Mission Improbable

by J. J. Green

  “I suggest we withdraw through here,” said Gavin. “There may be an exit.” He scrabbled over the remains of the wall and into the shadowy room. But there was no door. It was as if the shredder had been sealed in a tomb at the departure of its crew.

  A high-pitched whine told them the shredder was bearing down on them again.

  “Run,” Carrie shouted, but they needed no warning. As the shredders’ caterpillar tracks carried it over the torn wall and into its former hiding place, they scattered left and right and ran down the room again, outmaneuvering the clumsy machine.

  They met at the door, which was closed. Without the influence of the magnetic field neutraliser, it had slid shut behind them after they entered the entrance bay. Carrie felt for the neutraliser in her pocket, but she couldn’t find it. Dave and Belinda watched anxiously as she checked her pockets again and again. The neutraliser must have fallen out while she was running. Her eyes searched the floor.

  “Where’s the neutraliser?” asked Belinda.

  At the other end of the room, the shredder had completed its turn and was bearing down on them once more.

  “I don’t know,” said Carrie. She scanned the mess of shattered boxes and oootoon, run through with the tracks of the shredder and footprints. Finding the neutraliser in this chaos would be hopeless.

  “What? You mean you lost it?” exclaimed Belinda.

  “I think it fell out of my pocket.”

  “Run,” shouted Dave, as the shredder drew uncomfortably close.

  Dave and Carrie darted down one side of the entrance bay and Gavin and Belinda ran down the other, sheltering behind stacked boxes of oootoon. The shredder immediately turned to follow. It swerved towards Carrie and Dave, but the maneuver cost it speed and it couldn’t reach them. In its journey it took out more boxes of oootoon, splashing the yellow liquid over itself.

  The cycle repeated, this time with the shredder pursuing Belinda and Gavin. Once more their ability to turn more quickly than the shredder was the means of their escape. But they could not run forever. Dave was already puffing hard, and even Carrie was starting to feel the pace. The shredder seemed to have an inexhaustible power supply.

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Shredder Pursuit

  Carrie was beginning to lose count of the number of times she had run from one end to the other of the entrance bay, pursued by a murderous shredder.

  Dave called, “We’ve...got to...get out...of here.” As they slammed into the wall that held the only exit, which remained closed.

  “Maybe we can trick it into smashing through this wall, too,” said Carrie, panting.

  “I cannot imagine how,” said Gavin. “The placktoid commander is not lacking in intelligence.”

  “We need the damn neutraliser,” said Belinda, glaring at Carrie.

  Dave gasped and pointed. “There it is.” The instrument had been kicked or had rolled near the corner of the room, where it lay next to a smashed box. Dave ran to get it.

  “No,” cried Carrie. “There isn’t time.” The shredder was nearly upon them. They needed to run again. Dave scooped up the neutraliser and turned to run back to the others. His face drained of colour. The shredder had spotted him. It had cut him off.

  “Carrie,” he called, and threw the neutraliser.

  She caught it as he dashed into the corner of the room and curled himself into the wall, awaiting his fate.

  “No,” screamed Carrie, and closed her eyes. There was a resounding crash. Blinking back tears, she opened her eyes again. Unable to straighten its course, the shredder had hit the walls at an angle, forming the longest line of a triangle, with Dave at the opposite corner.

  Carrie’s heart leapt into her throat. Maybe the shredder would reverse to align itself better, and give him a chance to escape? But it didn’t. It drove forward, its caterpillar tracks grinding the floor. The walls on either side of the corner began to buckle and break. The shredder drew closer to Dave.

  “Give me the neutraliser,” snapped Belinda. “We have to get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving him,” said Carrie.

  “We can’t do anything for him, and if we don’t get out now, it’s us next.”

  Carrie thrust the neutraliser into Belinda’s hands and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Dave,” she yelled, “jump onto it. Jump on top.” But even as she spoke she knew it was impossible. The shredder was at least two metres tall. An Olympic champion couldn’t do it from a standing start, and there were also the rows of metal teeth to avoid.

