The Invader

The Invader

         The pressure, as always, was beyond intense. I could liken the feeling, although I have never personally felt nor do I know anyone who has, to a lowland gorilla standing on my face with his hairy kin hanging off my arms and legs like they were tree branches. Despite the unpleasant feeling of being squished into a puddle of skin and bones, I was still smiling because I knew that quite soon I would once again experience that ethereal feeling which was weightlessness, until Captain Carnell equalized the pressure of our spacecraft.
         The shift from high pressure to zero gravity was brief and smooth and I immediately unlatched my harness' and began swimming around the room. It had come a long way since the days of yore when cavemen like Armstrong and Aldrin were forced to float around in their dingy little shuttle; this was the era of high technology and our ship contained a lot more, a prime example being the device which increased pressure on board to roughly what it was on the atmosphere of Earth. Those lab boys back home knew what they were doing all right.
         I floated for a few minutes and I heard Captain Carnell's gravelly voice through my helmet saying "On the floor Jimbo."
         I floated down and I was about five feet from the stainless steel deck when I heard the noise that can only be described as a combination of steam hissing and a vacuum cleaner. This all too familiar noise signalled the usual, that we were not going to float on our trip to Cetagon VI, our destination. I dropped the five feet and since I was unprepared, I tumbled forward and smashed my helmet on the ground, doing a brief headstand before I toppled over onto my back. I could still hear Captain Carnell laughing as he removed his suit.
         "Was that necessary?" I questioned.
"No, but it was funny" he replied, emitting his guttural laugh and Gottlieb joined in too. We were on a routine trip to Cetagon VI for palladium as Earth had long since exhausted its personal supply and the supply of any nearby planets. Cetagon VI was about a four week's flight away and we had just entered space with the sound of our dispatcher still crackling over the intercom asking the captain if everything was fine.
         There were three of us on board and that was all that we needed on this collection mission. The palladium was being mined out by a mining colony placed on Cetagon VI long ago and we were simply picking it up and delivering it back to Earth.
         Thee crew consisted of John Carnell, our captain and a 25 year veteran of Willoughby Co., leading hundreds of interplanetary trips for palladium or whatever metal Willoughby Co. was interested in that time.
          The other crewman was an engineer and was mainly here to make maintenance on the ship in case something broke down. He was a very skilled German aeronautical engineer named Jurgen Gottlieb, a recent acquisition to the crew whom I had only flown with twice. He replaced the almost-fossilized stalwart engineer of this particular spacecraft about ten months ago.
         "Alright ladies, only 719 hours and 59 minutes until we're there" stated Captain Carnell, his usual joke.
         "We are practically there" joked Gottlieb with an accent as thick as pea soup, making his w's sound like v's.
         The combined best and worst thing about the trip to Cetagon VI was the tasks we had aboard the ship, which was a whole lot of nothing. We were paid to sit on the ship and wait until we arrived and then return. The only member who ever had something to do was Gottlieb and malfunctions were thankfully quite rare. I don't know if it is because of Willoughby Co's expert engineering or the fact that if almost anything, save the pressure equalizer or the microwave, malfunctioned on the ship it would simply result in our painful and hopefully quick deaths.
          The voyage was fun for a short while to get away from the wife and kids and enjoy yourself but soon boredom kicked in as you bitterly remembered you were spending 720 hours with nothing to do on a tiny ship with two men. It got worse when you remembered that it was a 720 hour return trip as well. Of course, alcohol and any controlled substance were strictly forbidden, which could really make the time drag, but hey, the pay was good and the view was spectacular.
         The ship was simply designed; there was the control room, currently occupied by us, and one small corridor branching from it. It had the bedroom on the right side, and the lavatory on the left. At the end of the corridor was what we called the Sittin' Room which consisted of a few kitchen essentials and a bolted down steel table where we spent most of the trip sitting around in our identical Willoughby Co issued uniforms consisting of a blue t-shirt and blue slacks, making us all more or less look the same. The vast majority of the ship's volume was the cargo hold for the palladium.
         My job on the ship was cook, janitor, dispatcher, basically all the jobs no one else wanted to do but it didn't bother me at all, I never got a proper education anyway and now I was getting paid a whole hell of a lot for just completing high school.
         I made some coffee, which consisted of me putting these hard brown pill things into another softer gel capsule which somehow made coffee. Don't ask me how it works, I didn't invent the things, you could thank the lab boys back home.
         Captain Carnell was regaling us with a Tompkins-tale, which was an anecdote of the former engineer that Gottlieb had replaced. I had been there in the flesh, being with Willoughby for ten years, but Gottlieb had never heard it before and was finding it quite amusing.
