Space Team: Sting of the Mustard Mines

by Barry J. Hutchison

“What’s the matter?” Cal whispered.

  Konto scanned the gloom around them. Cal followed his gaze but saw nothing beyond rocks, sand, and the enormous stomach that had come very close to digesting him.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Growlers,” Konto whispered.

  Cal glanced up. The sky was clear.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about those guys. Like I said, I grabbed one by the danglies and he was completely under my control.”

  “Yeah, you said,” Konto remarked, still searching the horizon.

  “I don’t know why you’re so worried about them. I mean, it’s an obvious weak spot. As soon as I grabbed them, the poor bamston almost dropped me right out of the sky.”

  “Right,” said Konto, then he processed what Cal had said and turned. “Wait. What do you mean ‘out of the sky’?”

  Cal pointed up with an arm stump. “You know. Up there.”

  “I know what the sky is,” said Konto. “But how did it almost drop you out of it?”

  Cal shrugged. “I grabbed its nuts. It opened its talons. I almost fell.”

  Konto closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “That was a Thurrax.”

  Cal raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

  “That wasn’t a Growler,” Konto explained.

  From behind Cal came a sound that immediately leapfrogged several positions up his personal chart of most alarming things he’d ever heard.

  “That’s a Growler.”

  Eight

  The sound the Growler made was low and guttural, yet simultaneously loud and piercing. It was a rumble of thunder in an earthquake, an explosion in a firework factory, the furious parping of some vengeful, flatulent god. It was all these, and more.

  And that was without ears. Fonk knew what it would’ve sounded like if Cal still had them.

  He had absolutely no inclination to turn and look at the thing behind him. He wasn’t sure he’d cope with hearing a vague description of whatever it was, let alone be able to handle seeing it with his own two eyes.

  The sound affected Cal on some ancient, primal level. It screwed up his insides, flooded his brain with panic, and triggered his flight response, bypassing the ‘fight …’ part completely.

  He set off running, going from standing-start to a speed he had rarely, if ever, achieved before. His bare feet pounded the sand. His elbows pumping furiously. His lips flapped up and down and he babbled in tongues as the thing behind him let out another roar that was somehow even more powerful than the first.

  Konto’s bike skidded into his path, churning up a trench of sand. “Get on,” Konto barked.

  “Bleurmgf,” Cal ejected, but he scrambled onto the bike behind Konto. The ground trembled. Another roar thundered across the desert toward them.

  “Hold on,” Konto warned, gunning the bike’s engine.

  Cal managed to pull himself together enough to form actual words. “With what?” he yelped, waggling his handless arms.

  “I don’t know. Improvise,” Konto said.

  “Fonking improvise,” Cal muttered, then he lunged and bit the collar of Konto’s jacket, his teeth clamping on just as the bike shot forward.

  “Ngg!” Cal grimaced. “Mm fnkin’ teef.”

  Konto leaned right, sending the bike into a sudden curve just as something large and heavy slammed into the ground behind it. Over Konto’s shoulder, Cal caught a glimpse in one of the bike’s side-mirrors of something multi-limbed and hairy, then the bike skidded left and powered ahead.

  Cal’s jaw ached as he bit down harder on Konto’s jacket, and was almost thrown sideways off the bike when Konto turned to look behind them.

  Konto barely had time to eject a, “Shizz!” before he slammed on the brakes, snapping the bike to a stop so sudden it flipped Cal out of his seat. He smashed against the rear windshield that curved up behind him, thudded back onto the chair behind Konto, then stared in mute horror at the abomination that struck the ground ahead of them like a meteor made of hair, teeth, and anger.

  There was no time to take in the details, as the impact threw up a wall of sand around the thing which—mercifully—almost immediately blocked it from view. Cal got enough of a look at it to get a broad-strokes picture of it, though, and that was enough to make him wish he was suffering from the acid-blindness.

  And he’d thought it had sounded bad.

  “Don’t you have a blaster?” Cal asked. “Shoot it!”

  “That’ll only make it angry,” Konto said, spinning out the bike’s back wheel.

