Jeopardy Chapter 12

Zalara had to pee something terrible, but Mr. Harchett would not let her, or Honey, move a muscle. She didn’t expect to be on the floor in hydroponics or she would have worn leg covers. Her bare skin shivered against the slick metal deck where water trickled across a groove. Her chin on the floor, she glanced at Honey, in the same prostrate position underneath a cool, long rack of vegetables growing above their heads.

To her other side, Mr. Harchett also shivered a little, but at least he had more clothes on. He returned her gaze and held up one finger as if he were going to press it to his lips and make the shhh sound, but he didn’t even do that. Zalara repeated the gesture to Honey, then watched the floor again.

Various shades of blue colored ‘pythons’, each with a single claw at the end, clacked up and down the deck. The Zlogers’ odd pitched whining also echoed in the garage-sized, spartan room.

Zalara’s legs started to cramp, and she tried to shake the pain out. Mr. Harchett reached back and pressed both of her legs to the chilly floor. His eyes were as wide as he was scared. She didn’t think she could stand one more minute of playing statue under the plant rack when the two Zlōgers clacked away and out the door. The only sound was that of the water pumps trickling and spraying the crops. It would have been a relaxing sound had she not been turned to stone for the last five minutes.

“I think they’re gone,” Harchett hissed at them. He squirmed out from under the rack and held out his hands, one for each girl, to help them up.

“Are they aliens?” Honey asked.

“Of course, they’re aliens,” Zalara said.

“They have no business being in here,” the young man muttered.

“Why were we hiding?” Zalara asked. Harchett stumbled over his words.

“I just didn’t want them to know we saw them.”

“Are you scared they had guns?” Harchett’s eyes snapped to meet hers. She knew, yes, he was scared, but he probably wouldn’t say he was. The men never said they were scared, even if they were. Her mother had told her men were afraid to say they were scared, which made them more scared.

“Let’s just get the food and go,” he told her, pushing a large bowl at each girl, and wandering down the aisles in search of the items on the highest racks.

Honey, being a dozen centimeters taller than Zalara, collected radishes, and from the labeled rows of herbs she plucked several of each on her list. Zalara selected lower shelf items but less of them:

“Mr. Harchett, do you want any eggs?”

“No, thanks, Zalara. Bailey will want them in the morning, so just let them be.”

“My mom loved eggs,” Honey commented while staring into the wall. “She wanted them for breakfast every day.”

“Do you like eggs?” Zalara asked her.

“I used to.”

“Come on, Ladies, let’s get these to Jules. Hurry up.” He shoved at the door but it didn’t budge a micron. The girls fell in behind him and waited. He tried it again. Nothing. Zalara watched him tense up and shake just a tiny bit. He looked scared again, with his eyes wide and his mouth a wide line. He looked up and down the edges of the door where it hooked to the walls and he tried to pry it open once again. Nothing.

“Is it stuck?”

“I…I don’t know, maybe it’s just locked, locked behind the Zlōgers when they left.” Harchett shook the handle and started pushing buttons. “It’s …never…locked before,” he stuttered between buttons. “Who would lock the hydroponic bay?” He looked at Zalara, then back at the door. He kept tapping buttons until the panel flashed once and went dark.

“I don’t think my mama knows we’re here. I might get in trouble.”

“She left you with Bailey; she can figure it out.”

“Mr. Harchett,” Honey said, poking him from behind. “Are we gonna die?”

“What? No!” He looked at both girls with his bugged-out eyes. “No, we aren’t gonna die.”

“I hear something,” Zalara said, tipping her ear a little closer to the source. “It’s like a snake noise,” she said.

Honey and Mr. Harchett looked in the direction her ear was listening.

“The vent!” Honey shouted. A thin fog seeped into the bay from an air vent at the rear of the chamber. Nearly, but not quite colorless, the orchid mist began to sink toward the floor and roll forward in their direction.

Mr. Harchett stumbled in a circle and then to a wall panel, opening the door and yanking out three portable respirators. He put his on over his mouth and nose and then gave one to each child. Zalara promptly modeled Mr. Harchett but Honey needed help adjusting her straps.

“I still have to use the bathroom,” she mentioned with a bounce in her knees.

“Come on,” Harchett said, waving them to follow. He flung open the door to the chicken house and turned up the lighting. Fat birds fluttered and squawked in response to their pineal glands suddenly flooding with light. He slammed the door behind them and pushed several buttons until the panel was lit with red dots.

“Why are we here with the chickens?” Zalara asked.

“Don’t you like chickens?” Honey said.

“I love chickens. Their feathers are fun!” she answered, plucking a random fluff of white from the air.

“The ventilation is separate here, to keep the chicken by-products out of the rest of the ship’s ventilation.”

“Is the stuff coming out of the vent poison?”

“Probably,” Harchett mumbled. He removed his mask and coughed at the visible dust floating in the room. The three of them stood in silence, listening to the chickens’ soft cackles, clucks, and worried waaaaaahha? noises.

