Byron walked away from Uncle Bob’s Emporium and patted his “Vest of Holding” as the marketing promoted the large vest with almost uncountable pockets.

  “Happy now?” asked Heron.

  Byron smiled and nodded.

  Heron noticed a lot of bulges in Byron’s vest and asked, “How many cans of Tangle Free did you get?”

  “Four!” answered Byron, holding up the three fingers of one arm and one on another, “Just in case.”

  Heron smiled and shrugged good naturedly, “Let’s go. We’re almost late.”

  They arrived at the Matter Transmission Station and noticed the other four hunters were already waiting, talking excitedly amongst themselves. They all looked over as Heron and Byron approached and turned away to ignore them. Heron frowned, but Byron didn’t notice and walked up to the group, holding out his hands in greeting, “Hi guys! Ready to go on our ‘Little Hunt’?”

  They turned their backs to Byron and one muttered, “Why do we have ‘them’ with us?” and another replied, “Yeah, we don’t need people like them with us.”

  Byron let his hands drop to his side and looked at Heron in confusion.

  Heron stepped forward, deliberately ignoring the social rejection of them, “Greetings. I’m Her .. Hyron and this is Beron. We’re looking forward to joining you on our hunt today.”

  Heron mentally kicked himself for almost revealing their real names.

  One of the other hunters replied mockingly, “Hello Her-Hyron and Beron. Just don’t get in our way. We are going to bag some dirtlings and have been practicing for ages.”

  Hendon was watching the exchange. With Harrick away he had decided to be in the MTS when each hunt departed so he could get a feel for the group and be able to react promptly if anything happened. His exposure to the Dirtlings on his few rescue missions so far had warned him to be ready for trouble. And the group disharmony he was witnessing did not bode well.

  “It would be best to work together,” Hendon said to the hunting group in a gravelly stern voice, “A hunt on Dirt is not a game. Dirt is not like home.”

  The leader of the early group replied with disdain, “Yeah, right. I am Gerdon, and my father is one of the most important people at home, and we have had the best training for this hunt. These ‘amateurs’ will just get in our way.”

  “Yeah, ‘whatever’,” agreed Gerdon’s sidekick and the rest of their group laughed. Sadly, the phrase “whatever” had caught on amongst the youth trendy set.

  Hendon frowned and nodded. Play stupid games win stupid prizes was his motto. He would ensure his team was ready to intervene.

  ****

  Jillian was back at the console of the MTS watching the latest group getting ready to beam down. The MTS team had been very busy the last week sending down about six hunts a day. The destinations varied across the planet below as the shuttle orbit had to take into account the orbiting Dirtling space station and orbital junk. Jillian did wonder how a NC planet had a space ship, even a rudimentary one, but she needed this job and didn’t want to ask too many questions. She had signed the standard non disclosure agreement as part of working for HTI and it was a very foolish person who broke those agreements!

  Nelson was having a sleep cycle for this hunt. Jillian thought she could let him know that two of the hunters were from his own planet, but didn’t want to disturb him. Nelson had been working just as hard as the rest of the team and he deserved his rest.

  Jillian had to do the introductions this time and the HTI representative gave her standard introduction in a very perfunctory manner. The two blue people - she looked at her party list to check the names - Hyron and Beron - paid attention, but Gerdon and his group just lounged in position waiting for the talking to stop. Once Scree, the HTI representative, stopped talking and stepped away, Jillian spoke, “Are you all ready?”

  Hyron and Beron nodded nervously and Gerdon just waved dismissively for Jillian to get on with it.

  Jillian pressed the blue button, the party members shimmered and disappeared from the pads.

  Hendon, the HST leader while Harrick was away, stepped up and looked into the viewer to see where the party landed. They had materialised into a tunnel through a grate open above them. “Great,” thought Hendon, “That will make them harder to track.”

  He nodded at Jillian in acknowledgement of her fine work and walked promptly out of the room.

  Jillian placed the MTS on standby and left, leaving the MTS room in murky standby mode lighting.

  ****

  Heron and Byron materialised next to the rest of the party and looked around.

  They jumped as Gerdon said aloud, “Bah! These danger glasses are useless!” and threw them away to clatter into a dirty corner.

  His team mates, Timms, Red and Blaire, then found their own glasses and threw them away too with various signs of disgust.

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  Byron was about to do the same, but Heron stopped him, “They may be useful. Just because Gerdon reckons they are no good, I think they may be worthwhile.”

  Byron nodded and tried them on. They instantly went black and he could only see if he peered over or around the lens edges, “But they’re all black!” he said to Heron.

  “That means there’s danger about. We were told Dirt was dangerous, so what did you expect?”

  “That’s fair,” said Byron and held his Universe 7 phone up and took a photo of himself wearing the glasses. There was a faint flash and his picture came up on the device’s screen. He showed it to Heron, “They look pretty cool, don’t they?”

  “Cool?” asked Heron smiling, “I think you have been watching too many of those Dirtling transmissions.”

  Byron grinned, “Yeah, they’re pretty good fun.”

  Byron considered the glasses. If he looked over them he could still see, so he would keep them on.

  “Really?” asked Heron.

  Byron nodded and looked around where they had materialised. They were in a tunnel with stone walls, floor and roof. A little stream of water flowed along under their feet and the only light was through a grill about ten feet above their heads.

  Heron turned on his torch and looked along the tunnel to his left. It looked the same as far as he could see. Byron peered over his shoulder, “Anything?” he asked.

  “No. Just more of them same,” he answered.

  “We will go this way,” announced Gerdon and his team went to Heron’s right, along the tunnel.

