Space is a quiet place. Sound waves don’t propagate through vacuum, so a theoretical watcher hovering a few meters away from the Corti ship would have heard nothing more than peaceful, blissful silence.
Move forward a few meters, to the inside of the hull, though, and the story was entirely different.
“Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, it’s trying to eat me! I’m going to die! Aieee!”
“Rawr! Nom, nom, nom, nom!”
“Akeri, be calm, be calm, I just need to… Curse it!”
“Aieee! My arm! Leten, it broke my arm!”
“You’ll survive, now help me catch…”
“Aiee!” A crash followed this second scream.
“Can’t catch me, na, na, na, na!” Giggles followed that, then there was a brief, ominous silence.
“It’s off you now, at least. You go to the medical bay while I corral the thing. I just need to… Ah bother. I don’t see it. I thought it ducked under the examining table…”
“Where is it? Where is it? I can’t hear it anymore, where is it?”
“Entropy!”
“What?”
“It’s in the shuttle bay.” There was a metallic thud that rang through the ship. “I think it’s broken something. How in the galaxy did it get there so quickly, though?”
“It’s an entropy-spewing deathworlder, that’s how!”
Two Corti stood in a standard examining room with its cold metal table fitted with restraining straps that had, unfortunately, turned out to be unable to snug down quite tightly enough to hold a very small and very wiggly abductee, much to their dismay.
“It’s barely one meter tall, its legs are shorter than mine. How?!” Leten, the slightly calmer of the two, though only slightly, stepped away from the security panel where he’d seen the indicator for the inner shuttle bay doors showing open, and keyed open the door to the examining room. He snatched up a gun with an intense expression of annoyance on his face, and wished that the weapon weren’t a mere light kinetic pistol. They’d intended to abduct a deathworlder, of course, but they hadn’t intended on one getting lose, and they were scientists, not soldiers, so they hadn’t bought heavy weaponry. Suddenly that omission seemed like a potentially serious one.
Leten was the senior scientist on this mission, in fact, and fairly typical of Corti, being slender, gray-skinned, and with a large, even bulbous head. In a species that prided itself on its intellect, his irritation only paradoxically irritated him more. He should be calmer than this, despite the personal danger they were now in.
Akeri, his junior and extremely nervous companion, cringed back from the door as if the deathworlder was going to leap through it at any moment. It had been Akeri’s idea to abduct a small one. The thought of a full-sized murder machine on board his ship had been just too much for him, and so Leten had indulged him. The senior Corti was starting to regret that decision, though. The little thing had already been a great deal of trouble, since sedatives, translator unit, and hygienic implant had all required careful scaling to the creature’s tiny size.
“Go on, get to sickbay,” said Leten, then strode out the door into the corridor beyond. Distant footfalls, surprisingly heavy for something even shorter than he was, sounded, indicating that the deathworlder was not in fact in the shuttlebay. The footfalls were irregular, as if it were jumping, or skipping. A sing-song chant began, a nonsense song that no doubt rhymed in the deathworlder’s own tongue. Children, ugh.
“Daddy finger, daddy finger, where are you? Here I am, here I am, how do you do?” This was repeated with “mommy finger”, “brother finger” and so on as Leten cautiously advanced along the halls towards the source of the sound. When the creature had apparently cycled through all the family roles it knew of, it started the song over from the beginning. Leten decided that he was going to go mad as the singing continued to echo down the corridors with the same simplistic verses repeated over and over and over. And somehow the damn thing was always ahead of him, even when he quickened his pace. The ship was only so large! How was it evading him?
He heard a door open ahead of him, and tried to figure out which door it had been. And while he was asking questions, how had the stars-cursed thing figured out how to open doors, anyhow?
The overhead lights suddenly shifted their tone from a pleasing blue-white to a distressing red-orange, and Leten cursed again. The creature stopped its singing, then the distant voice said, “Daddy? Where are you? Mommy? Where’s daddy? Where’s mommy?” The formerly cheerful voice now sounding worried, even distressed. Leten, having no paternal instinct whatever, only felt relief that the singing had ended.
“Leten?” Akeri’s voice—trembling, incredulous and fearful—came over the com system. “Did you switch on the emergency beacon?”
“Friction no! Do you think I’m mad? I wouldn’t advertise our presence to everyone within twenty light years while we have a dubiously-legal deathworld abductee aboard! The damn creature must be on the bridge.”
“It switched the beacon on?!”
