The Gastronauts
By
Kami Orr
Interstellar Ivy, captain of the starship, Eclipse, stood at the main cabin window with her arms folded. She stared into the black expanse of space as she reflected on the success of her most recent mission. Her commander, Moonrise Maybeline, had accompanied her on a visit to the Phlegmelians to negotiate a new shipment of phlegm balls. And, since their storage bay was completely filled with various sizes of slimy green blobs, she felt the negotiations had gone extremely well.
Moonrise Maybeline’s panicked voice broke the silence. “Code red! Code red! Unidentified starship approaching fast!”
Alarms blared through the cabin.
Interstellar Ivy ran to the scanner, reading the information. “That’s not just any ship. That’s Windbreaker—the ship of the Gastronauts.”
Moonrise Maybeline looked at her, wide-eyed. “Who are the Gastronauts?”
“They’re a couple of nasty space pirates who have been collecting toxic gas from the Flatularians for years. They shoot the gas at nearby ships, killing any life forms on board. Then they either take the ship and sell it, or steal whatever is on board.”
Moonrise Maybeline moved to punch in the sequence to engage the lightning bursts.
Interstellar Ivy stopped her.
“They’ve already locked onto us,” she said, her brows furrowed with concern. “With the potency of the flatulent gas, the lightning bursts will only make us explode faster. No, we can’t outrun them.” Her voice turned hard. “Our only shot is to outsmart them.”
She sat down and immediately veered the ship toward the nearest planet, Oralon. With over 400 moons orbiting the planet, it would be the perfect place to lose a pursuing ship.
Eclipse picked up speed and weaved through the moons with graceful agility, Windbreaker hot on its heels, firing brown puffs of toxic gas.
Interstellar Ivy dodged right and left, barely missing the blows. She came around a bright orange moon and spotted what she was looking for—the Ice Rings of Oralon. She headed straight for them.
“You’re not going into the ice rings!” shouted Moonrise Maybeline. “Our ship will never survive it!”
“Nonsense,” retorted Interstellar Ivy. “Have you no faith in your captain?”
Moonrise Maybeline’s voice rose frantically higher. “This is your third ship this year!”
She had a point. But that didn’t stop Interstellar Ivy. She had a plan. She turned to Moonrise Maybeline. “Load the phlegm balls!”
With a frustrated sigh, Moonrise Maybeline rushed to the loading bay. A few minutes later, her voice came through the intercom. “Missiles loaded, Captain.”
Interstellar Ivy smiled as the ship neared the ice rings. She came at them from above, increasing speed as she went. She heard Moonrise Maybeline return to her chair and fasten her buckle extra tight.
The ship zoomed toward the ice rings at maximum velocity. Interstellar Ivy glanced at Moonrise Maybeline, whose eyes were squeezed shut. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair with white knuckles, and she seemed to be muttering something that sounded like a prayer.
“Get ready to launch the phlegm balls,” commanded the captain. Moonrise Maybeline reached to the control panel, opened the protective hatch, and hovered her shaky hand over a large red button. Her eyes wide as an owl’s, she watched the ice rings surge toward them, awaiting her captain’s command.
“Almost there…almost there…NOW!” shouted Interstellar Ivy.
Moonrise Maybeline squeezed her eyes shut and slammed her hand down on the button. A string of lumpy, green phlegm balls shot out of the ship, landing on some ice rocks in front of them in a long line. Interstellar Ivy pulled the ship up at the last second, stalled the engine and whipped it around backwards so they faced the phlegm balls. Grasping the triggers as hard as she could, she blasted the snot out of those phlegm balls. The first one erupted in a massive explosion, causing a domino effect down the line and straight toward Windbreaker. Ice rocks shot in every direction, but since the ship had so much momentum, it was safe from the blast; however, Windbreaker was just reaching the phlegm balls. Interstellar Ivy could see the ship attempting to pull up out of the blast, but it was too late. Phlegm, flames, and ice rock debris peppered the bottom of their ship. It wouldn’t be long before…
BOOM!!!!!!
The largest explosion Interstellar Ivy had ever seen erupted from Windbreaker, taking out two moons in its wake. She watched as flames and smoke billowed toward them in a wall of consuming fire. She cringed as the blast reached the ship, jolting it into an uncontrollable tumble. Interstellar Ivy’s ears rang as the sound of the blast reached the ship, blowing off pieces of it as if it were a dried up dandelion.
