Jed paced the living room in apprehension. He could hear the grinding of the alien creature's teeth against the metal of the door. He dreaded to think what would happen if the creature got through. Trying to relax, he sat—or rather, sank—down into the large, soft couch in the middle of the room. Hearing snapping noises, he whipped his head around to catch a glimpse of the source of the grisly sound. Unable to see anything, Jed stood and walked to the door. A clear substance was oozing onto the carpet. Sparks hissed out from the edge of the door, igniting the pool of goop. The fire grew quickly with no signs of slowing down.
Jed looked around for some way to put it out, but there were no containers to use. The flames blazed higher and began to spread.
*****
Sarah and Alice looked up as an alarm blared inside the command room. Sarah jumped off the stool and ran to another computer terminal. Lights were flashing all over the top of the console as Sarah tried to make sense of what the alarm was trying to tell her. Glancing up at the main viewscreen, she could see Jed still inside the living room where they had left him. Fire was crawling along the floor. Sarah pressed a button labeled FIRE CONTROL and was relieved to see the sprinkler system in the room turn on.
"Alice, do you remember the button Dad pressed to talk to Jed?"
"Yeah," Alice said, hopping off her stool and crossing the room towards her.
"Go press it." Alice climbed up on one of the stools at the communications terminal and pressed the button as she had seen her father do.
"Jed! Jed!" Sarah called to the screen.
"Sarah is that you?" Her brother appeared on the screen, still not finding the hidden camera.
"Yeah, do the sprinklers seem to be having any effect?" she asked.
"Not much. They've shut off now, anyway, so we better look for something else."
Sarah looked down at the controls in front of her.
"I didn't shut them off!" she protested in frustration, pushing a few other buttons to no avail. "Jed, there is a fire extinguisher under a panel beside the bathroom door. I remember seeing it there before. Can you get to it?"
"Yeah, I got it," Jed replied as Sarah and Alice watched him pull the pin in the extinguisher and begin spraying the flames.
Sarah and Alice both gasped as one of the creatures appeared and crawled over the camera. To Sarah and Alice, it appeared to be chewing through the screen they were watching. Suddenly, the picture went blank. The camera had been destroyed.
"Jed, watch out!" Alice called through the microphone in front of her.
The sisters only heard ominous static.
"The communications link to that room must be down as well. Let's see if we can find Dad," Sarah stated.
Trying to keep up a facade of enthusiasm for Alice, Sarah scanned the different hall visuals until she found their father. Their father was backed up against the wall trying to keep the creatures away from him with nothing but a pole he must have grabbed from a storage closet. She quickly changed the view before Alice could realize what was happening.
Sarah paused and thought hard for a few moments.
"What's wrong, Sarah?" Alice asked.
"We're going to go help Dad," Sarah answered.
"But he told us to stay here," Alice replied.
"He's in trouble. We're going to help him. And Jed," Sarah added, sliding off the stool and taking Alice's hand.
The two girls stepped into the elevator and asked it to take them to Level One.
*****
Mr. Gatores kept a wary eye out for the creatures he had seen from the control room.
'Hmm. I wonder.'
He pressed his hand on the door to one of the janitorial closets. Inside, he found a metal pole that had been left among the boxes and equipment.
'Might come in handy if I come across any of those creatures,' Mr. Gatores thought.
He ventured about halfway down the hall when creatures came swarming out of the doors around him. He was trapped! Backing up against the wall, he tried to ward off his drooling attackers. Making a face of disgust, he kicked at one of the creatures that attempted to jump at him.
It wasn't long before he glimpsed an even more sickening sight. A wave of fire was threading steadily down the paths of saliva the creatures left behind.
"Saliva that burns... ugh!" he exclaimed as he unceremoniously skewered one of the creatures and flung it into the flames. "There are too many of you anyhow!"
*****
Sarah and Alice emerged from the elevator to find the emergency sprinklers on in the hallway.
"Wasn't it Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh who said, 'tut-tut, it looks like rain'?" Sarah asked Alice sarcastically, her face grim.
The two girls walked down the hall. The fire now raged and was marching towards them with incredible speed. Sarah turned and ran back a few paces. She jerked a twin-barreled chloroblast fire extinguisher out from the cabinet hanging on the wall. With Alice holding one of the barrels and Sarah holding the other, they targeted the flames. Soon, the fire retreated.