  “It’s already angry!” Cal managed, before the bike accelerated and he was forced to chew on Konto’s jacket again.

  “Right now, it’s inquisitive,” Konto said. “Trust me, you’ll know when it’s angry.”

  Cal’s response was an ejection of barely intelligible sounds through his clenched teeth.

  The ground rumbled, and Cal knew the thing was giving chase. He bit harder, bracing himself for another evasive maneuver.

  “I have an idea,” Konto said.

  “Ou oo?” Cal said, bouncing in his seat as the bike roared up over the top of a dune, then dropped steeply down the other side.

  “Yeah,” Konto confirmed.

  He spun in his seat, wrenching his jacket from Cal’s mouth.

  “Hey!” Cal began to protest, before Konto’s elbow caught him across the cheek.

  He grabbed desperately for the bike, but the force of the blow and his lack of available hands made saving himself impossible. His mouth was suddenly filled with sand as he rolled clumsily across the desert floor, and thudded to a stop against a lump of smooth rock.

  Konto’s bike powered up the next dune, then vanished out of sight over the top of it.

  “He sacrificed me! That selfish son-of-a-bedge,” Cal wheezed, as he tucked himself into cover behind the rock and wished, not for the first time that night, that he’d brought Splurt.

  A shadow passed over him, there one moment, gone the next. Cal didn’t look up. He sat there, frozen, until he heard the badoom of the Growler touching down somewhere on the other side of the dune.

  “Ha! It’s still coming after you, shizznod!” Cal shouted in the direction Konto had gone. He shouted it quietly, though, to the extent that it was more of a whisper, and not technically a shout at all.

  Scrambling up the dune on his stumps and feet, Cal reached the top in time to see Konto’s bike racing up the sloped side of the giant stomach. The Growler bounded along behind him, moving too fast and churning up too much sand for Cal to gather much more information about its appearance than he already had. The fact he couldn’t bring himself to look at it for more than half a second at a time didn’t help, either.

  What he could see was that it was gaining fast. Konto was going to have to pull a tight turn to shake it off before they both…

  The bike sailed up over the edge of the stomach, hung in the air for the briefest of moments, then plunged into the Guts. The Growler, which was running too fast to be able to stop in time, followed. It thrashed a multitude of hulking limbs in the air for a moment, as if attempting to fly, then it, too, plummeted down into the Guts.

  Silence fell. Cal kept watching the edge where both Konto and the Growler had vanished, waiting to see if anything would happen.

  Nothing did.

  He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth.

  “It’s a flying bike,” he said. “Got to be.”

  He considered the implications of this with regards to him being lowered into the stomach on a cable.

  “If that bike has been able to fly this whole time, I swear to God, I will fonking kill him,” he remarked. Then, with a sigh, he trudged down the other side of the dune and followed the Growler’s trail up the side of the stomach.

  The fleshy outer lining was springy and spongy beneath his bare feet as he made his way up. Without hands to help him, the climb was difficult, and he made it to the halfway mark three out of four times before sliding back down aga
in.

  In the end, he took a run up at it, threw himself forward when he began to slow, then wriggled up on his front, worm-style, until he reached the top.

  The acrid stench of the Gut’s bile assaulted his eyes and violated his nostrils as he leaned over the ledge. The glowing green fluids were a long way down, but Cal could just make out the Growler bobbing on the surface. It was still moving, but in violent, fitful twitches that suggested any last-minute comebacks were highly unlikely.

  Peering through the gaps in the acid clouds, Cal caught a glimpse of something metallic. It lasted only for a second before the bike sunk out of sight, and several thick, lumpy bubbles belched to the surface.

  “Fonk,” Cal wheezed, sliding a few feet back down the stomach-side and out of the path of the rising fumes. “Konto, you crazy bamston,” he groaned. “Now who’s going to give me a ride home?”

  He shook his head, sighed, and sat up. “I mean, driving into a big stomach. What was he thinking? There had to be another way.”

  “There wasn’t,” said Konto from behind him.

  Cal jumped in fright, which sent him skidding several feet down the stomach before friction brought him to a stop.