  “I’ll never make it,” came Dave’s shout. “Go, Carrie, leave me. You don’t need to see this.”

  “I’m not damn well leaving you, you idiot.”

  Belinda and Gavin were through the door. As it closed behind them, Carrie had an idea. She fished in her pockets, but as she expected, her translator had fallen out as well as the neutraliser. She thumped the door with her fist. “Belinda, give me your translator,” she called. The door remained closed. “Belinda, damn you, come back here right now and give me your translator.”

  “I’ve got it.” It was Dave, yelling over the grinding of the shredder’s caterpillar tracks against the floor.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got her translator.”

  “You stole it?”

  “I have a condition.”

  “Never mind that now. Throw it to me.”

  The translator came sailing over the shredder. As it hit the floor Carrie snatched it up and turned it on. “Hey, placktoid commander,” she bellowed. “Stop immediately. I am Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Hatchett, and I demand you stop.”

  In its BBC newscaster voice the shredder replied, “The Transgalactic Council is far from here, little human, and soon there will be nothing left of this ship. You and your companions will be dead. There will be no one left to report me. Run away. When I’ve finished with this one, I’ll chase you and kill you. That will be fun.”

  Carrie couldn’t think of a reply. The shredder was right. Unless they could convince the oootoon to release its hold on the ship, they would all be dead soon. But being shredded to death was not a pleasant way to go, and she was determined that wasn’t going to happen to her or her friend.

  She launched herself at the shredder and banged on its metal sides with her fists. The shredder ground on. There was now only a narrow space between it and the corner of the room. Carrie couldn’t see Dave but she imagined him cowering, awaiting his terrible fate as the grinding metal teeth drew nearer.

  “Stop,” she screamed and kicked the shredder, gasping as the impact jolted her leg. “Stop, please. Please.” She hit it again. There could be no room left by now for Dave. The teeth must be nearly upon him.

  Dave’s yell was long and loud, and cut off abruptly. Carrie covered her face. Then she noticed the silence. Not only had Dave stopped yelling, the shredder was also making no noise. She opened her fingers a crack and peeped through. The shredder was motionless, and it hadn’t quite reached the corner of the room.

  “D-Dave?”

  “Carrie?”

  “You’re alive!”

  “It’s stopped, but I’m trapped. I can’t get out. I’m thinking it’s going to start up again any second now.”

  Carrie scanned around. She had to get Dave out and quickly. But all there was in the entrance bay was the boxes of oootoon. The smashed and remaining intact ones had been scattered randomly around by the shredder’s progress. When the answer hit her she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. She ran to the nearest box and pushed it as hard as she could. It was very heavy. Her efforts slid it a few inches across the floor. The stickiness of the spilled oootoon made the going even harder.

  After turning so that her lower back was pressed against the box and her feet were braced against the floor, Carrie pushed again, straining with all her might. The box slid farther towards the shredder.

  “Hold on, Dave,” she panted. “I’m coming.”

  “Hurry u
p.”

  Sweating and red-faced, she pushed and pushed, until finally the box was close enough. She climbed onto it, then onto the top of the shredder. Running to the front, she saw Dave’s face peering up anxiously. He was standing in a triangle of walls and shredder just large enough to hold him. She grabbed his hands and leaned back. Scrabbling up the shredder’s teeth, he climbed onto the top. She took him to the box and together they climbed down.

  The shredder still showed no sign of movement.

  “What did you do? How did you stop it?” asked Dave. “I could hear it talking, but without the translator I couldn’t understand.”

  “I didn’t do anything. It wouldn’t listen to me. It said we were all going to die, it was going to have fun killing us, and no one would ever find out.”

  “Then why did it stop? Has it broken down?”

  Carrie scratched her head. “Shall I try and find out? Maybe it is talking, just not to us. Didn’t Gavin say they only use sound when communicating with species who can hear?”

  “I suppose it’s worth trying. It might be useful to know.”

