We were somewhere in the Obega system, on the edge of Karadonian space when the readings stopped making sense. Karadonia is a wretched area of space to be in any sort of mental state, and we were twisted out of our minds. It was not a place that any rational person would ever want to stop. But we were not rational people. And besides, we had no choice.

We'd run out of fuel hours earlier, but that's not why we were forced to delay--our solar sail would have been more than sufficient to get us at least through the system. We had no food, but hunger was the furthest thing from our minds. The barnacles that we'd ingested at the beginning of our voyage were kicking in with full force, giving my hands that awkward feeling of distant balloons floating recklessly away from my body, and transforming the stars outside into a throbbing and gushing rainbow which threatened to flood our tiny cruiser with its sticky, incandescent light. The very idea of food seemed far away and unimportant--not to mention that the solar combers and swells which tossed the tiny Starcraft Derby nauseatingly to-and-fro made it all but impossible to keep anything down in this queasy state.

Though ingestion, imbibement, and gross overindulgence were indeed at the very heart of our mission, the very concept of food for consumption seemed somehow foreign to us. In any case, it was not worth stopping to eat in the Karadonian Territories. Karadonian culture is hopelessly ecclesiastical, and their cuisine, though highly symbolic, tends to be inedibly bland. No, we had been forced to stop in Karadonia because of the direst of circumstances. Circumstances which were entirely beyond our control--we were lost and needed directions.

"Did you see that?" my copilot was beginning to yammer. He had a head full of the Martian barnacles, and they were beginning to get to him. He stood up, pointing wildly and grabbing at empty air around his head. "Holy Christ, Raoul, did you see that?"

For a human, Donald had a relatively high tolerance to psychedelic influences. But these particular barnacles had come from deep in the Cydonian canals where moisture still coalesced. Even as a high ranking Martian diplomat and a respected journalist with all the appropriate press passes, credentials, and connections, they had not been easy for me to come by. They were strong, heady stuff, and like my confounded copilot, I was on the verge of being overtaken by their strange effects, as well. I had to shut him up quick, before he could convince me that I too was seeing whatever horror was currently playing through his warped human mind.

"You fool!" I cried, shaking him, "Get a hold of yourself! For god's sake, it's the drugs!" I sat him back down in his seat and in my most reassuring voice tried to explain to him the precariousness of our situation. "Don't you understand where we are?" I cried, "We're an hour inside of Karadonia! We can't act like that here. We've got to act--" I thought for a moment-- "Reasonable." He began to breathe a little bit more easily, and I loosened my grip on his shirt shoulders.

"We've got to pretend like everything is normal," I did my best to assuage his hysteria, to quell his hallucinations. And just to be sure that we were on the same wavelength, I leaned in close to his ear and took a deep breath. "CALM DOWN! " I hollered.

He leapt so high out of his seat that his shoulder hit the plastine windshield, and for a moment I thought that his enormous hundred and eighty pounds of point two gravity inertia was going to smash right through it. As I watched, his startled jump seemed to happen in slow motion, and I patiently awaited the inevitable hiss of escaping air which I fully expected to hear just before we were both sucked out into the warm glow of space.

But the plastine didn't even tremble when he hit it. Instead it bounced him back, and sent his enormous rear crashing down onto the main control panel. The stars took a sharp shift to the right, and I lost my footing. I fell down laughing as the ship careened out of control.

Suddenly there was a terrible roar and the window was filled with what appeared to be gigantic purple insects, screaming and diving all around us, narrowly avoiding collision. A few dozen at first, and then hundreds of them blocking out the stars and obscuring our view of open space. I could hear them thudding against the hull and smashing against our makeshift solar sail.

'What were these creatures?' I wondered madly, 'Surely it hadn't started already. Good god, we weren't even there yet--'

"Stop yelling!" my copilot was shaking me, "What's wrong with you? For god's sake, B'Tarskii have you completely gone over the edge?" Donald's face was dripping with sweat. I could smell the sour odor of the Cydonian barnacles as he pressed his face closer to mine. He was snapping his fingers, an impossible trick which I had always admired but had never been able to master (the Martian opposable thumb is considerably longer than that of the human, and not conducive to snapping).

"Snap out of it," Donald was saying, "We've still got a ways to go."

He was right. It was well past noon and we still had more than a thousand light years to go before we reached the Briscayne Nebulae. The barnacles were distorting any sense of timing that we might once have had, making us see things that weren't there. It was much to early for us to have gotten into those rotten things already. Timing was everything. Without it, you've got nothing-- 'If you're not early, your late,' my mother used to say. And by god, she was right. We were late. If we going to make it to the Winthrall system in time for the most spectacular zoological event of the Millenium, then we needed to get our heads together, but quick--before the drugs began to really take hold. How long would we be able to maintain?

