by Alan Black
Larry had seen this landing together in unison act in his back pasture. It was a neat trick, but a relevant misquote from Dorothy often reminded him, “you aren’t in Kansas anymore”. He was curious about how they managed such a synchronized activity among fourteen separate ships.
Larry wasn’t any kind of ex-navy veteran. Still, it had been kind of a kick to learn he was on the flagship of their little fleet. The Teumessians didn’t call it a flagship or even a fleet. To them it was just their spaceships. The more ships they had around them the better they felt about a trip outside of their own atmosphere.
From what Larry had been able to learn, everything the Teumessians did was like that. Families did everything together. If a family migrated, they worked to convince other families to join them in the trek. If a family decided to stop and settle down, they wouldn’t do so unless there were other families content to work with them to build a town or a city.
Larry wanted to learn as much about the spaceship as possible, but Scooter was reluctant to show him the engines. He wasn’t sure if keeping him out of engineering was caution on Scooter’s part or if Scooter didn’t want to try to answer questions about a power plant he didn’t understand. As it was, Larry thought the process of bringing a fleet in from orbit, through an atmosphere and landing safely would be a daunting task.
Scooter spun a dial until a small X appeared on the monitor where the speedometer should have been. Spinning the dial, the X on the screen raced toward the planet skimming over it toward a picture of a small spaceport. It screeched to a halt in a clear area near the port. The X had raced and slid to a stop exactly like the roadrunner in the cartoons. It went from full speed to a complete stop in one frame of the film. Apparently, Newton’s laws of motion didn’t apply to Xs or roadrunners.
Not that Larry remembered Newton’s laws of motion. There were many things from junior high school Larry didn’t remember. He deliberately didn’t remember a few things, like his converted cow milking machine or the rather embarrassing afternoon when Becky Smallwood kept dropping her pencil in front of him.
He knew enough of Newton’s laws of motion to know that if he tried to stop his tractor as fast as that little X stopped, he would have ended up in the next county. Not that the tractor would have consented to stopping that quickly, but when you slammed on the brakes, a tractor wasn’t offered the option to give consent or dissent. Tractors didn’t really care as long as the driver slammed on the brakes before it ran into something. Normally, tractors were averse to running into things, especially cows. The cows were pleased with that attitude and as a result maintained a friendly attitude toward tractors.
The little Teumessian pushed a button, sat back, and sighed with contentment. Without any feeling of motion, the ship descended through the atmosphere and stopped on a dime just above the surface of the planet, exactly where the X was located. Larry’s mind supplied the little boing noise and a quick meep meep.
From what Larry could tell from looking out the view screen, they were hovering a foot above the planet, as they had done in his Kansas cow pasture. At least, the two other ships he could see out the view screen were hovering above the field. He wondered if that was a safety precaution or if they just didn’t want to squash any bugs who inadvertently wandered onto the landing pad.
Larry made a mental note to check on that. He had a solution if bugs were the problem. He was sure he could interest the Teumessians in one of those non-kill, sonic bug things offered on TV at 3:47AM on Wednesday nights during the showing of a 1950’s movie that even the people in the 1950s hadn’t wanted to watch. He would have to look around and see what kind of adapter plugs the planet might need for their electrical outlets. The ship had given up its secret electrical outlets although the Teumessian crew hadn’t quite understood his need to plug in. He wondered what he would do if they didn’t use electricity. Maybe he would just have to see if they needed solar generators.
He wasn’t a seasoned salesman. In fact, the last thing he remembered selling, not counting beef, mutton, and horse dung for manure, was Christmas trees with the Boy Scouts. As a steak farmer, he recognized that when people get hungry, they want a Yankee pot roast or lamb chops with mint jelly. That didn’t make him a space trader opening up new markets on strange new worlds, boldly going where — well, that just wasn’t him.
