Chess

'Hmmm.' Brooker leaned so close to the chess board his saggy moustache almost obscured his defensive line of pawns. 

'You're real proud of that moustache aren't you?' Grace Holland picked up her wine and gently sipped it. If she had too much she'd lose to Brooker. Again. 

'Actually I was thinking of shaving it off.' Brooker sat up and ran his fingers along its voluminous width. 'It's being getting a bit irritating recently, sort of itchy.'  

'No, you're not!' 

'Are you saying you like it? Does it make me look handsome? Do you think?' Brooker turned his head sideways so Grace could get the full benefit of his bushy behemoth. 

'I think you look like a walrus that's lost his dentures.' Grace replied nonchalantly. 'OK. Maybe it makes you look a bit distinctive, in a Benny Turland sort of way.' 

'Distinctive. Really, you think so?' Brooker's white teeth appeared behind the mass of curly hair. 'Wait a minute, Ben Turland? Wasn't he?' 

'The mass murderer from The Colonies. Benny the Butcher was his moniker. They left him to die on a rock in the Hestia belt with a list of his victims and a single bottle of oxygen.' Grace nodded and smiled sweetly at Brooker.  

'Nice.' Brooker stretched his arms and yawned. 'You know I've always wanted to see the Hestia asteroid belt. It's on my list of fifty things to do before I die.' 

'It was on Benny's too. They put it on there just before they dropped him off. Are you playing or what?' 

'I was until you raised my moustache's hopes.' Brooker cradled his chin in the palms of his hands and studied the pieces. He wondered whether he should have gone for the Smith-Morra Gambit rather than the Alapin Variation against Grace's Sicilian opening.  

They sat facing each other over the board. The wind outside howled, their hab-hub gently swayed in it's cradle. One of Brooker's pieces rocked and toppled over. Brooker impatiently picked it up a slapped it back on the board. 

Grace took another sip of wine. 'You sure you placed that back where it was? You can admit defeat now if you want.' She did like Booker's moustache but certainly wasn't going to let on. He would become unbearable. 

'Ha,' laughed Brooker, 'you've never beaten me yet so don't try those little physiological tricks on me.'  

The transceiver crackled, 'It's Denz. Is anyone there?' 

Brooker poured over the patterned surface. 'No Denz, its eighty below on the planet's surface, the sun hasn't risen for two hundred years, so we're outside playing snowballs in the trees.' 

'Hello?' 

Grace rocked her chair back on its rear legs and lifted the receiver with her outstretched hand, 'Whhhaaatttzzzzup Denz.' 

'You two better get down here. Quick.' 

'No chance Denz. It's not another three hours until our shift. Whatever the problem is you can deal with it.' Brooker called. 

'No. Really. You're going to want to see this. You need to come down now.' 

'If it's like last time when we spent two hours in that knackered old lift freezing our arses off just for Denz to show us an icicle in the shape of that girl he met in that bar in Gaam 5, I'm going to kill him.' Brooker reached for his jacket. 

'I heard that Brooker.' 

    ******* 

When they stepped out of the lift Denz was there waiting for them stamping his feet and flapping his mitten covered hands around his chest. 'You took your time.' 

'We're bloody frozen Denz. This had better be worth it. Why have you stopped drilling?' Grace's breath came in frosty white plumes. 'Where's Beal?' 

'He's back down there, with it.' Denz motioned back down the ice shaft behind him. 

'It?'  

They plodded down the tunnel into the ice cave. The ice walls glistened in the brilliance of the arc lights that flooded the drilling platform. Beal was kneeling on the floor his head bent close to the ice.' 

'Mecca's that way Beal,' said Brooker. 'Put in a good word in for Denz because I'm just about to throttle him.'  

Beal looked up and waved them to join him. 

Grace knelt by Beal, ran her sleeve over the ice surface to clear off the frost covering and peered into the cloudy white ice. 'So what is it?' 

'You're the Doctor Grace, you tell us,' breathed Denz.  

'I'm a geologist not a biologist.'  

'Well, you're a 'gist' so you know more about it than any of us.' 

'Well gist or not I've never seen anything like it.' 

