Space Relations Pt. 26

Momentarily thrown off kilter, Cruz waited for the beep. When it didn't come, he spouted out anyway. "Damn it, Barbie! This is a matter of life and death!"

"Why? What's going on this time?"

"The world has turned upside down again, Barbie!" Cruz shouted. "And it's also turned inside out! Brace yourself, Barbie, and brace the Captain as well, because Thor is now a woman!"

Because the ship's hub was so small, Captain Washington ended up walking in a circle around his command chair. Everyone in his crew was inside the bridge. Barbie was checking through the ship's computer log for any electrical anomalies, while he and Thor were going over everything they knew about what took place on the Beagle, comparing that to what was happening to them. Mary consoled Margo by sitting on her manly lap, while Cruz was mortified that something would happen to him next. Only Cammie, a veteran space commander, was truly calm and collected.

Space Corps simply hadn't trained him well enough to handle situations like this, Washington worried, as he addressed his wife. "Barbie, anything to report?"

"We have two unexplainable power surges that took place in Margo's and Thor's bunks." The pretty redhead answered. "It happened while they were both sleeping. I have no idea what caused them."

The captain turned his gaze toward Cammie at the navigator's spot. "Any idea why you were not affected?"

Cammie shrugged. "I heard it. It sounded like a loud snap, or a crackle. It was loud enough to wake me up. Five seconds later, Thor started yelling and running out the door."

Washington shifted around to face the secondary command chairs. Although he was trying to suppress this, he found that Thor didn't look too bad as a woman. As if sensing he was being started at, the big blonde turned his head to look at him.

"Captain, please don't look at me that way." Thor said, in a low, raspy, and admittedly sexy voice. "You're making me nervous."

"Right, sorry. We've gone over the conversation we had with the Beagle over a dozen times now. Have you picked up any new insight from it?"

"Nothing we don't already know, Captain." Thor frowned. "The Beagle picked up an artificial radio signal near the gassy surface of Saturn. At some point they entered the Saturnian atmosphere and came right back out. Apparently, they went through a cloud of what they describe as unknown matter, but whether this was within Saturn or out of it we don't know. What we do know is that we found the Beagle in operation, but with its crew in suspended animation. I didn't believe what Mary said at first, that the captain of the Beagle had changed sex from female to male."

"But you sure believe it now." Mary said, from the back of the bridge.

"The crew of the Beagle was acting strangely every time we were in contact with them." Washington considered. "They were nervous when they told us they were going to follow us to the California, and then they lit out before we even got to the Neptune. None of that makes sense. Why would they mention wanting complete physicals and then not go through with them?"

"I'll tell you why, Captain." Cruz said. "It was an insidious plan from the beginning. Those bastards! They knew exactly what they were doing!"

"Explain."

"This mysterious radio signal they were investigating," Cruz elaborated. "Suppose it was being emitted by that cloud of unknown material. They said so themselves. When they passed through the cloud, all of a sudden they claimed they were having hallucinations of, what did they say exactly?"

"Hallucinations where things appeared oddly different." Thor read from the computer's transcript.

"Think about the ramifications of that, Captain!" Cruz reiterated. "They only said hallucinations because they refused to tell us the truth!"

"And the truth is that their captain had changed sex from female to male and back again?" Washington considered. "Let me get this straight. A cloud, and at this point we must assume it was an intelligent cloud, sent out a regular, unnatural signal. The Beagle went through the cloud..."

"No, Captain." Cruz interjected. "The cloud was somehow attracted to the Beagle, either magnetically or through some other means. The ship didn't go through it; the cloud went inside their ship on its own. It knows the difference between our technology and our biological human forms. The cloud affected their bodies somehow. This is why we found the crew in suspended animation."

"We almost went into suspended animation, too." Mary mentioned. "Remember when we poked into Saturn's sheath?"

"That's right, Captain." Cruz pointed at the blonde. "Mary sensed something was awry ahead of time. She shielded Margo and I because that's all the time we had. The three of us had to wait for the rest of you to wake up."

"I thought that had more to do with penetrating Saturn's sheath." Thor said.

