K-19

A Story by Ron Sanders

Where things go sploop in the night.

K-19

K-19’s most striking feature has always been the peculiar plasticity of its physics. The well documented ability of its molecules to attain fluidity on the moment, and to remain mutable indefinitely, is an eye-popping fluke, perhaps unique in the universe. Everything on K-19 morphs as a steady state; spontaneously, as perceived by the senses, but continuously below the visual threshold…in the planet’s depths. Miller knew this; had in fact written impressively on the phenomenon way back in his sophomore year. But nothing could prepare him for the eeriness of the place; for the lush mauve tendrils crawling across heaving pasturage, for the nitrogenous pips that sparkled and passed, for the solitary brooding inn that appeared to huff and dissolve in the aching night.

The driver allowed his car to find a comfortable spot after its sickening descent. He took his time, too, in releasing the cabin pressure. Nor did he look back, or make a move to get the door. The trip had been passed in icy silence, but Miller was prepared: he realized Earthmen were just as unpopular on K-19 as on any other developing world. But, damn it, this was an emergency.

He stepped out and gave the driver his print. It was scanned and handed back without a look or a word. “The tip,” Miller enunciated, “is included.” The driver didn’t respond. Miller knew he was understood; this entire quadrant recognized Universal Tongue. Miller slid the print back on. “Thanks again,” he said quietly. The car, with the faintest shiver of protest, lifted off and began its ascent.

Miller squinted in the gloom. A fissure crackled in the distance, a nearby puddle kicked and spat: the first signs of real weather. Up in the inn a shade was pulled aside, and an odd figure stared out at him, eclipsed by the room’s shifting blushes of gradient light. The inn was the only sign of habitation for miles; Miller was certain the driver had deposited him here solely out of spite. He shouldered his case and began hiking the grade. The ground worried each footfall with a tugging, sucking action; frightening at first, but only an annoyance by the time he reached the porch. A sprig turned at his passing, a hanging shutter leaned back and groaned. Off to his right he noticed four peering steeds mailed against the weather. They were just like the animals he’d studied remotely so long ago; fascinating then, repulsive now--fat, sprawling, disgusting slugs that wax dynamic at commands from their riders.

He waited. After half a minute the old door creaked open and Miller found himself staring across a dilapidated lobby at a hunched gray innkeeper in a state of flux. The man quickly looked away, his shoulders slinking down his spine. Miller walked casually to the desk and pulled off his case. A small group seated against the far wall, evidently the steeds’ owners, watched him carefully.

“I’ll need a room for the night, at least. Our galleon was disabled in a drift pocket and I was one of the last men off. I had to retrieve some drives.” He held up the cylindrical case, speaking clearly in the echoes, “They’re important drives. The rescue ship was full. The Company’s sending a personal vessel that’ll arrive tomorrow night at the latest.”

“No rooms available,” the innkeeper muttered. “The place is closed.”

Miller blinked in the flickering shadows. “What do you mean, ‘closed’? I just told you there was an accident in the drift. I’m stuck here. I’ve a graph that says all of K-19’s right on the cusp of a major storm. The Company will cover my print. Where’s your ledger?”

“No need,” the innkeeper mumbled. “Rooms all taken.”

“Taken!” It was the crack of a whip. Moments later Miller said, with barely contained venom, “Then I’ll sleep in the lobby if I have to. But be absolutely clear that the Company will hear all about this.”

The innkeeper shrank further. From the seated group came a cold drawl: “Lobby’s taken too.”

Miller’s face burned to the side. Two of the men stood. Another voice called out, “And he said the inn’s closed!”

Now a young iridescent moon broke from behind a peak miles off, recasting the floor’s shadows. Miller stamped on two and the rest disappeared into the woodwork. His expression twisted round. “Do you know who I am?”

“No. But we know where you’re from.”

A pantry door opened and an old woman oozed into the lobby. “What’s all this racket?”

“You!” Miller demanded. “Do you work here?”

