Chance Furlong sat rooted to the spot in ultimate terror as the giant alien beetle crawled down the street, people fleeing before his advance, screaming in fear. This was exactly the kind of situation that would've ordinarily called for the intervention of the SWAT Kats. And yet Chance didn't move. Beside him, neither did Jake. Hard Shell - as he'd been dubbed by the smartypants scientists tasked with finding a means of destroying him - resembled an ordinary Earth beetle in all but size, with blazing yellow eyes slanted just right to impart a look of utter malice on an otherwise expressionless face. As the helpless kats fled in all directions, he grabbed an older model sedan in his mandibles, lifting it up; the car crumpled like tinfoil in the process, the windows blowing out, spraying glass everywhere.
Suddenly, a missile flew in and hit Hard Shell on the back. Blam! Chance flinched as it exploded harmlessly across the supreme monstrosity's shell ("carapace," Jake would've corrected him ordinarily, but owing to the situation remained silent). Another flew in and hit him in the face, with exactly the same results, which is to say none at all. Chance stiffened where he sat, the sound of Jake's loud munching filling his right ear. A cold sweat was beginning to trickle down his body, making him shudder as the droplets slithered along underneath the back of his coveralls. This was awful, he thought. How anyone could just sit here and do nothing while this was happening, while this monster from beyond infinity - or wherever he'd come from - had his way with the terrified populace.
Dropping the car, the monster turned to regard the one who dared attack it. A single fighter jet, bearing the colors and insignia of the Army Air Corps, flew high overhead. Chance could see the pilot in the cockpit, helmeted, his face hidden behind flight goggles and an oxygen mask.
"We're not makin' a dent in that Hard Shell!" the pilot exlaimed, pounding his control panel in frustration. Chance knew that everything counted on keeping Hard Shell in one place until the other jets could get there with their loads of insecticide. Then, steeling himself, his eyes, briefly visible through his goggles, he flew 'round and dived down at the creature. "I'm goin' in!"
Guy's braver than I am, thought Chance as his heart leaped into his throat. Whatever this selfless hero attempted to do, it didn't work; as he flew past Hard Shell, the huge, car-chomping mandibles clipped his jet. Chance winced as the left wing was sheared off entirely. The aircraft made a belly landing in the street, leaving a trail of sparks and fire as it slid along, narrowly missing an overturned van before turning in mid slide, its right side colliding against a parked green car. This annihilated the other wing, and the jet sat there for a moment, most of the back end and right side in flames.
Swallowing audibly, Chance's hope swelled as the canopy slid back and the fighter pilot, having taken off his mask, goggles perched up on his helmet, winced, painfully extracting himself from his cockpit... or trying to. Come on, come on, thought Chance. Hurry! He's gonna-- Too late. A shadow fell across him. With a gasp, he doomed pilot turned, eyes wide, to regard his soon to be killer. Hard Shell loomed menacingly above him, mouth open wide, drool flowing copiously from his chitinous jaws.
Making a fist, Chance pounded it impotently against the armrest in frustration. He wanted to yell "Come on!" out loud, but even as angry as he was with the movie, he didn't want to get himself thrown out of the theater Of course the movie would kill off the character he identified with the most, the cool fighter pilot guy. Not that he could remember the character's name. He'd only been introduced in the last act, and was played by Kit Westwood in an uncredited cameo, but still. It sucked having the brave, cool fighter pilot guy end up as a snack for the title monster a few minutes towards the end.
For Chance, this was enough. Keeping his voice to a hoarse whisper, he turned in his seat in the sixth row and hissed at Jake sitting to his right, "Aw, Jake, you know how I feel about bugs!"
"Yeah," said Jake Clawson, shoveling another handful of popcorn into his mouth, "I was surprised you came with me to see this flick."
So am I, thought Chance. "I thought 'Hard Shell' was about a tank, not some giant beetle."
"Sshhh!"
Chance turned and glared at some dopy guy in a tux. He felt underdressed. He and Jake had come to the theater just after knocking off work. Everyone else at Hard Shell's premiere was dressed "to the nines," as they said, all except for the two grease monkeys in their mechanics' coveralls. Fortunately, nobody seemed to mind, and were mostly too caught up in the excitement and thrills of the monster movie to bother noticing.
