“What?” Jaycee pushed through the door and into the walkway. “Why?”
“We need to get Tor before those things do.” Tripp slid the door shut mere nanoseconds before the first of scores of fleshy creatures slapped against the glass door, splattering its pink saliva up the glass window.
“What’s happening to us?” Baldron cried and shook his head. “What kind of perversion is this?”
Jaycee bopped him on the back of the head with the butt of his K-SPARK as they hurried toward the control deck. “Shut up, Russian.”
“It is a perversion of science,” Baldron sobbed. “Those things—”
“—Yeah, and those things are going to have their way with us if we don’t figure out what the hell is going on, here,” Tripp lifted his forearm and spoke into his skin ink. “Individimedia. Open channel, please.”
“You’re not giving Rabinovich the heads up, are you?” Jaycee asked.
“Huh?” Baldron shot Tripp a look of despair. How did they know Tor’s real identity?
Tripp didn’t look at the man. He was more determined to get the crew to the safety of the control deck. “Don’t act the numbnuts with us, numbnuts. We know who Tor is. Speaking of which, Tor, can you read me?”
“I read you, Tripp,” came his voice. “What’s the situation?”
“We have Baldron and we’re making our way to control right now. Something’s happening.”
“What?”
“A Tango got on the ship. It’s okay, we took care of it.”
“Took care of what? What Tango?”
“Hey,” Tripp screamed into his arm, “Don’t quiz me. Just do as I say.”
“Sorry.”
“We are ETA ninety seconds to the control deck. Is Manuel online and ready to go?”
“He’s online,” Tor said. “Whether or not he’s ready to go is another matter.”
“He’d better be, or I’ll have Jaycee remove your head. Do you understand what I have just said?”
“Yes.”
“Good, now get ready.”
“But, can I—”
“—Can you shut up and do as I say? Yes, good idea.” Tripp swiped the ink on his arm to his wrist, severing the communication. He quickened his walk to a sprint and moved ahead of Wool, Baldron, and Jaycee. “First N-Vigorate, then the cells. We’re not going to have much of a ship left if this continues.”
“Tripp?” Jaycee shouted from behind Baldron. “What about those monster things?”
Tripp’s temper neared to a close, “How the hell do I know, Jaycee? I know as much as you do.”
“Yeah, but, they could be anywhere.”
“They are anywhere. They’re outside. They’re all over the damn place,” Tripp rubbed Wool’s shoulder as he faced front and continued walking. “One thing’s for sure, at any rate. We know we’re not in space. This walkway is bound to subside just like every other part of the ship. Keep moving. As long as we’re moving we’re not sitting ducks.”
“What are we going to do when we get to control?” Wool asked. “Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
“Survive.”
Wool rolled her eyes. Fortunately, Tripp couldn’t see her reaction as he was ahead of her. If he’d have caught her flippant retort it might have proved to be the final straw.
Tripp was as angry as the others were frightened. He was the captain of Space Opera Beta. The human being in him was frightened, too. The captain in him, though, was a whole different person altogether. Nothing stood in his way.
“The plan right now is to survive…”
CHAPTER NINE
A trail of tiny paw prints nestled in the fine, white sand. Two on the left, two on the right, a few inches apart.
They belonged to Jelly.
For such a young cat she sure had a lot of energy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten or had a sip of water. She felt a rumbling sensation in her stomach, underscored by a similar occurrence in the pink sky.
Jelly paused, shifted her behind in the sand and tilted her head back. A permanent smile struck across her face as the glint of the nearest white blotch of white – a sort of cloud – reflected in her pupil.
A few laps of her tongue across her mouth and she was off to the oceanfront. As she trundled ever nearer to the shore, she stopped occasionally to turn around and see if the Opera Beta was there.
It wasn’t.
She might as well have jumped through a portal for all the good her bearings were to her. Usually, she’d be on point in that respect. Geography had always been her strong point – a sense of belonging and territory.
In the infinite vastness of Pink Symphony she felt naked and alone.
The crystal blue water lapped against the white sand, turning it a strange yellow color as it rolled across, settled down, and clawed thousands of grains of sand with it into the water.
The journey to the ocean took longer than Jelly expected. Storming forwards, exercising every muscle in her body, the faster she sped the slower the ocean arrived.
A perplexing mirage for a cat.
On the way there she passed the odd fish bone. One of them resembled a ribcage with a skull in the shape of a helmet.
A quick sniff around confirmed what she knew all along. Whatever this thing was, it had well and truly expired.
She felt the pink-colored sky watch her every move. If she moved her left paw, the clouds seem to tilt to the left, like an angry lava lamp.
The right claw moved forward taking with it the clouds in the sky. They didn’t move as they had back on Earth. Calling them clouds were as comparable as possible to what they really were. More like explosions of distant galaxies; silky, smooth, as if one had poured full fat cream into a sky full of candy floss.
Jelly might well have had second thoughts about moving in any direction. The water, at least, seemed benevolent enough.
Eventually, she reached the shore. A careful probe with her infinity claws resulted in the wet sand tearing apart as expected.
The metal claws fizzed subtly as the waves crashed around her paws. She stepped forward and lowered her face, exploring the liquid with her tongue.
Two successive gulps – and success. A fully lubricated mouth. A wave of relief ran through her entire body. She felt better, energized, and ready for more.
Lap, lap, lap… the refreshing water soaked into her coarse tongue and swirled around her mouth. Above her in the sky, the white ink-like clouds bled out, creating a harmonious voice for the duration of its travel.
Jelly’s ears pricked up as she continued to drink the water.
The thought occurred to her that she should get back to the ship and alert her crew of the seemingly plentiful supply of H2O. Said thought evaporated when the oncoming ripples of water grew higher, quickly turning into medium-sized waves.
“Meow,” she squealed and hopped back, fearing the wave would entrench her entirely. She loved the water, but the concept of swimming was way beyond her grasp.
In fact, she didn’t even know if she could swim.
Stepping back wasn’t enough. She had to run around and run across the sand just in time for the end of the wave to envelope her hind legs.
“Meow!” she yelped in defiance, determined to return and satisfy her thirst.
As the wave rolled back into the ocean, her eyes followed it back to the tree dead in the middle of the ocean.
It was a tree, yet it wasn’t a tree. It merely resembled one.
Jelly knew what a tree was. Fat at the bottom, thinning out in the middle, with hundreds of blossoming branches fanning out from the top. Usually brown, or dark brown, and made of wood and covered in bark. She’d got stuck in many of them during her young life.