Chapter 5

"Slow day for monsters," Greasly grumbled as he stood from a crouched and ready pose. The alley was typical of alleys on Sol Deux, which all had a vague cookie-cutter quality to them—just like the rest of the planet. As dingy alleyways went, Greasly would give it three out of five stars—holding back two for its displeasing lack of danger.

"So sad," Penny commented. She didn't really sound sad.

He looked back at the petite Humanoid female standing next to Throom and had to smile. The way she filled out her khaki flight pants and grey tank top, the sassy tilt of her one raised eyebrow, the shine of the forehead zipper peeking out through the bangs of her short black hair—it all thrilled him. They had been together for more than a year and he was still smitten with the cheeky little Goober.

He holstered his spazzer. "You remember the last time we were here? We met rat-faced scab melons, giant wolves, and thermidors!"

"What's a thermidor?" Penny asked.

"Those big lobster things that almost killed you in the Hall of Records."

Her expression showed she remembered those. "You think they're still there?"

"I doubt it. From what I know about thermidors, they tend to be wanderers. I'm sure there's something else there by now."

"Wonderful." She groaned. "Well the sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave."

"We'll get there."

"We could be there and gone by now if you hadn't landed so far away."

"I expected to meet more nasties on the way, but all we've seen are a dead harmadillo and a handful of pigeon toads." He motioned to the fun-deficient alley. "Where's the purple lung-pluckers? The yellow pus maggots? Hell, I'd settle for an off-white knee-nosher at this point."

"Something you'd feel justified in shooting?" Penny jabbed.

Greasly nodded. "You get me, baby."

"It is unusual, now that you mention it," Throom said, looking around.

"Maybe the Solians decided to clean things up on their own?" Penny posited.

"Sol Deuxians have no initiative." He motioned out into the street where a scattering of Sol Deuxians commuted mindlessly. "Just hollow flesh echoes of a fallen society. As for Sol Prime, they don't even like to admit this planet exists."

One of the flesh echoes bumped into the Humanoid mass of stone that was Throom's body. Throom looked down at the top of the thing's head. It paused only a moment, checked its watch, and tried to walk through him again.

"You may have to step aside, Throom," Greasly offered.

Throom grumbled a bit and side-stepped. It continued on its habitual route.

"Let's just get the body and go back to the ship," Penny proffered.

"Then what? Go back to Sol Prime? Maybe stand in line to get a permit to apply for a waiver to get a street taco?"

"We do still need to find someone that can compare the DNA," Throom added helpfully.

"The Flatheads are already working on that."

"Are they having any luck?" Penny asked.

Greasly performed a sort of interpretive dance with his shoulders and face to express his ignorance.

"So maybe we should have waited until they had something before we came here?" Penny suggested too late.

"I thought this trip would be more fun than it turned out to be."

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head at him.

"Oh come on," he challenged, "aren't you sick of staying on the ship?"

Her stern look seemed to soften. Or, perhaps, she just adjusted her strategy. "Staying on the ship can be fun," she suggested as she stepped into his personal space for a kiss.

Greasly kissed back while stealing a glance to see how his first mate was reacting.

Throom looked up to avoid the public display of affection. He started at something he saw. "Uh, oh."

Greasly released Penny and followed the Fraggart's gaze up the side of the building. He drew his spazzer.

Making their way down the wall of the building were dozens of creatures that looked like shorts with flailing suspender straps. The slit-pupiled eyes peering out of the leg holes brimmed with menace.

"Slaughterhosen!" Greasly exclaimed as if he'd just opened a very good birthday present.

The trio opened fire on the descending threat. There seemed to be at least twenty of them. Greasly hit one square in the upward facing flap. The recipient merely quivered before continuing its downward advance.

"Spazzers aren't doing much!" Penny warned.

"Heat flingers!" He kept his eye on his target as he changed weapons. Before he was ready to fire, the beast detached from the wall and glided smoothly toward Throom. Greasly's hasty shot missed the gliding short pants by a hand's breadth.

The beast ended its transit on top of Throom's head. It engulfed it like a funeral shroud. In an instant, Throom's head seemed to disappear. The slaughterhosen gripped tight against Throom's now empty shoulders. Throom was trying to pull the leathery thing off his head, but his hand was finding only empty air.