  Turning on the translator, Carrie’s mind resounded with the shredder’s roar. She grimaced and handed the device to Dave, who winced as he took it. He listened a few moments before turning it off.

  “All I can make out is something about the oootoon. Damn the oootoon jamming it. Once it was free it would destroy it all, etcetera.”

  “The oootoon? But, how could...?”

  Carrie looked around. The floor was wet with oootoon from the boxes the shredder had smashed. They were both sticky from it, and the shredder’s caterpillar wheels were coated with it. “It’s the oootoon, It must have been oozing into the shredder all the time when it was running over the puddles from the smashed boxes. The oootoon has jammed its tracks and engine.”

  There was a creak. The shredder’s tracks moved forward a notch, then with a roar, the placktoid started up. Carrie and Dave jumped back. The machine lurched forward and drove into the remaining space in the corner of the room, where Dave had been only minutes before. The floor shook as it crashed into the wall before the engine fell silent again.

  Dave went pale. “Let’s leave.”

  “Yes, it’s still struggling against the oootoon.”

  “I hope the it can hold the beast. Don’t want that thing roaming the ship looking for us.”

  After a few minutes’ banging on the door, it opened. Gavin was there holding the neutraliser with Belinda beside him, looking annoyed.

  “I keep telling you there’s no point...oh,” said Belinda when she saw them.

  “I concluded from the absence of noise from the placktoid and the strikes upon the door that one or both of you were still alive,” said Gavin. “I am delighted to find I was correct.”

  “We’re pleased to see you, too,” said Carrie, noticing that Belinda didn’t seem to share Gavin’s happiness.

  “I apologise for leaving you, but in the circumstances it seemed prudent as I was unable to offer assistance, and you insisted on remaining to help in what I believed to be a hopeless situation.”

  “That’s okay,” said Carrie.

  Outside the entrance bay part of the corridor had been destroyed by the shredder’s efforts to kill Dave. The wall had collapsed and the shredder was embedded in it, locked in its silent struggle with the oootoon that was jamming its engines. Carrie explained to Gavin what seemed to have happened. Gavin blinked, a hundred translucent lids flicking over a hundred eyes. “The oootoon has clearly developed an automatic antagonistic response to the placktoids. It did not attack us when it had the opportunity.”

  “That’s right,” said Carrie. “When we first landed in it, it let us go. I mean, it was in its natural state, so we sank and everything, but it was only when I provoked it that it captured Dave.”

  “What I yet fail to properly understand,” said Gavin, “is why the placktoids are extracting the oootoon. I can only imagine that among its many remarkable compounds and their properties there exists something that facilitates the placktoids’ ability to incorporate biological systems, reproduce organically and metabolise using light.”

  “I hope you manage to find out one day,” said Dave, “because that would mean we survive this.”

  The ship shuddered.

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Oootoon Solution

  A grinding lurch from the shredder drove the four down the corridor, away from the struggling machine. They huddled in a bend, joined in silent thought about how they were going to persuade the oootoon to release the ship.

  All except Belinda. She laughed grimly. “Huh, you’re all busily rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. It’s hopeless. We left orbit—”

  Dave’s punch hit her right cheekbone and sent her to the floor. She sprawled, holding her cheek. “What the hell?”

  “Dave,” exclaimed Carrie. Gavin chittered.

  Dave rubbed his right hand. “Damn, that hurt more than I thought it would.” He shook out his hand and stretched his fingers. “First time I’ve ever hit someone, and I hope the last. But as for you,” he pointed at Belinda, “you’ve been nothing but trouble since you arrived. What have you done to help, huh? You didn’t listen to the oootoon—I mean, neither did Carrie, but at least she’s a nice person. At least she tries. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so rude, arrogant and negative. So if you won’t help, shut up and keep out of the way, and the rest of us just might save your life.” He turned to Carrie. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Her eyes were filled with tears and her chin trembled. “Do you really think I’m a nice person?”

  “Hey, you just tried to save me from a terrible death at the hands of a rampant item of office equipment. After these two ran away and left me to my fate—sorry, Gavin, but it’s true. Do you think I’m gonna hate you after that?”

