Pinback didn't like them.
"All right, where are you?" He bent over and started peering under tilted crates and empty shelves. "Come on, ball, quit playing around." Beachball was an accurate description, if not a particularly dignified name for the alien. Boiler, typically, had named it, and despite Pinback's best efforts to the contrary, the label had stuck.
It was better than naming it after Pinback, which had been the corporal's initial suggestion. At first Pinback was flattered. Then, as the nature of the alien became more obvious, he was considerably less so.
"Come on, quit hidin'." The luminants swarmed over to the side of the cage nearest him, and he waved his arms irritably at them. "Go on, beat it."
They scattered to the back of the cage. Even their total alienness could be tolerated if they would only make a sound of some sort—something to indicate a bare hint of the sentience that was probably there.
"Come on, come," he muttered. He set the broom and pan down on a huge crate and started snapping his fingers. "I haven't got time for this. Come on."
There was a sudden flash of spotted red in front of him, followed by a loud thump. Startled, Pinback jumped back. Then he recognized the source of the sound. He put hands on hips and glared down at the alien angrily, covering his nervousness. "And to think when I brought you on the ship I thought you were cute."
The alien twittered engimatically back at him.
Well, to a man who had been away from home and all other companionship save that of his crewmates for as many years as Pinback had, the alien might have seemed cute at one time.
It was about a third the size of a grown man, neatly spherical, and colored bright red. Large blotches of yellow, black, and green concentric circles mottled the pulsing body. It also sported a set of clawed, lightly webbed feet. That was all. It possessed nothing resembling hands, arms, a multipart torso, or even a face.
It could distinguish sounds and sight, though the organs carrying out these functions were well hidden beneath the bulbous body. Occasionally it made sounds like a querulous canary. These were matched by deeper moans which sounded suspiciously like Pinback sounded when he had a bad bellyache.
The sergeant had moved to a nearby cabinet and was rummaging inside it. After a bit he came out with a large, somewhat frayed head of alien-world cabbage. They had run out of food from the alien's own home world a long time ago, its appetite proving to be far greater than even Pinback could have imagined.
"All right, soup's on." He held out the battered greenery. "Come on, this is no time to get picky. We don't have any more of the other stuff."
The alien made no move to come forward. "Here, eat it," Pinback yelled. He tossed the vegetable toward the alien. He was about fed up with this "pet."
The cabbage bounced a couple of times and came to a stop in front of the Beachball.
"Eat it, damn you. Take it or leave it. It's all we've got."
The alien seemed to pause, then leaned forward over the food as if inspecting it with invisible eyes. Both multiple claws tapped at the floor, an imitation of a gesture it had observed in Pinback. Whether or not the alien had any real intelligence was questionable, though at times it performed actions apparently unexplainable in any other way. But that it was imitative, like a parrot, was undeniable. Certainly it hadn't displayed anything which could be interpreted as an effort toward communication.
Eventually the tapping stopped. The claws reached out, grabbed the cabbage, and shoved it back toward Pinback. It twittered noisily.
"Oh yeah? What am I supposed to do now, huh? Whip you up a twelve-course RD-Three gourmet dinner? I don't know anything about the kind of food you like. These old specimen vegetables are the only nonconcentrates we've got aboard, and I don't think you would like concentrates—we're not crazy about them ourselves."
The Beachball quivered, twittered mindlessly.
"Ah, go ahead," Pinback finally said disgustedly, turning his back on the alien and picking up the broom and dustpan. "Starve—see if I care." He started muttering to himself again. "Do all the work . . . damn unappreciative alien twit . . ."
Moving on short, powerful little legs, the alien took a leap and jumped onto the cabinet to Pinback's right. It might have been trying to draw his attention. If so, it failed. Pinback continued to sweep, gathering alien excrement into the dustpan.
"I do my best to prepare your meals, I clean up after you, and do you appreciate it?" He snorted, spotted another dirty area, and swept again.
