For what seemed like an interminable amount of time, all three of them stood there pretending that those four words had not been spoken. Then...

  “A what?” Joseph’s voice quavered. “Did you say a black hole?”

  “Hoover,” Foster looked back down to the floor, and the middle of the swirling gasses. To that black, lightless center of the maelstrom. Or as he now understood it, an event horizon. “Shut it down.”

  Without speaking another word, his little program deactivated the floor, sending it back to its original state. No, he thought, that’s enough of that. Watching something like that in a movie was one thing. But standing over one of the most destructive forces in the universe seemingly unprotected was too unnerving, even for him.

  Though, at that moment, Foster couldn’t help but be more worried about why someone would put a space station directly over a black hole than the actual black hole itself. “Strange place for a space station, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve seen weirder stuff show up on my front door.” Joseph rolled his eyes, glad to be shielded from the fright-inducing sight. He spun around in a half circle, trying very hard to get his bearings. “Does this place have any lights or are we going to follow your tiny disco ball around all day long?”

  “No,” Foster tapped the tablet again, and Hoover maneuvered through more of the station's command functions. Near the end of his search, they came across another section of commands entitled Docking Bay Illumination. With another tap, small pinpoints of light began to slowly flicker far above their heads.

  Soon, the entire space was filled with a soft, yellow glow. Well, that wasn’t entirely true because they couldn’t see the entire space. No, all they saw was the once translucent floor stretching out ever onward with nothing resembling a wall in sight.

  “What the hell?” Justine’s legs felt wobbly as her mind tried to comprehend the immensity of their surroundings. “This place is gigantic.”

  Slowly, almost as if her eyes needed to adjust to this insane reality, the ambient light began to illuminate the room’s borders. Turning slowly, she noticed that the surrounding walls seemed to be made from the same black material as the floor. Slightly curved, this outer wall mirrored the ring in which they stood. Above her, the angular ceiling was littered with large cone-like protrusions.

  The whole place reminded her of an empty stadium minus the seats. But as she continued to look around, another more fantastical sight stopped her dead in her tracks. As she spoke, her lower lip began to tremble. “Are those what I think they are?”

  Still focused on the tablet, it took a nudge in the ribs from Joseph to get Foster to turn around and look. When he did, his jaw dropped as well. Because about one hundred yards to the left of where they stood rested a small fleet of saucer-shaped UFOs. About ten in total, each one looked like it had just flown out of a fifties space invasion movie.

  “Oh---my---god,” she turned to Foster, on the verge of shrieking. “A fleet of freaking spaceships… that’s what they are, right, unidentified flying objects!?”

  Foster could only nod at her question while Joseph chuckled at the sight spread out before his eyes. “Spaceships,” he snickered belligerently. “More like Yugo’s of the galaxy.”

  “What do you mean Yugo’s of the galaxy?” Justine asked indignantly. “How can you compare those beautiful machines to such a piece of crap car?”

  “I mean,” the deputy stepped over the ring and quickly began to cross the distance between them and the nearest of the retro crafts. As he drew near, he began to explain, “These particular ships were designed over five thousand cycles ago, Agent Rushing.”

  He pointed to the ship’s oval-shaped fuselage. Made from light grey material, the ship was supported by four tiny, landing legs that looked like they might snap in two at any second. When he drew close enough to touch it, Joseph reached up and scraped at the hull until a small piece of metal fell off into his hand.

  “Probably hasn’t been a new one built in over three thousand years. You know, it’s kind of funny. An extinct species of two-headed slug creatures originally commissioned them. But they cared more about them looking good than ever flying right.” He handed the piece of twisted metal to Justine who accepted the cast off with open arms. “Anyone stupid enough to own one could barely keep it in the sky. Just ask that farmer outside of Roswell.”

  “Really,” Justine said excitedly, “cool…”

  “Not for the slug who was piloting it.” Joseph continued to walk around the ship. “It wasn’t cool for him at all.”

  On Foster’s command, the 8-ball powered down its fiber optic lights and slowly began to drift downward until it hovered just five feet off the ground. As he passed within a foot of it, he snatched it out of the air and dropped it back in his satchel.

