by Carl Derham
*
The launch had not gone unnoticed. The Throgloid captain was watching this feeble attempt at space travel.
“If it comes this way, destroy it,” he gurgled.
He was on his way down to the hanger bay to drool over his newly acquired trophy. He snarled to himself in a Throgloid version of a chuckle as he recounted the clever plan that had brought them to this barren moon orbiting the ugly blue and green planet. When the Throgloid fleet had fled Cranus, the Captain returned under cover of sensor block that only worked at sub-light speeds because of the energy that it required. He’d clamped the ship to the underside of Cranus and hitched a lift to the earth system. As they passed the sun, he uncoupled from Cranus and drifted through space monitoring Cranus’ path. When the little ship left the moon for the blue planet he was rather confused. The ugly creature was obviously one of the inhabitants of the planet, but following a survey of the world, monitoring many forms of communication, he concluded that the two ships of his desire had not been built by these imbeciles. But when Cranus belonged to him, he was looking forward to going down there and having some fun with them. Maybe he could add the skull of their leader to his collection. He watched the little ship leave the moon and enter the atmosphere of the planet, fired up his engines and headed for the moon. He formulated a plan of action; to enter the great ship and steal it before the ugly creature returned. His attack group had entered the huge ship using a liberal amount of brute force and a not-inconsiderable level of ignorance. They then located the bridge. But all their efforts to make any of the mystifying equipment come to life had been in vain. It appeared that they would require the ugly creature. So Grrghracksh headed back into space to prepare a trap. When the small craft appeared, he approached it under cover of the sensor block with the hangar bay doors open, and swallowed it whole.
The Throgloid Captain approached the hangar bay door and it slid open. There in front of him was the greatest triumph of his career and his career had indeed been long and illustrious. He was the most decorated captain in the fleet and last year he’d broken the record for slaughter to consumption, previously held by Gorgaff the Kicker. Just wait until they saw what he was about to bring back to the home world. His name would be entered onto the Tower of Invincibles for all of eternity. All he had to do was defeat the small but unbelievably powerful ugly being and work out how to get the gurking thing started. The secret, and maybe even the ugly creature itself, lay inside the little ship over which he was now drawling. It was suspended above the floor by a web of Taglar chains driven into the hull. Robbie discovered that these chains were sealed at the molecular level, making them the strongest substance he'd ever encountered. The Captain walked under the ship, running his hand down the smooth surface as he went. He brought his other fist up against the hull with such force that the chains wobbled and Pardy nearly fell off her perch.
“Come out now and I will make your death an honourable one.” he gurgled.
This was turning into a very bad day, thought Pardy. She wanted to be home with a bucket of buttered seeds and a preening tongue. But she felt sure that somehow, Oli would come to the rescue. How he was going to get to the moon without a ship, she hadn’t yet worked out.
Commander Grrghracksh raised himself a few more centimetres by standing on the tips of his enormous feet and placed his ear to the hull. The next memory that he had, was waking up on the floor with two members of the crew staring at him in a; if he’s dead I want the shoulder kind of way. The shoulder was known to be the best part of a Throgloid, and was considered a delicacy usually reserved for family members or victors and the two crew members were both drawling, in a most unattractive manner at the thought. He leaped to his feet, pushing the two expectant Throgloids away with such power that one of them flew through the air, ending his impromptu journey bent double on one of the Taglar chains. He flopped limply to the floor and the other unlucky fellow picked himself out of the Throgloid-shaped indentation in the bulkhead, making a hasty exit.
Robbie had sent a localised electric current right into the captain’s ear. This would have killed most creatures, but fortunately for the Captain, a Throgloid’s brain is not situated in his head, it’s kept out of harm’s way in the middle of the torso.
Captain Grrghracksh ordered charges to be placed in the middle of the roof. He was going to get into this ship if he had to destroy it in the process. The main prize after all, was the big ship sitting on the moon below. They positioned a stepladder against the side of the ship and the lucky crew member who had been picked for the assignment tentatively climbed to the roof of the ship. He had two explosive charges in his right hand, leaving him the other to climb the ladder. Gingerly, he stepped onto the roof of the ship.
“Put them in the middle,” ordered the Captain, pointing towards the centre of the ship.
