What kind of moron would expect them to be labelled in Standard? Give me a mirror and I’ll point him out.
No way in hell am I going to be able to make sense of that in the time I have.
He picked up one of the bottles and looked at it more closely. His smile returned. The bottle in his hand and, it turned out, all the other bottles as well were labeled on the right side with each material’s structural formula, essentially a stick-figure diagram of the molecule showing how it was put together. He was currently taking Organic Chemistry, so the information was fresh in his mind. Also, some of the labels had some printing on them that was much larger than the rest and was also a particularly brilliant and odious shade of yellow that made a marked contrast with the so dark as to be almost black violet of the labels. He knew that shade of yellow: it was the one the old chiefs always called “baby shit yellow.” For the moment, however, that color was Max’s favorite because he would have bet any amount of money that what was written in that color were warnings like FLAMMABLE and CORROSIVE or EXTREMELY TOXIC or BURNS SPONTANEOUSLY WHEN EXPOSED TO OXYGEN.
The structural formula on the label of the bottle he was holding indicated that it contained glycerin. No help. Max looked through the cabinet quickly until he came to a bottle that had more than the usual share of warnings.
This looks hopeful.
He looked at the shape of the molecule as depicted on the label. He couldn’t read the symbols but the molecule itself was unmistakable. That bundle of dots in the center had to be oxygen with the other lines and dots representing two short carbon chains sprouting from the oxygen, one to the left and one to the right. Each of the chains had a back bone consisting of two carbon atoms zigging up and then zagging down, all with a bunch of little hydrogen “groupie” atoms clustered around each of the carbons. The whole effect was rather like a squashed letter “M” or a sea bird drawn with straight lines rather than curves.
No doubt about it. That label was printed for a bottle of Diethyl ether. Max knew its properties well and came close to chuckling to himself as he mentally reviewed its properties. Highly flammable, both in liquid and vapor form. Vapors can be ignited by static electric discharge even in the absence of a heat source. Just as likely to explode as to burn. Plus, the vapors when inhaled for a minute or so cause unconsciousness and, in too high a concentration, death.
It was some truly nasty shit. Max loved it.
There was a possible problem, though. What Max was thinking of doing would work a lot better if the bottle containing the ether were made out of glass. The way his luck was running, Max was pretty sure it was going to be made of some virtually indestructible alien polymer. Max picked it up and checked.
Glass.
Of course it’s made of glass, dipshit. This stuff dissolves most plastics.
Ignorance of that fact caused more than a few laboratory fires over the years. But, Max had done his homework in Organic Chemistry.
Well, that particular night, at least.
Now, he just needed a way to ignite the stuff. Where’s a pipe smoker with his handy personal igniter when you need one? “Rely on the the patented Robuck Rotary Igniter: It always burns with just two turns.”
Max homed in on a wheeled cart containing a meticulously ordered array of instruments and pre-loaded pressure syringes, all encased in a big plastic bag, probably to keep them sterile. The cart stood against the wall with a sign written on its side in very large characters in the odd alien dotted script. Max grinned wolfishly.
I don’t need to be able to read that to be able to read that.
Max couldn’t decide whether that thought was stunningly brilliant in the manner of a Zen Koan or merely working-class clever in the manner of Yogi Berra. He chose to figure it out later.
He couldn’t make out a single letter, but he was positive that it read: “CRASH CART. DO NOT USE SUPPLIES FROM THIS CART FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.” What made Max smile most broadly, however, was a piece of equipment on the cart but outside of the plastic bag. It was a light green box with a small control panel on one side, two detachable handheld paddles on the other, and an electrical cord running out of the top and plugged into a triangular outlet in the wall. There was an orange rectangle drawn on the box around where the cord went into the device, which Max was certain indicated that the power cord was detachable.
