Running the Muxel Gauntlet |
Don't Just Stand There, Do Something! A collection of tales for young readers |
"OK. I give up, dad. What's a Muxel?" My father was steering our solar sloop through an asteroid belt in the Orion system where we hoped to establish trade on distant Orvalik. We were carrying phosphor seeds and Martian fertilizer in our cargo holds, two items that my father insisted were desperately wanted by the Orvalikians. They, in turn, had an abundance of furry artworks and bubble cheese which my dad assured me were the rage on Nukke where he hoped to make a large profit. Nukkes are not the brightest bargainers in the universe and we wanted to take advantage of things in a hurry. "Muxel is a corridor through which we must pass in order to get the approval of the Trading Guild in this sector," he explained. "It's a little tricky, because there are pirates hiding amongst the moons of Nergan. But if we get past them without incident, I think everything will be just fine." "What kind of pirates?" I asked. "Mollusk raiders of limited sentience," replied dad. "But don't worry about them. They don't have the ability to get past Luna shields." "Mollusks? You mean, like clams?" "Son you simply have to learn that space is filled with variations of creatures that you already know. Yes, clam-like, but not really the kind back home on earth. These are giants compared to those and they can actually think and have a language." "I thought clams needed water to survive?" "Only on earth. For these guys, the void is their water. They carry breathing apparatus inside their shells and dispel concentrated slime to project themselves about." "Ugh!" "That's not the worst of it. They act like barnacles on sea-going vessels, eating into the hulls of crafts like ours until they get inside. I'm hoping our shields will repel them." "What if they don't, Dad?" "Then I'll have to resort to some tricks I have hidden up my sleeve. Look, we've got some time before we enter the corridor. Tell your mother to make snacks and have your sister help her out." "OK," I said, faking a grudge. Actually, it was interesting to see how Dad made the preparations. The best thing about him was the way he was so calm all the time, always carefully explaining things in a reasonable voice and never showing the slightest hint of fear. Naturally, the snacks also had a way of keeping me settled down. Mom certainly wasn't worried about a thing with Dad at the controls. Koochie, my sister, was even more excitable than me, especialy during a crisis. It was usually my job to keep her cool and unafraid, though there were times in space when that was impossible, like when we got tangled in the Jovian pidey nets. But that's another story. We were cruising our approach into the corridor when Dad got the Trading Guild's permission to enter. I couldn't understand their translation, but Dad had a digital readout that simplified their words. All I know is that the moment we passed through the membrane, some kind of immense transparent slug appeared. It was so big that I don't think it was even aware that we had flown into its open rasps. "Not to worry," came the response from Dad. "We're much too small for this fellow. I'm going to navigate through its gullet until we reach the external pores. Then we'll be safe." Sure enough, he knew what he was doing. I guess there were 10,000 miles of innards before it dumped us out. We didn't even register as something to tickle its insides, so it never knew we were there. That's one of the strangest things about space creatures. Some are smaller than a gnat, others as large as planets. I don't know who regulates the size controls, but whoever he is, he has a weird sense of proportions. Anyway, we were in the corridor and making a beeline for Orvalik. My job was to let father know the moment Nergan showed itself on the scanner. For a long time, there was nothing noteworthy out there to observe. Abruptly, I saw a squiggle of pink stripes undulating across the screen, alternating between neon and invisibility. "Dad," I shouted, diverting his attention from the console to my scanner. We both stared at the thing and pronounced its name at the same time. "A divelgrob!" we stated excitedly, waking both Mom and Sis from their naps. Divelgrobs are worse than pideys, humongous space slugs and Nergan clams put together. The oddest thing about them is that they are totally blind but have an extraordinary ability to sense changes in the movement of nearby objects. That meant we couldn't alter our trajectory or speed in any way, else we'd be detected and engulfed in its acid tanks. There'd be no hope of escape if that happened. We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. Something must have been watching out for us because the beast simply squiggled right past the front of our sloop and kept going. "That was close," breathed Mom when the tail end of the divelgrob disappeared off the scanner. "It looked pretty to me," saod Koochie with wide eyes. "What could have happened to us?" "You don't want to know," Mom replied as we plunged deeper into the corridor. She didn't want to upset Koochie by revealing how close we had come to oblivion. It was thirty minutes later when I spotted the telltale, orange glow from Nergan and made sure that everyone was strapped tightly in their chairs.Dad was going to try in interstellar leap by chain-warping around the moon and resuming normal speed after we were out of its gravitational influence. Unfortunately, when he threw the switch, the sloop did not respond. Something was wrong with the dimensional engine. "Oh no," Dad muttered. "The slug's canal juices must have soaked up our shield." "Just what do these Nergan mollusks go in for, Dad?" I asked with true innocence. "Engines," he cried unhappily. "They have apparently already eaten through the hull and compromised the console in the lower berth. I'm going to have to go down there and see what I can do." "But who will steer the ship?" asked Mom, reasonably I thought. "I'll put it on auto-pilot. Son, you're in charge. Protect your mother and sister." "But ..." "No buts. We don't have a choice. If I don't take them out now, we're done for." "But ..." "You have my permission to open the defense locker. Here's the code." He handed me a plastic key card for the weapons cabinet after opening it, retrieving a stun gun and an air filter and re-locking the arsenal. He then kissed each of us, opened the hatch to the lower berth and disappeared. About five minutes later, we heard some struggling sounds below and a dull thud against a hollow piece of metal. Fearing the worst, Mom engaged the inside cameras and tried to survey the scene. Sure as asteroids, Dad was lying unconscious on the floor with a big bump on his head. That was bad enough, but then the camera caught a brief glance at one of the mollusks. Let's put it this way. If the dictionary people knew what they were doing, they'd have a picture of this clam next to the word "butt-ugly." Koochie's scream alerted me to the fact that they had breached our upper compartment. I admit being scared, but when given responsibility for the family for the first time in your life, courage erupts where it never before gave the slightest hint of existing. I tore into that defense locker like a demon, grabbing a laser, sonic blaster and an electrified casting web. I was sweating, shaking too as three of them came into view. They were very fast. I managed to stop one going for my sister with the net. The electricity had no effect on it, but its clumsiness caused a snaggled entanglement. A terrible noise behind my back whirled me around. The other two had Mom and I went ballistic. I fired the laser at one and it turned to laugh at me as though I was a fool. It resumed harassing Mom, so I fired the sonic blaster at both of them, splaying them against the walls of our cabin. They bounced right back like rubber balls strung to paddles. Mom looked at me hopelessly. Her words turned my insides to ice. "Goodbye, Son. You did your best." Koochie burst into a piercing scream of denial and I looked everywhere, racking my brains to find a way to stop them. No mutant saber-toothed oyster was going to slurp my mother, not while I lived and breathed. A strange, desperate idea came into my head. The cargo hose. Just maybe, the mollusks were not intimate with Martian fertilizer. It was worth a try. I leaped for the nozzle, grabbing it while frantically turning the spigot. Instantly, a ton of Martian dung covered the Mollusks, including the netted one and, unfortunately, my mom. I was thrilled when the potency of that combination dissolved their hard shells, leaving them little more than inartistic phlegm spots on the floor. I never would have believed that my toilet-training skills could have such a far-reaching effect or that my doody-painting techniques, gleaned from the orang-siamang tapes from earth, could be that deadly. The point is, when the shit hits the clams, they tend to fold. |