That wasn’t real life anyway, that was just science fiction. This was real life where if he could interest the Teumessians in commerce, they would have an easy time conquering Earth, especially if they could provide cheap labor making T-shirts, sneakers, and disposable electronic crap.
Selling things to the Teumessians was just like going to the grocery store. Larry recognized a red pepper and a bag of carrots. He didn’t grow them, but he at least could recognize them when he saw them. It was the same thing with potato chips, shoe polish, and canned pickled pig’s feet. He didn’t even need to use them, he could recognize that other people might want them. He wasn’t too sure about pickled pig’s feet, but someone, somewhere must buy them because the store in town always had them on the shelf. He wondered why they didn’t put them in the liquor aisle, since he’d have to be drunk to eat one.
It didn’t take long for the Teumessians to rush from the bridge and open both airlock hatches. The air smelled the same to Larry. He assumed the atmospheric pressure would be different between the planets, but his ears didn’t pop like they would have on a cross country airplane flight. He wondered if they’d slowly changed air pressure and properties during their long voyage or if the planets were actually that similar. He doubted the planets were that alike, he wasn’t a mathematician of Enrico Fermi’s abilities, but what were the odds?
All six of the Teumessians clustered in the airlock hatch were looking out over the spaceport. It was just as if they were soaking up the sensation of finally being home. Larry joined them, soaking up the sensation of visiting a strange new world.
He chided himself for thinking he was the first human to land on another planet. Sure, Neil and Buzz had walked on the moon. Everyone knew that — well everyone except a few conspiracy theorists who thought the whole space program was made up and shot on a Hollywood back lot. But no one knew he was here. How many other humans had been snatched, abducted, kidnapped, or simply volunteered in secret to go visit another world? Who would believe them even if anyone returned home from such a voyage to tell the tale?
Larry stared at the spaceport through the open airlock hatches, not bothering to hide his wide-eyed curiosity from his Teumessian friends. As curious as he was, he tried to keep as much out of sight as possible. He didn’t want to startle any strange Teumessians who came to greet the ships.
He was surprised to see the spaceport landing pad was grass covered. He’d always had a picture in his head of spaceports having landing pads of asphalt, concrete, plasti-crete, or ceramic-titanium covering the ground for miles. He’d expected cranes, gantries, spaceship cradles, hovercraft flitting around, and odd-looking aliens heading toward a noisy spaceport bar. This landing pad looked a lot like his cow pasture—minus the cows and cow patties, of course.
The grass below was green. It looked a lot like a rye and fescue grass mixture from home. It wasn’t blue grass or bermuda. Larry was grass savvy since it was the main ingredient used to build his primary inventory product. Not that his cows really cared what kind of grass they grazed on, but he needed to know which kind of grass grew best in what location so he could provide the best pasture coverage possible for his herd.
He assumed green grass meant chlorophyll. He filed that thought in his head as an assumption, since he didn’t know how to tell if the stuff used chlorophyll or not. Everyone said the grass at home used chlorophyll, but then everyone was wrong at one point or another in human history.
Everyone knew the earth was flat. Everyone knew the sun revolved around the earth. Everyone knew devils spirits caused the black plague in Europe. Everyone knew Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot US President John Fit
zgerald Kennedy back in the sixties. Of course, there were crazy people who went against what everybody knew; crazy people like Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein, and Grandma, who thought that Lady Bird Johnson was behind the Kennedy assassination.
Larry could see a cluster of buildings off in the distance. The distance wasn’t far, as he was a country boy, and prone to think of buildings as close if they were within easy walking distance. A city boy might hail a cab claiming the distance was not quite that easy. They were indistinct buildings from this distance, like looking at your neighbor’s place from your front porch. That is, if your neighbor lived a mile away. At that distance, it was hard to tell the difference between the hay barn and the horse barn. There were no paths, roads, or streets he could see leading to, from or in between the buildings. He had an indistinct picture as he was still attempting to remain as hidden as possible.