"Throom!" Penny screamed.

"It's okay," Greasly assured, "keep shooting." He stepped up and pulled the assailant off his first mate with his free hand. The confused stone head of Throom reappeared. "Their mouths are bigger than they look in four dimensions." Greasly threw the offending pair of breeches to the street and blasted them. The body disappeared as if pulled through a fist-sized hole in the pavement, but there was no hole.

"It was weird in there," Throom complained.

Greasly took out two in rapid succession. They disappeared into themselves in the same way that the one on the pavement had.

Penny was also doing well. Three more vanished. Then, suddenly, all of the remaining assailants vanished at once.

"What happened?" Penny blurted, looking around to make sure they weren't appearing again behind them.

Greasly holstered his heat flinger with a smile. "Well that was fun!"

"Where'd they go?" Throom asked.

"It won't be back for a while," Greasly said.

"That was all one thing?" Penny exclaimed.

"Yeah. It's six dimensional. The individual hosen are like fingers poking through into our dimensions. I mean, assuming fingers had mouths and pockets and such."

Penny kept scanning her surroundings as if expecting an immediate reappearance.

"That's a new one, I think, for Sol Deux." Greasly was beaming. "But no wonder there's nothing else around here. It probably ate them all."

"Maybe we should leave, then." Penny motioned in the direction of the shuttle. "Let's get the shuttle and fly to the Hall of Records."

"You're right," Greasly said. "There won't be any more fun here for a while." He headed off in one of the not-toward-the-shuttle directions and motioned them to follow. They walked down the street, avoiding defunct remains of land cars and occasional commuters. "You know, now that I think about it, there are fewer Sol Deuxians around here too. Makes sense."

"It's eating them?" Penny asked, watching one of them walk past.

"Why wouldn't it? Let's look for more Sol Deuxians so we know we're out of its range."

"And into something else's," Penny filled in.

"Precisely!" Greasly responded enthusiastically. They started to walk.

"And you'd really rather do this than visit my parents?"

"Is that a trick question?"

She responded with a sort of grunt/growl combo.

"We can't go to Goob now anyway. We have to wait for Hardegar."

"Actually," Penny began, "Square says that if we leave soon, we can get to Goob and back before Hardegar is done on Sol Prime. As long as we don't stay longer than three days. So what do you think?"

"I like the 'no longer than three days' part," Greasly admitted.

"So we go?"

"We can if you want," he relented.

"I do. It will be a nice break from Sol. I'm very sick of Sol."

"Even the fun one?"

"Especially the fun one," she said.

"Seriously? Think about the other Sol."

"We've just been in this system too long."

She had a point there. Before Hardegar arrived, they had already spent 101 days on Sol Prime getting their own rebob shares registered and setting up all the necessary financial channels. It had taken the full crews of two ships to retrieve the prize. That meant that a single instance of the most valuable thing in the galaxy had to be split ten ways. Lots of paperwork.

In addition, Greasly had been dealing with a separate subpopulation of the tedious Solians—the Solians repairing the Incorrigible. It had been an agonizing time for all of the Incorrigible crew, and they had not even been able have any side adventures like this to relieve the frustration.

"Think about it, Penny. At least on this Sol, we can shoot what annoys us."

She voiced her concurrence with a begrudging grunt.

"You know," he said, "now that I'm thinking about all of the paperwork and administrivia that we've gone through since we've been here, it's amazing that it only took 101 days."

"I suppose that's true."

"You have to hand it to the Solians. When it comes to wasteful bureaucratic excess, they have reached peak efficiency."

"Let's just get Hardegar's old body and go, okay?"

"We've had one firefight, so sure." He headed off up a cross street. "We won't need the whole body to get some DNA, though. Just a chunk."

"Isn't that the Hall of Records?" Throom asked, pointing down the same cross street but the opposite direction.

"Where?" Greasly looked around. "Oh! So it is!" Greasly backtracked past Throom, giving him a glare as he passed.

"Slipped right past you there, didn't it?" Penny observed.

