Starport: Zeta Prime (Alt) Read Online Free PDF Page B

if she even had enough energy to stand, and the fur was
feeling more comforting by the second. Plus, there was a more
pressing issue at hand. Running her tongue along dry lips, she
became hyper aware of a raging and growing thirst. It baffled her
as to why they’d brought her something to eat but nothing to drink.
Swallowing a few times to try and create some moisture–another
physical problem struck her.
    She utterly and
desperately needed to pee. The irony of her body’s two most urgent
needs was not lost on her at that moment and she bit her lip at the
lack of options she had to sate either one. Shuffling on her fur
mattress, she deduced that the need to drink was greater, and
lifted the bowl of mush to see if it contained any liquid. The
contents had congealed so that a thin film coated the top, and her
stomach turned. If it had contained juice, it had long since
evaporated.
    She huddled down and lay on her side, knees pulled in
towards her chest. Wanting to show strength, not weakness, she
would rather suffer than wake the sleeping creature and explain her
needs. Her bladder throbbed
and her mouth felt dry to the point of stickiness. It seemed like
she would never sleep, what with so much need. But her resting
place was warm, and her day had been long and tough. Against her
mightiest will, her eyelids began to grow too heavy to keep open
and she soon fell into the ignorant blackness of sleep.
     

Chapter Five
    With a jump, she woke. Memories of the events that had occurred the previous
day hitting her consciousness like a truck. She sat up immediately,
alert and aware straight away. Her heart sank as she took in the
surroundings. The grey stone making up the walls of her dwelling
were uneven and misshaped, held together precariously by unique red
mud fashioned into a sort of cement. A warming beam of sunlight
shone through the open door. She shook her hand and a loud rattle
reminded her of the fact that she was still chained
here.
    She fought back tears of misery. Tears that threatened to spill for her ruined life.
For her current hopeless situation. For the loss of the gateway–the
only possible way she would have ever seen Earth again.
    In a split second before reality had smacked her awake, she
had convinced herself that she was lying in her own bed, that
everything was as it always had been. But she was still a prisoner. In both this village and
if she ever managed to return to the colony, too. It was a bleak
thought.
    Jillian finally
noticed the absence of the alien who had put her in those chains,
who last night had slept just feet away from her. His fur bed had
been discarded to one side of the hut–all signs of him having ever
been there gone.
    Also, her bowl of cold food had been removed, and in its
place a terracotta clay jug. Jillian bit her lip, the stab in her full bladder becoming
ever more painful as she uncomfortably held her urine. Scraping the
jug across the dirt, she soon felt that it was full of some sort of
liquid. Picking up the heavy object awkwardly, she sniffed its
contents. It smelt faintly of clay but other than that was
odorless, and from shaking it slightly she deduced that it must be
water. This wasn’t the good news it should have been. Of course,
she was more thirsty than she had ever been, but the need to pee
overrode the thirst for the time being–the fullness inside causing
her physical discomfort.
    Now it was
daylight, she shunted across the floor on the backside so that she
could have a proper look at the area she had been taken to so
unwillingly, grateful that the length of the chain allowed her this
movement. Rocking with the need to go, she attempted to distract
herself by assessing her surroundings. None of the other huts
looked the same shape or size as hers–she saw just over a dozen in
total, most circular in shape and much larger than the small one
she sat inside, constructed with more care than it looked as though
hers had been. All were larger than the one she was