“Then why do we?” asked Charlie.
“That is a good question.” Greebol seemed to ponder it for a moment before shaking the idea away completely. “Not for us to worry about Charlie,” he said. “We shall let the experts deal with that. Onwards!”
“What about this gigantic ship over our heads?” gasped Charlie in disbelief of Greebol’s lack of interest.
“Again Charlie… let the experts worry about that. It really is none of our concern.”
“And what exactly is our concern Greebol?”
Greebol grinned. “Money of course! Back to work... we have cargo to deliver and we are already late.”
Reluctantly Charlie followed Greebol back down Soggy Biscuit and through some of the side alleys, further into the city. He almost had to run to keep up. The smell down this maze of alleyways was much stronger.
“Who hired you to kidnap the professor?” Charlie called to Greebol. There was no answer. Perhaps he did not hear him.
“Where are we going?” Charlie tried again.
Greebol paused briefly. He turned and looked Charlie in the eyes.
“My friend,” he said with a grin, “we are going to church!”
Chapter 20
Sleep is a curious thing. It is another of life’s little mysteries. Every living creature needs to sleep. Every living creature. No exception.
Of course some creatures sleep for longer or less than others. The Dung Rats of the gassy planet Bak-ed-bea-nes live for six years and for five and three quarters of those years they spend in a state of unconsciousness in a deep, dark, damp hole in the ground. A pointless life some would say, but to the Dung Rats, that quarter of a year is glorious! They eat well, play a lot and make lots and lots of babies.
Alternatively the Large Footed Dancing Porcupines on the half world of Styma, live for over five hundred years due to a complex but nutritious diet of cabbage, worms, tuna fish and whatever is left in the bottom of the can in the bins. Sleep occurs for them for only one hour every two years. As amazing as it sounds to live for that long, having such little sleep to break up the days actually makes life very boring. When it is finally time to die, the Large Footed Dancing Porcupines welcome death with open arms. At least the ones who haven’t already learned how to tie a noose around their necks many years earlier.
Although we all know why we need sleep, what actually happens to us in a sleeping state is still somewhat a mystery. The fact that living bodies simply shut down is for many somewhat disturbing.
The Umfians have a terrifying fear of sleep. Probably because the majority tend to sleep walk, sleep talk, sleep fight, sleep kill and often sleep die. They are such an unpredictable and violent race that their sleep is just as unpredictable and violent. On numerous occasions (probably too many to mention) an Umfian has gone to sleep one night and woken up dead in the morning. This is sometimes due to their volatile sleeping patterns but often because a rival Umfian has slit their throat in the night.
The Wizards believe that sleep is irrelevant and just wasted time when they could be learning and practising new spells. Therefore they have spent many years trying to perfect a spell to keep them awake, although not quite managing it often resulted in Wizards randomly falling asleep during the day. This can cause many complications, especially to Genira Vest, a Wizard attempting to use magic to fly. Needless to say Genira Vest is no longer with us.
Humans on the other hand enjoy sleeping. Most look forward to it and it is actually the highlight of their days. Humans are especially fond of dreaming, as in their dreams they are transported away from their normal, mundane lives and can exist in a danger-free world of adventure. Of course for one particular Human who now lives in an actual world of adventure, where the danger is very real, dreams would give him the chance to be back in his normal, mundane life.
For a Gumthar, sleeping is neither a joy nor a chore. It is just sleeping. And dreams are just dreams. Nothing less and nothing more.
This was true of one particular Gumthar who lay in his softer than cotton wool bed, wrapped up in his softer than feathers quilt next to his not so soft and actually harder than old cheese wife. This particular Gumthar dreamt of praise and applause. He dreamt of impressed handshakes, words of congratulations and admiration. In other words he dreamt of things that he never experienced in his real life. It was a dream that he would not care for when he woke, but was thoroughly enjoying it at the moment.
Little did he know that very soon he would be rudely awoken from the dream and his pleasant sleep and be forced to deal with something he in no way had any idea how to deal with.
Chapter 21
Private Forlus Lox’mus rushed down the corridor. He was sweating and kept tripping over his own feet as his boots were slightly too large for him. Hand-me-downs from Axtin.
His pale green hair, like a really weak pea soup, medium in length in a silly centre parting, flapped behind him as he ran. Every now and then he had to adjust the thick rimmed spectacles on his small green nose.
May’orns were said to be the beautiful race. Forlus contradicted this statement. After all, there was a black sheep in every species.
It wasn’t that Forlus was ugly, for beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One person's wart covered toad is another’s dashing prince. Forlus just looked a little different. On the day of his birth his parents thought that he was the placenta and that the baby was still to come.
He turned another corner and continued to run. These corridors seemed endless. Typical that he would have been given this job. Still, at this moment he was kind of glad he got to go indoors. What was waiting for him outside terrified him.
“Running iz not permitted,” said a snotty, yet lean butler, wearing a stereotypical tux and tails, as Forlus approached a large door. He slowed to a mild trot.
“I’ve been sent to wake the Governor,” he said amid pants as he stopped before the butler.
“No one wakez ze Governor. Not even ze Zentry.”