The alien paused at its post on the cabinet and appeared to consider the situation. Either it had a definite plan in mind, or else Pinback's bent-over form was just too tempting a situation. It leaped.
Twittering violently, it landed, claws first, square on Pinback's back. Pinback yelped and straightened up, but the Beachball hung on, scratching and bouncing ferociously against him.
"Hey, come on," Pinback yelled, dropping both the pan and broom and trying to swat behind himself. "Get off . . . get offa my back, damnit!" But while the alien was large and didn't weigh much, it was also smooth-surfaced and extremely difficult to get a grip on. Pinback couldn't.
"All right . . . all right, now," he shouted, 'that's enough! Come off it. That's—hey!"
The alien had shifted its position slightly higher onto his back and now was in position to pull at Pinback's shoulder-length tresses.
"My hair . . . quit pulling my . . . ouch!"
He staggered, aware for the first time that the Beachball might not be playing now. Still clawing at the thing on his back, he stumbled into a wall, turned, and staggered away. The alien reached around and started to paw his face.
Now frantic, Pinback finally managed to get a hand between himself and the alien and shoved it free. Immediately the being fell off, bounced on the floor, and scampered out the open door while twittering loosely in what might have been interpreted as a pleased fashion,
"Goddamn son-of-a-bitch, ungrateful, stupid, rotten, alien tomato-thing!" Pinback finally got the hair out of his eyes, then moved to the door and peeked out into the corridor.
It was sitting about halfway up the hall, panting like a happy puppy and, despite the absence of obvious eyes, no doubt watching him intently. Pinback sighed.
Well, the thing just wanted to play, after all. "All right, fun is fun. Get back in here." He stepped into the corridor and started toward it, snapping his fingers. "Come on, come on." The alien didn't budge.
"Come on now . . . good boy . . . good Beachball . . . that's right." He was closing in on it. Now he leaned forward to give it a reassuring stroke—and it made a violent lunge at him. Despite its not having a mouth in sight, or teeth, Pinback drew his hand away fast.
He knew enough about alien life-forms now to realize that it might have other, less visible but nonetheless potent, forms of defense.
Those unattractive yellow and black spots, for example, occasionally showed suspicious signs of moisture around the rims. Maybe the alien could secrete something unpleasant when angered. Why, it might even be toxic; and here they had been harboring it all these weeks.
Come to think of it, nobody had run any extensive tests on the alien. It had seemed so friendly and blatantly harmless at first that the thought had not occurred to him—or to anyone else. He sort of regretted that little oversight, because now he didn't know whether the Beachball was bluffing or not.
Its claws were another proposition entirely, of course, though his skin was more irritated than broken.
Well, he wasn't going to take any chances. Its twittering as it had lunged at him had risen to a sound that bore more than casual resemblance to a growl.
If it just want to play, he was going to have to try something else to get control over it. Perhaps the subtle approach.
It ought to be inside his jumpsuit . . . ah, there. This had always worked with the creature before. He leaned over cautiously, shoved the object toward the Beachball, and squeezed it.
It was a tiny gray mouse with pink ears and
a big pink nose. It made satisfying squeaking sounds. These didn't seem especially erudite to Pinback, but maybe they were close to Beachball talk. He squeezed it again.
"Here, boy . . . want the mousey? Nice mousey, pretty mousey . . ." This was a helluva occupation for a grown technician. "Want your mouse? Here, boy."
The Beachball didn't appear inclined to move any closer, but the violent pulsing seemed to lessen. Pinback dropped the rubber toy just in front of it. Again the claws tapped on the floor in imitation (or was it imitation?) of Pinback.
Coming to some Beachballian decision, the alien took a short hop forward and covered the mouse. Non-twittering sounds began to issue from it—crunching, swallowing sounds. Pinback interpreted them correctly. The alien was eating the mouse.
"Idiot!" he screamed, and reached down to recover the mouse's remains.
