If Querin had a word for the Guardian administrator ordering him around, it would be “crisp.”

  Flying jellyfish, in his opinion, should not be crisp unless they were deep fried. Just the thought of submerging the pompous woman in boiling oil until she stopped ordering him around made him smile. At least he thought she was a woman. She reminded him too much of his own wife to be otherwise.

  Querin himself was wearing the shape of one of the creatures native to this solar system, a blue furry biped with huge eyes. His Overlord form was too tall and his Carrier form was too long to navigate the ceiling and turns of the hallways, which only reinforced how far he was from the Guardian Empire proper.

  Outside of the empire, most solar systems were either falling all over themselves to gain official recognition and join, or trying very hard to stay beneath the Guardian's notice. This system had failed to do either, although Querin couldn’t figure out what they had done to merit such attention.

  “Are you even listening to me, Butcher Querin?” She paused in the space station hallway, one tentacle raised above a clipboard. An errant breeze pushed her closer until an overly starched shoulder pad nearly poked his eye. He thought about transforming himself to match the administrator’s species, but decided against it. Not all Butchers agreed, but out here beyond the edge of the empire, he'd found the usual emotional response Butcher shapeshifting was either to feel flattered or like they were being mocked, followed — eventually — by paranoia.

  “I’m sorry,” Querin replied, doing his best to look contrite. “I was just wondering about your species. And your name. What do others call you?”

  The jellyfish arched a crisp manicured eyebrow. At least Querin thought of it as an eyebrow, given that — like her lack of shoulders — she didn’t have eyes. “I thought my role for the Guardians was obvious. My species is Administrator. As for what you can call me, since I will not remain long enough for you to succeed or fail, Administrator is sufficient as a name, as well.”

  “If you aren’t remaining to expedite my needs, how will I get access to ingredients?” Querin asked. “This far out the spiral arm, I can’t afford express shipping.”

  Administrator sighed in a manner which very much reminded Querin of his wife. “Weren't you listening? You will have Guardian level access for the duration of this assignment. You can order any ship, anywhere, to alter course in the name of your mission. You have access to classified files, unlimited wealth, you name it… subject to review after the assignment is completed, of course.”

  “Why me? I’m certain both species have excellent chefs, and I’m really just a grocer.” A door in the hallway irised open and Querin got his first look at the galley.

  Querin's eyes caught movement in the darkened room, a view-screen mounted high on the wall showed highlights from last season's finals of the kaijumon battle games. Overlords Deck Tehzu and Birch Sshril stood on an open field in an exhibition match, giant resonance-advanced kaijumon battling between them. Birch's stomper drove hooves into the turf and a line of rocks erupted in a line toward Deck's blaster, who flapped wings at the last second, lifted its multi-ton bulk above the line of destruction, and replied with a line of fire from his mouth.

  Or, at least, that's how Querin remembered the moment. The image was distorted by dark drops, dripping from the ceiling onto the screen, obscuring the image in redness.

  Room lights flickered on, revealing blood splattered everywhere.

  The Administrator paused in the hallway, and gave Querin a nudge forward into the room. “The Guardians have given the involved species a time limit to conclude their treaty. Both cultures require the sharing of food as a prerequisite to ratifying any significant contract. The finest chefs on both worlds are currently dead or in the infirmary following an unauthorized knife fight. And, as you said, we are distant from the center of the empire. You are the only Butcher in range.”

  When Querin didn’t move, the Administrator shoved him harder. “Go. Cook something. Prevent a war. You have two decadays. Refusal is not an option.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone cleaned this?” Querin suspected he knew why. The Administrator wanted to scare him. It was working.

  “The chefs had several dishes underway when the … altercation broke out. You need to determine if anything is salvageable before the Cleaners dispose of it.”

  “I have a Cleaner crew?”