Jake was grinning ear to ear, soaking in his friend's indignation. But it was more than just indignation. Chance Furlong had a "thing" about bugs. That was how he explained it, so as not to seem like a wimp. But it ran deeper than that. He palmed his face, irritated at himself for just going along without asking questions. Irritated at Jake for not telling him beforehand there'd not only be a bug, but on big enough to crush cars, bring down fighter jets and eat kats whole.
He consoled himself by telling himself there was no way he could've known; the title was ambiguous, Hard Shell himself didn't actually turn up until near the third act, and although the clues were there, clear enough that Chance had felt the creeping fear crawling its way up his spine as the movie went on, he'd reassured himself that there was no way Hard Shell could be a giant bug; surely it was some villainous mastermind operating a fearsome tank designed to recall a beetle, just like he'd initially thought upon hearing the title.
Jake began getting excited at this point. He sat up a little further in his seat, the popcorn bucket tumbling from his lap, spilling its contents all over the already sticky, trash-strewn floor. He pointed at the movie screen as more fighter jets began flying in. "Shhh!" he hissed to Chance. Why is everyone shushing me tonight? wondered an increasingly nervous Chance. "They're using the bug spray now!" he whispered, as loudly as he dared.
Chance rolled his eyes. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
"Sshhh!" hissed someone behind them. Chance gave an apologetic glance at the hoity toity looking audience members behind him for his friend's enthusiasm making him forget that not everyone had seen Hard Shell and knew how it ended. Jake had already seen this film. In fact, it was a re-release, having originally come out back when they were kids. Chance had never heard of it.
Onscreen, the newly arrived jets swooped in and dropped their payload of slimy white gunk onto Hard Shell's back. Chance made a face. To him, it looked like something else entirely, but if the movie said it was bug spray, albeit bug spray mixed with some other compounds to make it stickier, then it was bug spray. Thoroughly drenched in the gunk, Hard Shell gave an unearthly scream and collapsed. His antennae twitched a final time and then fell limp. He was dead. The fact his favorite character's heroic sacrifice hadn't been in vain didn't do one bit to make Chance feel any better at the fact he was still looking at a giant beetle from space, whose motionless corpse the movie annoyingly insisted on continuing to focus on as the shell-shocked cast of characters walked over, standing around the invader's body. Just staring at the thing dead was giving the big mechanic the creepy crawlies something fierce. More cold sweat slid down his stiffened body as he stared at the screen like a deer in headlights.
"He's finished," said the handsome lead scientist character definitively. Chance hadn't bothered to remember his name either. "But for good?" he asked rhetorically, putting his arm around his love interest, who was attractive in a 60s-70s kinda way. Chance couldn't remember who she was or what she did for a living or what, if anything, she'd contributed to the plot. But he wasn't focused on her. He was focused on what the hero was saying.
Come on, come on, begged Chance, say he's dead for good and won't come back and there's no more like him comin', though he knew that there was a sequel coming out soon - which was in fact the reason for this much-anticipated re-release. But he still wanted to hear the words before he left the theater. His poor, jangled nerves needed it. And he was ashamed of it. But then the scientist continued. "Who knows?" he asked of no one in particular. He turned to the camera, seeming to look out at Chance in particular. Chance's eyes were as wide as saucers, his pupils shrunken to tiny little pinpoints, his mouth a tiny little "O" of stupefied worry. "Who knows what lies beyond the stars?" the scientist asked.
"Oh!" Chance finally blurted out in horror, covering his eyes as "The End...?" came on the screen in a dripping, blood red font. He shuddered at the very idea that there wwas anything even remotely like Hard Shell out there in the unexplored regions of the universe... in the movie's reality or in this one. A few of the other kats in the audience turned and looked at him. Now it was Jake's turned to giving apologetic glances for his friend.
~*~
A little while later, the two of them were walking out of the front entrance of the Megakat Multiplex, having been among the first to leave in the hopes of beating the crowds to the parking lot. Chance felt an intense sense of relief as he stepped out into the humid summer night air, which felt good against his sweaty fur.
"I give this flick two claws down!" he said with a smirk, giving signature Catskill and Felbert "two claws down" gesture with both thumbs, some of his usual bravado returning, though he still felt his heart beating fast.
He cast a glance at the marquee. Hard Shell, Hard Shell, Hard Shell! It was insane to think that dopy monster movie was playing on five of the thirty screens the Megakat Multiplex had to offer. He would've much rather seen Claw Hard 3 or even Feline Instinct.
