Several hours and stomach
growls later Obie had cleaned what seemed like miles
of ductwork and was approaching what he hoped was the galley. Not knowing the
layout of the ship he had had to work by sense of smell alone, a decision he
had not made lightly. Many odors battled in the air, but two were preeminent in
their lack of appeal; one he assumed to be the head, the other the galley. He
had cleaned in the direction of the one that seemed less objectionable, but was
taking no bets on its being the galley.
Passing a side branch in the duct, the aroma
suddenly increased. Obie turned his rag in that
direction and began working toward the end of the duct where he saw light
glowing greenly off the slime.
Cautiously he approached a grill set in the
floor of the duct, and looked down into what was unmistakably the galley.
Carefully sliding the grill loose from the duct Obie
pulled it up inside and set it down. Then dangling his legs through the hole he
lowered himself and dropped soundlessly the last foot to the floor. He quickly
crossed to the hatch and listened. Hearing nothing he opened it a crack and
peered through. On the other side was the crew's mess, a room never so aptly
named. Fortunately, it was dim and unoccupied, the crew either at stations, or,
Obie hoped, asleep. Either way, he wasn't going to
waste time.
Leaving the hatch open a crack so he might
hear anyone entering the mess, he turned to assuage his appetite, almost a moot
point as he surveyed his surroundings. Such a profusion of browns, blacks,
blue-greens, and other colors and textures too nauseous to mention he had never
seen, nor, he thought further, had he ever wanted to. These boys must love
Roquefort, Obie gulped.
Bracing himself, he opened the refrigerator.
There, nestled among the green and blue, he found what must be the true diet of
the crew: cold cuts, cheese, bread and beer. Undoubtedly, all they ever ate was
sandwiches. Obie recognized several seals from his
own spaceport, and, taking a fresh garbage bag from his belt, he began stuffing
it with enough food to supply him with sandwiches and beer for several days.
He shoved the bag through the grill hole and
took one last look before following it. As his eyes roamed over the
encrustations and crud his shoulders slumped. He couldn't, he decided. He just
couldn't leave this mess behind him. Squaring his shoulders, he whipped out
another bag and began gingerly shoveling it full, telling himself
that one bag was all that he would do: the rest was up to the crew.
Returning to the laundry room, Obie pulled four bags out of the duct: one full of food,
and three full of garbage. He had found it impossible to stop at only one
bagful, and desisted only when he remembered the trek back to his hideout
through the ducts, dragging four bags behind him.
Preparing to stuff them down the disposhole, he was suddenly struck by a horrifying thought:
he didn't know which of the four bags contained his lunch - they all looked
alike. He looked them over, then gingerly squeezed them, but could come to no
certain conclusion. Dejectedly, almost fatalistically, he decided the only way
was to open them one by one, perhaps subjecting himself to overwhelming odors
best left undescribed.
Hoping that he would be right the first time,
he opened a bag. It took only a brief and very shallow breath to determine that
his luck was running as badly as ever.
#
With his basic survival needs met, Obie could get on with his odious assignment. His search of
the ship via the air ducts had proceeded to the point where the air blowing
into the laundry room was no longer obnoxiously loaded with ketones
and moldy aromas, but beyond this small victory over filth little else could be
said for his five days of labor. Thus far he had located the galley, crew's
mess, ward room, engine room, two holds, and the control room, and none had
yielded the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of his quarry. Even his foray
into the engine room had been a waste of time: he had no idea what the coupler
looked like; he needed Dr. Sterling-Quincannon to
find and get it back from Moody.
Sighing heavily, Obie
wrapped himself again in plastic, pulled on his gloves, and picked up his sack
of cleaning rags. Then, knowing he was working his way toward the head today,
he grabbed a bottle of superstrength ammonium-cloride cleaner and craw led once more into the duct.
#
As he worked his way along in a direction he
had hitherto eschewed, he suddenly stopped in mid-scrub and listened intently.
He had, of course, heard the mumbling and rumbling of the crew's conversations
as it echoed down the ducts, but never before had he heard a soprano screech.
Stirrings of hope fumbled their way about Obie's
body: either one of the crew was a castrati or he had heard the voice of Dr.