  “You have Guardian access. I’ve spoken to the staff and the entire space station is yours to command, although I would advise against abusing that privilege.” The Administrator shoved Querin harder. “Go. Cook something. I have other assignments to attend to.”

  “What happens if I fail?”

  “The war will continue, if necessary Overlord forces will wipe out both species to prevent the altercation from spreading, the Butcher race will have their galactic status reviewed and reevaluated, and you will be transported to your home planet to explain why your species no longer has access to interstellar travel.”

  “No pressure.”

  A third of a centiday later, while black-winged Cleaners industriously worked behind him, Querin stirred a protein broth: the only dish in the entire kitchen which wasn’t poisonous to one or the other of the warring species. Neither species had official titles yet, and Querin hated the nonsense words mechanical translators assigned new things, so he privately called them Salt Puppies and Acid Slugs.

  While he was officially a Butcher by species, Qurin had never raised livestock. He’d never served as a chef at a spaceport, cooking food for hundreds of different species, each with their own dietary restrictions which the chef was supposed to know by heart. And he’d certainly never attempted to eat food in the shape of not one but two creatures he’d met for the first time less than a day ago. Since leaving his home planet, interstellar grocery delivery was the most exciting thing he’d ever done.

  … and he liked it that way.

  He’d been forced to throw out everything the native chefs had attempted and start over fresh. The dish in front of him was as basic as could be: protein slurry and water. Still in blue Salt Puppy form, Querin raised the ladle to his lips, trembling slightly. Yes, the machinery said this was edible. But the analysis machine all interstellar kitchens came equipped with had in this case been in the hands of a species at war. A little tampering wasn’t out of the question.

  What decided it for him was thinking of his wife. When he’d called her to explain what happened and why he would not be home on time, she had immediately gone shopping with his newly minted access codes. As she had pragmatically pointed out, if he succeeded he would be a hero who had stopped a war. And if he failed, his family would have more to worry about than a single shopping trip. She’d also, evidently, shared Querin’s access codes with her siblings and more than one or two cousins. He’d turned off his communication device after one too many friends or family members had called to congratulate him on his achievement. As his wife was telling it, he’d already succeeded. Accidentally poisoning himself would be a mercy.

  Touching the ladle to his lips, he immediately noticed the lack of odor and the complete lack of either sweetness or saltiness. He considered a rack of pungent spices to his left: what he privately called the slug-killer rack. Anything on that rack would improve the flavor for his current Puppy taste buds.

  One of the advantages of Butcher shapeshifting was that it wasn’t terribly frightening for the other creatures in the room to watch. His skin didn’t bubble and ooze like a Spymaster, and he certainly didn’t peel off his form like a Hunter shedding his skin. Querin’s blue fur retracted and the skin underneath turned red and slimy. His bipedal form morphed into a gastropod. His eyes shrank and then formed eyestalks. In less than a breath, he wore the plain red form of an Acid Slug and tasted the broth again.

  Ugh. He was reaching with a tentacle for a bottle of sulfuric acid to his right before he caught himself.

  Yes, the foul odorless broth was edible. Neither species would get ill drinking it. But both sides were expecting a feast.

  Just then, the analysis machine in the kitchen sprang to life and started printing out a recipe: a basic sugar which Querin was fairly certain he could synthesize combined with carbon dioxide pressurized through water until a mild carbonic acid was produced. “Cornucopia wine” it was labeled, even though no fermentation was involved. At the very bottom, the sender had added:

  *Wait until you try the meat. *

  Quillin

  If anyone could hack a food processor to spit out messages instead of recipes, it would be his brother-in-law, Quillin. Lacking anything else to do, Querin synthesized the sugar and was very surprised when it registered as completely edible for both species. It even tasted good.

  Atom by atom synthesis was possibly the slowest way to manufacture food, but Querin didn’t have a choice. While he waited, Querin tested out the recipe against other species. Edible.

  Trembling slightly, he fed in more species. Overlord, Gatekeeper, everything he could think of.