         "So Pete, he's never seen those coffee pills before right, they were brand spanking new after everyone kept bitchin' about how all we could drink was those goddamn water pills eh" continued Captain Carnell.
         "He thought they were the vitamin pills because back then they were brown, which was their natural colour and Pete, well this guy was a little...."stalled Captain Carnell.
         "Anal?" I added, knowing exactly what Peter Tompkins was. The captain nodded.
         "Anal, you mean like ass?" asked Gottlieb, "he was an asshole?"
         This sent Carnell and myself into hysterics while Gottlieb looked at us with a curious expression. Gottlieb was fluent in English but he hadn't spent much time in America and still got a few
words confused and sometimes lapsed back into his native German when he was excited.
         "No no no" continued Carnell but Gottlieb was distracted.
         "Jim" said Gottlieb, pronouncing it like Yim "was ist das?" and pointed behind me to the edge of the counter.
          I don't speak German but guessing from the context and his body language, I assume he was asking what something was.
         I turned around in my chair and didn't immediately see what he was pointing at.
         "What? The counter?" I asked him, "we use that for putting things on."
         "No" he said and shook his hand, his finger still outstretched and pointing at to where the edge of the counter meets the wall of the spacecraft. I still couldn't see whatever he was indicating and leaned in closer and saw what he was pointing at. It was a small grey blob, looked kind of like someone had picked their nose and wiped it on the counter edge. Normally, back on Earth, this would not have been anything out of the ordinary, just gross. Here in the spacecraft though, it was unusual as the craft was sanitized and cleaned prior to takeoff and neither the captain, Gottlieb nor I even had time to rub a booger on it yet.
         "What's he pointin' at Jim?" the captain asked me, ruffled due to the inattention of his Tompkins-tale.
         "I don't know, check it out" I said and the captain got up and walked over to investigate the grey lump where he squinted and leaned in.
         "Get on the transmitter and tell whoever is listening that the cleaners need to get their ass in gear" said Carnell. He was usually a pretty laid back guy but he was a complete neat freak as well, he even made us make our beds and tuck them in the morning but this was probably a relic of the 15-years he spent in the Royal Canadian Air Force prior to his career with Willoughby.
         The captain and Gottlieb returned to their uncomfortable stools and I walked the short corridor back to the control room and picked up the radio transmitter, making the captain's requested transmission which I imagine was being received with much eye rolling.
         I returned to the Sittin' Room and Captain Carnell was wrapping up his Peter Tompkins story which, for the sake of brevity, amounted to Tompkins throwing up and then having to scoop it into the lavatory and attempt to eject it from the spacecraft while Carnell and I had to deal with the stench of coffee vomit the entire eight weeks.
          Gottlieb had taken my stool when we got up and so I took Gottlieb's which was facing the counter and I noticed the grey blob on the edge of the counter again. What struck me as a little bit odd was that even when I was sitting three feet closer to the counter edge on the other stool, I could not see the glob but now I could easily see it poking out from the counter edge.
         "Jurgen" I started, "am I nuts or did that get bigger?" I asked him.
         He turned around and observed the blob quickly, turning back to me and he nodded slowly with his eyebrows furrowed. This caught the captain's attention and his eyes focused to the blob also, coming to the same conclusion. We sat in silence, all watching the grey blob and after a few minutes of stillness, decided that it was indeed larger again. The growth wasn't able to be seen by watching it, but it used to be the size of a tic-tac and was now about the size of a marble.
         "Gentleman that is indeed upsetting" said the captain.
"...what do we do?" I asked him. He put his finger up to his lips in a shushing motion and jutted his chin out to blob, effectively telling me to shut up and watch.
         In another ten minutes, it was the size of a ping pong ball and it was definitely time to act.          "Bill?" I asked him.
         "Uh, grab one of those canister things we keep up in the cupboard, and shove it in there" he said, apparently lost for anything better to do.
         "I gotta tell you captain, I'm not entirely crazy about touching that thing" I said. Carnell raised his eyebrows and turned his head to me.
         "Do it."
         I walked around the counter and reached above it, opening the cupboard and retrieving one of these acrylic containers I have never discovered a use for. It looked like a large, transparent pill bottle and I unscrewed the lid, moving to the other side of the counter.
         There was no way in hell I was touching it so I grabbed an unsharpened pencil from the same cupboard and slowly approached the blob. Its size now led to a better view and it was not as mucus-y as once thought. It was no longer grey but a pearly white like cloudy water, and translucent. It was still lumpy but in the total stillness, I observed, although faintly, that it was quivering slightly.
