Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Page 7

  “Splinter universe,” said Cal.

  “Blister universe,” corrected the one with the piercings.

  “Whatever, same thing,” said Cal.

  “It really isn’t.”

  Cal ignored him. “Turns out – that weird space thing we saw?”

  Loren frowned. “What weird space… Oh, the orange thing?”

  “Bingo. Turns out it’s a planet-eating transdimensional god-like entity,” said Cal. He shrugged. “I know, who knew, right? And we all thought it was just a big cloud.”

  “None of us thought that,” said Mech.

  “Oh. Right. Just me, then,” said Cal. “So, turns out it’s going to eat Earth. Earths. Every Earth. Different dimension Earths, I mean. And these guys want us to stop it.”

  Sixty-Nine shifted awkwardly. “I’m not sure that’s quite what Number Two said.”

  “Atatat!” said Cal, putting a finger to his alternate’s lips. “Let’s not get bogged down in the details. Broad picture, there’s a big weird space thing about to destroy an infinite number of Earths. Fortunately for all involved – with the exception of said big weird space thing – Space Team is going to do what it does best.”

  “Crash our ship into stuff?” Miz guessed.

  “Almost get ourselves killed?” said Mech.

  “Save the day!” said Cal. “I meant we’re going to save the day. But, yes, probably also both of the above.”

  He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Now, then,” he said. “Who’s going to point us in the right direction?”

  “Wait, hold up. We need to know more about what we’re dealing with, before we go rushing off to face it,” said Mech.

  “Agreed,” said Loren.

  “Guys, come on. This is me you’re talking to,” said Cal, holding his arms wide. “I already have it all worked out. You trust me, right?”

  “Kind of,” said Miz.

  “No,” said Mech.

  Loren gave a non-committal sort of shrug. “Meh.”

  “Have I ever steered us wrong before?”

  Mech scowled. “Pretty sure we’ve already had this conversation, and the answer was ‘yes’ then, and it’s ‘yes’ now.”

  “OK, fair point, but you owe me one for the space bears, so how about you trust me this one time, anyway?”

  Mech’s metal feet shuffled on the spot. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go get ourselves killed.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said Cal.

  “Are they in agreement?”

  Carver Two appeared silently behind Cal, almost making him jump out of his skin in fright.

  “Jesus, don’t do that!” Cal protested.

  “Who is that?” asked Miz, straightening slightly.

  “Uh, he’s me,” said Cal.

  Miz’s furry brow furrowed. “What? Like, how can he be you?”

  Cal glanced along the line of Carvers. “Like I said, alternate dimensions.”

  “Oh, did you?” said Miz. “Wasn’t really listening. Nice beard.”

  Cal touched his own chin, before realizing she was talking about Carver Two. “Uh, yeah, so moving on…” Cal said, quickly shifting back to the original subject. “Yes, they’re in. We’ll go and talk to the magic space cloud and smooth this whole thing over.”

  “You are prepared to make the offer?” asked Carver Two. He and Cal had spent a solid hour or so in the pod, working out all the details. It had involved diagrams, and everything.

  “Offer?” said Loren. “What offer?”

  “Details,” said Cal, with a wave of his hand. He smiled at Carver Two. “Like I say, we’ll smooth it over.”

  “I recognize that smile,” said Two. “And to say it does not fill me with confidence would be an understatement.”

  He stared long and hard at Cal, then sighed. “But we have no choice. Sixty-Nine and Fifty will reconfigure the bumpers, and pre-program them for the return trip. The offer must be made from within your universe. We will provide you with a remote control apparatus so that you may initiate your return once the deal has been struck.”

  “Jesus. ‘Remote control apparatus’? Since when did we call it that?” asked Cal. “Call it by its proper name.”

  “That is its proper name,” said Two.

  Cal raised his eyebrows in encouragement. “Come on, you can do it.”

  Two tutted. “Fine. We will provide you with a doohickey, so that you may initiate your return.”

  “There you go!” said Cal. “Didn’t that feel better?”

  “To my great annoyance, yes,” admitted Carver Two. “Yes, it did.”

  Chunky Cal and Tattoo Neck Cal hurried to opposite sides of the Untitled, where two semi-circular clamps had been attached beneath the bottom set of wings.

