Rick's Adventure On A Class F Planet

Rick "Collard" was a peddler. He’d peddle anything to anyone anywhere all across the Milky Way. He’s won Io’s independent salesman of the solar system award not once but twice. He had people skills. He’d sell a ball strap to an eunuch. He didn’t care what he peddled, whether it was Belgian tulips, transparent toilet seats or Martian earthworms. He loved bargaining, arguing and most of all he loved making a good profit on things that people didn’t necessarily need, but ended up buying anyway. Rick had just turned forty-two. He was slightly overweight, had dark brown hair, hazel eyes and even though he spent his entire life on a spaceship, his skin looked slightly tanned. Rick peeked out the window as his ship approached landing. There was no base in sight. Just fields of gigantic, blue cabbage as far as the eye could see.

“What the heck?” he murmured and crawled out of the donut bed and ran to the navigation station. He glanced at the monitor. He wasn’t on Io. He now remembered he had fed the numbers in, using his tablet, when he was already dozing off. He scratched his head and noticed his hair was clumped. He was due for his weekly shower and his monthly haircut. His beige galactic trader overall could also use an ultrasonic wash. He looked through the window again. The sky was a light shade of pink. To the right, he saw cabbage fields all the way to the horizon, like a bad painting. He looked at the monitor and realized why. A large red “F” letter flashed on the screen. So, this was a class F planet. These types of planets usually didn’t participate in the intergalactic trade. For a planet to be classified as a class F planet, it had to meet three conditions. It had to be way off in some forgotten corner of the universe, no marketable resources, and occupied by semi-intelligent or intelligent life forms. Basically, a class F planet was boredom compressed into a very large ball. The planet wasn’t a problem. Rick worried about something else. He looked at the lower left part of the screen where another “F” was also flashing. Rick was out of fuel. 

***

“Heh. Real cabbage, million light years away. Who would have thought.” Rick said, and kicked the nearest cabbage head. He heard a rustling sound and felt tingling in the back of his neck as if someone was watching him. He turned around. A large figure rose above him in the feeble pinkish sun. It was alien and looked like a metallic blue praying mantis crossed with an ant.

“Aaaaaaaargh” Rick screamed and fell down. He crawled backwards towards his ship, “holy shit!” he gasped.

He took out the planetary guide handbook out of his pocket and flipped through the plastic pages with shaky hands. He quickly found the right planet and scanned the description.

“Mants? Insectoids, omnivores… Omnivores?! Crap. Sign language… Advised mode of communication: use antennae like objects,” he read out loud while crawling back. There were a few basic phrases in the local sign language in pictures at the bottom of the page. Rick got up and rummaged in the broken palette box, “Black and long,” he murmured. The gigantic mant rose up on its hind legs and chirped, turning its head inquisitively. Rick grabbed two antennae like objects like the handbook advised and turned to the mant. Gosh, he thought, if anyone told him yesterday that he would be doing this, he would have laughed in his face. But now, Rick "Collard" stood in the cabbage field, sweating in the pinkish sun gesturing like a maniac, trying to communicate with a rare, alien, insectoid species using a toilet brush and a very long black dildo.

“I come in peace!” he squealed as he signed, “I. Come. In. Peace.” 

The mant got down on all its legs and bowed its head. Then it signed something using its long antennae. Rick looked down at the planetary handbook.

“Good day to you sir. Nice weather ey?” he decrypted the message out loud, “who wrote this?” The mant chirped again and signed the same thing again.

“Yeah, yeah, good day, you spindly cocksucker,” Rick mumbled waving the dildo at the mant and immediately thought, they don’t have cocks, do they? He pulled out his interplanetary phone and clicked it. No signal. That’s alright. He remembered he had a very affordably priced, range extender in one of the boxes. He quickly found it and attached it to the phone. 

“Do ants have cocks?” he spat into the phone as soon as he heard Frank pick up.

“What?”

“OK, purely hypothetically, how would you insult an insect?”

