The Cat Wore Electric Goggles

by Ian Hutson

  ‘Yes Captain - the signals ceased once we were disabled and committed to landing.’

  ‘Ceased? Just ceased - no preamble or natural disturbance?’

  ‘Those frequencies just exhibit low-power grey noise now.’ Newton played a tape. It was as though a million young sheep were bleating randomly over a poorly-tuned walkie-talkie channel. ‘Is the signal important?’

  ‘I think it may be abso-ruddy-lutely crucial. I suspect that this changes everything.’

  The Captain left the Science Deck at a reasonably dignified trot, puffs of tobacco smoke being blown out of his pipe as though he were a steam-locomotive under load. He needed to get outside. Rushing down the gangway, scattering the sentry and the sentry’s warming flask of mulligatawny soup, Faraday replaced his goggles intending to pan around the landscape.

  The sentry helped the Captain back up after he fell on his arse, and was careful to not notice that he was doing so as he did so. Some things that ship’s captains did it was better for lower ranks not to acknowledge. If the Captain wanted to jump out of his skin, stifle a very un-military squeal of shock and then fall down then it was up to his crew to lend a hand and see nothing.

  Focusing on the distant horizon through the goggles Faraday had come literally face to face, nose to nose, over-sized eyeball to green-glowing goggle with a deep, churning, seething mass of alien life peering back at him.

  Humanoid, certainly, but insubstantial and alive in ways that mankind was not. These creatures positively shone like beacons in the electro-magnetic while being of no material consequence whatsoever to the non-augmented human retina. Life more significant than “scorpimice” roamed the planet.

  From being as good as alone and standing in the quiet night landscape Faraday had found himself plunged into an unholy, crushing, heaving crowd in the quite literal blink of an eye.

  It had seemed that the horizon had rushed up about him on all sides and left him no air to breathe, no space in which to live. The barren rock was teeming! Positively swarming!

  A bright outline head with huge puddle-like eyes pressed in over his right shoulder, eager to get a view of the goggle remote-control unit that Faraday had in his hand in a sweaty, vice-like grip. The first head was immediately jostled aside by another and another and the sensation of being surrounded quickly became unbearable - it was like being sniffed at and scrutinised by a million overbearing and yet invisible Gollums.

  Faraday flipped the goggles off and felt a welcome return of exposure as his brain instantly placed him once again as just an isolated blip of life facing a bleak and barren landscape, empty from his toes to the far-distant horizon. The sensation was as though space-time itself had been snipped and spliced by a clumsy hand.

  He took several deliberately deep breaths, fought down his discomfort and chased hot adrenalin back to whichever glands it had escaped from. Then, as he had known that he would have to, he slipped the goggles back on. There was a capacitor-whine from the backpack and in the fresh blink of an eye all of the spare room in all of the world was gone once again, filled to capacity with bustling, over-curious life that seemed to have no concept of personal space.

  Just blue-white outlines seen through tear-streaked eyes, the creatures milled about, elbow to elbow, as insensitive to each other’s needs as the crowd in the public stands at Ascot. In an exercise in pure self-control, Faraday turned himself to look back at his ship. The gangway that he had marched down seemingly at his ease was packed from side to side, stuffed from top to bottom with a heaving mass of this other-life - as though it were the entrance to a fairground and HMSS Beagle the main attraction. Faraday forced himself to be calm and rational and pro-active.

  The creatures used the gangway. They were crowding through the main hatch. That surely indicated that they either wouldn’t or couldn’t move through the hull material. He hoped it was the latter - oh above all, he hoped that they couldn’t. Had any of them walked through him? He couldn’t recall. Faraday forced his feet forwards in some semblance of a full stride - and the alien horde almost tumbled out of his way, as though he were a juggernaut pushing through smaller traffic. In the goggles it was difficult to maintain his balance; his view of the ground was utterly obscured. His breathing became laboured again, he felt that he urgently needed fresh, un-used air and open space and normality about him.

