“That’s not strictly a problem though considering you lead a team.”
“The last time they tried to retire me I punched out the Admiral. Who incidentally happens to be Brelt’s father. Who also just happened to be helping Leader-One find volunteers for this trip.”
Xander laughed, “OK, I can see how that could be a problem! I’m probably being paranoid. I’ll get up earlier tomorrow and go for a run myself to shake it out.”
“The temperature is still dropping.” Booker paused to give Xander time to take it in. “Not more than we can handle but enough for me to have to make more adjustments to the thermostat.”
“It could be co-incidence,” Xander said but the Engineer just raised his eyebrows. “Has anyone else noticed?”
“Apart from Sarah? It was spotted by Fedka, one of the newer recruits. He wants to be my apprentice so he’s not going to do anything I don’t want him to. He’s a good lad and I trust him.”
“I didn’t know you were thinking of taking on an apprentice?”
“I wasn’t, but he can sew like a demon and he’s kind to Faith.”
“And kindness to Faith is a pre-requisite?”
“She stops cooking for me when she’s upset.”
Xander laughed again and got up to slap Booker on the back. “A unique approach to self-sufficiency! Maybe I should start something like that? Get myself a team of adoring sycophants to cater to my every need.” The vision of Garth floated through his mind. “Well, maybe not. How much has the temperature dropped by?”
“Twenty degrees since we separated from the other quarters. It’s been spiking up and down for the last few days so now I have Fedka monitor it every half hour, adjusting the heating to keep things constant. This isn’t happening for any metal-based or electrical reason.”
Looking out through the pod window Xander found his mind drifting back to the Gralic mission and the events before the problems started. “It could still be co-incidence and I’m not going into high alert on a possibility. Just keep me posted in case anything else unusual happens, OK?”
“Considering everything that’s happened so far what do you consider to be unusual?”
“Good point. We’ll meet daily.”
The intercom buzzed into life. Martyn’s voice, quivering with emotion, could be heard talking to someone about containment.
Xander lifted his eyes up. “Speak.”
“Sir, we’ve, um, it’s terrible! I don’t know how it’s happened but, um, the holding bay has been smashed.”
Xander and Booker shared a look.
“Report.”
Having spread the map over the floor the guinea pig ran a tiny paw down the length of wall tubing drawn in red ink to the Control room. Its eyes were bright. Using both its nose and paws the map was quickly folded and concealed behind some barrels. The elevators were close by and it streaked over to them using its blowpipe to hit the “call” button.
As the elevator door opened, the guinea pig checked behind to make sure it hadn’t been followed.
The door opened to reveal Monty sitting calmly, his mouth drawn back in a hungry smile.
Sarah was still uncertain about the time she had spent with Simon. When she was with him it had all made perfect sense but now, walking over to Xander’s quarters for the discussion she should have had last night, she was having second thoughts.
She knocked on the door and it opened automatically. Booker was sitting on one of the sofas, Xander was pacing the room.
Her first thought was how tired Xander looked and how the space had become cluttered with papers and empty coffee cups. Her second thought was that she had made a mistake, a big mistake, and that feeling hit her like a tidal wave.
“Is this a bad time?” Sarah brushed her hair back behind one of her ears and hesitated. “You said yesterday that we should talk, but I can always come back?”
Xander turned to Booker, “I’ll catch up with you again tomorrow.”
“Are you sure you don’t need backup?”
“Is something wrong?” She swallowed nervously.
“Have a seat, please.” Xander pointed to one of the chairs. “Tell me, what do you think could possibly be wrong right now?” He walked up to her and leaned over accusingly.
Booker got up. “Right, I’m off. Sounds like there’s some re-building to be done anyway.”
Sarah watched the Engineer leave, as much as to avoid Xander’s glowering expression as anything.
“I have crew members running around screaming sabotage. Again. I have an already exhausted engineering team trying to rebuild an entire section and Martyn’s having one of his moments. To be honest, out of those three things, I’m not sure which is worse. Explain.”
“I saw your specimen room. It wasn’t sabotage, it was a rescue.”
“My what?”
“The room with all the cages that was holding all those trapped creatures.”
“We don’t have a specimen room!”
“On level four next to the kitchen.”
“You mean the Visitors holding bay?”
“You call those poor creatures guests? One of them couldn’t even move in its cage.”
Xander passed a weary hand over his eyes. “We have security footage of what happened there and we have audio evidence of your conversation with Simon. I can’t believe you let Mr Chumbawala out! You terrified the life out of him, he’s acutely agoraphobic and in a delicate condition right now. It took Martyn ages to get him out from under the desk.”
“He was there because he wanted to be?”
“Yes! We have a few crew members who have very specialist skills and require extremely specific accommodation. Martyn makes sure that everyone gets what they want in the way of humidity, size etcetera and if anyone is uncomfortable it gets changed. If I remember correctly you were originally going to be in a salt water tank, because that’s what we thought would make you comfortable.”
“Oh.”
