“Yes, that’s the ones, ma’am,” said Kevin. “Gooramy short-range fighters, I believe, supporting what appears to be a diplomatic vessel of some description.”
“Any life signs?” Cal asked.
Mech looked back over his shoulder. “Of course there’s life signs. Why wouldn’t there be life signs?”
“I don’t know,” said Cal. “You were all saying cool things, so I wanted to say something, too and oh good God, that ship has a penis.”
On screen, a long flexible tube was extending from beneath the largest of the ships. It hung limply below it, swaying gently left to right as if buffeted around on some unseen space breeze.
“It’s a boarding tunnel,” said Mech.
“It’s a what now?”
“They’ll connect it to our airlock,” Loren explained. “Then either they’ll come here or they’ll tell us to go there.”
Cal glanced around the bridge at the dirty coffee cups and assorted other trash that was all within arm’s reach of his seat. “They’re coming here? Should we tidy up?”
“Attention, unregistered vessel.”
The voice was slightly damp, a little rough around the edges, and gargled its way through the letter R. The words spat from the speakers, apparently having bypassed the usual communications procedure altogether. At least, Cal hadn’t noticed the little blinking icon on the screen, or seen anyone press one of the many different buttons that seemed to answer it.
“You have entered Gooramy Space. State your intent.”
It took Cal a moment to realize all eyes were on him. He shifted in his seat, then pointed his face vaguely in the direction the voice had come from.
“Uh… rocks.”
Mech scowled. “Rocks?” he whispered. “What the fonk does that mean, ‘rocks’?”
“I mean, we’re here to look at some rocks.” He shrugged at Mech and silently mouthed, “Is that better?”
The expression on Mech’s face made it pretty clear that it wasn’t.
“Which rocks?” asked the voice.
“Quannum,” said Cal.
“Quanturum,” Tim corrected.
“That one. What he said. We just want to take a look at it. We’ll be, like, five minutes, tops.”
There was silence for a moment. Only Miz could make out the faint mumbling of the Gooramy discussing how to respond.
On screen, the snaking white boarding tunnel curved out of sight around the Untitled. A moment later, a clang shook the ship.
“We shall negotiate face to face,” the voice on the speaker commanded. “Join us aboard our vessel.”
“OK!” said Cal, relieved he wouldn’t have to put the dirty dishes away. “We’ll be right there.”
“And no funny stuff,” the voice warned.
“Deal.”
“Or we’ll mess you up.”
“Gotcha,” said Cal. “Oh, do you guys have anything to eat? You know, like a sandwich? Like a ham sandwich. Or maybe a tuna sand… No, not tuna. Shizz. Sorry. Like just something to eat?”
The only reply was dead air.
“Hello? Damn it. They’re gone.”
Cal stood, remembering to first unclip his belt this time. “Looks like we’re going to negotiate with the space mermaids,” he announced, and the idea of it seemed to delight him. “I know I don’t need to say this, guys, but we should probably leave the talking to me.”
Loren snorted. “We definitely shouldn’t.”
“They asked you a question, and you literally just said the word ‘rocks’ at them,” Mech added.
“They caught me off guard. Next time, I’ll be ready.” He pointed individually to everyone on the bridge. “Loren, you stay here with Tim. Mech, Miz, you come with me.”
Miz tutted loudly. “How come I have to go? What do you need me for?”
“Are you kidding me?” said Cal. “You’re my right-hand girl. You think I can trust this pile of bolts to protect me?”
“Fonk you, man.”
“See? I need you with me, Miz,” Cal continued. He winked. “What do you say?”
Miz tried her best to look mind-numbingly bored by everything Cal had said, but the twitching of her tail gave her away.
“Fine. I’ll come,” she conceded. “But it better not be just people all standing around talking. I hate that.”
“I doubt they’ll be standing,” said Cal. “They’re space mermaids. But I take your point. Tell you what, if the conversation seems to be dragging on, we’ll shoot someone.”
“Don’t you dare!” Loren warned.