  Forcing his way back up the gangway Faraday reached the deck of his ship. To the sentry the Captain looked to be moving very stiffly and awkwardly - just something else to not be noticed. Captains could be such odd creatures sometimes.

  Having proven something important to himself about his ability to function in a pure hell of runaway over-population, he whipped off the goggles. With the naked eye the horizon switched once again from the end of Faraday’s nose to some several miles distant and, away and above, to the happy, human lebensraum of outer space. The deception was total.

  Doubtless every inch of deck that hadn’t been behind locked doors would be over-run. How many had entered the Science Deck with him, sharing his passage through the quarantine airlocks? How many had showered with him earlier, before he tried to sleep?

  Captain Faraday leaned hard on the big red-alert lever by the hatchway. He leaned on it as though he hoped to push it through the bulkhead plating. This was perhaps neither the most carefully considered nor wisest action of Faraday’s career, but it was the only action that would hold down the lid on the queasiness with which the pressing alien population had threatened to overwhelm his senses. Klaxons sounded again throughout the ship and a crew that had been unable to get comfortable anyway admitted that it was awake, dressed in seconds and rushed to man their posts. He issued orders to the bewildered sentry that further sightseers were to be denied access to the ship and then strode away, leaving the sentry wondering just why he was strapping on electric goggles in the deserted dead quiet of the tail end of his unremarkable night-watch.

  When Faraday had travelled just fifteen paces he was very satisfied to hear a full-blown scream of surprise from sentry, who had presumably just donned the goggles. That should keep the blighter from blabbing about captains squealing and falling on their arses.

  Throughout the vessel human crew-members unknowingly pushed through as-yet unseen aliens, causing eddies and backwashes in the crowd, while the Captain - striding for his bridge - caused the humans to dance aside and flounder similarly in his wake.

  Entering the bridge Faraday barked ‘I will have my ship back, Mr Hawking, I WILL have her back.’

  The Officer of the Watch, misunderstanding, positively leapt from the Captain’s chair and released his command. Unseen aliens, misunderstanding even more completely, jostled to try on the vacant chair for size.

  ‘The ship is taken, Mr Hawking, we have been BOARDED!’

  ‘Boarded?’ queried a confused Hawking, noting that the Captain seemed sober.

  Faraday flicked a switch and his voice boomed out on the Science Deck.

  ‘Electro-magnetic goggles. How many sets? ANSWER ME!’

  ‘Er - twelve, Sir. Twelve in total.’

  ‘One set to the bridge, the remainder to the Master-at-Arms at the double-double.’

  The Captain then flicked a second switch. ‘Master-at-Arms - all visitors to be put ashore immediately. Recruit any crew or officers that you need and report to me once done.’

  ‘Visitors Captain?’

  ‘Science Deck are delivering some goggles to you. Just put them on.’

  Faraday held up his hand for silence, making the officers wait with him for confirmation.

  A minute later in the background of the open comms channel there came the earthy expostulation of a six-foot four-inch, two hundred and forty pound Marine who had just found himself surrounded on all sides.

  Satisfied, the Captain flipped the comms channel off and waited a few more seconds for the set of goggles for the bridge officers to arrive. They were quickly passed around, causing the whole watch crew to break into a cross between the solo ru
mba and the ant-hill twist.

  The comms beeped - the Master-at-Arms. ‘Captain - how do we? I mean have Science Deck found a way to...’

  ‘Cabin by cabin, Master, cabin by cabin and deck by deck latching every hatchway as you go and then search every cubby-hole, every ventilation and wiring shaft. Lasso them with electrical cord and throw them out of the portholes if necessary, but find a way to CLEAR MY SHIP!’

  Faraday then barked for silence once more on the bridge, and the hubbub cut off as though someone had pushed the needle across a record on a turntable. Everyone was looking around like swivel-eyed loons while also desperately trying to remember that they were officers, standing at something between attention and near-enough, considering.

  ‘Chief Engineer - how long before we could take off?’