  Edible. Edible. Edible.

  Cornucopia was a Butcher myth. Nothing other than water was edible to everyone. Not even the synthetic protein in the broth he’d just made. But the Cornucopia myth had a downside.

  Trembling slightly, Querin sent his cousin a message through more conventional means, "Please tell me you haven't discovered Cornucopeans."

  Quillin's reply was immediate. "No sufficiently intelligent species here, the gravity is too high. Your customers are both carnivores, right? I'll bring you several of the more populous species."

  Querin used his access codes and pulled up a map. There was no way the part-time smuggler would transmit his exact location, but his wife had said her brother was near the border between the Guardian Empire and Hunter space. The rust-bucket his cousin owned couldn't get anywhere quickly, but there was a military scout ship in a system in the general area, surveying the fourth planet for possible terraforming. He sent his cousin the Guardian access codes and the Overlord ship's location.

  With the evening sun adding a sepia touch to the Marine Corps barracks' gray concrete, the building could have belonged in an advertisement, perhaps for a seaside hotel with balcony walkways wrapping around all three floors. One of those hotels which looked good in the photograph, but wasn't actually near the sea.

  The barracks next to it looked exactly the same, with only a sign out front to differentiate it from its neighbors, as did the next, and the next. Pristine perfection repeated to the point of monotony.

  Jodie Mitchell's pager buzzed: Where are you?

  When Jodie arrived at the correct barracks, it was late enough that Julie had given up on waiting for him and was nowhere to be seen. He parked, grabbed his cane, and headed toward the office.

  Jodie and his newly-minted-officer wife had arrived at her first duty station less than a month ago. He'd missed his old friends in San Diego, but he made every effort to fit in. He drove a small white pickup which looked identical to every maintenance contractor on the base. He took an office job for a construction contractor which completely ignored his engineering degree. He wore tan cargo shorts and a polo shirt and even the same shoes.

  But despite Jodie's best efforts, the cracks showed. The bed of his truck contained several plastic barrels destined to become lightweight armor for the fighters in his LARP guild. His cane was covered in arcane symbols and had a lion's head for a handle, appropriate for the highest level sage in the LARP, but jarring with his current attire.

  In Jacksonville, many men wore the same buzz-cut hair as the Marines. Jodie's dirty-blonde hair, curly as a 70s perm, touched his collar. Even his doughboy build stood out among the Marines of Camp LeJeune. All of them could easily run three miles and do stacks of pull-ups. Being five foot eight and over two hundred pounds was treated like a minor crime.

  It was only a matter of time before Julie left him. The only one who couldn't see it was Julie.

  "Good afternoon, Mr Mitchell." The corporal on duty in the office set down his book and pointed over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Mitchell is out back in the sandpit with Lieutenant Winston.”

  Jodie hobbled out of the office and through the tunnel in the first floor of the building to the back. As he left, he overheard a soldier say to the corporal, "That's Lieutenant Mitchell's husband? And his name really is Jodie?"

  Behind the building was a large sandy area bordered by rail-road ties and Lt Winston was attacking Julie with a knife.

  Picking his cane up like a club, Jodie rushed forward as fast as his bad knee would let him, but he’d only made it a few steps before Julie had Winston bent over at the waist with his knife hand up in the air behind him. She kicked one leg forward then back into Winston’s tree-trunk calf.

  The bigger man chuckled. “Close, but really kick that leg up. Above your waist if you can manage it.”

  Julie did as instructed and this time Winston went down on his back. “I did it!”

  “Don’t stop now. Boot to the head.”

  Julie kicked one leg straight up, showing off her cheerleader training from school, then drove the heel of her combat boot several inches into the sand next to Winston’s head. The peanut gallery hanging out on the barracks walkways groaned melodramatically.

  After Julie helped him up from the ground, Winston turned to the onlookers. “Were all of you taking notes, when she did that kick? Lieutenant Mitchell is a foot shorter than me and half my weight. But if this had been real life, that kick would have caved my head in.”

