low.
She gasped in horror as she watched a nearly transparent Pentapod, its visible heart beating a rapid and erratic rhythm even for a Pentapod, fling a spindly barstool over its head into the mirror behind the bar. Ab’nere’s Number Eight Son—fathered by an ammonia breather and thus possessing gills to breathe a veritable cocktail of different atmospheres—ducked out of the way of the stool, arms shielding his neck and those vulnerable gills from shattering glass. His daughter and her spouse flung aside their trays filled with noxious drinks only an ammonia breather could love and dove beneath the tables they had been serving. The silica and lead globules filled with liquid and vaporous chemicals smashed into walls. Before the rainbow puddles slid to the floor, two patrons slammed their arm joints, simultaneously, into the offender’s mid-region.
The first combatant stumbled backward. He collided with yet another patron. That being’s drink flew out of his hand. The splashee’s foot jerked into a delicate leg joint of yet another patron. This next victim retaliated by breaking a drink globule over the nearest head—that of Number Eight Son.
Before Ab’nere could blink, all twenty imbibers in the bar had joined the fray. Flippers and pseudopods lashed out. Limbs tangled and internal organs pulsed. Defenders leaped aside and slammed into no longer innocent bystanders.
One of them landed upon the portal iris. It buckled. The air lock behind it hissed. An attacker launched himself at the door. The lock shattered under the combined weight and thrust.
The fight spilled into the corridor. Only one more air lock separated them from the hub.
If the ammonia leaked into the hub, containment could prove difficult.
Ab’nere fought the panic rising in her gorge. She carried new life—not yet discernable to any but herself. This eighteenth offspring had been fathered by a Magma Giant. The heavy metal content in its blood was particularly vulnerable to contamination from ammonia.
“Number Eight Son!” Ab’nere shouted over the com link buried in yet another of her one hundred ten teeth.
No answer. Her offspring remained hidden safely behind the bar.
“Number Eight, I did not incur untold debt with the bankers of D’Or to build this station just so those spacers could tear it apart. Get out there and end this brawl.”
“Mother, they are ammonia breathers. What else do you expect from them,” her offspring protested.
“Do not make me close down this oxygen/nitrogen/hydrogen bar just to come settle a brawl you are too timid to end.” Not that she would risk the new child in the ammonia arm of the space station. “I will lose a valuable first contact fee if I do.”
“But, Mother…”
“You are no better than your father. Now get out there and do something. I have just written you out of my will.”
“Honored Mother, I will do as you bid. At great peril to myself. But only so that your displeasure with me does not affect the welfare of your grandchildren. And a new great grandchild.” Just as verbose as his father, too!
“The damages will come out of your portion of my estate. If I write you back into my will.” At the same time Ab’nere preened at the news that yet another descendant was on the way. The ammonia line might lack concentration and reliability, but they were amazing breeders.
She always enjoyed reunions with her eighth spouse.
Then she ground her dental work together, at great risk to her various controls and links about the station.
What would the new species think of Labyrinth! Brawls threatening to mix atmospheres, cowardly progeny, toxic drinks too near the air locks.
“I have provided a safe, friendly place for species to make contact, negotiate trade, and solve mutual problems,” she nearly screamed at her negligent son. “And you jeopardize it all.”
The monitor in her spectacles showed her offspring wading into the midst of the brawl.
His smooth skin, a legacy from Ab’nere’s Labyrinthine ancestry, protected him from scrapes and bruises better than the thin membranes of the ammonia breathers. Number Eight had also inherited Ab’nere’s squat figure without indentations or protrusions that might offer convenient handholds to enemies in one-on-one combat. But his ears were pitifully small, they only folded to meet at his flat nose, not overlap and cover his entire face.
Then she noticed the hem of his uniform robe was torn. He tripped on it, scrabbling for balance in the low gravity. An impolite amount of his thin legs (as spindly as his father’s and not at all as attractive as Ab’nere’s sturdier limbs) gaped through the hole in his garment. In his forward sprawl Number Eight flew between a Pentapod and a gelatinous, red-and-white Porgeusa who were beating at each other with broken glassware. The two separated, gasping for breath.
Number Eight tried the same ploy to separate other combatants with little effect. The energy fueling the fight continued to build. She set down her towel and the glass she had polished too many times. “Number Eight Son,” she called through the link. “My honor as a Labyrinthine trader is called into question. Contain this brawl.”
Number Eight Son picked himself up off the floor and peered into the two-way monitor.
He sported several bright green bruises around his eyes that clashed with his usually beautiful yellow/brown skin. “I shall try, Mother.”
“Do not just try. Do!” Ab’nere shook her head in dismay. Bad enough that she had to worry that the child she carried might possess enough of its father’s DNA to be born weighing more than she did. Her entire station was at risk if the ammonia leaked out.
She took several deep, calming breaths. Then she inflated the cost of the damages and medical bills by a factor of three—the only way to keep the bankers of D’Or from finding too much profit aboard the space station and trying to tack on extra interest.
She really did not want to close this bar before the infant species made his appearance.
Ab’nere’s reputation, not to mention her various bank accounts, and the infant in her womb were at stake.
She pinched her towel with two of her three digits of one paw and a fresh glass in the other. Not that she needed to polish the drinking vessels, the TurboSteam® spat out clean, shiny, sanitized containers no matter which species had drooled into them. The time-honored activity made her look busy while she waited for the next set of customers.
An infant species just making its first venture into space, and a Glug.
She checked the computer’s schedule. Both species had missed their appointment by seventeen centags. An unforgivable breach of etiquette. This did not bode well. Did not this new species realize that all of its future trade agreements and diplomatic alliances revolved around this first meeting at the Labyrinth?
And the Glug. The greedy methane eaters came and went on a schedule understood only by other Glugs.
The infant in her womb twisted and upset her digestion. She folded one ear across her mouth to hide her burp.
She did not need this added worry.
When she had made verbal arrangements for this meeting with the infant species, their representative had promptly named Labyrinth “First Contact Cafi,” stating blithely:
“Yeah, we have them back home.” Whatever that meant?
Within centags of that communication, all thirty-seven species in residence had adopted the name. For sixty- five million trade agreements the station had been Labyrinth.
No more.
This new language could not disappear into the galactic polyglot fast enough.
Ab’nere looked over the bar to make sure a diminutive being had not crept in unnoticed; though preliminary communications indicated the new species was taller than most bipedal quadrupeds in this sector. Species had been known to lie about themselves to keep others from thinking about them in terms of lunch.
The etiquette Ab’nere had codified strictly forbade the question, “Are you edible?” Still, it happened. The granite giants of Magma Prime—like her latest spouse and the father of her eighteenth child—were voracious feeders on anything mineral, sentient or no. And the silicon globules of N’w Sson Hoos’seh had been known to slurp unsuspecting planets dry, leaving desiccated corpses for the Vulturians of Go Bae. Still, most of the fleshy carbon- based species avoided harvesting each other.
