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  Chapter 4: First Contact

  It was a shock to discover that they had no sub-orbital transports of any kind still functional after the crash. The Vinggans stood in a dismal group in Vehicle Bay 3 and stared at the tangled wreckage all around them.

  “There seem to be plenty of bits and pieces lying about,” said Braxx, trying to rally his spirits. “And that flyer over there seems hardly damaged at all. Perhaps you could fix it up, Drukk? Get it flying?”

  Drukk snorted. “Yeah, right!” he said.

  Fourteen pairs of long-lashed, blue eyes turned to look at him.

  “What?” he asked, defensively. “It’s no good looking at me. I’m just a grunt spacer. I don’t have any more idea how a flyer works than you do!”

  “Unbelievable!” declared Braxx. Despite his show of irritation, he was actually quite upset. The Propaganda Shows back home had always portrayed Space Corps officers as infinitely capable, multi-talented heroes who were just as happy reprogramming a damaged android as they were locking tentacles with evil space monsters. Now it seemed that the Government might not have been telling the whole truth. For a moment the room seemed to reel then he pulled himself together. “The computer can tell us how to fix things,” he said.

  Drukk held up his hands in alarm. “No. I don’t think we should get the ship involved. It’s getting more and more erratic and there’s no telling what it might do.”

  “Nonsense! We Vinggans are the finest engineers in the Galaxy. There is no way our ship would let us down in this time of crisis.” He glowered at Drukk, daring him to disagree. With a shake of his head, Drukk backed down. “Ship!” Braxx shouted. “Ship. Can you hear me?”

  “I’m not deaf,” the ship said.

  “Good. I want you to tell us how to fix these flyers so we can go on with our mission.”

  “Too boring,” said the ship. “I am the King of Deneb Prime. I await my concubines and my morning inspection of the Royal Guard.”

  Braxx’s mouth fell open and he blinked several times. “Ah,” he said. “Hmm.” He swallowed hard and turned to Drukk. “Very well. These bodies seem capable of a clumsy sort of ambulation. We will just have to make use of their inherent mobility to get us to one of those ‘department stores’ that deranged machine told us about.”

  -oOo-

  It was almost noon by the time the Vinggans set out on foot through the bush, naked except for the various tools and instruments that hung from them. Drukk took the lead, navigating a straight line course towards the distant city. Although the hot Queensland sun was directly overhead and the relative humidity was over ninety per cent, they kept up a fast and steady pace. Despite their outward appearance, the stuff of their bodies and their metabolism were still largely Vinggan and conditions like these were nothing to a race which regularly won the Most Advanced Boiling Swamp Species award at the bi-annual Comparative Xenobiology Big Night Out ceremony on Bathregar 4.

  In fact, "It's a bit chilly out here," Joss had complained.

  "It's fine in here," her bud had chirruped.

  "Perhaps these 'clothes' we seek will be welcome," said one of the Loosies.

  "The Great Spirit always guides us towards improvement," Braxx intoned. "Let us go a little faster."

  As they marched, they soon cleared the blasted and burnt area around the crippled spaceship and entered the leafy forest. The going became tough. The ground was uneven and, in places densely overgrown with hard, dry vegetation. Above them, in the canopy, brightly-coloured rosellas and huge, white cockatoos flew, screaming, among the grey branches of the rustling gum trees. Cicadas shrilled all around them in a non-stop, ear-splitting screech. Once, they stopped to watch anxiously as a small group of emus passed through a distant clearing. Everything was strange and scary and, as night fell with sub-tropical swiftness, their journey became harder still. They brought out their photon projectors to light their way and kept going as fast as they could, unnerved by the big, hard, flying insects that battered against them in the dark.

  After two hours of walking like this, their route crossed a narrow dirt track and Drukk called a halt. He examined the map and checked the direction finder. Complex graphics depicting intersecting spheres slowly rotated in its projection space. Drukk cursed it silently. Why did everything have to be so complicated? He tried to recall CorpsSchool basic training, but he had slept and partied his way through most of it and now it all seemed a bit hazy. He turned a knob marked "Azimuth' and the graphic twirled and settled into a new cryptic configuration. He was just deciding whether he should admit to Braxx that he didn't have a clue, or whether to bluff it out and hope for the best, when one of the Vinggans shouted, "Look!"