“Well, what do they eat?”

“Cabbage.”

“How about: you cabbage-eating heap of chitin?” Frank said in a sleepy voice.

“Ohhhhh, yeah, that’s good, that’s good,” Rick chuckled with satisfaction.

“Is this why you’re waking me up in the middle of the night?” Frank asked and yawned.

“I’m stuck on a class F planet,” Rick said. 

“Well, you should have probably started with that. Class F, Rick, geez, what happened?”

“I um… miscalculated,”

“Again? You shouldn’t drink and fly. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rick waved his hand, irritated.

“So what are you going to do?”

“About that, um, I’m out of fuel and way off the trail.. They don’t have any spacedocks over here. You need to come and get me.”

“Can’t you… call someone else?” Frank sighed.

“Well, you’re first on my list.”

“Because I’m good at insulting people?”

“Because you’re not a fucking idiot like the rest of the bunch.”

“Thanks, Rick, I’m flattered, really,” He put the phone down. Rick sighed. Frank was a douchebag but he was solid. 

***

“Who the hell was that?” Amanda, Frank’s wife asked getting up from the bed. She walked to the water dispenser and took a glass from the cabinet.

“Rick..” Frank answered, avoiding her eyes.

“Rick who?”

“Rick the enterpre-naut,”

“The peddler?”

“Astropeddler.”

“The unsuccessful businessman?”

“Look, I know you don’t like him…”

“Don’t like him? He’s the type of indestructible vermin that you need to scrape off the landing gear with a blowtorch,” Amanda scoffed and took a sip of water.

“He needs help,” Frank said and sighed. His wife gave him a long look.

***

Rick watched Frank's ship as he landed. Frank walked down the ramp in his silk suit and patent leather shoes.

"Nice cabbage farm you got here," he said and laughed.

"Thanks for coming, Frank," Rick said, “look it’s not about the cabbage. He took a lump of soil in his hand and crushed it. Tiny shiny dots shimmered in the dirt.

“It’s platinum. They pay with it. I mean it’s worthless to them. I sell them umbrellas and squishy toys they can play with. They love them! They dig up those platinum nuggets from the ground. Nuggets! You know how hard it is to come by a platinum nugget back on Earth?”

The refueling would take another sixteen hours so Frank went back to his ship. He took a quick sonic shower, gulped down some protein pulp and went to sleep. But Rick couldn’t sleep. He sat in his shop, eyes wide open. As the sun set, mants appeared, gathering around the shop. They began rubbing their abdomens together, secreting a sweet scent, in some weird kind of ritual. He stared at the pink glow as a weird feeling overcame him. 

Rick "Collard" couldn’t believe it. He had become fond of the mants. And they weren’t even his species! It must have been some kind of pheromone they secreted. The pink sky made him all schmoltzy and teary eyed, as if he just watched a romcom. Rick wasn’t a romcom guy. He had watched exactly two and two thirds of a romcom in his entire life. His ex-wifesband made him do it back on Mars. But now, when he looked at the pink sky he felt exactly like he used to, when that guy finally saved the community center from the evil real estate mogul. Or was it a judo club? Rick couldn’t remember. He felt as if his brain and in fact his entire nervous system had been hijacked by an inexplicable force. There was something wrong with this place. The mants, the pink sun, everything. He felt like he was starting to lose it. 

“Come” one of the mants signed to him. No, it wasn’t one of the mants anymore. It was his brother. Rick recognized him now. Something had switched in his brain and he could tell them apart. The ritual had changed him.

***

The pink sun rose up. Frank checked on the tank controls. The refueling was almost complete. We walked to the airlock and opened the docking ramp. 

“Rick?” Frank called, carefully stepping into the cellulose hut, “where the hell are you?” he murmured, stepping back out into the pink sun, and scanning the horizon with a squint. There was a gathering of mants over by the forest. He couldn’t see if Rick was there. He rolled out his atv and soon he was there.