  Chadwick seemed reluctant to open his mouth to reply, probably in case some alien were to peer in and poke about, gawping at human tonsils - after all, they were poking into everything else. He pulled himself together. ‘If we isolate the damaged sections still under rebuild and skip final testing of the engine recommissioning Captain then we can take off as soon as the reaction matter tanks and the hydroponics tanks are refilled. We emptied them for repairs and we’re pumping water from the river right now - about another hour, two at the most.’

  ‘Make it faster if you can.’

  The Chief Engineer’s manner was as comfortable as that of a young dog waiting alone in a veterinarian’s surgery and reading a magazine article about neutering through the ages. ‘Captain, I’ll get the crew passing a line of buckets if I have to.’

  The Marines worked through the ship as a physical barrier sweeping the decks and ushering the “visitors” before them. Even as each section was confirmed cleared still no-one seemed comfortable in the middle of cabins and corridors, preferring to slide along the bulkheads to keep their backs protected. The crew wished that there had been enough electric goggles for one set each, and yet were grateful in some animal way that there was not.

  Tanks filled, and with the last alien sightseer persuaded out and down the gangway, the main hatch was sealed and a countdown begun. Dials flickered and telltales began to glow as the reactors warmed through. The crew strapped themselves down as they had done a thousand times before, except that this time, to a man, they felt trapped and vulnerable rather than safely restrained and protected.

  HMSS Beagle surrounded herself with clouds of vapour and steam. With her repaired atomic reaction cones angled downwards and her forward thrusters straining, showers of sparks sprayed through the fuel-mist feeds and suddenly Beagle created her own shadows, lighting the rocky wastes more brightly than the planet’s own sun ever did. The hull began to vibrate and then to heterodyne like the sides of an old corporation bus climbing a long, steep hill.

  Those with goggles twisted themselves to portholes and mapped out a vast encircling swarm of alien life, with just a few of the brave or the foolhardy now dropping from the Beagle’s fuselage and fins and running for cover. Those without goggles tried to not obsess over the shadows in the corners of their cabins. Oddly, for those with a fear of crowds, even an empty cabin or room would never again be quite the antidote that it once was.

  Out in the calm of space the crew began to relax a little, feeling the claustrophobia of the pressing alien hordes ebbing away with each passing tera-league. In the Ward Room a tension-relieving debriefing was being held over a bottle of Jura whisky. Captain Faraday was generously explaining why he had ordered an emergency take-off, leaving full “first contact” to be handled by another expedition at some later date. Even aside from the horror of the aliens being everywhere all at once and quite without any sense of personal etiquette or human manners, they had put him in mind of nothing more than a rabble, almost a flock of mindless young sheep without a shepherd. He couldn’t bear the thought of Beagle gaining a reputation for bravely finding nothing but non-sentient alien species.

  The Master-at-Arms confided as he refilled everyone’s Waterford crystal glasses that he had been surprised by just how easily they had been able to clear the ship. The whole operation had given him the impression that the aliens who had come onboard weren’t the brightest little lambs in the flock and seemed quite used to responding without question to the orders of authority.

  The Senior Navigation Officer joked that maybe the alien shepherds had been stuck in traffic - if they were all made of the same insubstantial electro-magnetic bodywork how could any of them move about quickly in that mad crush of alien bodies? The ship had been careening around like a wild thing so their crash-landing site would have been difficult to predict. If the situations were reversed and as someone had suggested earlier, for example, aliens had landed in England in the crowded stands at Ascot the effect would not be dissimilar. A delay would be inevitable before authority could push its way through the civilians to respond, and the aliens would find themselves initially surrounded by gawping, undisciplined idiots.

  Silence fell in the Ward Room, like the silence after a joke at a funeral.

  Everyone jumped out of their skins when Mr Babbage leapt out of his Ward Room igloo, let loose a meow and strode into the corridor, on a mission. The Radio Officer’s ears heard the cat’s purring fading down the corridor.

  Not quite knowing why, everyone rose and followed.

  Mr Babbage was rubbing up against the steel of the hatchway onto the Hydroponics Deck, bumping his head against the metal and purring more loudly than ever. The temperature, humidity and lux monitor gauges on the readout alongside the hatchway were fluctuating wildly, their needles swinging like compasses in an electrical storm.

