Part 16 (2/2)

'That.' Ace pointed at the tentacle jutting from the s.h.i.+p, waving gracefully high above the pine-clad slopes. It moved with the sinuous strength of a giant snake, an eerie rainbow of colours pulsating through it. 'It's like seeing the Northern Lights inside a jelly.'

'Highly poetic, Ace. In fact, it's the same kind of tentacle as those that brought us aboard.'

'You, me and the cowardly Major.'

105.'You shouldn't be so hard on poor Rex.'

'Rex? Is that his name? He is a bulldog.'

'The poor man is in a situation which is utterly beyond anything in his experience.'

'He's a wimp.'

'Really, Ace. You should feel sorry for him.'

'I did, but he's so suspicious and hostile. He doesn't want to trust us. He doesn't like us.'

'That's his job. Not to like us or trust us.'

Ace watched the tentacle, as thick in section as an industrial chimney, snaking below them, a glowing shape streaming above the dark pine slopes, retracting its opalescent length back into the s.h.i.+p to the stern of them. 'Maybe, but he doesn't have to always behave like we're spies and he's the great detective whose going to find us out.'

'But in a sense we are spies. And he is if not a great then at least a very good detective.'

The tentacle was shrinking rapidly as it retracted. While Ace and the Doctor watched, the last few metres of its length disappeared silently back into the hull somewhere behind them.

'But, hang on a minute,' said Ace. 'If those tentacles bring people on board, and that one just arrived. . . ' She turned and looked at the Doctor. 'Are we expecting company?'

'We're certainly not,' he said. 'Or at least I'm not. How about you?'

'No way. So then who just came up inside that tentacle?'

Ace received the answer almost immediately, as Major Butcher came scoot-ing into the control room. 'Ah, welcome Major,' said the Doctor. 'I'm glad you could join us at last.'

'Anything to get away from that drunken fool,' snapped Butcher.

Despite her dislike of the Major, Ace felt relieved that he was back to his perpetually angry self. The helpless creature they'd left in the arrivals chamber had alarmed her more than she cared to admit.

'What drunken fool?'

'Major Butcher's talking about me, baby,' said Cosmic Ray Morita as he came loping down the corridor that led into the glowing chamber. 'Hey, man, this is really quite some place. A really cool pad, daddy-o.' Ray looked a little dishevelled, his lurid s.h.i.+rt stained here and there and his beret askew. He was clutching a slos.h.i.+ng and foamy bottle of mescal.

'So you woke up, Ray,' said the Doctor. 'What a pleasant surprise. I suppose you decided you couldn't just simply stay in that nice comfortable cave and sleep.'

106.'How could I, with this thing hovering overhead, daddy-o? I had to take a look. I saw those things come down to pick you up. I was watching from the cave, baby. I'd been sleeping off the mescal. But the lights woke me up. Those groovy lights, man. I looked out of the cave and I saw you do this.' He lifted his beret off his head. 'And that thing came down and picked you up. So after I worked up my nerve, man, I came out and tried it.' He lifted his beret again and grinned. 'And it worked, man! And here I am.'

'But where are?' said Butcher. 'That's the question.'

'We've already told you the answer Major,' said the Doctor.

'Some twaddle about little green men from outer s.p.a.ce.'

Ray chuckled drunkenly. 'But obviously it's some kind of a s.h.i.+p, man.'

'A s.h.i.+p?' Butcher laughed. 'That's the same kind of nonsense they were trying to get me to swallow.'

'It is. Look around you. A s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. Extraterrestrial craft, daddy-o.'

'c.r.a.p,' said Butcher.

'Look at the floor,' said the Doctor. 'You see that large dimple in it. Go and peer out, or rather down. Go ahead Major. You can see the ground below. The hillside where you were standing just a little while ago.'

Butcher peered down through the clear dome in the belly of the s.h.i.+p. He stared down at the Apaches on the hillside. All he said was, 'There are those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who got the drop on me. They wouldn't have been so c.o.c.ky without their rifles.'

'I might have to disagree with you there, Major. But that's not the issue at hand. Look at that structure you're peering through. What does it remind you of?'

Butcher stared into the transparent hemisphere. He said, 'Gun turret in the belly of a bomber?'

'Precisely.'

Butcher grinned. Colour was returning to his face after a prolonged absence. His confidence seemed to grow with every word. 'So, it's like a B29 bomber for little green men?'

'If you like, yes. Although less warlike a.n.a.logies would be more appropriate.

Luckily for us all, this craft is not dedicated to killing.'

'Then where are the little green men?'

'Zorg,' said the Doctor. And for a moment Ace had no idea what this mono-syllable might mean. Then the lights in the room started to flicker and everyone looked up at the ceiling where the chandelier glowed. The chandelier was twitching and curling, the long tube-lamps that spread across the ceiling were retreating and shooting back into the glowing centre of it. As they retreated, the uniform light in the room shrank to a glow on the ceiling, centred on the sphere at the heart of the 'chandelier'. The tentacles were absorbed back into 107it in a fas.h.i.+on that reminded Ace of something. Then she realised what it was.

Like the transport tentacles that had brought them onto the s.h.i.+p.

The glowing ball in the middle of the ceiling flashed with coloured lightning and suddenly began to swell downwards. 'What's happening?' said Butcher in a worried voice. 'What's happening to the light in here?'

A blob of opalescent jelly was bulging down from the ceiling, shot through with scarlet and azure and piercing green. It was like wax melting, a flood of glowing gel that reached the floor and formed a large mound that stratified and solidified and took on a new shape utterly different from, yet strangely reminiscent of, the jellyfish chandelier that had been clinging to the ceiling.

Finally the thing took on the form of a huge crablike creature, with soft, giant limbs that hinged in odd ways. It had a face, of sorts, in the middle of its stomach, and the face made a horrible attempt to smile.

'Greetings, Zoctor,' said the thing.

'Ace, allow me to introduce Zostrathnia Otocr Regus Gelb. Zorg to his friends.'

'Greetings Zace,' said the thing, shuffling its numerous limbs so its pearly, bulbous obscenity of a body was facing her. The thought of a crab that big, even a dazzlingly beautiful one with flashes of radiant colour, made Ace feel queasy. The disgusting pliancy of its limbs, the fatness of its torso. Ace had seen plenty of aliens, but if she wasn't careful this one would give her the heebie-jeebies. Maybe it was that horrid approximation of a face where no face should be. She decided that thinking of it as a kind of giant crab was at least better than the other thought that came to mind a huge soft jelly of a giant tarantula, wobbling around full of venom. Ace very firmly put the giant tarantula thought away and concentrated on thinking of Zorg as the intelligent alien life form he it? so clearly was. It sounded like a he.

Indeed when the creature spoke, its voice had a perfect command of English, in a pleasantly low-pitched masculine voice. It was a smooth and clear voice, yet there was something disturbingly unmodulated about it. Ace wondered if this alien blandness of expression came from the creature itself, or was a consequence of some kind of device it was using as a translator.

'And who are my other guests?' said Zorg. As it spoke, the thing scuttled around like a giant crab. It glowed with inner light, as though it had radiant bodily fluids circulating in its transparent sh.e.l.l. Colours flashed through the creature as they did in its s.h.i.+p, violet and green flashes of miniature lightning.

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