As they got closer to the middle of the block and the Hall of Records, they could tell that the glass windows of the entryway were still smashed out. The damage had not been repaired. That was a good indication that a chunk of Hardegar might still be lying around.

As they arrived, dark stains of thermidor blood still spotted the sidewalk and much of the floor inside, but no bodies were visible.

"What happened to the dead lobster things?" Penny asked.

Throom answered, "Something must have eaten them."

"I hope they didn't eat Hardegar too," she said.

"He didn't have anything tasty on him," Greasly pointed out. "He was just leather, bones, and mechanical parts."

"Then where is he?" Throom asked as he stepped into the entryway and looked around.

The other two entered and started searching the debris for a body that should have been quite visible but wasn't.

"You don't suppose it walked away?" Throom posited.

"Seems more likely that the thermidor that had a grip on him got dragged off and Hardegar's body went with it."

"Fuck!" Penny let out. "So the whole trip was useless."

Throom started tossing aside chunks of destroyed furniture to look under them.

Greasly crouched and examined the floor. "As I remember, it was about here that the thing that had him died. These streaks could be thermidor blood and hydraulic fluid," he looked to where the streak went out the broken window. "Maybe we can track it."

He and Penny exited to the street, but the trail ended shortly after exiting the building. They walked around looking for more signs.

"Ignore the blood. Look for hydraulic fluid," Greasly suggested.

"Right," Penny affirmed.

Eventually, Greasly threw up his hands and said, "I've got nothing. You?"

"Nothing."

"All this blood tells us is that thermidors were dragged off in both directions," he pointed the two directions the street ran. "So Hardegar's body either went this way or that."

"I think we could have guessed that," Penny observed.

Throom joined them. "You think this is enough?" he held up what looked like a stuffed leather glove minus any stitching.

"Where'd you get that?" Penny asked.

"It was under some rubble."

"Before I shot, he had already blasted off part of his left side by accident. Maybe he shot this off at the same time."

"Well," Greasly said, "I guess that turned out to be a lucky shot." He took the hand from Throom and started to put it into the back pocket of Penny's flight pants. When this elicited a look of shocked disgust, he assured her soothingly, "He would have wanted it this way."

"Ugh."

"Come look what else I found," Throom requested. He led them into the destroyed lobby again. There was a spot there that was damp from leaks in the ceiling. Throom looked around until he spotted something, then pointed to what he had found. It was a slug-like thing that appeared to be made out of water. It was about the size of Greasly's index finger. "Cool huh?"

"Wow," Greasly agreed and hunkered down to get a closer look. It was moving along the ground at a fairly good clip—for a slug at least.

"What is that?" Penny asked.

"Not sure," Greasly answered. "If it wasn't so big, I'd say it was a grex."

"What's a grex?"

"Some types of amoebae live independently until they need to move somewhere else. Then they come together to form a grex, or pseudoplasmodium. It looks just like this thing, but much tinier."

"There's another one," Throom pointed out.

"And one there," Penny added.

Two of the things met up and merged into a single, larger slug.

Penny asked nervously, "What do they eat?"

"Amoebae eat microscopic stuff. I don't know what this is, though. Who knows what it eats?"

Three more slugs met and formed into one larger one. Several more appeared out from under the rubble.

"Let's not wait around and find out," Penny said.

Greasly agreed, and they went back to the street.

"So back to the shuttle?" Throom asked.

Penny's glare pinned Greasly to his promise. "All right." he dragged himself that direction but quickly froze.

An oblong pink blob was now at the intersection. It was half a block away, which in this part of the city meant over 100 meters.

"What is that?" Penny asked.

"There are a few possibilities," Greasly said. "Throom, can you tell if that looks like a clam shell, and if it's a fleshy shell or a hard one?"

"Not from here."

"Not even if you zoom in?"

"I can't zoom in."

"I thought Fraggarts were designed as weapons. I always assumed that you had hyper vision or something."

"We see with about the same acuity as our designers."

"Huh."

"How long have you two been together?" Penny asked, pointedly.

"It never came up," Greasly said defensively.

"It's come up several times," Throom corrected.

