Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Seriously, that’s the only way?” Loren asked.

  Dave blew out his cheeks. “I mean, I think so. I don’t know. I guess there might be other routes down from this side, but I wouldn’t know where to even start looking.”

  “OK, then let’s go,” said Cal. He let out a rasping breath, and put on his best Darth Vader voice. “Let us begin our journey to the Dark Side.”

  “Join me!” said Dave, pulling off a decent Vader of his own. “Together, we can rule the galaxy as father and—”

  “Do you mind?” Mech snapped. “Can we get back to the matter at hand?”

  Dave blushed. “Right. Yes, right. Sorry. Well… it’s not as easy as just wandering to the dark… to the other side,” he said.

  Loren crossed her arms. “It never is. What do we have to do?”

  “Well, circumnavigate half the globe, for starters. Now, it’s a small planet, so that in itself isn’t a deal-breaker. But it means passing through the other areas of the park.” Dave looked at the others in turn, making sure they understood the full significance of this. “The walled-off areas. With the rogue bio-bots.”

  “Man, for a hundred million credits, I will fight every one of those motherfonkers,” Mech said.

  “Yeah,” said Cal. He nodded, slowly at first, but then with growing conviction. “Yeah. How bad can it really be?”

  Dave shrugged. “OK. Have you ever seen the movies Escape from New York and Aliens?”

  “Of course,” said Cal. “Who hasn’t? Except all these guys, obviously.”

  “Mash them together, and that’s this place,” said Dave, pointing to the sector immediately to the East. “Gangs of bio-bots who will shoot, stab, burn, impale, or generally hurt and kill us in any way they can.”

  He pointed further East, to one of the two largest segments of the circle. “And here. You seen Jurassic Park?”

  “One, two and three,” Cal confirmed.

  Dave hesitated. “They made a three?” he asked. “Any good?”

  “No. Fonking terrible,” Cal said. “You missed nothing.”

  Dave seemed pleased to hear it. “OK, well this here, this is Jurassic Park, only instead of rampaging dinosaurs, it has rampaging giant clown-monsters that’ll eat us all alive.”

  Cal winced. “OK. Maybe we shouldn’t go that way. What about West?”

  Dave’s finger swung West of the Hub, and stopped over the smaller of the two sections. “You ever see the movie Deliverance?”

  “Uh… yeah,” said Cal, pretty sure he knew what was coming next.

  “OK. Picture that scene. You know the one.”

  “I do,” Cal confirmed.

  “Right. Now picture it a thousand times worse,” said Dave. “Only with funny wigs, big shoes and a lot of comical honking noises.”

  Cal tried very hard not to visualize it, but the way his body spasmed in horror suggested he’d failed.

  “And as for further out,” Dave began, pointing to the final sector. “Have you seen the movie Jurassic Deliverance?”

  “No…”

  “Because it doesn’t exist,” said Dave. “Because nobody in their right mind would watch it. And yet, that’s pretty much what would be waiting for us in this section, if we set foot on the other side of that wall.”

  “OK, then. East it is!” said Cal.

  Dave laughed. “Ha. Yeah,” he said, then it dawned on him that nobody else was sharing in the joke. “Wait, you’re not serious? You’re not actually considering going?”

  “Considering going? No,” said Cal.

  “Thank God.”

  “Going? You bet your ams we are.”

  “But… But… You can’t. Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s suicide!” said Dave.

  Cal waved the concern away. “Meh. We do this sort of thing all the time.”

  “No. Trust me, you don’t,” said Dave. “When the first few bio-bots went rogue, hundreds of people died. Hundreds. And not just guests, security teams, too. Zertex even sent in squads of shock-troopers. They never came out. No-one came out. And that was just a few malfunctioning bots. Now they’ve all gone nuts. You can’t go in there. It’s… It’s madness.”

  “It’s a hundred million credits,” Mech corrected. “And we weren’t asking for your permission.”

  Cal put an arm around Dave’s shoulders. “Besides, it’ll be fun. It’ll be an adventure. When was the last time you had a real adventure, Dave? A real space adventure?”

