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Fur-Sty Planet Part 4: A Change in Trajectory

Dr. Francis Allman stood in the hall aboard the NATO Research Starship Darwin, his hand cradling his scowling muzzle. Beyond the one-way glass before him was a sterile room featuring only an uncomfortable wall-mounted bed and a toilet/sink fixture. The occupant of this quarantine chamber was Allman's assistant, Holden Crawford. The young borzoi xenobiologist sat dejected in a corner wearing only a paper gown.

“Are you sure we're doing the right thing, here?” Dr. Allman asked the Universal Labs Research Lead Dr. Hank Scranton. “We’ve run the scans dozens of times. No harmful pathogens were found.”

“None that we're equipped to scan for, you mean,” the perpetually grumpy calico cat reprimanded. “Bismuth is an alien world teeming with alien life. This includes life we have no understanding of. The policy exists for a reason.”

“NATO policy? Or corporate?” Allman barked back. Almost immediately, his heart leaped into his throat. He may have just screwed up.

Scranton's feline eyes narrowed, one lip lifting in a sneer. “A dangerous question for a dog one phone call away from a quarantine chamber of his own.”

Dangerous and pointless. Universal Labs had, for several decades, dictated government policy with little to no pushback. Their contributions to interstellar travel granted them immeasurable social and political credit. And that credit was very well utilized, indeed. Journalists disappeared and assassinations were frequent. Nobody wielded power unless it benefited UL in some way.

“This isn't over,” Allman growled, shooting one last look at the miserable canine in the cell. “I'm filing a grievance.”

“As is your right,” Scranton recited, waving the biologist away impatiently. “Do not return to this deck until you are cleared to do so.”

He wouldn't be, of course.

Dr. Scranton stared silently at the highly unfortunate assistant xenobiologist as he waited for the door to slide shut behind the dog's belligerent colleague. As soon as he was alone, he tapped the communicator on his wrist. After a few seconds, a holographic projection popped up as his call was answered. Chief UL Xenobiologist Dr. Don Swiftly smiled as his vulpine face floated in midair.

“How is our subject?” Swiftly asked.

“Crawford is rather pitiful, but alive. Our initial interviews suggest that he's hearing a voice. And unlike our previous subjects, he can understand it,” Scranton answered, turning his wrist so the fox could look into the chamber.

“Incredible,” Swiftly muttered. “This could be our most promising prospect yet. What did the voice tell him!?”

—

“RETURN AND MAKE US WHOLE,” the thunderous voice called out, echoing through Holden's mind like distant thunder.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he groaned, clutching at his skull with both hands until the throbbing abated.

He had known the quarantine process would be awful, but this was hell. The white room, the reflective glass that concealed who knew how many staring eyes on the other side, and the voice. Worst of all was the voice. It was like a quavering chorus that spoke as one. And the fact that he was hearing it meant that something was very wrong with him. Something that Earth’s medical science might have no answer for.

He might never leave here alive.

Holden sprang to his feet and began to pace. How long had it been? Food arrived three times a day through a recessed shelf whose door closed flush with the wall as soon as he removed it. At first, he'd tried to mark the time using that cycle, but the bland calorie-rich nutrient bars were the same every time. There was no way to know if they were feeding him breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And when he slept, was it between 2200 and 0700 in accord with his usual routine? Impossible to tell. He yearned for something unusual to break up the monotony. Something to stimulate his mind other than the unwelcome visitations by the booming voice.

The door in the wall slid open and delivered exactly that.

—

Swiftly jogged down the hall toward Dr. Scranton, who gestured toward the cell's window with a slender hand.

“You're just in time, sir. The specimen has been delivered,” the cat said. “I’m already seeing some interesting EEG fluctuations.”

“So you believe that this thing will…resonate with the subject?” Swiftly asked, tugging his tie as he took his place in front of the quarantine cell.

“I believe it already is. We're detecting the same low-frequency signal from the object that exudes from Bismuth itself. We're detecting it from Crawford, too.”

Swiftly stared at the two test subjects, his brow furrowed. “What's being transmitted?” he asked, his voice low.

—

“NOW WE WILL BE MADE WHOLE.”