  Jodie's knees weren't the greatest at the best of times, and he had just finished a full day of work. The aborted sprint was enough to make each step painful. Putting both hands on his cane, he took a moment to catch his breath.

  Even in shapeless cammies and her white-blonde hair in a bun, Julie was the kind of pert beauty which would have turned heads anywhere. In Camp LeJeune, where the male to female ratio was 17:1, the effect was even worse.

  On the other hand, in a town where a disproportionate number of the men were under twenty, ran three miles regularly, and stood over six feet tall, Lt Winston was a six foot four slab of brown granite with chiseled cheekbones and piercing brown eyes. The bastard even smelled good.

  When Jodie approached, Winston frowned as his gaze flicked over Jodie’s chubby body. Then the moment passed, as it always did, and he was nothing but polite smiles. "We missed you at the officer's barbecue last weekend. Lieutenant Mitchell said you were off being a wizard?"

  "Sage," Jodie corrected. "Less running."

  “You’re late,” Julie interrupted.

  “There was a fifty-three foot long semi at the gate trying to do a U-turn in a forty-six foot wide space," Jodie explained. "If the MPs had blocked the outbound traffic for less than a minute, that would have given the truck eighty-two feet to–”

  "Or, you could have left early enough that a slight delay wouldn't have been a problem," she muttered as she stepped past him toward the truck. “It's Friday, I'm tired, and I get enough excuses from the troops.”

  It was then that a fifty-foot long turtle landed on the barracks, crushing it flat.

  The only warning was a silvery glow in the shape of a turtle a second before it appeared several feet above the roof. The turtle was blue with a brown shell and — other than the color and the brown helmet on its head — reminded Jodie of a snapping turtle.

  The entire building shuddered when it landed. A second later the roof fell upon the floor below, followed by a second collapse as the third floor fell down on the second. Jodie heard but didn’t see another collapse as a cloud of dust washed over him.

  “Julie!” Jodie rushed forward before the dust cleared and spotted her lying on the ground, chunks of concrete rubble on and around her.

  He didn’t get close enough to see how badly she was injured before the turtle looked in his direction and opened its beaked mouth. The jet of water which slammed into him was like getting hit by an entire swimming pool and he tumbled backwards the way he came, disoriented and choking.

  As he pulled himself off the ground, he saw Lt Winston near him, also water-logged but conscious. A silvery glow silhouetted the Marine and then he was gone. Jodie looked around for his cane, but didn’t have a clue where it had gone.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  No one had yelled orders, no one screamed. It had all happened too fast. Jodie had barely gotten up on his knees before the entire scene turned silver and eerily quiet.

  When the silver glow passed, Jodie lay in the exact same position he'd been in a moment before, dripping in the center of a white room with a softly glowing ceiling. Before him stood a furry nine-foot tall alien, holding out a blue cube about nine inches across.

  The alien was humanoid and furred with a square muzzle and upward pointing ears like a doberman. Where it wasn't covered by a hooded green jumpsuit, the fur was light peach and brown, striped in a pattern like a tiger, and white at the throat. The pupils of its eyes were slitted, with azure blue irises which filled the rest of the eye. Jodie dove under a wide shelf which he suspected was a bed before the alien could use the cube on him.

  From the dubious safely of the bed, Jodie saw the alien switch cubes and hold out another one. The cube glowed white and — at the same time — the glowing silhouette of a cow appeared where Jodie had stood moments before. When the glow faded the cow looked around, but didn't look startled and continued chewing on whatever was in its mouth.

  The cubes were either red or blue and the nine-foot tall alien was able to cradle five of them against its chest. A third cube and a third glow produced a chicken which immediately panicked and flapped around the room knocking things over.

