Still, he wasn’t one for grumbling, and even if he was, who was left to listen?
The water tank sounded almost empty as Kash poured himself a cup full. A new delivery was due any day, but as ‘any day’ may not necessarily be any day soon, he’d have to ration it. He sipped just enough to moisten his mouth, dabbed a few drops on his black, bulbous eyes, then turned and headed for a ramshackle cottage that stood on its own a few hundred feet away. Two teetering wooden constructions leaned over it, groaning in the virtually non-existent breeze. They kept the cottage itself in the shade for much of the day, deflecting the worst of the sun’s effects.
A few years back, after a particularly productive season, Kash had spent most of his savings on a single solar panel, which he’d attached to the top of the tallest tower. The advert had promised unlimited power around the clock, and Kash had relished the idea of having lights in the dark evenings, and an electric blanket to see him through the cold desert nights.
The day after Kash had set up the solar panel, it melted. What was left of it was still up there now, after he’d decided not to replace it, and to instead spend a considerably smaller amount of money on some candles and wooly socks.
Yes, it was a tough old life, shizzfarming. Still, this season was bad, but he’d survived worse. The Great Constipation of ’42 had almost brought the whole industry to its knees. If he could get through that, he could get through anything.
As he headed home, Kash almost managed a spring in his step. The situation was bad right now, but you never knew what was right around the corner. Things could always get better.
He was halfway to his house when a ship landed on it.
He stopped. He stared. Two jets of steam hissed out from beneath the ship in a billowing white cloud. There was a screech of feedback from a hidden speaker, followed by a crackled announcement.
“Sorry!” said a woman’s voice. “I think that was partly my fault.”
* * *
“Did you just land on the guy’s house?” asked Cal.
“The landing gear jammed. I overshot,” said Loren.
“A whole planet to land on, and she picks the one building a thousand miles in any direction,” said Miz. “Smooth.”
“It’s not my fault! The Scrivers must have knocked something out of alignment.”
“Like what? Your sense of direction?” said Mech.
They all left the bridge and headed for the landing ramp. Splurt hadn’t come down from the ceiling after the gravity malfunction, and was busy squeezing himself into vents and ducts. He seemed to be having fun, so after warning the little blob not to break anything, Cal left him to his own devices.
The ramp shook as the crew piled down it. “Maybe we didn’t land on all of it,” said Loren. “It might not be that bad.”
She stopped when she saw the remains of the cottage. “No,” said Cal. “It’s totally that bad.”
The house wasn’t a house any more. It would barely even qualify as ‘bits of a house,’ as there was really no way of telling what, if any of it, had been walls or roof. Something that might once have been part of a door could just as easily have been any number of other things, provided all the other things in question were A) made of wood, and B) broken beyond any possibility of repair.
A short, skinny figure with an unusually tall forehead stood in the sand a short distance away, saying nothing. His eyes – two round, shark-black balls – went from the wreckage to the crew and back again, his narrow mouth curved downwards into a frown.
He was about the height of a seven-year-old human, but thinner across the shoulders. His head was completely bald, and his nose had either fallen off, or never been there in the first place. Miz was beginning to wish she could say the same for herself.
“Ugh, what is that?” she wheezed, clamping her hands across her nostrils.
“Nothing pleasant,” said Cal, blinking away tears that nipped at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, that stinks.”
Loren gave the figure a wave. “Sorry again! We had some problems with the ship.”
“Yeah, the pilot being the main one,” Miz muttered.
Cal stepped down onto the sand and shot the little guy a smile. “Hey. Are you Kashee… Kashees… Mech, help me out here.”
“Kasheeshaktek Shasheeshketak,” said Mech.
“Yeah. Are you that guy?” Cal asked.
The little figure blinked. His eyelids made a faint scraping sound as they licked across his eyeballs. “Me ‘ouse.”
“Uh… sorry? Didn’t quite catch that,” said Cal.
“Me ‘ouse. Me bleedin’ ‘ouse!” said Kash. “You’ve flattened me bleedin’ ‘ouse!”
