Chapter Twenty-Four – Shredder Pursuit
Carrie was beginning to lose count of the number of times she had run from one end to the other of the entrance bay, pursued by a murderous alien.
Dave called, “We’ve...got to...get out...of here.” As they slammed into the wall that held the only exit, which remained closed.
“Maybe we can trick it into smashing through this wall, too,” said Carrie, panting.
“I cannot imagine how,” said Gavin. “The placktoid commander is not lacking in intelligence.”
“We need the damn neutraliser,” said Belinda, glaring at Carrie.
Dave gasped and pointed. “There it is.” The instrument had been kicked or had rolled near the corner of the room, where it lay next to a smashed box. Dave ran to get it.
“No,” cried Carrie. “There isn’t time.” The mechanical alien was nearly upon them. They needed to run again. Dave scooped up the neutraliser and turned to run back to the others. His face drained of colour. The shredder had spotted him. It had cut him off.
“Carrie,” he called, and threw the neutraliser.
She caught it as he dashed into the corner of the room and curled himself into the wall, awaiting his fate.
“No,” screamed Carrie, and closed her eyes. There was a resounding crash. Blinking back tears, she opened her eyes again. Unable to straighten its course, the commander had hit the walls at an angle, forming the longest line of a triangle, with Dave at the opposite corner.
Carrie’s heart leapt into her throat. Maybe the placktoid would reverse to align itself better, and give him a chance to escape? But it didn’t. It drove forward, its caterpillar tracks grinding the floor. The walls on either side of the corner began to buckle and break. The alien drew closer to Dave.
“Give me the neutraliser,” snapped Belinda. “We have to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving him,” said Carrie.
“We can’t do anything for him, and if we don’t get out now, it’s us next.”
Carrie thrust the neutraliser into Belinda’s hands and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Dave,” she yelled, “jump onto it. Jump on top.” But even as she spoke she knew it was impossible. The placktoid was at least two metres tall. An Olympic champion couldn’t do it from a standing start, and there were also the rows of metal teeth to avoid.
“I’ll never make it,” came Dave’s shout. “Go, Carrie, leave me. You don’t need to see this.”
“I’m not damn well leaving you, you idiot.”
Belinda and Gavin were through the door. As it closed behind them, Carrie had an idea. She fished in her pockets, but as she expected, her translator had fallen out as well as the neutraliser. She thumped the door with her fist. “Belinda, give me your translator,” she called. The door remained closed. “Belinda, damn you, come back here right now and give me your translator.”
“I’ve got it.” It was Dave, yelling over the grinding of the shredder’s caterpillar tracks against the floor.
“What?”
“I’ve got her translator.”
“You stole it?”
“I have a condition.”
“Never mind that now. Throw it to me.”
The translator came sailing over the placktoid. As it hit the floor Carrie snatched it up and turned it on. “Hey, commander,” she bellowed. “Stop immediately. I am Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Hatchett, and I demand you stop.”
In its BBC newscaster voice the alien replied, “The Transgalactic Council is far from here, little human, and soon there will be nothing left of this ship. You and your companions will be dead. There will be no one left to report me. Run away. When I’ve finished with this one, I’ll chase you and kill you. That will be fun.”
Carrie couldn’t think of a reply. The commander was right. Unless they could convince the oootoon to release its hold on the ship, they would all be dead soon. But being shredded to death was not a pleasant way to go, and she was determined that wasn’t going to happen to her or her friend.
She launched herself at the mechanical alien and banged on its metal sides with her fists. The machine ground on. There was now only a narrow space between it and the corner of the room. Carrie couldn’t see Dave but she imagined him cowering, awaiting his terrible fate as the grinding metal teeth drew nearer.
“Stop,” she screamed and kicked the placktoid, gasping as the impact jolted her leg. “Stop, please. Please.” She hit it again. There could be no room left by now for Dave. The teeth must be nearly upon him.
Dave’s yell was long and loud, and cut off abruptly. Carrie covered her face. Then she noticed the silence. Not only had Dave stopped yelling, the placktoid was also making no noise. She opened her fingers a crack and peeped through. The machine was motionless, and it hadn’t quite reached the corner of the room.
“D-Dave?”
“Carrie?”
“You’re alive!”
“It’s stopped, but I’m trapped. I can’t get out. I’m thinking it’s going to start up again any second now.”
