She’s got a point. But still, I feel bad.
Tin Tom guides us the rest of the way and we steer towards a valley with bright green grass with patches of pink dotted throughout it. We land hard.
Mandy flies through the air and lands on the headless corpse of our once animated pilot. She begins a new round of puking. Now I definitely have to get off of this ship.
Tin Tom tells Rolanda to flick a few switches and the engine shuts down. It’s eerily quiet without the hum of the engine or the purple electricity shit or whatever it was that was propelling the ship.
There’s a loud hiss and the doors slowly open behind us. I hold my breath waiting for my head to explode or something but I can’t hold off for long and close my eyes as I inhale.
It’s oxygen.
I let my head fall back against the seat and take a deep breath of the cool fresh air flowing in. The three of us step up to the door and gulp as we look out at the spectacular valley in front of us.
I take the first step out and let out a huge breath when the ground doesn’t swallow me up whole. It’s good old-fashioned dirt. There are low mountains on either side of the valley and besides the vibrant colors everywhere, it looks a lot like earth.
Well, except for the six moons in the sky, the dozens of meteors hurtling through the sky, and the fact that there’s no Starbucks, yoga classes, or any other cool shit.
Rolanda jumps up and down with her fists in the air. “I’m the MMA champion of the planet!” she hollers.
“Are you?” Mandy asks.
Rolanda grins. “On this planet I am.”
Both Mandy and I take a step back. We’re not about to challenge her for her made up title.
“Welcome to Zandipor,” Tin Tom says as he rolls up to the open door of the spaceship.
“Zandipor?” I ask, turning back to the blinking robot. That doesn’t sound too bad.
“Yes, Zandipor,” he repeats. “Land of the dinosaurs.”
Wait. Did he just say freaking dinosaurs?!?
four
“Dinosaurs?!?” Mandy screams as she whips her head around. “Like, dinosaur, dinosaurs?”
Tin Tom beeps as we anxiously await his answer. “I’m not familiar with a dinosaur dinosaurs,” he says. “But Zandipor is the home of the dinosauriforms. What earthlings call dinosaurs.”
Even Rolanda is freaked out. Her face is turning as white as Mandy’s. She’s a tough bitch but even the best fists in the universe aren’t a match against a freaking T-Rex.
“Observe earthling women,” Tin Tom says. “There is a dinosauriform coming now.”
My blood runs cold and every hair on my body stands at attention as I slowly turn around. There’s a fucking dinosaur alright, and it’s a goddamn T-Rex. It’s far enough in the distance that I don’t have to pee my shorts yet but that can all change in an instant. I’m assuming, by the three dinosaur movies that I’ve seen, that it can run over here in the time it takes me to tighten up my shoe laces. I really should have tightened them on the ship.
I can’t take my unblinking eyes off it. It’s huge. Even bigger than I thought a T-Rex would be. We’re probably the three only humans in history to lay eyes on a Tyrannosaurus Rex but I don’t feel particularly lucky. Watching Jurassic Park was good enough for me. I don’t need to see the live version.
The T-Rex doesn’t see us and begins walking in the other direction towards the mountain. All three of us take a breath of relief.
“Why did you let us land on a planet full of dinosaurs?” Rolanda asks with narrow eyes.
Tin Tom just beeps. “You are the Captain of the ship. I go where you tell me to.”
Rolanda throws her hands in the air and groans. “I hate you, so much right now.”
Every few minutes there’s a soft thumping in the distance. Dozens of white lines decorate the sky as meteors fall from the heavens. “Why is it raining rocks?” I ask Tin Tom.
He blinks. “It appears that Zandipor is in the midst of a meteor shower. It is the debris from Orunta, a nearby planet that has recently exploded.”
“Holy shit,” I say, looking up at the falling rocks. “Recently?”
“Yes,” Tin Tom answers, “ninety-eight thousand years ago. Roughly.”
“Rocks I can handle,” Rolanda says, jerking her head from side to side. “Dinosaurs I can’t.”
“Let’s get a closer observation of the dinosauriforms,” Tin Tom says. Before I can scream ‘no’ the stupid robot lets out a screeching alarm that echoes down the valley.
It only shuts off when Rolanda kicks him over.
But it’s too late.
The enormous T-Rex is staring right at us and whatever it was interested in before apparently isn’t anywhere near as interesting as us. It starts running. Fast.
It’s so far away but I can still feel the vibrations through my feet. I can still hear it grunting.