  “I… I mean…”

  “Look at us. A couple of Earth guys, out here exploring the galaxy,” said Cal, gesturing to the air in front of them, as if the entire cosmos was spread out there in all its glory. “I’ve saved the multiverse. I’ve seen other realities, fought giant spider-dragons, died and come back to life…”

  He squeezed Dave’s shoulder. “And you’re running a transport company. I mean, great job, well done – seriously, it’s impressive – but don’t you ever wish you could just do something… crazy? Something amazing? Something cray-mazing? I totally just invented that, by the way, so no-one steal it.”

  He pointed to the hologram map, and resisted the urge to try to touch it. “This, Dave. This is cray-mazing. You think we bumped into each other so we could catch up on old times? We bumped into each other because of one thing.”

  “Massive coincidence?” Dave guessed.

  “Destiny,” Cal said, in his most dramatic whisper. “Your destiny. To come with us on this adventure. To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and… No, wait, that’s Star Trek.”

  He shrugged. “Look, just come with us, OK? It’ll be great.”

  Dave shifted awkwardly on his feet, sighed, then scraped together some semblance of a smile. “No, it won’t be great,” he said. “It’ll be cray-mazing.”

  “Yes! That’s the spirit!” Cal cried. He squeezed Dave’s shoulder. “Also, I copyrighted the ‘cray-mazing’ thing. You owe me ten bucks.”

  * * *

  Mech, Loren and Miz plodded in the direction of the barricaded gate that led East from the Hub. Splurt clung to Loren’s back, his arms too short and stumpy to reach around either Mech or Miz’s shoulders.

  Cal and Dave were thirty feet or more ahead, talking and laughing and sharing the occasional high-five. They had spent the first ten minutes of the trek singing their favorite TV theme songs, and were now playing ‘Marry, Fonk, Kill,’ with the cast of The Simpsons, albeit only the early seasons.

  “Look at them,” Mech grunted. “Talking.”

  “Yep,” said Loren. “They’re definitely talking.”

  Mech shook his head. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Dave?” said Loren. “Why not?”

  “Me neither,” said Miz. “There’s something about him.”

  Loren smirked as the penny dropped. “Wait, are you two jealous?”

  “What? As if,” Miz snorted.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mech snapped. “I mean… What are you even talking about? That’s crazy.”

  “Oh wow. You are. You’re both jealous,” said Loren.

  “Am not!” Miz scowled.

  “Bedge, you’re crazy,” said Mech. “Jealous? Me? Of that guy? Uh-uh. No way. No way, no how.”

  “Aw, don’t feel bad,” said Loren, pouting out her bottom lip. “It’s good for him. To meet someone else from Earth, I mean. You saw what he was getting like. He was lonely. I mean, not lonely, he had us, but he was getting miserable. This is good for him. It’s someone with shared experiences. Someone he can relate to. If you ask me, Dave’s exactly what Cal needed right now.”

  She had walked on three more paces before she realized Mech had stopped. “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re right,” said Mech. Loren could practically hear the synapses firing in his head. “Dave’s just what Cal needed right now.”

  “Right. Good. Well… I’m glad you agree,” said Loren.

  “Because he ain’t real,” Mech added.

  Miz’s furry b
row knotted above her nose. “Who, Cal?”

  “What? No! Of course Cal’s real. I mean Dave. He ain’t real. He’s a bio-bot, or whatever the fonk they’re called.”

  Loren watched Dave and Cal continue on ahead for a while, still laughing and joking.

  “I think that’s a stretch.”

  “No, it makes total sense,” Mech insisted. “The dude said it himself. The park scans your brain and creates custom bots from the molecular level up, designed just for you. Designed to be exactly what you need them to be.”

  “Well how come we don’t have one?” Miz asked, sounding a little put-out. “I have needs, too.”

