Alien Pets

by Trisha McNary

  That was weird, Antaska thought.

  The car rose up to the level of the bridge, and its door started to open.

  Before the door opened all the way, the walls on either side of Antaska made a small creak sound. Her survival instincts kicked into high gear. Without thinking, she crouched and then jumped out through the partly opened lift doors. Super-fast muscle reflexes, genetically enhanced by the Woogahs and strengthened by hard work in their factory, shot her out through the narrow opening between the two doors.

  Antaska landed just outside of the lift car. She turned around and looked back. The doors stopped opening at about three feet wide and started to close again.

  “Creak!” The lift car walls creaked louder. Then “Bam!” The walls slammed together.

  “No!” Antaska heard a high-pitched scream from two floors down. “She got out! Don’t let her get away!”

  “Boom! Boom! Boom!” Antaska heard right next to her, and she screamed too. The ground shook and wavered under her feet. She looked along the bridge that extended away from the lift. The large colorful balls the students had been tossing down in the courtyard were landing on it and exploding! Antaska looked down in the courtyard and saw alien students—if they were students—aiming their bomb balls at her!

  With so many hostile aliens in the courtyard, the bridge looked like her best chance for escape even with bombs hitting it. Antaska took it at a run, ducking and dodging the flying globes.

  Then loud sirens split through the air. The aliens in the courtyard cleared away fast. Antaska had avoided the falling bombs, but the bridge she ran on started to crumble beneath her. Somehow, as if running down a staircase, Antaska managed to keep solid material under her feet by jumping from one piece of the breaking bridge to another as it sunk down. Just before it crashed and broke into a thousand pieces, she jumped off a last large chunk of concrete and landed in a crouch on the courtyard ground.

  Several small police vehicles sped into the courtyard and drove in circles around Antaska. No exit was possible without being run over, so she straightened up and stood still.

  An odd-shaped police car with a small cabin in the front and a larger bulb shape in the back pulled up next to Antaska. Inside the clear front enclosure, a small canine police officer with long floppy ears and a doggy face turned and looked at her. Then he pulled a lever.

  The back of the car opened. Foam sprayed out of it and encased Antaska’s body up to her neck. It shrunk down to her size and trapped her.

  What’s going on here? Antaska wondered. Am I being arrested? I’m sure I didn’t do anything wrong, but I don’t know all the laws of this strange planet.

  A pronged plasti-metal arm extended from the back of the car toward Antaska. The prongs opened and then closed tight on the hardened foam that surrounded her. The arm lifted her up and pulled her inside the opened back of the car. Then it retracted.

  The car’s lid closed down over Antaska so that all she could see was the gray side of a rounded wall in front of her face. Then she felt motion. The vehicle moved in a circle and picked up speed. Its siren blared as it raced to wherever it was taking her.

  The material that enclosed Antaska was cushiony but unbreakable. She twisted her neck and looked around at the small open space around her head.

  What if I run out of oxygen in here? Antaska thought, on the verge of panic.

  She noticed a small vent on the curved side of the wall.

  Hopefully, that’s an air vent, she thought.

  Antaska listened, but she couldn’t hear the hiss of air circulating over the loud siren and other honks and beeps coming from outside her container. Her body swayed from side to side whenever the vehicle made a turn.

  Less panicked about suffocating, Antaska wondered why she had been picked up and put in this police car.

  Did I break a law without knowing it, or did they just take me because I was the only one there? Will I be blamed for whatever happened?

  The vehicle kept going, and Antaska’s thoughts kept going in the same endless circle. But at least she wasn’t thinking about Marroo now.

  The Woogah stealth ship carrying Marroo the slave hunter slid out of warp space near planet Earth. Sleep gas cleared from the cold storage capsule he slept in. Valves opened and sprayed oxygen mixed with chemicals to reverse the effects of the gas. Marroo’s strange cloud-covered eyes opened. He breathed deep and inhaled the reviving mixture for several minutes. Then the clear, curved lid of the oblong chamber lifted.

  Marroo raised a dark-blue hand and grasped the strap that restrained his chest. He groped for the release button, clicked it open, and sat up. He grabbed a restorative beverage bulb from a compartment inside the cushioned chamber and gulped it all down. Then Marroo reached down and freed a second restraint from his legs. His body floated up a few inches in the ship’s zero gravity. He grabbed the edge of the sleep chamber with both hands, twisted his muscular torso, and swung himself out.

  Marroo’s limbs swayed and wavered in zero g. The three months spent in deep sleep made him struggle for a few moments to regain his ship balance. It came back fast.

  Marroo stretched and flexed his stiff arm and leg muscles. A light kick in the air propelled him back to the sleep capsule. He reached inside and lifted out his folded-up ship suit. Then he pushed himself a few feet away and pulled his knees in toward his body. First one foot and then the other went into the leg openings of the suit. Marroo rotated around in all directions as he pulled the suit all the way on, but he was used to that. After hundreds of years of space travel, zero g was almost more familiar to him than his native planet’s 0.8 Earth g.

  When his suit was on and fastened, Marroo reached over and grasped the white plasti-metal side of the sleep chamber again. A push off from there floated him across the small room to the doorway. Another shove against the door frame sent him floating down the narrow hallway to his ship’s bridge.

  As usual, despite the stretching and restorative beverage, Marroo felt fuzzy and dull after the long cold sleep.

