Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 62

I WAS SLUMPED over in my cell, feeling awful about what I’d said to Pork Chop, when I sensed wraithlike movement on the other side of my cell door. Then Seth entered with a contingent of formal-looking, uniformed alien guards. Now I felt even worse. If I was murdered, I’d never be able to tell Pork Chop how sorry I was.

I was herded into a large, high-ceilinged chamber crowded with a couple dozen horse-heads in black smocks, working at computer consoles.

Was this the execution chamber?

My mind reeled, coming up with a couple dozen horrendous ways in which I would now be put to death. I gritted my teeth and erased all the bad images. I wasn’t going to give Seth the satisfaction of seeing me afraid.

“Get it over with, Seth,” I said. “Do your worst. I can take it.”

“You think so? Put his home up on the big screen,” Seth commanded.

I turned as a soccer field-sized wall seemed to vaporize and a star-sprawled view of space appeared.

Oh, I thought. This wasn’t the execution chamber. It was the bridge of the spaceship. Whoops, I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. I liked this one a whole lot better.

The view on the screen seemed to pan to the left. I gasped! Filling the screen was Earth in all its massive, beautiful glory.

“Why have we come back?” I asked. “And why is Terra Firma greenish at the edges? What have you done now, Seth?”

“Come back? Did you hear this fool?” Seth called out to the other aliens. “Of course, we just went for a seventeen-light-year spin around the block. That’s not Earth, idiot. I said you were home. Welcome to Alpar Nok, your home world, jackass.”

Alpar Nok? I thought, staring at the green-tinged planet. My home?

The screen tilted suddenly, and the shining green planet on it got larger and larger as we approached in a hurry.

My poker face crumbled as we blasted through clouds and an ocean appeared. An ocean, calm and limitless and filled with the purest, bluest water I’d ever seen.

I felt it then, a kind of warming of my soul. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t take my eyes away from this miracle.

I was home.