Star Yawns Episode 1. By David Williams. Smashwords Edition. Copyright (2012) by David Williams

STAR YAWNS

  THE LAUGHING ALIEN

  BY David Williams

  Copyright 2012 David Williams

  As we traveled through the wormhole we saw we had only traveled fifty-seven parsecs but now we were in the Beta quadrant. A very backward quadrant, so backward nobody ever bothered to tell anybody what quadrant they were in. We sent a tackyon beam to what looked like an M class planet hoping this might send us back but with no luck.

  Captain's log: star date 23.0211:

  We have arrived in the Beta Quadrant on the star ship VHS. A vessel has approached us at high impulse. We scanned the vessel and we realised they were charging weapons.

  " Raise shields and polarize the hull plating.” I ordered and we quickly targeted their weapons array. Moments later they hailed us and asked us to meet them on the planets surface.

  An hour later six-crew members and an alien beamed up from the planets surface. I thought it was time to make introductions.

  " I am Captain Hemorrhoid and this is Commander Fruit Loop. Are you from the Beta quadrant?" I asked.

  " Where? Oh no I am not from here. I am Harrison of the Ford Galaxy. I traveled here in my space ship equipped with mega drive. It goes faster than warp speed but you have be on your toes. If you hit a super nova at these speeds you can kiss your butt goodbye.”

  Which was strange because his face looked like a butt already.

  Captains log 07.0311:

  We have now been in the Beta quadrant for four days and it seems to be the same thing as being through the looking glass. No matter what we do everything is always the opposite. Our guest has asked me to assemble the senior officers. For the moment he is waiting outside. We have Captain Hemorrhoid Commander Fruit- Loop and myself. Sub Commander Appalled, Mr. Sook the Vulcan science officer, Lieutenants Beeday and O'hoara (she's Irish of course) and finally Ensign Hairy Follicle. We discussed the Beta quadrant for a few minutes and I listened to their ideas about how could get home. It seems we are only 50 light years from our own quadrant but for every kilometer we travel closer we are farther away.

  Harrison was in the corridor when a young yeoman approached him. She was a pleasant girl but she was a little on the plump side and didn't look good in our uniforms. "The captain will see you now" she said " sorry about the wait."

  He looked her up and down and replied. " Don't worry you’ll loose it someday a diet always works for me." Harrison came in and seated himself.

  " Captain I understand you have a shape shifter on board, I picked up his signature when I scanned you."

  " Yes we have" I replied. " His name is OH-No and he has been a member of our crew from the very start. Why do you ask?"

  Harrison started to look a little annoyed. " His kind invaded my planet decades ago and ended up stealing all the buckets we had. They even took a whole continent just because it was shaped like a bucket. Please transport him off this ship at once."

  I was appalled at his demand. "He has been our crew mate for three years and he almost runs engineering and where would I transport him to. We are a long way out of transport range."

  “ That's not my concern captain I want him out of here."

  Suddenly one of the chairs started to change shape and moments later Oh-No stood before us.

  I spoke first. " How dare you sneak into this meeting."

  " As soon as I heard this man was on board I knew he would be looking for me."

  " How could you know that, up to yesterday you thought you were the only one of your kind."

  " I don't know Captain, I just knew."

  Just then Harrison butted in. " I told you he was no good, shoot him out of the air lock."

  " I'll do no such thing."

  Just then the captain received a message. " We are in the midst of a gas giant sir what are you orders?"

  " I'll be right there," he paused for a moment. " A gas giant, I think I can smell it already."

  " Oops that was me." said ensign Follicle.

  After we had maneuvered through the gas giant I sent for Doctor Flusher.

  " You sent for me Captain?"

  " Yes I want you to entertain our guest for a while, distract him."

  The doctor was enraged. " I'm a doctor not a functions coordinator."

  " Actually you are and you are an opera singer or you can be, I'll program it into your sub-routines."

  " Oh great, every time you have a problem just come to me and I'll solve it for you." He thought for a moment. " Maybe there is something you can do for me. You can give my son Pestly Flusher a post on the bridge. He's a very efficient pilot."

  " Are you joking he's only four days old."

  " Time is nothing to a hologram."

  " What if there is a power outage and he goes off line. We could all be killed."

  " Captain do you want me to entertain your guest or not. I have just been rehearsing a new version for 'I'm just wild about harry and I might say, I'm very good."

  " Okay fine whatever, just distract Harrison for a while."

  " Come this way Mr. Harrison.,” said the Doctor. " I want to show you our hollow deck." They walked in.

  " Start program west field." he said.

  The little man looked amazed.

  " This is what I like to call the Star Fleet Food Court. You can get almost anything here from the alpha quadrant. Would you care for some Clingon food, beware it's usually not cooked. In fact it's probably alive. Or maybe you might like some Zindy food. Romulan Ale is always popular, although." he whispered " it's illegal."

  " No thankyou!" Said Harrison " You're just trying to waste my time. I want something done about that shape -shifter. Take me back to see the captain."

  The doctor looked disappointed. " I was going to sing an opera piece while you were eating."

  " No thankyou, that would make me throw up. I'm leaving, you can sing to the waiters."

  " They've heard me sing before and besides there holograms."

  With that Harrison vanished into thin air. The doctor pushed on his Comm badge. " Captain please come in."

  " Yes doctor."

  " Harrison has disappeared and I don't know where he is."

  The captain acted quickly. " Security alert, please find the alien Harrison."

  A few minutes later the outer hatch opened....

  " What has happened". Asked the captain.

  It was the alien that answered. : " Captain I have just ejected your shape-shifter into outer space. You should have listened to me. Now I intend to take over your ship and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

  At that moment he started to laugh. All you could hear throughout the whole ship was the sound of his laughter.