“No, space ghosts did,” snapped Leten, his anger at Akeri even greater than his anger at himself. Why had he listened to Akeri’s mad idea to abduct a deathworld child? And why couldn’t he recover the clinical detachment necessary for clear thought? “The button is huge and bright green, so that it’s easy to hit while injured. No doubt the creature thought it was pretty, or tried to eat it, or something.”
The creature stopped calling out for its parents and began to wail, a high-pitched sound that seemed to pierce Leten’s head right though. Then that sound was muffled suddenly by a closing door. It had, for some entropy-ridden reason, shut itself up on the bridge. He would have to go in there, in a confined space full of control panels and other delicate things that the ship very much needed, and try to deal with a deathworlder that could break all of that, Leten himself included, merely by playing, and meanwhile the ship was broadcasting its presence to anything within lightyears.
Entropy curse the whole idiotic situation. This was just not shaping up to be his day.
Ninaaki hummed to himself as he sat on the bridge of the private yacht Fair Sailing and watched the galaxy go slowly by. The Fair Sailing was, specifically, his private yacht, and he was very proud of her. She carried a crew of six, if you included his personal chef, and was so beautifully automated she could almost fly herself, but he took great pleasure in knowing every single in and out of her navigation system all the same.
She was terrifically expensive, of course, and that was the second reason that he loved her. She was a sign that despite being clanless, he’d done very well for himself indeed. The first reason that he loved her was that she meant he could go where he pleased, without being confined to anyone else’s schedule, not even the day/night schedule of a planet. She was his own little world, his own clan unto himself, where he was chief of everything, even if “everything” was as paltry amount of real estate compared to the planetside palace he could have bought for what she’d cost him.
A soft chime and an indicator light drew the raccoon-like alien’s attention to one of the control screens, and he frowned faintly as he saw that a distress beacon had popped up there. Rescuing somebody in trouble would disrupt his plans and his schedule quite thoroughly. There was nothing for it, though. One did not leave sentient beings stranded in space. So he immediately altered course towards the beacon.
It was a Corti ship, and he wondered what kind of trouble the obnoxious little smooth skinned things had gotten into out here. He noticed that the distress beam carried a com channel, and something seemed to be being broadcast on it, so he flipped the com on, only to hear an ear-splitting wailing.
“Moooooooooooooooooooooommmy! Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddy!” Ninaaki flicked his ears as he realized that the wailing had words in it, carried to him with high fidelity by the translating implant he wore. The words were followed by wrenching sobs, and then a shout of, “No, no, no, no, bad! Stoppit! Bad, bad, bad!”
Then Ninaaki heard a more adult voice saying, “Hold still! Augh! Missed again.”
“Excuse me,” he said down the open line, and the adult fell silent, while the cub started the heart-rending sobs again. “This is Ninaaki, of the private Gaoan ship Fair Sailing. Do you require assistance?”
“Ah, forgive me, the beacon was pressed by mistake. Everything is under control,” said the voice, presumably belonging to a Corti.
A second voice broke in. “No! Everything is not under control! There’s a deathworlder lose on the ship! Save us!”
Ninaaki flicked his ears again, staring at the screen before him, where the Corti ship was growing every closet, in disbelief.
“Akeri! What do you think you’re doing!”
“Getting somebody else to take care of that thing!”
Ninaaki’s ears went down flat, and he shook his head. They couldn’t possibly mean that the cub crying in distress was a deathworlder? Deathworlds were only supposed to have animals, not sentient beings, but the cub had used words. Perhaps the cub was something else entirely, and being menaced by said deathworld monster? It didn’t sound terrified, though, only sad.
“Sir Gaoan, please, everything is fine. My colleague is a bit distraught, but we have everything under control.”
“Corti,” said Ninaaki flatly, “your coleage’s distress is not what concerns me. The crying cub I hear is what concerns me. Does the young one require rescue?”
“Yes, yes, come take it away! Get the horrible thing out of here!” said the other Corti, and Ninnaki’s ears flicked again in complete disbelief at what must nevertheless be true. The “deathworlder” that the frightened one wanted gone was indeed a crying child.
“Sir Gaoan…” The other Corti’s voice was a bit strained. “It’s fine. I’ll be turning off the beacon in a moment. You can go your way. I just… Ah entropy!” There was a thud, the sound of a kinetic weapon firing, and the child’s wail rose to something more like a screech.
“Ouchie! Bad! No!”
“Corti, I will be coming to take the cub, which will solve both our problems. If you harm it before my arrival, there will be consequences.”
