Rax, Space Scientist
“Rax, I need you in quarantine on the double,” buzzed the com-badge.
Rax jumped up from his evening supplement meal and dashed out of his quarters. Damn, this ship is massive, he thought, as he sprinted down the silvery corridor and past the crysto-glass windows opening onto the Venatti sector. Next time I take a post on a research vessel, I'm going to forgo the officer's deck and take a cabin near the lab.
He darted into an express power lift and rode it for what seemed like an eternity, despite the fact that it was travelling at twice the speed of sound. “Deck three-thousand one-hundred and ninety-four,” chimed the digital voice. Why couldn't SpaceEx assign smaller cruisers to the frontier, he wondered.
“I'm here! What's going on, Marshall?” said Rax urgently to the view-screen from inside the quarantine deck's airlock. He could make out a massive, fleshy form on the examination table. Seconds later, his skin and clothes purged of all microorganisms, he was in the lab proper.
“Look at her. Jesus, she's huge!” he exclaimed before Marshall could say a word.
“And that's not the half of it,” said Marshall. He was normally cold, calculated, and logical, but he couldn't hide his disgust. "She has kids, too."
“And aren't they cute. They're like little balls of love,” said Rax, grimacing while peering into the hyper-X-ray scope aimed at the creature’s abdomen. “It's too bad that she’s in such terrible shape.”
“Agreed. The expeditionary team wasn’t very careful with her. I’m going to have a word with the Captain,” said Marshall. “I've always wondered what it’s like when they are born. Can she get her forward appendages around them? Does she feed them right away? Do the larvae drink that syrupy excretion that we keep finding? Without a good specimen, we'll never know the answers to these questions.”
The hulking mass of giant space grub started to quiver violently. Rax and Marshall stood horrified but couldn’t take their eyes from her; they couldn’t look away.
“Watch out! The skin flaps!” yelled Rax, as he leapt towards Marshall. But it was too late. from under a large fold jutted a jet-black sphere, which Rax immediately recognized as a Thotar-tech bio-bomb—a booby trap. Rax ducked, but the bio shockwave instantly digested Marshall’s face.
Rax stood in the air-lock looking into the decimated lab. Poor Marshall, he lamented. He hesitantly pushed the release button. Watching the space grub and Marshall’s remains get sucked out into the icy black depths of space, he seriously questioned whether there could ever be understanding between their two species.
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