He jabbed its butt into her spine to keep her moving along and Lissa stumbled, wavering for one treacherous moment above the cold metal ladder that led to the cargo hold below, until Stephanie’s tight grip on her arm steadied her. She clutched the railing and gaped at the yawning hole.
“Get a move on,” the robot translated the captain’s growls and squeals. The bot had changed to a literal translation rather than the involved explanations he had started to give. She found it easier to understand this way, although the side comments had been useful information. Not useful enough to help me figure out what to do with this mad situation though. We’ve been kidnapped!
“I don’t have a whole sun-turn!” The bot added for the Captain’s sake.
Whatever that was, thought Lissa. He prodded her again.
She peered down the long drop to where the ladder disappeared into darkness. She was pretending courage she didn’t feel, knowing from just one look into Stephanie’s face that the other girl was terrified. An alien stepped out of the gloom and peered up at them from below—it was a guard dressed in the same muted gray colors as Captain Nask, holding a second ray pistol which he waved airily in her direction while motioning for her to descend the ladder.
Great, she thought ironically, another laser gun to point at me. Do I really seem so dangerous? I’m eleven!
But apparently age was no guarantee of safety to these alien minds. They watched her climb below with small black eyes set deep in their green mottled skin. Captain Nask’s face had an oily gleam in the eerie artificial light of the cargo hold, and a stench of alien sweat oozed off of them into the air which her breath mask could not filter completely as she passed the guard and followed his gestures with his gun toward the far end of the hold.
The translation robot had told her she was going down to the cargo bay. To her shock and revulsion, the ship’s cargo was not boxes of goods from various planets, nor was there a cache of strange weapons or alien technology. The corridor she stepped into was lined with the glass walls of cages—cages that held…humans.
There was an African boy, wearing little at all but a scrap of cloth over his loins and white paint across his black cheeks, still clutching a spear in his sinewy hand. His black eyes bore into his captors with a deep hatred that made her shiver. Despite his passionate demeanor he looked little older than Lissa.
“Oh, look!” Stephanie was pulled out of her shocked reverie. She pointed forward. In the next cage sat a Mongol boy with a haughty face. He was clothed in a thick coat of white fur and an embroidered red silk cap. The thick glass that separated them made Lissa feel she was in a museum staring at the habitats of wild animals. What had caught Stephanie’s eye and made her point was a beautiful golden eagle that sat on the boy’s wrist and mantled at them before settling down at a touch from his master.
The boy was cross-legged on the ground, his face impassive. With his eyes averted, he studiously ignored them as though it were beneath him to grant importance to aliens, but his feathered companion was not above snapping out angrily in Nask’s direction. The Captain lumbered on, unperturbed by the hostility in the hallway.
Nask paused before the next cage to tap the glass. Now his thick grey lips stretched wide in a grin. Lissa peered around him and saw that this cage was different—over five feet of water sat on the other side of the glass, the surface lapping slightly above her head. The water was murky and opaque—she saw nothing but seaweed waving slowly back and forth as she stared into its depths.
“Why do you have a bunch of water?”
“Stupid Earthling!” He made to cuff her ear but Lissa ducked away, narrowly missing his fist, “That’s not just water,” he gloated, “Look closer.”
She strained her eyes to see through the blue-green ocean tank, and then…
“An octopus?”
She turned to face her alien captors, “You came all the way to Earth for a bunch of kids and a pet?”
The alien Captain guffawed, “That’s no pet, little Earthling. That’s a highly advanced intelligent life form from one of the moons of Jupiter,” he nodded wisely toward the tiny blue-ringed octopus floating in seawater on the other side of the glass cell wall.
“It looks like an octopus to me.”
“Their home,” Nask ignored her comment, “is shielded by a thick ice crust. Underneath the salt ocean is heated by the planet’s core. Millions of life forms are swimming around in there. Earth has become a popular vacationing spot for these little guys,” he wiggled a fond finger at his captive cephalopod, “Although I think it’s kinda getting discouraged now since they keep getting eaten by the indigenous population.”
Lissa turned a little green.
“We’re serving sentient aliens in sushi restaurants??” Stephanie gulped, horrified. One hand went to her mouth and she looked like she was trying not to listen to her gurgling stomach.
“Yup,” he chuckled indifferently, “Well I say, if they’re dumb enough to vacation on a planet where they’re low on the food chain...” He grinned.
“Is that why you caught him?” Lissa asked, never taking her eyes off the small creature.
“Exploding suns, no!” He swore, looking surprised, “I’d never eat an Europan. These little guys are the best mathematicians in the Universe. Make darn-good navigators, they do. I just gotta persuade him to mind me.”
His eyebrows wiggled evilly, and Lissa swallowed hard—not wanting to think what this cruel Captain might do to the poor alien octopus in order to “persuade” him. Did Nask have a torture chamber on this ship?
“What’s a Europan?” Stephanie interjected.
“Europa is the Earth name for the sixth moon of Jupiter. As that is where this species originated, their genus is best translated as ‘Europan’—or, ‘inhabitant of Europa’.” The translator bot explained, his hover jets tilted forward in a quick bow.
Just at that moment, a shudder seemed to run through the hull, making their feet quake. Lissa saw a rippling wave slosh water against the glass wall of the sea tank. The octopus bobbed up and down in reaction and his eyes grew wide for an instant.
“What was that?” Lissa cried, turning to Nask. A second shudder made her stumble sideways and a crackle came over Nask’s short-wave. The Translator bot, having no orders to the contrary, continued to translate for Lissa, “Space Patrol, Captain! You better get up here!”
“By the exploding suns!” Nask cursed, “Why are they firing on us?”
He seemed to forget all about the two girls. Waving his ray gun in the direction of the upper deck, he led the guards back toward the ladder, his lumbering gait full of stomping frustration, “Don’t they know we have a contract to be in this sector?” He growled, “Why would they…” the rest was lost as he rose above the upper hatch.
Invitation
Bilderbus considered himself a fair man. He knew many called him cruel; some would say he was a ruthless man, but Mr. Bilderbus knew he really had others’ best interests at heart. And if his plans meant the demise of small children and lapdogs, well—the world was safer without so many people in it anyway. It was hard to control billions of people; Earth would