“Relax, I’m kidding!” he told her, then he turned to Miz and mouthed, “Totally not kidding.”
Miz’s snout curved into a smirk, then she padded after Mech toward the door. Cal had barely taken a step when Splurt drooped down in front of him like a long drip of snot.
“Not this time, buddy,” Cal told him. “I can’t risk you getting obliterated again. OK? Hang here. Recover. Get back in shape. You know, metaphorically speaking. Your shape’s fine as it is.”
Splurt rippled. His eyes widened.
“Don’t guilt trip me, mister,” Cal told him. “I need you here to make sure Loren doesn’t fly off without us.”
“Don’t tempt me,” said Loren.
“You hear that, buddy?” Cal said. “You keep an eye on her for me, OK?”
The bulbous part of the Splurt-drip became a single staring eyeball and swiveled in Loren’s direction.
“God, that’s unpleasant,” Cal muttered. “But good job, pal. We’ll be back soon.”
With a final finger-to-forehead salute at Tim, Cal left the bridge and joined the others by the airlock. The white tunnel was attached like an umbilical cord to the outer door. Cal peered into it, but saw nothing except the ridged plastic walls where they curved off in the direction of the Gooramy ship.
“Is it safe?” he asked. “Should we bring space suits?”
“It’s safe,” Mech confirmed. “It’s fully sealed at both ends and pumped full of air. It’s even got artificial gravity. We can walk straight aboard their ship.”
“Well alright, then! Let’s do this!” said Cal. He hit the button that opened the airlock doors and stepped into the mouth of the tunnel. “Let’s go meet the space mermaids!”
FIFTEEN
FORTY MINUTES LATER, they were still walking.
The first five minutes had been pretty enjoyable. They were setting off on a new adventure, Cal was going to meet some space mermaids, and there was a generally positive vibe within the group. Even Miz wasn’t complaining, which was something of a miracle in and of itself.
The next twenty minutes were less fun. Although, in hindsight, they now felt like the glory days of the expedition. They’d settled into a comfortable stride by then, and Cal had passed the time asking countless questions about how mermaids coped in space.
How did they get around on their ship, for example? Wheelchairs? Little hovercrafts? Did they swim in zero gravity, using their tails to flick them along? That would’ve been the coolest, he decided, but the others were already pretty much ignoring him by then, so they neither agreed nor argued the point.
Every minute that followed since then had been excruciatingly tedious. The problem wasn’t the distance, exactly, as much as the fact they couldn’t tell how much of said distance was left to go. The boarding tunnel was always slightly curved, meaning they couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty feet ahead of them before the bend got in the way.
Mech knew how far it was, but he’d stopped answering Cal’s Are we nearly there yets roughly twelve minutes into the journey. Now he just plodded on, muttering quietly to himself, his weight shaking the tunnel with every step.
If Mech was getting impatient, though, it was nothing compare to Mizette.
“Eurgh. How much further? We’ve been walking for, like, forever!” she groaned, flapping her arms dramatically, then shoving them straight down by her sides.
“It’s got to be close, right?” said Cal. “
I mean, we must be halfway across the fonking galaxy by now.”
“I should totally have stayed on the ship. I knew it. I should have, like, totally stayed behind.”
Mech muttered some more.
They walked on. Seconds bled into minutes.
Cal began to whistle.
“Don’t,” said Mech. It was the first full word he’d said in a while, and the way he said it made Cal’s lips unpurse themselves all on their own.
They walked on.
Cal had an idea.
“I spy with my little eye…”
He looked around them.
“Something beginning with…”
“It’s tunnel,” Mech grunted.
“T.”
“Tunnel,” guessed Miz.
“Bingo. Miz gets it, because the round hadn’t officially started until I said the letter,” Cal said. “Sorry, Mech, you jumped the gun. What can I say?”
“You could say nothing at all,” Mech told him. “I would like that very much.”
“OK, Miz, your turn,” Cal said.
Mizette’s eyes darted around. “I—”
“Tunnel,” said Mech. “It’s tunnel. There’s nothing but fonking tunnel.”
