The Insane Journey

Chapter 10

 Lubidada and Snox were doing the Zargonian equivalent of gossiping when a flashing light appeared on what, to a human eye, would have looked like a sheet or laminated paper. Snox picked it up and looked at it with one eye while her other eyes remained attentive to Lubidada.

 “Excuse me,” she said, interrupting Lubidada’s story involving a misunderstanding between the Zargonian ambassador to Europa and her human driver, which had resulted in an expensive escort coming to a dinner party in a nurse’s costume.

 Lubidada knew his companion would not interrupt him over a trivial matter and was not offended. “Yes?”

 “The object that came out of the tear is approaching Earth and is decelerating quickly. It looks like it will land a couple hundred kilometres north of here. Take a look.”

 Snox showed Lubidada the sheet of paper, which displayed a topological map of Southern Europa and a dot representing the object.

 “Interesting. Do we have a reading on it?”

 “It seems to be a mixture of a carbon composite and organic material.”

 “I wonder...” said Lubidada thoughtfully.

 “Yes?” asked Snox.

 “I believe Wendy and Maxwell are headed north,” said Lubidada.

 “Do you think the object might be targeting them? Perhaps for tearing the fabric of the universe?” said Snox.

 “It’s possible, though it might also be a message, or maybe it’s simply following them,” said Lubidada.

 “Or it could be a coincidence,” said Snox

 “Indeed. Oops! Where did it go?” asked Lubidada, for the object had disappeared from the screen.

 Snox tried to find the object again without success.

 “Curious. It was still 300 metres in the air when it disappeared.”

 “Could it have blown up?”

 Snox queried the screen. “There’s no evidence of that,” she said. “It seems to have faded away.”

 “Curious,” said Lubidada.