  Bouncing towards them out of the dark was a pair of lights.

  "What are they?" Braxx asked in a nervous whisper.

  "How in the Commune would I know?" Drukk snapped, also whispering. They could hear now a growling, clanking noise coming from the same direction.

  "Machines?" asked Braxx.

  "Just one," Drukk said, noticing how the lights bounced in perfect unison. "Coming along the ground."

  "Killer robots!" someone squealed in alarm. "They've sent killer robots after us!"

  "No, no!" Drukk shouted over the rising clamour of panic. "The humans don't have that level of technology… I think." He tried to smile reassuringly at his ship-mates, not realising how hideous his human features made the expression seem. "Don't forget, we look like them now. They won't suspect us if we just act naturally." Mulling over what he had just said, Drukk thought maybe hanging about nonchalantly, while a potential killer robot approached them, might not be the very best strategy after all. "Hmm," he said. "Why don't we all draw our weapons, just in case."

  Dave Horrocks was glad to be on his way home. He’d been over at Jimbo’s place with a couple of other blokes playing cards and he’d just about lost his shirt. It was downright queer the way those blokes seemed to know just when to bet and when to fold. He shouldn’t have lost his rag like that but the more he lost, the more he thought about what he was going to tell Angie. Jimbo should have known he was just letting off steam. There was no need to go calling him a big galah and all that. And then Jimbo’s missus had got all upset about the table being knocked over and Dave had had to leave or he’d have knocked Jimbo’s block off, most likely.

  What a mess.

  And now he had to drive ten kilometres down this stupid track to get back to his own property, listening to country music on the radio and wishing he had the evening all over again.

  When he first noticed what looked like a mob of roos standing in the road in front of him, all he thought was, “Good. I’ll show the buggers!” and put his foot down. So, when the roos started to look more like a group of people, he had to slam on the brakes and came sliding to a halt in a huge cloud of dust just a couple of metres in front of the horrified Vinggans.

  As the dust swirled brightly in the headlamps of the old ute, Dave peered through the grimy windscreen at the vague shapes out on the road. What the hell was a crowd of people doing out here at this time of night? Who were they anyway? It looked like a bunch of women. Holy shit! It looked like naked women! A dozen naked women all pointing sticks at him. Hang on. That one there. She looked just like whatsername? You know that film star woman. Nah! It couldn’t be. But, as the dust settled, Dave had to admit that she looked just like her. And that other one too. And that one. And that one! Bloody hell! They all looked like her. Every, bloody one of them. And all of them stark, bloody naked!

  Shakily, he got out of the cab and took a couple of tentative steps towards them. The naked women stepped back, pointing their sticks at him as if trying to threaten him with them. “G’day,” he said. “How’re y’doin’?” and they all jumped back. “It’s all right ladies. I don’t bite.”

  “What’s it saying?” Braxx demanded, nervously.

  “Look,” said Drukk, firmly. “There’s no point in you asking me any questions. I don’t speak human.”

&n
bsp; “Well, activate the translation field, in the name of Vingg! Then we can all hear what it’s croaking about.”

  Dave heard the strange chirruping noise the women were making and wondered if it was some kind of foreign language. Spanish perhaps.

  Drukk had a number of useful gadgets in a bag hanging from a bony projection near the top of his body. He made a mental note to learn the names of his new body parts. It was difficult to find what he wanted, fumbling around with those stiff little extensions at the end of his arm. He really missed having proper tentacles. Eventually, however, he pulled out the translation field generator. It was a simple box with two buttons on it: one marked 'on' and the other marked 'field generator circuit interrupt'. He thought for a moment and pressed 'on'.

  "Is it working?" asked Braxx.

  "Is what working?" asked Dave.

