Fun For Flashsatsumas, Chapter One

Flashsatsumas had had nothing planned for his day off but sightseeing, at an old chunk of Space-Screamer war-moon which had outlasted its creator. One of those steel walkway and glass dome sort of places, popular with tourists. He’d checked in, clipped his pink day-pass to the rubber hemline of his containment-suit, and commenced.

Then he saw her, and anyone who’d met Mini-Flash Juniper would have known on sight another of her kind.

To this, an Earthling observer might have pointed out that the girl in question looked nothing like Juniper. She had tumbling russet curls, a pouty pink face and almond-shaped eyes of darkest brown. True, all she was wearing was the least she could get away with in little membranous knickerthings, which was one resemblance, but even so. Flashsatsumas however wasn’t from Earth, and for Mini-Flashes there were surer means of identification than physical traits.

He made his way over at once and said:

“Front and centre, Special Program!”

The blushes that rose from his addressee lent Flashsatsumas a surge of tenderness. And when you were constituted as Flashsatsumas was, a surge really meant a surge. He hadn’t realised he’d let it get quite so urgent, and it was suddenly clear he was going to have to vent.

“Don’t panic,” he reassured the girl first, in a little bit of a rush. “I’m not going to do you any harm, but you know we can’t have you runways wandering around unaccounted for. As it happens I’m friends with your old classmate, Mini-Flash Juniper?”

The almond eyes were huge, and the pouting scarlet lips parted. Flashsatsumas felt faint.

“I know I’m not supposed to, but I’ll take you to see her in Nottingham if you’d prefer that to Headquarters,” he stammered. “Um, but actually, while you’re making your mind up, could you come over here and wait for me on this bench a minute…?”

It was mortifying. He was supposed to be the senior, and this girl still strictly speaking a neophyte. It had never seemed fair to Flashsatsumas that he’d turned out the way he had.

The girl however murmurously acquiesced at once, surprising him with a very pleasant change from the sort of respect second gender juniors usually showed male graduates. Perhaps rank still counted for something after all, thought Flashsatsumas as he led the way to where the seats were. Not that he was quite sure it was necessary for her to walk so close to his side while he was doing so. He didn’t dislike the tickles of her rusty curls against his cheek, or the frequent soft brushes of her supple hip against his skirt. It was just that right now it all made for a lightly-scented sort of torture, things being as they were.

The benches were on a bridge over a plasma-canal, whose rushing currents of potency in spate coursed crashing and free. Flashsatsumas tried his hardest not to look.

“Just here, OK?” he panted as the girl obediently sat.

A signpost pointed to a public harness-room halfway down the steps to one side of the bridge. Only when Flashsatsumas had dipped below the girl’s line of sight did he commence hurrying for it. There was a card-reader set in the wall alongside the closed iron door, so with one hand he groped for his hemline.

The day-pass wasn’t there.

A fevered glance back up the stairway afforded Flashsatsumas no glimpse of a stray pink rectangle. There was nothing for it but to retrace his steps, at speed.

His pass-card wasn’t by the benches on top of the bridge either.

Nor was the girl.

The worst of it was that the relative recentness of females to the quadrant left Flashsatsumas without the vocabulary for a situation such as this. Humans could have gone five minutes or more on Delilah and Mata Hari, whereas Flashsatsumas had to content himself with inventing new words to fit. To his credit, he managed quite a few.

Ooh! She knew what she was doing. And she was good, Flashsatsumas concluded helplessly. This strategy could only be to steer him back to the entry-gate, while she made her escape.

He had to think. Once he’d moved himself away from the rushing noise of the plasma-canal, he found he was able to.

Since the girl could fly, and he couldn’t, she might be far from his reach even now. Her deployment of the strategy however hinted otherwise. For obvious reasons a Special Program runaway would be reluctant to call attention to her Mini-Flash abilities. Flashsatsumas reckoned he was looking at a hunt on street level, and there he might stand a chance.

Especially since he also knew which direction to start out in. If she wanted him to head back the way he’d come, then she’d have gone the other way.

All well and good.

Yet Flashsatsumas hesitated. How badly did he need a replacement pass-card?

There was no point asking himself that. He needed one really badly. What was more, even if he did run the girl to ground, being close to her again would only make the problem worse.

There was a sensible thing to do here.

It was called scuttling home in squirmy little first gender fashion. His report on just how well he’d done his Flash Club duty today would make fun reading for Auntie Green. Oh, and maybe while he was at it he could contact Mini-Flash Juniper, to tell her all about the ridiculous ease with which her Special Program schoolfellow had outsmarted him.

Flashsatsumas heaved a sigh from the turbid fathoms of his protective garment.

No girl was going to manipulate him into that.

The chase it was, then.

Restless and agonzied, with his containment-suit straining as to burst, the chase.

He’d go and find the girl who was the source of his distress, because he couldn’t resist, even though the resultant encounter was likeliest to hurt him still more.

Ooh, but Flashsatsumas wished he was human. He honestly did. Planet Earth had had the second gender so long he bet the boys there never made stupid decisions like that.

The still-functioning energy-conduits of this moon-relic were one of its attractions, and presently Flashsatsumas came upon an open repository for runoff from the canal. A sheer-sided trough in the middle of the highway, its oblong innards from time to time received slopping replenishment of reddish-black plasma-slurry from which had been sluiced all the good. Resting with her elbows propped on the rim was another Mini-Flash, watching each splat as it slowly settled and sank.

This seemed to Flashsatsumas an unromantic way to pass the time, but the thought of a quick rest was appealing. He went across and sat, which helped ease things a little.

“You look like you’re about to swoon,” the female Mini-Flash commented. “Is the smell too much for you?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Flashsatsumas at once. “I only notice it because I’m first gender. Among other girls I’m sure it’s just normal, or maybe even nice.”

“I meant the plasma-waste,” she returned, rather frostily.

“Erm,” was the best Flashsatsumas could do.

The girl gave him a scornful look. Then, since frosty was one thing the day wasn’t, she reached behind and plucked from her knicker-elastic something to flick her face with.

It was a laminated pink day-pass.

TO BE CONTINUED