by E. C. Tubb
It had been more than two weeks since the last ship had landed at Tranquility, Inc., which was located far outside even the outskirts of Punktown’s Industrial Square. There were no buildings near the warehouse. Potential neighbors feared that a space barge might crash into them. That left Keaton and his gang stranded out in an enormous, otherwise empty lot that stretched kilometers in all directions.
A red light lit up on the wall above Keaton’s desk. That meant a ship was coming in and the tracker ray would lock on it and then automatically land it.
“It’s going to be a while, guys,” Keaton said to the two Chooms, who kept staring at the red light. “Those Tikkihottos are slow. It’ll take them half an hour to enter all the authorization data, and we can’t help with unloading until then. They should put more Chooms in that department. That would speed things up. They only have two right now.”
“Yes. Freder and Josaphat,” Grot said, leaning on his broom.
While we’re waiting, you two should grab a bite to eat.”
Lang and Grot looked at each other and nodded. They sat on the floor next to Keaton’s desk, where they both pulled plastic bags out of their pockets and started snacking on dilkies. Lang held out some for Keaton, but he shook his head. He always had a hard time eating the fried, gritty roots. They always left a greasy yet oddly dusty taste in his mouth. The Chooms had no problem eating the forage—with their extra rows of molars, it was like eating Earth cotton candy.
Keaton kept playing solitaire, hand after hand. He looked down and noticed that the Chooms had finished eating and were simply watching the red light again. He checked his watch: forty-five minutes since the ship had landed. That was odd. Even with those slow Tikkihottos, it usually never took that long.
He checked his communications radio next. It was on and working, so he should have received a call by now. He pushed the button down and said, “Wheaton or Percy—are you there?”
No answer.
Keaton decided to call on the other Chooms. “Freder or Josaphat—do you hear me?” He didn’t know the names of any of the Tikkihottos and didn’t want to talk to them anyway.
Again, no answer.
Silence from Chooms, the most helpful folks on the whole planet?
Keaton was starting to worry.
* * * *
Keaton waited another fifteen minutes and then decided it was time for some investigating.
He went up to the space barge with Lang and Grot. The ship, quaintly named Busy Bee, was docked, but no one was around—no crew members, no Tranquility, Inc. technicians, not even an ugly old Tikkihotto. He couldn’t understand what was going on. By now the landing area should have been swarming with activity. He had worked with the Busy Bee a few times before and remembered the access code for the airlock. So he went aboard with the Chooms, armed with freshly charged faser-sticks. A single shock from a faser-stick couldn’t kill anybody, but it sure as Hell could knock practically any living creature on its ass.
There were flame-guns and plasma capsule blasters in Elliot’s office, but those were not allowed on the ships. Firing weapons like those on a space barge could cause an explosion, since most of the larger ships had lunglilies growing onboard to keep the air fresh. Lunglilies were carnivorous plants equipped with huge, brightly colored bladders that gave off puffs of pure oxygen. On the home world of the plants, the oxygen drew smaller creatures to the leafy predators. Onboard space barges, the crew fed the lunglilies soy protein, which Keaton thought was probably a big disappointment for the plants. He’d never found soy satisfying as an entree option, so why should a lunglily be any different?
He didn’t know where the Busy Bee had been manufactured, but he knew it couldn’t be Earth. The ceilings were too low. Plus, the designs on the walls incorporated complex alien pictograms that reminded him of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Of course, the written language of the Pharaohs had never included images of starships or aliens with tentacles instead of arms.
“Wheaton? Percy?” Keaton yelled. “Freder? Josaphat?” The names echoed down the corridors.
They walked through the ship, utterly perplexed by the disappearance of both the crew and the Tranquility, Inc. employees who should have been onboard by now. Lang and Grot whispered nervously to each other—it took a lot to rattle a Choom. Plus, there were odd, flowering silver vines growing here and there on the ship. Keaton had never seen anything like it before. Weeds, running rampant on a space barge? The vines grew out of storage cupboards, desk drawers and toilets—any nook or cranny where something organic might have been left behind.
