For the Love of Gelo! Read Online Free PDF Page A

nearby predator. I sighed.
    Suddenly a blue six-legged beast—a thyss-cat, the apex predator of Gelo’s ecosystem and just about the most terrifying sight a Xotonian could hope to see—came tearing out of the darkness toward us. Becky and Hollins fought the reins as their usk-lizards howled in distress and tried to flee. The thyss-cat hunched and sprang high into the air. It landed right on top of Little Gus, knocking him out of the saddle.
    Gus and the cat rolled over and over on the ground, a ball of blue fur and human limbs. I heard a high-pitched mixture of yowling and giggles.
    â€œPizza, heel! Heel, dude! C’mon, Pizza!” said Little Gus, wrestling with the young thyss-cat, which was now much bigger and far stronger than him. “When are you going to learn how to heel?”
    â€œMaybe when you stop carrying raw meat in your pockets,” said Becky.
    â€œGood call,” said Gus, pulling out the parcel and unwrapping it: two fresh usk-lizard flank steaks from the butcher’s stall. Pizza bolted them down in a gruesome and bloody display. Goar and Gec stamped nervously.
    â€œAnd that’s why Pizza’s got to live way out here,” said Hollins, shaking his head and suppressing a gag.
    When he was a mere thyss-cub, Pizza was grudgingly tolerated by the Xotonian populace of Core-of-Rock. After all, the humans were heroes, so perhaps they should be allowed to have exotic (terrifying, dangerous) pets? But as Pizza grew, this tolerance gave way to fear. Every day Pizza looked less like a harmless blue furball and more like a nightmarish killing machine. Eventually, the Xotonian Council held a vote. It was decided unanimously that Pizza had to go. After some of our neighbors complained that Pizza had trampled their puffball garden and eaten three welcome mats, even Kalac was for it.
    So Little Gus had released the beast—then about the size of an Earth housecat—back into the wild. We had chosen a spot near the waterfall where we’d first found him. It was a tearful scene. At the time, Hollins had said the whole thing was very
Born Free
, referring to some ancient human film.
    But that wasn’t the end. Each time we passed through Flowing-Stone, Pizza would bound out of the philiddra forest and give Little Gus a forcible tongue bath. Sometimes he even brought us a bloody shugg carcass as a “present.” And Little Gus brought presents of his own: leftovers, fresh meat, brand-new welcome mats purchased just for Pizza to shred. I was loaning Gus a lot of x’yzoth crystals.
    â€œYou guys go on,” said Gus. “I can ride on Pizza, my faithful mount and battle companion.” Then he tried to climb on top of the thyss-cat’s back. Pizza immediately shook him off into the dirt.
    â€œYou heard him,” said Becky, and she spurred Goar forward. Gus stayed behind, wrestling with his self-declared best friend.
    The other humans and I left the usk-lizards to graze on moss above and descended the long stone staircase to the only intact part of the ancient city, a place we simply called “the hangar.”
    The hangar was a huge iridium chamber, empty save for a couple of spaceships and one messy corner. This small area was cluttered with human things. After the battle, we had brought all that could be saved from their crashed pod: a televisual screen, a dilapidated yet comfortable couch, a stained area rug, and a ping-pong table with one wobbly leg. This ping-pong table was the bloody field of competition for Hollins and Becky. Their high-speed grudge matches made oog-ball look civil by comparison.
    It was a little slice of Earth, right here on Gelo. And I suspect that this—even more than solitude or the chance to work on actual spaceships—was why the humans enjoyed spending time in the hangar. In fact, we made the trip to Flowing-Stone nearly every day.
    â€œSo, who’s up for some ping-pong?” asked Hollins. “What do you