"That's no moon!" Ben chimed. Smartypants. So much was obvious. Moons don't normally drift alone in space, they tend to stick to planets like biloins—or flies, if you're human—to turd. If they don't, they're not called moons.

But Ben is human, and it's common knowledge they're slow. No wonder with only a single heart to pump blood to this tiny, soft brain of theirs. I'm fond of Ben anyway, and he's a reasonably gifted engineer.

I adjusted the exoscanner to get a better view of the pale sphere in our projected path.

"Listen, squishybrain, instead of dealing out platitudes, what about checking our landing thrusters? I'd hate to live through a reissue of that touch down on Getaway 7."

It's always a sight watching human cheeks blush. Hrrovr's emerald head scales tingled in barely suppressed laughter while a purple-headed Ben disappeared down the hatch to engine. My remark was unfair, of course. The infamous landing I referred to hadn't been his fault alone.

Topsy-turvy, our battered tin can, had been in dire need of an overhaul for a while. Duty as a freighter, messenger, scout, and other things in the sparsely populated outer spiral arm of the galaxy has this effect on ships.
Our mixed bunch of a crew doesn't mind. We all have reasons to keep away from denser populated areas, be they dominated by SU, the Sentient Union, or AIP, the Alliance of Independent Planets. The main political forces dance around each other like binary stars, or sandworms on spice deprivation. This thankfully leaves them too occupied with politics to care for unattached rangers and leaves us free to roam the galaxy's backwaters, happy as comet-gobblers.

That day, we reached Getaway with our long-suffering starboard thruster failing. Had to bring her in manually on the main drive. Ben did quite a good job at the engine while Aalyxh worked her yuuol telepathic marvels to guide us through approach. She's the best helms-woman I've sailed with—unless she's distracted by smells. As every spacer knows, yuuol double noses are a tricky affair: a wrong fragrance and their gifts run awol.

Anyway, right above the Getaway landing pad, when everything looked peachy, Hijac, our resident karjkan, released a flowery fart of relieve. From there, things went down the wormhole. Aalyxh lost concentration, Ben overcompensated, the Topsy skidded sideways towards the city, and—well, suffice to say Hrrovr and I spent a copious amount of time and credits with the relevant authorities.

To convince the Getaway judges our unannounced landing in their treasured mud-wrestling arena was a mere accident proved tricky. They chose to see it as a political statement against local traditions.
At least, Hijac, Aalyxh, and Ben had cleaned the slug-infected mud from the hull when we were released on probation. I've never seen the trio working so harmonic, unified, and mud-drenched. Perhaps we should get arrested more often.

Since this incident, we keep the proverbial twelve parsecs between our ship, Getaway, and its outposts.

But I digress. I wanted to tell you about our encounter with the infamous no-moon. When Ben announced all thrusters clear, Aalyxh took the Topsy in a wide bow around the white sphere. Comm cackled and Ben's melodic voice filled the bridge. I swear, the man could have made a career as an opera tenor on Scala station, but that's another story.

"Thing looks like a giant golfball."

Hrrovr's ventral claws moved over his screen and called up a picture. Squishybrain had a point. The depressions lining the no-moon were distributed in neat, regular rows. Hrrovr hissed his approval with rattling scales.

"Human 'ss right, 'ss not natural. Artificial 'ss-structure, but lifeless-'ss."

I glanced at Hijac, waiting for another fragrant attack to my nostrils. But the insectoid remained atypically odourless. Its glimmering compound eyes wandered from Hrrovr's projection of an ancient, semi-religious, human plaything to the main screen and back. Time to earn that captain title of mine with a bold decision.

"Take us in, Aalyxh, pole-side. Hijac, keep track of scan and your pheromones, we can't afford another crash. Hrrovr, watch our back, I'm not keen on surprise encounters."

No one doubted my instinct. Same old story: Hauling freight between independent rim stations doesn't pay the bill—discovery of a new mine or an ancient artefact and technology will. I hoped for the later. Either the Union or the Alliance would show interest and offer a deal.

An old hand, I've seen good and bad guys on both sides, SU and AIP. Therefore, I prefer to stay unattached. The trick is to keep both sets of papers in order and make sure they don't get mixed up. So Hrrovr's next question didn't come as a surprise.

"Which ID, captain? Alliance-'ss or Union-'ss?"

"None, for the moment. We can always claim a broken transmitter if we're hailed."

Hrrovr's turquoise belly scales rattled in affirmation. He's the best number one a captain can wish for, even if the meaning of all the scale jiggling his race is so fond of can be confusing.