  The alien dropped the cubes as it attempted to grab the chicken. Jodie reached out and grabbed a red one. Although they had looked smaller in the giant alien's hands, they were actually the size of basketballs. One side showed the gray silhouette of a fit human along with a series of symbols across one edge. The opposite side of the red cube was solid gray and what had first appeared to be sharp edges were actually slightly rounded.

  A section of wall disappeared and a second alien stepped into the room.

  "Nie, what do you think you are doing?" This alien was built like the first one, but twelve feet tall with white fur, pink eyes, and pale tan stripes. It's language was a complex series of growls, but when it spoke Jodie could hear English in his head.

  Is this what telepathy feels like?

  "Close the doorway," Nie yelled, still trying to catch the errant chicken. Across the room from the bed, several shelves were covered with stretchy white cloth, holding down the shelves' contents like a net.

  Jodie pulled the red cube with him farther under the bed until he could only see ankles and feet. The bed was seven feet wide and twenty feet long and covered one side of the room. Once he reached the end, it would be only a short sprint to the doorway. Hopefully his knee would hold up long enough to get away.

  "Dad will kill you." The larger alien scooped up the only two cubes which weren't gray on one side. There was a white glow and the chicken's cackling cut off with a sharp squawk.

  "Please Tre," the tiger-striped alien said, "don't tell him. At least until I can find out why that Butcher ordered Dad to pick them up. One of them might even be kaijuchan."

  "They're animals, Nie." Tre picked the remaining three cubes off the floor, and the cow's legs were covered in a white glow before it disappeared. "There can't be any intelligent species on Earth. If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that. The gravity on the third planet, where these animals come from, is three and a third standard: way too high for intelligent life. If there was intelligent life in this solar system, it would have been on the fourth planet — the gravity there is 1.26 standard — or one of the moons of that big planet."

  "Okay, I'm stupid. I get it," Nie said. "But don't tell Dad. Please?"

  Tre sighed. "If nobody noticed they're gone, I'll put them back. But I'm not taking the blame for this."

  Fighting to keep his breathing even despite his hammering heart, Jodie slowly crawled toward the open doorway. He hadn't noticed, but his body did feel lighter here, and his knee was giving him a lot less trouble than earlier.

  He had just reached the end of the bed and pulled his legs up, ready to run, when Tre stepped out of the room and the doorway disappeared.

  Nothing closed, nothing moved, nothing glowed. One second he was staring at a five foot wide doorway, and an eye-blink later he was looking at unbroken white wall with only a red and green display above the space to show he was looking at the same spot.

  Damn.

  Nie knelt down, and Jodie found himself staring into bright-blue eyes with vertically slitted pupils. The lips pulled back into what Jodie hoped was a grin, but the expression exposed canines as large as any bear.

  "You rescued your friend!" Even though Jodie heard English in his head, his ears still heard growling. The nine-foot tall alien laid down on his belly and reached for Jodie.

  Clutching the basketball-sized red cube to his belly, Jodie kicked at the five-fingered paw reaching for him, but the low gravity combined with the smooth floor didn't give him enough traction to effectively get away. All he accomplished was sliding around a lot, much to the complaints of his knee.

  "I'm trying to help you, dammit. Stop kicking me." Nie ’s voice took on a booming quality without getting louder, both audibly and in Jodie's head, then the odd effect went away. "Come out and let me help you."

  Jodie pushed off against the wall and easily slid into the center of the room. Nie held out his furred hand and Jodie spotted rough pads on the palms and fingers like a dog. "Go ahead, give me your friend's cube. Only one creature at a time can fit in a training cube."

  This thing might be a kid, but at nine feet tall he's a little over 150% my height. Let's see… square cube law puts his weight more than triple mine and his strength at least double, if not more to handle that body weight. I don't even want to think about his big brother.

  Jodie stood and held out the cube. When Nie's fingers flexed around the cube, curved claws slid out of the tips of his furred fingers like a cat. Nie pulled back his teeth again. "I don't care what Tre says, but the fact you can obey me means you are intelligent, and you'll make an excellent kaijuchan. Maybe even a kaijumon."

