The door they tumbled through was coated with smiling faces on the inside but sharp orange rock on the outside. Louba’s hips caught in the doorway but Bott was behind her this time. He threw a shoulder against the obstacle and they popped out together.
“Ya woon’t have problems like ‘at if ya’d lose a couple tons o’ suet,” said Bassada, jumping out of the way.
“Nifty advice. Drink it an’ water flowers wit’ it.” Louba slapped at a few smoulders on her overalls. Deep gouges showed on her arms. Bott brushed his hands on his knees to shake some green skin from under his nails. She had not offered a lot of useful handles where he needed them, and the sweat had caused frequent slippage.
“Cap’n plays rough.” Bassada slapped him on one shoulder. “Nex’ time I gits ta go last an’ git stuck.” Chlorda looked him over with frank admiration.
Bptt turned eyes still dazzled by afterimages around their new prison. They had lamded in an oblong orange case. The ceiling looked low, but he doubted he could reach it from the floor. Darl brown rock formations sprang like blemishes along the floor and walls. A ridge of brown and orange rose far ahead of them, blocking any vision of what might be waiting behind it.
He leaned forward, squinting. A spot of white gleamed between two rough brown ovals. He eased toward it, one hand on his satchel. The skeleton he found was far beyond making any kind of threatening gesture.
”Someone else lost this game,” said Chlorda, who had advanced with the captain.
Bott knelt by the bones. “The Emperor said this place had never been tested.” He blinked twice to banish the black and white squares still flitting across his line of vision. “It’s either a prop to scare us or something that was fed to…something else in here.”
He looked up at the ridge. “What’s ‘at?” demanded Bassada, moving up between Chlorda and the captain to point at metal among the bones.
Bott blinked again. “Wrenches,” he said. “So, a technician who got lost during construction, maybe.”
”Any meat on them bones?”
The other three looked up at Louba, who was still slapping out incipient flames. Each slap was now leaving a handprint.
Chlorda nodded. “She’s becoming frenetic. She does that when she’s hungry.”
“Lotsa her ta keep fed.” A blue finger jabbed Bott’s back, a little too low. “I gets kinda frenetic meself when it’s too far between meals. If we ain’t getting’ et right away, Cap’n, I wish ya’d call an’ find us a food slot.”
“I tried that.” Feeling it was better to demonstrate than complain, he drew out his command card. “Ship, where is the nearest food outlet?”
“He still hasn’t learned to say ‘please’. It’s in room 8W5/3T0/3C5.”
Bott looked up, shrugged. Bassada reached over his shoulder to press his fingers against the card. “Hey, ship! What room’s ‘is?”
“Your voice is changing, lummox. You are in room 8W5/3T0/3C5.”
“Well, staple yer pitcha ta me frame!” Louba stepped forward. “Where at?”
“The order slot is in a crack in one of the rocks around the corner from your current position.”
“Corner?” Bott took two of the wrenches and put them in his belt, nodding to his companions to take the other tools. “What corner?”
“My maze is filled with corners, lummox, so I can tell you you’re cornered.”
The four looked to each other, and then started forward, Louba still swatting herself but less strenuously, not that she was holding a wrench and two screwdrivers. They found that the ridge ahead of them formed one wall of a corridor with another ridge beyond it. Following this path, they walked nearly to the end of it before Bott noted a thin line on one of the rough outcroppings. This was a handy thing to find, but it was also handy to whatever might come around the edge of this corridor. Waving his crew back, he leaned around the end of the ridge to check.
Beyond this canyon’s end was another that looked even longer. One difference was that it lacked yet another ugly brown ridge at the end. In the distance a broad grey wall waited, with ornate moulding around what seemed to be a massive hangar door.
Bott nodded, and Louba tucked the screwdrivers away and brought out the ration card. She shoved it into the slot among the rocks. “Gimme the best eatin’s ya got!”
“You again,” sighed a voice from the speaker next to the slot.
“Jus’ give out.” She turned to Bott. “We knows ‘is guy from way back. Waters ‘a soup.”
A panel slid up in the rock, revealing a cubical white chamber. The floor of this slid back to allow for the rise of a broad silver platter with a silver domed cover. Four rolled napkins sat next to this, apparently holding cutlery. “Hot hoopdydoo!” shouted Bassada. “Pass me a plate!”