  “Well, Agent Rushing,” Foster dropped the tablet to his side. “This is your little adventure. What do we do next?”

  “Next?” Barely listening, she kept her eyes glued to the UFOs. Then, the reason she hijacked Foster overwhelmed her need for science fiction glory. “We find the prisoners, save them, and clear your name.”

  “That’s inspiring,” Joseph joked in a mean kind of way, but his bark was lost on her. “However, I’m more interested in where my body has gotten off to.”

  “Body,” Justine wasn’t sure what he meant by that remark. “What do you mean your body?”

  “My body, Agent Rushing.” He playfully patted his stomach. “After all, I can’t go home looking like this.”

  “Go home?” Justine asked. “What do you mean go home?”

  “Hoover,” Before that train could leave the station, Foster slipped the tablet back into the satchel and pulled out a similarly shaped device, only smaller. It looked like a high-tech version of his Blackberry. “Where are the prisoners you and Agent Rushing wanted to save?”

  “That’s a great question.” He pretended to search for them while Foster played with his new piece of hardware. “I can definitely say they’re not in this room.”

  “No shit.” Justine didn’t like joking about people in danger. “We can see that.”

  “I’m glad you can see that because I don’t know where they are. Like I said before, the systems of this “docking bay” aren’t linked to the rest of the station. There’s no way to know where the prisoners are being kept. If they’re even being kept here at all.”

  “Let’s not go full meltdown mode just yet, Hoover” Foster asked calmly. “Where’s the exit?”

  The smaller version of the tablet reacted instantly to his question by turning itself on. A red arrow soon materialized in the center of its display and pointed just past the ships.

  “Just follow the arrow,” Hoover instructed. “Although, if you look just past the high-performance spaceships, you should be able to see a structure resembling an elevator door. That’s your exit.”

  “Alright, kids.” Foster pointed past the dormant UFOs and motioned for everyone to start moving off in that general direction of the exit. “Let’s get this train a moving.”

  Ignoring his obvious bad mood, Justine ran to the next saucer and ran her hand across its smooth, metallic fuselage. She was surprised to find it covered by a layer of fine dust. But the thrill of discovery outweighed her need to be clean. “I can’t believe I’m touching an actual spaceship.”

  “Neither can I,” Foster smirked. “Because from what Joseph says, these things don’t really classify as spaceships.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?” She took out her cell phone, engaged the camera function, and handed it to him like they were on vacation. “Besides, I don’t care what he says. These old school ships have always been my favorite. They’re just way cooler.”

  Posing, she leaned up against one of the landing struts. Almost instantly, the thing twisted precariously under her weight. “Hey,” Justine yelped, as she quickly got out from underneath the ship, while still staying close enough to touch the outside edge. “If you don’t mind, please take my picture as I stand next to the only item on my bucket list.”

  From there, Justine spent a couple of more joyous minutes milling around the spaceships, checking for more seams in the hulls that could be hiding laser cannons. Then, as if her brain had finally begun to work, she blurted out, “Can we get in one of them?”

  “We could,” Joseph said cautiously. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “Why not?” Justine asked in a disappointed tone.

  “How can I put this?” Joseph took a few steps in the direction Foster had pointed out earlier. “These ships have a fuel problem.”

  “Fuel problem?” It was Foster’s turn to be curious. “What do you mean, fuel problem?”

  “I mean.” Joseph took another couple of steps away. “The micro reactor that runs these things are known for having a problem with leakage.”

  “Radiation?” Foster looked at the nearest ship disapprovingly.

  “No,” the deputy said reassuringly. “The reactor isn’t nuclear. It’s biological.”

  “Biological?” Justine backed up ever so slightly as the thought of space bacteria made her skin crawl. “Like a disease?”

  “No,” Joseph stopped moving and finally stood his ground. “Those things ran on a certain type of... I think you would call it an arthropod.”

  “What’s an arthropod?” Justine didn’t recognize the word.

  “Bugs,” Foster joined the deputy in gaining some distance on the ships. “These ships run on actual bugs?”

