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Albinia started weeping; I was utterly confused.

“I did say yes, to your generous and extraordinarily kind offer,” I apologised.

“Are you afraid of me, Jak?”

“Of course not,” I lied, fluently.

“You are.”

“Well-”

Albinia got up and walked away.

I was utterly bewildered. But one thing was clear to me.

I had totally fucked that one up.

“Couldn’t we just shadow-flit into the cave?” asked Morval.

“We have to make a good first impression,” I told him.

“A canoe?”

“Just row,” I said.

The three-Olaran canoe bearing myself, Morval and Phylas skimmed fast along the viscous waters. The sky was dark with purple clouds, and the only trace of sun was a faint glow behind the largest swirl of cloud formations. It was raining. On this planet, it always rained.

The Klak-Klak that was leading us surfaced and its many claws klak-klakked. We looked ahead and saw the cave entrance.

“I hate caves,” said Morval.

“How come?”

“I have a fear of small dark confined spaces,” Morval admitted. “My simulacrum was once buried alive and the remote link failed. I spent a year under the earth before they found a way to wake me up.”

“That’s nothing,” snorted Phylas. “On my first Explorer mission, I was flogged and sprayed with salt water and Commander Galamea refused to wake me because she thought the aliens were just ‘playing’ with me.”

“Bitch.”

“She is a hard woman, without a doubt,” Phylas admitted.

“How many times have you been killed by aliens, Morval?” I asked.

“Thirty, forty thousand times,” admitted Morval.

“I’ve only been killed sixty-four times,” I said.

“That’s because you’re just a Trader,” Morval said.

“You have the easy job,” Phylas added.

“We do the hard stuff. Prepare the way.”

“Fornicatory traders.”

“Take all the glory.”

“Earn all the money!”

“Will you quit fornicatoryishly whining?” I told them.

We carried on rowing, an even steady stroke that sent the canoe flying above the sticky red waves of the planet’s ocean.

Our boat penetrated deep into the complex of caves. Stalactites made of precious gems dangled down. Fish bumped the underside of our canoe and a few of them leaped in and were killed by Phylas’s energy gun. The smell of burning fish flesh became intolerable.

The narrow waterway through the cave complex began to broaden, and we emerged into a high damp cavern. Thick black tubes dangled from the rock, forming complex shapes, like a latticework.

“Artworks,” suggested Phylas.

“Excrement,” was Morval’s opinion.

“Rock formations,” I suggested.

The canoe ran aground on the rocks and we stepped out. We were wearing full body armour, even though we were in shadow-self form. The armour had been sprayed jet black and decorated with bumps and spikes, to make us seem more attractive to the crustacean-type entity that was the Klak-Klak.

There were six of the brutes waiting for us, each with at least twenty arms, and each arm was festooned with vicious claws. The claws klakked in unison like applause at a concert. I walked towards the largest of the Klak-Klaks, went on one knee, and attached a translating device to its chin.

“Can you understand me?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the Klak-Klak.

“We come in peace,” I said.

“No,” said the Klak-Klak.

“We wish to trade,” I said.

“No,” said the Klak-Klak.

“Do you understand this concept-‘trade’?” I asked.

“No,” said the Klak-Klak.

“Is it possible,” asked Phylas, “for a species to be considered sentient if it only knows two words?”

The Klak-Klak’s eyes rose out on stalks and peered at Phylas. Then the eyes retreated into the black carapace again.

“Yes,” said the Klak-Klak.

“Let us show you our treasures,” I said. And Phylas stepped forward and opened up his cargo bag. He took out a huge Balla Pearl and held it in his hand. It glowed lustrously, transforming the dark shadows of the cave into lighter shadows. The Pearl sang, and the sound was like a female’s post-orgasmic smile on a sunny day. Phylas passed the Pearl to the Klak-Klak, who clutched it in his claw. Then the Klak-Klak crushed the pearl and dust dribbled to the ground.

“Or this,” I said, and took out an energy gun. I aimed it at the wall and carved a crude face, with two eyes, a nose, and a smiling mouth. Then I grinned. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

The lead Klak-Klak visibly recoiled, stepping back and raising its arms in what in any creature’s body language would indicate horror. Then he and the other crustaceans began to klak-klak their claws loudly. The sound was deafening, and ominous.

“You have,” said the leader of the Klak-Klaks, “hurt our wall.”

I laughed. “It’s a wall!” I said. “Walls can’t-” I broke off. I looked at Phylas.

“I’m on it,” said Phylas and took a sentience reading of the walls of the cave that enveloped us.

“Ah,” Phylas eventually concluded. “Shit,” he added.

“The wall is alive?” I said, and Phylas nodded.

Red water trickled down the rocks of the cavern. The black wires dangling from the rock changed colour and became pink, then started to flash. A terrible low moaning howling sound emerged, as the wall groaned in agony.

“We didn’t realise,” I said, and the Klak-Klak lunged and ate me.

There was a crunching sound as the Klak-Klak devoured armour and body and bones.

[I woke up.]

Phylas raised his energy gun and incinerated the Klak-Klak.

Out of the ashes, a shadow stirred. The shadow grew, and became a silhouette. Finally the shadow became me again.

“Forgive us,” I said, “for our error. But we come in peace, and we wish to trade.”

The Klak-Klaks starred at us through eyes that stuck out through black armour plating and a terrible silence descended.

“Maybe we should-” I began to say.

Then there was a cracking and groaning sound. Phylas and I looked up. A trickle of dust slowly drifted down through the air, forming a haze like a parachute. A terrible wailing sound emerged; it was the rock, baying with pain, declaring its hate for the two intruders; we needed no translation for the sound was a dagger being plunged through our eardrums.

Then the roof crashed down on us.

I found myself enveloped in rubble. Boulders bounced off my body. Dust and rocks were everywhere, and in a matter of minutes, I was trapped under tons of screaming, howling, roaring rock.

“Not again, ” muttered Phylas, irritably.

[I woke.]

I wrote up my log that night: Negotiations failed after we were buried alive by a sentient cave. These creatures have much we would desire; but the evidence is they want nothing from us.

System placed on the Trading Reserve List, to be reviewed in one hundred years.

The missile hurtled through space then teleported and reappeared and exploded an inch from the battleship’s hull. The image blurred as the battleship’s forcefield engaged, and the explosion lit the awesome blackness of space with a red and yellow fireball.

The smaller fighter ships were V-shaped and daringly fast and were firing energy beams of some kind at the battleship’s rear end; tiny columns of flame erupted from the huge ship’s side as the en-beams struck home.

Pinpricks of light in the distance betrayed the locations of fighter craft that had been hit and had expired in a burning maelstrom. Meanwhile, a new flotilla of space-fighting vessels had appeared and was spewing out debris which, I deduced was explosive.

“It’s kind of beautiful,” said Phylas, soulfully.

We were in invisible orbit in the planetary system of Xd4322, watching two tribes of the same species attempting to destroy each other in a series of colossal space battles.

“The planet is a radioactive shell, the sentients now live on moons and satellites,” Morval explained.