"Fine, but that means we need to get closer to see if that's a screaming pink bone crusher or just a corner clam."

"In that case, let's let Throom go first," Penny suggested, "since he doesn't have bones to crush."

Without waiting for an answer, Throom took the lead.

"We'll be wanting matter declumpinizationizers for this one." They all drew their weapons.

"Don't shoot Throom," Greasly goaded Penny.

Rather than object, she nodded.

"Or me," he added.

"No promises," she said with a smirk.

"So if that's a bone crusher, it'll look like a giant clam. Don't be fooled. They can outrun a Human and crush you with one snap," Greasly warned mostly Penny.

"Then why are we getting closer to it?" She asked as she moved to behind the Cap'n.

"For fun."

"Bad answer, Lou."

"Besides, if we take another route back to the shuttle, we risk getting lost."

Greasly's head made an odd little sound as it came into contact with the stone back of his first mate, who had stopped walking.

"It moved," Throom said.

The other two stepped to either side of Throom to see for themselves. Down on the corner, the two-meter pink clam shell raised itself up on appendages that looked exactly like two beefy, naked, male, Human legs.

"No fish nets. Not a corner clam. If it charges, don't run. Just keep firing," Greasly instructed, "And don't let the scream paralyze you."

The clam opened, and they braced for the scream, but only a loud hiss came forth. It advanced toward them. The legs seemed to drag rather than propel. In fact the feet were now entirely off the ground.

"It's a pseudo pink bone crusher," Greasly stated confidently.

"Is that better or worse?" Penny asked.

He shrugged. "Slower, but more smashy. It'll try to pound, not bite."

The clam head was advancing, carried by a millipede body some twenty or so meters in length, that had been concealed around the corner. They only had time to fire at the thing twice before it was on them. It tried to smash its clam onto Greasly. He managed to jump aside in time, and the giant shell crunched into the sidewalk. The useless legs popped straight out on either side.

This let Penny score a shot dead center of the shell. A chunk the size of her head exploded outward—flesh and shell declumpinizationized. The beast did not fall. Instead, it raised the shell for another strike.

"Don't bother with the head!" Greasly yelled as he blasted one of the body segments. "The brain is in one of the segments!"

"Which one?" She leaped to the side to avoid a deadly clamming.

"You never know! It's like an advent calendar with only one treat!"

"Spread out," Throom yelled.

"Good idea!"

They moved out into the street to make the thing choose a single target, leaving its body open to attack by the other two. It chose Greasly. He avoided the smash and blasted at a segment.

The leggy clam raised its pseudo shell above him. He dodged into the area where the last strike had occurred and immediately found that said area was now a gaping hole. He tried to catch himself on the far ledge as he fell, but only managed to send his matter declumpinizationizer spinning across the pavement and add spin to his plummet. He landed back down in shallow, mucky water. The ceiling spat small debris as the creature's latest strike walloped the street above. Stunned from the fall, all he could do was squint.

"Lou!" Penny's voice yelled into his ear. She had turned on the yackers.

"I'm fine. Keep shooting." He managed to get to his feet. He stood a moment, trying to gauge if the thing was going to smash its way into the sewer to get him. "I lost my matter declumpinizationizer. I'm going to find a way out." The sound of the next smash let him know the clam had moved to another target.

He was in a sewer—a square tube more than twice his height. He was peering down the tunnel for an exit when a shadow came over him. He looked up to see the tail end of the monster. It was snaking down through the hole in the ceiling. Giant pincers on the tail were clicking menacingly.

"Watch out, Lou," Penny urged breathlessly. "It's got tongs!"

"I see them." He tried spazzing the tail while he backed away down the tunnel. The chitinous exoskeleton made the attempt useless. He turned to run away. At least he was heading in the direction of the intersection they wanted.

Greasly stopped when he saw that he was entering a patch of sewer where the walls were lumpy with yellow fur and large, anxious-looking eyes. He hesitated only until he realized that they were just rat-faced scab lemons—a smaller, benign, and fragrant type of rat-faced scab melon.

He had only paused a second, but that was enough for the pincers to catch up and knock his legs out from under him as the thing felt around blindly. Cued to his presence, they snapped at him but caught only part of his coat. A second snap found only air. Greasly was up and running through the lemony tunnel.

