Part of the shuttle’s nose crumpled as though an invisible fist had struck it, and the craft fell away in an evasive tumble.
On impulse Keelic aimed the pistol at the bulb and fired. A hole appeared in front of him, and he fired ten more times to widen it, and crawled in. His environmental suit closed its hood with a snap as soon as it detected the helium.
The interior was much larger than he imagined, even knowing how big it was on the outside. It rose above him, growing wide as it rose higher and higher to a distant green roof. Something moved up there.
Long fuzzy bodies with spindly legs were running down in streams. He raised the pistol in fear, but the creatures ran to the hole and placed themselves in it, making a lattice into which they pulled the foam with their legs. Soon the gap was closed with the creatures sealed in it. They also converged on larger holes opposite the one he came through. Worm-like creatures crawled out of the fuzzy body shells and worked their way into the bulb flesh.
Keelic’s sight had improved, and he looked around for his friend. Thotti linked with him and Keelic saw the world from outside the bulb.
"You’re still outside!" cried Keelic in dismay.
Light-blue affirmation, crimson fear swirl, damaged shuttle returning from below.
Keelic watched, feeling helpless as the shuttle rose to hover beside the bulb. An armed figure emerged from the hatch on the top of the shuttle, and Keelic felt a tingling. He collapsed, unable to move.
Yellow crimson concern.
I can’t move, thought Keelic through his fear. Can you?
Blue affirmative, shuttle nudging against the bulb, air lock opening.
Keelic found he could just move, and forced his head up with the pulse pistol, and felt the tingling again, and again.
Through his friend’s eyes, he saw a bearded man with a large stunner leaning out of the shuttle’s top hatch, and another man with a cutter in one hand standing in the open air lock.
The one with the stunner checked its display and shouted, "He’s down!"
"Aye," said the man with the cutter. He sliced a smooth hole in the bulb and leapt in. Keelic would have cried out in fear, but he could barely breathe.
The man grabbed Keelic’s faceplate and peered in with hawk eyes. Thotti came in through the hole in the bulb and dropped beside Keelic. The man leapt away, drawing and firing a stunner at the alien. Thotti was unaffected by the stun. The man frowned, keyed the stunner, and fired point-blank at the alien. Keelic felt his friend twitch in pain, then pretend to go limp. The man studied the pair for a moment, gripped Keelic by the suit and his friend by the legs, and heaved them into the shuttle.
They landed hard in a tangled pile. Keelic lay facing the bulb and watched the man smack away the creatures trying to seal the hole, then take a deep breath of fresh air as he heaved himself into the shuttle. The air lock sealed, cutting the twine to Keelic’s belt.
Someone grabbed the suit behind his neck and dragged him into the interior of the shuttle. Three men sitting there stared at him with predatory interest.
The man dropped Keelic. His limp body landed on Thotti, and Keelic apologized to his friend silently, but the alien emoted no pain from it, only fear, and caution.
The pulse pistol was pulled off Keelic. Laughter erupted and comments in multiple languages, but they all quieted and switched to Galactin as a dark-skinned man, clean shaven, stepped into the cabin from the bridge of the shuttle.
The man who had grabbed Keelic in the bulb stepped back and said respectfully, "Commander."
The dark man said in perfect Galactin, "Good catch," and, reaching down, touched off Keelic’s hood. Keelic wrinkled his nose. The air in the cabin stank. Rough fingers gripped Keelic’s jaw and turned his head so that he was looking into brown-black eyes.
"Keelic Travers," the man said. "And the first-contact alien. Log it."
"Tough ones," said one of the others.
"Aye," said the commander, and Keelic felt the man’s approval. "Stow them."
Someone picked Keelic up and hauled him through another door into the anterior part of the shuttle. Keelic felt some strength returning, and raised his head to look around. The room was filled with cages, not force beam but metal, crammed with people. Women, children, and men cried, gazed vacantly, or stared with fear and hatred at the men with Keelic. With a start, Keelic recognized the planetary steward, and Thom from school, who was sobbing.