The butler was a Lampan but it was clear to Forlus from his accent that he was one of the Stellar Lampans from the Generi sector of space. Of course he was wrong as he usually was. The butler was in fact from the Mogolen sector, which to most of us would be pretty obvious.
“This is really important,” said Forlus panicking.
“I do not care if ze Overzeer himzelf iz dezperate to take a zhit in the Governerz toilet, no one iz waking him up! Ze Governor needz zix hourz of zleep a day and at current he az only had four. If you wizh to come back in two hourz I am zure he will be happy to help.”
“These are direct orders from superintendent Stort himself,” Forlus pleaded. “We have a situation.”
The butler snorted and raised his chin, looking down his non-existent nose at the young goofy private. “There alwayz appearz to be a zituation doezn’t there?” he said sarcastically. “If ze zuperintendent wizhez to zpeak with ze Governor, tell the zuperintendent to get hiz mizerable arze here himzelf.”
“That is unlikely to happen,” Forlus mumbled. He was losing the butlers attention. He had already turned back around with his pink feather duster, aimlessly dusting items that had no dust on them whatsoever.
Forlus couldn’t go back out there without the Governor. The superintendent would not be pleased. He had to think of something quick. The problem was that quick thinking was not something Forlus was usually very good at. At least not quick thinking anything that actually mattered.
Today however he felt this was all about to change. For some reason today, he felt that he did not understand anything about the universe he lived in (at least less than he usually did), yet at the same time felt that he understood everything perfectly (again, as perfect as Forlus would ever know).
In this ever changing universe, even someone like Forlus could have a sudden spark of intelligence.
He bounded over to the nearest window, the blinds closed, and spoke in the most authoritative voice he could muster.
“I’ll let you be the one to e
xplain to the Governor why he wasn’t woken for this then shall I?”
He pulled the string for the blind, a little too hard. The blind fell from the window, crashing down on the young privates head with an almighty THUNK!
The butler gasped, not for the reckless destruction of Baggus government property, but for the large silver ship that covered the sky.
As Forlus tried to stagger back to his feet, rubbing a large lump rapidly growing on his already strange looking head, the butler gibbered, “I’ll… I’ll… I’ll wake ze Governor!”
“Superintendent Stort I hold you responsible for this!”
Stort closed his eyes for a moment and counted to ten. “Not really anything to do with me sir,” he said slowly.
“Very well… in that case I hold you indirectly responsible.”
The Governor paced the ground, staring up at the silver spaceship, tutting.
Rolphan was a Gumthar and, like all Gumthar he had grey skin, his was a dark shade, and yellow eyes. The double antennae on top of his head, that met in the middle into something very similar to an ear was slightly wonky. He could only be called fat. To call him anything else would be an insult to anyone of a slighter frame. A large fat body, yet the double arms at either side of him, that joined at the end into one hand, were unusually thin.
At the present moment he still wore his striped pyjamas and his fluffy bunny rabbit slippers.
Rolphan was the Governor of Baggus City. How he had ever got the job no one could quite remember. It just kind of happened and, what is usually the case in Baggus, the people seemed to accept it.
It wasn’t that Rolphan was a bad Governor, or that he didn’t care for the city, it’s just he wasn’t a great Governor and he seemed to care for himself far more.
“What are you going to do about this then superintendent?” he growled, his voice wobbly like his cheeks.
“It’s not really my responsibility is it sir?” asked Stort, one hand on a hip, the other flicking the ash from another liquorish cigar. “After all… I control the streets of Baggus… not the skies.”
“I see, I see,” the Governor responded, nodding his head, forcing the antennae to bounce comically, “trying to get out of work are we? That will be noted in your next review.”
“I’m Picking Up A Message Sir,” said the Umfian officer standing by a mobile control station.
The Governor stared at the officer with a look of disgust. “Stort,” he began, “are you aware you have an Umfian in your force?”
“Yes sir,” said Stort, “he has been with us for over a year. You signed his entrance papers yourself.”
“I doubt that very much. I have to question what type of man would allow such a savage to work for him.”
Stort could have said how private Klantic Pak had proved himself as an exemplary officer. How private Pak was not a mindless brute as many Umfians were believed to be. How private Pak was a better man then Rolphan would ever be. Stort didn’t say that of course. It’s not that he feared for his job or feared the Governor. It was more the fact that he just couldn’t be bothered.
“What does the message say Pak?” Stort asked.
Klantic Pak gave the Governor a look that seemed to say talk 'about me like that again and I’ll rip that daft antennae from your head'. It could have been 'talk to me like that again and I’ll separate your attached arms and put your head through a skewer'. It could have been 'talk to me like that again and I’ll feed your testicles to the peasants'. It could have been any number of things, but it was fairly certain that all of them resulted in a great deal of pain for the Governor.
“Transmission’s Bad Sir,” the Umfian responded with a grunt. “Could Be This Crappy Old Machinery Sir.”
“I have put in requests for updates,” said Stort, “but so far they seem to have fallen on deaf ears.”
The Governor did not seem to hear the remark.
“They Say Something Along The Lines Of A Quest And Something About A Dragon,” Pak continued.
