Peter Roger's Alien

'What? You want me to go in there?' Albert Twiddle's nostrils flared behind his visor as he pointed ahead with a gloved hand. 'You must be joking!' Beyond the alien arch lay a murky interior, fog shrouding a floor space covered in something fungal, something grown - row upon row of fleshy spheres looming up from the mist in neatly ordered lines.

Sergeant Rumpo rolled his eyes and took another puff on his fag. 'Oh for Pete's sake,' he expectorated as his domed helmet once again filled with a pearl grey cloud, obscuring his vision. There was a whir of servomotors as the suits systems sucked out the smoke, revealing him now blinking and red-eyed. 'I don't know what you think we're paying you for, Twiddle, because it certainly ain't your sunny disposition. Now do your job and get in there and have a butcher's for us like a good boy.' He grinned a wrinkled grin and patted Twiddle on the head.

'I'll thank you to keep your filthy hands off my helmet. I shall be speaking to my union rep about this.'

'Oh blimey.' The Sergeant shook his head, and pressed the stud upon his chest unit which redirected his radio communications. 'Bernard, I believe one of your colleagues would like a word, if you can spare a moment.'

A third man trudged up from behind, from where the rest of the team were milling around the loading ramp of the drop ship. He stood almost seven feet tall, dark piercing eyes in a great bald dome of a head glaring down from behind his visor. 'What?'

Twiddle pulled himself up to his full height, which failed to make much of a difference. 'He wants me to go traipsing around in that, that,' - he flapped his hands towards the arch - 'whatever that is.'

'So?'

'There might be something horrible lurking in there. I don't like the look of it. Something might get hold of me.'

'You should be so flipping lucky!' The Sergeant dispensed laughter, hyak hyak hyak, which seemed to hang in the air - or at least the ambient methane-hydrogen mix - like an expensive cheese.

The seven-foot man turned to Rumpo. 'I thought you was going to tell me he had a complaint about the tea in the canteen.' He went back to Twiddle, his giant face suddenly taling on the appearance of an anxious child. 'Here - you ain't got a problem with the tea, have you?'

'The tea is perfectly adequate,' Twiddle reported with a trace of acid. 'What concerns me more is the possibility of extraterrestrial ghoulies.'

'Don't they like the tea in the canteen?' Bernard turned as though to address those behind him, although they were all still back at the ship, several hundred yards away. 'Brothers, it is with great regret—'

'Oh put a sock in it!' The Sergeant pressed another stud on his chest unit, this time cutting radio communications to the taller man, whose mouth now opened and closed in silence as he continued to hector an oblivious audience like a huge pink goldfish in a bowl he'd long since outgrown.

Rumpo rounded on Twiddle once again, the face behind the visor wrinkling with resolve. 'Now you get in there and do your job like you're paid to do, or it won't be the extraterrestrial ghoulies you have to worry about.'

'No need to be like that.' Twiddle stepped back a few paces, shocked by the vehemence of the command.

'And tie your blooming laces,' Rumpo added. 'If there's ghoulies, you might at least try to make a good impression!'

Twiddle turned and stood staring at the arch, then stepped forward with a shrug. He'd been down the Bayswater Road on a Saturday evening, and whatever lay ahead could hardly be worse. As he walked beneath the arch, his booted feet entered the low level mist into which he began to sink as he went down a slight incline towards the rows of spherical growths. Another step and his foot caught on something. He stumbled then quickly righted himself.

'Oh fiddlesticks!'

Remembering his untied lace, he gazed down into the mist now swirling about his knees. Just behind, one of the fleshy orbs projected its wrinkled peak. There was something horribly familiar about the folded skin - and Twiddle realised he was now thinking of it as skin, or at least something akin to a reptilian hide. It seemed almost to glow and pulse from within, but it was difficult to be sure, peering through the visor with one's own fizzog reflected back like in the hall of mirrors at a funfair.

He shrugged, sat down, and sank his gloved hands into the mist, feeling for the errant lace. He could hear voices raised in the communications relay within his helmet, something about readings, signs of life, and Lieutenant Dimple complaining about his blooming waterworks as usual. The man really was dreadful. Heaven knows what use they thought he'd be out here so far from Earth.

As Twiddle felt the lace through the tech-sensitised fingers of his space gloves, he failed to notice tremors running through that upon which he was sat, mainly due to the thick padding in the rear of his space suit. Then suddenly, all within the margin of a split second, he found himself unseated and propelled violently forward as something horribly biological resembling a crab forcibly set up shop inside his bottom.

'Oh my word!' he expectorated violently, mouth twisting and eyes bulging as though trying to escape the confines of his head.

***

Bernard looked up from his spotted dick as applause rippled around the canteen. Twiddle came in, helped by Nurse Jeffries. He was walking a bit funny, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances, but he seemed to be wearing a faint smile.

'Blimey! We all thought you was a goner!' Bernard hooted, getting up to pull back a chair so that his colleague could sit. 'You should have seen that thing, it was right up—'

'It wouldn't be the first time, believe me.' Twiddle batted the air with a dismissive hand. He sat, still evidently fragile. 'What a palaver. I could eat a horse!'

'I think it's sausage and chips today.'

'How are you, boy?' Sergeant Rumpo came up behind to deliver a hearty slap on the back. 'All ship shape, I hope?'

'Please,' said Twiddle. 'I'd rather not think about anything nautical just now if it's all the same.'

'Here you are, love.' Nurse Jeffries set a tray down before her patient. 'Eat it all now, got to keep your strength up.'

'I'd rather not think about anything being kept up, either,' Twiddle groaned. 'Thank you, Joan. Very kind, I'm sure.'

Bernard watched his colleague tucking in. 'The grub's very good today,' he said happily. 'Miss Rhubarb certainly knows her way around a sausage.'

'That's what I've heard too,' Sergeant Rumpo added with a chuckle, sending a wrinkled wink across the room to where the Chef was clearing away a serving tray of toad in the hole.

Twiddle submitted a demure belch to the conversation, such as it was, with a slightly pained look upon his face. 'Oh dear. I don't like the sound of that.'

'Manners,' said Rumpo.

Twiddle clutched his stomach with a look of horror. 'Oh my goodness. It must be something I've eaten.'

'Well, you been in bed with a space lobster stuck to your harris since Tuesday,' explained Bernard helpfully, although not so helpful as he clearly imagined. 'Nurse Jeffries brought you stew and dumplings last night but I don't fink you had none of it.'

'Nothing wrong with Miss Rhubarb's dumplings,' added Rumpo.

'What's that about my dumplings?' called the Chef from across the canteen, a frown having made its way onto her brow.

'Nothing,' the Sergeant called back. 'We was just saying how nice they are.'

'Oh crikey,' wailed Twiddle as an extraterrestrial ghoulie effected its entrance by means of his exit.