At one point, they turned down a corridor and saw that the path was completely blocked by silver vines. Keaton recalled from his earlier visits to the Busy Bee that this hall was lined with snack machines.
The three walked to the ship’s administrative offices, hoping to find the captain or at least a well-informed secretary. But instead, they found two dead animals on the floor, with silver vines growing out of various orifices.
“What the fuck is that?” Keaton said, giving the closest carcass a little kick for emphasis. The barges were prohibited from bringing livestock or other life-forms, including pets, onboard.
Keaton bent down for a better look at one of the dead things. He held his nose, since excrement was leaking out of it. The creature looked like some kind of enormous rat, about the size of a healthy tomcat, covered with bony plates like those of a nine-banded armadillo. It had a cruel, batlike face, a mouth loaded with pointed yellow teeth, and a sharp stinger for a tail. Both of the creatures had been stabbed in the eye—one still had a screwdriver embedded in it skull. Evidently somebody had figured out a weak spot. So where was that person now?
“Damn. A thing like that has no business being on a barge,” Keaton said. The Chooms nodded solemnly.
“Smells like krogg,” Lang said.
Next they headed toward the crop chambers. Maybe that’s where all the crew members were. Halfway there, they reached an area where five major hallways met. There was a vine-choked Starblast Coffee kiosk in the center of the intersection.
“Wheaton? Percy? Freder? Josaphat?” Keaton yelled, louder and more urgently, hoping that his voice would carry through most of the ship from here. “Anybody home? Come on, wake up, folks! There’s work to be done!”
This time, his shouts brought a response: a chorus of hungry squeals, like wild hogs on the rampage.
A dozen of the rat-armadillo beasts swarmed down one of the hallways, straight at them. Their squealing was so loud and high-pitched, it hurt Keaton’s ears. Grot was standing closest to that hall, and in a flash they were all over him, tearing at his flesh.
“Holy krogg! Get off him!” Keaton screamed. He poked frantically at the creatures’ faces with his faser-stick, but that only seemed to enrage them. They would back off for a moment, slightly dazed, and then charge forward again.
Keaton and Lang ran back toward the ship’s airlock. Soon the squealers following them were joined by even more from other parts of the ship. At one point Keaton looked back, and saw that the entire hall behind him was practically a snarling wall of rolling, writhing squealers, all striving to be the first to feed.
As he ran, he suddenly realized that Lang was no longer by his side. He glanced back again and saw that the Choom had fallen. A second later, the squealers were upon him, ripping him to ribbons.
Keaton reached the airlock, raced through and closed the entrance behind him. He stopped to catch his breath, and look around the empty landing bay.
Still empty.
Where were all the other Tranquility, Inc. employees?
A little squealer, no bigger than a kitten, ran out from under a nearby tool cart and bit his shoe. With a startled cry, he zapped the tiny thing’s head with his faser-stick five times, killing it.
So. The squealers were already out of the ship. On the loose.
That gave him a good idea of where most of his coworkers were: shredded and wetly nestled inside of numerous dig
estive tracts.
Krogg.
He walked to the elevator area and pressed the UP button. Elliot was on the top floor—hopefully the squealers hadn’t found their way there yet.
He pulled a syn-cig out of a pack in his shirt pocket, lit it and inhaled. This little episode would be an interesting test of Elliot’s managerial skills. With any luck, the fat bastard would decide to pack up his jazz records and cats and head straight back to Earth.
Maybe I’d better get my ass back to Earth, too, Keaton thought as he stepped into the elevator. While my ass is still attached.
* * * *
Elliot sat in his executive leather chair, listening to the wailing horn of John Coltrane, which sounded like the musical equivalent of axe murder, on his Victrola gramophone. It had cost him a small fortune to get Earth jazz records, but hey, what else was money for, besides doughnuts and catfood?