Max walked over to the cart and looked more closely. The box just had to be a defibrillator plugged into the wall to charge a depleted battery or, what Max was hoping, to keep a continuous trickle charge going on a fully charged battery. He yanked the power cord out of the side and looked at the panel. He couldn’t read a thing, but--like every other man to reach the rank of Spacer Second Class--he had been trained to use the Union version of the same piece of equipment. He felt more strongly about his conclusion when he glanced to his right at the nearest other cart. On it was a grayish green box with some kind of display screen and a bunch of wires with electrodes on the end coming out of the side. That settled it, THAT box had to be an EKG to analyze heart function which meant that THIS box had to be a defibrillator. You want to be able to shock and you want to be able to see whether the shock worked.
A defibrillator is a defibrillator, right? They can’t be all that different. I hope.
Max knew that, in order to perform its functions, any defibrillator had to do certain things. There had to be some way to turn it on and off, some way to route the external power so that the user could set it to charge the battery or to zap the patient, and some method to adjust the amount of power used to shock the patient. Then, there had to be two paddles to conduct the power into the body of the patient with one paddle equipped with a button that triggers the shock. The box in front of him had to work in a fashion similar to the commercial, off-the-shelf PortaFib 208 and the milspec MDD-57 Mark IV on which he had trained. Even an incredibly advanced species would want to keep this kind of device as simple as possible so that other, less advanced, species who would inevitably be allies of an advanced race could use it.
There was one button in the lower right hand corner with a little LED light in the middle. It was isolated slightly from the others, was purple while the other buttons were orange or black, and it had a blue box inscribed around it. That had to be the main power. He pressed it and a blue-green light came on. He suddenly remembered to put the bottle of ether on the floor a few feet from where he was standing. Dropping it right now would probably be a very bad idea.
There was what looked like a rocker switch with the right end pressed down. This was almost certainly the CHARGE-SHOCK switch. As the unit was plugged into the wall, it had to have been set for CHARGE. Moving the switch the other way must set it for SHOCK. Max pressed the left end of the switch and a pink light came on in the handles of the paddles.
That’s two for two.
The big rotary dial in the middle of the panel was a no brainer--it set the strength of the shock. The knob was turned all the way to the left, which Max surmised was the lowest setting. Max turned it all the way to the right. Several lights came on, which Max presumed were warning lights telling him that at this high power setting he might kill his patient.
Now, for the shock paddles. Max picked one of them up. The device must be made for use on some perfectly enormous patients, because the paddles sat at the end of telescoping stalks about a meter and a half long. Max fully extended both paddles and experimented with moving them around. The handles were a bit awkward to hang on to because they were made for hands that had three fingers and a thumb rather than human hands, but Max didn’t think he would have any trouble. Max, moved himself, his ether bottle, and the crash cart behind his bed so that someone entering the room couldn’t see him or what he had in store. Max sat on the hard floor waiting for his enemy for about fifteen minutes. The tedium was killing him.
Then, footsteps again. But these were coming toward the door very rapidly. It sounded more like scampering than an ordinary pace. Finally, there was a beep, presumably a
s the door scanner recognized whoever was coming, and a loud click as the door unlocked. The mysterious someone came through the door. Max bided his time until he estimated that he would be able to get between the door and the alien before the alien could get out the door to alert the guards that Max had armed himself. After a few seconds, Max sprang out from behind the bed, pushing the crash cart--which by now carried only defibrillator and the ether--for all he was worth. When he was in position, he shouted as threateningly as he could:
“I don’t know if you can understand me, but you’d better hold it right there. Make any funny moves and I’ll smash this bottle of diethyl ether on the floor and ignite it with these paddles, which will turn you into a crispy critter in about five seconds.” He pantomimed the threatened procedure as he was describing it. “So, back away toward that wall over there and sit down on your hands or paws or whatever. Don’t try to call for help, and don’t reach for any weapons or remote controls or it’s going to be instant Molotov cocktail with you as the olive.”
Not a bad performance. That would have scared me. I think.