The crewmember took one step then suddenly started tap dancing across the top of the ship as Robbie hit him with a bolt of electricity every time his foot hit the hull. He dropped the explosives and the Captain heard their painful trundle as they rolled along the top of the ship, straight over the front, before crashing to the floor. Everyone in the hangar followed their journey till they came to rest against the sidewall. They were all well aware of the instability properties of Throgloid explosives. There was a general sigh of relief around the room. The unfortunate dancing Throgloid pirouetted his way along the length of the ship, producing a sorrowful wailing sound every time his foot contacted the hull. When he reached the front, he flew straight off the end landing in a heap on the hangar bay floor. He probably would have survived the fall with just a few minor bruises. What did for him was the inevitable full-force kick from the Captain, which sent him flying across the hangar, finally slamming him into the wall. He was scooped up by two Throgloids, who carried him to the already overstretched medical centre.
For the next attempt, they attached a harness around the waist of another ‘willing’ volunteer and swung him from a crane over the top of the ship. As he arrived at the centre, clutching the charges in one hand, Robbie directed a highly localise beam of Matter Transform, which cut clean through the rope. The Throgloid slammed down onto the ship where a couple of thousand amps of current awaited his arrival. Following another great performance of a Throgloid River Dance, he landed with a thud on the hangar floor. As his eyes began to focus, he turned his head to realise that he had landed squarely at the feet of the captain who showed his displeasure with a size seventeen to the head.
Finally, they did away with the living element and lowered the explosives onto the ship with the crane and some Taglar chains. The captain roared and everyone evacuated the hangar. He pressed the remote detonation button and the hangar walls shook violently with the deafening explosion. He held up his hand, ordering the eager Throgloids to let him enter first. He wanted to bathe in the glory of his victory. The door opened and he took one step into the smoke-filled room to inspect the damage. He half expected to be greeted by the ugly creature and so he was cradling one of the stolen pulse rifles from Cranus, ready to fire. The smoke was dense and he could barely make out the shape of the ship. With the pulse rifle at his shoulder and a fat finger resting on the trigger, he moved across the hangar. He stepped onto a lifting platform and raised it a few metres from the hangar floor. He was aiming the gun at the roof of the ship, expecting to see a choking alien emerge from the gaping hole, but as the smoke cleared he felt a welling of anger inside him, the like of which he hadn’t felt since his first wedding night.
A Throgloid wedding was slightly unusual, in that instead of marrying for love, they would marry for hate. If a Throgloid warrior hated another warrior to such a level that killing him would not suffice and the eradication of his genetic line was the only way to achieve fulfilment, he would marry him. At the wedding ceremony, all of the members of each family would be present and when the two warriors were joined in an extremely unholy matrimony, the males would proceed to kick every shade out of each othe
r. No weapons were allowed at the ceremony and the fights sometimes lasted for many hours, until all the males of one family were dead. Then the victors would claim the females of the dead as their own. This usually led to a punch up between the remaining males of the victorious family. There were no written rules for this second skirmish, so weapons were permitted and it was usually over pretty quickly.
As the Captain looked up from the black, totally unmarked hull of the little ship, his anger welled up inside him like a volcano straining to burst its cap. Instead of blowing a hole in the ship, the explosion had been directed upwards and had blasted a four metre wide hole in the ceiling of the hangar. As though that wasn’t bad enough, situated directly above the hangar, was the Captain’s room. He watched in dismay as the last of his priceless collection of Throgloid warrior skulls wobbled a few times and then toppled off the smashed display unit, bounced twice across the roof of the ship and exploded into a thousand pieces on the hangar floor below.
It had taken the Captain all of his adult life to collect his trophies. They represented his entire worth, his reason for living and they were all gone. He let out a blood-curdling howl that rattled the sides of the cupboard in which Pardy was hiding.
“Are they inside?” she asked in a fit of panic.
“No,” said Robbie, “They’re finding me to be rather a tough nut to crack.”
The Captain jumped down from the platform and ran out of the hangar to find the gump who had planted the charges, but he was long since gone. He’d found the nearest airlock and released himself into space. It was definitely the less painful option. Captain Grrghracksh raised the pulse rifle to his waist and pointed it at the ship. He didn’t know what this weapon would do, but it certainly looked like it could pack a punch. In his fit of rage, he had turned the power meter to full and he was now prepared to destroy the ship rather than allow it to ridicule him further. Robbie was willing him to pull the trigger. He would be able to deflect the pulse into the heart of the Throgloid ship and when it exploded he would be left floating in space…In theory. But the captain was a strange one. Most Throgloids of old would have not hesitated, but he seemed to be in possession of slightly greater mental prowess than the average Throgloid. He lowered the weapon and stormed out of the hangar.
