Boarding the Starflae

Cleaning the Starflake from top to bottom, the Gobrin got off on the classroom level—the floor just below the bridge—while Julie and Heather rode the tube all the way past the student dormitories to the dock access floor, the very lowest on the ship. When they arrived, Jim from Security was already there and stood stoutly aside Cadet Sanders, resting the pad of his palm on his phasor's handstock. Heather caught sight of the green port light on the standing panel Steph was clumsily operating.

"Ah, good, Security 1 is here. Cadet, the port is open?"

"We threw the latch but the blips haven't come through yet."

"We've heard a couple noises," Jim offered helpfully.

"Port door's soundproof," Ship Steward Heather Handler corrected.

"Oh." Jim cleared his throat. "Well, um, we thought we heard something. Cadet," buck-passing to Steph, "you told me you heard something!"

"Whatever. I'm new here."

A clank shook the gunmetal portal and it sidled in its hinges with a thud. Jim tightened his grip on the phasor.

"Easy," said Julie. "Let's not get everybody on edge."

The Starflake welcoming committee looked on in tense silence as a trio of fat, gray fingers wriggled around the portal's rim. A chubby, glistening humanoid followed, pressing the door wide and stepping through on elephantine legs. It sniffed a piglike snout and studied Jim and the girls beadily. Before a word could be exchanged, a musky odor rose to Julie's nose, some acrid blend of plasticky perspiration and oxidized tallow.

Steph grimaced. "Ugh! What is—," she started before Julie, though fighting the urge to pinch her own nostrils, briskly shushed her.

"Welcome to the H.M.F. Starflake, um . . ."

"We're Troglodytes," the visitor informed, passing himself (herself? itself?) through the portal and into the Starflake's receiving dock to make room for a second, more squat Troglodyte behind him. "My name is Argon." He gestured to his companion. "And this is Morgo."

He surveyed the girls. "Please," he continued, "do not be troubled by our appearance and odor. To you we are an alien species, and we have been trapped aboard ship for days without the energy or supplies to spare for unnecessary cleaning and washing."

"Understood," said Julie. "It's a vast and varied universe." She offered Argon her hand, hoping she didn't look the way she felt. His own was moist, porous and sickly warm. "I'm Julie Beers, first mate and acting Captain of the Starflake. We're sorry your vessel encountered distress. We will do"—here she let a telltale hitch pass her throat; God, that smell was strong—"will do everything in our power to accommodate you until you can repair your ship and get back under way. Is anyone in your crew in need of medical assistance?"

"It's only the two of us, and I don't believe so." Argon glanced a question at Morgo; in response, Morgo nodded the lumpen mass that passed for his head. "We're okay."

Young and so ignorant of social grace, Steph openly pinched her nose. "God, it smells like a truck-stop bathroom in here! What is that?"

Argon and Morgo traded hurt looks.

"Cadet! Settle down and secure that idle talk."

"Pee-yew. Somebody light a match!"

Argon snarled. Morgo stepped at Jim, who backed up a beat and fisted his phasor-stock.

"Cadet!" Julie repeated, more sharply. "Secure that talk!"

"Ugh! Sorry, but that smell is gross! Until I get out of the cadet program I'm still a student; I don't have to take your orders. And I'm not sure I want to, if it means putting up with a stench like that!"

Julie stomped over to Stephanie's standing panel, palm outstretched. "Cadet, give me your mood manager."

"What?" Steph guarded the boxy unit on her utility belt, looking like she'd just stepped in something. "You don't have the authority!"

"Not in the chain of command, no, but I'm also Starflake's acting headmistress until we make planetfall at Obiron." Julie poked at Steph with her upturned hand. "Hand it over."

The sulking girl unbuttoned the gizmo from her hip and tapped it over to Julie, who fussed with the knobs while giving her a bitter smile. "Let's just make you a little more agreeable, shall we?" The mood manager hummed; Gabby's posture slackened.

"I hate mood management, I—"

Suddenly she was beaming like a toothpaste model, flashing white teeth. She practically curtsied as she put her hands out to Argon and Morgo, fingers draped, as if expecting a kiss on the knuckles. She brisked eagerly to them as the dumbfounded duo took her hands, one apiece.

"Welcome to the Starflake," sounding like a tourguide.

She bent in toward Morgo, so intruding on his personal space that he leaned back and tucked his chin into his chest, frowning. She drew in a deep breath through spread nostrils. "You smell simply lovely!"

