Fast Cars and Intergalactic Speed Dating

15: Worm Queen

Richard was not sure where they were going, but away seemed to be a good direction. When he whipped around the corner of their quiet little street, he nearly clipped the strangest car he had ever seen. It was only later, reflecting back on the vehicle with its fins and its lights, that he realized it must have belonged to the Chorodonians.

"Are we going to the police?" Garth asked as they sped into the countryside, leaving the sleepy city of Luella behind them. On either side of the car were fields of corn, tall and lush. "I think the police were back that way. Next to the post office, isn't it? The police station?"

"What are we going to tell the police, Garth? That we're being attacked by crab monsters? Aliens?" Richard threw a glance at his friend and then put his eyes back on the road. He was gripping the wheel like it might fly away from him; his hands were shaking, and his right bicep was throbbing, sending pain all the way down his forearm and into his hand.

"Well, yeah. I thought maybe yeah," said Garth.

"And they'll believe us?"

"Well, it should help that we have an alien with us," said Garth with uncharacteristic crispness. He was still very pale. A drop of sweat rolled down his cheek. "And also it should help that I've been shot."

"We're going to hospital," Richard said. "That's this way."

"We are not going to the hospital. You know how I feel about hospitals."

"You're bleeding all over my seat. I'm taking you to bloody hospital."

"No." This came from Aialo-El. "We are likely to be pursued by the Chorodonians. We must go to my ship; we will be safe from detection there."

Garth looked smug. "Two against one. Math means I win. Oh my God, Richard! We're going to her ship!" He glanced at the speedometer, then pulled on his seatbelt, baring his teeth in a grimace of pain through the motion. "We'll probably meet a police officer one way or the other. But hey, if we meet 'em on the way to a spaceship, I am here for it."

"Yeah, you really look like you're in good shape to be visiting spaceships." Richard shook his head, setting his jaw. It occurred to him that they didn't know that the ship was a spaceship at all. Aialo-El might be a subterranean worm queen from the center of the earth, for all they knew.

They sped onward for a moment, all of them silent. Then, Richard realized he didn't know where he was going. He glanced in the rear view mirror. "Where is this...ship?"

"It is in this direction," said Aialo-El.

"How did you get to the house so fast?"

"I can travel swiftly." Aialo-El's tentacles smoothed themselves back over her head and twisted into a rope that fell over her shoulder.

"Yeah. Yeah, you did say that." Richard frowned at the ditch as they zoomed down the highway. The cornfields on either side of the road broke occasionally into fields of soybeans instead. Between the crops and the highway were ditches overgrown with grasses and weeds. Richard tried to picture Aialo-El slithering along the road. It had seemed to take her ages to answer their call, but she must have moved at impossible speeds.

Garth twisted in his seat, looking back at Aialo-El. The motion clearly caused him pain; he hissed in a bracing breath. "Is it rude for me to call you an alien?"

Aialo-El's tentacles extended toward Garth. "Rude?"

"Yeah, rude. Like, not polite. Like mean."

"I do not know." She blinked at him. "An alien is simply a foreigner, and I am that. What are you called?"

"I'm called Garth Danger Vanderlinden."