“Oh yeah? What am I supposed to do now, huh? Whip you up a twelve-course RD-Three gourmet dinner? I don’t know anything about the kind of food you like. These old specimen vegetables are the only nonconcentrates we’ve got aboard, and I don’t think you would like concentrates—we’re not crazy about them ourselves.”
The Beachball quivered, twittered mindlessly.
“Ah, go ahead,” Pinback finally said disgustedly, turning his back on the alien and picking up the broom and dustpan. “Starve—see if I care.” He started muttering to himself again. “Do all the work… damn unappreciative alien twit…”
Moving on short, powerful little legs, the alien took a leap and jumped onto the cabinet to Pinback’s right. It might have been trying to draw his attention. If so, it failed. Pinback continued to sweep, gathering alien excrement into the dustpan.
“I do my best to prepare your meals, I clean up after you, and do you appreciate it?” He snorted, spotted another dirty area, and swept again.
The alien paused at its post on the cabinet and appeared to consider the situation. Either it had a definite plan in mind, or else Pinback’s bent-over form was just too tempting a situation. It leaped.
Twittering violently, it landed, claws first, square on Pinback’s back. Pinback yelped and straightened up, but the Beachball hung on, scratching and bouncing ferociously against him.
“Hey, come on,” Pinback yelled, dropping both the pan and broom and trying to swat behind himself. “Get off… get offa my back, damnit!” But while the alien was large and didn’t weigh much, it was also smooth-surfaced and extremely difficult to get a grip on. Pinback couldn’t.
“All right… all right, now,” he shouted, “that’s enough! Come off it. That’s—hey!”
The alien had shifted its position slightly higher onto his back and now was in position to pull at Pinback’s shoulder-length tresses.
“My hair… quit pulling my… ouch!”
He staggered, aware for the first time that the Beachball might not be playing now. Still clawing at the thing on his back, he stumbled into a wall, turned, and staggered away. The alien reached around and started to paw his face.
Now frantic, Pinback finally managed to get a hand between himself and the alien and shoved it free. Immediately the being fell off, bounced on the floor, and scampered out the open door while twittering loosely in what might have been interpreted as a pleased fashion,
“Goddamn son-of-a-bitch, ungrateful, stupid, rotten, alien tomato-thing!” Pinback finally got the hair out of his eyes, then moved to the door and peeked out into the corridor.
It was sitting about halfway up the hall, panting like a happy puppy and, despite the absence of obvious eyes, no doubt watching him intently. Pinback sighed.
Well, the thing just wanted to play, after all. “All right, fun is fun. Get back in here.” He stepped into the corridor and started toward it, snapping his fingers. “Come on, come on.” The alien didn’t budge.
“Come on now… good boy… good Beachball… that’s right.” He was closing in on it. Now he leaned forward to give it a reassuring stroke—and it made a violent lunge at him. Despite its not having a mouth in sight, or teeth, Pinback drew his hand away fast.
He knew enough about alien life-forms now to realize that it might have other, less visible but nonetheless potent, forms of defense.
Those unattractive yellow and black spots, for example, occasionally showed suspicious signs of moisture around the rims. Maybe the alien could secrete something unpleasant when angered. Why, it might even be toxic; and here they had been harboring it all these weeks.
Come to think of it, nobody had run any extensive tests on the alien. It had seemed so friendly and blatantly harmless at first that the thought had not occurred to him—or to anyone else. He sort of regretted that little oversight, because now he didn’t know whether the Beachball was bluffing or not.
Its claws were another proposition entirely, of course, though his skin was more irritated than broken.
Well, he wasn’t going to take any chances. Its twittering as it had lunged at him had risen to a sound that bore more than casual resemblance to a growl.
If it just want to play, he was going to have to try something else to get control over it. Perhaps the subtle approach.
It ought to be inside his jumpsuit… ah, there. This had always worked with the creature before. He leaned over cautiously, shoved the object toward the Beachball, and squeezed it.
It was a tiny gray mouse with pink ears and a big pink nose. It made satisfying squeaking sounds. These didn’t seem especially erudite to Pinback, but maybe they were close to Beachball talk. He squeezed it again.
“Here, boy… want the mousey? Nice mousey, pretty mousey…” This was a helluva occupation for a grown technician. “Want your mouse? Here, boy.”
The Beachball didn’t appear inclined to move any closer, but the violent pulsing seemed to lessen. Pinback dropped the rubber toy just in front of it. Again the claws tapped on the floor in imitation (or was it imitation?) of Pinback.
Coming to some Beachballian decision, the alien took a short hop forward and covered the mouse. Non-twittering sounds began to issue from it—crunching, swallowing sounds. Pinback interpreted them correctly. The alien was eating the mouse.
“Idiot!” he screamed, and reached down to recover the mouse’s remains.
The Beachball lunged forward again and this time made contact with Pinback’s bare hand. There was a searing sensation as if he had waved his hand over a low flame, and the alien almost hissed at him. Pinback jerked away, holding his hand and sucking at the injured member to try and lessen the pain—a purely reflexive, not too bright action on his part. Fortunately, the substance had already sunk into the skin and so didn’t transfer to his tongue.
So much for subtlety and psychology. Now it was time for less Freudian approaches.
He disappeared inside the alien-holding room, and reemerged moments later hefting the broom firmly in one hand. It would have been easier with someone else to help herd the Beachball, but Boiler would only have laughed and he doubted that the oh-so-superior Doolittle would have bothered.
It didn’t matter. He could handle the alien by himself. He’d show the others he could. Turning up the corridor, he prepared to give it fair warning… and stopped.
The alien had disappeared.
It still wanted to play? All right! He started up the corridor, looking behind him at every odd second. You had to watch out for the alien. It was tricky. Not intelligent, but tricky. There was a definite animal cunning in that Beachball. It reminded him of Boiler.
He slowed as he approached the turn in the corridor, edged cautiously up to it—and peered quickly around the bend. Not… something grabbed his ankles, and he screamed. But this time the alien had made a mistake. While it had a solid grip with both clawed feet, its muscular system was weak and it couldn’t put much into the grip. Certainly not enough to topple Pinback.
The sergeant turned at the waist and swatted downward with the broom, catching the alien squarely.
It twittered and let go, backing away down the corridor, back, back. Pinback followed, continuing to swat at it. He had driven it halfway back to the holding-room entrance when the Beachball apparently decided it had taken enough.
Timing its leap in midswing, it caught the broom handle right at the base of the plastic straw and yanked it from Pinback’s grasp. Now, using its semi-flying ability, it showed its imitative tendencies once again by flailing violently at Pinback, forcing him back down the corridor.
“No, no… you idiot… ow, yowch!” Something caught his feet and he stumbled, the broom crashing down heavily on the back of his neck.