He could see clusters of Teumessians standing around. They looked like Teumessians, but they moved like those meerkat things on the Animal Channel, or rather more like a school of fish, except not. Each individual Teumess stood near enough to the rest of his or her cluster to touch in some manner or another. Larry could see individual Teumessians move away from their grouping far enough to be separate, but never farther than an outstretched arm or two.
A few individual Teumessians were scattered around the groups. The single ones were close to the family groups, but never closer than speaking distance. To his human eyes, seeing individuals scattered about, made the groups appear even more odd. The singular Teumessians looked like punctuation marks scattered about a sentence, their whole reason for existence was to emphasize the clustered groupings.
From his hidden vantage point, he could see four or five groups. He assumed they were families. He might have seen more if he had gone back to the bridge and looked through the window, but strangely, he didn’t want to be alone. He really didn’t think he would be alone for long. He was sure Betty would follow him back to the bridge. Yet, she seemed enthralled to be home again, and he didn’t want to spoil it for her.
He also didn’t want to jump into view and startle the spectators. He could only imagine the kind of panic he might invoke. The pleasant and bucolic scene would turn into something reminiscent of what happens when Manchester United plays against the Wolverhampton Wanderers. There would be more Teumessians trampled in the riot to get away than he could eat.
On Earth, he’d never traveled beyond the boundaries of his own country. However, he’d read enough to know that many Americans traveled as if their way was the only way, slightly ethnocentric — haughty and stuffed full of Americanisms. He didn’t want to start giving the Teumessians the wrong impression of humans. Well, a worse impression than they already had.
It would be like the first native islanders who met Captain Cook on that Hawaiian beach in the South Pacific, except exactly backward. They were nice people — the islanders, not Captain Cook. Larry was sure Captain Cook wouldn’t have assumed every islander he met in the South Pacific would be a cannibal as some he had previously met. That wasn’t common sense. Larry had been part of the human race long enough to know that common sense was anything but common or sensible.
However, Captain Cook did assume the islanders were ignorant savages and would bow to him as a god. His assumptions were wrong. Not about the Hawaiians being cannibals, they were not, but about them being ignorant savages, because the first batch he met killed him for acting like he was a god. Larry didn’t intend to try to lord it over any alien species that had their own spacecraft, whether they bought it new, used, or built it themselves out of junkyard scraps.
Larry could easily see a few single individuals racing between the groups. They ran at full speed toward the buildings, but dodged around groups. Sometimes they yelled to other single runners, but mostly they ran silently and alone. They all carried bundles of goods and sleeping pallets. They were the crew from the other ships. The family groups moved away from the runners like schools of fish avoiding a barracuda.
Larry finally asked, “Do you want me to go or do I have to stay in the ship?”
Scooter said, “The Tetra want you to stay on the ship for now, but due to the fire damage we need to leave and let the spaceport crews in to assess the damage. I’m sure they’ll need to notify the builders to come and fix it.”
Larry asked, “You don’t do your own repair work?”
Scooter shrugged.
Larry said, “That’s okay. I guess it’s sort of like they’re still under warranty. I can fix my tractor and even do some minor repairs on the car, but when the television goes out, I just buy a new one.” Larry knew about warranties, but everything he owned was so far past its expiration date that keeping the paperwork was a futile exercise in data storage. Everything except Ol’ Bucky and he hadn’t come with a warranty, more’s the pity.
Scooter said, “Everyone, go grab your belongings.”
It only took a minute before everyone was back. Larry had to wrestle the translator as part of his personal stuff. The translator was the first thing he would have someone retrofit when—if—he ever got back to Earth. The thing had to have huge storage capacity, not only for keeping all human languages, but for all of the alien languages it contained. The translator, after the past few days, started to understand and use contractions when the Teumessians were talking. Still, the machine was huge, and he was sure any reasonably intelligent ex-NASA engineer could shrink the thing down to the size of a watch quicker than Larry could figure out how to unscrew the translator’s exterior casing.
