Chapter 9

     By nightfall, the five had already set up a makeshift camp. They had stopped after dusk, when the light was too dim to continue further. They didn’t dare try to make a fire, or even light a sodium-gas lamp; it would be too obvious to pursuers as to their location, so they settled with the glow of some radium lanterns, which weren’t all that bright but at least were better than almost pitch darkness.
     “Er, don’t we need to worry about radiation?” Heather frowned dubiously.
     “Well, look at your wristwatch,” Drew pointed at it. “If you use its backlight function, that’s a radium glow right there.”
     “Yeah, so don’t worry,” Strufis assured her. “Any radiation we get from these isn’t that much more considering the amount of radiation people are exposed to every day anyhow.”
     She reluctantly assented, and they proceeded into their miniature artificial grotto to sleep. Strufis had packed in his knapsack a nifty little gadget that, when activated, expanded into a small plastic room with windows, a few tables and seats, and some mattresses on the ground. There were two compartments, each with two mattresses and separated by a wall with a door, so one compartment was for the girls and the other for the guys, with one of them needing to sleep on the included couch. The three rock-paper-scissored for it, and after quite a long stalemate with Strufis, finally Drew lost, much to Drew’s dismay, although he was more upset about the game than actually sleeping on the couch, which was comfortable enough anyway.
     After most of the radium lamps had been turned off, leaving only a few at the entrance in case someone had to go to the bathroom, Heather lay awake on her mattress long after both the rooms had gone quiet. As she often did whenever she had a hard time sleeping, she got up and went out, and luckily outside it was warm enough to not get a chill.
     She found Drew also outside, lying on the grass nearby, gazing up at the sky. She sat down next to him. “Can't sleep, either? Was it the couch?”
     “Nah. It was fine.” He looked at her. “What kept you up?”
     She smirked. “Well, I found out how much Anastasia snores, for one thing.”
     Drew chuckled.
     “But that's not the real reason.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and glanced upward. “I'm really anxious about all that's happened. We've gotten ourselves into something, out of no fault of our own, and we have to get through it without knowing what we need to do. I have no idea what's going to happen, and…I guess I'm afraid I'll mess up and screw any of us over. I mean, for all I know we could get killed! Killed! And, our parents…” she grimaced, “and our friends, and everyone else...they would never know what happened to us.”
     “Well, you know,” Drew replied, “I’m jittery too, but I’m more like…excited.” He grinned. “I still can't believe that you guys haven't seemed to get that we're in another dimension!”
     “Er, we understand that,” Heather said wryly. “I think we made that clear upon coming here…”
     “No, not like that.” Drew sat up and paused, trying to think of how to put it. “All the time, throughout, like all eternity, people have been imagining what new worlds, dimensions, space-times, and so on would be like, and what they would do if they were there. I could only imagine what it would be like when something finally happened, and I kinda suspected it would only in my mind. But here it IS! All that thinking about if it happened, it comes to something! Even when I thought it never would. It’s like I was…vindicated, or something.” He shook his head. “Argh, I might not make any sense, but…”
     Heather paused, trying to understand. “I guess it made you feel like you did something right?”
     “Sorta…”
     Suddenly, they heard a humming in the distance, and saw lights in the trees just within their eyesight. They stood up, puzzled.
     “Are those…helicopters?”
     “It looks like they’re out looking for something…”
     They looked at each other.