the larger ones. The burrows seem just the right size for the ice goblins. “Could those goblin things that chased us be the alien explorers?” Haticat asks.

“Anything’s possible,” Doctor Bill says.

“Maybe they’re pets that got loose,” Nathaniel suggests.

Soon, they encounter a very large block of ice inside of which are more animals. There is a tiger, a rhinoceros, a crocodile, some smaller animals they do not recognize, a Human, a Hammer-Face, and a Zook – a three-legged, bird-like race of creatures who have colonized almost as many worlds as the Zleesnits and Nops. “This is a zoo,” Nathaniel says quietly.

“Captain!” Fred calls.

Nathaniel runs to see what he is looking at. Inside the ice is a Tyrannosaur in a jumpsuit with an oak tree growing from the back of his neck. “Let’s get him out of there.”

Nathaniel slides the control knobs through the maze-like pathways of a nearby control box and the ice begins to thaw. In five minutes, Mister Dinosaur is free, wet, and shivering. “I was sent here by Ninosa as a paid explorer.”

“Ugh! So we aren’t even the first to discover the place for Ninosa. The whole galaxy has been explored; there’s nowhere left for us,” Nathaniel complains.

“I noticed the region was not in future records, so I approached the exploration department with my proposal. Once I was funded, I set out and soon encountered the Exlish. I didn’t recognize them as sentient beings at first because their voices are too high pitch for me to hear, but when I played back their chirps at low speed, I realized they were talking. That’s when I returned, looking for their cities, but they captured me, probably thinking I was just a strange animal,” Mister Dinosaur recounts.

“Did you try recording your voice on a communicator and playing it back faster?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes, but they were on me too fast and knocked it out of my hands,” Mister Dinosaur explains.

“Maybe with more of us we’ll have a better chance,” Nathaniel says. “Let’s thaw out the others.”

Seven minutes later, the Human, Hammer-Face, and Zook are free. They tell similar stories. The Human was blown off course by a supernova. The Hammer-Face was hiding from enemies who wanted him dead. The Zook was looking for potential sources of rubidium to be mined. Each encountered the goblinesque Exlish on different worlds in the unexplored zone and were frozen before being brought here. “Well, if we can get back to my ship, I can drive you all home. Unfortunately, we’re trapped under a glacier. The tunnels that took us in have closed behind us,” Nathaniel says.

“The Exlish have ice burrowers – worm-like vehicles,” the Zook says.

“Yes, I thought they must, but we haven’t found any yet,” Nathaniel says.

“I’ll look around,” Mister Dinosaur says.

Eventually, they find a vehicle the size of a short bus and climb inside. It moves by means of expanding and contracting segments of its rubbery exterior, much like an earthworm. The front is equipped with a metal cone that emits microwaves, melting its way forward. Its top speed is thirty kilometers per hour. Soon, they pop out on the surface of the glacier. “Head toward that mountain and take a left,” Nathaniel orders.

They do and Nathaniel’s pool-ship comes into view. It is surrounded by Exlish, who have built igloos in the green snow. They run to meet the approaching burrower vehicle and surround it as well. Nathaniel opens the door and steps outside. The creatures begin chirping non-stop. Nathaniel plays his recorded voice at high speed. “We are people like you. We explore new worlds to increase our knowledge. We mean no harm. You speak too fast for us to hear, so we need to use this playback device.”

The creatures stop chirping. Then several of them jump on one of their own, tearing him apart and eating him. Others join in. “What are they doing?” the Zook asks.

Nathaniel asks why they ate their comrade into his communicator and plays it back. A single Exlish steps closer and says something, which Nathaniel records and plays back. “He was wrong about you. He was the one who said you were some sort of walking plants and that this metal ball was your seed.”

“I can see why they think you’re a plant, but why me?” the Human says to Mister Dinosaur.

“So why eat him?” Nathaniel asks.

“We always eat those proven wrong. Otherwise, they might still lead us into wrongness,” the ice goblin says.

None of the explorers know what to say to that. Mister Dinosaur finally says, “Don’t tell them that we were wrong about them at first, too.”

It is decided to limit interaction with the Exlish in the future. Nathaniel drops the Human, Hammer-Face, and Zook off on the nearest civilized planet with space travel before returning Mister Dinosaur to his ship on the last planet he saw it. It is encased in ice and topped with a fresh coat of snow. Nathaniel simply teleports Mister Dinosaur, Haticat, and himself inside to make sure everything is all right.

“I’ll run the engines a bit and be thawed out in no time,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“Sounds good,” Nathaniel says.

“Just imagine if we were eaten every time we were shown wrong. We could never be explorers, constantly learning new things. We were wrong about this planet being undiscovered. We were wrong about being able to return to the surface through the same tunnel,” Haticat says.

“There is no greater joy than being surprised by something,” Nathaniel says.

“As long as you aren’t taken by surprise and made into a popsicle in a zoo,” Mister Dinosaur adds.

“Yes, I suppose,” Nathaniel says.

A few minutes later, Nathaniel and Haticat return to their own ship and take off, seeking out new adventures and new surprises.

SUPPORT