Jake, for his part, considered asking why his friend obviously had such a problem with a fictional giant monster when they regularly fought real ones as the SWAT Kats, but didn't press the issue. Mostly because he wanted to respect his friend's feelings. If and when Chance wanted to talk about his problem with Hard Shell, he would, and pushing him was a bad idea. Besides, if he asked without invitation, especially now, he knew Chance would just clam up and lie, insisting that the movie had simply caught him off guard and that he totally didn't have a problem with bugs. Though Jake knew better. Any time there was an insect or spider in the house, it was Jake Clawson who had to deal with it while Chance did everything except climb up on the nearest piece of furniture, doing a panicky little dance. He'd find it funny if it wasn't obvious it caused Chance very real distress.
"Hey look, a shooting star!" cried Chance suddenly as they were halfway across the parking lot. He pointed.
Grateful for the chance in subject, Jake stopped and followed his pointing finger. What appeared to be a comet or meteorite was shooting across the starlit sky, leaving a fiery trail as it went. "Negative, Chance," he said, knowing what it was, having seen the latest Spotlight on Science report on Kat's Eye News. "It's just that space center satellite returning from orbit."
Kat Sat 1, he thought as the two continued on towards the tow truck. Though he wasn't an astrophysicist, Jake Clawson had tremendous respect for science and he valued knowledge of the world the kats lived in, and he envied who was going to get to find out what secrets from beyond the known galaxy the probe had managed to discover.
Chance, of course, just made a joke. "Darn," he said as they got into the tow truck, "and I was gonna wish I never had to see another bug."
~*~
Kat Sat 1, the pride and joy of the MASA deep space probe project, sat half buried in a smoking crater out in the middle of the Megakat Desert near a tall, narrow rock formation, the only noticeable landmark around for miles. Everything else was just plain boulders and plateaus. Having gotten out of their vehicles, the two scientists approached it with something like reverence. Their demeanor, coupled with their hooded clean suits sporting radiation symbols on the chest lending them an air of somewhat offsetting anonymity, made them look less like scientists and more like alien visitors or perhaps followers of some strange religion.
"I've waited two long years for this," said the one in the lead. His suit was trimmed in orange to distinguish him from his companion. Unafraid, he went right up to the satellite and laid a hand reverently, feeling the heat of the metal through the insulated glove. His colleague hung back, hesitating. They weren't sure if Kat Sat 1 was safe to approach just yet, and the lead figure's brazen act of just walking up to the thing was a trifle unprecedented.
The hand laying upon the Kat Sat 1 - his Kat Sat 1, he reminded himself - didn't betray the excitement that the suited figure felt. This was the culmination of years of hard work, years of arguing with the money men about the cost versus the reward and all that nonsense. Behind the opaque visor of the suit's hood, he was smiling with tremendous excitement and satisfaction. He thought he could almost feel the already diminishing heat from the satellite flowing through him.
"Now the secrets of the stars will be mine!" he declared aloud.
"There are no secrets from Kat's Eye news!" said a female voice from nearby.
The two MASA scientists jerked in surprise, nearly jumping out of their skin in surprise. Two hooded heads turned, eyes squinting through their visors at the approach of an attractive, auburn-haired woman holding a microphone. Behind her came a burly male kat in a purple sweater, sunglasses and baseball cap, filming over the woman's shoulder with a large video camera. The man in the orange-trimmed suit recognize the woman instantly. Ann Gora. But where had she come from? He hadn't heard the approach of an engine. Behind her and her cameraman, he could see their vehicle, a news van, parked partially hidden behind a rock formation.
"Ann Gora here in the desert with Dr. Harley Street," she was saying into her microphone, speaking to the man in the orange-trimmed suit, "brilliant creator of the satellite Kat Sat 1!"
Harley Street frowned behind the impenetrable visor of his suit's hood. He didn't like the unexpected. Had the two gotten there before them and then hidden behind the boulder, waiting to leap out and ambush them like a couple of kids waiting to yell "Surprise!" at some friend's birthday party?
And that was in fact what they'd done, though throughout it all Ann had had to force herself not to giggle at the childishness of waiting behind the big rock with Jonny to jump out and surprise the arriving scientists. She'd initially planned to wait a little longer, until the men from MASA had had more of a chance to properly examine the probe and begin removing it to take it back to the space center, but her eagerness to talk to Street had gotten the better of her. Although he and his companion were currently hidden from view by their suits, she knew what he looked like and she had to admit, although she ordinarily maintained a professional detachment in her work, she had to admit that she had a small crush on the astrophysicist. She had in fact fought for this assignment. She didn't normally do Spotlight on Science, but if Tab Mouser thought he was going to be the one to interview Harley Street, that square-jawed, grinning idiot had another thing coming.
