Because cosmic coffee bo.., p.10
BECAUSE? (Cosmic Coffee Book 2), page 10
She was learning how much politeness mattered. If they ever ran into the OFSF foxes again, she’d give it a try. Maybe, before kicking their furry butts all the way to the nearest impenetrable ice fortress. Oh, she had plans for those miserable S.O.Bs.
But just now, they were approaching the official checkpoint. Grace fussed a little with her hair, checked her reflection to make sure she didn’t have mascara running down her cheeks because she really didn’t want to look like a deranged raccoon on her first trip to Europa, and sat up straight.
The Europan immigration beings—whatever their position was called—popped up on the main view screen. One looked like a little monkey, except it was the color of radical thoughts, and had hands so green they matched her Lazy Daisy bag. It wore a jaunty little hat which looked like it had never sung a welcome tune, and coveralls with the same cartoon image of Jupiter on it that peeked out from the chest of her t-shirt.
Uh-oh. She really hoped it wasn’t going to sing the welcome song’s obscene second verse.
The other one looked like a giant Bird of Paradise flower, with eyes on the ends of its petals. Also, it was done up in hues Grace could barely even understand, they shimmered between shades so quickly. They were absolutely spectacular, even if the eyes were pretty disconcerting.
Grace held her breath, expecting the worst.
“Scanning,” the flower-faced one said.
“Breathe,” Rhodes whispered.
Grace could not. She was so tied up in knots, she was a pretzel with or without the spicy queso dip or mustard. They were going to get arrested. Nothing would go to plan. They would bounce her back to Earth, and that would be the end of her and Rhodes. It was inevitable. Now, instead of holding her breath, she was hyperventilating. Great. Instead of a deranged raccoon, she probably looked like a deranged overheated puppy.
“Welcome to Europa, OU-A394927PSI-9000 and passengers. Please proceed to Station X39A for updated vehicular tags before entry. Enjoy your stay on Europa and remember, take only photographs, leave only footprints. No peeing in public pools. Please check that your food is willing to be consumed before doing so. Don’t drink and fly. And per Interstellar Treaty A63, statute 1.1, all visitors are prohibited from removing any native Europan life-forms for transport off-planet. Thank you. Go with happiness and love.”
The officials flickered off their screen, replaced by a map showing the way to Station X39A.
Holy wow. Not only had Crystal P!nk’s plan worked, but they were also given the twin gifts of happiness and love, and a nice little PSA about safe piloting. It looked like the tide was finally turning in their favor.
Rhodes popped out of the ship, all casual and long-limbed and 1000% Ouranian charm which, Grace knew, was absolutely a real asset. He made the smallest small talk with the snail-shaped being currently running up and down the ship’s side, leaving a trail of slime behind. From her perch at the ship’s door, Grace watched with what she hoped didn’t seem like too much naive amazement as a clump of grass with many eyes carefully applied new, unexpired stickers right over the slime.
She stayed quiet because she didn’t know the etiquette, although her brain was pushing for her to scream out something inappropriate about Super-Glue slime and what effect it might have on a sexual partner, and whether it was something the snail creature could turn on or off at will. Wisely, she did not listen to that inner voice. Instead, she feigned indifference with a yawn, a stretch, and a strong desire for them to get Crystal P!nk delivered so they could get on with their own lives.
Tyche-A was really calling her name. She’d had plans—in her mind, at least—for a nice relaxing spa treatment followed by all the sex in a beautiful sybaritic haze. Of course, she had no real idea if that was to be expected, but her stomach still growled at the prospect of a sex-and-breakfast planet. English muffins with salted butter sounded really good about now—she’d danced her ass off in food storage and couldn’t stop thinking about a bite to eat that wouldn’t talk back.
Speaking of talking back. Grace pulled her universal translator scarf out of her bag and wrapped it around her head. That was better. Now she could hear the snail humming a tune about a lonesome cowboy in a voice that promised oil-slick rainbows. It was sort of beautiful, in an appalling way.