Could we make it into the Briscayne Nebulae on time? Now I wasn't so sure--my mind felt clouded and my head full of cotton. Strange purple after-images flitted around the perimeter of my vision, but for now the hallucinations seemed to have subsided. Barnacles were notoriously unpredictable, but I guessed that I would have an hour or so before the next wave of dementia washed over me, stronger and not as easily shaken off as the first. An hour--just enough time if we played out cards right.

For seven thousand years the galaxy had been anticipating this very event, and we were cutting it down to the minute. It was going to be tough--I knew that once the Pigroits started spawning, security would tighten throughout the system and there would be no chance in hell of us being allowed into the nebulae, credentials or not.

I took inventory. We had two and a half gallons of drinking water, three days worth of usable oxygen, and another two dozen of the Cydonian barnacles. Hopefully that would be enough.

I scooped up a handful of the barnacles and let them fall through my delicate fingers. I was sweating, and the perspiration gave my digits and emerald sheen, as of polished jade or sage. Pea soup, claimed Donald, but then humans don't have the same perception of color as do Martians. I marveled at how the colors of the barnacles contrasted and played against my skin. They (the barnacles) ranged from a dull crimson red to a brilliant scarlet, and each was about the size of a peanut. The outer shell was tough and leathery. Martians, of course, could swallow them whole, but humans usually had to crack them open and mix the gelatinous innards with something strong (usually gin or tequila) to counter the bitter taste. Not that many humans could brag to have sampled Cydonian barnacles. And neither could many Martians, for that matter--they were extremely rare, and grew only in the deepest canals of the southern Cydonian desert. That, combined with the fact that they were illegal in virtually every system in the charted galaxy assured that they were a delicacy reserved only for those with the determination and the means to acquire them.

They were shaped like small half-moons, and in its center each one had a small brown photosensitive spot. This "eye" would expand or contract when exposed to light, and the colors of the barnacle would react with brilliantly subtle changes in luminosity and texture. This reaction was commonly referred to among barnacle aficionados as "tanning" or "roasting the nut." The colors achieved by the barnacles varied depending on the intensity and type of light to which they were exposed. The scientific term for the chemical reaction was photomorphosis, and folklore insisted that the most profound psychedelic effects could be gotten from ingesting a barnacle which had been saturated in red mud under a black cloth and then laid in a bed of sekrak grass during a full lunar eclipse. The barnacle must then be eaten directly at the conclusion of the eclipse. This was known "tripping the nut." Not that I'd ever known of anyone who had actually managed to try it, but the act was often pondered and was a topic of great discussion among barnacle-seekers and psychedelicians.

I'd originally intended on saving all of the barnacles until we arrived in Winthrall, but it was too late for that now. Once you've committed yourself to a serious Martian barnacle binge, any thought of moderation is strictly out the window.

"Why are you yelling?" Donald was becoming hysterical now, too. He was gripping me by the shoulders and shaking. He was sweating and trembling all over. "Never mind," I told him, trying to shake the clinging purple remnants of delusion from my head and focus on the matter at hand. "None of that's important now. What is important is that we figure out how to get to the Winthrall system from here. We need directions."

"Well, that ain't gonna be easy." Donald dropped his hands to his sides and slowly shook his head. "The whole damn system's been closed to traffic for The Big Event. No one's gonna let us anywhere near Winthrall, let alone the Briscayne Nebulae. Who in their right mind would help someone like us with directions? I mean, even if we was reasonable people we prob'ly wouldn't get far--and we sure as hell ain't reasonable people. We might as well drive right up to the first security outpost we see and tell 'em we're headed into the Briscayne to catch us a pigroit," he began to speak quickly, his voice taking on a frantic edge. Donald was becoming paranoid. "I mean we might as well ask 'em how to get to the President's refuge, while we're at it. Or the inner sanctum of the Martian Papal Pentagon--Jeez Raoul, I thought you said you had this all figured out..."

He was right. Things had become more difficult. But he had also underestimated our resourcefulness. Two and a half years ago I had been granted diplomatic immunity by the Earth Ministry to flip through the Winthrall system en route to interview Johass Mikota, the ultra-radical Martian ambassador to the Karadonian Republic of Kasar. That had been just before the ambassador had lost touch with reality and gone into hiding, and just after he had made the career ending mistake of introducing the Karadonian Ecclesiastical Society to the concept of Manifest Destiny. In doing so, Ambassador Mikota had unwittingly instigated a new era of political turmoil and religious proselytization. Almost overnight the Karadonian Ecclesiastical Society had transmogrified into the Karadonian Religious Liberation Front. The Front had wreaked untold havoc and left countless political and religious casualties in its wake as it began to expand, in the name of their deity Ka-Ra, at an ungodly rate into this entire corner of the Galaxy. And all at the fault of the kind-hearted Ambassador Mikota.