  Konto stood at the edge of the stomach, very much alive.

  “What the…? Where the fonk did you come from?” Cal asked.

  Konto tilted his head in a backward nod. “Down there,” he said.

  “But… How did…? Why aren’t you…?”

  A couple of tin cans and something that looked a bit like a spanner landed in the sand between Cal’s legs.

  “Got you those,” Konto said. “Between those and the cable, reckon you’ll have what you need.”

  “Uh… Great. That’s awesome,” said Cal. He nodded down at them, then to his arm-stumps. “But can you carry them?”

  Konto ran his tongue across his bottom lip. “No,” he said, then he trudged past Cal down the stomach-side, and slid the last few feet onto the sand.

  Cal tutted. “God,” he said, as he attempted to pick up the cans with his elbows. “I fonking hate this guy.”

  “What kept you?” demanded Mech, when Cal eventually arrived back at the ship. “And why the fonk are you hopping?”

  Cal hopped on the spot and fixed Mech with a cold, impassive stare. “Seriously, Mech? That’s what you notice?” he said. “Not the arms? Not my baby-pink skin, or the fact I’m wearing clothes meant for a four-armed alien with obesity issues? The hopping?”

  “I was building up to that,” said Mech. He pointed to Cal’s stumps. They had continued to grow in the hours he and Konto had spent trudging across the desert, and he now had the beginnings of a wrist on the right. “You have no hands.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Mech,” Cal said. “It’s not the sort of thing you miss.”

  “Wow, what happened to you?” asked Loren, striding down the landing ramp of the Currently Untitled. The ship’s hull was still grubby with siltch, but a glow from inside told Cal that they’d got the lights fixed, even if nothing else.

  “A lot happened to me, Loren,” Cal said. “A lot.”

  “Why are you hopping?”

  “That’s what I asked,” Mech said.

  “I’m hopping because I have no shoes. And because ever since the sun came up, the sand has been melting the soles of my fonking feet off,” Cal said. He switched legs and contorted himself enough for the others to see the bottom of the foot he’d just been hopping on.

  “Man, that’s nasty,” Mech grimaced when he saw the crispy-fried chopped-liver that was Cal’s sole.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Cal said, his voice taking on a slightly hysterical edge. “I let it heal up, then I swap and do it all over again. I’ve been doing that for the past eight miles.”

  His voice became a whispered sob. “You know how long it takes to hop eight miles across a desert?”

  “I mean, I could probably calculate it,” Mech began.

  “You don’t have to. It’s fine. I already know,” Cal said. “A long time. A long, agonizingly unpleasant time. That’s how long.”

  “You should’ve taken Splurt,” Loren said.

  Cal shot her a dirty look that told her he was only too aware of this fact, then hopped past Loren and Mech and onto the ramp. “I’m going inside,” he told them. “You’ll find me in my room, hugging myself and crying.”

  They listened to him thudding up the ramp on one foot. He was halfway along the corridor before his voice drifted out. “Why the fonk am I still hopping?”

  Loren rolled her eyes and looked up at Mech. “You think he got what we sent him for?”

  “Didn’t look like it,” Mech said.

  “Yeah. I didn’t like to ask. He seemed kind of… on edge.”

  Konto’s voice took them both by surprise. “He’s been like that for a while. I got sick of listening to him bedging, so I gave in and carried these.”

  A coil of cable, several tin cans, and some other assorted pieces of metal clanked onto the sand at Mech’s feet. “That man sure knows how to complain,” Konto said.

  “Says the guy with shoes!” Cal called from inside the Untitled. “And arms!”

  Konto glanced up the ramp, flicked his eyes across the ship for a moment, then gestured to the scrap in the sand. “That enough?”

  “That should do it,” Mech confirmed, bending to retrieve the metal.

  “Thanks for your help,” Loren said. “We owe you one.”

  “You owe me one bike, eight miles of shoe leather, and six hours of my life I’m never going to get back,” Konto said.

  Loren shot Mech a sideways look. “Uh, we don’t really have any money.”

