The Ultimate Inferior Beings (8 page)

jixX looked at his watch. As
far as he could tell, time was still travelling forwards. “Shouldn’t we be out
by now?”

“Hmm,” said LEP. “That’s a
good point. It’s possible that something’s gone horribly wrong.”

“Great,” said jixX, rubbing
his tired eyes.

“I’ll check.” LEP spent the
next few picoseconds gathering and analyzing data from hundreds of scanners,
sensors and meters all around The Night Ripple. He even subjected some of the
information to low-level, axosynaptic processing.

Finally, he said, “Yup,
something’s gone horribly wrong.”

“Brilliant,” said jixX with a
deep sigh. “What is it?”

“Well, we’re still in the
Pseudogravitic Continuum, yet we should have been out... minus ages ago.”

“How bad is that?”

“Let me think. It’s a
separate, bubble universe, quite a lot smaller than ours. No one’s ever been in
it longer than a few seconds. So there’s no way of telling what effect that may
have on us. Added to that, we don’t know how to get out. Sound bad enough to
you?”

jixX nodded. “It’s a start.”
He put his head in his hands and sat like that for a full ten seconds. The
journey to Earth was supposed to be the uneventful leg of the mission. “What now?”
he asked, finally. “Should we contact Mission Control?”

“Mission Control?” asked LEP
with a laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You mean there’s no Mission
Control? We’re doing this on our own?”

“That’s about the sum of it,
partner.”

“So what do we do?”

“We must inform the crew.
Shall I sound the Red Alert?”

“Don’t you dare!” said jixX,
looking up quickly. “I’ll tell them myself. Ask them to meet me in the common
room.”

*

When jixX opened the door of
the common room he was pleased to find all four crewmembers already there. For
a brief moment his attention was distracted by the sight of a mahogany
window-frame hanging on one of the walls. He turned to the crew, but his eyes
were drawn back to the window-frame which he couldn’t help noticing was
crooked. The more he looked, the more crooked it seemed. On the opposite wall
was a mahogany bookshelf, also crooked.

Eventually, he managed to
tear his eyes away and focus on the news he had to impart.

“Good morning, crew,” he
started. “There’s something I have to tell you...” And then, suddenly, he
stopped. The four members of the crew looked up at him from the armchairs and
settee. jixX looked down at the four of them with a vague sense of unease. He
could have sworn there should only be three crewmembers.

He recognized two of them:
the dishevelled, white-coated and crazed-looking behavioural chemist, fluX, and
the boyish, crazed-looking carpenter, twaX, whose clothes were still covered in
mahogany sawdust. But additionally, there were two females. One had to be anaX
the gynaecologist, but who was the other?

He looked from one female to
the other. “anaX the gynaecologist?” he probed.

The attractive, raven-haired
gynaecologist gave him an enigmatic smile and a little wave.

jixX waved back and then
turned to the other woman. “And you are?”

She rose to her feet and
offered him her hand. She was thin and pretty, with short blonde hair and a
winningly sweet smile. “My name’s sylX,” she said, with dimples appearing in
her cheeks as she smiled. “I’m the ship’s stowaway.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The ship’s stowaway.”

“Er... and you’re stowing
away here in the common room?”

“Yes.”

jixX was suddenly lost for
words. He stared at sylX and blinked, his mind stuck in some kind of loop.

There was a long silence.

Then he remembered the purpose
of the meeting. “Er, what I came to tell you,” he said, addressing the crew,
but occasionally also glancing at the stowaway, “was that we’ve entered the
Pseudogravitic Continuum. And, er, we don’t know how to get out.” He added
quickly, “But don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be okay.”

“Captain,” LEP interrupted
him. “I think you’d better come back to the main control room.”

“What? Now?”

“We’re approaching a planet.
And it looks like it has life on it.”

“Oh, for goodness sake!” said
jixX.  But then he recovered his composure. “Yes, of course,” he said as
matter-of-factly as he could.

“There’s life on the planet!”
exclaimed sylX excitedly, her pretty face lighting up with delight. “Aliens!
Maybe they’re intelligent. Wow, how fantastic! That’ll be a first for
Humankind!”

“Er, yes,” said jixX
absently. “If you’ll excuse me.” He gave a slight bow to the three crewmembers
and one stowaway and left the common room.

*

 “LEP,” said jixX urgently,
as he hurried along the brightly lit corridors back to the main control room.
“We have a stowaway on board.”

“I know that, cap’n,” said
LEP.

“And how long have you known
that?”

“I detected her a couple of
hours ago,” said LEP. “But I must admit I didn’t see her slip aboard at
Tropecaps. She must be very good.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you
unduly.”

“Worry me unduly? What else
haven’t you told me? How many more stowaways do we have?”

“None, sir.”

“Serial killers? Mass
murderers? Saboteurs?”

“None to my knowledge,
cap’n.”

jixX sighed. “Do you think
she’s dangerous?”

“No more than any of the
others.”

jixX gave a wry smile at
this. “What are we going to do with her?” he asked.