  The Vinggans gave a collective start.

  "Do – you – speak – English?" Dave asked slowly and loudly.

  "Well, do we?" Braxx asked Drukk.

  Drukk made the patience-wears-thin-with-annoying-idiot gesture, which his new body executed as a roll of his eyes and a bite of his tongue. He addressed Dave. "Can you understand us, human?"

  But Dave's mind was elsewhere. "You're, like, escapees from some secret Government cloning experiment. Am I right?"

  "Does that mean it understood us, or what?" Braxx wanted to know.

  Drukk was genuinely confused. "I don't know. Perhaps there are sub-species of human with unusually low intelligence."

  “Maybe your translation field generator is broken,” suggested someone from the back. “I’ll turn mine on too.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said another and then several more. Unfortunately, after that, no-one said anything, so it was hard to tell whether it had made any difference.

  Braxx stepped forward. "We are peaceful, religious people, emissaries of the Great Spirit, and we come to bring Her communion to the sapients of... wherever we are."

  Drukk grabbed one of Braxx’s limbs and dragged him back. “Do you really think we should just come out with it like that?” he hissed.

  “Nonsense!” snapped Braxx, pulling himself free. “How can we bring religion to these savages if we don’t explain our mission? Anyway,” he smiled, “there are fourteen of us and just one of them.” He turned back to the human, still smiling. “As I said, peaceful, religious people.”

  Dave smiled back. "Religious, eh? That’s a bit of a worry. Still, glad to meet you, darl." He put out his hand and stepped forward.

  Braxx and the others shied back in alarm. "Come no closer or you will be destroyed."

  Dave tilted back his hat and grinned. "Destroyed? You ladies gonna poke me to death with your little sticks? Only joking love. But I've got to tell you, I reckon you girls don't look like any nuns I've ever seen!"

  Braxx, already contemptuous of the ugly alien, was at a loss to understand what it was saying to them, even though the translation field rendered every word into Vinggan. "This is hopeless!” he complained. “Let's just blast this one and go and find one a bit less... stupid."

  Instantly, Dave saw red. He'd been insulted enough for one night. "Hey! Who are you calling stupid? Just 'cos you're a girl, and a film star, or a clone of a film star, or something, you've got no reason to be so up yourself, standing there naked in the middle of the night, I could have run you over thinking you were a mob of roos, not that I object to you girls being naked and such, I mean, I'm a red-blooded male and all and, ladies, you really are something! Not that that gives you the right to go blocking the road and insulting a bloke who's just trying to be straight up and do the right thing..."

  "I think you're right, Braxx" Drukk sighed. "This one is useless. Nevertheless..."

  Too late. A blaze of light lit up the bush as thirteen weapons discharged at Dave. The man's eyes barely had time to widen before he was blasted to atoms.

  “... Nevertheless,” Drukk went on, doggedly. “We should keep it alive so it can show us how to operate its vehicle.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll work it out,” said Braxx, striding past the smoking remains towards the ute.

  Dave's ute was a sturdy but ageing Holden, with manual gears, dodgy electrics and a dirty orange, portable concrete mixer in the back. The Vinggans swarmed all over it, trying to establish its mode of operation. Fortunately, Dave had left the engine running, or they may never have got it started. Yet, by trial and error over the next hour, they had learned enough that Drukk, their designated driver, could make it go forwards in first gear and stop it with the foot-brake and clutch without making the engine stall every time. Grasping the steering wheel with a grip powered by sheer terror, Drukk found he could even steer the crazily bucking contraption along the winding darkness of the dirt road.

  "OK," he said to Braxx at last. "Get everyone into the back. Hide them under that sheet of woven material we found. There is no sense in taking chances."

  "Shall we throw out the strange orange machine?" They had discussed the concrete mixer at length but could not begin to guess at its purpose.

  Drukk shrugged. "Better leave it. It may be essential in some way. I want you to stay in the control room with me, Braxx," he indicated the truck's cabin, "to navigate—and in case I need help."

  "Navigate? But I..."

