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."

"For you, I'd do anything." I think I really said that.

The stimulant did kick in, albeit slowly. She laid out the bug-eyed monster suit for me, and slid my legs in. By then I could stand, and I shrugged into the sleeves. She clapped an air supply and goggles over my face, then sealed me in underneath the blobby Bloog head. I could walk, but my peripheral vision was shot.

Before she tucked her beautiful head out of sight, her crisp-yet-soothing alto voice said, "Follow my lead. Our immediate objective is to reach the roof. From there I'll call in a sky hook."

I replied, but into a breathing cup. That plus the rubbery fake-Bloog head swallowed all but a tinny whisper of sound.

Her last words were, "Walk like a Bloog, Doc," and then she flopped her Bloog head forward and sealed it. It was like the sun had winked out. I wanted to see that face again, but I had to admit it improved my powers of concentration to have it hidden.

The lab door whisked aside and we left the lab. Bloogswalk sort of like bad mimes. I did my best, but I'm not sure I captured the amphibious prancing very well. Agent One did, but she was obviously a pro. Out in the hallway a couple of dogs trotted by. Their cat drivers stared at me — through me — and I knew I had been found out. But cats are cats. They just don't care.

The dogs and their feline riders disappeared around the corner.

Were we on camera? We probably were. I sweated and followed Agent One, lifting my legs like a flamingo performing a mating dance.

A Bloog on a personal wheel appeared from around the next hallway corner, careening at high velocity. It zipped by us. Agent One dodged it, but its passage buffeted me.

My arm flailed as if on its own accord and I heard a rubbery rip sound. I swiveled the green-covered arm into my limited cone of vision. Sure enough, my disguise had ripped. I saw glimpses of my own bare skin in the gap, a smooth brown eye winking between warty green eyelids. I clapped a suckered glove over the rip, but my rate of sweat production tripled. If they had caught that on camera, the security forces of this secret torture lab would be riding me like cats on dogs before I could say "flooperzoop."

Agent One peered back at me through bulging prosthetic eyes. She motioned emphatically and I sped up, flapping my feet like a water walking frog.

We banged through a manual door into a shaft full of stairs. Bloogia had building safety codes, too, I guess. I hadn't actually, physically climbed a set of stairs since elementary school. After the first few iterations of step-push, step-push, the rhythm of climbing stairs came back to me. It hadn't seemed like hard work back in school, but by the twentieth stair, I was panting like a dog with two catriders.

And then the alarm blared. I trembled at the assault of sound. Agent One flailed a sucker-hand at me in a come-hither gesture and sprinted up.

Complaining muscles or not, I put my rump into it. Behind lay torture and death. Ahead lay possible freedom. Who was Agent One? What agency was she an agent for? She looked as if it must be the Galactic Hot Model Agency, but of course it must be some branch of the military. The advent of the flooperzoopray had painted smug smiles on a lot of Space Fleet admirals' faces. If the Bloogians or the Nebbi-Nebbies copied it, the tides of war would turn the other way. The Terran expansion would reverse.

Stimulants notwithstanding, exhaustion ravaged my sagging body as Agent One pulled me through the roof access door. My captors had not informed me of which world I had been imprisoned on, but its sky blazed with thousands of bright stars. Galactic center, perhaps, or the core of a globular cluster.

The plentiful radiance illuminated a flat roof festooned with various pipes, conduits, housings, and cables. Agent One laid two silver pucks on the rooftop, and motioned me forward, pointing to one of them. I lurched forward to stand on it.

A throbbing filled the sky. Three green helicopters rocketed into view from below. Their searchlights roved. My knees wobbled and I'm sure I would have urinated freely had I not been dehydrated.

My guardian angel activated my puck, somehow, and a silvery webbing covered my eye-holes. The webbing wrapped my arms tight to my body and pressed my legs together. I foughtto maintain balance, even as the 'copter searchlights found me. Their yellow lights flashed into my eyes, leaving greenish afterimages.

I caught a glimpse of Agent One encasing herself in a silver cocoon. The difference was, she also held her portable laser, and it was aimed at me.

Was she the sort of agent that would kill me rather than let the Bloogians obtain the secret of the flooperzoop ray? A cold chill at my center seemed to think so. She was pure pro. What was the sacrifice of one life to save many? Next to nothing, is what.

The helicopters rained combat-suited Bloogs.

I couldn't watch. Something would probably kill me in the next five seconds. Did I really need to know what?

A giant invisible fist yanked me straight up. My startled eyes beheld the roof dropping away beneath me. Moving air whistled around me.

I comprehended that I had not perished, but the acceleration pulled and pulled. Speckles appeared in my vision and each breath I gulped from my mask took more effort than the last. My sensations blurred so much it is immaterial whether I blacked out all the way. No useful information arrived at my brain.

But at some point, the acceleration eased, and the oxygen-starved fog in front of my eyes cleared. A few hard blinks brought Agent One's face into focus. How cool and professional she was. No trace of strain or hardship marred her winsome features.

"I believe he's coming to," she said. Her brows knit in concern. Concern for me. Could a nerdy scientist dare hope? Could there be some spark there? Might I have a one-in-a-million shot with this gorgeous creature?

"Hi," I said dreamily.

"Oh, good." She smiled. I would give up a paycheck or three to see that smile again. It sent sizzle from my brain to my toes and back.

She stepped back, giving me a broader view of my environment. Vine-like organelles covered the walls, leaving circular spaces for portholes that looked out to the starry skies.Definitely not Terran military hardware. My eyes flicked down. Several spiny balls glided across a tree-bark-textured floor on tube feet. Nebbi-Nebbies, they were called, the other alien race pitted against the Terrans in the Galactic war.

"Oh, no," I said, weakly.

Agent One winked. "Don't worry, Doc. We'll take good care of you."

Pseudopods appeared through the chest of her Bloog suit and split it open. No human chest inhabited that cavity. No shapely breasts, no lovely shoulders, no sculpted abdomen. The only occupant was another Nebbi-Nebbi.

I began to cry. I knew I would shortly be drugged into telling the Nebbi-Nebbies all about the flooperzoop ray, but that's not why I wept.