Chapter Twenty-Seven – Mellow Yellow
Yellow. Everything was glowing yellow, and the air was filled with a sweet scent. Carrie bobbed gently on the surface of a cool liquid. She blinked, trying to focus on the ceiling, which was an undefinable distance away. She tried to remember where she was and what had happened. This place didn’t look at all like her bedroom, not any bedroom. But it was pleasant, and soft, and smelled nice. Maybe she should just drift back off to...Toodles and Rogue. She hadn’t seen them for a long time. They would need food and water, and Rogue would need a walk. She forced herself awake.
Carrie sat up, sinking her face into the ceiling, which was a soft, blancmange-like substance. Before she had time to pull her head out, the ceiling lifted away and bubbles of air popped open across it. The events of the previous hours filtered into her mind: the placktoids, the oootoon, the desperate rush to save themselves. The last thing she remembered was the shredder breaking free and preparing to attack them again, and then nothing. The placktoid ship must have hit the planet, and she was in the oootoon. It had saved them. It must have flooded the entrance bay and cushioned them against the impact.
Flopping down, Carrie let out a sigh of relief. She’d been right. The oootoon had protected them. Or maybe that had been its intention all along? Maybe it had never meant to kill the placktoids? It didn’t seem to her that the oootoon was a murderous species, even in revenge for wrongs committed against it.
But where were the others? Sitting up again, Carrie felt in her pockets and checked all around her for the translator, but it was gone. She couldn’t ask the oootoon if the others had survived, or where they were. Or how to get out of the place.
As she stood, the bubble reacted by expanding around her. She wobbled on the jellylike floor. Before, the oootoon had transported her, but now she couldn’t tell it where she wanted to go. But maybe she could use its reactive properties to move around? She took a step forward, and the bubble opened in front of her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the wall draw inward to close up the space behind. Success. She could move around at least. She desperately wanted to find the others, particularly Dave and Gavin, to check that they were okay. She even wanted to find Belinda, though that would probably be a brief visit. The oootoon had saved her, but that was no guarantee it had saved everyone. The impact of the falling spaceship on the ocean would have been massive, and even the exceptional properties of the oootoon must have struggled to respond to it.
Carrie strode on, wondering where she was. Was she still in the entrance bay aboard the placktoid ship, or was she outside it in the oootoon ocean? Her muscles tensed. If she was in the ocean she could wander forever, alone, until she died. She didn’t even know in which direction land lay. The planet was mostly ocean with only a few islands. She might be walking deeper and deeper below the surface, farther and farther from shore.
Her stomach churned. How she was going to find the others by wandering blindly through the oootoon? And when had she last eaten or drunk? Apart from a few mouthfuls of oootoon—she cringed at the memory—she’d had nothing in the hours since she had dived through the green mist beneath her kitchen sink on the heels of Dave.
A musical chittering came from behind and Carrie’s heart leapt. As she turned, her bubble expanded and melded with another, containing a familiar creature. She had never been so happy to see her gigantic bug boss. “Gavin, thank goodness you’re okay.”
“Carrie. I see you are also unharmed. That is good.”
“Do you know where the others are? Where’s Dave? Is he all right?”
“I have only this moment succeeding in conveying to the oootoon my request to transport me to you. I do not yet know how the others fared, but in the light of our survival, I have every confidence the oootoon did its utmost to protect them. It appears your strategy was successful.”
“Maybe, or maybe the oootoon never intended to harm the placktoids, only capture their ship and its crew.”
Gavin’s many eyes blinked. “You may be correct. I had not considered that. It is always wise to avoid concluding causation from correlating facts.” The insect rubbed his hind legs together. “Regardless, I feel this is an appropriate time to inform you that, despite earlier mishaps, I find your performance in your first assignment to have been exemplary.”
“Really?” Carrie almost —but not quite—wanted to hug his shiny bronze insectoid head. But she was forgetting her friend. “I’ve lost my translator, Gavin. Please talk to the oootoon and tell it to take us to Dave.”
The surrounding oootoon must have been particularly tuned into the situation, because it didn’t take more than a few moments of persistence from Gavin before the familiar protrusions rose from the floor, lifting them from their feet. Seated upon oootoon supports, Carrie and Gavin began to move, and the bubble walls flowed past.
When they burst into Dave’s bubble, Carrie threw her arms round him. Compared to the well-groomed, stylish young man who had come to her flat what seemed an age ago, Dave was almost unrecognisable. His hair was a sticky mess that stuck out at all angles, and his clothes were damp and smeared in yellow, but without him by her side, she would never have made it through the events of the previous hours.
“You won’t believe what I’ve found,” Dave said. “It’s this way, I think.” He turned and pointed. “Or over there.” He pointed in a different direction. “Damn, I’ve forgotten. It’s so hard to navigate in this stuff. I was wandering around try to find you, but I found something else instead.”
“Perhaps I can assist,” said Gavin. “What is it you wish us to see?”
Carrie could not believe Dave’s answer.
They burst into the huge chamber a few minutes later, and there they were: placktoids. Hundreds of them, motionless, frozen by the oootoon that had infiltrated their systems. Carrie clutched Dave’s arm and pointed. Grimacing, he nodded. The largest placktoid stood at the far end of the chamber. A massive rectangular object lying on its longest side. Just visible beneath a heavy coating of oootoon. The commander.
Carrie wondered how much oootoon it had taken to permanently jam its powerful engine. Though it was completely still, the sight of it brought Carrie’s heart into her throat, and her muscles ached at the memory of the pursuit in the placktoid spaceship’s entrance bay. “So this is where the oootoon is keeping the placktoid hostages.”
“There is no doubt that the oootoon is responsible for the missing placktoids,” said Gavin.
“Are they alive?” asked Carrie. A cacophony of screeching as the placktoids spotted them gave her her answer. She clasped her hands to her ears. “Let’s get out of here.”
Their bubble withdrew from the placktoid holding chamber, taking them with it, and the painful noise of the placktoids’ squealing and booming faded.
“It’s kept them down here all this time,” said Carrie. “With their seized parts, they couldn’t move, and the oootoon could block any communication they sent to the command ship. But even though the placktoids were siphoning up oootoon and taking it away, it didn’t harm the prisoners it took. It never meant anyone any harm. It just wanted to be left alone.”
Dave yawned and rubbed his eyes, and Carrie realised that she, too, was heavy with tiredness.
“So, that’s that, isn’t it?” she asked Gavin. “As they say on TV, case solved. We can return to Earth now, right?”
“But you must attend a debriefing at the Transgalactic Council. They will be most interested to hear what the placktoids have been doing. It is alarming and disturbing, and we must address their actions at once.”
Carrie and Dave shared a glance of mutual agreement.
“Gavin,” said Carrie. “It’s been fun, kind of, but, you know, I need to see my pets. They’ll be wondering where I am. We just want to go home.”
Dave nodded.
“I see,” said Gavin. He worked his inner jaws in and out.
Carrie waited in the pregnant pause. She had never wanted to see her quirky cat or handsome dog so much. But the only way she would get to see them was if Gavin started up the green mist that opened a passage through the stars.
“In the circumstances,” he said at last, “I think that it would be acceptable for your assignment to end here. I am able to make a full report based on what you have told me. You both require rest after your exertions. I will ask the oootoon to convey us to land, where I will be able to open a gateway to Earth.
“But before I do that,” he continued, “I believe you are forgetting something, Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Hatchett.”
“What’s that?”
“Your colleague, Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Markham.”