  “Yeah, we’re aware of that. You tell us on a regular basis,” said Loren with a shudder. “But, Mech, I mean… no. It doesn’t make sense. We met him outside the park. He paid our entry fee. Why would he do that if he was a bot? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why would a guy Cal knew from Earth just happen to be visiting a shizzhole of a carnival planet at the exact same time we were?” Mech asked. “I mean, I could calculate you the odds, but it’s a big fonking number, and it’d take me a while to say it out loud.” His eyes narrowed as Cal and Dave began belting out the theme to Fraggle Rock.

  “That guy’s a fonking bio-bot,” said Mech. “That’s the only way this makes sense. You mark my words.”

  Miz cocked her head to the side. “I hear more cops.”

  “Coming this way?” Loren asked, gazing back the way they’d come. The buildings stood still and silent, dust swirling lightly over the paving stones. “I can’t see anyone. Are you sure that—?”

  “Maybe if you’d quit yacking I could hear,” Miz said. She listened again. “No. I think they’re going down into the tunnels. Probably trying to find out what happened to the other guys. I think we’re OK.”

  “For now,” said Loren, as the resumed walking. “If Dave’s right about what’s over the wall, this could get messy. And we don’t have guns. Or Splurt.”

  Splurt bobbed happily at the mention of his name. Loren patted the arm slung around her neck.

  “How are we supposed to get all the way around a planet?” Miz asked. “Isn’t that, like, a long way?”

  “You’d fonk Maude Flanders?!” Cal cried. “Seriously?”

  Mech grunted in annoyance. “Bio-bot. I’m telling you.”

  “Yes, it’s a long way,” Loren confirmed. “But we don’t have to get all the way around to the opposite side. Dave says there should be an entrance just beyond the last wall, so we only have to cover, like, a quarter of the planet’s surface. Maybe slightly less.”

  “That still sounds like a long way,” Miz pointed out.

  “Yeah, but Dave thinks—”

  “Oh, Dave thinks!” Mech snapped. “Dave thinks. Ain’t Dave just the fonking greatest?”

  Loren and Miz exchanged glances. “Uh, OK,” said Miz.

  “Seriously, Mech, chill out,” Loren soothed. “Even if he is a bio-bot – which he isn’t – Dave’s OK. He’s helping us.”

  “Or he’s leading us to be killed or eaten or fonk knows what else by whatever’s beyond that wall.”

  Loren shrugged. “We could turn back. We could go. I mean, it’s only money.”

  “Fonk that shizz,” Mech barked, picking up the pace. “We’re doing what we have to do, but one wrong move from Dave, and it’s no more Mr Nice Mech.”

  He pulled ahead as he powered off after the two Earth men. “Wait,” said Loren, fighting a grin as she called after him. “This is you being nice?”

  * * *

  The gate that led eastwards from the Hub was no longer a gate at all. The outline of a gate was still visible, just faintly, the opening itself having been swallowed by the same space concrete that had been hastily used to make the wall taller.

  Up close, it didn’t really look all that much like a wall. Not in the traditional sense, at least. It was a barrier, definitely, but it looked more like a cliff-face, like millions of gallons of the space concrete had been poured over the existing structure until the resulting structure was tall enough to stop anything climbing over.

  It sloped upwards at the bottom, then climbed steeply towards the sky. The surface was marbled with gloopy rivulets that had long-since dried hard. Cal rapped his knuckles on the wall, but the substance it was made of was so dense it didn’t make a sound.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” said Dave. “There’s no way through.”

  “Uh, you didn’t tell us that,” said Mech. “You told us we’d be killed by clown-monsters.”

  “Hmm?” Cal raised his eyebrows. “Oh, no, Dave and I were talking about it on our way here. He said the gate would be blocked, I told him we’d figure something out.”

  “Oh. I see,” said Mech, making no effort to hide his irritation.

  Cal looked at him expectantly. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Have you figured something out? I mean, there must be some way through, right?”

  “Oh, you want my help?” Mech asked. “Why? Can’t Dave find us a way through?”

  Dave shook his head. “Me? No. No idea.”

  Miz extended her claws and reached upwards. She tried to hook them into the stone, but it was too dense, the bumpy surface too smooth for her to find a handhold.

  “We can’t go over it,” she said.