Rhodes looked down at the new stickers proclaiming they didn’t expire until ERPA349~3.1415/26+9999, whatever that meant outside of Pi being everywhere in one form or another. His frequency oozed right out of his pores and in her direction, so she felt safe, happy, all Grace, all joyful. She smiled, and he smiled back as he waved her down from the ship.
Hopping onto Station X39A’s surface, which was softer than a Jell-o dessert and stronger than titanium, she flashed a peace sign to each of the beings.
Holy wow, clumps of grass sure looked weird when they smiled!
“Um.” Rhodes reached for her hand. By now, Grace knew that whenever he started a sentence like that he was either in the throes of some orgasmic high, or something less good was about to happen. In this particular moment, she couldn’t imagine it being the first, so she braced herself for the unexpected.
“Que pasa, main squeeze?”
Rhodes nodded to the grass being, and to the snail-being who’d inched over to their side. “The tags cost a story, and they’ve requested that you tell it.”
Oh, geez, another story? What a shame office supplies were illegal here—that would be so much easier. “You could have warned me,” she whispered into his ear, otherwise doing her best to maintain a look of utter delight. She probably projected ten different kinds of fear and regret, but at least the smile fixed to her face wouldn’t kill anybody, like those tended to do in horror films and nightmares.
But also, she was honestly delighted at the way her breath so close to his ear made him close his eyes and breathe in deeply. That did more for her self-esteem than the fear of screwing up a story could possibly take away.
She pressed a kiss to Rhodes’s cheek and felt his hand take up residence on the small of her back. “I hear someone would like a story. How much time have you got?”
The grass clump guffawed in trilobites and marshmallow. They glanced up at a wall clock, which held an astonishing thirty-four symbols, and what Grace assumed were the equivalent of hour, minute, and second hands. “Fourteen ticks of the fast layer,” they said. Wow, their voice really reminded her of chocolate fudge. She could do with some of that now. Instead, she sat with crossed legs near them on the floor, which jiggled in a lecturing sort of way.
Pop!
“Hi!”
Rhodes was so adorable. “Hi!”
“That’s the equivalent of seventy Earth seconds. Just so you know.”
“Thanks!” She was getting the hang of this politeness thing.
Pop!
She was also getting a case of the nerves. Telling a good story in seventy seconds was daunting, to say the least, and practically…
Wait! Digging through her inner filing cabinet, some of the ones and zeroes from her time in the data stream lined up nicely for her. She smiled, happy to report back on the little tale she’d amassed while sharing brain space with Gretel.
“I hope you don’t mind it in a poem. This one comes from a gnome.”
The snail snickered.
Grace cleared her throat, leaned forward, and spoke in a cadence she’d never used before, but it fit the words pouring out of her mouth.
“There once was a man from the moon, who only could eat with a spoon. Every sixth day right at noon, he’d walk to the top of a dune. On top was some kind of a rune, which always requested a boon. The time that he did it in June, the rune turned right into a loon! It flew far away from the moon, then settled and sang him a tune. The tune became quite a nice croon, and down climbed the man from the moon.”
“Ooh!” Each eyeball on each grassy stalk brightened. “Can we have that one for keeps?”
“Sure!” Grace couldn’t see ever needing it again. Now that she’d relayed the binary information, she was going to have to take some time to think about the kind of things going on in Gretel’s brain, but that could wait for later.
“High seventy-five!” Grassy tendrils reached out to her; she let them tickle her palm. It made her laugh like freedom mixed with Turkish Delight candy. When the grass-being pulled back, she had no memory whatsoever of the story she’d told.
Good thing she hadn’t given them anything important! Lesson learned, lesson learned.
“Are we all settled up, then?”
“You betcha,” snail-being burbled. “You can go now.”
“Yeah.” Grassy tilted all their stalks in the direction of the airlock. “Follow corridor C to planetary entry.”
Wow. Dismissive of them, but their time was up. Rhodes hurried them both back into the ship. When Grace looked out the porthole window, the two beings looked like they were devouring her story in a rabid feeding frenzy.
“Holy cow.” Things were so rarely as they seemed! Before she could even rationalize anything going on, the two beings strapped themselves to the wall just as the airlock opened.