The Beachball lunged forward again and this time made contact with Pinback's bare hand. There was a searing sensation as if he had waved his hand over a low flame, and the alien almost hissed at him. Pinback jerked away, holding his hand and sucking at the injured member to try and lessen the pain—a purely reflexive, not too bright action on his part. Fortunately, the substance had already sunk into the skin and so didn't transfer to his tongue.
So much for subtlety and psychology. Now it was time for less Freudian approaches.
He disappeared inside the alien-holding room, and reemerged moments later hefting the broom firmly in one hand. It would have been easier with someone else to help herd the Beachball, but Boiler would only have laughed and he doubted that the oh-so-superior Doolittle would have bothered.
It didn't matter. He could handle the alien by himself. He'd show the others he could. Turning up the corridor, he prepared to give it fair warning . . . and stopped.
The alien had disappeared.
It still wanted to play? All right! He started up the corridor, looking behind him at every odd second. You had to watch out for the alien. It was tricky. Not intelligent, but tricky. There was a definite animal cunning in that Beachball. It reminded him of Boiler.
He slowed as he approached the turn in the corridor, edged cautiously up to it—and peered quickly around the bend. Not . . . something grabbed his ankles, and he screamed. But this time the alien had made a mistake. While it had a solid grip with both clawed feet, its muscular system was weak and it couldn't put much into the grip. Certainly not enough to topple Pinback.
The sergeant turned at the waist and swatted downward with the broom, catching the alien squarely.
It twittered and let go, backing away down the corridor, back, back. Pinback followed, continuing to swat at it. He had driven it halfway back to the holding-room entrance when the Beachball apparently decided it had taken enough.
Timing its leap in midswing, it caught the broom handle right at the base of the plastic straw and yanked it from Pinback's grasp. Now, using its semi-flying ability, it showed its imitative tendencies once again by flailing violently at Pinback, forcing him back down the corridor.
"No, no . . . you idiot . . . ow, yowch!" Something caught his feet and he stumbled, the broom crashing down heavily on the back of his neck.
"No, no!" Pinback continued to flail about for a couple of seconds until he suddenly realized that the broom was no longer in belligerent motion. He grabbed at it, glanced up, and saw the alien disappearing around the far end of the corridor.
It was moving back toward the engine-service area, the rear of the ship.
Not that he was worried about anything as theatrical as a suddenly sapient alien taking over the ship, but if the mischievous monster got itself entangled in any delicate machinery . . .
Naturally, anything that could be easily damaged should be well protected. But considering the lapse of maintenance on the ship these last months, there was no telling what shielding panels or covers might be out of place. No telling what Boiler might have played with besides the heat-unit shielding. The sooner the alien was back in its room and locked up, the better.
Untangling himself from the broom, Pinback started down the corridor after the rambunctious alien. One open bay after another yielded nothing. He was about to start back when a familiar twittering sound came to him from one of the big service bays. He moved slowly inside.
The twittering seemed to come from just behind the door leading to the inner service chamber. He put a hand on the latch, at the same time wondering that the creature had had enough sense or curiosity to close it behind itself, and threw it open.
Nothing showed inside but a tangle of old machinery, dimly lit by the service lights. Hunting through the room, broom firmly in hand, he followed the faint honking. The sound was moving away from him again, and the darkness was increasing. There wasn't much reason to visit this part of the ship.
The section he was heading for was fully automatic and he wouldn't find much of anything in the way of lighting there. He'd have to bring his own light with him.
There was a powerful flashlight in one of the service boxes. It produced a satisfyingly broad beam. Aiming it ahead and sweeping it thoroughly into all deep corners, he moved deeper into the little-visited service section of the ship.
This was absolutely crazy. There were never supposed to be fewer than two men at a time in this section of the Dark Star. There were too many things that needed two sets of hands to repair, and a number of things that could go bang at odd moments. But Pinback had forgotten most of that. Over the years, you only remembered the parts of the ship that had given you trouble.
Also, a number of elevator and ventilation shafts ran through here at odd angles. But there was no danger of stumbling into one of those, not with the light. Actually, he had no business being this deep into the service bay by himself. It was strictly against regs. But he couldn't tell Doolittle what had happened, not now. And he didn't dare tell Boiler.