The Sentry in the area looked to each other. They had heard those words before.
Governor Rolphan looked towards the market square and saw a number of people in white suites and face-masks clearing up what could only be called a blood bath.
“I think I need to be updated on what has been going on around here.”
For the next ten minutes, Stort explained about the out-of-control cube-shaped ship, the death of the civilians and the attack by the small being and his words of a quest and a dragon. Now most people when telling a story tend to exaggerate it slightly, to make it sound more exciting. Not Rexan Stort. He was not a storyteller. He told it plain and simple, exactly as it was. No thrills.
“And where is this small being now?” the Governor asked.
“In the cells.”
“Good. Take me to him.”
“Sir?”
“He seems to have something in common with our… visitors. Perhaps he can help.”
Giblet was not a happy Dwarf. As previously mentioned, Dwarves can have bad attitudes and right now Giblet's attitude was definitely bad.
He was stuck in a cell, no larger than his space faring vessel, which was quite small. Inside there was a hard bed. Graffiti was scrawled on the walls, stating a whole host of profanities and things they would like to do to superintendent Stort if they managed to get their hands on him (these including decapitation, mutilation and thrusting hard spiked rods where the sun don’t shine). It concerned Giblet to see that most of the graffiti was written in brown. As there was no way of getting brown paint into the cells, he could only imagine what it was the prisoners had used.
He heard a rush of voices from outside and stepped over to the front of the cell. Five thick bars stopped him from escaping. Giblet had already tried to squeeze through the gap and found that they were highly charged and had given himself a rather nasty shock. This was the reason the hair on the top of his head was currently trying to touch the ceiling.
The Governor and Stort walked up to the cell. Giblet growled when he saw the superintendent.
“You!” he scowled. “Payback is a Dwarf's right! I promise you that I will get my vengeance for what you did to me!”
Stort smiled. “Please… you’re not the first prisoner to threaten me and I assure you, you won’t be the last. Besides… it’s not as if you’re getting out of here any time soon.”
Giblet growled showing a row of yellowing, slightly pointed teeth inside his mouth.
“Giblet is it?” asked the Governor. “I understand you are Goblet's son. Is that right?”
“You know of my father?” asked Giblet.
“My little friend… I don’t even know what you are supposed to be!”
Giblet’s eye twitched at being called ‘little’.
“He’s called a Dwarf apparently,” put in Stort. “Oh we’ve heard of them before. Been around for years.”
“Really?” questioned the Governor in confusion. “I thought there were only ten species in our galaxy.”
“There is,” Stort responded. “It’s all highly confusing. I’m not sure I fully understand it.”
“Ha!” Giblet snorted. “Then I have the advantage! Galaxy’s changed you see.” He stopped before he:
a) gave the game away, giving them the upper hand
b) made a fool out of himself as he didn’t actually have a clue what was going on and should have paid more attention to that damned Wizard.
The Governor scratched his big fat behind and considered the Dwarf carefully.
“I’m going to let you go,” he said suddenly and out of the blue.
Now, Stort had heard the Governor say some stupid things in his time, (like the time he told a room full of the one-eyed Shlolatians that he had a deep mistrust of anything that didn’t keep both its eyes on the ball, or the time Baggus was divided in war, one hundred thousand people dying, and publicly he proved to the galaxy that he cared more about his game of space golf) but still it shocked him to hear more.<
br />
“Set him free?” Stort questioned.
“On one condition,” the Governor continued. Giblet leaned forwards, listening carefully. “There is a large ship in the sky. We think it has come here for the same reason you have.”
Giblet's eyes narrowed. He had a pretty good idea who that would be. “And?” he asked.
“And,” said the Governor with a wink, “I want you to tell them to piss off.”
Stort groaned. He could tell the owners of that flashy silver ship to piss off. Any of his men could tell them to piss off. Heck, most of the morons that lived in this city knew how to say piss off. Yet the Governor was going to release this little bugger to say it instead?
“It’s a deal,” said the Dwarf with a smile.
“Now you do understand that not only must you tell them to go,” put in the Governor, “but they must actually go. If they don’t… you go straight back in here. Understood?”
“Perfectly. Do not fear for I promise to keep my end of the bargain. Giblet of the Dwarves knows exactly how to get rid of them!” And he did. He had to kill the dragon. It was the only way his bitter rivals would leave Baggus’Regious.
So the Governor opened the cell door and the Dwarf was released. Giblet looked at Stort with a cruel glare as he followed the Governor out of the jail, giving him a sign with his finger that he would slit his throat. And then giving another sign with another finger that was just plain rude.
Back outside the panic had died down slightly and the Sentry were sitting around doing wasteful things with their paid time.
Privates Forlus and Axtin played a game of battered draughts, similar to the common game of draughts, except when you lose a piece your opponent gets to punch you in the face, hence the reason Forlus had two black eyes and a fat lip.
Sergeant Thinker leaned against a wall scrubbing his helmet. Not that it needed scrubbing as you could already see the entire fat planet reflected in its shiny sheen.
Intergalactic Terrorist (New Dimension Book 1) Page 15