Cautiously, following the receding fire they found a group of the creatures, seemingly undisturbed, walking among the flames. Hoping to blind the creatures to their approach, Sarah aimed the nozzle at them and let the foamy, green-plant-laced mixture spray over them. As the flames in that section of the hallway were put out by the foam the automated sprinklers stopped. Looking down and expecting the creatures to attack, Sarah saw that the foam had evaporated as usual, but the creatures were now immobile.
Frowning, she prodded one with the toe of her shoe then sprung backwards with a shiver expecting it to jump at her. The creature didn't move.
"What happened?" Alice asked, wringing water from her long, straight, almond-colored hair.
Sarah watched as a few water droplets fell on a creature near her sister. The water soaked into the creature's textured head, leaving a pink splotch behind.
"I don't know. Let's get going," Sarah replied, herding Alice away from the now-docile creatures.
They had not gone far when the sprinklers started again. The sisters hurried down the hall as the sounds of a confrontation reached their ears. Their shoes and soaked overalls adding muffled squishy noises to the din.
*****
As they rounded the corner, Sarah and Alice found that it was their father making most of the noise as he alternately berated himself for letting a creature get too close and just yelled in general hoping to scare the creatures off. Mr. Gatores stopped as he heard Sarah and Alice yell for him. Looking down the hall he saw them running towards him, hauling between them one of the station's fire extinguishers.
"Sarah, Alice—I told you to stay down in the command room! Watch out for those things!" Mr. Gatores called, distressed at seeing his children running straight toward the frenzied beasts.
"We found out..." The rest of Sarah's words were drowned out as she and Alice sprayed the chloroblast over the creatures and the fire surrounding their father.
Mr. Gatores stood stunned as he watched the strange life-forms stiffen and fold down to flat plates on the floor.
"The chloroblast kills them!" Mr. Gatores exclaimed, shocked. "Or perhaps it only puts them into hibernation," he added, after a moment's consideration.
"Why do you say that?" Sarah asked, confused.
"Turn slowly and look behind you," Mr. Gatores said, careful to keep his voice even.
Sarah looked over her shoulder and then whipped the fire extinguisher's targeting nozzle from between her and Alice, spraying the oncoming creature squarely on its head. As the foam dissipated, she saw the pink splotch disappear on the surface of the creature's plate-like head.
"I assume you sprayed every one of these things in the hall as you came, am I right?" Mr. Gatores asked, stepping over the stiffened forms at his feet. Looking closely, he tried to determine their true condition.
"Yeah. Alice dripped some water on this one. Maybe that's what woke it up."
"Are you sure it was this one?"
"Definitely. The pink splotch appeared as the water was absorbed."
"Something to note," Mr. Gatores replied and added, "but I thought I told you two to stay in the command hub."
Sarah lowered her gaze.
"Thank you for your help," he finished, reaching out to wrap them in a hug.
Sarah managed a weak smile, but it soon faded as she remembered why they had come to find their father in the first place.
"Jed was in the room, and a fire started. The creatures got in," she stammered, breaking away from her father's grasp in desperation.
"Standard safety procedure. All doors to living quarters open in the event of a fire. We'd better go look for him," Mr. Gatores replied grimly.
Sarah, Alice, and their father walked down the hall to find the room where Jed was trapped. As they looked in through the open doorway, they saw what could only be described as a chloroblast explosion.
"I see Jed found the fire extinguisher handy as well," Mr. Gatores replied.
"Look, he left the room. You can see his footprints in the wet carpet," Sarah added.
"Cool!" Alice exclaimed, looking behind at her own footprints.
Sarah took Alice's hand as they followed the trail down the hall.
Mr. Gatores took the fire extinguisher onto his hip and looked up as he heard Sarah gasp and Alice whimper. He spotted a larger, decidedly more grotesque version of the creatures farther down the hall standing tall on three of its tentacles and pining a squirming Jed against the wall with its other four.
Mr. Gatores strode forward, emptying the remainder of the contents of the fire extinguisher onto the large creature. As it stiffened and folded to the floor, Mr. Gatores led a shaking Jed away and back to his sisters.
"Thanks," Jed told his dad in a tone of relief as his sisters hugged him.
"Are you alright?" Mr. Gatores asked in a worried voice.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Jed replied with a nod.
"Let's get back down to the command room. I'd feel better knowing that you three were with me. I don't know how those things got in here, so there's no way to tell if there are any more of them wandering around the station."
The three children nodded in agreement and followed him in silence, stepping around and through the legions of the unconscious, coral-headed creatures on their way toward the elevators.