Thinking through his fear, Keelic remembered the weapon he’d forgotten. He tried to move his hand, found he could, and touched his belt-mounted proximity stunner to open the panel, but his finger stuck to the housing. He managed to hit the emergency universal stun and everyone sighed as they collapsed. The man carrying Keelic toppled to the side, striking his head against a cage. Keelic tried to stand. His legs wobbled, and Thotti snapped out of his fake stun to steady him with half a dozen arms. After looking around to see if anyone was moving, Keelic keyed the environmental suit for an external cleaning cycle and let the the sap fall from his hands and arms.
"We have to do something," he said. He looked at the scanner’s screen and saw bodies slumped in their seats on the bridge. No one was flying the shuttle. He needed to get to the bridge.
They went to the hatch leading out, but it didn’t open when they touched its panel. The alien began random patterns on the pad, searching for the combination.
Ten minutes passed, but Thotti failed to open the door, and people started moving and groaning. Keelic lit off his stunner again.
The floor tilted and he tumbled to the back of the chamber. Thotti held tight to the wall beside the door.
"Who’s piloting?" said Keelic through gritted teeth, feeling himself pushed into the bars. The alien fell off what now felt like the ceiling, and landed hard beside Keelic.
The pressure continued for a long painful time, then with a swerve Keelic found that he was weightless. He floated for a few seconds, and overcame his pain with some warm orange comfort from his friend. He blinked his eyes and checked the scanner’s display. Something huge came into the scanner’s range on the starboard side of the shuttle.
"Dreep!" he said.
A loud clang drowned him out. The starboard wall of the shuttle approached fast and slammed him. All the bodies in the cages piled up on the starboard side of the ship, rebounding slightly.
His scanner couldn’t pierce the ship’s hull, but he did see the lock opening and men entering the shuttle, weapons ready.
Keelic fired the stunner, but they kept moving. They were armored.
There was a slight pull, like a moon’s gravity, that was keeping Keelic and the bodies against the starboard side. He looked around for an escape. Two other doors facing the back of the shuttle were set on either side of the wall, and he and Thotti soared through the air to one just as the main hatch cycled open. They escaped into a lavatory as a heavy stunner sprayed the area behind them. The lavatory door closed.
Breathing hard, Keelic watched the men move on his stunner’s screen like an invasion team in the vids, weapons going where they looked, keeping one another covered. One motioned to others, pointing at the door to Keelic’s and the alien’s place.
Frantic, Keelic thought, Make them blind. Make it so they can’t see us!
The door slid away. Keelic cowered with Thotti. The pair of men floating outside frowned at the empty room, and checked their scanners again.
"Do you see anything?" asked one.
The other took a hard look at the lavatory and said, "I did."
"Sir!" called a voice from forward. "Two specks in the starboard lavatory."
One of the men in front of Keelic answered, "It’s empty, I’m lookin’ right at it."
Another voice ordered, "Burn it."
The man before them raised a weapon that was no stunner. In a crimson flash of fear, Keelic and Thotti pushed off low, soaring under the blast of yellow energy that vaporized the wall they had been hiding against.
"They’re on the move!" said the vo
ice forward. "Low! Along the starboard bulkhead!"
The man swung his weapon to the wall, but hesitated to fire on a bulkhead leading to space. Keelic and Thotti shoved off for the forward hatch.
"Out the door now!" called the voice again.
Sailing into the next room, Keelic and Thotti saw the man look up from his scanner, raising a pistol, seeking something to shoot. Keelic and the alien swept past, shoved off from the wall behind him, and rocketed through the air lock, some weapon ripping molten chunks from the bulkheads behind them.
They flew wildly down the corridor, and Keelic realized they were accelerating toward what he thought was a wall but was actually a floor.
Thotti whirled arms and reoriented to land properly. Keelic landed more softly than he expected, and was up in a heartbeat. Gravity was light, and they set off in large leaps. After a few random turns, Keelic paused to check his stunner scanner. Startled, he looked up and down the hallway, then back to the stunner. A chill of wonder raced through him.
"Look," he said to his friend, and Thotti bent an eye over the screen.
A burst of vivid understanding shot through Keelic in colors across the spectrum.
"The Death Cloud," he whispered.