  Heron shrugged and he and Byron followed.

  The tunnel came to a T intersection. Timms, one of Gerdon’s friends, jumped out and faced to the left and fired a laser bolt from his rifle down the tunnel. They heard an explosion and something broke further along where he had fired.

  “What’s he firing at?” asked Byron.

  “No idea,” said Heron as they followed the rest of the party. He pulled out his laser pistol while Byron carried his laser rifle over his shoulder.

  Gerdon asked, “Timms, what did you get?”

  Timms was examining the wooden remains scattered around the tunnel, “I blew apart this door. These guns work great!”

  “Don’t you think you should have tried to open it?” asked Gerdon, smacking Timms up behind his head.

  Timms bent over with the light blow and said, “Maybe, but I was bored. We’ve been here ages, Gerdon!”

  “Well, it’s open now. You go first,” ordered Gerdon and Timms stepped through the remains of the door.

  “More tunnel. Boring,” said Timms, “Hang on. I see red lights ahead.”

  Meanwhile, Byron had been looking around as they followed the others and noticed an alcove in the tunnel wall. He tapped Heron and pointed it out. Heron stepped into the alcove and saw a doorway a little further on and beckoned Byron to follow him.

  They looked closely at the door and saw it had a handle.

  “How does this door open?” he asked Heron, “Normally you approach a door and it goes ‘Swoosh!’ and there you go. Or you see a button, press it and the people behind the door let you in.”

  “Or you knock and confuse everyone like X Bear,” commented Heron as he examined the handle closely, “I think I understand.”

  Heron stepped back and pointed at the handle, “Remember the transmissions you have been watching?”

  Byron looked at the handle and a grin spread across his face, “Yeah. It’s a door handle. You pull it down like this,” he said as he pulled the handle down.

  “It’s not open,” he said sadly.

  “Push,” said Heron.

  “And then you push,” said Byron and as he pushed the door opened.

  “Cool,” he said as he looked inside.

  “Are you using that Dirtling word again?” Heron asked.

  “No. And yes,” said Byron, “It is cool. Look, ice!”

  Heron and Byron stepped in and the room was very cold. Despite the ice Byron saw, it was not freezing cold, but more like a refrigerator. The ice had formed around a machine rumbling in one corner.

  “Let’s get the others,” said Heron and they retreated back to the tunnel.

  They looked both ways along the tunnel and saw no one. They tried listening but could not hear anyone or anything other than the slight rumbling from the machine that had produced the ice in the room they had just left.

  “Where have they gone?” asked Byron.

  Heron shrugged and said, “Probably chasing those red lights they saw. Do you want to go that way or just do our own thing?”

  Heron pointed down the tunnel where Timms had seen the red lights.

  Byron looked back at the cold room. “We should really keep together, shouldn’t we?” he asked.

  “I think we might be safer doing our own thing,” said Heron, “We’ll meet up with them later, or if not, when we all materialise back on the shuttle.”

  Byron nodded, “Let’s see what is in that cold room. That looked interesting.”

  ****

  Timms raced towards the red lights with Gerdon, Blaire and Red following. He stopped when the red lights blinked out as he approached. “Where did they go?” he asked.

  “Over there!” shouted Blaire and they rushed down a tunnel branch where other red lights had appeared.

  “Stop!” shouted Gerdon, “Wait up a bit. Use your torch!”

  Timms and the others stopped and they were all in darkness other than the light from Gerdon’s torch. “Did you bring a torch?” Gerdon asked as he flashed the light into the face of each of them. They all looked away and squinted in the light.

  Gerdon sighed a familiar long suffering sigh and pointed the beam of light from his torch along the corridor to the red lights. The beam shuddered as Gordon’s arm was brought back when he saw the red lights were the eyes of rat like creatures and their fangs glistened in the light.

  Laser and projectile shots burst along the corridor at the rats until Gerdon once more made them stop. He looked again at where the rats were and saw a number of them lying in a burned and battered pile. “Come on,” Gerdon said pushing them forward, “Let’s see what we got.”

  They stood over the pile and Timms poked his rifle into the pile, “I think they’re dead.”

  “Our first trophies,” said Gerdon, counting four rat bodies, “Place some Trophy Tags. One each.”

  They all took out a tag each and placed one on each of the rats. As Red placed his tag on a rat, it jumped up and bit him on his hand.

  “Aaaar!” Red shouted, swinging the rat around, “This one’s not dead!”

  The others immediately began firing at the rat bodies and Blaire fired at the one biting Red, hitting the swinging rat and Red’s arm.

  Gerdon stopped them firing and Red nursed his injured hand.

  “Bandage the wound,” said Gerdon, “Use the medical kit.”

  No one moved. “Did anyone bring one?” Gerdon asked, looking at his team, “Hopeless,” he muttered as he took out some basic bandages from his kit and treated Red’s wounded arm.

  “Umm, Gerdon,” said Timms who was looking at the rat bodies, “I think they’re all dead now.”

  The rat bodies were now very much destroyed, barely recognisable as rats. The trophy tags had also been destroyed. Gerdon sighed.

  “Let’s continue,” he said and gestured to his team to move.

  “Hey Gerdon,” Tims asked looking behind him, “Where are those other two losers?”

  They all looked around and Gerdon flashed his light back along the empty corridor.

  Gerdon shrugged, “They probably got scared and ran. We’re better off without them. Which way do we go?”

  Timms pointed at a blood trail leading from the rat bodies, “Let’s follow where the survivors went.”

  Gerdon nodded and prodded his team forward, bravely leading from behind with the beam of light from his torch lighting their way.