Sterling-Quincannon's daughter Amanda. Hoping the
latter was the case, Obie
strained his ears in anticipation, was not disappointed, and began polishing
madly in what seemed to be the correct direction, spewing cleaner and strewing
cleaning rags in mad abandon.
When he came to a crossing he had a ten
minute wait before again hearing the voice he was tracking. He spent the time
mentally constructing a face and figure to go with the voice: long, softly
curling hair, strawberry lips, deep blue eyes,
long-legged, slender but fully curved. It wasn't until just before he heard her
again that he realized his mental picture was like the girls on the covers of
the computer's books. Almost touching his own something less than granite jaw,
he located the duct from which the sounds emanated, breathed a slight sigh of
exasperation and embarrassment, poured more cleaner on
a rag, and scrubbed on.
At the next crossing the voice suddenly grew
louder, and was joined by another high pitched whine like fingernails on a
blackboard. Turning into this duct, Obie cautiously
approached a grating that appeared to be set in the wall of some room. Inching
forward, he scanned the room and realized he had found his quarry: the cadaverous
man with the wild hair, stained lab coat, and irritating voice must be Dr.
Sterling-Quincannon. Obie
searched for Amanda, then realized that the six foot
tall, broad shouldered, short haired man with the paunch standing in front of
the doctor was actually a woman, his two clues ponderously evident as she
turned. Numerous pungent remarks sprang into Obie's
mind as he thought about his computer's idea of helpful reading material, but
pushed them firmly to the back of his mind. At the moment he had work to do.
The room seemed otherwise unoccupied, so Obie tried
to determine the best way to unobtrusively gain attention. Suddenly realizing
the two goals were mutually ex clusive, he took a
breath, leaned forward, and quietly called out, "Hey!"
The effect was hardly what he anticipated.
The doctor had a hissy-fit and his daughter assumed a stance whose belligerency
was only offset by the gleam of sadistic glee shining in her piggish little
eyes. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," she wheedled sweetly, her
pudgy fingers grasping the imaginary necks of little bunnies and other
dangerous fauna. "We won't hurt you." Obie
felt a certain lack of sincerity on her part. He felt sure that the only way
Moody and his crew got her on board was with a cargo net and a cattle prod.
Nevertheless, he did have a duty to perform.
"I'm over here," he whispered, "in the air duct." With a
speed he found hard to believe from such short legs, she rushed across, jammed
her fingers into the grate and wrenched it loose from the wall. Tossing it
aside like a candy wrapper she then groped inside for Obie
who scuttled back out of reach, thankful that her girth was too great for the
opening. "Wait a minute!" he shouted as loud as he could whisper,
"I'm a friend. I'm here to rescue you!"
The fingers stopped wriggling, although they
occasionally twitched with a life of their own. "Rescue?"
"Yes! Rescue. Succor. Save. Get you and your father out of here."
Twitch. Twitch. "How?"
The silence grew uncomfortably long. Obie felt he had to say something. "Well . . ."
That wasn't it. "Uhh . . .
" No improvement.
"That's what I thought." Twitch.
Twitch.
Obie's plans for escape included only a personal, and hasty,
departure from that twitch, twitch when the matter became academic. With a
spine-rasping howl, sirens throughout the ship went off, echoing down the ducts
and almost nerve-jumping Obie int
o Amanda's grasp.
"Now hear this, now hear this! Gas leak,
gas le--" The automatic alarm reporter broke off short. Recorder's
probably jammed with dirt, Obie thought. There was
silence for a few seconds, then Moody's voice came
over the PA. "Alright, scum. There seems to be a chlorine leak somewhere
in the ship. Find it. Now!"
Chlorine? wondered Obie.
His musing suddenly became tinged with panic as he realized that chlorine was
not only poisonous, but would be spread through the ship by the air ducts in
which he was currently ensconced. All he could smell was unwashed Am anda and freshly scrubbed duct work, but he had to get out.