Interstellar Ivy turned the starter, but nothing happened. The ship blew past multiple moons, then slowly veered toward the planet, Oralon. Backup generators clicked on, and red-lit sirens blared through the cabin.
Interstellar Ivy and Moonrise Maybeline switched levers and pushed buttons as fast as they could, trying anything they could think of to get power back to the ship, but nothing worked.
Debris flew past the window, then something large caught the captain’s eye—the escape pod. She gasped. How would they get off the ship now? The escape pod was the only way.
Or was it?
“Time to go!” she hollered, unbuckling herself and grabbing onto the walls for support.
“Where are we going?” asked Moonrise Maybeline, unbuckling nervously.
“The loading bay,” she answered. “We either save ourselves or go down with the ship.”
Moonrise Maybeline seemed to prefer the first option, because she jumped up with lightning speed.
Interstellar Ivy grabbed two oxygen tanks and masks and handed one to Moonrise Maybeline. The two scrambled to the loading bay, sliding and tumbling around the ship as they went.
Interstellar Ivy stumbled over to the container housing the largest of the phlegm balls. Each one was about double the height of a human, greyish green, and slimy. She pushed a button on the side of the container, and it opened. She pressed another button and the phlegm ball slowly rolled out. She commanded Moonrise Maybeline to assist with two more containers.
As the ship reeled, Interstellar Ivy grabbed a lever on the wall and a large arm with a flat gripping claw lowered from the ceiling. She maneuvered the claw to reach around the phlegm balls and squish them together to make one massive glob.
“Get in!” she ordered.
“What?!” Moonrise Maybeline took a step back. “I’m not getting into a phlegm ball!”
Interstellar Ivy could feel the ship picking up speed as they reeled toward the planet. “Get in or we die!”
“What about the escape pod?”
Interstellar Ivy shook her head, “The blast took the escape pod with it. We don’t have much time left! This is the only way!” She motioned more strongly this time.
“Oh man!” Begrudgingly, Moonrise Maybeline pushed herself through the goo and into the center of the phlegm ball.
Interstellar Ivy pulled the lever that opened the loading hatch, then pushed herself into the ball. It wasn’t easy to get to the center since the phlegm was so thick, but she made it.
As the ship tumbled, the phlegm ball rolled around the loading bay, nearly missing the open hatch multiple times. Interstellar Ivy decided it was time to pray. She squeezed her eyes tight.
After a few more near misses, the ship finally tilted just right, and the ball rolled down the ramp and out into the air. She felt the strongest urge to throw up—not only because she was falling in an uncontrollable free spin most likely to her death, but also because she was inside a giant ball of snot. She forced herself to hold it in. Her oxygen mask was the only thing keeping her alive at the moment, and filling it with vomit wouldn’t do her any good.
There was only about 100 feet left before they hit the ground. Interstellar Ivy braced herself for impact. The phlegm ball landed with a hard bounce, jolting her body forward, definitely cracking some ribs. It twisted in the air, then bounced again and again until it rolled to a stop.
She moaned as her head continued spinning. She didn’t want to move, but staying in that phlegm ball was more torturous than the pain of her broken ribs. She winced with every push through the goo. It felt like she’d never get out, but at last, she emerged.
She looked around to find Moonrise Maybeline sitting on the ground, covered in slime.
Interstellar Ivy lowered herself slowly to the ground next to her, pulling her mask off.
“I can’t…believe…that worked.” Moonrise Maybeline said through painful breaths, staring at the misshapen ball of goo from which she had just emerged.
“Me neither,” said Interstellar Ivy.
Moonrise Maybeline gave her a look of incredulity.
“I mean, I thought it would,” Interstellar Ivy assured her.
Moonrise Maybeline’s face remained unchanged.
Interstellar Ivy continued, “It was our only hope. Can you think of any other way we could’ve survived that fall?”
Moonrise Maybeline squinted her eyes and scrunched her mouth to the side, then rolled her eyes and admitted, “Oh fine. I guess not.” She tried wiping the slime from her suit with little success. “But I am never climbing into a phlegm ball ever again! In fact, I’m never even going on a mission that includes phlegm balls.” She gave up her attempt as the phlegm seemed to get stringier the more she touched it. “I will admit though, the way you flew through the Moons of Oralon and how you took out the Gastronauts’ ship with the phlegm balls and ice rings…I’ve got to hand it to you, that was unbelievable!”
Interstellar Ivy smiled, feeling pretty good about how her plans had unfolded…until she looked toward the smoke cloud that was the Eclipse, then sighed. “There goes ship number four!”
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