Argon raised a quizzical brow at Julie, who was switching off the mood manager and returning it to a now-obsequious Steph. "We're a school for college-age girls," Julie explained.

"I imagine they can be an unruly crowd at times," said Argon.

"Exactly. So we have a few trinkets for when we need to keep them in line."

As Jim discreetly came around behind the two visitors and a vacant Stephanie went back to dawdling at the standing panel, Heather pulled Julie aside.

"I know you wanted to be polite," Heather whispered, "but did you have to turn her into such a total buttkisser?"

"Didn't meanta," Julie shrugged. "I guess I haven't really figured out how to work those things yet. When our DubL-M man gets back from that Rigel mission I'll have him reset it."

"Whatever." Heather eyeballed the Lechwerth's new guests. "I still think this might be a trap."

"Well, give 'em quarters near the security station and keep an eye on them," Julie whispered. Then, while turning, more loudly: "I trust you'll make yourselves at home. I have to get back to the helm." She started back to the tele-tube, halted. "Say, if you're not doing anything later, maybe you two would like to join us; some of the students are putting on a play and we'll be watching their rehearsal."

Argon and Morgo looked puzzled at first, but Argon figured out what Julie was saying. "Oh, you mean, like a stage play? I don't see why not."

"Fine, feel free to freshen up and we'll let you know when we're about to head down to the ship theater."

Another private aside to Heather as they went on their way: "Seems like a good way to keep 'em in our sights."

***

Morgo flicked the light and it flickered on, unveiling their Spartan quarters—bare white mattresses on leather lattice frames, boxy dresser, grimy kitchen.

"Sorry about the room," said Heather. "We've got a lot of student dorms open, a good number of the girls like to land at dock for Autumn break—Halloween and all. But we can't put you up in them. They're paid for. So 'fraid you're stuck with a crew room."

"Better than suffocating in outer space," said Argon.

"Yeah." She cocked them a not-sure-if-you're-joking look. "Well, enjoy. Gotta run."

Morgo waited for her to leave, door sliding shut behind her, before speaking his mind.

"What was that thing? What the first mate used on that annoying bitch, I mean."

"I dunno, but it made her awful cheerful, didn't it?"

Morgo started shaking down the dresser drawers. "I wonder how it works."

"Couldn't tell. She just fiddled with a couple sliders, looked like."

"I never seen anything like that before. Wonder what we could get a girl to cotton to if we got our hands on one of those."

"Cap, if what Boxis said is true, we've just lucked into the biggest repository of sexy young Earth girls for lightmonths in any direction."

"Well, be careful, is all. We've hit the jackpot, yeah, but that's why we gotta be extra special not to let the fact that you're in season blow it."

"Might not even need to be an issue. I think they're shorthanded."

"Yeah. seems like they just had one guy on security. If no one's watching the store, we should try and get our hands on one of those things."

"What's your plan for doing that?"

Morgo was pacing the room now, casing it for traps and weaknesses as he talked. "We need to find a quisling. The weakest, bitterest, loneliest bastard on this ship."

"Yeah," Argon mused, "but who's that?"

***

Fuckface was having another lapse; lately, it seemed to be harder and harder to fight the urge. He was in Miss Butters's dorm, and had already mostly straightened it up; there really wasn't that much to do. Trouble was, once he'd gotten around to her bedroom and started folding and arranging her scattered clothes on their carefully made bed, he'd lifted a crumpled blouse and uncovered a matching rose and lace bra and panties underneath them.

He'd meant to simply lay them on the bed aside the girl's other garments but here he was, ten minutes later, still fumbling them both against his wet snout with trembling hands. His vision was blurred, and his small member had stiffened under his grungy work slacks, as he worried the soft fabric between his thumb and forefinger. It concerned him that he couldn't seem to stop this, but the fear of discovery wasn't enough to outweigh the perverse, tingly arousal he got from violating these college fillies' intimates. The girlish scent on the inside cups of the bra, a mix of sugary perfume and the salty musk of a human female not lately showered but not yet unclean, billowed through his slavering nostrils and made his eyes water.

As he coursed the flat of the cups over his face, he thought or at least imagined that he could discern where its owner's nipples would be, spots that smelled smoother, milkier. His snout daubed the pantylining—with its fishier fragrance of estrogen—and he chanced across a tiny, curly strand of blonde. The fur from Britney Butters's quim, which he had dreaming about performing inter-species cunnilingus on as he ran his green, thick tongue over the pantylining belonged to Britney Butters.

