Challenge #00835-B104: Close Encounters of the Blurred Kind
More encounters between the spider-people and humans, pre- or post-Amity
Ten weeks prior to Amity’s re-introduction to the Galactic Alliance…
Salvage spacers tended to have short names. Monosyllabic and easy to pronounce in an emergency. So it was with Mar and Dee. Both women had longer names, but such names were exclusively on their paperwork.
“I’ve been on this hulk before,” said Dee, pointing to a conglomerated wreck in their pathfinder screen. “There’s an enormous colony of BFS on there.”
“BFS,” repeated Mar. Knowing Dee as she did, she easily guessed the first two letters. “Big Flakkin’…?”
“Spiders. Huge. The size of dogs. Saint Bernard or bigger.”
Mar side-eyed her companion. “It’d be easier to say ‘pony’.”
“True.” Dee shrugged. “On the upside, there’s these crystals that grow in there? Twenty ounces gets us a Year, minimum. They’re super-rare in the upper gravity zones.”
“Are the spiders dangerous?”
“Uuuuuuuuhhhhhh…” the call sign of impending doom. “Dunno. Never hung around long enough to find out.“
Right. Presumed dangerous until proven otherwise. Which meant the extra electrical packs. “Any Oshits?“
“No, I’ve never seen an Oshit in there.”
“Just wondering why this hulk got labelled H’nuf’ruf, is all.”
“I looked up to see one of them crawling on me.“
“Ah.”
*
Precautions taken, they split up to find the rare crystals. Though the place was, as Dee put it, full of big flakkin’ spiders, it was astonishingly free of webs. What webs there were seemed to serve a different purpose. Mar noted that some seemed designed to corral a cloud of Fhitts into a room where flies bred on filth stuck to the walls.
Mar stared at it. That’s a farm. A low-g farm for Fhitts. Lit with the very crystals that she and Dee were looking for. Though these ones were also attached to webbing.
She turned to leave, and came face-to-palps with the farmer. Mar screamed her way into a defensive posture… only to watch in frightened confusion as the spider mimicked her with four of its legs.
It took her some hours to realise that the spider was wearing clothes. Woven spider-fibres. Made into some kind of socks, and a cloak-like arrangement over the abdomen.
But that was later. After she and a spider had freed Dee.
Mar was bouncing off the walls to get away from the farmer-spider when Dee’s call came.
“Uh. I’m experiencing some technical difficulties…”
“How big is your embuggerance?”
“Door-sized. I was going after some crystals and… the spider on the other side closed the door.”
“And…?” Mar called up the mini-map on her HUD and began bouncing in Dee’s general direction.
“I’m stuck halfway through. Every time I try to make a move, the spider lunges at me.”
“Stay still and survival breaths. On my way.”
By the time she got there, it was a Scene. Four or more spiders were clustered around the right half of Dee. Aiming to startle them away, Mar bounced towards them, arms flapping, and yelling, “YAAARRRGERRONOUTOVITYARUDDYGREATLUMPS!”
The spiders only sidled a little away. One of their number waved its front legs around in the same manner that Mar used her arms.
“That wasn’t effective,” said Dee.
“Yeah. These things don’t know how to be afraid of humans.”
“Wish I knew how to be not afraid of spiders.”
“Me too.”
Mar would not leave Dee. The spiders would not let Mar take her. There was plenty of time to analyse the situation.
The spiders wore clothes and seemed to communicate by some kind of palp semaphore. With emphasis coming from their two front limbs.
Mar tried to imitate their palp-movements with her hands.
Which got instant notice from the spiders.
It was a combination of pantomime and guesswork and charades, but understanding had a seed. The spiders also valued the delicate crystals and farmed them for light.
Having humans barge in and steal some samples was… upsetting… for the spiders.
Negotiations had to break for Mar and Dee to get more air, but they returned to H’nuf’ruf with Glim lamps and adapters. And fuel.
The old engines still worked enough to run the doors. Dee pantomimed and walked the spiders through how to use the interface to add to their environment. Showed them some basic scavenging techniques. Like, for instance, bleeding just enough air out of a hulk to not set off an alarm; then using that air to fill a nearly-vacated add-on of their own.
Knowledge was worth a fortune, if you knew where to sell it.
The spiders showed them how to farm crystals in a low-g zone. And somehow, without nearly beginning to understand each other, they began to form a trade agreement.
Help us get crystals and we help you get things you need.
It would be years before any real communication was at all possible.
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