A grinding, rumbling motor signaled the approach of the retrieval truck which had left the space center with Street but which had fallen a ways behind his car, owing to the rough terrain of the desert. It finally stopped, tires crunching on the dirt. Two hardhatted technicians in teal jumpsuits and mirroed sunglasses hopped down from the cab. Taking his own hood off, the other scientist who'd arrived with Street went over and began directing them in the removal of the probe from the crate. This would be accomplished with a big, extending crane-like mechanism that rose from the back of the truck, swinging over to position itself above Kat Sat 1, which had by now cooled down and was no longer smoking.
Managing to compose herself, Ann stopped as she reached Street, holding her microphone out towards him at a respectful distance. Behind him, the other man from MASA was giving the probe a once-over. "Well, what’s the story, Doctor?"
Dr. Street composed himself. Although he was still a little annoyed at having been blindsided, to say nothing of this reporter getting there before him, he was already getting over it. He relished the opportunity to talk about his work with someone, and besides, having seen Ann Gora on TV many times over the years, he had to admit, she was quite attractive. Smiling, he pulled his hood off, revealing an unremarkably rugged handsome face with broad features and strong cheekbones. Stylishly tousled headfur cut short crowned his head.
Tucking his hood under his arm, he said, "The probe survived reentry undamaged, Ann, but I’ll be able to tell you much more after I’ve examined it back at the lab." He'd already decided that as much as he liked Ms. Gora, he didn't have the time to talk her. About the Kat Sat 1 or anything else. At least not tonight. He began walking towards the car he and the other scientist, his assistant, had come in, a dark red sedan with the MASA logo on the doors. Ann followed, Jonny filming them both.
As a big magnet descended from the crane, grabbing the Kat Sat 1, Street decided on a plan of action. He'd get the scientific nitty gritty out of the way tonight and then spend the rest of the day being interviewed by the pretty Ms. Gora. And not in the middle of nowhere, either, but in the comfort of his office back at MASA. He opened the driver's side door of the sedan and paused, turning to smile flirtatiously at her. "Say, why don't you stop by the space center tomorrow?" he asked gently, giving a friendly little chuckle.
Ann was excited. A private interview with Dr. Street! "What am I? Chopped liver?" she could almost hear Jonny saying; as much as she liked Jonny and depended on him, in her enthusiasm she could sometimes forget he was there. She almost considered telling him to remain behind so she could go alone. "Kat's Eye News will be there, Dr. Street," she said.
Satisfied, Street, got into his car, waited for the other scientist to get in, then turned the key in the ignition. They threw their hoods into the back seat. As they drove off, the magnetic crane, carefully manipulated by the two trained technicians, lifted the Kat Sat 1 from the impact crater. Crumbling - and in some cases smouldering and burned - bits of earth and rocks fell from the bottom as it swung gently in the air. Then with a loud whirring noise that made Ann and Jonny turn and watch, the crane swung back into its "neutral" position and retracted, fastening the satellite into a specially designed clamp on the rear of the truck. Jonny filmed it with his camera for some B-roll before Ann tapped his shoulder.
"Let's go, Jonny," she urged him, and the two walked back to where they'd left the van.
"Lucky you," Jonny said. "Gettin' to interview Doc Street." He smirked, knowing about his employer's crush on the scientist. "Mouser's gonna pitch a fit."
"Let him," Ann said. She was beaming.
They got into the van and drove off. As the two technicians finished making sure that the Kat Sat was secured, they walked back to the cab of the truck. Consequently, no one was standing at the rear of the vehicle when a lumpy, viscous, greenish-yellow substance began slowly oozing out from between one of the seams of the metal and flowing sluggishly down the exterior of the satellite...
~*~
The Megakat Space and Aeronautics Administration was a sprawling facility located in the middle of the desert. Like most government and private installations in and around Megakat City, it boasted a variety of defenses against attack in the form of both manned and automated laser turrets which ringed the perimeter of the property. Armed guards were everywhere, seeming to outnumber the researchers and other employees, especially now that it was the middle of the night and there was basically no one else around except them.