         I turned around to look at Carnell and Gottlieb, who were now both standing but a fair distance from me, eyes observant and sharp. I took the pencil, slowly put it towards the lump and poked it with the eraser.
         Instantly, the eraser began to smoulder and melt into a gooey pink substance that was being slowly sucked into the blob, resembling melted chewing gum. I shrieked loudly and effeminately, dropping both the canister and the pencil. The canister fell to the ground and clattered but the pencil hung from the blob like a dart about to fall from a corkboard. I stepped back quickly and watched as the blob shivered a bit and began to turn the faintest shade of pink as the pencil slowly entered it, turning it a more brownish colour.
         "Oh shit" whispered the captain under his breath and we all backed up to the other side of the table.
         The pencil was now entirely in the blob which had elongated itself to accommodate the pencil's shape, visibly splintering and disintegrating. I knew that soon there would be nothing left.
         "Everyone out" ordered Carnell, "Jim, get Bacchus on the line, now." I obeyed.
         "What's going on there Jim, still doing fine or did the captain find another snot deposit?" came the bored reply from the Willoughby dispatcher.
         "No, something's not good, we have a problem" I replied. I could see him now, feet up on the desk with the TV on, but now I knew he was putting his feet down and turning off the TV, pulling himself into his desk and getting ready to be serious.
         "What's your problem?" he asked.
"Start a video link, and bring in Dr Bacchus from the lab, right now" I commanded. The dispatcher started the link and phoned the lab on the emergency phone, it took only a couple minutes for Dr Bacchus to show up and I heard him through the transmitter. Although it didn't take long for the doctor to show up, the minutes seemed a lot longer, Gottlieb and the captain surrounding me, the captain ready to take the transmitter.
         "I am being informed you have an urgent issue?" came the mind-numbingly boring voice of Willoughby Corporation's chief scientist.
         Captain Carnell snatched the transmitter from my hand, "Yes, you see me?" A few seconds later, the one-word reply "Yes."
         We followed Carnell briskly to the Sittin' Room and walked to the blob on the counter and he turned the transmitter so Dr Bacchus could see the blob.
         "What the hell is that?" asked the captain.
         "...I don't know, looks like nothing" he said.
         "Well it's not nothing and you better find out, you're the scientist" growled Captain Carnell, "look." He walked over to the counter and removed a coffee pill from a container, he dropped it on to the blob where it disappeared, turning it the colour of mud.
         "Interesting, is there any way to contain it?" he continued.
         "No way doc, Jim tried putting it into a bottle but it ate his pokin' stick" he responded with a tone I had never heard before on Bill Carnell, a tone of anxiety.
         "Is it possible----"was Bacchus' reply but that was all he was able to say because at that moment, a long mud-coloured tendril erupted from the body of the blob and hit the transmitter directly in the centre, melting it immediately and sending the acrid smell of burnt plastic into our nostrils.          Gottlieb and I jumped back and the captain dropped the transmitter. It fell about two feet and the tendril began its retreat into the blob, dropping tiny splatters of burnt plastic onto the floor.
         Amidst our collective shrieks, another tendril whipped out and slapped Carnell across the face with a sizzle of burning meat, searing a straight line through his thick, grizzled beard into his skin. The stomach churning odour amalgamation of burning hair and frying skin combined into a smell of the sickly-sweet smell of garbage and rancid meat, making my eyes water.
         He spun around clutching his cheek and yowling like an angry bear. He removed his blood streaked hands from his face and I was appalled to see square white chunks attached to his cheek and then I realized out those were his teeth and a pocket comb-sized hole had spread through the side of his face. I back stepped quickly and bumped into Gottlieb who was already in the process of exiting the room as fast as he humanly could.
         There was a thick slurping noise and a tendril whipped out once more and slapped Captain
Carnell on his left thigh but it didn't retreat immediately as before, it wrapped around his leg like a boa constrictor and in about two seconds, most of the captain's leg fell off to the side and he toppled over, screaming even louder than before. His face hit the ground and a bloody streak splattered out onto the once immaculate steel flooring. The last thing I saw was the severed leg being sucked into the blob, which was advancing over the counter, as Gottlieb's yell broke my horrified trance and I sped from the room.
         Not one second after I cleared the Sittin' Room, the sliding door shut and Carnell's screams were muffled, not silenced, just muffled. I didn't want to, nor could I, look through the window so I quickly ran from the corridor and entered the control room where Gottlieb was leaning over the control panel, finger still on the seal door button.
         He was leaning over the myriad of buttons and knobs, sweating and breathing heavily. I dashed by him and flipped the radio intercom switch, to see if I could hear anything from dispatch. I fell down into the chair, and stared at the roof, sweat stinging my eyes, the smell of burnt hair and flesh which I would never forget still lurking in my nostrils.