The Corti suddenly laughed. “Me! Harm it? Hah! I just shot—” He stopped. “Er. Never mind. I’ll just leave it here. On my bridge. Pushing buttons that seem shiny at random. While you come to rescue it.” The Corti began laughing hysterically. “It’s fine, just fine. You should come fast, though, before the entropy-blasted thing turns on the main drive or something equally mad!”
There was the sound of a door closing, and then the only remaining sound was the hiccuping cries of the deathworlder cub. “Mommy?” it said.
“I am not your mommy, child,” replied Ninaaki, “but we will return you to her soon, I promise.”
There was a brief logistical problem, in that the deathworlder cub had jammed the Corti ship’s shuttle bay doors, so a shuttle couldn’t travel between the two ships. Fortunately both had suitable airlocks for a docking tube, and so the flexible polymer slid out from the Gaoan ship and homed in on an airlock on the Corti saucer, clamping on tightly before both locks opened and the path was clear.
Riilo was the one who pushed himself along the tube, floating in the zero-g between the two ships for a long moment before gracefully landing in the Corti ship’s airlock. He’d been chosen because he was the largest and the toughest of the Fair Sailing’s crew. None of them were anything like military, but Riilo had been a bit of a spacedock brawler in his youth. He was a chef now, and he was nowhere near as young as he used to be, but he hadn’t flinched at the idea of handling a deathworld monster child.
The Corti that met him inside the lock had a sour expression and a torn jumpsuit. “Welcome,” he said in a tone that was not remotely welcoming.
“Where is the cub?” asked Riilo, getting straight to the point.
“Follow me,” said the Corti, and Riilo did, along the curving corridors and to the ship’s bridge, where the Corti opened the door and then stepped far back from it, gesturing for Riilo to go in. From within soft sobs still sounded, as well as Ninaaki’s voice, speaking soothingly.
“See, there’s my friend Riilo. He will take you to my ship, and then we will take you back to your mommy.”
Riilo stepped inside, to be confronted by a compact little creature, perhaps half his own height, with a disarrayed tuft of yellowish fur atop its head, its face otherwise a bare, splotchy pink. It was clad in a single pale purple garment that covered all of it except its small, stubby hands. Its eyes were very, very blue, and very, very wide as it peered up at him.
“Hello little one. I am a friend.” Riilo knelt down to put his own head nearer the cub’s level. His heart was pounding. If the odd little thing really was from a deathworld it could probably do him harm despite its small size, but he wasn’t going to flinch away from saving it. Especially not given the tears staining its face and the little sobbing hiccup it had given as it turned.
The deathworld cub stared a moment longer, then tilted its head to the side in a curious gesture. Then suddenly its lips curved upward, and it said, “Kitty!” Next thing he knew the cub had pounced on him with shocking speed and force and was clinging tightly to him. The translator conveyed a sense that “kitty” meant an animal of some kind, no doubt a companion animal.
Riilo clenched his teeth. The cub’s grip hurt. It was immensely strong for such a small creature, and it had fisted its hands in his clothing tightly enough to grab the fur underneath too. He was in danger of losing a double patch of it. But he only put his own arms around the cub. It loosened its grip slightly, thankfully, but snuggled its face to his chest. “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” it repeated.
“I suppose I am kitty, then.” Riilo shifted his grip slightly and hoisted the child. Wind and sky, it was heavy! He grunted as he got it in a better grip, then turned. He gave the Corti, hovering outside the door, a glare. “Now, you will be transmitting us the precise location this cub comes from, so that we can return it to its mother, yes?”
The Corti shrank slightly from that glare. “Ah. Yes. Yes of course.”
“Good. Now, child, let us take you home to your mommy and daddy.”
“Home,” said the cub, its face still buried in his chest. “Yes, yes, yes, home, please.”
With one last glare for the Corti, Riilo headed back to the docking tube. The cub squeaked in surprise as he launched himself from the edge of the airlock out into the zero-g beyond, and its grip tightened enough to hurt again, but Riilo only clenched his teeth once more and concentrated on landing properly in the airlock of his own ship, which was complicated by the dense little alien’s mass, but he managed it.
He was immediately greeted by the rest of the crew, who had, of course, been curiously gathered, waiting to see the results of his expedition. None of them got close right away, they were wary enough of a possible deathworld monster to keep a little distance, but they all peered curiously at the cub.
The cub lifted his head from Riilo’s chest and peered back, its blue eyes still wide. Then it gasped in delight and said, “More kitties!”