“Gretel, follow corridor C to planetary entry.” There was a bit of a raw edge to Rhodes’s voice, which sadly Grace hadn’t put there, at least not intentionally. She noticed he didn’t relax, not even a smidge, until the air lock had closed behind them. Then he let out a deep sigh that sounded very much like relief, and turned to Grace.
“Looks can be deceiving,” he said softly.
“No kidding.” She didn’t want to ask what had just happened, but she was every bit as glad it was behind her as Rhodes seemed to be.
“Where did you get that story?”
Grace shrugged. “I have no idea. That grass guy kept it.” Taking Rhodes’s hand in hers, she gave it a squeeze. “I’m learning to always come prepared. It would be a lot easier if I knew what I was supposed to expect.”
“I didn’t know they were narrativorous.” His voice softened, but still held a note of dismay. “I haven’t been here since I was a kid, and someone didn’t think to warn us.”
On their ledge, Crystal P!nk Persuasion blinked so many eyes so slowly it was downright hallucinatory. WELCOME TO EUROPA, they said. HAVE AN ICE DAY.
GO CHASING WATERFALLS
The nanosecond the door at the end of Corridor C opened, the ship was sucked into a swirling vortex of fog, ice shards, sleet, pounding rain, and the screams of warriors past. The whole world went grayish-white. Unable to help herself, despite her several space-based experiences and a moderate acquaintance with theme park rides that liked to spiral you into a frenzied drop for absolutely no reason, Grace did the only logical thing: she screamed as the ship plummeted straight down into and amidst the chaos.
“Grace.” Rhodes squeezed her hand.
“I’m too busy yelling my head off!” she yelled. “What is this place?”
“Grace.” He was so calm, so serene, so Zen about it all, that she dared to open her eyes. Holy wow! All around them, streams of water crashed against and into the ship. But it was less an assault this time, at least until a tiny turquoise chipmunk that looked like it’d been run over by a semi tractor-trailer suction-cupped all six of its many-fingered feet to the main view screen and bared its fangs in a move reminiscent of demonic screaming, before being washed off again.
Grace blinked, willing herself to feign serenity. Since she was vibrating like an amp about to blow its fuse, that was a losing proposition. Her teeth chattered. “Are we in the middle of some kind of waterfall?”
Death by drowning among possessed rodents on the moon of a gas giant was not on her to-do list. At least not for a few more years.
“It’s the way into the planet, through the icy shell.”
Okay. Okay, that made a little bit of sense. They had to enter somehow, and if only she’d studied the Big Book of Planets, Outposts, and Rampant Galactic Curiosities a little more, she’d have known that you couldn’t just zip in through the ozone layer or whatever. Then again, who knew they’d be visiting Europa, and by “visiting” she meant “forced there against their will?”
On their shelf, Crystal P!nk was grinning maniacally. Wow, for a supposedly serene and all-knowing being who allegedly vibed with her and Rhodes, that was one evil-looking crystal at the moment. Fangs, why did everything here have fangs? If Rhodes smiled and his teeth were pointy, she was going to—
Pop!
“Hi!”
All of Grace’s inner panic moved aside to make room for Rhodes. Thankfully.
“Hi I am so so so afraid right now.”
“Because?” His voice and words were like a magic tonic, designed to smooth all the ragged edges of her imagination. They also made her have to stop and think, which blessedly slowed her breathing, her heart rate, her agitation.
“Because…it’s so brand-new, and everyone has fangs, and if this is the way in, do we have to climb back out and up a waterfall when t’s time to leave? Oh, Rhodes, I know space travel is the bee’s knees and all, but my little Earth human heart might not be ready for this much excitement and drama all at once.”
“Your little Earth human heart is strong and vibrant and beautiful, just like you. Pay no attention to the waterfall creatures. They treat every incoming spacecraft like a personal toy. It’s like a contest to see who can stick to the surface longest. As far as the fangs go, well, that’s just nature at work. Europa is largely jungle, and what doesn’t want to get bitten has to bite back. But it’s safe for tourists.”
She wasn’t sure if Rhodes had faltered a little at the end of that explanation, or if maybe he’d just taken a larger-than-usual gulp. Which, since he was speaking in her thoughts, he should definitely not have needed. “I do not consent to being bitten by anything or anyone but you.”