“Rick! What the hell are you doing?” Frank gasped, jumping off the vehicle. 

“Oh, hi Frank,” Rick said in a sweet, delusional voice, “I’m marrying Pasheeka. I’m in love with her.”

Frank blinked a couple of times as he took in the absurd picture before him.

“Rick. Are you insane? She’s a… It’s a mant for crying out loud!”

“Hey! Don’t insult my wife to be!” Rick yelled.

“Are you on something?” Franks asked suspiciously.

“No... Why?”

“You’re not the same species Rick! How are you even gonna... I mean does it even have a… a.. um?”

Rick’s fat cheeks reddened and he growled with rage, making his whole face shake. He started toward Frank with his arms stretched out.

“How DARE you!”

“Rick! Calm down!” Frank said, ducking a little.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Rick yelled jumping to reach Frank’s neck in a fit of blind rage.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frank sighed. He had black belt in jujitsu. He moved to the side, made a couple of moves and threw Rick to the ground. He landed on his back with a loud grunt and moved his limbs weakly, like a large beige turtle. 

“Ugh…” he moaned. Rick’s mantese fiance turned her head curiously and gave Frank a long look. There was a commotion among the gathering. The mants started signing something to each other in crisp silence interrupted by their screeches and crisp clicks of their moving antennae. 

“What’s happening? What are they saying?” Frank said, feeling uneasy as Rick gathered himself up.

“Sugar…” Rick said absentmindedly.

“Yes, I have high blood sugar, you know that Rick. Can they… can they sense these things?” Frank asked, fidgeting as the mants closed in. 

“They like sugar." 

“No, no, no, no, no!” Frank yelled and started towards his atv, but the mants were already closing in. It was too late.

“Frank, look out,” Rick said in a monotone, as if for a minute, an echo of their old friendship got through the endorphin haze. 

“What the…” Frank turned around, right as the mant stabbed him in the thigh, “Aaaargh!” he yelled and grabbed his leg.

“It’s odd but they’ve never stung me even once… How does it feel, Frank?” Rick said, turning his head to the side. 

“Actually it feels… fucking awesome…” Frank said hoarsely as the poison began circulating in his veins. It must be some kind of drug, he thought. As his muscles weakened, he reached out to the interplanetary satellite phone, attached to Rick’s belt and grabbed it with both hands and pressed the distress button. “Please God, send someone to get us,” he whispered as he passed out cold on the ground.

***

A woodgrain, six-engine Opel Astra Enjoy starship entered the atmosphere with a loud whiz. Grandma Penelope, also known as Grams had it customized to her needs. The ship had extra lights, double antennas and additional backing sensors. A series of personalized jolly toots announced her landing, so that everyone could get out of her way in time. The wax flowers and crystal figurines wobbled behind the windshield as the Opel touched the ground. Her legs moved at a robotic speed, which was a surprise to anyone who first saw her. Still, she preferred the one seat levitron hover jet to get around on alien planets so that she doesn’t “wear out her feet”.

“Richard Avery Anderson Cunningham the third!” she yelled, scanning the horizon with her sharp, needlepoint gaze. Rick jumped up, electrified and turned around, hearing her yell from the distance.

“Grams?” he whispered hoarsely, “oh no…” he looked down at the satellite phone attached to his belt. The S.O.S. button was flashing. Someone must have pressed it. Frank! That bastard. 

The twenty third century changed the way old people lived and got around, but in many ways Grams was a granny like every other granny that came before her. Yes, she had her own starship, her legs moved at an exceptional speed, but she was a grandmother. She acted like a grandmother, sounded like a grandmother and… smelled like a grandmother.

The mants sensed Grams as soon as she entered their range. They sensed IT. The unmistakable, overpowering scent of mothballs. It traveled with her like a cloud and the mants couldn’t stand it. As soon as their receptors registered the deadly scent, they stood upright on their hind legs, turned around and scurried away. 

