Homesick

The monitor image fluttered and distorted when the rockets fired, but they could still see Daaarrm sinking into his couch. Obiiilion’s bulk almost trailed behind her and her face stretched across itself, looking impossibly wide. Clearly unprepared for this experience, she shouted angrily, as if rebuking gravity itself. Later, as the ship began its climb into orbit, they could see vomit explode from her mouth and dribble back behind her head. She howled in frustration.

“Shouldn’t have eaten so much,” Ian mumbled, shaking his head.

Vlad burst out laughing. “Look at it! Look at that pig!”

But Anderson leaped from his chair without warning and launched himself at Vladimir. His legs were still tied together, so at first he only fumbled helplessly. His hands were free, however, and he quickly guided himself in the man’s direction. He grabbed him by the collar and landed a vicious punch on his stomach with surprising strength.

Sally jumped into action, sweeping his feet out from under him with one leg and grabbing at his flailing arms.

“What the hell?” Ian shouted, ducking to avoid a stray kick from Anderson.

“Fly the ship!” Sally shouted to him as he prepared to rise. “Stay with the controls!”

Anderson screamed insults at Vlad with a cadence too fast for the translator to keep up with. He seized a handful of his hair and pulled.

“You mad fool!” Vlad cried in fury, struggling in sudden panic. He angled his body either to retreat or strike back, but doing so was causing him to drift out of his seat, the result of which would be a floating brawl that would surely become disastrous in the cramped space. Sally used her ankles to brace herself to the doorframe while guiding the two fighters away from Ian. Slipping her arm under Scott’s shoulder, she wrenched one arm from Vlad and folded it behind his back. Seeing his advantage, Vlad prepared to strike him in the side of the head, but Sally bent her legs to pull him out of range, taking their combined mass briefly on her ankles.

“Don’t!” Sally shouted at Vlad.

But in the confusion none of them noticed that the com panel was unmuted.

“What’s going on up there?” Daaarrm shouted, his voice weak from the G-forces.

“Masters!” Scott shouted.

“They’re over there!” Sally told Scott, trying to angle his body towards the door.

Momentarily confused, he released Vlad and reached back towards the doorframe. Sally used that opportunity to coil her body around him and fold his other arm behind his back, pressing the Velcro cuff into its place, which held him just long enough for her to re-buckle the restraint. With that arm secure, she wedged him in the doorframe and worked on the other. He wiggled violently, struggling to get his bearings.

“You can’t talk about Mistress Obiiilion that way!” he screamed at Vlad like a boy defending his mother. “You can’t say that about the Mistress!”

“All right, all right!” Sally shouted. “Apologize, Vlad!”

He glared down at her, stroking his head with one hand and his stomach with the other.

“Apologize, Vlad!” she repeated, struggling to maintain her hold on Scott.

“Very well, 4-7-0-2,” he said, almost spitting his words. “I’m sorry I insulted your pretty, fat girlfriend.”

But this enraged him more. He tore his arm free and tried to crawl towards Vlad again, making Sally ride him like a horse. She saw Ian turning from the controls once again, looking to see how he might help.

“No, Ian! I can handle it!” She reached for Scott’s free arm, swiping at it several times before grasping the strap dangling from his cuff. She pulled it hard and forced his shoulder back against the doorframe long enough to fly the strap through its buckle. He struggled from her grip again, but with both arms secured he only managed to turn himself helplessly in circles.

On the screen, Obiiilion seemed to have cleaned herself up as far as her hands could reach. She looked about the ship with a weary expression. Sally could see that Ian had wisely muted the transmission on both sides before the second bout began.

“Sco . . . 4702!” Sally panted. “Remember, you’re supposed to be watching Ian fly the shuttlepod! Remember that? Mistress Obiiilion said so! Remember?”

He snapped to attention, finding Ian with his eyes and allowing himself be guided back to his place beside him.

“Un-mute it, Ian!” Sally said.

When he did, they could hear Daaarrm’s voice pick up in the middle of a tirade. “__status of this flight right now! 4702, are we in danger? We need to know!”

“Darm!” Sally shouted. “Everything’s under control!”

“You deceitful slither of maggots!” he shouted back. “What have you done?”

“It’s under control!” Sally repeated. “Ask 4702.”