  “Curse that Earth female!” he said telepathically, even though no one else was on the ship. “I had to put myself in cold storage to get her off my mind. Now I’ll have to deal with who knows what unpleasant side effects. Oh well, this obsession will be over after I quench my thirst with the physical love of another Earth woman.”

  Inside the bridge, Marroo floated over to his pilot station. He strapped himself down in a round, deep-cushioned chair next to a console surrounded by video screens. Views of the ship’s current surroundings displayed on the screens. Marroo’s stare fixed on a cloudy blue and green globe.

  “There it is! Beautiful! The Verdante’s precious and ever-protected farm where they grow and train their human pets,” Marroo spoke telepathically again.

  “Bwhh, uhh, whuh,” he mumbled out loud, trying to get his lips and tongue to work.

  “Bwuhh…I need to practice talking in the galactic vocal language if I’m going to snatch an Earth female,” he finally managed to say out loud. “As far as I know, they’re not telepathic, so my mental hypnotic powers won’t work on them. I’ll have to use my manly charms to convince one to come along with me. But that shouldn’t be hard. The Woogah gene labs designed me to be irresistible to women, and I’m one of the most attractive and desirable of all the hunters—if not the most desirable.”

  “I need to be looking my best for this mission. Am I?” Marroo asked himself. “Did I lose weight while I was in cold storage?”

  He looked around for a mirror for confirmation, then remembered he didn’t keep one on the space ship.

  “Urrgh.” Marroo’s mouth and throat felt parched from the unusual amount of vocalizing added to the recent stretch of time in cold storage. He pushed a panel open, retrieved another beverage, and drank it down.

  “This barbaric form of communication is so tiresome!” Marroo complained out loud, “but I must get my vocal cords in shape if I’m going to accomplish my goal. Ah humm! Anyway, it’s a crime to
step foot on an alien planet, so I’ll have to hover my ship near an Earth female and then talk her into getting in. I’ll have to find one walking around by herself outside somewhere. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Marroo pressed some keys on his console to set a course for the planet’s most populated area—the North Pole.

  “I’ll just grab one and be on my way in no time,” Marroo continued to talk out loud as his ship headed toward Earth. “One taste of the physical charms of an Earth female is all I need, and that Earth slave Antaska will be out of my head. I’m sure of it. I’ll be free to continue my carefree lifestyle without the curse of this constant longing for her. Humph!”

  Unasked for, her image had entered his mind again. The flow of her shiny pink hair. The glow of her amazingly soft, warm skin. The look of longing in her almond eyes the last time he’d seen her—under the influence of his hypnotic love spell, of course.

  Marroo realized that he had never expressed his desire for Antaska in such strong terms before. He ended his monologue feeling not better but even more exasperated.

  Pweet, a young Earth female, stood next to the clear wall that separated her “viewing room” from the gigantic green aliens who walked past and stared in at her. She wore her stretchy gray space school uniform to let them know she was ready to leave for space right away. The aliens, in their own bright blue ship suits, flowed past. Many huge slanted eyes set in large craniums looked, but none stopped. Pweet watched and waited. Finally, one of the giants broke away from the rest and approached. Pweet brushed long silver hair away her face and looked up.

  The eight-foot-tall male, by body shape, stopped just outside the clear divider in front of Pweet. She tipped her head back to meet the enormous dark green eyes that looked down at her. The alien ran a six-fingered hand though his short, spiky green hair.

  Then for a few moments, nothing happened. Pweet stared at him, and he stared back. Neither spoke. The divider was soundproof anyway. He didn’t smile, but she knew the Verdantes were telepathic and didn’t use their mouths much.

  A life-changing decision had to be made based on only this brief silent encounter. Would Pweet leave Earth with this alien for the rest of her life? She tried to judge the alien from his still eyes and face. Impossible! She checked her feelings.

  How do I feel about this humanoid, this alien? she asked herself. Pweet felt comfortable, happy, and relaxed. Or maybe just happy about the chance to finally go to space? The thought circled through her mind, but she rejected it.

  No. I want to go to space, but I like this one too even though we’ve just met. It’s almost like an attachment. I could be imagining it, but I don’t think so. This time, I’m going to be picked, and I’m getting off this planet. I know it!

  Her decision made, there was no time to be shy. Pweet lifted a hand and pointed at herself. She held the hand over her heart and then pointed up at the sky. The alien’s big eyes grew bigger. She waved her arms in the air like a flying bird and pointed up at the sky again. Then she pointed at herself, to the alien, and up again.

  The corners of the alien’s eyes crinkled and tilted up higher. Encouraged, Pweet smiled at him. He placed his large hand over his own heart, pointed at her, and then up. Then he nodded his big green head.

  Yes! thought Pweet. I’m finally going! This morning when I got out of bed, I just knew I was leaving this planet today!

  But wait…no. Not this again! One of the human-alien liaisons stood next to the big alien tugging on his sleeve with one hand to get his attention. She held an electronic table in her other hand. The alien looked down at the liaison, away from Pweet. The older woman spoke and stabbed at her tablet. She gestured toward an opening in the wall across the corridor. She pulled the alien’s arm in that direction.

  He looked at Pweet and nodded—an incomprehensible nod—then turned and followed the small human woman away. Pweet’s feelings changed from happy to numb. She watched the tall green man and the small woman all in black disappear though the crowd. Then all she could see was the blue and green crowd of other aliens walking past.

  Pweet walked to the back of the small room and sat down on the couch built into the wall. She leaned against the soft back of the couch and crossed her arms.

  There’s still hope. I’ll just wait, Pweet thought, as she had the last six times this had happened.

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