Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,30

turn and look at his broad back. “You’re speaking much better today than yesterday. Or is it my imagination?”

“It could well be,” he growls.

No, it’s definitely not my imagination. He must have taken a class during the night. Or maybe he did some kind of speed-learning thing. That’s actually kind of flattering. Maybe he spent the whole night brushing up his Interspeech, just so he can talk to me better. Well, I won’t mention it again.

The space station comes gradually closer, and it’s genuinely huge. Zaroc maneuvers the ship to one of the two circular ends, then flies it slowly through an opening that could have room for an aircraft carrier to pass safely through.

We fly over to a wall, the ship turns around so I have to close my eyes to not get vertigo too badly, my seat shakes, and we’re standing still.

“Kur Station,” Zaroc says darkly. “Be careful. Don’t look at anyone. Some of the people here are decent enough, but most of them are not.”

I stand up from my seat, not at all sure about this excursion. “Will there be Bululg?”

“Very possibly. This is on the edge of their sphere of influence. You will carry a weapon. I understand the vibroblade was not to your liking. I’ll find something else. The baton is not ideal.”

I look up at him. “Your face is still swollen from where I… hmm. Is it tender?” I carefully reach up to touch the purplish part of his face, from the eye down across the nose, and he lets me.

“I didn’t break your nose, did I?”

He turns and walks to the elevator. “It appears to be intact.”

Down in the hold, he hands me a weapon that looks so much like an old-fashioned ray gun it pretty much has to be one.

“Tie it to your side with this holster,” he instructs and hands me a piece of plastic. “I recommend against trying to fire it. It’s very old and may not hold a charge. You just want it to be seen. In places like this, looking dangerous is your first line of defense.” He looks me up and down, then sighs. “Though I think you are a little too obviously female to intimidate anyone. Remember, don’t look at the ones you pass.”

The hatch pops open with a sharp hiss, and some small slivers of green leaves drop to the ground outside.

I shudder at the sight. “The Fentrat got a little too close.”

“Far too close,” Zaroc agrees as he closes the hatch again. “But we need never see it again.”

We walk along a metal gangway, through several big airlocks and sliding doors. And then we’re inside Kur Station.

I look up, stunned. “Are all space stations like this?”

“This is the only one of its kind,” Zaroc says, looking around. “You can see why it’s so valuable.”

I really can. A few miles above my head there’s the surface of a glittering, blue lake. On either side are forests and towns and roads and gardens. It all stretches far into the distance, all the way to the opposite end of the cylinder.

Here and there the land masses are broken up by Rose Bowl-sized sheets of glass that let in the light from the sun. The whole station rotates slowly on its long axis, and that is what creates the gravity. I could actually walk up to that lake, like I was inside a gigantic barrel where ‘down’ was always the direction my legs were pointing.

It gives me a sharp shock of vertigo – it feels like the water in that lake could come crashing down at any moment. I have to look down to reorient my senses. “Yeah.”

Zaroc walks off to the right, and I follow. We’re outdoors, in a sense, and this is a commercial area with lots of stores and offices and things I can’t identify.

I take my phone out, because this has to be recorded. “Kur Station,” I explain softly. “And this is real.” I point the camera up, panning it around while I walk so the not-viewers can get an impression of the space. I also make sure to get a good shot of the sun. If against all odds this film is one day seen by an astronomer on Earth, maybe they can try to identify the star from its spectrum.

We’re not the only ones here. Aliens are milling around, some similar to the ones I knew about, some very new to me, and some so weird I can’t even be sure if