Forward into Amanda's arms, or try to get back to his hideout before the gas
got him. A moment's reflection had him scuttling for safety -- he was sure he
could make it to the laundry room in t ime. He almost
lost a nose and a couple of fingers as the choice was cut off, along with his
stretch of duct, as baffle plates dropped, sealing each compartment off from
the others. He stared bemusedly at the plate before his nose for a moment, then
turned and slumped against it. Hell of a deal, he thought gently, and waited
for Dr. No.
#
Obie realized something was happening when the light in
the duct increased dramatically. Deciding the opening was no longer blocked by
Amanda's excess avoirdupois, he moved cautiously forward. Arriving at the
opening he saw Dr. Sterling-Quincannon cowering in a
corner and Amanda in a gorilla stance at the door, all atwitch
and eager.
The door began opening slowly. An eye warily
peeked around the edge, spied Amanda, and ducked back as she pounced, her bulk
buckling the bulkhead.
"Ms. Quincannon?"
a voice quavered through the door. Taking her growl as a response the voice
continued. "There is a chlorine leak in the ship, and we've traced it
through the air ducts to this cabin. We need to get in to check it out, and we
don't wish to get physical with you." Obie could
well understand why. "Please let us enter."
Obie found himself doing the incredible: rooting for the
twitch-twitch. With his escape route through the ducts cut off he was trapped
if Moody and his men came in. But then, he was in an air duct with a chlorine
leak. He couldn't smell anything but his cleaner, but if Moody was willing to
brave the beast to check, it must be there.
Obie felt like a bell clapper just starting up: either way
he swung -- toward the opening and Moody or toward the duct baffle and the gas
-- it was going to be hard on him. The need to decide was removed along with
his consciousness as Moody took the only possible way past Amanda -- he flooded
the room and duct with sleep gas.
#
How anything as insubstantial as a gas could
contain such large quantities of scrap metal to dump on one's head, Obie would rather not know, even if his head stopped
throbbing long enough for him to ponder on the question.
At the moment, other ponderables
were clamoring for his attention. Moody's questions sounded like they were
burbling through several gallons of water, not being particularly sanitized in
the process. The few words that filtered through undistorted seemed to have
less to do with the questions than with Obie's lack
of answers.
In an attempt to reduce the noise level, Obie burbled something back. What it was wasn't exactly
clear even to him, but it had the desired effect -- Moody's verbal diarrhea
flowed to a halt. With a sigh of impending relief, Obie
settled his head like a poleaxed elephant and awaited
blissful oblivion.
#
Obie found his five seconds of oblivion insufficient, but
all Moody allowed him. "What (burble, burble)
here?"
"Raja frazma bawstl mok." The perfect response -- it gained him another five
seconds. However, he realized that sooner or later he was going to have to use
actual words and he should start picking them now. But none he selected seemed
quite ripe.< P> "What are you doing
here?"
"Rebeded
drur kakakuh."
"One more time."
"Resln
drakl korakahn."
A sudden blast of halitosis cleared Obie's mind like the smelling salts it resembled. "One
more time, and if I can't understand I'm liable to lose interest. We don't want
that, now do we?"
Obie's tongue shrank along with his stomach and, taking a
deep breath, he choked momentarily on the ambient
atmosphere, then blurted, "Rescue Dr. Quincannon!"
A stunned silence was followed by an
eye-patch-and-parrot-on-the-shoulder laugh that rumbled through Obie's head like boulders down a cliff.
"You? Rescue the doc?"
"I fail to see the humor."
"Then open your eyes."
Obie did so and found himself nose-to-nose with a
wall-to-wall face reminiscent of a lemon meringue pie sprinkled with raisins.
"Well? How's your funny bone?"
"Still in one piece, and I'd like to
keep it that way."
"Then tell me why you're here."
"I already did. I'm here to rescue the
doctor."
Moody's eyes widened as he straightened up.
"You mean it. You really think you're going to rescue Quincannon."
"I have to."
"Why?"
"Those are my orders."
Moody smiled like an acute case of dyspepsia.
"And what do you think your chances are?"
"Oh," Obie
quavered, "about nil."
"Very
perceptive." Moody turned to
a couple of crewmen standing near. "Put him in with the other two--"
"No!" Even Obie
was startled by the volume of his protest, but he continued on. "Please,
not in with..." He couldn't go on, but Moody instantly recognized the
twitch-twitch that shook Obie's hands.