  “And we can’t go under it,” Loren added. “Even if the tunnel wall has collapsed down there, it’s full of cops.”

  “It’s for the best,” said Dave, visibly relaxing. “Like I said, I don’t think we should be doing this, anyway.”

  “Oh, you don’t?” said Mech. “You don’t think we should be doing this?”

  “No. No, I think it’s best if we all just—”

  Mech’s fist struck the wall, dead in the center of the gate’s outline. Cal and the others all stepped back as Mech drew his arm back again, his eyes locked on Dave’s. “Looks like I don’t give a shizz what you think,” he said, then he hammered the wall again. A crack – faint and small, but definitely there – appeared on the surface.

  “Hold on,” Mech said, his arm withdrawing again. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Mech was still at it. The others sat around on the ground, idly tugging on weeds, juggling stones, and doing whatever else they could to pass the time. Cal and Dave were discussing their favorite 90s movies. It had almost descended into a punch-up when Dave had said he thought Toy Story was overrated, but their mutual love of The Big Lebowski had gone some way to ease tensions.

  Through it all, Mech continued to punch the wall. Bam. Bam. Bam. Sparks flew from his knuckles with almost every strike. He had chipped away a large bowl-shaped indent in the center of the gateway, and was confident of breaking through at any moment.

  Of course, he’d been confident of breaking through at any moment for the past hundred and nineteen minutes, but this time he was really confident.

  Any minute now.

  Any fonking minute.

  He punched the wall again. Bam. Sparks flew from his knuckles.

  “You realize we’re ringing the dinner bell for everything on the other side?” said Dave.

  “Me-mee-me-me-me-mee-me me,” Mech muttered, mimicking Dave’s voice in the style of Beaker out of The Muppets, although not consciously, as he had never heard of Beaker out of The Muppets.

  He had, however, come face to face with Animal out of The Muppets, although he didn’t realize it at the time. Or, for that matter, later.

  “You got a better idea?” he asked, this time in the style of himself.

  If Dave did have a better idea, he didn’t get a chance to voice it. Mech punctuated his sentence with a final jackhammer punch that shattered the remaining thin sliver of space cement. Most of the stone inside the frame of the gate crumbled away, leaving a gap large enough for even Mech to get through.

  Everyone was on their feet in an instant, all at various levels of readiness. Loren
topped the readiness chart, crouching, poised and alert, her stance suggesting she was one quick jump away from spinning-roundhouse-kicking the head off whatever made the mistake of coming through the door.

  Miz was next. Normally, she wasn’t the type to show interest in much, but violence was one of the few things that got her excited, and having recently been humiliated by one of the clown-things, she was itching to get her revenge.

  Next was Cal. His fists were raised and his feet were planted, but he occasionally glanced away from the gate, escape routes plotting themselves out in his head.

  From there, the levels of readiness took quite a steep drop.

  Dave stood awkwardly, his arms at his side, his eyes in constant motion as they went from the crew to the door in an endless panicky loop.

  Last of all was Splurt, who was doing a handstand.

  “Mech, see anything?” Cal whispered.

  “I see the same as you,” Mech whispered back. “Big hole in the wall.”

  “Then look through,” Cal suggested.

  “What? Fonk you, man. I ain’t putting my face through there. I don’t know what’s on the other side.”

  “That’s why you should put your face through it,” Cal pointed out.

  “If you’re so keen to find out, why don’t you do it?”

  “You’re closer.”

  “So? You’re less than eight feet away. You could just walk over here and stick your face through.”

  “My face isn’t made of metal.”

  “Neither is mine!”

  “But it’s partly made of metal.”

  “But it partly ain’t!”

  There was a sudden pitter-patter of feet. Everyone who was ready became readier. Everyone who was Dave whimpered softly and closed their eyes.

  Cal heard the pitter-patter grow louder, and realized it wasn’t coming from beyond the wall, but from behind him. He realized this just as Splurt scampered past, his stubby arms pumping, his stumpy legs waddling him quickly towards the gap.

  “Wait, Splurt, no,” Cal said. “Mech, grab him.”