  “We’ll put you back in your universe, on an approach vector with the big weird space thing,” said Chunky Cal, who – unlike Two – hadn’t lost his essential Cal-ness. “You won’t be too close, but you’ll be able to see it.”

  “Will it be frozen?” Cal asked. “You know, like everything else?”

  “No, that’s only affecting Earth,” said Carver Fifty, flipping open a panel in one of the clamps and adjusting a number of tiny intricate levers.

  “Ye couldnae hae thunk wid frozen the hale lot, surely?”

  Cal blinked. “Sorry, I have no idea what… Something about Shirley?” He looked at Mech and the others. “Any of you guys know a Shirley? No?” He turned back to Carver Eighty-Three. “No, we don’t know a Shirley. Sorry, dude.”

  “Done,” said Chunky Cal, closing his panel.

  Tattoo Neck pulled a face, fiddled with a few more switches, then closed his panel, too. He fished in his pocket and produced something that looked like it had come from a gun. There was a handle and trigger, but where the barrel should have been was nothing but a slim metal wire with a flashing red ball on top.

  “One doohickey.”

  Cal took it, testing the weight of it in his hand.

  “Whatever you do, don’t pull the trigger yet,” said Carver Fifty.

  Cal pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  “Kidding,” said Fifty. “Totally knew you’d do that. It’ll only work from your universe. We’ll launch you from here.”

  Cal flashed a grin at Fifty. “You guys know me so well.”

  He turned to Carver Two. “And stop looking so worried. We have totally got this under control.”

  Cal led the others back up the ramp, then turned at the top. “Oh, and you know I’m keeping the Ghostbusters bean bag, right?”

  Carver Two nodded. “Yes, I know. Good luck, Ninety-Nine. The fate of the Earths is on your shoulders.”

  Splurt rippled, just slightly.

  “As well as that green thing, obviously,” added Carver Two, then he tapped his finger to his forehead in salute, and Cal returned it as the ramp raised into position between them.

  “I suggest you all buckle up, and quickly,” said Kevin, his voice tainted with panicky tones. “Something very odd is happening that I’m not sure I wholly approve of.”

  “We’re going to make a dimension jump,” said Cal, following the others to the bridge. “If it reassures you, we already jumped the ship to get you all here, and no one died. You’ll barely notice it.”

  “Well, if you can cope with it, it can’t be too bad,” said Loren, sliding into her chair.

  “Exactly!” Cal agreed. “I didn’t even throw up a little bit, and there was, like, zero in the way of accidental bodily functions.”

  “I feel like you’re looking for a ‘Well done,’ there,” said Mech. “Just so you know, I ain’t gonna congratulate you for not shizzing your pants.”

  “I will, sir,” said Kevin. “And, on behalf of the washing machine, thank you.”

  “Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate that,” said Cal. The ship began to hum with vibration, and fingers of white light crept across the viewscreen. Cal quickly pulled on his seat belt, and set Splurt down in his lap. “OK, looks like we’re r
eady for blast-off.”

  “Readings are all over the place,” said Loren, tapping her controls. The side of the panel, which had been broken off, was now back in place, but held on with tape. “I hope they know what they’re doing.”

  “Hey, come on. They’re all me,” said Cal.

  An awkward silence descended on the bridge.

  “Great,” sighed Miz, after what was quite a long time. “We’re totally all going to die.”

  The vibration of the ship rose to a loud buzzing sound as the white glow spread like a fast-growing fungus across the screen.

  “Hey, now, not so negative,” said Cal, raising his voice over the din.

  “Fine. We’re probably all going to die. That better?” said Miz.

  “Much,” replied Cal, and then the screen flashed white, their stomachs all lurched, and the laws of conventional physics unfurled like a loose thread before them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When the whiteness retreated, the big weird space thing loomed in space ahead of them, still doing its weird ripple thing.

  Up close, it looked less like one big cloud, and more like billions of smaller clouds, that all just happened to be heading the same way at the same time. A paler orange glow emanated from the center of the vaporous mass, creating a shimmering glitter effect where it reflected off thousands of metallic particles floating within the thing.