The woman froze and regarded him indifferently, but Miller could tell she was bristling by the sudden spikes under her cloak at the shoulders. To his utter disbelief she folded her arms and said, “The building is closed.”

Miller took two broad steps forward and pointed out the open door. “Do you see that world out there? There’s a real storm brewing. I’ve never heard of a rooming race turning away a traveler in distress. What’s wrong with you people?”

The whole room appeared to tilt. Outside a pair of shrubs fell about, caught up in a death struggle that ended as quickly as it began. The wind moaned from the marrow. The old woman said, “Come here.”

After a respectable pause Miller followed her out onto the porch, the hard truth sinking in with each step. When they were out of earshot he said matter-of-factly, “Okay. How much?”

Her head jerked back as though she’d been slapped. “You…” she said, “you…” and turned away. Miller waited, listening to the steeds splashing about in their own waste. He should never have gone back for the drives. They were replaceable. The Company wouldn’t have blamed him for being swallowed up in the off-ship rush. His fantasy scenarios of a promotion and raise were already turning stale. The woman’s voice was small in the night. “There’s another inn not far from here, just down the road over that hill.”

“Let me guess. Also ‘full’?”

“If they say so.”

He carefully set down his case. “You know what? Maybe I’ll just get comfy on your porch here. You don’t think that’ll bring your property value down too far, do you? And--so help me…don’t you ever think this little travesty’s going unreported.”

She shifted closer, her face buckling and swelling.

“No. Listen to me. You can’t stay outside in a storm. You won’t last.”

Miller snorted. “What do you mean: ‘won’t last’? Maybe you should show Earthmen their due respect, huh, lady?” He blew out a lungful of stress. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you take an honest look at this little backwater planet of yours.” He ticked off points on his fingers. “Your propellants are notoriously unstable. Your ‘durable’ goods have preposterously fickle shelf-lives. No one will navigate anywhere near your gravitational field without first closing his eyes and crossing his fingers.” Miller’s hot white face eclipsed a heaving atmospheric globule. “Case in point: my consortium’s marooned galleon and my little unrequested vacation.” He placed his hands on his hips and swiveled his head, marveling. “Say, just when is peak tourist season around here, anyway?” Patches of black moles cropped up on the old lady’s face. “Why…” Miller added, “if not for the Company’s sense of progressive fair play, this whole place would’ve just shaken and shimmied into oblivion decades ago.”

The woman’s body twisted while her fingers protruded and withdrew. Her eyes became smoke-veiled embers, her voice a sandpaper hiss.

“You’re from Earth; you don’t understand. Products, capital gain, your precious Company--we’re not interested in all that. We’re sorry your ship was caught in the drift. But please don’t start any trouble here.”

“Lady, we don’t start trouble, we finish it. If any of you people have a problem with the way we run things you can always take it up with a caseworker.”

A lump throbbed laterally along her forehead. A wrist appendage extended eastward. “Over the hill,” she said icily.

“With pleasure.” Miller looped his case’s strap over his head and began to hike.

The old lady watched him recede, her body readjusting to the landscape molecule for molecule. St. Elmo’s fire lit her cloak’s peaked hood.

Miller’s eyes burned and froze, swam and steadied as the storm picked up. When he looked back again she was gone. Maybe he was better off with a lesson learned well. If the grotesqueries at the next inn were anything like these last impudent monsters, a little tact might go a long way. It couldn’t hang more than a night, and maybe a day, anyway. He’d just fall out in his room and sleep through it.

An odd sound rose back at the inn, a restless, banshee-like wailing. Miller stopped, trying to put his finger on it. Haunted K-19 imagery…armed riders…a miscellaneous audio file, back in college…yes, the steeds had been roused; all four. The noise spiked radically as they rounded the intervening building. A pocket of air sizzled and exploded overhead. Miller picked up his pace.