“What is this vermin!” Grams yelled in a heavy New York accent, “Yeah, run off you skittling bags of vomit. Twiggly, crusty bastards. Hah!”

“Twiggly crusty bastards. That’s genius!” Rick cried, awaking from his stupor.

“What in the name of St Hedwig’s holy undergarments is going on here?” Grams addressed Rick and the gathering.

“I’m getting married, Grams,” Rick said, avoiding looking at her directly.

“Married? Well, I don’t see a bride anywhere Ricky,”

“This is my bride. Her name is…”

“That there, Ricky, is a bug. You marrying a bug? Who do you think you are, the antman?”

“I’m… sorry Grams. Rick extended his hand to his mant fiancee, just as Grams snatched him by his utility belt and put him in tow. Her levitron wobbled gently under Rick’s weight. 

“Noooo!” he yelled, trying to grab onto something.

“What are you on Rick?” Grams asked in an unapologetic tone.

“I don’t know….”

“Jeez Rick..” she sighed, “where’s the ship?”

“I don’t know…” Rick sobbed.

“That boy is about as organized as a bowl of spaghetti,” Grams murmured to herself. Rick hung dolefully, bobbing on the line, as she flew up and started scanning the area to find his vessel. 

The gusts of wind ventilated his sinuses and made him come to his senses a little bit. 

“Frank…” he said.

“What about him?”

“The mants took him,”

“Richard, you are a clown,” Grams sighed.

“What? Why?”

“Why did you drag Frank into this?”

“But I love Pashee…, ouch!” he exclaimed when Granny leaned over and smacked him in the back of his head. 

“Where is he?”

“They took him to the queen’s mound.”

***

Grams entered the mound. The mants sensed an intruder they rang their silent alarm. Soon all the mants in the mound were running around like crazy and away from the source of the heavy smell of mothballs. 

“Run you little fuckers, ha-ha” Grams threw some firecrackers at them and laughed, “Where the heck are you Frank?” she muttered. And then she saw him against the wall of the mound, locked in some sort of waxy compartment, wrapped up, and fast asleep. Grams broke the wax and started pulling him out. But he was too heavy even for her robotically enhanced elbows. Gram sighed.

“I’m sorry Frank. I wish there was another way,” she said and took a deep breath and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.

“Aaaaaauch!” he yelled, waking up instantly. 

“There, that should teach you to stay out of trouble,” she said, 

“I was only trying to help.”

“Yeah! We all do. But not all of us are made for it,” Grams said, “now get the hell out of that thing.”

“Jeez, my suit!” Frank lamented, ripping through the cellulose wall of his cocoon. He was covered in a nutritious white jelly that mants used to feed their young.

“Alright, get out of there,” Grams said to him, taking his arm.

***

All three managed to get back to their respective ships unharmed. Rick had sobered up from the heavy pheromone trip and was now about to enter his regular paranoidal hangover phase. He grabbed his head, opened the medbox, took some pills and strapped himself in the donut bed as the ship started to take off.

“Where’s Frank?” Grams’ voice sounded in his earpiece. Rick looked at the starboard window. There was a mant gathering in the distance and a humanoid figure among them. The mants were rubbing their abdomens together and Frank… Frank was kissing one of the mants, its black tongue deep in his mouth.

“Pasheeka! No!” Rick yelled as the echo of the pheromone infatuation came back over him.

"We're going home, Ricky," Grams said through the radio.

***

A slick GTA ten engine black Alfa Romeo landed ominously, burning a black circle in the cabbage field. A black figure jumped out of the airlock and fired up the flamethrower. Ten minutes later, Amanda stepped into a makeshift cellulose shack. She was dressed for combat in black boots, a kevlar helmet and fireproof eyewear. Behind her, the remains of burned, blue mant bodies lay on the ground. Amanda looked at Frank, who lay naked and fast asleep in a tight embrace with his mant lover, under a gigantic, rubbery leaf.

“Imma fucking kill you!” she yelled.

“Shit!” Frank said, opening his eyes.