Algolan society was dominated by females, Kiru knew, but as for the rest of the galaxy…
From her experience of Earth, and after, she could guess.
Kiru stood up as tall as she could and, in a deep voice, said, “I am male.”
“I am male,” said one of the Xyzians.
“I am female,” said the other one.
“She is my husband.”
“He is my wife.”
“Oh,” said Kiru.
“We do not see enough of each other, my treat.”
“How can we? We have this entire ship to run.”
“Work, work, work. We have to earn a crust, I know. But, my morsel, there should be time for play. Remember our games?”
“We are too old for games.”
“You are not too old, my pudding, and you are just as gross and beautiful as when we first mated. We can still rekindle the flames of our barbecue.”
“Can we, my succulent one? Or has the oven in our kitchen lost all its heat?”
“We need a different course on the menu, my sweet. An exotic new flavour neither of us has ever tasted.”
As it spoke, the Xyzian looked up at Kiru.
And she realised there was something worse than being killed, perhaps even worse than Grawl taking over her mind and body: They were planning to eat her!
“You are a deviant,” said the other one. “Am I not all you desire?”
“You are a banquet, my tasty one. Compared with you, this alien is less than a discarded crumb. But imagine it as an amusing appetiser.”
Kiru was not amused. “No! I taste terrible. I’m an alien. If you eat me, I’ll poison you!”
“Eat you? The idea makes my throat burn.”
“My stomachs turn at such an unsavoury thought.”
“To believe we would want to eat the deformed creature, such arrogance!”
“It must really be a princess, my laden dish, even if it is not an Algolan.”
The aliens were bouncing up and down faster than ever, circling around and around, making Kiru dizzy.
She had to get away, to open a door and escape. But she could only open a door if there was one. And the Xyzians didn’t seem to have invented doors.
“I do not care about any reward or salvage. The only reward I want is you, my staff of life.”
“And all I want is to salvage our love, my feast, to devour and digest you forever and ever and ever.”
“Exquisite ecstasy.”
“Ecstatic exquisiteness.”
They became still, although their torsos wobbled from side to side, up and down, then they shuffled closer to each other. Their obese grey bellies touched.
Kiru took a slow step sideways, hoping she could slip away while the aliens were so involved with one another. But it was an even slower step than she hoped, and in this gravity she stood no chance of running away.
The aliens noticed her first tentative step, and they began to bounce up and down again. The heavier gravity had no effect on them. This was their ship, the gravity the same as on their native world.
“I… I thought… that,” said Kiru, as slowly as she had moved, “that at… at such an intimate… intimate time… you don’t… don’t want me around.”
“We want you.”
“We need you.”
“What,” she asked, “for?”
“Our sex slave.”
She felt sick.
This was even worse than being eaten.
She started to retch.
Then she threw up.
All over the Xyzians.
Which was a serious mistake.
Because how was she to know that vomiting was their idea of foreplay?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The lifeboat landed.
There was a bump, that was all. The ship was down. Intact. Then silence. The voyage had seemed silent, but now the silence was absolute. No engine sound. No vibration. Nothing.
“We made it!” said Wayne Norton, as he finally opened his eyes. “Isn’t that great?”
Grawl was as silent as ever.
“Aren’t you pleased? Nod. Just one little nod.”
There was no hint of cranial movement.
After so long together, Norton thought he knew how far he could push Grawl. And this was far enough.
“How about breaking out the champagne?”
Norton poured two cups of water. Grawl allowed him to do this occasionally, although he kept the meals as his responsibility. The water was recycled, which Norton always tried to forget. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if the lifeboat had had two recyling units. In fact, it had three—and he and Grawl were two of them, with whatever they produced then passing through the capsule’s filtration system.
At least their food wasn’t recycled. When Norton had first considered the idea, just thinking of what he might already have eaten led to him skipping numerous meals. That was the trouble with thinking; it gave you too many thoughts.
Fortunately, in spite of spending at least one or two minutes preparing each meal, Grawl never seemed to care whether Norton ate or not. In the end, he convinced himself the food wasn’t produced via waste reprocessing. If it was, there would have been so many added flavours that it couldn’t possibly taste as bad as it did.
He handed one of the cups to Grawl, who accepted the water but didn’t drink.
Although he’d attempted to keep counting the days, Norton had lost track of time. If the voyage had gone on much longer, he would also have lost his mind. Then one day (or maybe one night, it was all the same) he noticed one of the stars visible on the viewscreen was slowly getting brighter, which meant it was getting nearer. The lifeboat was heading toward it.
That was when he realised the capsule was on autopilot. It would land on the nearest planet and they would be saved.
But not all planets were safe. Some worlds were too big, with an atmospheric pressure strong enough to crumple the lifeboat like a tin can. Assuming there was an atmosphere. And even if there was, it could be a lethal mixture of toxic gases.
For days, and nights, he had gazed out at the blackness, watching for an orbiting planet to come into view. Without success. It was the star which was pulling them closer, its gravity dragging them toward an inevitable fiery doom. But long before they were incinerated in the heart of the alien sun, the escape pod would become a stove and they’d be boiled alive.
Then at last he’d seen the planet, and it grew and grew as the capsule came nearer and nearer. It had to be habitable, or else the ship wouldn’t be heading there. But was it inhabited? If not, Norton would be stranded on an alien world with only Grawl for company. Which was a vast improvement on being trapped inside a lifeboat with him. At least he could have half the globe to himself.
“Let’s see where we are,” said Norton.
He went to check the screen. It was blank. For a moment he wondered if it was damaged. But it was still operational, and there was nothing on it because there was nothing to see. The screen was dark, darker than it had ever been, because there were not even any stars.
“Must be night outside,” he said.
Grawl shook his head.
Norton stared at him in amazement. This was almost the first positive response—okay, negative response, any response!—Grawl had made for weeks. Maybe even months.
“Shall we open the door?”
Grawl shook his head again.
“Is it too cold? Would we freeze out there?”
Again.
“Is it too hot? Would we fry out there?”
And again.
“Is the air poisonous?”
Again again.
“So why can’t we leave?”
Grawl opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again.
“I don’t understand.”
Grawl’s mouth opened and closed in the same slow rhythm, but his lips didn’t move.