         "Dr Bacchus is assembling a team immediately, await further instruction" said the dispatcher, I knew from experience that he would relay this message every thirty seconds as we could not respond.
         I did not hear Captain Carnell's cries anymore, whether I was too far away or whether he was dead was known only to him.
         "Hurensohn" muttered Gottlieb eventually.
         We remained this way for a minute or so until I found my tongue. "Should we check?" I asked.
          Gottlieb looked at me through wide eyes, "Yes, we both should."
         I got up and Gottlieb and I walked beside each other down the narrow corridor, both careful not to get the least bit ahead of the other one. The window in the door was clear and we could see nothing except the big viewing window beside the table in the Sittin' Room which allowed us to look into space. We inched closer, on tiptoes, looking at the bottom of the tiny door window, trying to get a view of either the captain or the blob. There was no noise except the huffs and puffs from our agitated lungs.          "There, I see it, right there" I jabbered, pointing to the bottom of the window. Gottlieb was a few inches shorter than me and he could not see yet so we edged closer yet. The top of the glob was visible and it was now the size of a round hay bale and coloured a disgusting puce. We continued our advance and were soon at the door, peering into the room. I could see nothing in the room besides the puce lump and the captain was completely gone.
          Gottlieb's finger touched the little window, "is, are those teeth?"
         Squinting, I was able to see little white chunks of tooth floating around the midsection of the blob which it evidently had a difficult time breaking down.
         We backed up, not a second too soon as another tendril, except not a tendril anymore, this was more of a tentacle, hit the window and bubbled the plastic. We spun around and bolted back down the hall towards the control room. I whipped my head around and saw the blob sliding through the hole in the window like molasses at an alarming speed, buckling the door. In my panic, the tip of my shoe came down on the back of Gottlieb's and we were both sent sprawling, me lying on top of him.
         We slid several feet and the top of Gottlieb's head smashed into the corridor wall. A sickening crack followed and I pushed myself off, jumping back onto my feet and rushing past Gottlieb. I snapped my head around once more but the blob was entirely through the window and had progressed halfway up the corridor, there was no time for Gottlieb.
         I was already in the control room when I realized this and I continued to the console, hectically attempting to locate the close door button. In my terrorized state, it took me much longer than it should to find it but I eventually did, stopping the blob just outside the door.
         For whatever reason, this door did not have a window and I hoped to any sort of religious deity that it could not eat through metal but I also figured I was wrong. When the buzzing in my head stopped and I was able to think again, I heard the voice of the dispatcher repeating his message that Bacchus would return shortly. It had seemed like an eternity since I had called Bacchus but in reality it had only been about five minutes.
         "Little late doc" I said bitterly to no one.
         I watched the door, unblinking until my eyes watered and when I eventually did blink, I looked down and found out that I had pissed my pants but this was not even a remote concern of mine. My breathing slowed down momentarily to its regular rate, until I heard the first noise indicating that the intention of this predatory organism, this invasive presence, was to enter the control room and finish off the last crew member of this goddamn ship. There was crunching and crackling and I knew that before long, it would breach the door and be here to kill me.
         I turned around and looked down at the console, sweat obscuring my vision. I don't remember how, I was running on autopilot, but I managed to log into the flight path and I punched numbers in haste, trying vainly to change the course path so I would not take this monstrosity to Cetagon VI.
         I checked over my shoulder and saw there was a large hole spreading in the centre of the door and the blood red blob now seeping through like syrup. I set the coordinates to the nearest star and pressed the enter button but much to my heart-stopping dismay, the monitor displayed the blinking words "Verification Needed."
         I did not have the code, only the late Captain Carnell had the code. This ship, and that being, were headed nonstop to the colony on Cetagon VI. I turned around slowly and saw the crimson sludge had entered the room and was standing completely still by the melted door, ceasing it's quivering momentarily.
         I could see some of Gottlieb still inside, most of him was gone already but his stretched out skull was staring directly me, reminding me with a sickening bit of nostalgia of that stretched out Coke bottle I had when I was a kid.
         There was nothing left to do now, so I'll make this quick. I barely heard the voice of Dr. Bacchus and the mathletes over the transmitter as he finally returned, saying something or other.
         I pressed my feet against the base of the control panel and pushed off like an Olympic runner, running straight for the red being which had remained stationary. It lurched forward at the precise moment I kicked off the ground, aiming straight for the centre in a dolphin dive. I felt the top of my head break into the being and smelled my own burning hair, feeling the most incredible pain of my life for what can only be described as a fraction of a nanosecond. Then I felt nothing and all was dark.