And Harley Street. Upon returning to the space center, Street had insisted, nay, demanded that the Kat Sat 1 be taken into his private laboratory for examination. The workers lugged the thing into the lab and placed it carefully on the special examination table designed for it, where it sat with a camera aimed at it. The camera was on the end of a jointed metal arm descending from the ceiling, and its indifferent, aloof electronic eye just happened by chance to be focused on the blob of slime that'd been steadily oozing from the side of the probe ever since it left the desrt. Though now the flow had slowed and it dripped no further, seeming to just hang there of its own accord in defiance of gravity. This was shown on a TV screen on the bank of monitors at the far end of the room, though Street paid it no mind as he finished supervising the workers.
The workers had noticed the stuff, as had the technicians who'd driven the truck back from the desert and supervised its unloading in the high security motor pool. But none of them had considered bringing it up to either Street or his assistant. None of them were qualified to identify the weird-looking substance, and it looked to gross to touch, so they'd decided to leave it to the experts to notice. Street had a reputation of being hyper-observant. Surely he would find it and figure out what it was.
And ordinarily, they would've been right. But that fateful night, Harley Street was a hectic mixture of exhausted and excited, his mind going in a million different directions at once and struggling to fight off sleep. The same applied to the other scientist who'd accompanied him. He was tired as well, and Street's enthusiasm for the Kat Sat project was not exactly infectious at half past midnight.
As the two hardhatted kats trudged out of the room to clock out, leaving the lab door open, Street hurriedly struggle free of his clean suit. His assistant, Weyland Thorne, who'd accompanied him out to the Megakat Desert stood watching him, still in his own suit with the hood tucked under one arm. He was bleary-eyed and wanted to go home. He both admired and was annoyed by Street's enthusiasm.
"Surely this can wait until tomorrow," he mumbled, stifling a yawn.
"Nonsense!" said Street, putting on a shirt and tie. Even though he looked about as tired as Thorne felt, he was running on pure excitement and adrenaline. "This can't wait another moment!" he said breathlessly as he finished tying his black necktie. Grabbing his lab coat off an ornate antique coat rack, the only non-scientific furnishing in the room, he said dismissively, but sympathetically, "Go home if you're tired."
Yawning, the other scientist shrugged indifferently and left, shutting the door after him and entering the security code which would prevent anyone but authorized personnel from entering and disturbing his employer. No sooner had his slipped on his lab coat, which was such a light color of blue it looked deceptively white, than Street immediately went to work. He carefully removed the Kat Sat's data recorder unit from what amounted to the rear of the probe, still not sparing either the pulsating glob of ooze or the picture of it on the TV screen a second glance as he carried the heavy device to the terminal and plugged it in. Immediately, the other TV screens came to life, showing images of distant nebulae and planets. Street's breath caught and his pulse quickened. Such celestial beauty!
He activated a tape recorder built into the console. "The Kat Sat's data recorders have surpassed by expectations!" he began. Smirking smugly, remembering all those budget meetings with the facility's project directors and money men, he added, triumphantly, "And to think the fools here were ready to cut off my funding."
He frowned as he flicked through the various high-resolution pictures taken by the Kat Sat. It might do to make sure he delete that offhanded remark against his superiors. Complainers didn't get very far at MASA. Or anywhere, for that matter. He decided to focus on a picture of one planet in particular, which looked like it might support life, the possibility of which intrigued him. It clearly had an atmosphere of some sort and orbited a sun not unlike Earth's. Evidently the Kat Sat thought this world worth investigating as well, because as Street clicked through the pictures, it became evident that this world was one of the ones the probe had decided to visit and examine more closely rather than simply photographing it from space and passing it by.
The picture of the planet's surface looked bizarre and unsettling. It was a blasted, tortured-looking landscape that look somehow both alien and familiar. But Street couldn't put his finger on what exactly it was about this strange, empty landscape of twisted, malformed geological formations that struck him as being somehow familiar. He clicked "next." The next picture was of a big greenish-yellow globular growth clinging to the side of a ruined cliff. What was this? Life?
"Never saw anything like that before," he murmured, then described for the record what he was looking at. Another click. The next photo was closer. The thing didn't look any more pleasant up close. Frowning, Street stared at this thing, whatever it was, this possible indicator of life on another world. He'd have to alert the exo-biology department immediately. Reaching up, he rubbed the screen thoughtfully, studying the growth. "Reminds me of an... insect's cocoon."
