Spaceships and Magic, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Chapter 156: The N-Body Problem

I had been expecting many things upon arrival to the nearby city. 

Part of me had expected our bad luck to continue, that the city wouldn't really be a city but would be more like a small town filled with mud huts of primitives who would never be able to help us. 

Part of me had expected some kind of megacity like Prespian City, filled to the brim with thousands of different species. 

What I hadn't expected was another mountain, at the centre gouged out of the rockface itself was a gigantic metal doorway. The entrance to some kind of underground metropolis. 

The predator, which we really had to find a name for at some point, sensed my confusion and sent one back, this time accompanied with some blurry images. Images of death and destruction. Images of burning fire. 

I was starting to get the idea that the orbit of the planet wasn't quite as stable as I had originally believed. 

"Yr'arl," I said, "We're going to need to make it to that other mountain, and we're going to need to get there very very quickly." 

I had a theory. A terrible theory that, if it were true, would entirely explain why the creature I had tamed had no eyes even though it lived on a planet that orbited three suns. Why a species would choose to live underground instead of on the surface of a world that would be heated by three suns. 

Heated quite a bit, I'd wager. 

Hadn't come up with a reason for the grass or the trees being able to survive, but I was sure I would come up with an explanation for that too. 

"Have you realised something, Squadron Leader Jacob Lyre?" Yr'Arl asked, concern laced his tone. He hadn't made the logical leaps I had. 

"When we got to this world I wondered how a planet with not just one, or even two, but three stars could possibly stay in orbit around all three properly," I said, "Well, I think the planet stays in orbit, but I don't think that orbit is one that would be very conducive to life." 

Yr'Arl cocked his head to one side as he tried to work out the conclusion that I had already come to. 

"So you believe that this world will draw too close to one, or perhaps more, of the stars in this system to support life?" He asked, "How does the plantlife survive, in that case?"

It was a question that was bugging me too, it was also a question that I was about to get a very unexpected answer to. 

A faint sucking, bubbling sound broke the two of us out of our conversation. 

I turned toward the source of the noise, it was coming from back down at the bottom of the hill. It was coming from the jungle. 

Only, there wasn't much of a jungle left anymore, as it was being slowly dragged down into the ground. Disappearing underneath the topsoil. I think I'd figured out how the foliage of the planet had survived, it had done it the exact same way the rest of the life on this planet survived. 

By hiding deep underground. 

<If the plantlife is receding to get away from one of the stars, but that star hasn't arrived yet, what does that tell you?> BB quickly said from the back of my mind. 

Well, it would mean that the plant life had some way of knowing when the next pass from one of the stars was going to be made close to the planet's surface. They'd have to burrow down before the star arrived so they didn't get burnt to a cinder. 

<And if all the foliage is slipping away under the ground right now, what does that mean?> BB pressed, <Come on, you're not stupid, you should have worked this out by now.>

Insults aside, BB was right. I should have worked it out before now, because now we were really going to have to move, and I didn't know if we were going to make it in time. 

"The star is coming," I breathed, my voice low and worried. 

"What was that Squadron Lead-" Yr'Arl started to say before I cut him off. 

"The star is coming!" I said again, yelling this time, "Only reason the plant life would start to recede is because of the star being on its way, we have got a very limited time now Yr'Arl. We need to get the hell to that mountain, and fast!" 

I didn't wait to see if Yr'Arl was following, I just took off in a sprint that instantly atomized the ground that I was standing on. 

As I ran I pushed BB down into our Synchro mode once again so that I could get the benefit of my enhanced cognition when moving at high speeds passive, otherwise, I was liable to run straight through the mountain let alone to it. 

My newly acquired beast sprinted right alongside me, keeping pace without even having to try. 

The two of us made it over to the mountain in mere seconds, with Yr'Arl bringing up the rear not too far behind us. 

"Hey!" I called out from the base of the door, which honestly looked large enough to fit smaller sized spacecraft through it, "We're gonna fry out here if you don't let us in!" 

Yr'Arl arrived as I finished speaking, the look of concern on his face was obvious for anyone to see. 

At first it seemed like no one was home, or at the very least no one was willing to open the door for us. 

The stars had set while we were walking up the mountain previously, but now it was starting to get bright again. Bright and increasingly hotter. 

As my panic started to rise and rise, and I started to consider simply punching my way through the door, a heavy echoing clunk was heard from behind the metal mechanism and ever so slowly the door swung open inwards. 

We had been saved.