Riilo laughed. “Yes, more kitties. We are all you friends, child. Now come, let us return you home.”
The coordinates that Leten had transmitted to Ninaaki were precise. They had included additional information, that the planet was not yet aware of the galaxy at large, and that as a pre-FTL civilization, it should probably stay that way. Fortunately the cub’s home was on the very edge of a small town, so it was easy enough to discretely land a shuttle and slip the cub back into her very own bed.
In fact Riilo had more trouble prying the cute little thing’s hands off of him than he had getting silently in through her window with her. The sky to the east was growing light with coming dawn, and the cub’s parents would no doubt be rising soon, though, so he couldn’t linger. Finally he extracted himself from her embrace. “You are home, child. Your mommy and daddy will be here in just a moment. But I must go now.”
“No! Stay, kitty. Please?”
“I’m sorry. I cannot stay.”
The cub looked up at him with those large, expressive eyes, and said, softly, “Kiss goodbye?”
He wasn’t certainly what a “kiss” was, the translation carried a general sense but was absent specifics. Still, it was some form of parting gesture, so he knelt again so that the child could reach him. “Give me a kiss goodbye, then,” he said.
She flung her arms around him once more, and kissed his cheek, but let go willingly this time. He chuckled softly, ears flicking, and kissed her cheek as best he could in turn. Then, with a final, “Goodbye,” he was out the window and gone into the growing light of dawn.
Her parents’ alarm was due to go off in half an hour, but the little girl understandably couldn’t wait for that, so they were woken on this particular day by her abrupt and energetic arrival in bed. “Mommy! Daddy! I missed you! I was gone forever and ever and ever!”
Groggy groans were the only response she got at first, but eventually her mother managed, “Laura, it’s still early, go back to bed.”
Laura, however, suddenly burst into tears and clung tightly to her mother, unable to contemplate leaving for even a moment after all that had happened. She’d weathered her adventure well, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t left its marks.
Puzzled, but unwilling to cause her obviously upset daughter any further distress, Laura’s mother hugged her. Her father reached over and stroked her hair. “Hey, it’s okay, kiddo. We’re right here.”
“I was gone away forever! I missed you!”
The parents exchanged puzzled and worried glances. “You were gone, honey?” said her mother. “Where did you go?”
“Bad monsters took me away. They took me with a light.”
“Where did they take you? And what did they do?” asked Laura’s father. “Monsters” didn’t seem worrying, but the idea of his daughter being kidnapped was impossible to entirely dismiss, as absurd as that obviously was.
“They took me in a big, bright room, and they put me on a table and they stuck me down to it but then I wiggled away and they were very funny and I played dinosaur with them and went ‘rawr’ and ‘nom’ and then I ran around and I sang and that was fun! But then you weren’t there and I was sad. Then the bad monster hurt me with a thing that went ‘zap!’ right here.” She patted her side. “And it was owie and I was more sad, but then the kitty talked to me and said his friend would rescue me, and so the other kitty came and rescued me and all the kitties took me home and I petted them and I kissed the kitty goodbye and he went home and then I came here because I missed you and it was exciting and scary and everything!”
The parents blinked at each other, and both smiled. “You had a dream,” said Laura’s father. “A very imaginative dream, it sounds like! But you did very good in your dream, you got away from the monsters and you got to pet the kitties.”
“Not a dream,” said Laura with a frown.
“No?”
“The kitty was in my bedroom. I wasn’t in bed. Not a dream.” She nodded firmly.
Her father managed to not laugh. “I see. It sounds a lot like a dream to me, sweetie. But either way you’re here, safe and sound, so it’s all okay.”
“And I guess we might as well get up,” said her mother with a smile and a shake of her head. She lifted Laura. “And let’s get you dressed for the day. Can’t stay in your pajamas all…” She actually looked at her daughter and took in the smudged, dirty, and even torn state of her clothes and gasped. “Laura! What have you done to your pajamas?”
The evidence of torn and dirty pajamas, and bruised side were still too small in the face of the sheer impossibility of her story. So Laura was told again and again that her adventure with the tall, skinny bad monsters and the giant kitties was a dream, and eventually she believed it. Until not so many years later, when a still-blue-eyed but much less blonde high school girl saw the first news reports showing some of the species from beyond Earth’s bounds, and instantly recognized both the Corti and the Gaoans.
The lure of space called to her, and the debt she felt she owed the Gaoans who rescued her was an even stronger pull, and so when Laura turned eighteen she found a way to get off of Earth, but that’s another story altogether…