"We still don't know the full story." Cruz threw his hands up. "Maybe the cloud is part of Saturn's sheath. Maybe the electromagnetic energy inside of Saturn is quantum in some way. We saw for ourselves the tremendous plasma charges that were forming planetoids in there. In my opinion, that was more mathematical than it was random accident."

"I think that maybe the cloud tried to come into our ship, but it didn't because I almost became aware of it." Mary said.

"Then it stayed on the Beagle?" Washington queried.

"What if the Beagle went into Saturn, picked up the cloud, and came out of Saturn with the cloud on it?" Thor suggested. "Maybe the cloud was doing what it normally does but it was suddenly out of its element. That resulted in the suspended animation of the crew."

"Then there had to be two clouds," Washington surmised. "One on the Beagle, because their crew was still frozen in place, and a second cloud that tried to board our ship."

"Not two clouds, Captain." Cruz corrected. "One giant cloud with fluid portions. If we are to believe what the Beagle told us, they were only inside Saturn's sheath for a brief time. We were in that same place for days, baby! That was plenty of time for a portion of the cloud to hitch a ride with us. We have a stowaway on board, Captain, and it isn't human! It is an alien!"

"It had lingering effects." Thor estimated. "Severe enough to affect their captain into changing into the opposite sex. That's why the Beagle followed us to the California. They must have been trying to find out if we were being affected similarly. At some point, for some unknown reason, they got spooked and lit out and got as far away from us as possible."

"Maybe they passed their cloud over to us." Cruz guessed. "They did transmit to us, didn't they? Maybe the cloud was intelligent enough to follow the transmission right into our ship. When the Beagle realized they no longer had an alien on board, they got the hell away from us! That's it, Captain! We've broken the puzzle!"

"That does help explain why none of you changed sex right after leaving Saturn." Cammie considered.

"But we were docked on the California." Washington rebutted. "And we were walking around and screwing around on the Neptune. Why did it wait until we were back out in space to start doing this to us?"

"What if this supposed entity couldn't penetrate the hulls of those ships?" Thor theorized. "The California and the Neptune are huge vessels. They give off much larger electromagnetic fields than ships the size of the Beagle or the Space Relations. What if this entity stayed out in space during that time, and only reattached itself to our ship when we set out again."

"You can always ask the stupid thing if you run into it!" Margo snapped, pushing Mary off her lap. "I don't want to be this way! Somebody do something and change me back into a woman right now!"

The captain considered his options. The most important factor in his eyes was to get in contact with the Beagle, but that ship had deliberately made itself very difficult to track down. The next option would be to find a vessel with a good number of medical and science personnel, with the nearest being the Neptune, but they'd be facing several sex scandals if they did that.

"The Neptune is the only ship close by that might be able to help us." Washington spoke up, although he had a feeling about what the reaction would be."

"Definitely not." Thor shook his pretty head with its beautiful blond hair on it.

"I can't have the Vamps see me like this, Cappy!" Manly Margo complained. "I've never been an honorary member of a lesbian gang before! They'll take that away from me if I show up all of a sudden with hairy balls!"

Washington had his own Vamp scandal to think of, and Cammie's sex tape with Commander Brody was probably still making headlines.

"Don't look at me." Barbie held her hands out. "I just got off that ship after a very dry tribunal, and after getting kidnapped and dry humped by the Vamps. If you ask me, that's a lot of dryness!"

The captain turned to face his toward his two science officers. "What say you?"

Cruz simply shrugged, while Mary glanced around the room as if reading through the minds of all on board.

"I have an idea." The pretty blonde suggested. "If we have a quantum alien on board, like Cruz thinks we do, then maybe it just wants to figure us humans out. There is a reason it chose the two biggest people on this ship to experiment with."

"You think this is an experiment?" Washington asked.

"What else could it be? If this alien were happy where it was, it would have stayed there. Instead, it saw a new, shiny ship that it hadn't seen before, called the Beagle, and it went in for a closer look. You know how stuffed shirt scientists are, Captain, after that mess we went through on the Webb Space Based Telescope. If there is anybody qualified to study alien life forms out here, it would be Mr. Cruz and I."

"What if the alien is like a virus?" Thor questioned.

