TK Special #7 - Return to the M'Verse: An Ooorah Anthology

The Flooperzoop Ray - by @guywortheyauthor

The Flooperzoop Ray

by Guy Worthey / guywortheyauthor

The fact that Bloogians still had things to learn about Terran physiology saved me. The drugs they injected me with the first time knocked me out colder than a chorus girl's rejection. On the second round, they overcompensated. After the injections I stayed conscious enough to fight off, barely, their hypnotic suggestions.

I had not divulged the secret of the flooperzoop ray. Not so far.

But I was about as energetic as a bee splatted onto a speeder windscreen, and depressed as a miner on a water planet. The door to the lab where I was imprisoned whisked open. A green, bug-eyed monster waddled in, wheeling a tray of syringes and shock paddles. Attempt number three was about to commence.

I muttered, "And I thought science would be a quiet career. Safe. Boring. I should have stayed in grad school. Chucho managed to stay for fifteen years before they forced a diploma into his hands. I could have tried that."

And all the while, the Bloog interrogator quietly worked. I had a great view from the tilted slab that I was tied to. And don't think I was in a hospital gown. I was naked. My happy-snake had all but shriveled in the chill. My goose pimples had goose pimples and I hadn't been able to feel my toes for days.

The bug-eyed biped laid out its instruments of psychotorture. It shut the shutters on the sole window in the room. It disabled the intercom and the surveillance cameras.

Wait. What? Why would it do that?

The alien approached me. I could see its warty skin jiggle and smell its swampy funk. With two sucker-fingered hands, it dug into the wattles of its own neck. A faint hiss resulted, and then it peeled its own head back.

My own eyes bugged out and I gaped like a Slobhoovianmonsterguppy.

But no fountain of gore erupted. A smaller head, this one covered with what looked like a pilot's breath mask and goggles, lay beneath the original. The next moment, its sucker fingers plucked even that away.

And my gaping and eye-bugging worsened. Regarding me coolly was the most beautiful Terran woman I ever saw. I mean, even in magazines. I mean, even in the sorts of magazines a gentleman should decline to look at. Her eyes swirled together all the colors of Royal Niftgardian silks. Her skin was so creamy it would make a Jonesian Trucow hang up her udders. Moonlight on the tropical waters of Zerinesia IV could never compare to the radiant highlights that glowed in her luxurious hair. She was a ten-alarm fire in progress. She was a living air raid siren. She was a million-credit fireworks display.

"Dr. Neft, I presume?"

My head spun like a mad yo yo, but I took a stab at the correct answer. "Y-Yes. That's me. Bavery Neft."

"Call me Agent One, for now. Let's get you out of here, Doc." A hand-laser appeared in her suckered hand. Deftly, she sliced through the bands that pressed me to the table-top. In slow motion, I slid to the floor at her feet. My nerveless legs crumpled, and I fruitlessly pushed and scrabbled.

"Hold still. I have stimulant."

I barely registered the short hiss and brief sting at my shoulder. Her suckered fingers twitched aside a white cloth that covered the bottom of her syringe-cart to reveal a drab box. She, meaning Agent One's head on a Bloog's body, whisked it out and popped its lid. Inside lay a green, warty mass. "Buh," I said. "Wha? Agent One?"

"You're being rescued, Dr. Neft. You're in worse shape than I thought. I hope that stimulant kicks in soon because you need to suit up. And you need to be able to walk."