No, Doolittle would have given him another of those supercontemptuous smiles which he reserved only for Pinback. And Boiler—Boiler would either grin or, worse, laugh outright. But he could tell Talby. So someone would know where he was.
He hesitated. Talby might understand—but for sure he wouldn't do anything to help. So why bother? Pinback moved on. Crazy Talby. At least he was harmless. Not like Boiler, who—
There was a twittering sound to his right, and he swung the beam rapidly in that direction. The brilliant, slick red epidermis of the Beachball gleamed back at him.
It was sitting in a small square doorway. Pinback didn't recognize it right away—and when he did, his breath came up short. The alien was sitting in this level's emergency entrance to the main service-elevator shaft.
Maybe he could pry it into the room. He jabbed at it with the broom, but it was impossible to get the end of the stick behind the alien. Suddenly it moved—backward, into the shaft. Pinback dropped to all fours and crawled forward quickly. There was a chance he could reach it with the stick before it drifted down too far.
Holding the flashlight in front of him, he had just a quick glimpse of the Beachball as it vanished through the open hatchway on the other side of the shaft.
He sat back, sighed. Now he was really in trouble. The alien was loose in one of the most sensitive, least-visited areas of the Dark Star. It could roam around back there, fooling with who knew what, unless it was recaptured immediately.
But he had no way to get across the shaft. If he could only bring the elevator down it would be easy enough to cross over its top and slip through the emergency hatchway the alien had just vacated.
But the elevator was locked and could be activated only at the expense of notifying those on the bridge that it was in use. If he slipped back there and keyed it himself, certainly Doolittle or Boiler would be on station. And if they saw the elevator suddenly thrown into use, they would want to know what Pinback was doing fussing around in a section of the ship he had no business visiting.
If he remembered correctly, use of the elevator would even key a warning light in their living q
uarters. Only when it was working on automatic was the signal silent. And no sound issued from the shaft now.
He didn't think he could concoct an excuse that would fool Doolittle. Eventually he would end up confessing that he had let the alien escape. Then he would be in terrible shape. Doolittle wouldn't trust him with anything, and Boiler would never stop snickering.
All right, so he wouldn't use the elevator. He would get the alien back without anyone knowing, and without anyone's help. He stuck his head into the shaft, looked across, then down. It would help it he weren't so afraid of heights. He could drift in a starsuit for hours without being troubled, but he got dizzy atop a ladder.
Not that it was so terribly far from here to the bottom of the shaft. The Dark Star wasn't that big. If he slipped and fell while trying to cross, why, he might only break an arm or maybe both legs. In addition to being painful, that would be even worse than asking for Doolittle's or Boiler's help—but he was going to get across.
With what? There was nothing like an emergency ladder going down the shaft. The elevator was equipped with too many fail-safes—there was no need for a ladder. And there was no other way to the rear of the ship except across this shaft.
It had been designed this way, on the off chance that if any crewmember went berserk and tried to kick himself out the emergency airlock, or fool with the vital communications/life-support instrumentation, he would have to use the elevator—thus activating those tell-tales in the bridge and living quarters that now bedeviled Pinback.
No one could use the elevator without some other member of the crew knowing about it. But Pinback would fool them—somehow.
Moving back into the service chamber, he hunted around with the light. Eventually he found a heavy metal canister which he was sure the wiry but light alien wouldn't be able to move. He rolled it over until it blocked the small hatchway.
Then he hurried back up to the crafts room. It was empty. Doolittle's wooden-jar organ sat alone, silent, behind a thin partition. The pottery wheels, the glass works, the metal etching and macrame sections, the instructional film viewers—all were deserted. That meant Doolittle and Boiler were either forward in the control room or, more likely, relaxing in their living quarters. Good. It didn't matter to Pinback whether they were taking sunlamp treatments or a bath—as long as they were out of his way.
Dark Star Page 8