  Jodie finally got a good look around the room. From the two beds, one above the other, he guessed Tre and Nie shared a room. The ceiling was over twenty feet tall and most of the lower shelves which he could reach contained stuffed animals, most of which wore soft brown helmets. One in particular caught his eye. He grabbed it and held out the stuffed blue turtle to Nie.

  "That's an advanced geyser turtle. Lieutenant Tehzu has one in his third advancement, but he got Dart from his cousin, Deck Tehzu. You know who Deck Tehzu is, right? Tre wants to be in the military like Dad and Uncle Yin — well, more Uncle Yin than Dad because Uncle Yin thinks Dad is wasting himself on the Clarion — but I want to be a professional kaijumon trainer like Deck. He even gave me one of his kaijuchan to train for myself, but I'm still having problems getting Biri-biri to listen to me."

  Jodie chuckled. "You may speak English, but I didn't understand a word you just said. How about you dial back the word vomit a bit?"

  Nie studied Jodie as if seeing him for the first time. "You know the Overlord gift all Ceruleans have is one-way, right? I didn't understand a word you said."

  Out of the corner of his eye, the doorway reappeared, and Jodie launched himself toward it.

  The creature towering over him had to be at least eighteen feet tall, but the soft curves on Nie and Tre had been replaced by hard edges. Like Tre, his fur was white, but his stripes were so pale as to be invisible in the wrong light, and the slitted eyes glaring down at him were albino pink. Instead of a hooded jumper with built-in boots, he wore a dark blue military uniform with five gold stars on each shoulder, and six red cubes were clipped to a shiny black belt at least six inches wide. In one hand he held a red cube with a cow silhouette on it, and he pointed the black cube in his other hand at Jodie.

  "Dad, I can explain!"

  Jodie’s vision went silver again. This time, he fought whatever the silver glow was doing to him, the sensation passed, and he charged forward.

  At five foot eight, Jodie's shoulder was even with the eighteen foot tall officer's knee. He slammed into it as hard as he could before pushing himself off and to the side, down the hallway.

  In the ships reduced gravity, the shove took him farther than he expected and he stumbled into a run, bounding like some kind of deer, trying to get as much distance between himself and the obviously carnivorous giant as he could.

  Something slammed hard into Jodie's back, just to the side of his spine and he felt ribs crack as the blow face-planted him in the hallway, dislocating his bad knee. The officer had thrown the red cube in his other hand like it was a baseball.

  Writhing in pain, Jodie's vision again went silver and this time he was too weak to fight it. When the glow faded, he found himself in a cubical black room with a window for one wall. Outside the window was the hallway he had just left.

  "You saw it fight the cube," Nie said. "It's intelligent and a kaijuchan. Why didn't you just command it, Dad?"

  The captain's hand was bigger than the whole window when it grabbed the room Jodie was in. “When I find out what these things are, then I’ll decide what to do with it. Until then, you and your brother are confined to your room until your mother or I come for you.”

  Okay Jodie, if you are as intelligent as the kid thinks you are, what next?

  He rummaged through his pockets: wallet, notepad, stub of a pencil with a worn eraser, pager with "out of service area" on the screen, and a Leatherman multitool which wouldn't do anything against anything as large as these aliens. Plus his belt, shoelaces, boots, and clothes. Not optimal.

  There was no sensation of movement, but when the hand eventually fell away from the window, Jodie saw he was on a high shelf in a different room. With his other hand the officer took a red cube with a human silhouette on it and placed it on the shelf next to Jodie's cell.

  Beyond the shelf, several more uniformed creatures sat at workstations, most of which faced a view-screen showing Mars against the backdrop of space. Their fur was brown, red, or orange with darker stripes in a variety of patterns, their ears all stood straight up like a doberman and their square muzzles looked faintly dog-like too. All of them were dressed in matching dark blue uniforms with silver stars on their shoulders instead of gold.