“Do you realise how much leeway you get on this ship because you’re a Visitor? Do you have any idea how much trouble anyone else would be in right now?”
“Just out of curiosity, if I wasn’t a Visitor how much trouble would I be in?”
After everything that you’ve done so far? I think I’d be experimenting to see if Earthlings could breathe in deep space.” He saw her horrified expression and held his hands up. “That’s just a personal preference, the rule book would probably have something involving a stay in the cells.”
He sat down next to her. “Look, no one got hurt so we’ll put this down as a misunderstanding. With Simon, well, he’s probably had a lot of mental stress over the last few years and from the camera footage it’s clear that you just wanted to help the guests. But please, for the love of Light, talk to me the next time you have some half-baked idea, OK?”
“OK.”
“Promise?”
The blush that had been building since Xander had started accusing her was beginning to feel like fire on her face. She stopped fiddling with her gloves and looked up at him.
“Promise.” She smiled and in that moment his eyes flickered and changed colour. He held her gaze for a second longer than was necessary before moving to the door. Sarah felt curiously light-headed. “So you’re not mad at me?”
“You’re a Visitor and my guest so no, I’m not angry but please try and stay out of trouble from now on.” He opened the door for her to leave as Lingor ran down the corridor screaming with a guinea pig on his back. He was followed by four members of security.
Sarah looked up at Xander. “You can’t blame me for that one.”
He followed Lingor’s progress. “No, that’s probably one of the few disasters that happened since you joined us that I can’t blame you for. Security tells me that the guinea pigs seem to have quite an attachment to our Linguist.” He turned back to her. “Seeing as how you seem to love taking an interest in the workings of the ship, I’m making you an honorary crew member. I want you to report to
the kitchen immediately and find out what you can do that doesn’t involve sharp objects, flame or freezing. All right?” Sarah nodded. “Good. Now, I need a coffee and then I should return to the Control room. Obviously my door is always open but I don’t want to hear of any more problems caused by you until we reach Kaor.”
Sarah nodded and followed him as he walked.
“Why don’t you take your gloves off now? You can’t possibly be cold.”
“Well, they get very comfortable after a while.”
Xander stared at her until she started to feel awkward. “What have you done?”
“What makes you think that I’ve done anything?”
“Show me your hands.”
“But…”
“Now.”
Sarah reluctantly peeled off her gloves and held her hands palm side down to show him.
“Have you considered cleaning your fingernails? OK, other side”
“I have cleaned my fingernails, and I’ve scrubbed them and picked them but nothing seems to get rid of the dirt.” She turned her hands over and showed two clean palms. She seemed as surprised as Xander. “See? Just hands.”
“Hmmm. Just stay out of trouble, OK?”
Xander moved off leaving Sarah examining her hands.
Hunger satisfied, Monty made his way, unseen, back to pod seven and curled up on his blanket. He slept.
The kitchens were a sprawling expanse of spotlessly clean tops and storage. A team of five, white-jacketed chefs worked around computer screens that relayed orders. The air was hot and full of noise as the kitchen chopped, cooked and argued their way through the daily shifts.
Rayine stood with a green scarf covering her deformity and surveyed the area. Occasionally she would tap something into her computer and from further down in the kitchen one of the junior chefs would raise a hand to acknowledge the order. When she saw Sarah she stopped her work and beckoned for her to come over.
“Rayine? Hi, I’m glad you’re down here. Xander’s asked me to come over and do something useful.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“OK, OK, he also said it had to be something safe without fire or sharp edges.”
Smiling, Rayine opened a door and pulled out a tea trolley.
It keeps the crew going. She wrote on her notepad, Garth comes out of med-crew today too, he might like the company.
“Well, I suppose it’s one way to meet new people. I have no problems with this but I am absolutely not wearing a hat, I don’t care if it’s part of a uniform, it’s just not happening!” Sarah went over to the trolley and had a look at the handle. “Is this thing motorised?”
Yes, but you must keep it on the lowest speed otherwise it can be quite difficult to handle.
“Oh, that’s fine; it can’t be any harder to control than Monty.” Looking around the kitchen she saw that everyone was occupied and they had some relative privacy. “Would you like to meet up later and see if we can have another chat? You’re the only one I’ve been able to do that with, although if it makes you uncomfortable I’ll completely understand. I mean, it makes me feel uncomfortable and I’m doing it but…”
Rayine held up a note. Love to. There’s quite a bit for me to do in the next few days but afterwards, yes.
“Great, we’ll catch up then.” A distinctive smell wafted through the kitchen and Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Aniseed?”
Cadka. We use it very sparingly and very occasionally.
“That’s what you recommended for Brelt, wasn’t it? Interesting. Right, well, I’d better get started then. See you later!”
Rayine watched her leave, thoughtfully. There was no doubt that cadka would give Derek a break from some of his inhibitions. She saw Sarah turn a corner and begin her tea round. Brelt was a sweet person and it was unlikely that she would do anything as underhand as slipping something into his drink. A cloud of steam began to rise from one of the work-stations indicating that the cadka was almost ready and Rayine came to a decision.