He laughed. “Have you already forgotten that you can shift into the scariest monster of them all if anyone gets too close?”
“Yes. The words ‘shape shifter’ or ‘murderous hydra-sphinx’ do not appear anywhere on my resume, which is getting longer by the moment.” Huh. What would she be able to add to it for her next job-hunting spree? That was a pretty cool concept. When she realized she was even entertaining the thought, she appreciated even more that Rhodes had tricked her into calming down yet again. “My thoughts are going more mundane,” she admitted.
“That’s a good thing. Because we’re almost finished with our descent onto the planet’s surface. Just a few more minutes.”
“I’m so glad time is relative. Right now I wish it would hurry up.” Grace glanced at the view screen just in time to see another blue chipmunk with way too many appendages shriek as it bounced off Gretel’s surface. “What’s our plan? We do have a plan, don’t we?”
“We do.”
Grace’s insecurity dropped six or seven levels just hearing that. “Mind sharing?”
“I love mind sharing. That’s what we’re doing.” Rhodes grinned his fabulous, sexy grin, but kept going before Grace even had time to roll her eyes. “The plan is to get Crystal P!nk Persuasion back to their people, then spend a few days exploring the planet while we’re here, but only with your consent. Because of the restrictions getting in and out, I don’t think we’ll be visiting Europa again until this OFSF business is cleared up.”
“I’m working on a plan for that.” She didn’t know why she’d said those words, because she had actually never really considered a plan to outfox the foxes yet again, but her brain-mouth kept making words she wasn’t sure about. “We’ll get them off our tails. You’ll see.”
She knew Rhodes had been playing the OFSF like a piano for…holy wow, thirteen Earth years now. Wasn’t there a statute of limitations? Some legal time-out? Or did they have a more personal vendetta against him? Time, which was so mutable it might as well have been made of Play-Doh, would tell.
“Your brain is a modern phenomenon. I love it so much more than you realize.”
“I hope it’s not just my brain that does it for you.” Grace couldn’t keep herself from giggling. “Because somewhere along the line I lost my bra, and you seem to appreciate that almost as much as my brain.”
“I appreciate every bit of you. Don’t sell any part of your wonderful self short.” Rhodes’s eyes filled with rainbows of love, and they warmed Grace’s entire body. Including her brain. “Okay. Time to play Captain.”
“Instead of just Captain of my Heart.” Wow, he’d really worked magic. She was so much calmer now.
Pop!
The brain-space formerly occupied by Rhodes filled with a calm ocean of happiness. Not only had she just assigned herself some homework, but it was going to be helpful! They would rid themselves of a fanged alien menace, enjoy the sights of Europa, maybe do a little shopping, maybe see if there was any cell phone reception, maybe have time for all the sex, and maybe escape without alerting the authorities that they’d been here.
Maybe.
That was a lot of maybes. Since all of them were out of her control, she settled back into the here-and-now of the first mate’s chair and held Rhodes’s hand.
YOU TWO ARE HELLA ADORABLE, Crystal P!nk intoned.
“Thank you.”
Grace would never get over how polite her favorite Ouranian was at all times.
With an even louder pop than the one Rhodes had made leaving her brain, the ship burst through the wall of water and out into the lushest, most amazing landscape Grace had ever seen. Her jaw dropped so far she nearly had to bend over to pick it up.
“Holy. Wow.”
Above them, the sky was an icy mint green with hints of Red Hots. Even in the sanctity of the ship, the loud popping noises everywhere filtered through, and Grace knew they were volcanoes erupting. Far in the distance, her assessment was confirmed when she saw a stream of orange-hot lava spew up into the stratosphere, reflected by the shell of ice that gave the entire planet a sense both of déjà vu and of a creepy after-school special.
Beneath them, a network of rivers—also various shades of green, from pea soup to dense Amazon rainforest—snaked through the proliferation of jungle flora in so many riotous colors every one of her senses felt assaulted. Mountain faces glowed in obsidian, glinting against the toothpaste sky, glittering with birds and flying beasts. Their sides were carved into rooms and buildings the closer they got to the ground.