To cut it short, Aalyxh brought us down without a glitch and soon we stood upon the mysterious sphere's off-white surface. All suited up against the vacuum with the exception of Hijac. It never misses a chance to show off its ability to exist in hard vacuum by holding its breath—for several hours if necessary.

The planetoid's atmosphere was knee high at best and consisted of nearly pure helium. Not thick enough to sustain the obscure helium-breathing species of the Union though.
Hijac got busy collecting data while I stood ready with my blaster. Hrrovr, a strong opponent of suiting up, guarded the ship. Bad tongues say rrss'h'ss males are too vain to cover their scales by clothing, especially spacesuits. Well, as long as Hrrovr watches our back, I'm fine with his vanity.

Ben stomped his foot and bowed over to scratch at the hard surface with gloved fingers.

"Too coarse for a golfball. Reminds me of eggshell."

Aalyxh's octahedral helmet perked up as her four eyes stared intently into the void a few degrees above the horizon, all her six limbs solidly planted on the surface. I watched her, aware she scanned the brainwave frequencies. It had taken the yuuol a while to eliminate the crews' signatures, but soon her efficiency in detecting sentient activity beat Hijac's elaborate scanners.

"Captain? Ben is right... something is... alive beneath the surface."

Alive, in this case, meant thinking. Ben, always the spontaneous one, stomped his foot again. An earthquake was the answer.

We were back in the ship in record time, Hijac's insect eyes flashing angry colours in the human's direction. Luckily, Ben ignored him and started the engines, still wearing full suit.
Aalyxh followed his example, probably to protect her sensitive noses from the uncontrolled wafts of karjk' fragrances. My own nostrils were flooded by the bitterness of fear and the sickly sweetness of anger, soon overlaid by the pine needle scent of anticipation. Trust Hijac to be the impersonation of curiosity.
Hrrovr's scale tingling turned my attention from karjk' odour-language back to the problem at hand.

"It breaks-'ss."

Hovering only miles above the sphere, our main screen offered a premium view of the spectacle we were about to witness.

It began with a shiver. I'm aware planets and asteroids don't shiver, but this one did. Hrrovr zoomed in on our former landing site, marked by the still active hand-scanner Hijac dropped when we fled. Buried in the helium atmosphere, it transmitted cracking noises. Aalyxh enhanced them and nudged Ben.

"You sure humans have no telepathic abilities?"

Unlike himself, Ben didn't react to the friendly jibe. Like the rest of us, he was busy staring at the pattern of fine cracks that spread from the landing site in all directions. Soon, they engulfed the greater part of the visible surface. The cracks widened as they were pressed outwards by the giant thing stirring inside the shell.

Hijac's rotten odour told me he knew what was going on. It confirmed my suspicions moments later, activating its speak-box. The melodic voice of a female human clashed with the insectoid exterior and conveyed enthusiasm.

"Captain, we witness the birth of a Shi'a. This is exceptional—we must closely observe and record every step for posterity."

An angry hiss from Hrrovr made clear he was on top of the request and, by the way, he wasn't the one who left a precious scanner down there. Aalyxh shushed him, her eyes wide in her typical pre-trance expression. I wasn't sure if it was a brilliant idea to mind-talk with a Shi'a, but Ben beat me. His soft features were unusually strained.

"Aalyxh, 'tis a Shi'a, a space octopus for toad's sake. Stop it before it eats us for breakfast. Captain, we must move!"

Right he was, although octopus might be the wrong classification for a giant squid with at least forty-two tentacles, fitted with sharp hooks and suction cups. By now, the big, triangular head with its double-row of bulbous, milky eyes pushed out of the hole in the eggshell. Hijac's fragrant exhilaration clashed with the panic surge I experienced myself, confronted with the stuff of my people's darkest legends.

Unfortunately, our helms-woman was a lost cause, all her eyes rolled back beneath their opaque outer lids, fully in trance. While Ben guided her firmly to a spare seat, Hrrovr took her place and, at my nod, engaged the subsidiary engines.

Our retreat was slower than the mating dance of a lavender snail. Hijac's enthusiasm now mixed with a hint of sour doubt, Hrrovr's scales rustled in concentration and Ben's breathing came too fast. Worried, I stepped up to Aalyxh in time to witness her eyes rolling awkwardly back into a normal position—at least for a yuuol.

"Captain, the Shi'a's mind is confusing. Clearly intelligent, but its thoughts skip from one subject to the next."