“Again,” said Loren. “Huge apologies. We can probably fix it.”
She caught Mech’s look. “Well, I mean, no, we obviously can’t fix it, it’s completely ruined, but…”
The sentence tailed off into an apologetic smile. She blushed and looked around, suddenly very interested in the acres of sand in all directions.
“Thirty years I’ve ‘ad that ‘ouse!” Kash protested. “Thirty bleedin’…”
He stopped when he spotted Mizette. “Oh my,” he said. “Oh my, my, my. Oh my.”
Kash dropped to his knees in the sand, realized to his horror how uncomfortably hot it was, and immediately got back up again. “Your ‘ighness,” he said, bowing repeatedly. “Your actual bleedin’ ‘ighness.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Miz. “I guess you’re Kashea…”
“Kasheeshaktek,” said Mech.
“Oh yes, yes, I am that, that I am,” he babbled. “But it’d please me greatly if Your ‘ighness was to call me Kash.”
“Thank fonk for that,” Cal whispered.
“Welcome, ‘ighness, to my ‘umble ‘ome,” said Kash, bowing even more deeply. He shot the wreckage a sideways glance. “I’d invite you in, but, er…”
“You can stop bowing,” said Miz. Her tongue flopped out and she found herself panting heavily. The stench that had been filling her nostrils since they’d landed was rapidly being overpowered by the sour tang of sweat.
“Man, it is hot,” said Cal. He wafted the neck of his shirt and shot Loren an accusing look. “Whose idea was it for me to wear black?”
“You know why I’m here?” asked Miz.
Kash resisted the urge to bow again. “Of course, ‘ighness, of course. I knew this day would come. It’s the key you’ll be after.”
“That’s right,” said Cal. “Do you have it?” He winced. “It wasn’t in your house, was it?”
“Oh, if only it were. If only it were,” Kash fretted. “Had I but known you were coming, ‘ighness, I’d have fetched it, but, well, the thing is, there ain’t exactly a lot of what you might call ‘iding places round ‘ere. An’ Graxan, ‘e said I ‘ad to keep it ‘idden.”
“So… where is it?” asked Cal.
“In the safest place what I could think of,” said Kash. “Somewhere no-one would ever think to look. Somewhere no-one would ever want to look. No-one what was in their right mind, any rate.”
“Right. Good,” said Miz, although she wasn’t entirely sure where the conversation was going. “So… where is it?”
Kash swallowed, his eyes darted towards a steep hill that rose up from the sand a few hundred feet away. “It’s in the worm,” he said.
Cal frowned. “It’s in a worm?”
“No,” said Kash, shaking his head. “It’s in the worm.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mech stood gazing into the gaping, cavernous maw of an enormous sand worm, wondering if it was too late to turn himself in.
Prison hadn’t been that bad. He’d been given three square meals a day, whether he wanted them or not, and being a seven-feet tall armored cyborg meant he had rarely, if ever, found himself on the receiving end of any unwelcome shower-based advances.
There had been books to read, a gym to use, even games to play. What there hadn’t bee
n was a forty-mile long invertebrate with breath like an abattoir’s garbage can.
“You cannot be serious,” said Mech. “I ain’t going inside that thing.”
“Why not?” asked Cal.
Mech scowled. “Why not? What do you mean ‘why not’? Because – I don’t know if you noticed – but it’s a giant fonking worm. That’s why not.”
“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Mech’s voice became dangerously high-pitched. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he spluttered. “Well, hmm, let me see… It could eat me, maybe?”
“Yeah,” said Cal. “But that’s, like, absolute worst case scenario.”
“You want me to go in its mouth!” Mech pointed out. “That’s the almost guaranteed to happen scenario.”
“Nah, doubt it,” said Kash. “He ain’t been eatin’ much of late.”
“Oh, so he’s hungry? That’s what you’re saying?” said Mech. “He’s been holding out, waiting for some juicy and delicious snack to come along and hop right in his mouth? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Well, if that is what he’s saying, you should be fine,” said Cal.