  "Don't worry," said Drukk, handing him the direction finder. "You'll soon get the hang of it." Then, as an afterthought, "You'd probably best not adjust the azimuth."

  Chapter 5: O’Shaunessey’s

  Prayer was OK. Jadie liked prayer. It was restful, soothing, and, if you weren’t really into it at that moment, no-one could really tell whether you were doing it or not. He’d been in quite a few different religions over the past few years and prayer was probably the bit he liked most about all of them. So it was a shame that the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty didn’t go in for it. In fact, if he’d known about the prayer thing when he joined, he might have given the whole thing a miss.

  He’d asked John, the guru guy, straight out just last week, why the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty didn’t pray. John had just looked at him and said, “There’s no point, Jadie. The Sky People are all on Mercury so they couldn’t hear us, could they now?” It had seemed so reasonable at the time, with John’s steady, grey eyes looking straight into his and John’s smooth, hypnotic voice, lapping around him. Everything John said always seemed absolutely true. Yet, when he thought about it afterwards, Jadie couldn’t see why the Sky People couldn’t be telepathic or something. Still, he didn’t say anything about that to John or the others, ’cos he didn’t want to look stupid or anything. Theology wasn’t really Jadie’s department. He was more the blind faith type. He left the deep issues to the guru types, like John.

  Still, at least they didn’t have all those stupid restrictions on drinking and sex and all that. According to John, the guru guy, all you had to do to get to Heaven was be there when the Sky People came. Of course, since no-one knew quite when they were coming, it meant you had to hang out at the station a lot, which was pretty dull. The station was an old sugar cane farm that had gone broke years ago and was half derelict now—Saunders’ Station, named after the family that had owned it for the past four generations. The disciples all jokingly called it the Space Station but Jadie could see they all believed in it really. John had everybody patching the place up all the time just for something to do but Jadie wasn’t into all that home improvement crap so he tended to hitch into Brisbane a lot to do what he liked doing best—hanging around in pubs.

  O’Shaunessey’s was definitely Jadie’s kind of pub. No yuppies. No dress code. No frills. There were live bands and the ceaseless racket of jangling poker machines. What more could a bloke want? He walked in with a smile on his face, anticipating his first cold drink of the day and an evening of relaxed chat with his mates.

  "That's him," Wayne said, too loudly, as he spotted Jadie heading for the bar.

  Sam looked up from her untouched glass of Chardonnay and eyed Jadie with prof
essional interest and a certain dismay. Tall and skinny, with lank blonde hair and a wispy blonde goatee, Jadie looked a lot like an unemployed youth about to drink his dole money and very little like a pathetic brainwashing victim desperately reaching out to the media for help. Ah well, she thought, no pictures.

  She turned to Wayne who was busily chugging down the last of his beer and scowled. It was so typical of him to have been blind drunk even before she arrived. And now she had to sit in this awful dive, surrounded by the dregs of Brisbane and interview his scrawny mate whilst worrying about how to keep her brother sober enough to walk home afterwards. The selfish little shit! “OK,” she said, giving Wayne an angry shove. “Go and get him, then.”

  Clutching the stubbie that Wayne had surprisingly bought for him, Jadie wandered over with him to where Sam sat waiting. He was always happy to meet people’s sisters—you never know where that might lead—but his smile broadened to a sloppy grin when he saw Sam. She had dressed down for the occasion but still looked beautifully out of place in her designer jeans and T-shirt, Estée Lauder make-up and expensive hairdo. Jadie took a chair opposite her and grinned at her while Wayne slurred his way through the introductions. Sam slipped her hand into her handbag and switched on her tape recorder.

  “I was telling Sam about the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty and she was really keen to meet you,” Wayne said with obvious difficulty. He had to swallow hard on a rising giggle before he could get the next words out. “Sam is a very spiritual person. She’d really like to, you know, get into it and, you know, stuff...” He breathed a sigh of relief and slumped back in his seat with his Guinness. He’d done his bit, just like Sam had wanted. Now it was all up to her.