corner of his eyes, Frank saw a female alien emerge from one of the doorways and block Hill's passage. She was humanoid, but with glittering pink skin and bright blue lips. She wore nothing but a thin strip of fabric across her generous bosom and a thin, see-through skirt around her hips. She pressed her hand against Hill's chest and said, "What were you two doing in that alley, honey? Why don't you take me back there and I'll show you some real fun?"
Hill angrily slapped her hand away and said, "Keep your filthy hands off me, sludgesucker."
The word echoed like a gunshot against the storefronts, and every head on the street turned to look at them. Hill ignored it and pushed his way past to keep walking, looking at nothing but the beeping tracker on his phone.
"Sorry," Frank said softly. "He's got kind of an embarrassing medical condition." He held up his thumb and index finger in the universal signal for "Tiny."
The alien snarled viciously at Frank, baring her blue teeth and soulless black eyes, and then she turned away and raced off into the smog. He stood there for a moment, wondering what exactly would have happened in that alleyway if they'd gone with her. There were plenty of predatory animals in the universe that used an attractive display to lure their victims in, and then shredded them to pieces with their claws and fangs.
Or was she just a desperate soul willing to sell herself to survive? Does she just look different than me, and that's what scares me? he thought.
They're aliens, Frank, he could hear his father telling him. They're not like us. You're living in a fantasy world if you think they'll do anything but tear you open, eat you like meat, and slurp the marrow out of your bones. That's why we have to control them, before they overrun us.
Sludge.
Suckers.
Hill was nearly at the end of the block already, and Frank was glad to have to hurry to catch up to him and vacate the area as quickly as possible. For all of humanity's unquestionable universal dominance, as individuals they were still vulnerable to all kinds of feral alien species. Frank felt like a shipwrecked sailor on ancient Earth, wandering into the dense jungle, surrounded by a thousand feral animals. Humans might have all the advanced technology back home, but this was their territory and that made all the difference.
He passed a dozen different kind of aliens, and all of them seemed to be eyeing him hungrily. Frank knew of at least a dozen planets in the surrounding solar systems where humans were considered good eating, and Frank was willing to bet more than a few of the aliens walking past him on the street had heard the same thing and were interested in him like some kind of strange, new delicacy.
If Lieutenant Hill really thinks that Unification insignia on his shirt is going to stop a hungry Vallvitka from yanking off his head and slurping his sludge, he's stupider than he looks, Frank thought.
Frank was limping again as he tried to hurry along, but he didn't mind. The extra security of what was stuffed down the front of his shorts was worth it , even if it made it hard to crouch and walk.
He caught a glimpse of Hill from across the street, just before the lieutenant disappeared behind the closed door of one of the storefronts. Several street-level transports flew past Frank so fast that his shirt rippled, but there were no signals to stop traffic and let him cross. He waited for a break in traffic before he jumped down off the curb and ran for it.
The street was filled with an inch of muck, a poisonous mixture of synthoil sputtering out of the engine blocks of the older transports to the hydrosene fuel splattered in bursts of speed from the souped-up turbines of modified racers. Frank splashed through it until he was safely on the opposite side and looked down in disgust at his soaked boots and pants. The storefront's door opened again as two aliens staggered out, obviously intoxicated, and teeth-rattling bass drums spilled out
Mercedes Keyes, Lawrence James