“Hey, fonk you man,” Mech snapped. “I’m both juicy and delicious.”
“Not so loud,” said Loren. “You might give him ideas.”
Mech glowered at her as she tried without much success to hide her grin.
“Know what? Fonk y’all,” he said. “Fonk the whole lot of you. You want to climb inside a worm and get your stupid key? Be my guest.” He pointed to the sand at his feet. “I’m gonna plant myself right here. Y’all go right ahead.”
Cal sighed. He looked into the worm’s mouth. It was wide enough to swallow the ship and almost completely dark from somewhere just beyond the tonsils.
He looked back at the Shatner standing on the sand a short distance away, bits of Kash’s house still wedged in the landing legs.
“OK then,” he said, then he whistled through his teeth. “I guess I’m going to need a space suit.”
* * *
Cal’s breath rolled upwards across the inside of the helmet, fogging the glass. The torch mounted on the helmet’s side pasted a thin circle of light onto the darkness, and reflected quite unpleasantly on the slick, glistening walls.
The floor – which was how he’d chosen to think of it rather than the more accurate ‘throat’ – squelched beneath his boots as he trudged onwards into the smothering gloom. “You guys are there, right?” he whispered, his voice echoing around inside the helmet.
“Yeah, we hear you and we’re seeing what you see,” said Loren. “Which isn’t much.”
“Yeah, I think the torch needs new batteries,” Cal said. He blew upwards onto his face. “Man, it’s hot in here.”
“You know which direction you’re headed right?” Loren asked.
“I’m assuming I don’t have a lot of directions to choose from,” Cal replied. “Isn’t it just ‘up’ or ‘down’?”
“It’s going to branch off in two somewhere up ahead.” That was Kash’s voice, shouting to be heard from the back of the flight deck. “One way’s lungs, the other’s guts. You want the guts.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course I do,” Cal sighed. “And you can tell me which is which, right?” he said his feet squidging across the spongy, uneven floor.
“Oh yeah,” said Kash, then, “More or less,” then, “Well, no, not really.”
“What do you mean ‘not really’?” Cal demanded.
“Well, I ‘aven’t been down in years, ‘ave I? ‘ow is I supposed to remember what way to go?” Kash said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
“How? Will there be a signpost?” asked Cal. “Because I suspect one fleshy worm tunnel looks pretty much like any other fleshy worm tunnel.”
He trudged on, slipping and sliding through a puddle of clear, gooey ooze. “You know, this reminds me of a joke I heard one time,” he said, grimacing as the torch light picked out something purple and fleshy dangling down in front of him. He ducked it and bent forwards into the oncoming headwind of the worm’s breath.
“So, there’s this guy, OK? And he’s at the movie theater, watching… I don’t know. I don’t remember. Let’s say it’s the Godfather. No, wait. Let’s say it’s Big Momma’s House. Both classic movies in their own right.”
Cal stepped over a quivering mound that might have been some sort of pustule, then continued.
“So he gets his snacks, you know, popcorn, a drink, whatever. Hot dog, maybe. And he takes his seat. He’s all excited for the movie to start, but then he notices that in the seat next to him there’s this glow worm. Just sitting there by itself, looking up at him.”
The worm’s throat rumbled as a gust of air rose up from the darkness ahead. It was warm enough that Cal felt it through the insulated suit.
“So the guy’s, like, totally amazed. I mean, he’s quietly sort of freaking out, too, because what’s a glow worm doing at the movies, right?” Cal said. “He’s polite to start with, trying not to look, but then the curiosity just gets too much. So he asks it. He turns to it and just comes right out with it. Just turns to it and says, ‘what’s a glow worm doing at the movies?’”
A string of gloop fell from above and landed with a splat on Cal’s helmet. He tried to wipe it away, but mostly just succeeded in smearing it across the glass.
“Jesus, that’s not pleasant,” he whispered, shuddering involuntarily. “So anyway, the glow worm looks up at him with these big eyes and it says, ‘Because I want to see how it compares to the book.’”
