“Ah, bugger. Now they’ve cut the bloody power for the fan. There was a simple “Off’ switch right next to them.” said Dave, miming using a little finger against a power switch, “Right There! Now we’ll have to get maintenance to repair that once they’re gone.”

  “Lucky they weren’t electrocuted,” said Jane, “That’s three phase power running through that cord. It was safely placed inside the conduit but the spider just cut through it with his light sabre.”

  “It’s a light sword,” explained Dave, “Sabres are curved, swords are straight.”

  “So it’s wrong in the movies?” asked Jane.

  “Sure is,” said Dave smugly, and paused, “Oh no! That Bubble Gum guy is going to do something stupid! Step back from the control panel!”

  Dave leapt back and pulled Jane to her feet as all the lights flickered. Traces of electricity coursed across the control panel and with a bang all the lights went out. A short moment later emergency lights returned and Dave rushed back to the desk.

  He sat in his chair and sighed with relief, “Phew! Lots of our gear is fried, but the safeties all triggered. We’re on emergency battery power but the most important thing is saved.”

  Jane looked at him and asked, “The most important thing?”

  Dave grinned and pointed at the screen, “Yeah! We’re still recording and the cameras are OK!”

  Jane grinned back as she passed across another beer.

  “New rule. Don’t bet against the Bubble Gum guy doing something stupid,” she said.

  ****

  Bubba plugged his torch into the three phase power cord. Industrial power connecting to a domestic quality alien torch caused a massive power surge and all electrical and mechanical noise ceased. Bolesh was flung off by the force into the wall and Bubba was surrounded by a sparkling glow.

  “I feel weird!” shouted Bubba through clenched teeth, “Fizzly and bubbly and I taste a metallic tang! Ow! Ow! Ow!”

  Bubba fell to the floor as the power completed its route through him. He was dead. The nano technology in his special emergency pills activated and the Blue pill was consumed. Bubba sat up and shook his head.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “We still can’t see anything!” wailed Koreb.

  “We should have seen the electrical storm,” said Bolesh, “I have seen electrocutions before and they are not invisible. Why can’t we see?”

  “Could it be the danger glasses?” asked Koreb.

  “Nah!” said Bubba, “They’re cool.”

  Before any further conversation, he added, “Guys, I just had the blue pill. I think I must have almost died. I feel lighter somehow.” He felt all over his body and felt his skin all bubbly, but they didn’t hurt. On impulse, which is when he had his best ideas, he popped one of the bubbles. A smell of blueberries filled the air.

  Bolesh stepped back as he caught the horrible odour, “Was that you?”

  Bubba realised no one could see him and quickly said, “No. Koreb was it you?”

  Koreb stood up indignantly and answered facing the wrong direction and pointing at the wall, “No it wasn’t! How dare you.”

  “Sorry,” lied Bubba and changed the subject, “What now?”

  “I have an idea,” said Bolesh and took out his universe 7 communicator. He pressed a button and the Universe 7 captured an image of the changed Bubba. “Nope. Still can’t see anything.”

  Koreb walked to the wall and felt her way along to the stopped fan. She called to the others, “We can get out through the blades here.”

  She climbed through and not long later the others stepped out.

  “The ground here is hard and I can feel the heat,” said Koreb and stepped a little further out and felt sandy ground under her feet, “and the firm ground stops here.”

  She then stepped to the side and found a wall, with rocks reaching as high as she could feel, “And there’s a cliff of some kind here.”

  Bubba fired his laser rifle out across the sandy area. He strained to hear anything.

  “Nope. No wall there,” he said.

  Koreb looked towards Bubba’s voice, surprised at what Bubba had done, “That’s not a bad idea. Using your laser rifle as a range finder. Interesting.”

  ****

  Dave rushed to a cupboard in the control room and pulled out a box.

  “Keep watching the screen Jane,” he said as he carried the box outside, “They’re leaving the building next to the new tennis court and sports ground fields. We’re bringing in new turf there tomorrow.”

  “So?” said Jane, “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “All our cameras are down in that area. The sparkies are coming next week to update the system as the lights are going up. I can’t miss the show so I’m chucking up a drone!”

  Jane nodded in agreement and watched the aliens as they touched everything around them and fired a random laser shot into the distance, destroying a tree. “Why are they blind? And I hope they don’t start a bush fire,” pondered Jane, “It’s been pretty dry lately.”

  Dave quickly opened the box in the courtyard, unpacked the drone onto the paving and turned on the controls. This was a fancy drone with long range and a remote camera which linked to their security system. The drone had last been used when the nearby bush was in danger of catching fire and it was very handy for spotting smoke.