  “Burning them, yes.” For a second, Joseph seemed contemplative as he spoke. “There’s something about burning their blood that’s good for creating a chemical fusion reaction. The problem is the vats where they’re grown tend to fail after a few years. So, if you leave them alone for long enough...”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “My god,” Justine made the face someone makes when they smell a fart. “That ship could be infested with bed bugs.”

  “Probably not,” Joseph couldn’t help but smile at the response the FBI agent was currently having at the thought of a ship full of space cockroaches. “The failure rate was only about ten percent. But do you want to take that ten percent chance and open one up?”

  “You’re just making that up.” Justine said with a nervous chuckle.

  Joseph’s face broke into a smile that suspiciously resembled one of Foster’s sly grins. “The button to open the ship is located just off the forward landing strut. Please, be my guest.”

  She rolled the odds over in her head for a second. After all, ninety percent sounded pretty good. But no matter what she told herself, ten percent sounded way worse. “Maybe later,” she responded meekly.

  So, with a heavy heart, Justine found herself being dragged away from her dreams and over toward the section of the bay that looked exactly like Hoover had described, an elevator door.

  “Why does it look so different from the rest of the room?” She asked when they were close enough to see their destination. “Did they run out of this other material before they were finished?”

  Foster saw her point almost immediately. Up until now, all the bay’s walls and floors were all made from the same smooth, dark grey material. However, the elevator and the sections of wall surrounding it seemed to be cobbled together from rusted pieces of iron and steel. And those pieces appeared to have been haphazardly fused together with an acetylene torch.

  To be honest, he found the aesthetic of the elevator quite ugly and out of place. But that didn’t stop someone else from finding something interesting about them.

  “These doors,” Joseph said as distant memories flooded into his mind. “I think I’ve seen them before.”

  “When?” Foster reached out with his hand and rubbed a spot on the wall clean of rust.

  Joseph tried to sift through the jumbled mess of images stored up since his conversion. All he could recall were visions of shrouded figures placing him on a gurney as stars washed in and out of focus beyond his field of view. Then, a bright orange explosion enveloped his body followed by a lonely, rainy stretch of road just outside of Allentown, PA.

  “Sometime around twenty years ago.”

  Foster waited for the follow-up, but nothing else came. “Thanks for that, Joseph. Really helpful.” He then moved directly in front of the doors and quickly estimated they were at least ten feet in height. “So. How do we open it?”

  “Don’t know.” Joseph shrugged his shoulders. “I kind of remember them, but I’ve never used anything like them before.”

  “Perfect.” Foster closed his eyes, said a prayer, opened them and began to work on the problem. “Well, in the absence of facts, one should start with observation.”

  The first thing the scientist noticed was that the elevator’s casing was made from a plain material, no thicker than an inch wide. Then, he looked for the usual control panel. But the only thing visible beside the bevy of rivets was an ornate wall panel. And on that panel sat a pair of intricate knobs with indented hash marks running along their entire circumference.

  Intrigued, Foster tugged on Joseph’s shirt to point out what he had found.

  “Interesting,” he squatted gingerly down for a better look. “Book 45… I’ve seen knobs like this before on my home planet. My father traded three loads of grain for a machine with a similar set of knobs.”

  “What did it do?”

  “The machine? Well, it allowed us to harvest our fields quicker. It was actually pretty simple to use. But the race we procured it from was by their nature very secretive.” Being extremely careful, he reached out and ran his fingers above the indentations.

  “What do you mean… secretive?” Foster asked.

  “The machine only worked when the knobs were placed in the correct setting.” He remembered a moment from his alien past and shuddered. “Anything other than the correct setting would lock the machine up until a master code could be inputted.”

  “Master code?” Justine was feeling left out of the investigation. So, she decided to ask her own question. “You mean like a security code?”

  “Exactly, Agent Rushing.” Joseph pulled his hand away from the knobs without touching anything. He turned to Foster and said, “The one constant in the universe is not gravity, Mr. Evers. It’s that no one really trusts anybody else.”

  “Call me Foster…”

  “Maybe this guy isn’t so bad after all,” Hoover said surprisingly warmly.

