by Jane Palmer
CHAPTER 14
After recovering from having Dax reduce his body to molecules, then fire them into the flight deck of his ship, Kulp sat quiet and motionless as a deep green pool. He patiently waited for the bumbling trio in the Mott monitoring station to trigger what they thought would be the signal to activate the space-distort net. It didn’t need the Olmuke engineer’s greater intellect to tell him that, in their simplicity, they hadn’t anticipated his miraculous return to his ship.
Kulp found it hard to take instructions from creatures who could change shape easier than he could change colour. That was tempered by the conviction that he wasn’t only on the right side now, but the winning one. He wondered briefly how Tolt and Jannu would react to his new way of looking at an ugly galaxy, and was slightly perturbed to find that he couldn’t guess. If greed and fear hadn’t overtaken them, perhaps they too could release that small suppressed area of the brain that allowed a glimpse of sparkling honesty. Not knowing what honesty was, let alone that it sparkled, the experience might have proved too much for their already confused minds.
Kulp had realigned the beacons and persuaded the two errant robots Ea 8 88 and Ex 8 89 to take theirs to the right positions before Tolt fitted the firing mechanism in the Mott’s observation chamber. He then reconnected the firing command and monitored their signal to make sure his synchronised with theirs. He expected there to be some delay as they squabbled about how safe it was and who was to do the dirty deed, so he waited, cat-like, to pounce as soon as the signal was activated. Then things would be completely out of their incompetent control, and it mattered little whether they discovered his presence or not.
Immediately the signal was activated, Kulp swung into action. Every beacon surrounding the unfortunate planet and its black companion triggered the lethal net that ensnared Moosevan in a web that excluded the normal laws of physics. The ensuing distortion began to twist the peaceful world out of its natural shape and rearrange every atom in it.
Soon the planet was no longer round, but ovate, then cylindrical, then finally spinning like a flat disc. Carefully following Dax’s instructions, Kulp held it in that position just long enough to ensure nothing could survive. Then he let it snap back into shape with a suddenness that made Tolt, Jannu, and the Mott on the monitoring station jump.
‘It worked! It worked!’ whooped Tolt in relief.
‘So it did,’ the Mott agreed non-committally, still watching the planet on the monitor. ‘I hope this is only a passing effect?’ he asked threateningly.
‘What effect?’ Jannu was bewildered and scrutinised the image to see what the problem was this time. He didn’t need to scrutinise it for long; the reality was all too obvious. Instead of the lush, fertile world they had promised the Mott for their new outpost, this one looked pretty sick, if not dead.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Tolt. Bewilderment was now his reaction to most things.
‘If you can’t answer that,’ snarled the Mott, ‘there’s no point in asking me.
‘It should be fertile,’ protested Jannu.
‘Of course it should still be fertile!’ screeched the Mott. ‘That was what we paid Kulp so much in advance for! Even the Mott artillery could have laid the planet waste without all this paraphernalia. Bombs don’t cost a fraction of what Kulp was asking.’
Jannu looked thoughtfully at the derelict smoking heap that had once been a planet, and suggested carefully, ‘Perhaps we could come to some arrangement about this?’
‘I’ve already worked out what arrangements I’m going to make,’ promised the Mott ominously, ‘and after the first few minutes you cease to figure in them.’
‘Now don’t do anything rash,’ pleaded Tolt. ‘Remember we could stand as witnesses at your trial.’ This was a rather pointless appeal, as the Mott knew full well that he would be dead before the evidence of his court martial was heard.
‘Perhaps we could lay our hands on some rapidly evolving plants and things?’ Jannu prevaricated.
‘So where would you find the atmosphere for them to breathe?’ snarled the Mott. ‘Shall I lend the planet yours?’
‘Oh, I’m sure we could lay our hands on that somewhere as well,’ Tolt said evasively. He glanced at the image on the monitor again. ‘Look, look! The collapsar’s gone.’
‘Pity,’ growled the Mott. ‘I was going to shove you two through it. But no matter, you might as well float around in this piece of space for the rest of eternity as anywhere else.’
‘Oh you wouldn’t,’ protested Tolt, knowing quite well that they were lucky to be let off that lightly.
‘I have this terrible phobia about open spaces,’ pleaded Jannu. ‘You would too if you spent the most impressionable time of your life confined in a jar.’
The way the robots ignored Jannu’s instructions to stop moving towards them, suggested the Mott had taken the precaution of deprogramming the instructions he had given them.
Jannu and Tolt were bundled into the airlock of the Mott station. Thankfully they were still wearing spacesuits. Hardly had their helmets been clipped tight when they were catapulted into the endless sky with a thousand supernovae remnants as a backdrop.
Helplessly they watched Kulp’s silent ship hanging some way off, knowing that without the means of locomotion their atmosphere would run out long before chance drifted them together. Even if they had managed to reach it, there was no way in for them and, if the planet had been a little nearer, its dead and dingy surface looked far from promising.
‘Wonder whether this would have happened if we hadn’t double-crossed Kulp?’ Jannu pondered over his communicator to Tolt.
‘Of course not. He was going to blast us, remember?’
‘Oh yes. Funny how you forget things when everything happens so quickly. I suppose we should count ourselves pretty lucky, considering what the Mott have been known to do to people who’d never even upset them.’
‘At least we won’t need to worry about having to patronise one of those hideous-smelling deformities again. I suppose Kulp was the best of a bad deal if you look at it from the point of view of ignorant egotism versus egotistical genius.’
‘I wonder if there’s any life after death?’
‘Well,’ replied Tolt, ‘we’ll soon be able to ask Kulp.’
‘I always thought he was life after death. At least he was the nearest thing to metamorphosis I ever knew.’
Kulp winced uneasily at that last comment as he listened on his person-to-person receiver. They weren’t making it easy for him to decide whether to go and pick them up or leave them to follow their orbit around the yellow sun until some more efficient species decided to clean up the littered galaxy.
‘Jannu..?’ asked Tolt thoughtfully.
‘What is it?’
‘Who was that fluffy creature Kulp got upset with?’
‘That was Dax. Surely you’ve seen a Torran before?’
‘Oh yes, I’ve never met one face to face though.’
‘You haven’t been around much, have you?’
‘Making up for it now anyway. What’s the chance of finding a surviving robot from one of the beacons and persuading it to take us back to the Mott station?’
‘Don’t talk rubbish. You don’t know when you’re well off.’
‘Just a thought. My air’s getting a bit thin.’
‘It will do,’ Jannu told him. ‘Try not to think about it.’
‘Not much else to think about out here is there? On one side are the dwindling remains of so many sick societies, and on the other, the end of the universe.’
‘It’s no good having profound thoughts now. Anyway, you know what happens to philosophers.’
‘Something like this, wasn’t it?’
Kulp switched the receiver off, unable to stand any more of their banal banter, and powered up his ship. The Mott would notice him as soon as he moved, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He would probably only send out a couple of robots to uphold his honour in combat.
Tolt and J
annu were still engaged in a conversation that was becoming more and more bizarre as their atmosphere grew thinner and thinner. They were so drowsy they didn’t notice the hull of Kulp’s ship block out the sun’s rays. The Mott commander did though. In his mind, the survival of Kulp only confirmed the suspicion he had of them all being engaged in some almighty double-cross. In the one last fling he knew he would have time for before Mott justice caught up with him, he ordered the robots to take the monitoring station out of orbit and send it at ramming speed towards Kulp’s ship.