Equinox - Diane Carey [0]
"IS IT ALIVE?"
"I don't care. I'm eating it anyway."
Sweat mixed with metal shavings grated against the captain's hand as he rubbed the back of his neck. Whatever it was, they were all going to eat it, down to the last dirty crew member still alive on his ship.
Funny how hunger could make the grotesque palatable.
He glanced at his first officer. The usually good-looking Max Burke, Casanova of the ship, lounge-lizard extraordinaire, was today a pathetic sight His dark hair was dirty, black eyes sunken with fatigue and hunger, his face shadowed, unshaven. Attention fixed on his bowl, he plowed through the questionables handed him by their exotic Ankari hosts as if his captain's "I don't care" were a direct order to consume. Burke was the last to eat
He'd been busy until now securing the ship from the last deadly encounter.
Behind them, Noah Lessing and Maria Gilmore checked a pile of cargo containers and other equipment for harmful emissions. The Ankari didn't have much to spare, but they were willing to offer.
And who in his right mind would turn down a dinner with big caterpillars who wore suits?
Across the campfire from the two officers, one of the Ankari waved its idea of a hand.
"Captain Ransom," the universal translator struggled, "we gift you ritual. You spirit like."
Accepting a glance from Burke, Ransom paused, then said, "We ritual... appreciate. We thank."
Burke muttered privately around his mouthful, "You sure we're not the ritual? Maybe they're ... y'know, fattening the-"
"Shh. Hope not."
The two puff-faced Ankari who had the job of entertaining the visitors now revealed a device made of a dozen metallic tubes with their tops cut on the diagonal like organ pipes-or was it a device? It could've been a bottle of window cleaner. Inside was a gelatinous liquid that shifted from blue to green.
"Blast from the past, Rudy," Burke said, attempting a smile. "It's a lava lamp. I always wanted one."
Ransom also smiled and nodded at the two aliens. "Beautiful. Thank you for showing us."
The aliens paused, blinked at each other, then seemed-if he read segmented body language right-to shrug. Now they activated the device.
"Fortune spirit," the Ankari on their right buzzed. "Realm far, you travel bless."
"Oh, I get it," Burke grumbled, and went back to eating.
"Very generous of you," Ransom told the aliens.
The device was blinking now, its colors shifting.
"Ow!" Burke dropped his plate and covered his ears. An instant later Ransom heard it too-a head-splitting noise, a single tone, as if the highest note on a church organ were stuck on superworship.
Behind them, the rest of the crew flinched and tried not to react in a negative way despite the howling noise shearing their ears.
Ransom was about to wave the aliens to stop their "gift"-that it was lovely, more than generous, he and his crew just didn't deserve such a wonder-when a thread-thin black line appeared in midair over the campfire.
Beside him, Burke flinched. Ransom held him back with a trembling hand. Wait.
The black line parted as if a scalpel had cleaved it, giving presence to a fissure in the air above them and then to a bulb of phosphorescent blue light. From an inconceivable backstage curtain, a fluid form appeared; free moving and independent, it pierced through the fissure. Green-blue?-with some kind of face, two paws, and a short tail. Built for swimming?
In his biologist's mind, Ransom instantly analyzed the "spirit." Head at one end, tail at the other, floating upright, clutching hands-was that an opposable thumb? He couldn't tell.
The hands were knobby-knuckled and in repose. Average skull formation for gravity conditions, so it wasn't space-evolved... but it floated freely in spite of no visible antigrav hovering mechanism.
Back to the swimming hypothesis?
Otherworldly and translucent, the moving form slipped over the campfire and bansheed its way to an open place between two trees. There it floated, angelic and perplexing.
"Is it alive?" Ransom murmured.