“He’s right,” said Miz. “And I totally hate this game, anyway.”
“How about a sing-song?” Cal suggested. “You know, to keep the spirits up?”
“Sing and I’ll punch your mouth loose,” Mech warned him.
“Fair enough,” Cal said.
They walked on.
Six seconds later, Cal began to beatbox.
Mech stopped. “What did I just say?”
“I’m not singing,” Cal said. He spat a couple of dum-dums and a tssh in Mech’s direction. “I’m laying down a sick beat. Or a banging tune. Or, you know, whatever the kids say these days.”
“Guys!” said Miz. She hadn’t bothered to stop as that, paradoxically, would’ve taken more effort than simply continuing on. She was a dozen feet ahead of them now, her tail flicking side to side in the first flush of excitement. “I can see the door. We’re here!”
“Thank you, Jesus!” Cal cried, thrusting his hands in the air. His voice rolled off along the tunnel in both directions, then bounced back at them off something solid up ahead.
Cal began to run, which bounced the others around inside the flexible pipe. They all half-jogged, half-bounced the final short distance to the tunnel’s end, then stumbled onto the solid floor of the Gooramy ship’s airlock.
“We made it. We actually made it,” Cal wheezed. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think we were getting out of that tube alive for a while back there.”
“You almost didn’t,” Mech mumbled.
Behind them, the outer airlock door slid closed. Cal straightened up, pushed his shoulders back, and took up a position at the inner door, which led into the ship. Unlike on the Untitled, there was no window built into this one, so Cal had no idea if anyone was on the other side. Still, better to look as impressive as possible, just in case.
“OK, so we leave the talking to me, remember?” Cal told the others. “I’ll explain the situation, we’ll have a few laughs, they’ll probably make us a picnic, and we’ll be on our way.”
There was a bleep from the other side of the door. Cal smoothed down his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, then fixed on a grin. “Space Mermaids,” he said. “This is going to be so awesome.”
The door slid open.
Cal screamed.
Instinctively, he lashed out, catching the abomination on the other side of the door with a right hook that knocked it off its feet and sent it sprawling onto the deck.
“What the fonk are you doing?” Mech barked, grabbing him before he could throw another punch.
“What the Hell is that thing?” Cal yelped.
“It’s a Gooramy!” Mech said. “They’re half fish. I explained that.”
“I didn’t think you meant top half fish!” cried Cal, indicating the fallen figure’s armless torso and grotesquely bloated fish head. “They’re supposed to be bottom half fish!”
“Bottom half fish? How the fonk would that work?” He shuddered. “That’d just be nasty.”
“And that isn’t?” said Cal, gesturing down to the figure on the floor. Its lack of arms was hampering its attempts to stand up, and it sort of flapped around, its bulbous eyes wide with panic, its mouth snapping open and closed.
“Shizz. Help me get it up,” Mech said.
“I’m not touching that thing!” said Cal. His whole body convulsed, ejecting an involuntary but entirely heartfelt, “Uyeeurgh!” from his mouth.
Mech shoved Cal aside and stepped out into the corridor. As soon as he did, a long trident-like weapon was jammed against his metal ribcage. Mech convulsed as electricity tore through him.
“Ow! What the fonk?” he spat, turning and knocking the weapon aside.
Two more of the fish-people had been waiting on either side of the door. Unlike the first, these two had four robotic limbs attached to their armless torsos. They each held identical trident weapons, pointy ends primed and ready to stab.
“Get back!” warned the guard that had attacked. “You dare assault a diplomat of the Gooramy!”
“Hey, I didn’t assault no one,” Mech said. He shot an accusing look back into the airlock. “My… companion here reacted in surprise, for which he apologizes. Right?”
“Uh, right,” said Cal, bending forward until his head appeared through the door. “Totally apologize. I was expecting bottom half fish,” he said, as if that somehow excused the fact he’d punched a diplomat to the ground. He gestured to the guards’ heads. “This… Well, it caught me by surprise.” He shuddered out a, “Bleeurguh!” then forced his mouth into a welcoming smile. “Anyway, great to be here, thanks for having us aboard.”