'Let me have a look,' Brooker pushed by Denz. 'Crikey, it's big and ugly. Isn't it?' 

'Thanks for that valuable insight Brooker. Beal what do you think?' Denz asked. 

Beal shrugged his shoulders and took off his glove to bite his nails. 

'I don't think Beal likes it,' said Denz. 

'Why what big teeth it's got. Why what big claws it's got. Why what ....' Brooker chanted. 

'Shut up, you're making Beal nervous.' Grace punched Booker's shoulder. 'It's odd that we haven't found much other life down here. It looks like some sort of invertebrate. I'm surprised it could have survived in this landscape. It's obviously a predator.' 

'How do you know Beal's nervous?' Brooker studied the introverted Beal. 

'Invertebrate? There! I knew there was a reason they'd sent you.' Denz looked at Grace. 'I wonder how it got here, we're what, two hundred clicks down. What's that, about three million years?' 

'Do you think we could get it out of the ice? We could take it home. I've never seen anything like it.' Grace looked up at the heads crowded around her. 

'We are not. I repeat, not taking that thing anywhere on my ship,' Brooker drawled. 'I've seen those movies and I'm not having this alien thing defreeze on the trip back home to find itself in the equivalent of a human lunch box. The thought of waking up to find my innards ripped out and this thing patting my liver off it's fangs with my best AC-DC tee shirt, is not one I wish to countenance.' 

'That's it. Brooker's got it,' chuckled Denz. 'It's alien to this plant! Stranded here for millions of years, stuck in the ice. Waiting for two men, a woman from the Interplanetary Mining Company and a big irritable bloke with a rampant moustache to dig it out of the ice. And then Whooooaaaa,' he pulled a face and waved his hands in the air. 

Brooker pulled out his ice pick and began tapping the ice. 

'Don't do that, you'll wake the critter up.' Denz grabbed the ice pick. 

'Turn the drill back on I'm going back to my chess game.' Brooker stood up, brushed the ice off his knees and headed back down the tunnel to the lift. 

'Hold on there Captain Charisma,' Denz shouted after him tapping his watch, 'Our shift's over. Your turn. Did you bring some coffee? We've drunk all ours. Come on Beal, lets go.' 

'Damit!' cursed Brooker.

    ***** 

'So how do you think it got there?' Denz lay back on his bunk and threw a few nuts in the air. 

'Dunno,' Brooker picked up his bishop and moved it a square and then returned it to its original position. 'But it's been down there three million years and as far as I'm concerned it can stay there for another three million.' 

'It's probably gone off by now. Do you think it defroze in the last big thaw and refroze again? It's like fish, you shouldn't refreeze them. It says so on the packet,' observed Denz cracking the nuts in his teeth. 

'I didn't see any instructions lying around Denz so I wouldn't know. You could always wake it up and ask it,' murmured Brooker. 'Then we can have a raffle to see who gets your bunk.' 

Grace looked at the ceiling and let out a sigh of exasperation. 'It could be worth a packet back home.' 

'You know my thoughts on that one. Anyway it gives Beal the creeps. He hasn't said anything since we found it.' 

'Beal never says anything.' Denz threw a nut at Beal. 'He's probably the only sane one here.' 

'We'll never know,' said Grace looking at Beal. 'Who knows, perhaps Beal's really Benny Turland. Eked out his supply of oxygen and managed to hitch a lift on a passing mining ship.' 

Brooker looked up. 'I'd rather be sharing a ship back with Benny Turland than that thing down there? Have you moved yet Grace?' 

'No, it's your turn. It has been since yesterday.'

    ***** 

'Bloody hell,' said Grace looking into the hole in the ice, 'It's gone.' 

'That idiot Denz he left the lights on over it, they've melted the ice.' Brooker ran his fingers through the icy water. 

'Idiot,' cursed Grace checking behind the packing boxes. 

'Right. You get the vaporiser and I'll sort the equipment.' Brooker looked back down the ice tunnel and turned off the drill. 

'We don't have a vaporiser Brooker.' Grace whispered. 