  “I know, but it’s my fault you’re—”

  “Oh stop beating yourself up. We don’t have time for this. We’ve got to figure out a way to make the oootoon listen to us.”

  “But it’s too late,” said Belinda.

  Dave threw her an angry glance, and she clamped her lips shut.

  “I keep trying to think of a way,” said Carrie, “but I can’t come up with anything. I’ve listened to the oootoon so many times now, and it’s just a mass of conflicting voices. There isn’t one representative to listen to or talk to. It’s impossible to communicate with it.”

  “But you did,” said Dave.

  “What? When?”

  “When it had me trapped, you persuaded it to bring you to me, and later you persuaded it to let us go.”

  “But, I...yes, I did, didn’t I?” Carrie frowned. How had she done that? Why had the oootoon listened to her? “I don’t know how, though. I just talked to it, shouted at it until I got its attention. Then it did what I was asking. I don’t know why.”

  “Perhaps you should try again?” said Gavin. “I doubt there will be any harm in the attempt, or that it will make matters any worse than our current situation.”

  “I think he means we’ve got nothing to lose,” said Dave.

  Carrie set her jaw and strode, translator in hand, into the entrance bay.

  It was a complete mess. At the far end was the gaping hole edged with torn metal, in the right nearest corner the shredder was embedded, surrounded by crushed and collapsing walls, and the floor was strewn with broken boxes and slippery with yellow, liquid oootoon. The remaining intact boxes were scattered everywhere.

  Turning the translator on, the first thing Carrie heard was the outraged roar of the shredder, still struggling to free itself from the oootoon that had infiltrated it. As she walked hurriedly away from it, the voices of the spilled oootoon became more distinct. Where are we? What are we doing here? Where’s the rest of us? Oh, thank goodness. How nice to merge with you again. Where are my friends?Carrie guessed that, cut off from the rest of its ocean, the oootoon in the boxes had been lonely. Other voices echoed the sentiment that pe
rvaded the oootoon entity. Where are the placktoids? Let’s get them. We hate placktoids.

  The oootoon that had been spilled was reconnecting with the rest of itself. Pools of liquid were moving sluggishly towards other pools. As soon as two made contact they flowed into each other, and the larger pool would continue searching for more oootoon.

  Carrie neared the bulge of oootoon in the floor, which was joined to the mass surrounding the ship. She noticed the strong emotions of the voices and their obsession with their task. We’ve got them now. They’ll never escape. Down we go. Back home, we’re going home! Not long now. Curse the placktoids forever. There must be hundreds on this ship. They’ll never take us away again.

  A pool of spilled oootoon oozed nearer the bulge in the hatchway. It was striving to make contact. Carrie squatted and put two fingers in the edge of the puddle. She dragged her fingers across to the bulge, creating a pathway for the isolated oootoon pool to merge. Screwing her eyes shut, she listened as hard as she could.

  Who’s this? Hooray, we found you. Welcome back. Where have you been? That feels so good. The placktoids took us. It’s some of the ones we lost. So good to have you back. We rescued them. We’ll take them home. Down with the placktoids. Yes, down with the placktoids. We won’t let them take you again.

  Carrie turned off the translator. It was impossible to think with the constant cacophony of voices in her head. She circled the bulge, studying it. The captured oootoon pool had slipped in easily and disappeared. No doubt it was mixing with the rest of itself, adding its voices to all the others in the oootoon surrounding the ship.

  Carrie stopped, her last thought echoing: Adding its voices to all the others in the oootoon surrounding the ship. She looked around the entrance bay at the still-intact boxes of oootoon. They were cut off from each other and wouldn’t be able to communicate with oootoon in other boxes, pools, or the bulge in the floor. She wasn’t sure how many oootoon voices or thoughts or personalities—she’d never quite figured that out—the boxes held, but talking to only the oootoon in each box had to be easier than trying to communicate with a whole mass of the stuff.