Another fragment had collided with the one we were on. It looked smaller than ours, but thicker and more dense. Like a battleship made of stone.
“How did you miss that?” I demanded of Chet, pointing across the green field to the place where the two fragments were mashed together.
“I have no idea!” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before!”
The ground shifted again as the “battleship” fragment shoved farther into ours, causing dirt to roll and stone to crunch. Our fragment was pushed along with it, like an old ship being pushed by a tug—a really aggressive tug with its boosters on overburn.
The chaos sent me to my knees. Scud, the entire fragment was shaking terribly. On Detritus I would have thought a thousand meteors were striking at once.
Chet grabbed me by the arm and helped me to my feet.
“How do we get off!” I shouted at him over the noise of rock crushing.
“I don’t know!” he yelled back. “There aren’t any nearby fragments!”
I struggled for balance but pointed at the “battleship” fragment. “There is one other place to go!”
“It’s trying right now to destroy us,” Chet yelled. “I don’t know that I consider it an option!”
“I’m very angry too!” M-Bot shouted from behind me. “I thought you should know, since it seems like we’re sharing!”
“Options?” I shouted at him.
“For being angry? I’ve always liked raw fury, but indignation has a certain bold flavor too, don’t you think?”
“M-Bot!”
“Sorry!” he shouted. “My databases say the proper behavior during an earthquake is to either get outside—which we’ve obviously scored good marks on, since we’re literally outside our own universe—or get to a place where nothing can fall on us. This seems to work. Yay us. Oh! And I’m not mad any longer. Wow. Do emotions always pass this quickly?”
Well, maybe the collision would subside now that we’d survived the initial impact. I looked up across the grass. The ground continued to tremble, and something else bothered me. Something I couldn’t immediately define. It was…
“The water,” I said, pointing. “The lake is empty. What happened to the water?”
“It must have drained out the bottom!” Chet said. “The fragments aren’t made entirely from acclivity stone—some have more, others less. I have hypothesized that it influences how fast they move.”
“The one crashing into us is more solid then?” I said. “It must have come up quickly, if you didn’t spot it.”
“Precisely!” Chet said. “Our current one looks to be mostly soil, so the bottom of the lake must have given out.”
That bothered me. I mean, these fragments were already playing with my brain. I perpetually felt like I was walking across unstable footing. As I scanned the fragment, my fears became manifest.
Rifts appeared in the soil. Widening cracks like bolts of lightning moved across the once-tranquil prairie. In these lines the soil and grass vanished, sinking out of sight.
“It’s breaking apart,” I said, forcing myself to keep my feet despite the shaking.
“Scrud!” Chet said. Ahead of us an entire section of the grassland fell away, leaving a gaping hole. “I suggest a hasty actualization of your earlier plan. We must get onto that more solid fragment!”
We dashed away from the tunnel with the portal, and it collapsed in a roar behind me. The ground, which had once felt soft and springy, now felt treacherous.
“M-Bot,” I shouted. “Stick the light-line to my back. If I jump or fall, pull upward with every bit of lift you’ve got.”
“I’m not powerful enough to carry you!”
“I don’t expect you to!”
As he complied, I tried to maintain a jog, but the tremors kept knocking me off balance. Chet wasn’t faring much better; ahead of me a particularly violent quake sent him sprawling, and then a rift opened between us.
He glanced toward me with alarm.
I jumped.
Obligingly M-Bot moved upward, pulling the light-line taut. While he couldn’t lift me completely, his efforts did add to my spring. I’d trained in low-g, and this wasn’t much different, so I knew how to compensate. I spanned the widening chasm and landed next to Chet.
“Marvelous!” he said as I pulled him to his feet. Together we charged toward the fragment that was causing all of this. But abruptly Chet grabbed my arm and hauled me back, halting my run as a hole opened up right in front of us, dirt pouring down like it had liquefied.