An idea stopped him. "Guy's I'm going to keep this end of it busy down here. Maybe I can keep you out of smashing range. Try to get past it and to the shuttle."

"Right," Throom said.

Greasly saw that the tail was retreating from him. He ran up and swatted it to draw its attention. He nearly lost a leg when it responded with a rapid series of pinches. Greasly backed up. It began retreating again. Looking to the walls, Greasly started plucking the hapless balls of fur that hung there and pelting his insectile foe with them. It responded with a flurry of sweeps and snaps that the Human was very happy not to be involved in.

"This is not going to keep the back end busy for long," he warned his crew.

"It's looking really ragged up here," Throom advised. "The brain may be in one of your segments down there."

"I can't do any damage with what I have."

The grabby tail part seemed less frantic, possibly realizing this tactic was not getting what it was looking for. Soon it would give up and attack Throom and Penny with both ends. He ran up and slapped the thing again. It came after him briefly with renewed vigor.

He attempted another slap and dash. Instead of snapping at him, the pincer end shot up to the ceiling and pressed itself against it. Greasly didn't understand what it was doing until there was a crash, and debris from the ceiling let him know that the clam was smashing its way into the tunnel directly above him. Clever clam!

He beat feet in the opposite direction as the tattered, clam-headed millipede burst through and flowed down into the tunnel, following him at speed.

He had very much hoped to find at least one exit per city block. But for as far as he could see down the smelly square tube, the Solian drainage engineers had had different ideas. It would probably be a wise precaution from now on to make himself familiar with the sewer systems of planets he visited, given the habit he had of ending up in them.

Wherever the next exit was, it was turning out to be a long way to sprint. Fatigue was already tapping him on the shoulder to suggest he stop for an ice-cold drink and some time in a lounger. He risked a glance backward to see how much of a lead he had on a painful death. It wasn't much.

He considered leaping on top of the thing to confuse it, but that would only change how he spent his last few seconds of life—trading oozing across the floor for dripping from the ceiling.

He had already seen how useless the spazzer was against this giant. His matter declumpinizationizer was half a block away and on the surface. His heat flinger was his only hope. He drew it and fired backward at the thing, trying not to slow his run as he did. When, to his surprise, he heard the thing scream, he slid to a stop and fired into the open clam.

The heat flinger didn't create any apparent damage, but the monster abruptly stopped and pulled back. A moment later it surged forward. Greasly backed up as quickly as he thought he could without falling, hoping the thing would open up to scream again. The clam opened, and Greasly fired into it. This time it did not recoil. Instead it just closed its clam and remained motionless.

"I killed it," Greasly was about to say until he realized that he had just heard Throom say it in his yacker.

Down the tunnel, over the top of the dead beast, he could see his granite first mate waving.

"Can you get out down there?" Throom asked.

"Not for quite a ways."

"If you can climb over the body to get here, I can lift you out."

"Right."

One very messy crawl over the remains of a monster and one very exhausted walk back to the shuttle later, they were on their way back to the Incorrigible.

"Are you okay?" Penny asked as she slumped in a seat near him.

"It never got to me. This is all from crawling over it." He motioned to the gooey remains on his clothing.

"Good." She then pulled herself out of her seat and began pelting him with open handed slaps. "You goddamn farking idiot!"

"Ow! Stop!" he protested, feebly trying to fend off the barrage. It abated, and she was starting to sit down when she took one more shot at his face and landed a stinging blow.

She sat. "You've got a problem," she said. After some silence she continued, "Is this going to be a regular thing? Now that you have money, are you going to spend it trying to get yourself killed?" She seemed to be trying to make it sound like a jibe, but Greasly heard the real pain under it. "We need to find you another fucking hobby." She was back to pulling her punches on swear words. That meant she was calming down.

He looked to Throom, who abruptly returned his focus to piloting the shuttle, tacitly agreeing.

"You're not wrong," he admitted to the pair of them.

They traveled in weary silence for a ways before Greasly said something that caused even Penny to break into laughter, though reluctantly.

"It's got tongs," he said.