I wanted to dash toward the dead lieutenant. Never mind that Smartoop’s host was squashed to a pulp, his soul was still trapped in the emerald green mess that remained of his body! I could save him! I might be able to find a way of transferring him to another earthling!

However, my host kept me rooted to the spot. He made the inside of my body begin to tremble and sort of bubble. My two eyelets, erroneously called “eyes”, were open as wide as possible. That is when I noticed Smartoop’s round, flat object, identified by Fyodor as a “compass”, right in front of me on the ground. I bent down and picked it up. The cord was torn but the compass itself was not broken, only drenched with the green liquid that had come from Smartoop.

“Why green blood? It can’t be green..!” Fyodor mumbled, looking at the object, before thrusting it into my spacesuit. My body was frantically inhaling and exhaling the atmosphere, obviously ventilating itself to avoid overheating.

To be honest, I was also kind of doubtful about saving Smartoop. The fast square earthlings in the canal seemed far more dangerous. They were growling and belched smoke out of their arses.

I could not stand it, so I legged it. What a dastardly, hopeless coward I was…

Boom-boom BROOM!
Boom-boom BROOM!

“Listen up, Kintoopian agents! You’ve got to keep jumping!!

Boom-boom BROOM!

“Nobody’s going to save you from alien dangers. This might be your last hurrah!”

We were about to drop a landing force onto the Dark Pole. It was a practical training session on Kintoop before we began our mission to the Third Planet.

Boom-boom BROOM!

“Shoulders back, chaps. Stiff upper lip! Better to die than to fail.”Aptoop hooted.

There were four of us in the detachment: — the commander, Loathtoop, was a reddish black burly guy who instigated lots of welfare marches in the Partoopian district and was responsible for thousands of crippled kintoopians; Fooltoop, an absolute bounder and a former shake dancer; Weaktoop, an infamous eye cleaner; and me who wasn’t fond of any of my teammates.

“On the hostile planet your key mission is to build the Soul Spitter! Remember this well!”

Boom-boom BROOM! Boom-boom BROOM!

“Once it’s built, the connection is established! Our chaps can fly back and forth!
We’ll gather data, study the planet, and change the damn place from hell to heaven!”

The ground was shaking from our Pow-Uow, the dance of invincibility. We formed a circle by joining hands. At every “BOOM” we jumped on the spot and at every “BROOM” we somersaulted into the place vacated by our neighbor on our left. Our circle was spinning rapidly.

Boom-boom BROOM! Boom-boom BROOM!! Boom-boom BROOM!!!

Jumping into the center of the circle, Aptoop suddenly stopped, shot his telescopic arms into the sky and yelled: “NO-O-O-O-OW!”

One by one we leaped into isochronous canals, each one leading to a different remote area of the dangerous Dark Pole.

“WOO-O-O-O-O-SH-H-H!” I rushed along my canal into the chill of the darkness.

“Remember, chaps! Your training mission has been simplified. You don’t have to build a Soul Spitter, but you do have to find your teammates, find a bubble signal and send it to me.” Aptoop’s voice transmitted through the vibration of the canal’s walls. “Good luck, chaps! I shall accept nothing but success!”

“Find the teammates, find the teammates,” I chanted. “Better to die than to fail!”

It rapidly became dark and chilly all around me. My hair stood on end, my hands and proboscis lost their elasticity. I screwed up my eye.

GUISH-SH-H-H-H! The canal ended and I flew like a newborn soul out of a furuncano.

My flight was short. I covered the equivalent length of about a hundred proboscises in one second and plopped into something narrow, wet and sickening. When my eye started to shrink, affected by the noxious environment, I realized what I had plunged into.

“It’s a stinking ravine!” I shrieked. “Mother Kintoop!!”

I heard a sound like slurping in slow motion. The ravine sucked at my legs and started to pull me under. I had about ten minutes before my body would be under the ground and then five minutes after that my soul would be sucked out of it and condemned to oblivion in the plasma of the planet.

I thumped on the ground either side of the ravine with my fists. I tried to stretch my hands out and grab something. But it was dark and wet, and so I was unable to make any progress. I was blaming myself for not having read the agency instruction and the bally chapter on fighting stinking ravines.

“Mother Kintoop! Let me have another go, please. I promise I’ll bally well study harder!”

But the ravine continued making smacking sounds with its lips. Before long I was already half sucked in.

Then I remembered about the agents’ emergency bubble line. I reached into my hump pouch and took out a slobbery bead. I squashed it and then pushed the slob deep into my proboscis. I started to blow into it slowly.

One by one the air bubbles exited my shaking proboscis encoding the message into the dark sky:

“S.O.S.! This is Wantoop. I’m being sucked in by a ravine! Save me!”

The ravine was continuing to suck me under. My shoulders were already submerged, but my arms were still shooting up and groping about for something to get me out of this trap.

I was sending my SOS message again and again gradually reducing the size of the bubbles to save the slob’s resources while my proboscis was still above the ground.

Then in the dark sky somewhere far away I saw another iridescent pearl bubble.

“This is Loathtoop. A jibajib appendix squashed my eye. I’ve lost my vision. I’m going to die. We have no choice but to abandon the training exercise. It went too far.”

Then I saw another series of bubbles.

“This is Fooltoop. I’m impaled on a gigantic tooth…”

There was no signal from Weaktoop at all. Later we learned he was swallowed by a wild healing tongue.

So we abandoned the mission and everyone, except for Weaktoop who was trapped, was evacuated.

Later three of us gathered at the SlickTrace headquarters in front of Aptoop. Gobsmacked, I looked at Loathtoop. His eye was safe and sound. But he hadn’t had time to heal it!

“What are you looking at? You look shocked,” Loathtoop said, and grinned. “I’m all right, just…”

“You have failed your combat mission, chaps!” Aptoop growled. “The goal of sergeant Loathtoop was to provoke you into abandoning the task. You did not have to obey a failed leader! You had to continue at any price! Remember, for a kintoopian agent, it’s better to die than to fail!”

It was undoubtedly better to die than take this from my captain. Keeping my proboscis drooped, it was a lesson well learned. I would never disgrace my leader and planet again. In the real inter-galactic mission, I would inevitably succeed.

In retrospect, the training mission now seemed so colourful. Inevitably, I tried to apply Aptoop’s lesson to my current situation and it drove me crazy. Why did we have to leave Earth? Who dared make this decision?

Info iconDid you know?..

— Human bodies are 8% (or 5 liters) a specialized fluid, called blood. One may erroneously find the blood similar to a Kintoopian soul, but it’s a stupid heavy substance which even partial disconnection (>40%) from the body leads to an inevitable death of the earthling.

— Blood is red (or at least it should be) due to corpuscles called hemoglobin which carries air around and is held in the red blood cells. Hemoglobin is the red pigment and contains iron that earthlings, oddly enough, use to build cars.