"A virus doesn't change DNA while keeping a body in perfect balance." Mary replied. "We just tested you and we already tested Margo when she first changed. You guys are fine except for the sex change. You guys can freak out like the people on the Beagle did, or you can adapt to it like I know you can. We can go on about our business while at the same time we'll be studying this alien life form. If we figure out a way to get rid of it, we'll do that, but we won't force it on anybody else like the Beagle did to us."

"Everything's fine with me, except for the sex change." Margo said, sarcastically. "Let's see you suddenly wake up with a pair of balls between your legs. Let's see if you like it!"

"I can handle that." Mary nodded. "Oh, yeah! I've imagined that before."

"Bullshit, Mary!" Margo growled. "You'd be tearing this ship apart if you suddenly had balls!"

The perky blonde set her hands on her hips. "I see that you and Thor are having some identity issues right now. Let's make this fun, okay? I want the both of you to pretend that you just put on a new costume. We did this, right, when we pretended the cat-women were normal women wearing cat costumes. Anyway, as I was saying. Margo, who is a woman, just put on a man's costume. Thor, who is a man, just put on a woman's costume."

"Mary, I don't like your idea." Thor said. "I think it stinks."

"Oh, come on!" Mary huffed. "It's either that or we go back to the Neptune where they'll put all sorts of electrodes on you and scan you all day and stick thermometers up your ass. Are you going to hear me out or not?"

Margo and Thor both grunted back.

"As far as we can tell, your bodies are fine." Cruz reminded the two.

"Listen, listen." Mary waved her hands for attention. "First off, we have to get the two of you to disassociate between when you're in your new costume and when you're not. This way you won't be all bummed out like you are now. Margo, you have a new character to play, and his name will be Mark."

"Mary, you can kiss my ass." Margo rumbled back.

"Everybody, we need to start calling her Mark." Mary persisted. "If Mark changes back into a woman, we can go back to calling her Margo again."

"What do you mean if?" Margo nearly shouted.

"She meant when." Cruz said.

"That's not what she said! She said if!"

"But that's what she meant. The change on the Beagle's captain was temporary, baby."

"How do you know that? The Beagle is millions of miles away right now! For all you know, their entire crew could have gone haywire by now!"

"The same thing is going to happen here." Mary replied. "Thor, until you change back, we're going to call you, uhm, let's see, how about Becky?"

The big, strong woman known as Thor stood up angrily. "Oh, hell to the mother-effing NO!"

"How about... Cassandra?" Mary mused.

"Mary, suck my dick!" Thor blasted back. "Well, I meant if I still had one!"

"Yeah, mine too!" Margo added. "You're lucky you haven't changed, or else we'd be calling you fucking Mario Brother!"

"That doesn't bother me." Mary answered. "You can call me Mario all day and I won't be ruffled by it. I'll tell you what. You can call me Mario when I change sex like you guys did."

"Hold on, Mary." Washington stopped her. "You expect these changes to continue?"

"Well, sure. Why would the alien stop with only two of us when it could change the entire crew? Barbie can be Bob. Cammie can be Cameron. You can be Wilma, I guess. Cruz, well, I can't think of anything for his first or last name. He'll just have to stay Cruz when he turns into a woman."

Somberly, Cruz made the religious sign of the cross over his chest.

The captain was growing increasingly anxious. "When do you think these changes might happen to us, Mary?"

"Well, duh! When did it happen to Margo and Thor? All you have to do is fall asleep, Captain. When you wake up, poof, you could be a woman!"

Washington cringed, nearly digging his fingers into his armrests.

"I think I'm suddenly in the mood for lots and lots of coffee." Cruz said, hurrying toward the bridge's sliding doors.

"Holy Zorg attack!" Washington jumped out of his chair. "Cruz, I'm coming with you! You get the pot brewing and I'll get the sugar! Cammie, take the helm!"

Calm and collected, Cammie strode to the vacated command chair. As she took her seat, she briefly surveyed the two people behind her, Margo and Mary, before she turned the chair around and took in the two people in front of her.

"Barbie, I want you to run a constant energy scan on the ship, in case our enigmatic cloud friend returns." Cammie commanded.

"Check." The redhead got to work.

"Becky, full speed ahead to the Gliese 667 system."

The hot and sexy Nordic blonde took a deep breath. "I don't very much like that name, Cammie, but I suppose I have to use it until I think of a better one. Very well. Full speed ahead to G 667."