Carrie scanned around. She had to get Dave out and quickly. But all there was in the entrance bay was the boxes of oootoon. The smashed and remaining intact ones had been scattered randomly around by the shredder’s progress. When the answer hit her she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. She ran to the nearest box and pushed it as hard as she could. It was very heavy. Her efforts slid it a few inches across the floor. The stickiness of the spilled oootoon made the going even harder.
After turning so that her lower back was pressed against the box and her feet were braced against the floor, Carrie pushed again, straining with all her might. The box slid farther towards the shredder.
“Hold on, Dave,” she panted. “I’m coming.”
“Hurry up.”
Sweating and red-faced, she pushed and pushed, until finally the box was close enough. She climbed onto it, then onto the top of the placktoid. Running to the front, she saw Dave’s face peering up anxiously. He was standing in a triangle of walls and mechanical alien just large enough to hold him. She grabbed his hands and leaned back. Scrabbling up the machine’s teeth, he climbed onto the top. She took him to the box and together they climbed down.
The alien still showed no sign of movement.
“What did you do? How did you stop it?” asked Dave. “I could hear it talking, but without the translator I couldn’t understand.”
“I didn’t do anything. It wouldn’t listen to me. It said we were all going to die, it was going to have fun killing us, and no one would ever find out.”
“Then why did it stop? Has it broken down?”
Carrie scratched her head. “Shall I try and find out? Maybe it is talking, just not to us. Didn’t Gavin say they only use sound when communicating with species who can hear?”
“I suppose it’s worth trying. It might be useful to know.”
Turning on the translator, Carrie’s mind resounded with the shredder’s roar. She grimaced and handed the device to Dave, who winced as he took it. He listened a few moments before turning it off.
“All I can make out is something about the oootoon. Damn the oootoon jamming it. Once it was free it would destroy it all, etcetera.”
“The oootoon? But, how could...?”
Carrie looked around. The floor was wet with oootoon from the boxes the shredder had smashed. They were both sticky from it, and the commander’s caterpillar wheels were coated with it. “It’s the oootoon, It must have been oozing into the shredder all the time when it was running over the puddles from the smashed boxes. The oootoon has jammed its tracks and engine.”
There was a creak. The alien’s tracks moved forward a notch, then with a roar, the placktoid started up. Carrie and Dave jumped back. The machine lurched forward and drove into the remaining space in the corner of the room, where Dave had been only minutes before. The floor shook as it crashed into the wall before the engine fell silent again.
Dave went pale. “Let’s leave.”
“Yes, it’s still struggling against the oootoon.”
“I hope the it can hold the beast. Don’t want that thing roaming the ship looking for us.”
After a few minutes’ banging on the door, it opened. Gavin was there holding the neutraliser with Belinda beside him, looking annoyed.
“I keep telling you there’s no point...oh,” said Belinda when she saw them.
“I concluded from the absence of noise from the placktoid and the strikes upon the door that one or both of you were still alive,” said Gavin. “I am delighted to find I was correct.”
“We’re pleased to see you, too,” said Carrie, noticing that Belinda didn’t seem to share Gavin’s happiness.
“I apologise for leaving you, but in the circumstances it seemed prudent as I was unable to offer assistance, and you insisted on remaining to help in what I believed to be a hopeless situation.”
“That’s okay,” said Carrie.
Outside the entrance bay part of the corridor had been destroyed by the placktoid commander’s efforts to kill Dave. The wall had collapsed and the alien was embedded in it, locked in its silent struggle with the oootoon that was jamming its engines. Carrie explained to Gavin what seemed to have happened. Gavin blinked, a hundred translucent lids flicking over a hundred eyes. “The oootoon has clearly developed an automatic antagonistic response to the placktoids. It did not attack us when it had the opportunity.”
“That’s right,” said Carrie. “When we first landed in it, it let us go. I mean, it was in its natural state, so we sank and everything, but it was only when I provoked it that it captured Dave.”
“What I yet fail to properly understand,” said Gavin, “is why the placktoids are extracting the oootoon. I can only imagine that among its many remarkable compounds and their properties there exists something that facilitates the placktoids’ ability to incorporate biological systems, reproduce organically and metabolise using light.”
“I hope you manage to find out one day,” said Dave, “because that would mean we survive this.”
The ship shuddered.