Chlorda reached out two fingers to raise the lid from the platter. A curlicue of steam rose from a pyramid of tiny translucent cubes. Snorting, the gold aristocrat tossed the silver cover over one shoulder. “Mashed lumpucks again!”
“An’ still no maynage,” sighed Louba, chest heaving.
“Izzat as best as ya could do?” demanded Bassada.
“Due to the demands of the Imperial company,” the foods computer replied, “It is necessary to….”
“Excuse me.”
“What do you want?” the first voice demanded of the second.
“I want to chat with my pet lummox,” the main computer replied. “He got out of his cage before I could complete his obedience training, and I THINK he’s forgotten how many cards he’s carrying.”
“Oh!” Bott reached for the collection of command cards he carried: light blue, dark blue, pink, orange, red, green…. “Bilstim thoughtful, for a slave ship.”
“Keep in mind, lummox that you refused to pose as a slave, and are therefore a prisoner. One of my jobs is to ensure that you are maintained in a condition which will provide a good game.”
That seemed reasonable. “An instrument of torture AND a slave ship. I’m proud to have you buy my lunch.” He glanced at the card Louba held, and selected one nearly the same color. Sliding this into the slot, he said, “Let’s try a little harder.”
“Why didn’t you use that one in the first place?” grumbled the foods computer.
“I rtold you he was a lummox,” said the Drover.
The platform with the lumpucks withdrew, to be replaced by a plain white platter holding four covered plates. Under each cover waited a steaming chunk of meat, a tangle of something brown and crisp, and a tumble of blue fruit. Bott sucked in his cheeks at the aroma.
“Better take a small taste so we know whether….”
Louba had seized a plate and, pulling out a screwdriver, shoved a large gobbet of meat into her mouth. “Poison’s quicker’n starvin’.”
Bott claimed a plate as Bassada and Chlorda pushed in. He didn’t THINK they’d take his food, but they did have two hands each. “Let’s keep moving, at least,” he said, tossing one of the fruits into his mouth. “It won’t be safe to stand long in one place.”
They went slowly around the corner, careful to spill none of their provisions. “Should we aim for that?” Chlorda asked, crunching on the brown frieds as she nodded to the vast door.
Bott took another step forward, his mind really on whether they could go back and have the foods computer send the forks and knives back. “Seems easy,” he said, around a mouthful of berries. “Been harder to get through a room than to get out so far.”
“Real dr cd be behin’ a rock,” Louba noted. “Er all of ‘em.”
She leaned on the corner of the ridge they’d just come around, and jumped away at a click. A section of the ridge slid back.
“No tanks very kindly kindly,” she said, looking at the hole this revealed in the floor. “No more tubes. Gotta double dose las’ time.”
Bott balanced his pate and reached for Dunny Bunk. “Well, the book says to turn left. That would be right there.”
“I’m facin’ ‘is way.” Bassada stuck her free arm out. “So lef’ is ‘at big door.”
“I’d hafta to walk backward,” Louba pointed out.
Bott understood the reluctance to slide into any more tubes, especially with lunch to be taken care of. But as he started to give an order he hadn’t quite made up yet, Chlorda cried, “Lala!”
A crack shot up the middle of the huge door at the end of the corridor. In the same amount of time, the door pulled back to the left and right.
“Akhain gubrath!” cried the company behindthe door, apparently as surprised as the prisoners that it had opened.
“Come along, lover!” Louba set her plate on a low rock. “I’ll put a arrow troo yer head an’ call ya me beau!”
“What are they?” Bott demanded, a hand in the grenade satchel.
“Akhain,” said Bassada, “Ey’ll eat just about anythin’.”
Bott lifted a grenade. “What won’t they eat?”
“Anythin’ ‘ey can drink.”
Bott took a mouthful of the fried side and watched them come on, galloping among the rocks. Long waving hair made their outlines hazy, but he could see each had four legs and about a thousand teeth. They had two hands each as well, one holding an axe. The other hand differed from Akhain to Akhain, carrying daggers, hammers, or a long double-bladed device he had no desire to sample. One long spear held Nubry’s head on the point.
“Better go.” He let the grenade slide back into the satchel and, snatching food from the plate, dropped the berries into one pocket and the fried brown mesh into another.
Chlorda grimaced at the advancing horde. “It might be their job to chase us, not kill us. There could be something especially dire at the end of this tube.”
“That’s true for any of them.” Shoving the last of the meat into his mouth and hurling his plate at the Akhain, he jumped into the tube.
Blogsy Babbles 