He sat every night, working at his desk and listening to his collection with his cats, all named after famous twentieth-century Earth jazz musicians. Chet Baker was an orange tabby, Zoot Sims was a Siamese, Duke Ellington was a long-haired Persian and Bix Beiderbecke was an Angora who had a chronic problem with runny eyes. Louis Armstrong was a Burmese, Charlie Parker was a Manx and John Coltrane was a fat brown tom who was licking himself in time to his namesake’s music.
Elliot sipped his coffee—fresh-ground, none of that Starblast crap. He had started organizing some invoices when Keaton rushed in, slammed and locked the door behind him.
“Break out the guns and blasters!” Keaton shouted.
Elliot yawned. “Oh, give it a rest. My cats aren’t that bad. Would it help if I bought you some antihistamines?”
Keaton sneezed. “Damned cats! No, I’m not talking about them. Look out your office window.”
“Have you been eating lotus again?” The night manager sighed heavily. “I’m really busy right now, so why don’t you–”
“Look out your window, you stupid piece of krogg!”
Elliot stared at the Keaton. “There’s no need for that kind of language. Now just settle down and tell me—Hey, is that blood on your shoe?”
Keaton looked down. “Yeah, I guess it is. It must have splashed on me after the space creatures tore up Lang. Or maybe Grot. I’m not sure. I was too busy being scared kroggless at the time.”
Elliot rose from his office chair, crossed the room and looked out his office window, down toward the landing bay.
“Where is everybody?” the night manager said.
Keaton lifted the needle from the record. The second the music ended, both men could hear a distant chorus of squeals, echoing throughout the building.
“Sounds like pigs,” Elliot said.
“Yeah,” Keaton said, “except pigs don’t travel in packs eating everyone in their path. The squealers do.”
“Squealers? Never heard of them.” The manager continued to look out the window, trying to catch sight of an employee. “Where did everybody go?”
“Listen. I’m just calling them squealers because they squeal and I don’t know what else to call them.” Keaton grabbed some tissues from a box on Elliot’s desk and wiped the blood off his shoe. “I’m pretty sure they’ve eaten most of the other employees. The Busy Bee brought them in, along with some weird silver vines. The squealers are all over the place. I ran into two of them in the hall outside your office, but they were small and I managed to kill them with my faser-stick.”
“Oh, no! Come see this!” Elliot said. “Down there! This can’t be happening.”
Keaton rushed to the night manager’s side and looked out the window. A small group of Tranquility, Inc. employees was running across the landing bay, followed closely by a pack of squealers. There were six employees and probably about four-hundred of the predators. The creatures soon caught up with the workers and ripped them to shreds, feasting with lightning speed. When they were done, the squealers moved on, leaving behind nothing more than a large stain on the bay floor.
“Krogg! We’re dead meat,” Elliot said, sweating profusely. “What are they?”
“Aliens. What else? They look like a cross between a rat and an armadillo, and maybe a pirahna, too. Somebody on the Busy Bee got sloppy and let some aggressive life-forms onboard. The squealers and those silver vines. The vines are growing everywhere in that ship.”
“That must mean those monsters don’t eat plants,” Elliot said. “Great. We have plenty of cargo bays filled with harvests waiting for distribution, but that won’t satisfy those squealers, will it? No, they’ll want to eat us. But we should be safe in here. The walls are steel-plated. Only a nuclear blast could get through.”
“I just though of something,” Keaton said. “Sometimes one of your cats will find its way down to my work area. How do you suppose it gets down there?”
The night manager thought for a moment. “Oh, I know. A few weeks back, I heard a mouse or something in one of the air ducts, so I took off the grid so my cats could go in there and get it. I guess I forgot to close it. I’d better block off that duct—it’s by the floor right behind my desk.”
Elliot found the cover grid and screwed it back down over the opening in the wall. Then Keaton helped him to push a filing cabinet in front of it.