“I’d make her walk the
plank,” suggested LEP. “Nothing beats the hallowed traditions of the good ol’
days.”

jixX had reached the main
control room. “Okay,” he said, pausing to get his breath back. “Now tell me
about these aliens.”

Chapter 2

The
Night Ripple
had
been detected by the scanners as soon as she had entered the Pseudogravitic
Continuum.

News had reached the Elders
shortly afterwards. Their decision had been swift and precise. Instantly they’d
had the answer. There could only be one answer. The answer was The Answer.

And so it was that the
projector came to be swung into position and brought to bear on the glistening
hull of The Night Ripple as the ship approached the planet.

“Left a bit,” said one, as
the other adjusted the projector. “Down a bit... a bit more.”

“Take aim.”

The glistening hull of The
Night Ripple was plum in the middle of the cross hairs.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

“FIRE!”

*

 “Do you think these aliens
are friendly?” asked jixX, looking down at the planet below.

*

The projector fired, blasting
its contents skywards...

*

 “Don’t know,” said LEP.
“More importantly, we need to give them a name.”

“We’ve not met them, yet.”

“No, but I’ve given the
matter some thought – on the off-chance of ever encountering extra
terrestrials. My idea is to call them the Point Beings.”

“The Point Beings? How do you
know they are points?”

“They probably aren’t,” said
LEP.

“So what’s the point of
calling them the Point Beings?”

“That’s precisely the point,”
explained LEP. “The point being, that the Point Beings are not point beings.”

jixX gave a withering sigh.
“No,” he said at last, “we’re not going to call them that.”

“The Things?”

jixX raised an eyebrow.

“The Thing Beings,” said LEP.
“The thing being that the Thing Beings are not point beings. And they’re not
the Point Beings.”

jixX wondered how much more
of this he could take. “No,” he said.

“How about the Mamms?”
suggested LEP.

“Mamms,” echoed jixX,
considering the name with some suspicion. “The Mamm Beings. Mamm Beings.” He
repeated the name a few more times, but couldn’t see the pun. “Okay, I don’t
get it,” he said at last.

“The Mamm aliens.”

“Ah. Very droll.”

“It’s a pun,” explained LEP
unnecessarily.

*

On it sped, hurtling through
space, closing in on The Night Ripple with every second...

*

 “Hmm,” LEP was saying. “The
planet has a strange topography.”

“In what way?”

“It’s completely flat. No
topographical features of any kind.”

“So?”

“Must have been artificially
levelled somehow. I can’t detect anything like cities down there. But there is
definitely life. And not just primitive micro-organisms.” Then, he added, “Wait
…”

jixX didn’t like the sound of
this.

*

Closer and closer it sped,
now in range of The Night Ripple’s radar detectors...

*

 “I think we’re in danger,”
said LEP urgently. “There’s a projectile heading this way.”

“A projectile?” said jixX,
suddenly panicking. “A projectile??”

“It will hit the ship in 15
seconds.”

“We’re under attack?!?”
screamed jixX, his panic increasing. “Isn’t there something we can do?” He
scanned the control panels in front of him. “Can’t we switch on a force-field
or something?”

“We don’t have one,” said
LEP. “But... duck!”

“Duck?”

“Lower your head.”

“What?”

“Reduce the vertical spatial
coordinates of your cranium.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see,” said LEP. Then,
more urgently, “Duck!!!”

jixX ducked.

At that moment there was a
splintering crash of shattered glass as a small object smashed through the starboard
observation window and flew into the control room, just missing jixX’s spruce.

“Aah!” yelled jixX in fear.

The object ricocheted off the
anti-inertial command couch and fell heavily at jixX’s feet. The sudden drop in
cabin pressure from the smashed window triggered the micro-sensitive pressure
detectors, which, in turn, triggered the emergency decompression defence
system. A praseodymium-reinforced shutter clanked into place over the shattered
glass.

“Aaargh!” exclaimed jixX as
he stepped back from the object at his feet. “What is it?”

“Hmm,” said LEP. “Let me scan
it.” There was a buzzing noise and a couple of flashes of light.

“Well?” asked jixX anxiously,
edging further and further from the object on the floor.

“My scanners indicate that it
is a brick with a note tied to it,” said LEP.

 jixX stopped his retreat and
peered more closely at the object. “My scanners are in agreement with yours,”
he said. “It
is
a brick with a note tied to it.”

“Well, pick it up,” said LEP.

“You’ve got to be kidding. What
if it’s a bomb, disguised as a brick? Or radioactive, or something?”

“Then you’ll have to pick it
up to get rid of it, won’t you.”

“Thanks for your help.” jixX
leaned down and picked up the brick.

“What does it say?”

“Hold on. It’s upside down.”
jixX turned the brick around. “It says: ‘WHO GOES THERE? FRIEND OR FOE?’”

“Is that all?”

“No, there’s some small print
under the dotted line. It says: ‘Write answer in space provided and return to
sender asap’.”

“Asap?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Hmm,” mused LEP.

“What do you think it means?”

“Probably exactly what it
says,” said LEP. “So let’s do as it asks. Write ‘FRIEND’ in the space provided
and sling the brick out through the dioxystable modulo-cystometric airlock.
It’ll fall to the planet below.”