The artificial voice of Hijac's speak-box succeeded to express disdain, a fact that made me feel reluctant admiration for its programmer.

"We deal with a newborn baby Shi'a. I doubt your thoughts were coherent moments after your birth. Try to understand, this is important."

Aalyxh snorted and closed her eyes. I watched the distance between the Shi'a and our ship grow, too slow for my comfort. Ben sang out the thoughts that tortured me.

"Shi'a reputedly attacked ships. Remember the story of the one that swallowed the flagship of the ghirillik rebel fleet?"

Hrrovr looked up from helm.

"It-'ss a legend. The ghirillik rebellion came to noth-'ss-'ing"

"Exactly. The legend might be true!"

Ben was right, but I had to stop this.

"Aalyxh, can you talk to it?"

The yuuol lifted a limb, asking for silence. It was granted but felt leaden.

"It's... hungry, I think... it craves... helium?"

The outburst of different odours from Hijac's communication glands stated our science whiz successfully drew the square root of an eleven digit prime number—at least.

"Helium. The egg was enveloped by a helium cloud. And most Shi'a sightings are recorded in the delta quadrant. Aalyxh, tell it to eat its eggshell. Where is the next nebula containing large amounts of helium?"

Hrrovr's scales clicked synchronous with his claws on the screen and Ben was already halfway down to engine. Fascinated, I watched the Shi'a gobble down the remains of its egg while I pulled up a list of nearby nebulae. Moments later, I fed the coordinates of the nearest with a high helium content to nav and nearly got blown off my feet when Ben ignited the plasma thruster. Just in time—the Topsy took flight, a hungry baby Shi'a literally on our heels.

"How does it keep up? The Topsy is one of the fastest ships on the run."

"It-'ss riding our ion track. 'Ss-see? 'Ss-simply 'ss-surfing on our emiss-'ssions-'ss."

And that's how it was. The baby Shi'a surfed our track through hyperspace while Aalyxh sat in her chair, limbs crossed in a complicated knot and eyes closed, a picture of yuuol concentration. No one dared disturb her, and for once, even Hijac kept itself under control.

Our patience was put to the test during the next few cycles. But Aalyxh never faltered. While Hrrovr and I took turns at helm, Ben hardly slept and coerced an unprecedented performance out of his engines. Hijac, on the other hand, delivered gallons of coffee to the rest of us.
Always amazing what an emergency does for team spirit.

We reached the Harare nebula right in time—before the baby Shi'a in our wake decided it needed the tiny amounts of helium our ship's atmosphere contained. Hrrovr stoped the Topsy outside of the navigational hazard zone.
Exhausted, we watched on screen as the Shi'a dived into the gaseous cloud, its trailing, sparkling tentacles reflecting the starlight in all the spectral colours. It was a sight to be remembered, especially taken into account this was a mere baby space squid. Soon, it disappeared in the swirling nebula. Hrrovr's scales chattered relieved and Hijac's burnt smell conveyed regret. Ben just shrugged.

"Good riddance, I'd say. Let's get out of here."

Aalyxh lifted a limb, asking for a delay. Aghast, I realised she still held contact with the Shi'a.

"Cut it, Aalyxh, we're off."

"A moment, Captain. She says thank you. And..."

She was interrupted by the beeping of our collision sensors. Everyone jumped back to station, exhaustion forgotten. But what first registered as incoming missiles soon turned into dull rocks peacefully bobbing around the ship.

"What the...?"

"She says we might need these to make more ... bubbles?"

"Bubbles? What..."

Hijac's modulated voice interrupted me.

"She refers to our ion track. The disturbance our passing leaves in hyperspace may be described as bubbles, seen with the eyes of a being born to vacuum and faster-than-light velocities. These rocks contain enough traces of corbomite to manoeuvre our ship for centuries."

Aalyxh opened her eyes and glared at him.

"It's not rocks. It's the residue of her eggshell. Call it Shi'a turd. A gift."

Yeah, and that was it. It pays to have a friendly Shi'a out there. Although I blame Aalyxh for insisting we return on a regular basis to chat. She believes her baby feels lonely without her. The benefit is we always can replenish our stock of Shi'a turd.

However, during our last visit, we got mixed up in a hell of a drama. It involved a fleet of marigan micro ships striving for galactic dominance, the Alliance president's runaway daughter and her Union senator lover. It ended with the marigan fleet swallowed by the senator's poodle, a Shi'a mating ritual—quite a sight, with all the tentacles—, and Ben loosing his virginity.

But this is a long story. I need another drink first.