  Nie and Tre's father turned to one of his crew members. “Lieutenant Tehzu, I want a security sweep of this entire ship. If there's another creature from that planet loose on my ship, I want it cubed immediately.”

  “Yes commander,” Lt Tehzu replied. He was stockier than most of the others with tan fur and short brown stripes. Two silver stars adorned his shoulders and three of the nine-inch red boxes rested in belt holders above each hip. One of the boxes had the gray silhouette of a snapping turtle on the top.

  "Have the children named them yet?" a female voice outside Jodie's view said with a giggle.

  “Nobody’s naming anything-” Like his son, the captain’s voice took on a booming quality without getting louder, then the odd effect went away. “-until we get more information on what we’re dealing with here.”

  The alien sitting closest to the view-screen got up from its station and strolled over to the captain. Its orange pelt, white throat and dark tiger-like stripes immediately reminded Jodie of Nie's paler stripe pattern.

  “Sweetmeat,” she said softly to the captain, “you know if these creatures are sentient we can’t let the Butchers have them.”

  “The order came with Guardian authorization,” the captain growled, just as softly. “Like I told the children, we aren’t making any decisions until we know more about what is going on.”

  After Nie's mother returned to her station, the commander sat in a chair above and behind her. “Lieutenant Keth, let's get to the rendezvous point and put this planet behind us.”

  Nie's mother smirked but did not look up from her console. “Yes sir, Commander Keth, sir. Estimated twenty-eight minutes to destination.”

  Mars slid out of view, showing only stars. Then, once the rotation ended, the light from the stars turned blue. Above the view-screen was another pair of red and green displays. The two rows of changing symbols — which had previously matched — began to show different symbols as either one sped up or the other slowed down.

  “Sublight holding at 90%. Navigation shields at 100%.” She glanced at the two rows of symbols which Jodie guessed were a pair of clocks. “Subjective time 23 dimidays to destination. Fuel mix is optimal.”

  “Keep sharp,” the captain replied. “Sensor sweep before your shift showed only one other ship out here, but I still don’t want any nasty surprises.”

  “Really?” She swiveled in her chair to face the captain. “You know I always stay alert and always check the log at the start of my shift.”

  Commander Keth grinned back at his wife. “We're on the edge of Hunter space, I’ve got to say something to at least pretend I’m in charge.”

  “Should I leave you two alone?” piped up the giggling voice Jodie had earlier as she stepped into view and sat at the station closest to Jodie. She was orange, like the captain’s wife, but her black stripes were packed tightly together in straight lines and she didn’t have a white chest. A single star adorned her shoulder.

  The actions of the three aliens were meaningless, as was the writing on their consoles. Although they had shifted in color, the stars on the view-screen remained stars. The one constant between what he assumed was the bridge and the giant childrens' room was the red and green display.

  Jodie jotted down the symbols from the display above the view-screen in a notepad, and quickly determined they were rotating between only ten of them. The display was set up in pairs with two pairs in green and those on either side in red. As he worked his panicked breathing slowed and his trembling hand steadied.

  Yes, there were actual giant aliens outside his window, but they hadn't harmed him. All the strangeness out there could be treated like collections of puzzles. Jodie enjoyed puzzles. He was good at puzzles.

  Of the four green numbers, the one on the right changed a little slower than once per second. The green display paired with it changed ten times slower, with the green symbol to the left changing slower yet. The remaining green display and the red numbers to the left didn't change at all, while the two pairs of red displays to the right whirled through symbols like a stopwatch, almost too quick to see.

  He was looking at two clocks — one sped up while the other slowed down. The four red numbers to the left were likely a numerical representation of the date, the four green ones in the center the time, and the four whirling red ones on the right only mattered at relativistic speeds. Glancing at the consoles, he noticed those same number symbols on each of the displays.