  Together, the two men pondered over every little marking’s meaning while Hoover silently assisted by scanning the knobs. Foster even broke out the tablet’s holographic diagnostic tool and tore apart the mechanism down to its base in a simulation. For a second, Justine imagined them pulling out a sketch pad and drawing the damn thing out free hand. All in a futile effort to leave no stone upturned.

  Tired of their overthinking, Justine wandered back over toward the ships to take a few more pictures and to make sure the area remained bug free. When she returned almost an hour later, three brilliant “people” had finally decided how to proceed.

  “It’s easy,” Joseph said as he adjusted a holographic image. “We’ll adjust the knobs here until the three smaller indentations line up with the larger ones.”

  “Easy,” Justine asked, doubtful they even knew she had gone.

  “I wouldn’t say easy.” Foster seemed a bit more skeptical than the deputy.

  “Really easy. Though...”, Joseph’s voice denoted aggravation. “It would have been easier if I could talk to that thing chirping in Foster’s ear.”

  “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy. No one deserved that kind of punishment. “But that would require trust from an untrustworthy soul.”

  “Aspersions aside,” Foster said. “Let’s just test our hypothesis.”

  Ready to move on, the scientist’s hand reached out for the first knob. At the same time, Justine looked up and noticed some weird substance oozing out from a small crevice near the top of the door’s outer casing. At first, the goo like material looked like oil trying to escape from a broken seal. She half expected the stuff to start dripping right on top of Foster’s head.

  But her chance to laugh was abruptly cut short when the substance stopped suddenly just before it reached the door’s apex.

  “Guys,” she began, as the goo slid horizontally across the wall. At a loss to explain this highly suspect phenomena, it was at this point she nervously tapped Foster on the shoulder. “What is that?”

  Foster pulled himself away from the knobs long enough to get a look at the gooey substance. At first, he thought it was merely hydraulic fluid since this whole section looked like it was falling apart. However, the stuff’s ability to defy the laws of gravity made this observation highly unlikely.

  “Where did that come from?” he finally asked.

  Justine pointed to the narrow crevice above the door.

  “Joseph,” Foster tugged at the alien’s arm until he was also looking at the goo. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Have you?”

  Both men watched the thick, black liquid undulate and snake its way around the outside edges of the door before finally pooling up on the floor near Justine’s feet. She took a cautious step backward while Foster and Joseph edged closer.

  “No,” Joseph responded as the liquid slowly ebbed toward the middle of the elevator’s entrance. Once there, it halted and broke yet another law by pooling vertically. “Could it be hydraulic fluid?” Joseph tried to shore up the hypothesis. “We are next to a black hole. Maybe this stuff has unusual reactive properties.”

  “Shouldn’t you guys back away from it?” Justine prudently asked.

  They both looked at each other and smirked. “I think we can handle a small puddle of goo, Agent Rushing.”

  Throwing caution to the wind, Joseph knelt beside the substance. It reacted to his overture by changing color from dull to glossy black. Then, it solidified into a small, shifting cube before finally folding outward until it resembled a small four-legged creature with no discernible features.

  “That’s weird.” Foster peered over Joseph’s shoulder for a better look. “It appears to have intelligence. Did you see the way it responded to your movements?”

  “Fucking incredible.” Joseph stood back up and turned to Foster. “Maybe a nano polymer? Hell, even a reactive metallic substance would behave similarly under the right conditions. But I wonder what’s controlling it.” The upper part of the small figure started to stretch outward to form a lopsided oval. Joseph squinted at the new appendage. “Does that look like a head to you?”

  “It does,” Foster began shaking his 8-ball. “We should get some readings.”

  “Guys. Do you think that’s the smartest idea?” Justine stepped back even further from this weird three-stooges like comedy routine. “I think we should be cautious around creepy little monster things that ooze out of walls.”

  Foster smiled at Justine in a vaguely chauvinistic way. Immediately, she wanted to punch him in the face. “I don’t think it poses us any harm, Agent Rushing. Besides, Hoover’s already accessed a dozen systems since we arrived. If this was a security device, then it should have already attacked us by now.”

  Joseph nodded in agreement while Justine took one more step back. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I won’t.” Foster said as he pressed a touch-sensitive section of the 8-ball. Right away, the device began to whir. “I think a low-level scan should yield some interesting results.”