  Captain Faraday summoned goggles and a team of sober Marines. Only then was the hatch allowed to slide aside. Virtually every officer on the ship was crushed in behind the Captain, peering over his shoulders or ducking beneath his arms to get a view. They were doing a damned good impression themselves of a gawping, idiot crowd.

  Lush plant-life was growing in serried ranks under strip-lights for fifty feet either side of the hatchway and stretching a hundred feet back. The ship’s crew depended absolutely on what was grown there during the months and sometimes even years between planetfall. Hissing water jets sprayed a fine mist that was shot through with nutrient-rich, oily rainbows. Among the plants, and also in serried ranks, stood a thousand or more blue and white outlined aliens, inch-perfect and eyes front and centre.

  A Marine spoke out of turn. ‘These ones look different. Sir, these ones have discipline.’

  The Captain had difficulty finding his own voice but managed eventually to command what was almost a conspiratorial civilian whisper.

  ‘So, if the aliens we were surrounded by on the planet were rabble civilians, these would be the alien equivalent of what? Track stewards? The alien authorities? The ruddy SAS?’

  ‘When could they possibly have come aboard though Sir?’

  Faraday’s brow furrowed. ‘Chadwick - what’s the diameter of the water intake pipes for the hydroponics and reaction tanks?’

  ‘Hell’s bells and buckets of blood Captain - we used the largest bore we had. It would be a tight squeeze, I suppose, but if these are the alien equivalent of the SAS and they can swim...’

  ‘Captain - if we can brush them out of the way like smoke then surely they can’t be any threat, disciplined or not?’ said a young rating, mostly to reassure himself.

  The captain muttered. ‘The immediate questions are, gentlemen, how do we communicate with them and what are their intentions? Do we come in peace or shoot to kill?’

  One of the foremost aliens reached out a long, thin finger and touched the tip to a plant. The plant glowed and seemed in an instant to thrive, to become more alive.

  ‘Life force?’ said the captain, brushing aside a proffered dog-eared pocket edition of Bradshaw’s A Rector Ut Omnium Translatione.

  The alien in the next row along reached out a similarly thin, ethereal fingertip and briefly touched the plant nearest him. That plant su
ddenly became desiccated, browned and lifeless.

  ‘Death? Life and death. You have the power of life and death. Is that what you’re saying?’

  A third alien still pointed to the Royal Space Service logo painted high on the wall - a beautiful blue and white marble wrapped in the silk of a St George’s Cross. Then he tapped his own chest and pointed again at the blue marble.

  ‘England’ translated Faraday, suddenly sounding weary. ‘We have the power of life and death over you, take us to England they say.’

  Mr Babbage, a cat of pragmatic character and six and a half remaining lives, trotted out and very sensibly rubbed up against a senior alien ankle.

  Captain Faraday thought for a moment, chewed with unusual vigour on the stem of his pipe and then allowed the hatch to slide closed.

  ‘Mr Chadwick, Mr Hawking - to the Self-Destruct cabinet if you please. Ensure that the mechanism’s mainspring is fully wound and set it for a twelve hour countdown without chimes. Mr Newton, Science Deck has just eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes in which to save me from having to blow this vessel, this crew and our guests to smithereens. One way or another, gentlemen, I do not intend tomorrow’s log entry to detail how HMSS Beagle carried an alien invasion force back to England.’

  #####

  One Saturday, Almost Two Thousand Years A.D.

  ‘...and intoxicated by Ariadne’s child-bearing hips and very nearly hairless lady-bosoms, the muscular hunter-gatherer Rodney grasped her firmly by her long auburn hair and dragged her through the craggy, primeval landscape back to his man-cave, there to be his second-best breeding-woman. As Ariadne slid contentedly along the ground behind Rodney she watched the sun setting over the smoking volcano and knew that, barring being eaten alive by wild animals, they would be very happy together forever, and she would raise many fine, healthy little hominids. The end.’