Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,107

course I’m tired anyway, but going through that jungle at night would be my vision of hell. Who knows what hideous monstrosities will appear? I’m not going in there, and that’s the end of it. Why don’t we just sleep here for two hours until it grows light again? Eh, Sona? Won’t you?” In the end he was almost begging.

“All right, let’s do that,” I said. “To be sure, I don’t think the jungle will be any less terrifying than it was before.”

We decided to take a nap at the foot of a frizzly acacia tree, from whose branches hung a line of relic pods, in a hollow just ahead of the jungle. I knew that having frequent catnaps would merely deprive us of deep sleep. That was particularly bad for the brain activity of scientists such as ourselves, not to mention our physical well-being. But it really couldn’t be helped in our present situation.

I was starting to doze when Yohachi shook me awake.

“What is it? I’m trying to sleep! I was just about to drop off!”

“You’ve been asleep more than two hours already, mate!”

I opened my eyes to find that it was already broad daylight.

“I can’t find Dr Mogamigawa,” said Yohachi.

“He must be collecting something in the vicinity.”

“I don’t think so.” Yohachi took me to the spot where Mogamigawa had been sleeping, and pointed at the ground.

The footprints of several creatures had disturbed the sandy surface there. The buttons from Mogamigawa’s clothing lay scattered around, but the bag containing his electron microscope lay undisturbed in its original position. I was convinced that creatures from the jungle had abducted Mogamigawa during the night.

“Hurry!” I shouted, almost screaming at Yohachi. Mogamigawa may have been a pig-headed old man, but I admired his enthusiasm for research and his virtuous morality. It would have been just too awful if he’d been gang-raped by large creatures and his internal organs had burst. I felt sorry for him. We quickly lifted the baggage onto our backs and headed towards the jungle. “Look there,” I said. “The tracks continue this way. Don’t lose sight of them.”

We immediately lost sight of the tracks under a deposit of dead fern leaves. We then turned towards the dead centre, where we’d seen the creatures having their orgy on our outward journey.

Mogamigawa’s bloodstained clothes lay torn to shreds in the middle of the dead centre.

“His pants are here too,” said Yohachi with an air of insouciance. “The animals must have taken turns to use his ageing body as the object of their pleasure.”

“Could you stop talking like that?” I snapped as I surveyed the scene around us. “I just hope to God he’s not dead.”

For the next half hour or so, Yohachi and I searched the vicinity of the dead centre, occasionally calling out to each other to prevent us from getting separated. Wherever they’d hidden themselves, we could see no sign of a single creature, let alone our dear colleague.

I returned to the dead centre, wondering how I was going to explain it to Mogamigawa’s wife on our return, and how I would berate the Team Leader for forcing an old man on such a dangerous mission. Yohachi was just standing there, looking up vacantly into the trees.

“He’ll obviously be lying on the ground naked,” I said. “There’s no point in looking for him up there.”

Yohachi ignored me and started talking, as if to himself, still looking up pensively. “He must have been stark-naked… There was blood on his clothes… In that case, if one of them spiders had found him lying on the ground unconscious, what would it have thought?” He slowly turned to face me. “It would have thought he was a big animal that had just been born. In that case, what would it have done? Wrapped him up in one of them cocoon things, of course. Wouldn’t it?”

For a moment I was flabbergasted. “What on earth gave you such a far-fetched idea?” I asked. Then I realized. I hurriedly turned my eyes to the object of Yohachi’s gaze.

Above our heads, a massive relic pod, large enough to contain a collapsible cow, was hanging down from the middle of a stout branch.

“You’re saying that could be Dr Mogamigawa?” I leant backwards, held my breath and stared up at the relic pod.

“Let’s climb the tree together,” I said after coming to my senses a few moments later. Yohachi remained as unperturbed as ever. “We’ll pick it up together and bring it down carefully. If he’s inside, we