That was the best comparison he could come up with. He was no entomologist. Surely someone in exo-biology would know what it was. Out of the corner of his right eye, he noticed the TV screen showing the lab camera's view of the side of the Kat Sat... and the glob of ooze clinging to the side. He was just opening his mouth to say aloud that it looked like the exact same substance from that tortured alien world when he heared a sound off to his left. It was a squeaky chittering noise. He turned, frowning. It was coming from the satellite from where it sat on the examination table. Leaving the wall of TV monitors, he walked around the probe until he saw the greenish-yellow substance on the side.
"Looks like something got stuck in the seam," he said, idly wondering if anyone else had noticed it and, if so, why they hadn't told him.
He reached out to touch it, then stopped. Bad idea. He really was tired if he came that close to making such an elementary, boneheaded mistake as touching an unidentified, possibly alien substance with his bare hand! Sighing, he decided that as soon as he was done examining this weird gunk, whatever it was, he was going to go lay down. There was a comfortable couch in his office that was calling his name. He grabbed a latex glove and pulled it on, and only then did he grab and attempt to pull the stuff free from the side of the satellite. It was incredibly sticky and didn't seem to want to come loose. Having failed to remove it, he decided to examine it where it was, prodding into its soft, slimy interior with one finger, making a face.
Suddenly, two black, pincher-like mandibles emerged from within the center of the gunk. Street had no time to react, no time to jerk his hand back before they bit his probing finger. He yelled in surprise and pain. The latter soon eclipsed the former as what he could only describe as a burning fire shot up his arm and into his body. Still yelling, he felt his legs give under him even as he turned towards the lab door and promptly collapsed face-first on the floor. There he lay shuddering as the pain burned its way into his mind. His very consciousness. And with the pain, which was already subsiding, came something else. A new understand. A new purpose. He felt a voice in his head.
Mine, it said. You are mine. And soon this world will be as well.
It wasn't a voice that spoke with words. Nevertheless, he understood it perfectly. It was her. The queen.
"Yes, I understand," he said.
He slowly got to his feet. When he opened his eyes, they were no longer normal kat eyes, but green, insectoid compound ones. His transformation had begun. It would take several days, perhaps longer, but soon he would become something more than a mere kat. The child and consort of the thing, the creature, the divine mental presence which still squirmed in her infancy in the cocoon that even now was bulging obscenely from the seam of the Kat Sat 1. He was the first of many. He turned and regarded her as she extracted herself halfway out of the slime. A purple-furred extraterrestrial that appeared to be a cicada with feline features. But unlike any Earth-bound cicada, she had blazing red compound eyes and large, wickedly pointed black mandibles.
She wasn't very big, but soon she'd begin growing, and, with luck, never stop. She'd soon have other consorts just like him, for this was one of the two ways in which his new benefactor's race reproduced. As for the other... despite her young age, the queen was ready to lay her eggs, but to do so she needed somewhere cloistered and away from prying eyes, and most importantly, where there could be food for both herself and her hatchlings. And for him and the other kats soon to be bitten and converted, Street realized.
He knew just the place. He held out his hands. The queen crawled into them, tugging the gunky slime of her cocoon with her as she went. It still clung to her and filled Street's hands to overflowing.
"I will do everything in my power to help you conquer this world."
Hiding his eyes was the main problem. Fortunately, he found a pair of black sunglasses that would do the trick. He certainly looked odd, walking down the hallway, wearing sunglasses indoors and carrying a gunky lump of vomitous sludge before him in both hands (the alien queen having secreted herself in its center once more), but he didn't look as alarming as he would if those fly-like eyes had been on fully display.
His destination was the nuclear furnace which powered the entire facility. A burly guard with a mustache was standing outside the door leading to the reactor, surrounded by radiation symbols. He had a laser gun in a holster at his side. Street didn't know his name and didn't care. It didn't matter. At his approach, the guard stood a little straighter, exuding professionalism, but his voice and attitude were friendly, conversational.
"What brings you down the reactor, Doc?" he asked.
Street didn't respond. He simply stood there with the glob of gunk in his hands.
"And what's that stuff?" the guard asked, making a face.
Finally, Street spoke. Holding up the handful of slime, he said, "It's... a surprizzze."
There was a slight "buzz" to his voice. The guard noticed it, but was more interested in the stuff being held up for him to examination. He grimaced, staring at it in morbid fascination... when suddenly, like a grotesque kat-in-the-box, something purple with red eyes shot out from inside it. The guard felt it bite his neck and collapsed to the floor. Another one for the growing army...