It was good to have friends and if you couldn’t give one of them a helping hand occasionally then what was the universe coming to? Running a finger along her shelf of cookery books she selected one on soups. Perfect.
The tea round was going perfectly until Sarah started to get bored. She found that she could lean her weight on the trolley’s handles and be carried along by it. By twisting the handle the trolley could speed up or slow down and this amused her for a little while until she tried to do lifting exercises as the trolley was still moving. Suddenly her grip on the handle slipped, turning the speed up to full power and she fell off, taking the handle with her. Having the handle ripped off messed up the electrics and the trolley started to move at high speed down the corridor. Sarah chased after it.
The doctor gently led Garth, clad in his orange bath robe, out of Med-crew. “Now remember to take things one day at a time. You’ve got your breathing techniques in case you have another panic attack and I want you to take two of these little pink pills every morning and one of the white pills every evening. The pink ones will make your day feel better and the white ones will help you sleep, but no more than one, understand? I don’t have anything stronger.”
“Yes. Thank you, Doctor.” Garth gave him a weak smile, took the pill bag containing the tablets and tottered off towards his pod.
As he turned the corner a guinea pig was waiting with a blowpipe. Garth froze. The guinea pig started up a low chattering and the hair on the back of its neck stood up.
It lifted up its blowpipe at the same time that the runaway tea trolley with Sarah sprinting after it turned the corner. The trolley knocked into the guinea pig, picking it up and carrying it along with it. There was a faint “squeak” as the trolley collided with a wall. Sarah, breathless from running, walked carefully up to the crash site.
“Oh,” she said as she saw how the trolley had dug itself into the wall. “Xander’s going to be mad when he finds out what I’ve done to the tea trolley.”
“You killed it!”
Sarah paled. “Was it a crew member?”
“You saved me!”
Sarah was too busy pulling the trolley out of the wall to reply. It came away with a small squelching sound and she carefully examined the corpse. She tried to prod it with a spoon.
“Just another one of those furballs. Xander’s put me on menial duties and when I heard you were being discharged from Med-crew I thought I’d come and see you. Maybe get you a drink or something. I can’t believe I’ve managed to mess up serving tea!”
“You came to see me?”
“Do you think there’s some sort of cleaning android on this ship or am I going to have to clean it up myself?”
“Cleaners will come. Liquid on floor triggers response. Maintenance on way for wall. Same set-up.” Garth looked at the floor. “No one ever visited me before.”
“Do you think the trolley will work again?”
“No.”
“Oh well. It’s only metal, I guess. Would you like to head back to your pod now or do you feel that you need to go back into Med-crew?”
“Only metal? True. Material goods unimportant.”
Sarah felt that something was lacking from the conversation and tried to keep in mind that Garth was only just getting over a mentally traumatic experience. “I’m not sure that Booker’s going to think that way, he seems rather attached to his walls.”
“Everything connects to each other?”
“Uh, I suppose you could see things like that. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to have another lie-down? All this … stuff can be cleaned up without us being here. The most important thing is that you’re all right.”
“All this just ‘stuff’… Yes. Lie down beneficial. Thinking to do.” Garth stared vacantly at the tea trolley as Simon came along the corridor.
“Simon!” Sarah breathed out in relief, “I’m so glad you’re here. Could you walk Garth back to his pod?”
Simon took in the disaster site and grinned. “Sure th
ing. By the way, sorry if I got you into trouble earlier. I’ve just had a chat with Leader-One and found out I was mistaken about the holding room. These things happen. Did you do that to the wall?”
“Just walk with Garth, would you?”
“Fair enough.” He bent down to whisper in her ear, “Then I’ll come back to see you. You’ve been running through my mind all day.”
“In what direction?” she said absently. Simon picked up the pill bag that Garth had dropped in shock and Sarah watched them walk away. When they had gone around a corner two cleaning androids appeared and started to clean efficiently and silently.
Booker approached in response to the thud on the wall. He looked at the wall, looked at Sarah then took off his backpack to write something in his note pad.
“I’m not even going to ask what happened. No, really,” he raised his hand, “I don’t want to know. At least it wasn’t near one of the engineering wall holes, I can’t stand going through the tunnels cleaning them. You got another guinea pig? Well, it will be the first time a trolley has been used as a deadly weapon. Just as well, they seem to be avoiding the traps we put down for them; it will be the poison next, when we get the chance.” Booker closed his book and put it back in his pack as Faith came running down the corridor.
“Booker, Booker! There was an animal in my pod; I think it was another of those small furry things!”
“Relax, Faith, Sarah managed to take it out with a tea trolley.” As the cleaners removed the lethal trolley, he pointed to the furry form that could be seen embedded in the wall, four paws splayed out. Faith went to take a closer look.
“No,” she said carefully, “mine was a different colour.”
Space Hoppers - Dance of the Guinea Pigs Page 14