“Well?”

Scott scanned Ian’s controls carefully. “Yes, Master Daaarrm,” he said, still out of breath. “I see nothing wrong.”

There was a pause. “Very well.”

“You should be starting to feel weightless now,” Ian said. “As you enter orbit, your weight will begin to disappear. This is normal __”

“I know all about this!” he growled. “Don’t patronize me!”

“Very well,” Ian said with a shrug.

Sally signaled him to mute the transmission again.

“Why do we worry what they think?” Vlad spoke up, still nursing his stomach. “What could they do?” He regarded Ian. “You talk to them like flight attendant. Why not offer them coffee? You treat them like friends!”

Sally glared at him. “Whether we care how they feel or not is hardly the point. Keeping this operation from falling apart is, however, and you are not helping us!”

Vlad rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t have to hold him back, you know,” Sally challenged. “Or I could have waited a few minutes to see how well you did. Maybe I could have taken bets with Ian here, but that wouldn’t have been very professional, would it? Show some courtesy and watch your mouth from now on! And, if you can’t do that, just keep it shut! This man is ill and none of us needed that! Heaven help you if you’ve made me hurt him!”

“How was I to know?”

Sally nodded. “Granted! Maybe you’re not the sharpest tack in the box and maybe what’s obvious to most normal people goes right over your head, but if you don’t have anything constructive to say, just shut up! If I had to trank him again he might have gotten sicker, and that wouldn’t have made a good impression on our guests, now would it?”

“Captain, may we speak in private,” he asked with a tired expression.

Sally thought for a moment and turned to Ian. “Will you be alright?”

“Yeah,” he said

She then looked for Poole, finding her perched above the view port in a corner of the room that would normally be inaccessible to all but the most limber. She observed them with concern, still processing what she had just seen. “Call me if anything else goes wrong.”

Once in the corridor, she closed the hatch. “Make it quick.”

“Captain, you can’t really intend to let them get here!” he said, as if asking her to let him in on a secret plan. “I know how to fly the pods. There are a hundred steps. Everything has to be done right __”

“And you’re saying there are probably ninety-nine ways we could screw up and make it crash, right?”

“Or lose it in orbit.”

She scowled at him as if he had just told a tasteless joke. “Yeah, I know how that feels. I remember when Ian and I wondered how we’d find our way back to the ship with no navigational signal.” She resisted the urge to shove Vlad up against the bulkhead, but her eyes told him she wanted to. “Vladimir Coronov, it may seem old-fashioned, but when I make a deal with someone I keep up my end. Don’t you think I’d feel a lot safer if those bastards somehow died en route? Then they wouldn’t have the shuttlepod and we’d be spared the pleasure of their company, right?”

He stared blankly.

“But then we also wouldn’t be able to determine the status of those databanks, whether they’d been accessed or copied. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some way of knowing what they know about us?”

He didn’t answer.

“Also, odd as it may seem, we’re representing our planet out here, and what we do may determine how Earth and New Ontario get along for generations to come. On that basis, we obviously can’t expect them to honor their commitments if we don’t honor ours. That also means, if they extend an invitation to negotiate, we’re obligated to at least try to take it at face value even if we don’t particularly trust them.”

Vlad started to protest, but Sally raised her hand to cut him off.

“Remember our deal, Vlad! I’ve got some new orders for you and I expect you to follow them. First, doctor’s orders: Keep your mouth shut around my patient! And now, Captain’s orders: As soon as they’re out of that shuttlepod, you go in and get those databanks just as Ian described. Get them out as quick as you can, and then plant Ian’s bomb.”

He nodded.

“Then I want you to replace the chutes, all four of them. When you’ve done that, I want you to install the auxiliary landing struts and re-fuel the ship. Give them just enough fuel for landing, no more. Our guests will be granted safe passage, just like I agreed, no matter who they are!”

He said nothing, but couldn’t mask his disapproval.

“Oh, and another thing. It occurs to me that once they step onboard this ship they won’t understand a word we say.”

“That is true.”

“Rig up a few portable translator units for their benefit. While you’re at it, break out some headsets for us, too. I want to hear everything going on everywhere on the ship while they’re here. Now go!”

Sally watched Vlad go off to his work and then returned to the pilot’s cone.