  He adjusted the controls and the drone lifted off in an almost silent whine as the cleverly designed rotors engaged. In a short time the drone hovered above the building, but near the newly erected light poles. Dave did not want to be in the open as the local protected wildlife, principally the wedge tailed eagles, loved swooping and destroying drones. It was if they were insulted at intruders in their territory. Some local wag nicknamed the most tenacious bird as “Weginald the Wedge Tailed Eagle”, but that quickly was shortened to Reggie the Wedgie.

  Dave spun around the camera checking the sky, saw nothing ominous and returned to looking at the exit tube of the industrial air exchange unit. “Ah,” he thought, as he pressed the button to connect the video stream to the security system, “Found them.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  ****

  Koreb armed herself with her own laser rifle and fired into the distance using the minimum energy of one energy unit. It sizzled as it grazed Bubba’s ear and popped a few of his bubbles with a smell of burnt blueberry. Smelling the air and hearing Bubba’s cry of pain, she realised what happened and immediately apologised, “Sorry Bubba. I was following your range finding example.”

  “Ow!” said Bubba in reply.

  Koreb reached into a pouch on her belt and offered one of her emergency pills to Bubba, “Do you want one of my pills?”

  Bolesh said, “You know that these pills are individually designed for each of our races, right? Yours won’t work on him.”

  Bubba shuffled towards Koreb’s voice and found her outstretched arm. He took the pill and huffed, “I’m keeping this. You shot at me. I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Fine,” said Koreb, embarrassed at her error, “Let’s start walking” and stepped onto the sandy soil.

  “Wait a moment,” said Bolesh, “Let’s go around the wall. That way we won’t be exposed in the open.”

  “Besides, it’s hot,” said Bubba who stretched his arms and reached the wall with the others as they started to make their way around.

  “This is a big wall,” said Bubba a short time later, “Hey Koreb, let’s use your anti gravity belt and go up the side. There must be something up there.”

  “I’ll just climb the cliff using my legs, shall I?” said Bolesh.

  “Excellent idea!” answered Bubba as he grabbed onto Koreb’s leg and she activated her belt and they floated upwards.

  A few yards up and the belt started beeping.

  “What’s that?” asked Bubba.

  “I don’t know?” said Koreb, “The belt’s beeping. It sounds important.”

  “Hurry, reach over and grab the cliff!” shouted Bolesh, “The belt is running out of power. How long have you had it on?”

  “Since before we hit the fan,” said Koreb as Bubba and her quickly reached for the cliff, grabbing on just as the Anti Gravity belt gave a happy beep and turned off.

  “How do you know so much, Bolesh?” asked Bubba as he clung to the side of the cliff.

  “The manuals were pretty interesting. You should try it sometime,” answered Bolesh.

  “I don’t think so,” muttered Bubba as he started climbing up.

  Bolesh reached the top of the cliff first. Cliffs were easy when you have eight large hairy legs and loved climbing. The others arrived a short time later and clambered over the edge with a bit of huffing and puffing.

  “Why don’t we use these danger glasses to see if there is any danger?” asked Koreb.

  She pressed some buttons on the glasses and the others tried the same.

  “These things are useless,” said Bubba.

  “Absolute garbage,” agreed Koreb, “I don’t know why we even have them.”

  Bolesh was silent, trying to remember if he had actually read the Danger Glasses manual. No. He ran out of time and missed that one. Maybe they didn’t work on a dark planet.

  The hunting party left the cliff edge and walked towards - well they didn’t know where they were going, just away from the cliff edge.

  ****

  “Oh no,” said Dave as he saw Reggie fly overhead. He manoeuvred the drone closer to the light pole and followed at a good distance as Reggie caught the rising wind and soared higher. Dave sent the drone higher to see the aliens.

  The aliens had fired a couple of wild shots once they left the air exchange tunnel and this time the bubble gum guy was hit. Dave laughed when he saw that, until Jane called out for him to keep the drone still. The screen was jiggling too much.

  They then found the decorative wall at the side of The University main building. Some architect explained it was to ‘provide a connection to our ancient land through creative use of a rock wall rising to the sky’. Dave thought that sounded fine in theory, but safety regulations meant the rock wall was made from formed concrete, then painted with a special non porous paint to look like rocks. This meant extra insulation, waterproofing and supports so that the internal structure did not encourage mould from the lack of air. It also meant an industrial air exchange unit was required.

  The aliens reached the top. For some reason, two of them seemed to start rising using one of their flying belts and then changed their minds and leapt to the wall. Aliens were weird.

  Then they started walking across the roof which was covered in sand to ‘maintain the connection to the earth’ according to the architects. Dave shuddered to think of the extra thick roof and extreme waterproofing required. On the bright side, some of the researchers liked rock climbing and others had a volley ball team that used the roof for their competitions.

  ****

  Bolesh felt it get cooler and then warmer.

  “That felt like a shadow,” he said, “Something flew or moved above us.”