'I know we don't. I just hoped if you had one about you I'd nip back up to the surface and turn it on Denz.' Broker grabbed her arm and pulled her to the ice wall. 'Did you hear that?' 

Echoing through the tunnels rose a pulsating buzzing sound and then the rapid 'click clack' of hardened claws on ice.  

Grace shuddered, 'Shush! Let's get back to the lift and get out of here. We can decide what to do when we get up top. We can spin a coin for who's going to 'Do' Denz.' 

They ran along the tunnel shaft dodging between the discarded crates and mountains of spare drilling equipment. Reaching inside the lift's lattice metal gate Brooker switched off it's light. Then he lifted the gate's latch and pulled it open. 'Bloody hell. It's stuck.' 

'What?' Grace asked in disbelief. She turned her head and looked back. Through the tunnel the sound rang. 'Click clack, click clack.' Faster and faster, it moved toward them. 'It's heard us Brooker, it's coming!' Grace gasped.  

'It's jammed. I can't get it to open properly. Squeeze through the gap Grace.' Brooker pulled her round and pushed her through the gap into the lift. 

'It's here. Be quiet!' Brooker froze, his body caught in the gate. Half in, half out of the lift. 

Grace shrank back and watched in horror as its shadow filled the lift. Distorted by the light its huge head hung low, swinging slowly to and fro as it searched for them, its jaw loose, its teeth snapping. It stretched out its bony wings and vibrated them. A frightening low pitched buzzing sound pulsed through her body.  

It was moving back towards the drilling area. It hadn't seen them yet.  

'Yoo hoo! How's Sleeping Beauty Brooker?' The lifts transceiver squawked.  

Grace slammed her fist into the off button.  

The shadow of the beast swung around to face them. An ear piercing high pitched wail filled the air. 

Grace grabbed Brooker's hand, held it hard and closed her eyes.  

'Thwack!' The sound reverberated through the lift shaft. She felt a rush of air and the unmistakable sound of liquid hitting the lift walls. Hardly daring to, she opened her eyes. The sides of the lift were washed in a layers of green slime, scattered across the floor fat blobs of green flesh lay gently pulsating in leeching pools of rancid liquid.

Brooker, still stuck in the gate, turned to face her, his eyes wide in shock. He was smothered in a liberal covering of the green goo. 

'What happened to you?' she asked letting go of his hand. 

'It turned around when that idiot Denz called down. Saw me, then just exploded. It just exploded Grace! I've been glooped!' Brooker wiped the mass of fetid green jelly from his face. 

'You stink. I'll get a mop.' 

    ***** 

'You know,' said Grace, her finger resting on the white Queen. 'I have a theory on what happened down there.' 

'Ah the great Doctor Grace Holland is about to expound her theory on the incredible exploding beasty.' Brooker rocked back on his chair and crossed his arms. 'Let's hear it then.' 

Denz stopped throwing peanuts into the air and sat up in his bunk revealing a red raw black eye. 'Go on then.' 

'His moustache killed it.' 

'Ha,' laughed Brooker. 'I don't think so.' 

'I think when Denz de-froze it in the ice he did it so fast that it weakened its cellular structure. When we surprised it, it swung round, saw you Brooker and it looked at a face that, let's be honest is pretty scary whichever planet you come from. So it turned round, saw Brooker, probably the most alien thing it had ever encountered, its gloop pressure rocketed and 'pop'. That was it! Gloop and guts all over the drill platform floor!' 

'I'll buy that.' said Denz slumping back into his bunk. 'Brooker moustached it to death.' 

'I see,' said Brooker carefully stroking his growth. 'And I suppose that is your argument for me retaining my magnificent vestige.' 

'It is,' said Grace. 'After all we don't know how many more we might come across down there. Do we?' 

'Is that why you're looking so self satisfied, forcing me to abstain from shaving for the rest of this trip.' Brooker grimaced. 

'Not really Brooker, you know I don't particularly like it anyway.' Grace chuckled and picked up her Queen.  

'Check Mate.'

It always struck me as odd that at the movies the beasty's never frightened of us, only us of them. Mind you wouldn't be much of a film otherwise I suppose.