  “There it is,” Loren whispered.

  “Duh,” said Miz.

  “What do the scanners pick up?” Cal asked.

  Mech tapped some controls. “I got no idea. The data that’s coming back is… I don’t know. I ain’t seen anything like it before.”

  “The Carver Council – because I have my own council now. Don’t know if you noticed?”

  “We did,” Mech grunted.

  “They had a name for it. Not weird space thing, I mean, something different,” said Cal. “Even though, if you ask me, my name was better.”

  They sat staring out at the thing for a while. If it knew they were there, it was doing nothing to show it. It was creeping in the direction of Earth, but with a very deliberate slowness that suggested it was in no great rush.

  “So, what now?” Loren asked. “Do we hail it? Try to, you know, strike up a conversation, or whatever?”

  “I don’t know,” Cal admitted.

  Mech’s head snapped around. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You told us to trust you, which, if you ask me, suggests you had at least some idea of what you were doing.”

  “No, I asked you to trust me,” Cal corrected. “If you trusted me, you did so of your own free will, so I can’t be blamed for anything that happens to us. Can we all agree on that now? Nothing is my fault.”

  “Oh, it’s all your fault!” Mech said.

  “Maybe we, like, fly into it?” Miz guessed.

  Cal chewed his lip. “Doesn’t that seem a little, I don’t know, forward? Just, like, ‘Oh, hi, Ikumor-whatever. Excuse us while we violate you with our spaceship.”

  Miz sat upright in her seat. This was rare, and worthy of note in itself. The alarm in her voice was what really caught everyone’s attention, though. “Wait, what? Ikumordo? Are you saying that’s Ikumordo?”

  “Uh, yeah, pretty sure that’s what they called it,” said Cal. “Why?”

  “Loren, get us out of here. Now!” Miz barked.

  Loren looked back over her shoulder. “What? Why?”

  “Just do it,” said Miz. She snarled, but it only lasted a moment before her expression became uncharacteristically soft and vulnerable. “Please. Just get us out of here.”

  “You know this thing?” Cal asked. “I mean, I’m assuming not on a personal level, but… You know what it is?”

  Miz nodded, her eyes not shifting from the thing on screen. “My dad used to talk about it when I was little,” she whispered. “He saw it, back when he was a kid. Him and my grandfather. He used to say it swallowed a whole solar system. Just, like, devoured it, or whatever – planets, moons, sun, everything. He used to have nightmares about it. I’d hear him wake up screaming pretty much every night.”

  “And we’re sure that was this Ikumordo?” said Cal. “I mean, it does sound like its M.O. I guess, but this thing isn’t big enough to eat a whole solar system, is it?”

  “How many Ikumordos can there be?” Loren asked. “Maybe it shrunk.”

  “Whatever, we need to get away from it,” said Miz. She looked imploringly from Loren to Cal. “Please.”

  “I’m rather afraid we can’t, ma’am,” announced Kevin. “It appears we’re caught in some kind of tractor beam.”

  Loren tested the controls. “He’s right, I’m getting nothing.”

  “Oh, shizz,” Miz whispered. “Oh, shizz, this is it. We really are going to die.”

  “Hey, relax. I got this,” said Cal. “The other Cals thought something like this would happen. This is a good thing. This is just what we wanted. OK?”

  Cal turned his chair back to face the front. Mech caught his eye, and Cal gave a worried little shrug in reply. On screen, Ikumordo seemed to expand as they were pulled towards it. Wisps of orange hugged the screen like early-morning fog, while further ahead, deeper inside the cloud, something soft and fluffy became solid and rigid.

  “We have officially penetrated the big weird space thing,” Cal whispered. “And we didn’t even have to buy it a drink.”

  He looked around at the others, half hoping for some sort of reaction, but everyone was transfixed by all the shimmering orangeness.

  The Currently Untitled jolted softly as it touched down inside the cloud. “I don’t get it,” said Mech. “Scanners ain’t showing nothing below us. Kevin, did you drop the landing legs?”

  “Not me, sir,” said Kevin. “I think Ikumordo may have done it.”

  “Shizz,” Mech grunted. “So it can control our ship. That’s not good.”