It was a struggle to make any headway at all; the road had an odd disposition that made forward movement like walking in place. The steeds’ compound wail became aggressive, phasing in and out, nearing…definitely nearing. Miller pressed on with an attitude, his ears popping, his eyes bulging--he had to be marching backward somehow…no, it was the road, the road: the road itself was flowing downhill. Miller cried out as first his left ankle, then his right, submerged in grit and was freed. He fell on his palms, felt his wrists gripped by a force unseen. Only by rolling onto his back was he able to struggle free. He sprinted uphill, each sole’s contact too brief to allow a meaningful grip.

The wailing increased in intensity. He shot back a glance, saw four surreal shapes charging uphill in tandem. Miller shook to the quick and scrambled to the road’s summit, where he gasped for want of air and options: before him lay only bogs and gnarly banyan-like trees. The road itself descended into desolation; no signs of habitation, no trace of civilization. The old witch had been lying all along! He stamped and bawled at the horror and betrayal, and was rewarded in seconds by a tremor underfoot and an answering howl. Miller simply lost it; he blew out his mind in a flurry of shrieking gray, ran stumbling off the road into the abutting swamp. The undergrowth strained to meet him, muck underfoot grabbed and thrashed. Mustered by his cries, sulking columns of mist swept in from all sides, tangling him up, making for his airways while obscene things ran yipping through the shadows, leapt thrashing in the vapors, hopped flopping pool to pool. Racing low to the east, a pair of moons threw parallel shadows that passed tree to tree, creating a pulsing confusion of simian wraiths. Reeking fumes--vile, increasingly antagonistic--were stirred out of the air by his movements.

Miller’s case nipped him. At first the notion was so unreal he could only gape at his shoulder. Next thing he knew, the case was making its way down his arm in one long convulsive shudder. He flung it off with a little bark of horror, blood droplets swimming in his breath, his fingernails splitting blue. The bag flopped off in one direction, Miller in another. Crashing sounds broke just behind, accompanied by a haunted cry that built and built until it seemed right on top of him. Miller slammed his back against a tree and stared up at the quartet of riders watching from a roiling knoll. Even as their heads inclined, a strong pair of limbs grabbed him by the biceps.

The tree hauled him up kicking and screaming, a foot at a time. When he was eye-level with the riders a pair of limbs branched from the trunk; one to impel and brace his spine, the other to hold him by the throat.

Miller hacked and dribbled, clinging to the steely limbs while his body jerked to and fro. “You freaks!” he coughed. “Get me down!” His focus was going. The riders looked on silently, unmoved. Miller forced a savage breath. “I’ll see you burn! I’ll see your whole planet blacklisted, quarantined…shut down.” He was fading. The upper limb lifted him forward until he dangled, suspended midway between the trunk and the observers. “We men of Earth won’t stand for any of your damned…we’ll get you for…” One of Miller’s eyebrows detached, his left arm seized, teeth and bits of flesh spewed out before him. “Won’t take this…” he choked. “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything.” His face went plum, the eyes bulged and raved, the ears crimped and folded, the scalp peeled off in layers. “I’m sorry…please…please…” His head fell forward. “Oh mercy,” he whispered. “Please.”

A stalagmite-shaped bulge, seeping out of the slime beneath his feet, strained upward through bursting pockets of gas. The tree’s uppermost branch shook Miller hard; an alley dog thrashing a roof rat. A long shudder ran down the branch and the tree turned to stone. Immediately the bulge rushed up, clasped Miller’s feet and tugged. A stinking miasma appeared around his stretched and dangling remains. Putrefaction began at once.

The eastern sky started to turn in a lazy spiral; the storm was winding down. The four riders watched for a minute, turned their beasts as one, and began the short slog back to the inn.

Don’t miss my collection of poems

Out Of The Whirl

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Out Of The Whirl: Sanders, Ron: 9798671245547: Amazon.com: Books

My stories collection Wild Stuff is also available on Amazon, at:

Wild Stuff: The Collected Tales Of Ron Sanders - Kindle edition by Sanders, Ron. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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