  He reached into his satchel and pulled out his life detector, He had read the manual for this and by feel he found the adjustment switch and pointed it upwards. The device beeped and by moving it around could sense something moving above them by the audible beeps.

  Bubba and Koreb immediately fired upwards in random directions to shoot whatever was up there circling them.

  They all heard a load “SQWUAK!” from above and Bolesh’s life detector beeped louder as the creature dove closer. A claw grabbed onto Bubba and Bubba felt himself rising higher firmly caught into tightly closed talons.

  The life detector now responded with two close beeps.

  Bubba panicked and tried to do too many things at once. Again. He unleashed his light sword swinging at the creature holding him, while throwing a tangle grenade upwards. The tangle grenade exploded all across the creature’s underbelly but didn’t affect its wings that Bubba could hear whooshing up and down. The explosion diverted his light sword swing and the follow through cut off his other arm! The separated arm was caught in the tangle as Bubba screamed and struggled to escape the closing claws.

  Koleb fired her laser rifle upwards towards the sounds of the screeching of the creature and the screams of Bubba.

  The creature released Bubba who plummeted to the ground. As he hit the ground, the nano technology once more kicked in, activating a white pill which failed and then a red pill. Success! Bubba breathed again but felt very sad at the state of affairs, not at all like his usual cheery self.

  ****

  Dave could not believe it. Reggie spotted the aliens and attacked the Bubble Gum guy. There was some sort of explosion and the lizard thing fired upwards and hit Reggie who dropped his catch. Just after the Bubble gum guy hit the ground it shuddered and then turned blue.

  Reggie then dived down at the spider thing and missed but caught the lizard alien on the return flight upwards.

  The blue bubble gum guy jumped up swinging its remaining arm holding his light sword wildly. He looked like he was trying to catch Reggie! Dave scoffed, “As if that’s going to work!”

  The lizard thing fired its laser weapon at the bird from underneath but only grazed it. Reggie let go of it and it plummeted to the ground.

  The spider ran blindly to the edge of the building and Dave quickly spoke to Jane over their radios, “Ten bucks he runs over the edge!”

  “No way, “ said Jane, “It’ll stop for sure. The spider is better than that. You’re on.”

  Dave swore as the spider raced for the side of the building and stopped just as his leg touched the edge.

  “That’s ten bucks,” said Jane in triumph as they watch the drama happening below.

  ****

  Bolesh reached the edge safely and armed himself with his cross bow. Holding his life detector in one leg and the cross bow in the other he aimed at the direction indicated by the beeping life detector. He waited until the moment he considered was the right amount of beeps.

  Confidently he fired and heard a scream. “Got it!” he yelled.

  Koreb screamed as a bolt hit her and she fell down, landing solidly on to the ground. Her pills activated, but there were only two left. The first pill failed but the second worked.

  Bubba and Koreb groaned.

  “We should be all right now,” sighed Bubba as he lay on the sand.

  They screamed as they felt themselves get picked up by the creature, one in each claw and once more raised high into the sky.

  Bolesh heard the increasing tempo of beeps on his life detector as the creature dived towards him. Leaping sideways, he escaped with a graze, narrowly avoiding the cliff edge.

  Bubba yelled, “This will get us out of here!” and fired his laser pistol set to five energy units straight upwards.

  The creature exploded in a ball of heat and Koreb and Bubba start plummeting back towards the sandy ground, smothered by the parts of the creature stuck to them by the remaining tangle web.

  “Hello,” said a voice on their communicators, “Would you like to get beamed up now?”

  “Umm,” said Koleb.

  “Ahh,” said Bubba as he felt his speed increase downwards.

  The voice continued, “I’m about to go on my break. If you want some more time I’ll be back in about thirty minutes.”

  “GET US OUT OF HERE!” yelled Bolesh into the communicator.

  ****

  They’ve gone!” said Dave to Jane, “Did we get everything?”

  “Other than a little blank patch when they shorted the power,” said Jane.

  As Dave manoeuvred the drone back to the security station he said, “I think we’ll call ARRG now. No need to use the red button though. Just give them a buzz on the phone.”

  ****

  Nelson watched in amazement as the three hunters returned, covered by a huge winged creature, or what was left of it. Some of the claws and talons still moved and Hendon and the Hunter Safety Team quickly moved in to help.

  He noticed all three hunters still had on their safety glasses which remained pitch black while the HST did their work.

  “Why is it so dark?” asked a dazed Bubba.

  “You’re safe on the shuttle. Would you like to remove your Danger Glasses now?” Nelson said to the dazed hunters.

  The hunters slowly removed the glasses and blinked to the bright lights of the Matter Transmission Station.

  They groaned as they realised they had been left in the dark by the FUSSI bureaucrats.