The Girls From Space, Chapter Three

“Talk to me, Prof.”

Every wall-monitor along the corridor blinked to a direct line, so that Dylan and Phoenix were marching past image after image of one aged yellowish face.

Prof looked busy. “If this is about anything other than the obvious – ” he began.

“We’re on it,” Dylan confirmed, hitting the launch-bay stairs. “And I know you’ve observed a round-the-cycle standby since Titus. Just try to muster that response as promptly as you can, Prof, and ask your guys to go the short way round from Grindotron to Limb. I’m only thinking of how well Phoenix and I did against him last time.”

The humanoids scaled the embarkation-ladder of the sleekest high-tech interceptor in the showroom. From its drive-section the arms of a great pulley were withdrawing after having lowered some weighty upgrade. Robotic engineers finished off the weld and leapt down to the deck while squashy overseers yelled commands and Dylan at the control-stick made ready for take-off.

“Never should have told him what was in Neet’s message,” he muttered as he did so, shaking his head. “Every time something like this happens now, I wonder. Experimental within-atmosphere hyperspace booster coming online.”

“When was it advanced to ze experimental status?” inquired Phoenix from her co-pilot chair.

“This is the experiment,” Dylan grinned back. “Hold on tight, babe.”

He had based this invention on memories of the long-jump at school. Several thousand mega-kilos of propulsive afterburner thrust, spiriting the star-fighter along the ramp and past dullivian blast-doors to lance through shafts of sun in a golden Grindopolitan sky, were but the soles of sneakers pounding the run-up. That expenditure on which everything depended, that all-or-nothing push and lurch into the unknown, came when the booster kicked in. Dylan and Phoenix were plastered back against their seat-cushions by a body-blitzing force which summarily shoved afternoon languidness out of sight, and propelled two interstellar athletes over light-years of open galaxy which neither of them ever saw. For no sooner was Nereynis’s track behind them than the pit of their destination loomed in the windscreen, a barren battlefield where Harbin stood gaunt over three females of diverse shape strewn powerless about him.

If it had been a disorienting jaunt, Dylan didn’t show it. His thumbs flipped open the caps of his handgrips to hammer down on the buttons beneath, and field-events transformed to a relay-race as twin torpedoes roaring from their launchers took the final straight.

Mini-Flash Bobbypins and 4-H-N were immersed in a repurposed liquid-nitrogen tank, their long hair carefully arrayed over the rim to keep it dry. The former wore in her straight silky tresses her trusty beige Alice-band, and the latter a matching beige bow to hold her bouncy brown ponytail in place.

At a party like this one, those details made the pair of them a little overdressed.

“It’s not working, Bobby,” 4-H-N announced at last.

“I don’t know,” replied Mini-Flash Bobbypins. “I’m feeling quite a bit more refreshed and enervated.”

“I mean,” said 4-H-N patiently, “they’re still not letting us in. Just look.”

There were boys at home and in this galaxy who would have greeted that invitation with blissful tears of thanks in their eyes. Lucky them, 4-H-N thought. Their fantasy, her stress. She herself was sick of the whole steamy scene and its pinkly perfect little collections of curves, when she wanted everyone back in their beige and standing ready to confront the crisis which even now worsened on Limb Four.

For all she knew, Mini-Flash Bobbypins wasn’t finding it sinister or strange. To 4-H-N however, the superficial resemblances to an Earth-sorority mixer served only to remind her she was watching anything but. It wasn’t the absence of boys. There had been no hostility from the Special Program, no trace of the ways in which human co-eds might have hinted two gatecrashers weren’t welcome. Their hostesses were nothing but smiles. They just wouldn’t talk to them. All they did was smell and simmer and bop about to the eerily non-threatening pop that reverberated through Flashlab Central’s recreation-room.

“I still don’t know how come you’re hiding half the Special Program runaways on this ancient space-station,” Mini-Flash Bobbypins ventured at length. “But wouldn’t you have had to discuss it with them, at least a bit, just to set it all up?”

4-H-N sighed, wishing it was that easy.

“The only one who’s ever spoken to me is Sue,” she explained. “And unfortunately for us, she’s not going to be doing that again until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

Without looking any more than she had to, 4-H-N indicated the section of deck where lay a girl with glossy dark-chocolate hair. If this quality in Mini-Flash Pseudangelos was somehow related to her preferred branch of tappy smell-bomb, then the empty test-tubes scattered about her suggested those locks were destined to keep their colour a long time. Usually you only had to be in her general neighbourhood to start fancying a quick trip to the vending-machine, but right now she smelled like Bournville in a power-cut.

The one sign of progress was that her knickers with the pink butterfly-print were finally making a reappearance. It had been an uphill struggle for 4-H-N to convince her that going without them was no more than a necessary part of her disguise, and that she had to put them on again when she wasn’t dressed up. True, Mini-Flash Pseudangelos was wearing them on top of her head, but under these circumstances small victories mattered.

“It’s my fault,” 4-H-N went on to Mini-Flash Bobbypins. “I introduced the whole concept of parties to her, and she brought it back to the station. Since then it’s all they’ve done. So Bobby, you’re the one who comes from round here. Really got my fingers and toes crossed there’s some secret to communicating with the Special Program that you happen to know.”

Bobbypins however looked about as hopeful as 4-H-N felt.

“I don’t understand why they’re being like this,” confessed the former. “Second-gender Mini-Flashes like me, who function more or less the same as the regular kind, were never encouraged to associate with the Special Program at entry-level. It’s like The Flash Club was afraid we’d pick up habits. Then when we started to lose control of them after the Arch of Titus, no-one was allowed any contact at all. I don’t know any Special Program seniors. There aren’t that many yet. Sometimes they’re given standard duties, wherever that’s possible for non-combatants. These ones here though, who are only our age – ”

4-H-N was listening, but throughout the whole hot tub gambit she’d also been keeping one eye on the open door to monitor the situation on Limb. Now with a sudden splash and a bounce she shot bolt upright.

“Bobby, quick!” cried 4-H-N. “No time to put our clothes back on!”

Slick and agleam she scrambled from the tub, her wondering companion close at hand. The Special Program paid them no attention whatsoever as they exited the rec-room and slapped huge watery footprints all over the vestibule and steps on a headlong skidding course back to Flashlab Central’s bank of antiquated telescanners. Halting before the polychromatic luminescence thereof, though chests remained restless, two wet watching bodies faithfully reflected the spectrum while contours played tricks with proportion and scale. From bosom to thighs each girl was alive with every leaping shade from Foretold One dusk to star-interceptor silver. Colour danced minutely even on 4-H-N’s lips, which were parted and damp with apprehension.

“My family,” she whispered. “It’d take too long to explain what that means, and why it’s important. Just take my word for it that it is.”

“But surely, like that, they can’t hope to…” began the other, but let her voice tail off.

Speaking of progress. Could that have been tact from Mini-Flash Bobbypins? It was quite something to hear, even if it only signified she was starting to figure out what kind of things she said were most likely to make 4-H-N yell at her.

Moreover, she wasn’t wrong. Not much gave Harbin cause for concern.

Dylan’s powers seven and a half times over, which they didn’t have. Or a full fleet of Grindo robots, which 4-H-N assumed was on the way, but hadn’t arrived yet.

Or the Special Program.

As opposed to the life and soul of Flashlab Central.

“Nothing else for it now, Bobby,” declared 4-H-N. “We’ve got to find a way to get through to them.”

TO BE CONTINUED