The dorm's front door slammed.

Wheeling in a panic, Fuckface remembered he'd not even shut the inside door to the bedroom and locked eyes with Britney, bare-legged under a tiny white skirt and holding a tennis racquet. Her matching white T-shirt stretched a United Forces flag across her modest but molded young breasts. Behind her followed Heather, a duffel bag over her shoulder. He'd not had an instant, but as quick as he could he started carefully folding the dainties and laying them on the bed aside the other, tidily arranged clothes.

Britney stopped in her path. "Oh, gross," she snorted. "It's that fucking cleaning troll."

"Gobrin," Heather corrected. She dumped the bag on the living room sofa as Britney stomped over to the bedroom, past Fuckface.

"You don't think I know that, Heth? My Dad's out there in the United Forces blowing those little stumps away." Britney twirled and shoved her face at Fuckface's. She shook her head and her hair went haggard like a madman's. "Blowing you useless Gobs the fuck away!"

She turned to slide the racquet in a high shelf of the bedroom closet, conspicuously averting Fuckface's eyes. As she did, Fuckface eyeballed her trim bottom, enjoying a flash of white panty under her frilly miniskirt before recalling that Heather could see him from the other room.

"I was just . . . I was just folding your clothes."

"It's four thirty, you filthy little thing. Aren't you supposed to be done with this by now?"

"Give it a break, Brit. It's so pathetic. You pick on it like this every time."

"I'm running late. I'm sorry, Miss Butters."

"Well, can you beat it, troll? It creeps me out when . . ." She turned and caught sight of the undies on the bed. "Wait, what have you been doing?"

"I've just been sorting the clothes on the floor." Fuckface tried to hide his adrenaline panic but he was trembling all over, and his trouser bulge, though modest, was unmistakable. Britney put hands to hips, enraged. Shit. He'd been found out.

"Why, you stupid little troll, I'm gonna thrash the daylights outta you." She stomped at Fuckface and loomed over him imposingly. "Like we did at Gabriel. When we wiped out your family. I'm gonna re-enact that on your stump ass."

Even in his terror, her proximity—he only rose to about her mid-pelvis, halfway between her crux and her navel, so far beneath her that it was virtually impossible to lift his chin enough to meet her eye—stoked the tingle in his snout, caused him to recall the luscious taste of her privates still lingering on his tongue, to become once again aware of the stiffened, throbbing lump of his dwarfish root in his slacks.

"I'm sorry," he stammered, not quite aware what he was saying. "It's just, you're so, um, desirable, and . . ."

Britney raised her hand and he recoiled, feeling quite the coward, but instead of striking him, she snatched a fistful of the folded clothes and threw them back down on the carpet.

"They're on the floor because they're dirty, you mangy runt! You were going to put them back in the dresser?"

"No, I wasn't, it's just that it's the procedure with cluttered clothes that . . ."

Britney shook her head angrily. As she went to get a hamper from the bathroom, she went on berating Fuckface over her shoulder. "You got that big huge head like a mongoloid retard, what're you keeping in there instead of brains? Wood chips?"

In addition to sexual excitement and fear, Fuckface was beginning to feel the hot fire of anger, which mingled with the tingling, unwholesome arousal he'd been enjoying and the copper taste of his fear in a way he felt sure wasn't healthy.

Heather came at the door. "God, what's going on in here?"

Britney started gathering fistfuls of clothes and stuffing them into the hamper, undoing Fuckface's careful folding job as she did so. "This shriveled slug was about to mix my dirties in with the cleans."

Heather gave Fuckface a sympathetic look. "Aren't you being way too hard on him? They're supposed to fold clothes they find on the floor."

"Whatever. Stupid worm." Britney stormed back out of the room, leaving the task of gathering the dirty clothes half finished. "Just get it outta here. Nasty little Gobs gimme the shivers." She waggled her palms as though trying to shake some manner of grime off them. "Blugh."

"But I haven't finished . . ."

"I don't care!" Britney was at a full head of steam now. "Go! Scram! You slimy goddamned turd! Don't make me get out the spray bottle!"

In a fit, Fuckface scooped up his bucket of sponges and cleansers and made for the door, giving up.

"Jesus, Brit, is it ever not your time of month?"

"And stay out!" Britney hissed. Fuckface found himself bounced into the hall but heard one last comment from Heather.

"Ew. Brit, you work out in lace or something? Why are these so wet?"

And then the door slammed shut behind him.