  “Wait, no, hang on,” said Kevin. “I tell a lie. I don’t think I put them away after we left the bubble universe.”

  “You sure?” Mech asked.

  “Oh yes, sir. Absolutely,” said Kevin. “Well, fifty-fifty.”

  Loren looked back over her shoulder. “Now what?”

  “Can we take off again?” asked Miz.

  “Theoretically, yes,” said Kevin. “The tractor beam is no longer holding us.”

  “Then let’s, like, get out of here,” Miz said.

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Cal, unclipping his belt. He stood up. “Let’s go out there and talk to it, see if we can make it see sense. It’s either that, or let an infinite number of Earths all die, and I’m not sure my conscience can handle that, can’t speak for anyone else.”

  “I’m not going out there,” said Miz. “I’m staying here.”

  “Fair enough,” said Cal. “Loren, Mech?”

  Mech nodded. Loren unclipped her own belt and stood up. “No way we’re letting you do this yourself,” she said.

  “Yeah, man, you’d totally fonk it up,” said Mech. “Hell, I’m thinking we tie you up and leave you here with Miz, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Probably best,” Cal agreed, but then he led the way out into the corridor. Just before he reached the back hatch, he set Splurt down on the floor and squatted beside him. “Keep an eye on Miz, OK, buddy? She looked kinda freaked out, and I don’t want to leave her alone.”

  “Don’t worry, sir—” Kevin began.

  “Or with Kevin,” Cal continued. He rubbed Splurt’s head. The little blob’s eyes gazed up at him with absolute sincerity. “Thanks, pal,” said Cal. “Knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  He stood up, nodded once to Loren and Mech, then dropped the hatch. Loren jumped back, her arms across her face, her eyes wide in panic.

  “What the fonk are you doing?” yelped Mech. “We’re in space! You can’t just drop the motherfonking hatch!”

  Cal glanced outside, then back at the cyborg. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Why’? Because there’s n
o fonking atmosphere, that’s why!”

  Cal leaned outside, inhaled deeply through his nose a few times, then leaned back in. “I think it’s OK,” he said, then he trudged down the ramp and stopped just before the bottom.

  The ground beneath the ship didn’t look like ground at all. It was wispy and white like dry ice, with a vague sort of transparency to it that showed the heaving mass of orange below. The Untitled stood on it, which suggested it was solid, but all the primal parts of Cal’s brain were making it very clear that they believed otherwise. Cal blew towards it, and the top layer of mist drifted away from him, which did nothing to boost his confidence.

  “Mech?” Cal asked.

  There was a brief pause as Mech tapped the controls on his forearm. “Sensors got nothing. Lot of other readings from further inside this thing – lot of other readings. Far as I can tell, though, there’s nothing beneath us.”

  “Great,” said Loren. “So what do we do?”

  “We take it slowly,” said Mech. “Maybe link arms or—”

  Cal jumped off the ramp. The ground held him. “It’s totally fine,” he said. He jumped up and down a few times for emphasis. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  He held a hand out, but Loren batted it away. She took half a second to compose herself, then stepped onto the fluffy whiteness. “Huh,” she said. “It’s solid.”

  Mech moved less confidently. He shuffled closer to the bottom of the ramp, his eyes darting between his scanners and the thing his scanners were insisting wasn’t there.

  “Come on, we haven’t got all day,” said Cal. “It’s fine. Look.”

  He jumped up and down again. Loren flinched and shot her feet a look of concern, but the ground held firm.

  Mech glared at Cal. “I swear, man, if this is some kinda trick, and I fonking plummet through this shizz, you’re a dead man.”

  “What do you mean ‘a trick’?” Cal snorted. “What, are were wearing rocket boots? Come on, it’s fine. It’ll hold you.”

  “How d’you know? I’m heavier than you two.”

  “Not as heavy as the ship,” Loren pointed out.

  “Although,” added Cal. “I didn’t like to say, but… have you put on a few pounds lately?”

  “Fonk you, man,” said Mech. He stepped off the ramp in a sort of wide-eyed panicky lunge, briefly shouted, “Yaargh!” then jolted noisily when his weight crashed down onto the cloud.