The alien made no move to follow Max’s instructions. In fact, he stood his ground and made a repeated, high pitched pforht pforht sound that Max would have bet his last dollar was laughter. Or, Max supposed that the sound might be how he called for help and six more just like him but carrying assault rifles would burst through the door any second. He knew he had to act fast. Not only might armed guards show up, the shock and surprise at a prisoner having turned the tables was Max’s most powerful asset right now, and with each passing second, he could feel that advantage slipping through his fingers.
“Goddamn it! You’d better start taking this shit seriously, fella, because I’m not joking and I’m not bluffing. You do what I say or I’ll roast you alive! I’ll set this crap on fire—WHOOSH—and sear you like a grilled T-bone.”
Still the alien stood his ground, making that infuriating pforht sound. As Max was about to start prodding him with one of the paddles, the alien took a deep breath and started making a series of almost musical hoots, toots, blorts, and barks, sounding like an operatic solo by a California sea lion. Max presumed the noises were speech but had no idea what the alien was saying.
Until he knew exactly what the alien was saying. Somehow, the alien’s precise meaning was totally clear in Max’s mind, as though he were reading an almost simultaneous translation. What the alien said, while quite amiable, was not to Max’s liking at all.
“My, my, my, how wonderful. What a feisty young primate you have turned out to be! Very feisty, indeed. I have no doubt that you are perfectly ready and perfectly willing to burn me from fur down to bones. Down to my very bones, indeed! That is the stern, combative material of which you are made. You have resolution made of titanium. No one’s going to drag you off into some nightmarish alien laboratory to violate your body in a series of never-ending yet luridly quasi-sexual medical experiments. No, no, no. no. Not you! You’ll fight to the death with blunt teeth, soft fingernails, and improvised weapons rather than have a bunch of grey beings with overly large heads and ineffective, almost vestigial bodies sticking electrified needles in YOUR eyeballs. Or using brightly polished metallic probes to conduct alternating current into the tender mucous membranes of your anus. You would never let us take you alive if you were facing the prospect of those. By the Maker, no anal probes for you. No, no, no, no! I have made a detailed study of the psychological records from your ship’s computer, including records to which your clearance does not give you access. So, in some ways, I know you better than you know yourself, which of course is quite impossible in the broader, more comprehensive sense but could be true in the more limited sense of my access to and analysis of those particular records about yourself that your superiors do not allow you to see. Still it is a peculiar situation, is it not?”
What the fuck?
“Setting aside for now that ever so interesting line of inquiry and the conclusions one can draw from it regarding the respect senior medical bureaucrats have for combat personnel in the Union Space Navy, suffice it to say at this juncture that I have an excellent logical and evidentiary basis to draw the conclusion that I know you very well. Very well, indeed. Those records and your performance here today in the last few moments show you to be quite wonderfully feisty. I do so like very much to see resolve, grit, and feistiness in a member of a race being subjected to evaluation.” He made ten or twelve of those pforhting sounds. “The Vaaach and you are going to have such wonderful fun together. I can’t wait to read the report. My eagerness is building even as we speak. I will probably save it to read over a tankard of Kcobrenihs beer as the reward for hard work over the course of a busy day. The report on your field training and examination would be excellent entertainment to be accompanied by a tall, blood-warm Kcobrenihs.”
Max continued to stand his ground, holding the bottle and paddles in what he calculated to be the most menacing manner he could muster. Meanwhile, the alien cocked his head to the left, as though he were listening to something. He probably had some kind of earpiece and someone was talking to him. He resumed speaking.
“The Shephard of the Young in charge of this stage of your training directs me stop talking so much and to protect you from further humiliation by informing you at this time of certain facts that are crucially relevant to your understanding of your current situation. Very salient, very crucial, very relevant indeed. You need to know them. You will absolutely want to know these things immediately without any further delay, which is why I am going to tell them to you right now.”
Get to the point, fuzzball. My arms are getting tired.
“But, I am causing the delay, am I not? It’s a pity that it takes me so long to get to the point, isn’t it? In any event, you need to know at this particular juncture that you have put neither me nor this facility in any danger of being consumed in a conflagration. None. There was no danger of any kind.”