  Five minutes later he was still laughing and the captain noticed some the crew starting to become effected. Ensign Follicle was first as he fell to the ground in the fetal position. After that more and more crew were dropping like flies.

  Ten minutes later the laughter kept going.

  " Might I suggest ear muffs" Said Mr. Sook the science officer.

  " Yes put them on quickly."

  " Captain look at my monitor." He said

  " Your what?"

  " Look Captain we have an extra satellite dish on the outer hull."

  Captain Hemorrhoid took a look. " You're right, it must be Oh-No, I forgot he doesn't need air to survive, he's still okay."

  " What did you say, captain? I can't hear with these ear muffs on."

  Suddenly the laughing stopped.

  " How many of the crew were effected Mr. Sook?"

  " According to my sensors 95% of the crew are now unconscious. We are in deep trouble captain, only those of us who wore earmuffs are okay. That makes five of us.”

  " Mr. Sook see if you can call Oh-no on your Comm badge. Tell him to try and

  get back inside the ship via an air duct or something. Don't forget the

  doctor will
be okay he is a hologram and that laughing should not have

  effected him. Also see if you can locate where the alien is at the moment."

  "Anything else captain I may have time to clean the toilets and make the beds

  while I'm at it."

  " Very funny Mr. Sook, we don't have time for your Vulcan humor right now."

  Mr. Sook did as he was asked and after that he scanned the database for

  some information. " Captain there is something here you might want to hear

  about."

  " What's that."

  " I entered the profile of Harrison into the database and he is not from

  another galaxy, as he would have us believe. He is from an M class moon that

  rotates around the planet Uranus. Do you remember we visited that moon about

  three years ago and we had to leave suddenly because the people of that moon

  wanted to have us leave all the female crew behind. They have very minimal

  females on that moon. The conditions are not suitable for females to survive

  more than a few years."

  " Yes I remember that voyage. They tried to hold us back towards the moon

  with a tractor beam. We managed to break free by sending a pulsar through

  the beam and we broke free and engaged warp drive very quickly."

  " So I would suggest this was no accident that we encountered this alien,

  and the story he told us about the shape shifter was fabricated. I think he

  wanted to get rid of Oh-no because he somehow is aware that he may somehow

  foil the plan."

  The captain thought for a moment. " You mean the plan to steal all our

  female crew members."

  " I'm afraid so."

  At this moment the ship came to a dead stop and the power went dead.

  Everybody was now in the dark...

  Moments later the emergency lights came on and Captain Hemorrhoid gave a sigh of relief. Not long after this a snake slid in through one of the vents. It was Oh-No and before long he transformed himself back to his normal self.

  " Oh-No, I'm glad to see you, how did you get back inside the ship?"

  " When I got Mr. Sook’s message I changed myself into a very thin thread and passed my way through a shaft in the rear end of the ship."

  " Good work, now all we have to do is get control of this ship. Oh-no, the alien is afraid of you for some reason, so we shall put on our earmuffs on and we will set our fazers to stun. You can do the rest."

  The Captain and the others set out to find the Alien. They spotted him near the toilets on the fourth deck. The captain shot at him first and missed and so did Mr. Sook. Then the alien opened his mouth to start laughing again but before he could get out one giggle Oh-No changed into a substance that looked like licorice and shot into his mouth, muffling the noise. The captain quickly signaled for Oh-No to come out and taped the alien’s mouth before he could laugh again. Just before the tape went on his mouth he managed to tell Captain Hemorrhoid that he was a pain in the butt.

  " Well that foils your plan Harrison, you will not be stealing our females, not on this voyage."

  Harrison signed for them to take the tape from his mouth. So they did, but covered him with their phasers.

  " I didn't want to steal your women, I needed to steal your ship."

  " Well why didn't you say so? Mocked the captain.

  " About a year ago we discovered a crack running through the middle of our moon."

  " So you have a crack in the middle of your Uranus moon?"

  " Yes we do, and we traveled to our neighboring moon and discovered that it is M class and it will not kill our females like the other moon did."

  " So why don't you transport your people there?"

  " We started doing that but there are too many of us. So we thought we would steal a vessel that could transport all our people much quicker before the planet explodes."

  " Do you know when it will explode?"

  " Yes next Thursday at 2:30pm. Around dentist time, so I needed to act quick."

  " All you had to do was ask and we would have helped you. The only trouble is that we are stuck here in the Beta quadrant and can't get back."

  " No problem, I arranged for the people of that planet to do this to you. When I give the signal you can return to the alpha quadrant anytime you want."

  Captains Log star date 27.0611:

  Well it was June 2352 anyway. On our return from the beta quadrant we headed for the planet Uranus and perched ourselves between the two moons. Mr. Sook had been able to make the transporter work to transport the people from one planet to the other. So by 2:30 on the Thursday everyone from the first moon had been evacuated and was now living on the second moon. We were all watching as the first moon blew up. It looked a bit like a mushroom cloud and there were some interesting patterns in the sky.

  With this voyage well and truly under our belts we decided to head for Tallis 4 and see what adventures we could find."

  On the bridge that afternoon, the doctor came to join us. " Mr. Sook really saved our skin from those butt people." said the captain

  " I'm still insulted that he didn't want to hear me sing." said the doctor. " I do a very good Jimmy Durranty."

  " Not everybody enjoys music."

  " Captain I still can't understand why you would help those people after what they did to us." said Mr. Sook

  " To air is human Mr. Sook, to forgive divine.”

  “ I suppose you’re right.”

  “ You may be more human than you think."

  " Well I see no reason to insult me." Said Mr. Sook.

  With that everybody laughed.

  THE END