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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 21: Cooper 79
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 257
Waking with his stomach growling, Cooper pushed himself upright only to rebound off the loose straps holding him to the bed. Untying them, he then looked around the tubular room with its five bunks placed equidistant from each other. The others were ‘shipshape’ and unused, but with their bed sheets neatly and precisely tied down.
Following the example, he tried to do the same, but he had never been in the Army, and doing it in zero G was harder than one would expect. Eventually he settled for a gesture in the direction of neatly laid out. A quick prayer for wisdom, and he exited the room after sliding the door aside by hand. That was just one of the oddities of this spaceship he recalled from his chaotic visit before his enforced-by-exhaustion sleep.
Floating out into the corridor, he grabbed a rung on the ceiling just in time to not hit an orange manling.
“Hey watch it stupid--” He remembered a couple cries of that general all-purpose insult, and did not like it. Instead, he replied with a calm, gentle smile and looked directly into the orange manling’s eyes. The alien looked perplexed, and then spoke again, as if abashed.
“The Terri tenderfoot. Um, Terri--”
“Brian,” he said.
“Ryan. Look where you are going before you float that way, and look in all directions. Faster moving people tend to have right of way, and if someone is already flying without reach of a wall, they have right of way.”
“Thank you. That makes sense. What’s your name?”
“Oh, I’m Lodotti. I’m a Dark Side Mercurian. Able Bodied Sailor Class Two.” That meant little to Cooper, but he took off his mask, and offered a hand to shake before wondering if that was a thing in zero g. It was not.
“Show your open palm to the side away from your sword if you want to greet someone in space. On planet, well, bows, or handshakes, or arm clasps, depending on where you are. Look, Ryan, I’m busy, so I’ll talk to you later.”
“One more question, Lodotti, food?”
“Three doors up on the right.” With that the ABS-Two flung himself away down the corridor. Brian moved more slowly ahead, and came to the aforementioned door. He was not sure what he expected--the scent of food, but what did aliens from the Planet Mercury eat even if they spoke English? So what would that smell like? He was familiar with the smell of Chinese food, and Californian, and all the varieties of Burgerman Food, and even Swiss cuisine, and the orange grass of Naga World. But what new scent would be here?
Would there be chairs bolted to the floor and ceiling?
He saw a metal wall with metal turning knobs like on toy dispensers ‘get a bouncy ball for a quarter’ in some restaurants for kids’ toys. No place to put a quarter, and the words were in a variety of scripts. Most were alien, but he found one with a Gothic font that was in German. Reading carefully, he turned four of the levers with a cranking motion. Out popped two glass cups, one shallow, holding three large pills, and the other deeper, with a straw, holding water.
Brian frowned. Food pills? It was a far step down from Luigi’s, that was for sure. Be content with such things as you have, he reminded himself. Carefully, he opened the pill box, and scooped them out. Pushing them into his mouth, he noted they had a vague sweet taste, and he took the bottle and sucked down the water to swallow it all. They went down, and he put the glass water bottle back into the grasper. There was a chunk-a-chunka noise, and both carriers went back into the metal wall, and he heard a whirring like that of a high powered dishwasher from within.
“You done?” The voice was contrabass, and Brian turned to look at the purple giant who had been the leader in the midst of the fight alongside the second mate.
“Yes.” He looked around and, seeing no one coming, pushed himself to the far wall where he grabbed on. The huge alien, who was easily two feet taller than Brian (who was a tall Human) and had arm biceps larger than Brian’s legs, twisted some different levers with practiced ease.
“Can I ask you some questions?”
“Sure, Terri. We have some questions too. Like we thought our passenger area was empty, and we had no Terris on board, and suddenly you’re with us.” The giant alien side eyed him as he swallowed a dozen pills without benefit of water. “Got to keep the engine burning. I’m a big boy. Still growing. Only forty T years old. Now I’ve answered one of your questions, what about mine?”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #525: Character Battles. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