The night manager looked around his office. “Oh, no. Charlie Parker isn’t here. He must be in the ducts. I hope he finds a good place to hide.”
Keaton grabbed some more tissues, this time to wipe at his eyes and nose. “Damn. I’m trapped in here with my allergies and all these cats.” He waved a handful of tissues at the computer. “What are you waiting for? Contact the home office, Punktown authorities, somebody who can rescue us!”
“Oh! Right!” Elliot rushed to his desk, sat down in front of the computer and–
That’s when one of the squealers broke into the office through another air duct in the ceiling. Six more of the squealers jumped out of the opening after it.
Elliot reached into a desk drawer, pulled out an old Earth pistol and fired at the first squealer. The bullet ricocheted off its armor and missed Keaton’s head by half an inch.
Keaton began to poke the squealers’ faces with his faser-stick, but these creatures were full-grown—the jolt only stunned them temporarily.
Suddenly the cats went into a frenzy. They began hissing, their backs arched and their claws flailing. John Coltrane jumped in front of one of the squealers, ready to attack.
The squealer sneezed, like Keaton did when he’d entered the office.
The cats started scratching and biting at the faces of the alien predators. The squealers didn’t fight back. They couldn’t—they were too busy sneezing, coughing and gagging. Their eyes exuded stringy mucus. One of the squealers coughed up a blood-streaked shower of thick yellow fluid.
“Hey! The squealers are allergic to your cats!” Keaton said. He picked up Zoot Sims and rubbed the cat against his chest and legs. “Get some of their hair on you! Hurry!”
“I can do better than that! I combed all the cats about an hour ago.” Elliot reached into his trash bin and pulled out two handfuls of loose cat-hair. He handed one to Keaton and the two men began to spread the hair all over their clothes.
The squealers began to gurgle and gasp, desperately fighting for breath. The cats continued to bite and claw at their heads, ripping at their batlike shouts and ears, rubbing their fur—and dander—all over the faces of their enemies. A few minutes later, the squealers collapsed to the floor. Soon all of the repulsive alien creatures were dead, asphyxiated by their own phlegm.
Keaton grabbed another handful of tissues and blew his nose. “I think we’re going to be okay. You’d better contact the authorities.” He walked around the office, looking at the dead squealers. Their eyes, noses and mouths were completely clotted with blood and snot. As he walked by the window, he happened to look down at the landing bay.
“Elliot!” he shouted. “Look what’s happening now!”
The two men stood at the window and watched as, f
ar below, the Manx cat known as Charlie Parker chased a horde of sneezing, gagging squealers across the landing bay.
“Elliot,” Keaton said, “how many Earth cats do you suppose there are on this world?”
The night manager shrugged. “Who can say? As far as I know, I have the only cats on the whole planet. Why?”
“Think about it. This building isn’t sealed shut. The squealers will find a way out. They’re no longer a problem for Tranquility, Inc.—but they are now for Punktown. We’ve got to figure out how to get hundreds, thousands of cats here as soon as possible.” Keaton looked at all the cats in the office. “Do any of these have kittens on the way?”
“I doubt it,” Elliot said. “They’re neutered males.” He then returned to his computer. “I’ll take care of everything here. Could you get us something to eat? After all this excitement, my blood-sugar level is at rock-bottom. I really need to get some food in me. You’re covered with cat hair, so you should be okay.”
“Oh, sure.” Keaton unlocked the door and walked down the hall. A few squealers ran toward him, but they ran away as soon as they got a snootful of cat dander.
Two floors down, he found an employee lounge with snack machines. In mid-air, right in the center of the room, a silvery something was fluttering. It looked like a butterfly made out of leaves. It flew up to one of the snack machines and managed to wriggle its way inside.
Curious, Keaton watched as the strange flying thing tore a hole in a bag of potato chips and crawled in.
He then bought some snacks from another machine, turning away from the machine with the silver interloper for only thirty seconds.