Johass Mikota had since gone into seclusion, no doubt fearing vengeful retaliation for the chaos he had unintentionally unleashed upon the entire quadrant. But before he did, he had granted me an interview--at a time when no one else could even approach the man, he had actually requested and audience with the famous Martian journalist Raoul B'Tarskii. I was honored, and had immediately begun the tedious process of securing the appropriate permits and travel clearances. But at the very last minute, just as I was preparing to set sail for the Winthrall system, a botched assassination effort was attempted Ambassador Mikota had disappeared into hiding.

That had been over three earth-years ago, but I had kept all of the papers and licenses. With some fast talking and a carefully placed thumb to cover the appropriate expiration dates, it shouldn't be too difficult to maneuver us past perimeter security. After all, my passport was still in good standing. If nothing else, I'd made it an obsession to always keep my passport valid and up to date. You never know when you might need to make a quick getaway over foreign borders.

And if that didn't work? Well, then we could always think up another approach when the time came. How hard could it be to talk you way past a few hired security goon-patrols? Plus, there was always the chance that I would be recognized and ushered in with no questions asked. I was, after all, Raoul B'Tarskii, the famous Martian journalist. And once you were inside, you were as good as gold. That's how these things worked. It was getting your foot through the front door that was the real trick.

But still, my copilot had a point--we were running dangerously short on time. And even worse, Donald had planted the seeds of doubt into the soil of our otherwise indubious mission. I slapped him.

"Get a grip, Donald." He was shocked that I had struck him, and I could see faint finger-shaped red streaks beginning to show on his cheek. I locked my eyes on his and glared at him. "My god--you're such a miserable human. Always worrying about things which haven't even happened yet."

Of course, there was also the challenge of attempting to deal, in a straight-faced and rational manner, with whatever authorities we might encounter along the way. The effects of Martian barnacles on humans could be extremely unpredictable, and Donald was of a more volatile bent than most. There was no telling what he might do or say when confronted with armed security. But the issue currently at hand was not getting past security at Winthrall. That could wait. The immediate problem was getting to Winthrall in the first place, and getting there before the Pigroits began to swarm. We needed to find a flip-station with an open, and hopefully direct, route to the Winthrall system.

I needed to clear my mind. There were three bottles of absinthe--an illegal Earth alcohol containing wormwood--that I had been saving for just such an emergency. The wormwood has a singular effect on both human and Martian anatomy, rendering the body bumbling and clumsily intoxicated, but leaving the mind sharp and focused (if somewhat prone to fantastic wanderings). I quickly retrieved a bottle from the back and pulled the cork.

I took a long swallow. The green liquid seared the back of my throat, but immediately began to take its affect, numbing my body but freeing my mind to careful consideration of the matter at hand. My limbs began to feel distant and detached.

"Here, drink this!" I thrust the bottle at Donald. "Absinthe!"

His eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he squinted at the label. "Where on Earth did you--"

"No time!" I cried, putting the bottle in his hand. "Just drink." He took a long swallow, gulped and winced. This wormwood was uniquely bitter, an acquired taste at best. Traditionally it was to be louched with sugar and ice-water to make the drink bearable, but we had no time for such amenities now…

We passed the bottle back and forth, steadfast in our rugged determination. Donald breathe a heavy sigh and wiped his lips. "When we get one of those pigs in the ship, we're gonna have one hell of a time holding the sucker down," he said. I read that oxygen makes 'em crazy."

"How big are they?" I pictured a wild, snarling vacuum-based scavenger life-form tearing the inside of the ship to pieces in and oxygen induced frenzy.

"I don't know. I ain't never seen no pictures," Donald admitted. "Only artist renditions. They only spawn every seven thousand years. I don't think they had pictures back then…"

"No, but they have been able to spawn a few in captivity… They're considered to be End-X level one. Among the most endangered species in the galaxy."

"Well, shit," said Donald, "We gonna have a time of it trying to get the damn thing to excrete the brain-juice before we get caught. The juice don't last long, and I heard you gotta drink it within minutes of extracting it." He look at me and frowned, "Shit, we might even need to snag two pigroits…"

HOME

CONTENTS