No one could explain its power source, although it sounded like Bob understood it, but the words he used didn’t translate into English. Larry never had to plug the machine in — even if he’d ever seen a wall socket — but the translator unit did have a place to plug in his e-reader to keep it charged, although it was an outlet only in the loosest of terms. Larry just shoved the little two-pronged end of the charge cord into an open gap and the machine melted around it, not letting go until the e-reader charge dial read one hundred percent.
Pulling the translator’s leash was easy because his backpack had straps, leaving his hands free to tug the little machine. He had re-tied everyone’s belongings so they could carry them on their backs. The process was apparently new for the Teumessians. He was sure somewhere they had the wheel, but so far, he hadn’t seen any sign of ground vehicles. Maybe they didn’t like to use wheels because bugs might get smushed under the wheels, not to mention what a windshield would do.
Larry said, “So, how do we do this without scaring the bejabbers out of everyone by turning a carnivore loose in their midst?”
Scooter shrugged.
Bob jumped down to the ground and walked toward the closest family group. He didn’t get close enough that they would move away before he began shouting “Run and hide. A human meat-eater is among us.” He walked to the next group and repeated his warning.
Veronica jumped down. She turned aside, out of Larry’s sight. He could hear her through the translator repeating the warning. The warning started spreading from family to family.
When Larry stepped into the hatchway, there was a smattering of individual Teumessians present. They were obviously the insane ones. He had no way to know if they were from the other ships; insane, but too sane to travel to Earth with them; or if they were newly insane and ready to end it all by becoming his supper.
A few of the individuals scattered at his appearance, but the majority stayed frozen in place. They were going to be sadly disappointed if they were crazy enough like Scooter to want to be food for a human. He was hungry, but not that hungry. He did hope they had set out a welcome buffet in one of the buildings ahead.
He stepped down to the grass, turned, and lifted Betty, Scooter, and Ginger to the ground next to him. Jughead jumped down on his own, avoiding Larry’s outstretched arms, but he didn’t flinch when Larry patted him on the back. They stood in place until Bob and Veronica rejoined them. Both were grinning.
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Veronica laughed in her high-pitched bark style. “I like this friends thing. We can go and do. When we come back our friends are still here to greet us.” She hugged Jughead and Betty.
Bob nodded, “Had I not been insane, I wouldn’t have been able to move about without my family with me.”
Scooter reached back. He placed his palm flat against a small square by the front hatch. The hatch melted closed with a solid thunk.
Larry pointed at the lone individuals scattered about the field. “Here’s your chance to start your own Friends Society.”
Veronica said, “But they are insane.” And she laughed. “So am I. Or I was insane. I don’t feel insane now, I have friends.”
Bob said, “Yes. Those few may be insane, and they may become friends or they may not. We won’t know until we ask.”
Larry shook his head. “I’m sorry about all of this. Of all of the things I could’ve brought to your planet, I would have preferred not to bring proselytizing.”
The Teumessians looked confused.
“That didn’t translate through the translator,” Scooter said.
“Proselytizing is what humans do to convert other humans to their way of thinking. Sometimes humans get mad when people don’t think like they do. That’s started almost as many wars on Earth as bad water.”
Bob nodded. “We don’t want war. That would be bad for the Teumessians. But being friends has benefits.”
Larry laughed, “Amen to that, Bob. We could all use friends with benefits.” It took a while but he explained the concept of friendly sex to the Teumessians as they walked across the grass to the buildings. Human emotions being what they were, Larry knew it was easier to explain friends with benefits in theory than it was to practically apply the concept.
The walk was pleasant, even if the Teumess did occasionally take short jogs away from the most direct route. Larry realized they were actually walking around small piles of bugs. He didn’t know whether they were doing so because the bugs were like a wasps nest to be avoided or if they just loathed killing other living creatures. Avoiding biting and stinging insects was prudent. Avoiding eating a rare steak at a vegan convention was just as prudent, especially if the vegans were your only ride home.