Stepping fully out of the airlock, he put his hands on his hips, then looked off along the corridor in both directions.
“Do you guys have, like, a snack bar around here?” he asked, then the butt of a trident crunched across the back of his head, and everything slipped silently into darkness.
CAL WOKE UP KICKING, punching and shouting something less than complimentary about Tobey Maguire. His knuckles clanged against Mech’s leg, and pain stabbed through his hand and up his arm.
“Ow! Watch it,” he protested.
“You fonking punched me,” Mech pointed out.
Cal rubbed the back of his head and groaned. He could remember very clearly where he’d been hit, but couldn’t feel any lump. It didn’t hurt, either, which was a blessing. If they were being held prisoner by wrong-way-round Mermaids, the last thing he needed was a headache.
He was sitting in an armchair that smelled quite strongly of fish, in a room that also smelled quite strongly of fish. Two Gooramy – Gooramies, maybe? He’d have to check – stood by the door, tridents clutched in their robotic hands, heads turned so one bloated eye could keep watch on the room while the other watched the entrance. Their scaly bodies shimmered in the glow of several round lights on the wall that shone like portholes facing the sunrise.
“You OK?” asked Miz. She was slouched in a chair on his left, while Mech stood on his right. “They hit you pretty hard.”
“I’m fine,” said Cal. “They just caught me by surprise, that all. But how did they take you guys down?”
Mech and Miz exchanged glances. “Uh, they didn’t,” said Mech.
Cal frowned. “Huh?”
“They just knocked you out, asked us nicely if we’d follow them, and we agreed.”
“You agreed?!” Cal spluttered. “Why didn’t you avenge me?”
“You did kind of hit one of them first,” Miz reasoned.
“Well, yeah,” Cal said. He began the sentence in a way that suggested there was a follow-up point to come, but it didn’t materialize. He sighed. “Tell me you at least looked like you were following them begrudgingly.”
“Oh, totally,” said Miz.
“Yeah, m
an. We complained the whole time,” Mech said.
“That’s a lie, isn’t it, Mech?” Cal asked.
Mech smirked. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. They’re actually pretty nice.”
“They gave us lunch,” Miz said.
Cal sat bolt upright. “They gave us lunch?!”
“They gave us lunch,” Mech said. “But we ate it.”
“You ate it? What, all of it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you don’t even have to eat!”
Mech shrugged. “Seemed kind of rude not to. Besides, it was delicious. I mean we’re talking top five things I’ve ever tasted delicious.”
Cal’s stomach rumbled in protest. “Oh come on! You didn’t keep me any?”
“Nope,” said Mech. “And we also spoke to their diplomats and straightened everything out.”
“What? No! I thought we agreed I’d do the talking.”
“Well, you were kind of unconscious, so I took over,” Mech said. “We got permission to go where we need to go. They just want you to do something first.”
There was something about the look on Mech’s face that made Cal’s whole body go tense. It was that slight flaring of the nostrils and curving of the mouth that suggested the cyborg was fighting back the urge to laugh that worried him.
“What? What do they want me to do?”
“I said ‘no way’,” Miz told him. “Like, there’s no way it was happening, but it was the only way they’d even talk to us.”
Cal looked from Miz to Mech and back again. “What? There’s no way what was happening?”
“We had to agree. It was the only way,” Mech said. His voice cracked, spreading his smirk further across his face. “Also, I thought it was the funniest fonking thing I’d ever heard, so there’s also that.”
“What did you agree to?” Cal demanded. “Guys? What do they want me to do?”
Before either of them could answer, the door to the room slid open. Cal visibly recoiled as another of the fish-headed creatures entered. This one had something not unlike a band-aid covering a spot just above one of his gills, and Cal guessed it was the same guy he’d floored earlier. The resentment burning in his bulging eyes helped to back this theory up.
Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow Page 17