  Give me a few weeks, and I'll be able to read this language.

  The thought of being trapped on an alien ship for weeks, possibly longer, got Jodie's hands trembling again, so he tore his gaze away from the picture window.

  The other three walls of the cube were plain and a charcoal gray so dark as to be almost black. Like the floor, the walls appeared to be padded. In one corner a fountain bubbled up from the side of a hot-tub sized pool, and in the other corner a small hole was covered by a hinged lid.

  Sticking a hand in the pool, Jodie found it warm enough to bath in without being hot, but the fountain near one edge was cool. Despite this, he couldn’t find an intake pipe, a heat source, nor anywhere visible for the water to go.

  Under the lid in the other corner, the hole was about two feet deep, and Jodie’s arm tingled when he felt inside. Like the water current pushing up from the bottom of the pool but in the opposite direction, the hole seemed to pull air without an obvious place for the air to go. As he searched, the tingle on his hand and forearm became a burn, and when he pulled his hand out it was hairless and red, like he had attacked it with an overenthusiastic scrub brush.

  Testing a theory, he urinated in the hole and let some of the liquid splash outside the rim. Despite his intentionally poor aim, the air flow sucked the liquid on the rim toward the hole, while the liquid already in the hole slowly disappeared.

  “So, either teleportation — which we’ve already seen them do — or some type of slow molecular breakdown or disintegration, which is also certainly possible,” Jodie muttered to himself. “At least the air flow should keep the smell down.”

  He jumped up in the air, reaching for the ceiling ten feet above. Unlike the low gravity he'd felt on the ship, everything here was Earth normal. A new puzzle.

  “Assuming the inside and outside of the cube match, I'm currently nine inches tall. However, the square cube law says I should be able to jump farther than a grasshopper at this size… and losing too much body heat to stay warm. Which means, despite the view outside, I have not shrank… or they compensated somehow. This is not a puzzle I'm going to solve by staring at it.”

  Jodie pulled a Leatherman multitool out of his pocket and unfolded the larger knife blade. Minutes later the room remained unharmed. The rubbery padded substance which covered the walls, floor, and even the inside of the toilet could not be cut and a thorough search had failed to find a seam or other potential weak point. Not even a frame for the window.

  “There they are,” Lieutenant Keth said.

  Jodie glanced up and the blue stars had returned to white. The view-screen zoomed in on Jupiter and its moons, but Jodie didn’t see anything else until the screen helpfully outlined a black ship near Europa in glowing green.

  “Standby kaijumon locked in,” Tiger lady said.

  “Really, Lieutenant?” the captain replied.

  “Better safe than sorry, and you and I both know you were going to say it.”

  Commander Keth sighed. “Well, I guess I should go say hello.”

  The captain pressed a button on the armrest of his chair. “Lieutenant Commander Vren, please report to–”

  The hatch opened and another alien walked in. His fur was brown with wide black stripes, sprinkled with gray, particularly around the muzzle. On his shoulder were four stars, gold like the captain's.

  The older alien sat down. “Lieutenant Keth, please adjust the view-screen to–”

  The main view-screen zoomed out to show the whole area, although the other ship was still outlined in green. Lieutenant Keth tapped several buttons on the arm of his chair, and a whole field of rocks were outlined in blue.

  ”Deploy jumper systems, sir?”

  “No,” both the captain and his first officer replied simultaneously.

  Vren raised an eyebrow in what Jodie thought was a very human gesture.

  “Lieutenant commander, you have the chair,” Commander Keth said formally.

  “Yes, I do.” The first officer leaned back and made a shooing motion. “I’ll keep it warm until you get back.”

  On his way toward the hatch, Commander Keth paused and glanced up to the shelf where Jodie stood. Removing two cubes from his belt, he replaced them with Jodie and the red one on the shelf.

  A blue uniform jacket and a seven foot tall belt filled the picture window.