An explosion nearby threw Carrie and Dave to the floor. The bubble walls wobbled violently.
“What the hell’s that?” shouted Dave.
“It must be a bombardment from the placktoids.” Carrie tried to stand as large ripples crossed the floor.
“Seems like—” said Dave as he rose to his feet. Another explosion jerked the bubble and he fell down again. “—the time for negotiation may have passed.”
Carrie’s eyes widened. “What if we take a direct hit? What if the bombs break the wall?” She wondered again how deep they were. She touched the wall as she spoke. It had become firmer, almost solid, and rubbery, so that her fingers barely broke the surface. It was as if the oootoons were trying to protect them. Another bomb detonated, and they were thrown to one side. They bounced back from the elastic surface.
Dave staggered upright. “Do the placktoids know we’re here? Are they trying to kill us?”
“I don’t see how they could. Unless they can trace this thing like Gavin can.” She held up the translator. Screams and shouts from it were echoing through her head. She winced. “Poor oootoons.”
Bracing himself against the bubble walls, Dave said, “Carrie, you have to do something.”
“Me? What can I do?”
“What can you...? You’re the Liaison Officer, or whatever. It’s your job to sort this out. That’s why you’re here.”
“But I don’t have the first clue what’s going on.”
“Then you need to find out.”
“But...I...” Carrie was about to protest that she’d tried to find out the important information and solve the dispute, but in fact she couldn’t think of anything she’d done other than try to go home. Dave was right. She should do something. It was her job. She had agreed to it. All for the sake of a stupid handbag.
An ear-bursting concussion resounded from outside, and there was an ominous bulge in the bubble wall.
“CARRIE.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll do something.”
Holding the translator in both hands, she brought it close to her lips. She wasn’t sure it would make any difference, but maybe it would help her to be heard above the explosions and shouts and cries of the oootoons.
“Listen, please listen to me,” she shouted. “You’ve made a mistake. I’ve been sent here to sort out your dispute, by the...” She looked at Dave. He raised his eyebrows and spread his hands. “By the Transgalactic...Council? I’m not wearing my uniform, sorry. But I’m here to help you. Take us back to land. Take us back to the shore. Please.”
A double explosion rocked the bubble, and Carrie fell down. It was impossible to remain standing on the undulating floor. At first it didn’t seem her words had been heard. From the oootoons she could hear nothing but shouts of pain and anger, but then she heard Transgalactic Council. Another voice repeated the words, and another, until the words echoed in her head. Protrusions rose from the floor that lifted them from their feet.
“We’re moving,” said Dave. “I can feel it.”
Slowly, then faster, the bubble walls began to flow past, and the voices from the translator merged into a speeding gibberish. Carrie thumbed the translator off. The voices were giving her a headache and she couldn’t comprehend a single word.
“Looks like they heard you,” said Dave, “and believed you.”
“Yes, maybe, or maybe they decided to take us somewhere else.”
“Out of the bombardment zone?”
“Yes, to protect us.”
“Or kill us.”
Carrie shook her head. “They could have done that as soon as they got us below the surface. If anything, they’ve gone to some trouble to keep us alive, maybe just as hostages of course. But when I suggested they’d killed you they were outraged. Accused me of thinking they were savages.”
“Some of them certainly sounded like they wanted us dead.”
Carrie nodded. “Only some, though.”
“Do you really think they’ll let us go?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do if they take us back to land?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
Dave rolled his eyes.
Carrie wondered how she was going to solve the dispute between these alien species. It was difficult to come up with a solution when she didn’t know what the details of the problem were. The placktoids must be bombing because, according to Gavin, some of them had gone missing and they blamed the oootoons. How could the oootoons take them, though? The placktoids had spaceships, weapons and other technology—dammit, they were technology.
“It’s got to be the placktoids’ fault,” said Carrie.
“Why?”
“How could the oootoons hurt them? How could it capture them?”
“Well, they captured us and could have severely hurt us if they’d wanted to.”
“We’re not machinery.”
“Are the placktoids machinery?” asked Dave. “You don’t know. You’re making assumptions. They might have some living parts. Or there might be baby paperclips that the oootoons were hurting. Yes, the placktoids were raising their babies and the oootoons came along and swept them away, or something like that.”
Carrie lifted an eyebrow. “Okayyyyy. So, how could oootoons have taken them? The placktoids are in a spaceship. How could the oootoons reach all the way up there?”
Dave rubbed his chin. “You’ve got a point...Unless the baby paperclips were playing on the beach?”
Carrie gazed at Dave for a silent moment.
“Or maybe not?” he said.
Carrie folded her arms. “It’s the placktoids' fault, I’m sure of it. They were the ones who were going to execute us, remember? And we hadn’t done a single thing to hurt them. But the oootoons didn’t harm me or you at all, even though I actually ate some of them. If some of the placktoids have gone missing, I bet the oootoons have nothing to do with it. Or maybe the placktoids are lying because they want an excuse to attack.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“You don’t have to be convinced. I’m the Transgalactic Intercultural...space detective, so it’s my call. I bet the placktoids can’t prove the oootoons have done anything to hurt them. ”
“I hope you’re right. I just want this all to be over.”
“Me, too. I’ll do this one job, then, when I get home, I’m going to dig a hole in a field somewhere and bury all that equipment Gavin gave me. And the next thing I’m going to do is get some nails, and hammer shut that door under my sink.” Carrie raised her arms for balance. “Whoa, we’re slowing down.”
The deceleration was rapid. As the bubble wall opened in front of them, the protrusions they were sitting on rose swiftly up and ejected them through the gap. They landed face downward on the pale grey, gritty shore, not far from where the oootoons had taken them.
“I hate this job so much,” said Carrie, sitting up and rubbing her nose.
“It has its disadvantages,” said Dave, blinking in the daylight and surveying the sticky, yellowish material that had once been his clothes.
An explosion. A giant custard plume erupted. Wet, slimy oootoons rained down on them.
“Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” shouted Dave. The oootoons had brought them back to the beach as requested, but not out of the bombardment zone. Another bomb hit close by, and oootoons were splattered over the beach. The large jellied balls that landed close to the ocean oozed quickly down into it, but the ones farther from the shoreline began to darken, dry and shrink.
“Look,” said Carrie, pointing at the drying lumps, “I don’t think they can survive cut off from the rest of the ocean.” They ran to the globs to try to help them return to the sea. Dave lifted one but his fingers slipped through. He pushed it, but his hands sank uselessly in. Separated from the rest of the liquid, the oootoons didn’t seem to have the ability to change their viscosity.
“You have to hit them hard,” said Carrie. “Do that and the liquid resists. Like when we landed on it. See, like this.” She smacked a glob hard, and the material shuddered and slid a short distance along the sand. “Kicking probably works better.” She aimed a sideways swipe with her foot, and the glob slipped closer to the ocean’s edge.
“Got it,” said Dave, and he began punching and kicking a blob for all he was worth. In a few minutes it touched the custard sea, melted, and flowed into it.
As the bombing continued, Dave and Carrie worked steadily to return the displaced oootoons to their fellows. They worked for longer than half an hour until the bombs finally stopped. The two humans flopped down in exhaustion. They’d done their best, but some of the globs farthest from shore had dried completely and showed no signs of life.