Max stared at the alien in disbelief.
“I see that you do not give sufficient credence to my statements. That is an understandable state of affairs given your current situation. Trust comes from the association of a being’s factual assertions or promissory statements on one hand with verified facts or observed outcomes confirming those assertions or statements on the other, leading to the conclusion by means of inductive reasoning that the statements of the being in question are worthy of belief. Until you have developed a foundation of experiential data to do so with regard to my statements, I invite you, instead, to trust the evidence of your own senses. Pull the stopper off that ‘ether’ bottle and gently waft some of the ‘fumes’ toward you.”
Max was somehow aware of the alien’s scare quotes around “ether” and “fumes.”
Max did as asked and was not struck by the powerful, oily-sharp smell of ether that he expected. He wafted more vigorously and inhaled more deeply, trying to detect a more subtle scent. He was rewarded by smelling . . . nothing.
“Oh, my bellicose and combative young friend, you are threatening me with a bottle of ordinary water that is, quite falsely I’m afraid, labeled as diethyl ether. Yes, yes, yes, I feel quite remorseful in the extreme for having played a role in misleading you in that way, but it was a necessary part of your trial. I abhor all forms of falsehood, however innocent, as do the Vaaach, but this one was essential to learning critical facts about you. You should also know that we removed the power cell from that defibrillator and replaced it with a power cell of the kind used to power the LED that illuminates the warning lights on my niece’s toy emergency patient transportation vehicle. It produces just enough current to trigger the test light at the end of the paddle. It would not have generated a spark.”
Now Max knew what the alien meant when he mentioned “humiliation.” Max felt as though his stomach had just detached itself from the rest of his internal organs and fallen through his feet all the way to the center of the planet. Just a few seconds ago, he thought he had a fairly strong
position (at least as strong a position as a captive can have when held on an unknown planet with his own ship nowhere in sight). But, it was now clear that he wasn’t going to escape from his captors any time soon.
Moments before, adrenalin had been surging through Max’s body, making him ready to take down a foe or to run like hell. Most of that was gone now, leaving Max burned out and shaking at the total humiliation he had received from this alien. Not to mention that he was totally powerless now. The aliens would be able to do to him whatever they wanted.
Anal probe, here we come!
“What the hell kind of charade are you people pulling anyway?” Max yelled at nearly the top of his lungs totally ignoring that the word “people” was probably inappropriate in that context. There was still a little adrenalin circulating through Max’s brain, not to mention anger. He had never known such rage. “You can’t just play with me like a toy! I’m not a fucking rat in a maze! If I find out that this was someone’s twisted idea of a training exercise, I’m going to start breaking things. As God is my witness, I’m going to go full bore hooligan and bust this place up like it just went through the planet-wide power failure riots on Edhellond II.”
“Maxwell Tindall Robichaux, please try to calm yourself,” the alien said in what probably passed in his species for reasonable tones. “I urge you to refrain from attempting to destroy my lovely little treatment facility.” With obvious reluctance, he produced a small but functional-looking pistol from an equipment harness he was wearing and pointed it at Max. “There is a clear boundary separating admirable feistiness from wanton and gratuitous destructiveness and I am fully prepared to enforce your observation of that boundary. If you become violent or destructive, I will—regretfully but promptly--use this device on you. The sedative ampules are programmed to make their way through any clothing and then inject you with an extremely powerful sleep-inducing pharmaceutical. You will be unconscious within a heartbeat or two of my pulling the trigger. You would not be harmed, of course, but you would wake up approximately half of one of your standard days later, feeling as though you had greatly overindulged in that Kentucky beverage of which you are so fond (and which—medically speaking--should be withheld from you until your body has become fully adult), without the pleasure of actually having indulged in the beverage--a balance of advantages and disadvantages that would weigh heavily against doing anything requiring me to sedate you.
The Hunters of Vermin Page 7