  He shoved the 8-ball closer to the creature’s misshapen head, and its surface immediately changed from a glossy, black sheen to a gray, non-porous material. The body visibly stiffened as legs, feet, and talons formed beneath it. A few more changes and the mysterious substance now appeared to be a lethal weapon.

  “What the fuck?!” Joseph screamed as both men scrambled backward on their butts.

  Spurred on by their quick movements, the newly formed attack droid took one step toward the hapless men. Like a demon, its eyes flashed a menacing shade of red as its talons dug into the floor. Everything about the thing screamed “I’m here to kill you”, as it poised to do something horrible.

  Then suddenly, before it could make good on that unspoken promise, the alien monster shattered into a thousand tiny particles. While behind them, Justine’s Slinger made the telltale crackle and pop sound of having just been fired.

  Still in shock, Foster and Joseph just sat there as its remnants whooshed into the air before settling over their bodies like dust.

  “So, it’s not just me you have an itchy trigger finger with?” Joseph dusted himself clean of tiny robot guts. Not really having spent any time with her, this question seemed appropriate.

  Hoover, on the other hand, knew better. “I’m surprised she waited so long.”

  “Why?” was all Foster could get out.

  “Simple,” Justine said, responding like a disapproving mother figure. “I had entertained the idea of letting the thing rip you guys to shreds. And trust me, after all those condescending looks you were giving me, it was a toss-up. But since I still need your wonderful toys, I figured keeping you alive might be the most prudent course of action.”

  Foster felt stupid for getting angry, so he smiled weakly as an unspoken apology. Not really that mad at him, she smiled back.

  “Anyways,” Joseph’s tolerance for human flirting had waned over the years up to the point where the very act made him ill. “Where is my body? I want to go home.”

  Considering they still had to get this elevator working before they could go anywhere, Foster pulled himself to his feet.

  “The knobs are the key.” He hunched down, close to the ornate panel, and began to twist the knobs and line up the markings. “If we can find the correct sequence of indentations then I think we can access it.”

  Justine allowed this circle jerk to play out for another couple of minutes before pushing both highly qualified men off to the side.

  “This is an elevator, right?” They looked at each other for a consensus. When none could be found, she resorted to her other expert. “Is that right, Hoover?”

  “This door provides access to a transport system which runs the entire length of the station. By using it, we should be able to visit any part of the facility we desire.”

  “So, it is an elevator?” She didn’t want the long version, only the one that brought them closer to their reason for coming here.

  “Yes…” Thinking he had just explained that very fact, Hoover attempted to simplify his explanation even further. “It’s an elevator.”

  “Great.” Justine shuffled past the two gawking men and slammed her hand down on the top knob. A small buzzer sounded out loudly from some dark recess, and the giant set of doors slid open, revealing a large, faintly illuminated compartment.

  Without bothering to clear the unknown space, she strode inside then spun around with a sorrowful look. Why couldn’t these geniuses see the forest for the trees? “You did say we were going up?”

  Standing there, slack-jawed and feeling quite stupid, both Foster and Joseph had nothing witty or insightful to offer. All they could do now was quietly follow her inside, all the while feeling like maybe they weren’t the smartest people in the room.

  “You know,” Foster offered quietly after all three of them had stepped inside. “You might be right about that thing being hostile. And if you are, we’re going to have to start being a little more alert during this expedition.”

  “Foster,” Justine grinned as she rocked back on her heels like a sprinter getting ready to explode off the chalks. “This is an alien space station hovering precariously over what looks like a black hole. Why weren’t you already more alert?”

  Foster guffawed.

  “What’s so funny?” She asked, a little afraid of the answer.

  “Nothing really,” Foster returned her grin with one of his own. “I just hope this place doesn’t turn out to be a slowly boiling pot of water.”

  Remembering a very boring sixth grade biology class, her grin faded away in an instant. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen?”

  Hearing the word ‘hope’ so many times in about 30 seconds triggered something in the back of his mind. Suddenly, Samuel Mosely’s words rang out like a voice in his head. And with them came a lesson he should have learned a long time ago. “Hope is not a plan, Agent Rushing.”