3: WHEREIN I AM SWALLOWED BY A LARGE CREATURE

The Diversity Of Spaceships

The spaceship was three blocks away, still well within the snow zone. Uclod had set it down in a wide intersection where two streets met; there was not so much landing room as if he had chosen the central square, but I suppose he had not wished to disturb the Explorer evidence back there.

Uclod’s vessel was nothing like the spaceship the Explorers had been working on when I arrived in the city. The Explorers’ ship had been shaped like a large glass fish… except Festina told me it was not a fish at all but a mammal called an orca, or killer whale. The whale shape was not the Explorers’ choice — many of them thought it barbaric for a starship to look like an animal instead of an abstract geometric object — but the Explorers were using the hull of an old space vessel built by ancient inhabitants of Oarville, and beggars cannot be choosers.

As for me, I thought a fish was an excellent form for a spaceship; one could picture it diving into the great blackness and plunging past whirlpool galaxies. Also it would be very good at orbiting, for fish are constantly swimming in mindless circles. Uclod’s ship, on the other hand, was not so easy to imagine speeding through The Void — it was nothing more than a huge gray ball, five stories high and powdered with snow. One could picture such a thing avalanching down a mountain, but it certainly did not fit the image of a Graceful Nomad Of The Space Lanes.

"Isn’t she a beauty?" Uclod said as we walked toward the ship. "Isn’t she the loveliest little girl you’ve ever seen?"

"It is quite spherical," I answered with tact. "You do not think the snow on top will cause problems, do you? Sometimes when machines get damp, the electric bits go fizz."

"Lucky for us," Uclod said, "she doesn’t have electric bits. Bioneural all the way."

I had not made the acquaintance of the word "bioneural," but I assumed it was a boring Science concept that would only vex me if Uclod tried to explain. Besides, I had greater concerns on my mind. The closer we got to the ship, the more I saw it was not just a plain gray sphere; it was, in fact, a whitish sphere, covered with snarled-up threads of gray string. As for the white undersurface, it looked all wet and gooey, glistening as damply as the snow falling around it. To get the exact picture, imagine the egg of some slimy creature that breeds in stagnant water, then wrap gray spiderwebs all over the egg’s jelly so the strands sink into the goo.

In short, the ship was very most icky… so when I got close enough, I touched it to see if it felt icky too. It felt quite appalling indeed — like bird poop just after it falls from the sky.

"What are you doing?" Uclod asked.

"I wished to see if your craft feels as vile as it looks. Which it does."

"Hey!" he said sharply, "don’t insult Starbiter!"

"If you have named your ship Starbiter," I said, "there is little more I can do in the way of insults." The Nature Of A Creature Which Bites At Stars

I began to circle the ship’s exterior, wondering why alien races always make their machinery unattractive. Surely the universe does not require space vehicles to be large gooey balls wrapped in string; a sensible universe would not even approve of such a design. If you constructed your starship out of nice sleek glass, I believe the universe would let you fly much faster, just because you had made an effort to look presentable. But one cannot suggest such things to Science people — they will laugh at you in a very mean fashion, and make you feel foolish even when you know you have an Astute Perspective On Life.

"Why is it like this?" I asked Uclod, who was following at my heels, "Why is it all stringy and damp? The spaceships of the human navy are not so awful — I have heard they are big long batons, covered with pleasantly dry ceramics. They are also white… which is not as good as being clear, but much better than a sodden gray."

"Well, missy," he said, "when humans joined the League if Peoples, they were given a different FTL technology than my ancestors. Humans got baton-ships; we Divians got Zaretts."

"This is a Zarett?"

"It is indeed." He reached up to pat the ball’s gluppy exterior, "A sweet little filly, only thirty years old… but smart as a whip and twice as frisky."

I stepped back a pace. "It is alive?"

"Absolutely. The daughter of Precious Solar Wind and Whispering Nebula III… which would impress the nads off you if you knew anything about thoroughbred Zaretts. This baby is worth more than a minor star system; I’d be the squealing envy of rich men and gorgeous women, if only I could tell the world what I’ve got. Which I can’t: Starbiter wasn’t exactly born with the blessing of the Bloodline Registry Office. A slight irregularity in the breeding procedure."

"In other words, you did something criminal to procure her."

"Not me personally," he replied. "Someone else pulled the actual heist: a load of fertilized ova went missing under unconventional circumstances. My family simply acted as go-betweens, finding buyers who’d provide good homes for the misplaced little tykes… and we took several ova off the top as our consulting fee." He patted the ship again. "You can’t imagine how long I had to suck up to Grandma Yulai before she let me have this one."

I continued to stare at the Starbiter creature. Uclod called it smart and frisky, but I could see neither quality in evidence. It did not frisk at all; and one does not display much intelligence by sitting in the middle of an intersection. "If this is an animal," I said, "what does it eat?"

"Oh, this and that. We feed her a mix of simple hydrocarbons, calcium nitrate, small quantities of heavier elements. She doesn’t have much of a digestive system for breaking down complex nutrients, so you need to keep the diet pretty basic."

"I am not so much interested in what she can digest as what she might swallow—"

"Well, as to that…"

Uclod walked farmer around the base of the Zarett, then reached up to touch a bleached-out spot on the creature’s skin. He planted his palm firmly and began to rub with strong circular motions, the way one scours hard at one’s body when one has slipped and got grass stains. The goop beneath Uclod’s fingers made soft slurpy rounds as his hand moved; slowly, the sounds grew louder, until he pulled back and the slurping continued without him. The skin bulged in and out, like a person’s jaw as she chews. Moments later, an enormous patch of the Zarett’s gooey exterior opened wide to reveal a dark throat leading into a darker gullet.

A giant mouth loomed before me, big enough to gobble me up!

Facing A Hellish Maw

The Zarett’s breath smelled exactly like the breath of an animal that eats simple hydrocarbons, calcium nitrate, and small quantities of heavier elements. It was particularly hydrocarbons… and I suspect many of those hydrocarbons had not been sufficiently fresh. Starbiter’s breath was, in short, quite the Fetid Reek. My stomach lurched at the odor, and the only thing that prevented a regurgitory incident was that I had not eaten solid food in the past four years.

Uclod gestured to the creature’s mouth. "After you, toots."

"You wish me to go inside?"

"There’s plenty of room. A big girl like you should scrunch down going past the epiglottis; but it’ll be clear sailing after that."

As far as I could see, he was telling the truth: the Zarett’s mouth was big enough for me to enter, provided I ducked under the lips. The throat was very large too — pink and gummy-looking, but with ample room to let me pass. On the other hand, I was not such a one as would calmly proceed into a large creature’s stomach on the invitation of a man who admitted to being a criminal.