Silence hissed softly over Cal’s earpiece.
“Yeah, I didn’t get it either,” he admitted. “I think maybe it was supposed to be a book worm. That would’ve made more sense. You know, in the context of the joke. Not in reality.”
More silence.
“Because in real life, either way would be crazy. You know, a talking worm and whatnot?”
Yet more silence.
“Hello?” said Cal. “Anyone there?”
He tapped the side of his helmet. “Helloooo?”
The silence was getting pretty repetitive now.
“Well, that’s just great,” he sighed. He looked back the way he’d come. A lopsided circle of light stood at the end of the tunnel, but the world beyond was too bright for him to make out any details. A little voice inside his head told him to go back. A much louder voice agreed with it.
He ignored them both and pushed on through the worm’s glistening innards, watching for the fork in the road.
“I’ll be honest, this is not how I imagined my life panning out,” he said, hoping by talking he could keep the rising feeling of dread from filling him all the way to the top. “I mean, flying around in outer space as a devilishly handsome spaceship captain? That I buy. I’m sure that was always on the cards.
“But trudging through a giant worm, looking for a way into its guts? That I did not see coming,” he said, then he stopped as the one enormous flesh-tunnel became two slightly smaller ones.
Cal leaned left and right, using the torchlight to examine his options. On the left, he had a lumpy purple passageway that oozed with a clear viscous liquid, while on the right he had a lumpy purple passageway that oozed with a clear viscous liquid. It was like the world’s most revolting game of Spot the Difference.
“They’re exactly the same,” he muttered, then he tapped the side of the helmet and tried again, louder this time. “Hey, there’s nothing different about the tunnels. I need a little help here.”
Once again, the only reply was a gently hissing silence. “I swear, if you guys are doing this on purpose to try to freak me out, I am not going to be happy.”
He held a hand out in front of him, gave himself – and his head camera – the middle finger, then picked a passageway at random.
Four paces in, he realized he could still feel the worm’s breath through his suit, so he about-turned
and headed down the other tunnel, instead. He was no expert on alien biology, but he was pretty sure breath probably equaled lungs, no matter where you were in the galaxy.
Just a few steps along it, the passageway leading to the stomach became sticky. Thick strands of mucus clung to Cal’s boots. It was like the whole floor was made of Splurts, but without any of the little guy’s more endearing qualities.
Even through the suit, he could smell something acrid and toxic. He was pretty sure that wasn’t good. Space suits, to his knowledge, were supposed to be air tight. That was pretty much the entire point. So, if it was air tight, how was the smell getting in?
He pressed on, trying to will his nostrils closed. The inside of the helmet was fogged up with breath, the outside still smeared with the goo that had dribbled on him from above. Cal raised a hand to try to wipe the rest of the gunk away, and that was when he saw the hole on the tip of one finger.
It was small. Barely the size of a cigarette burn. It shared some other characteristics with a cigarette burn, too – the scorched and blackened outline being the main one.
As Cal watched, the tips of the glove’s other fingers, and a dime-size patch of the palm turned brownish, then blackish, then pink and fleshy as the fabric was eaten away.
Acid.
The gloop that had landed on his helmet was acid.
Cal looked down at his boots, which were inch-deep in the see-through slurry. They were lined with metal, he knew, but would the acid eat its way through that, too? Was it munching its way towards his helpless feet, even now?
He hurried on.
Then slowed down again.
What if he fell? What if he slid on the slippery floor while running and went skidding through the acidic slime on his front?
Or his back?
Or any other part of himself, in fact?
He slowed down even more, remembered his feet might be about to melt, said, “Fonk,” under his breath several times, then marched onwards into the dark.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As well as not being an expert on alien biology, Cal wasn’t exactly the world’s foremost authority on Earth biology, either. That said, he was pretty confident that food generally went down the throat and directly into the stomach, and so he’d been surprised to stumble upon a second junction in the fleshy passageway a few dozen feet after the first fork. This one branched off to the right, and was a little narrower than the main path.
Space Team: The Wrath of Vajazzle Page 10