“Oh,” Honey said, looking down at the absorbent litter sprinkled with chicken droppings. Each step sent a chicken or two scattering, rousing another layer of dust, feathers, and odors.

“We should be okay in here,” Harchett said. “If we don’t get pneumonia. Let’s sit here and wait.” He sat on a chicken nesting box.

“Wait for what?” Zalara asked.

“For my head to think of a way out. Just sit here and be quiet, girls,” the man grumbled.

þ

“The sick bay is protected against your anesthesia.”

“Only from the sleep misting in remainder of your ship,” the Zlōger told Dr. Adams. “We have more sleep gas for you,” the translator voice said in an amazing imitation of Professor Stephen Hawking in his later years. “We only want machines, not humans. Get on the floor.” The sea-green Zlōger called Codenayak held all of them, one tentacle wrapped around each neck, and tugged downward to ensure their cooperation.

Adams, Mills, Ferris, Henderson, and Rianya lowered themselves to sit on the floor of the treatment room.

“You’ll get it, too,” Rianya spit at them. Her hands clenched until they ached.

“Zlōgers not sleep. Only warm body animals, like you are. We have not small brains.” The Zlōger’s right, mottled-gold eyeball swiveled to penetrate Rianya’s mind, but she refused to meet his glare. She collected a hand-held lighting torch from the floor, then crossed her arms to keep from throwing it at the creature.

The five of them hid their faces but that only prolonged the inevitable. The Zlōger patted each one on the head as it clacked by. Rianya’s head began to pound, and then, nothing.

“That was easy,” Codenayak said to Pekeena.

“Warm creatures are easily defeated. Not adaptable.”

“There is cold creature in engineering.”

“Rotana bashed him with conduit.”

“Kill him?” the sea green asked.

“No, not need to. You go to machine room and help Rotana. I stay here in medical room. Commander is on bridge.”

“All humans secured?”

“Bridge, engineering, machine room, kitchen, sickbay, armory, quarters, plants. No one in any other rooms, I checked them all myself and locked all doors.” The dark blue one slid over to the medical people asleep on the floor and touched each one’s arm, one at a time. He turned again to his sea green associate. “How do they operate the ship with only two arms and such tiny brains?”

“The bipedal mammal is a common model. It must be well evolved to its home world. I go to machine room. You keep watch on them, make sure they continue sleeping.”

“I will check with Commander and then check the people again.”

In the machine room, Codenayak, the sea-green, nearly had to mechanically stop listening to the noise the other Zlōgers expelled through their gills.

“What problem in this room?” he screeched. They four stopped shrieking and all looked at Codenayak. They all began to squawk at one time, at a lower volume, but a similar level of incoherence.

“We can’t take machines.”

“Not acceptable answer.”

“The machines are stuck.”

“Cut them out.”

“If cut out, they will not work.”

“We can adapt their power sources,” Sea-Green said, his eyeballs looking at each of them in turn, and, at the same time.

“The machines use engine power to operate, and computer that runs whole ship.”

Sea-Green clacked through the group of Zlōgers to examine the material machines. His eyes turreted along each seam, wall, and projection.

“Rotana said we could take them,” he whined. A gust of air blustered through his facial orifice causing it to emit a brief snort. “Look. You can disconnect it here, and here,” Sea-Green told the small crew. He pointed with one of his shorter appendages, not a leg.

“We can take the machine out, and we can adapt the power, we not can take the operating system and mechanism out. It is inside the ship. It not can be taken out of ship.

“How do I call bridge?”

“Not know.” Codenayak snorted again and left the manufacturing room, clacking at first, then sliding and molding along the floor in fast snail mode. The commander wasn’t going to like hearing this. He didn’t like having to bring him the message trunk to trunk. In the elevator, he used the translator hanging around his middle to get to the bridge. Before exiting, he straightened his tool belt and resolved to grow a spine, as they said on his planet, at least for the duration of his impending confrontation.

Commander Gugnichacrik lounged in Captain Jackson’s chair, his legs wrapped over and under the arms to keep him from sliding out. Without budging an inch, one eye swiveled to see who had come to the bridge.

“Commander,” Sea-Green said, clacking to speak with him closer. He noticed the human, awake, at the helm. “Why you keep one here? No mist?”

“I can’t run their ship alone. I had him turn off ventilation to the bridge. How much longer until the crew get those machines out?”

“They will not come out and also function later.”

“We can adapt their power supply.”

“Is not the power supply that causes trouble. Is computer.”

“Let Pegasi figure that out.”

“No, Commander. The computer won’t come out. The computer is part of the ship.”

“Download the operating system and files and let Pegasi figure it out. We are paid to deliver the goods. It is up to them to learn how to use the machines.”

“The computer is inside the ship. The operating system and files are inside the ship.”

“I not understand your explanation.”

“You don’t need to understand. You just have to know we cannot complete our contract.”

“We made a contract,” the commander said, his gills flapping and his orifice blowing air and slime. He unfolded from around Captain Jackson’s chair and stood up.

“Better to not deliver anything than broken merchandise.”

“We will just over-deliver.”

“Commander?”

“We’ll have to take the whole ship.”