  Konto nodded slowly and raised his eyes to the Currently Untitled again. There was something almost wistful about his expression as he took in the sleek curves and growing collection of dents. “Nice ship,” he said.

  “You ain’t getting the ship,” Mech told him.

  “I don’t want your ship,” Konto replied. “Trust me, my space days are over. I’m just saying… nice ship.”

  “Thanks,” Loren said. “We like it.”

  “Though you wouldn’t know that from the way she keeps smashing it into shizz,” Mech said.

  With a final glance at the Untitled, Konto turned away. “Well, good luck,” he told them.

  “What about the bike?” Loren asked. She staggered as Mech elbowed her. “What?” she whispered. “We should at least offer to repay him.”

  Konto stopped, but didn’t turn. “You want to repay me?”

  “Not particularly,” Mech grunted.

  “If we can, yes,” said Loren.

  “Then fix your ship, get off my planet, forget you ever saw me,” Konto said. “And don’t come back.”

  “Man, you have got yourself a deal,” Mech said.

  “And tell your friend he’s an annoying shizznod.”

  “Oh, we do,” Mech assured him. “On a pretty regular basis.”

  “Good,” said Konto. He took a step away, but paused there. “And tell him thanks.”

  “Thanks?” said Loren. “For what?”

  “Just ‘thanks,’” Konto said. Then, with a nod, he set off again. They watched him until he reached the crack in the ground and slipped inside. Only then did Mech shoot Loren the look of disdain he’d been holding onto.

  “We should at least offer to repay him?” he said, mimicking her.

  “What’s wrong with that? It was only fair,” Loren said. They both turned and headed up the ramp. “And I don’t sound like that.”

  “That sounded exactly like you,” Mech said.

  “It did not.”

  “It did not!” Mech imitated.

  “Just shut the fonk up and let’s go fix the ship, Disselpoof,” Loren told him.

  “Bedge, that was a low blow,” Mech said. His metal jaw curved into a smirk. “But let’s go fix the damn ship.”

  Miz sat forward in her chair, her eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Cal. He was sitting in the scorched
remains of his usual chair, leaning to the left so as not to fall off the side with the missing armrest. The whole thing reeked of burning leather, although that may well have been his feet.

  “You look terrible,” Miz said.

  Cal gave a half-hearted nod of agreement. He was looking a lot better than he had a short time ago. Changing into his own clothes had helped, and the fact that his epidermis had almost completely regrown was a big help, too. All in all, though, he was far from looking his best.

  “Like, why are your ears bright pink?” Miz asked.

  Cal turned, trying to see the sides of his head. This proved a largely unsuccessful endeavor. “I have ears again?”

  He raised both arms and extended the perfectly smooth, baby-sized thumbs that had been developing for the past hour or so. They were the only fingers he had, so he was determined to make the most of them. “Awesome.”

  “And what happened to your hands?” Miz quizzed.

  “They fell off,” Cal said.

  Miz hesitated. “Is that, like, an Earth thing?”

  “Not particularly,” Cal said. “Anyway, the good news is, they’re growing back.”

  Sure enough, what had been stumps were now almost fully-formed hands, albeit a little smaller than normal, and with just the one underdeveloped thumb on each.

  “I’d say I’ll be good as new in around three hours,” Cal said. “Although, obviously that’s a complete guess, and I don’t really have anything to base it on. It could be one hour, it could be five. The point is, I’ll be all-hands-on-deck before you know it.”

  He summoned the energy to grin. “See what I did there?”

  Miz tutted and sat back in her chair. “Or they might not grow back,” she pointed out.

  Cal blinked. “Huh?”

  “Maybe, like, this is as far as they’re going to go. They haven’t changed much since you came through here.”

  “They haven’t?” Cal asked, his voice suddenly tinged with panic. He turned his hands over, studying them, then shot Miz a frantic, wide-eyed look. “Why would you even say that? Oh, God, what if this is as far as they grow back?”

  Splurt lowered himself down from the ceiling until he was just above Cal’s lap, then dropped with an elastic snap. The little green blob crawled onto the end of Cal’s left arm and rearranged himself until he was hand-shaped.