"You're right," Moody said. "I
may be nasty and unfeeling, but even I'm not that cruel. Put him in a cabin of his
own. And seal the air ducts."
#
Two days of pounding on the door had yielded Obie nothing more than a sore hand and a deep thirst.
Moody's sense of humor evidently included hunger and thirst among the knee
slappers.
He raised his hand for one more blow when the
door slid aside, revealing Moody standing on the other side, hands on hips and
mossy teeth gaping greenly through a smile like a crack in an old sidewalk. His
eyes drifted to Obie's still up-raised fist. "Ah, ah, ah. Naughty, naughty," he cautioned,
wrapping a hand around Obie's face like a blanket and
pushing. Obie ricocheted off two walls, then feeling
suddenly fatigued, sat rather indelicately on the floor.
Moody came and leaned over him. "You don't look too well," he snirtled.
Feeling a witty rejoinder was called for, Obie responded, "Arghh."
"Witty rejoinder. Have you noticed a certain lack of communication
whenever we begin a conversation?"
"Fudahah."
"I quite agree. Perhaps
a small libation to clear the must from the corners." Obie gratefully grabbed the proffered bottle and sucked it
dry with a sigh of relief. "Feel more yourself now?"
Obie cracked an eyelid then let it close. "Bibo, ergo sum."
"What does that mean?"
"I drink, therefore I am."
"Fine. Bilingual puns." Suddenly Moody took on the
appearance of a shy rhinoceros in heat. "Uh, listen --
what's-you're-name..."
"Mac," Obie
responded hopefully.
"Mac?" Moody was momentarily nonplused, mumbled,
"Doesn't seem appropriate, somehow..." He looked back at Obie. "Anyway --uh -- Mac," Obie
beamed at him, "are you the guy that cleaned the air ducts and the galley,
and the laundry room, and --"
"Yes," Obie
interrupted, "I am."
"Good."
"I'm glad you're pleased."
"Actually, that's what I came to talk to
you about."
"What? Being pleased?"
"No. Your
cleaning."
"I'm confused."
"I believe it."
"Could we please use a few more words in
our sentences? I feel like I'm watching a tennis match."
Moody stared at him for a moment. "A what?"
"A tennis match. Most of the time on my
outpost the only company I had was my computer, so we would play games and one
of the computer's favorites -- why, I don't know -- was a thing called tennis
in which the computer would hit a blip across the mo nitor
screen and I would use another blip to hit it back and it would use yet another
blip to hit it back to me and back and forth it would go until one of us
missed." Obie paused for breath. "Now that
was a sentence I could get my teeth into."
Moody devoted another moment to staring.
"That is one of the most boring things I ever heard of," he finally
said.
"I agree. But one must keep one's
computer happy if one doesn't wish to discover something unsavory in one's
morning nutripaste, mustn't one?"
Moody's silence became abyssal. Then, "Either two days were far too many -- or far too few. Maybe I
should spend a couple of days deciding." He stood and went toward the
door.
Obie, sensing Moody's lack of desire to discuss batting a
blip back and forth, quickly sough a subject that would avoid his spending
another two days without food and water. "ou
said -- " What was it he said? "something about cleaning?" It that
what he said? Moody stopped and turned around. That's what he said.
"Cleaning? Yes. Cleaning.
You're the guy that did all that cleaning."
"I am."
"Good."
"I'm glad you're pleased."
"Let's not start that again!"
Obie settled his hair back in its wonted place and
silently nodded.
Moody exasperatedly sighed and sat. "We
wish you to continue. We have noticed a certain greater ease in breathing the
last few days, a fact that has greatly eased our breathing. Or did I already
say that? Anyway, keep it up and we'll think of a suitable reward -- say, we'll
allow you feminine companionship."
Obie began to twitch. "Whose?"
"How about Ms.
Sterling-Quincannon?"
The twitching became pronounced.
"How about we deny you feminine
companionship?"
Obie took a shaky breath and nodded. "I agree."
Go to Part Three of A Tidy Little Trip
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