Holden couldn't look away. Instead of the usual small, dry food bar the alcove beyond the door held something much larger and less obviously edible. It appeared to be a large, green egg. The flat base allowed the thing to sit upright, and the top of it featured an X-shaped perforation. It twitched slightly as the contents shifted against their wet, fleshy confines.

“No,” the dog groaned. “I don't understand.”

But on some level, he did. Whatever had set its tendrils into his brain was imparting knowledge, though its message was as indistinct as a garbled transmission delivered over a staticky phone line. All he knew was that the ovum contained something that would cement his psychic link to the planet Bismuth.

A question lingered…Would there be anything left of him when the process was finished?

—

Dr. Scranton’s wrist-comm projected a holographic display of the cell’s control inputs. “I'm going to run an electrical current through the egg. Perhaps that will be a sufficient stimulus,” he muttered, prodding the relevant button. The interior of the delivery box could deliver a shock if an unruly patient tried to meddle with it while it was open.

“It's opening! Look, there!” Swiftly gasped, pressing his fist against the glass and leaning in close. “What happens now? What's inside?”

—

The egg blossomed open like a flower made of glistening meat. Holden expected some newborn abomination to slowly emerge, with eyes squinting against the light. Instead, a spidery creature with eight heavily articulated legs leaped out and clung to the ceiling, tendrils of slime dangling from its body. Crawford scrambled backward until he was cowering behind the toilet, a scream sticking in his throat like a sharp chicken bone. There was nowhere to go.

—

“Holy shit!” Swiftly shouted, pressing his hand against the glass. “Is that thing contained!? What is it going to do!?”

“Yes, and what does it matter? He was never leaving that cell anyway,” Scranton muttered, swiping through the data being transmitted through the cell’s sensors. “Enjoy the show.”

—

“Stay back!” Holden shrieked, curling his legs and tail against his body.

“CALM YOURSELF. YOUR LIBERATION IS AT HAND,” the voice boomed. It now felt as though the speech was coming from the direction of the recently hatched creature, which twitched sporadically as it watched the dog from the ceiling. “RELAX YOURSELF. THERE IS NO NEED FOR FEAR.”

Fear was the only sensation that made sense. And yet, as the thing spoke, Holden could feel a cool, soothing sensation percolating in the depths of his consciousness. It spread slowly, like aloe-gel calming the damaged nerves in a patch of burned skin. The rising and falling of the borzoi’s chest slowed. His jaw eased shut. Both eyelids dipped downward as the monster exerted its psychic will on him.

—

“His vitals are reverting to a placid state,” Scranton remarked, watching the various numerical readouts transition from an alarming red to a nominal green.

“Why the hell would they be doing that?” Swiftly asked, gesticulating at the abomination attached to the cell’s ceiling.

“I have a theory…” the cat muttered, staring at the EEG chart.

—

“VERY GOOD. YOU ARE CALMING. THIS WILL FACILITATE OUR MERGER.”

“Yes…the merger…” Holden whispered, his lips moving on their own.

He felt like his mind was stuffed with cotton. The loss of control should have been alarming, but the sensation of warmth spreading through Holden's core and along his limbs was like a warm shower after a long day–one of the many luxuries he'd been denied in this cell. The creature did not seem intent on inflicting pain on him. That made it the first such being he'd encountered since returning to the Darwin.

“REMOVE THE GARMENT AND LIE ON YOUR BACK.”

Holden grabbed the flank of his paper grown and tore it away from his body. The tattered remnants fluttered into a pile around his feet. He plopped down on his rear before reclining backward against the floor. The smooth tiles should have been cold, hard, and uncomfortable. Instead, he felt like he was floating on a cloud of fresh goose down.

“YES.”

The alien dropped down from above, its body spinning in the air like a feral cat so that it would land upright. As soon as the slender leg tips clacked against the floor, it scuttled toward the vulnerable borzoi. With a single precise leap, it bypassed his legs and landed with its thorax over the male’s sheath.

“PREPARE YOURSELF FOR BLISS. I WILL IMPART A VISION TO YOU.”

Holden lifted his groggy head to watch the thing crouching over his abused maleness before his neck went slack and his eyelids dropped shut.

He was now on his feet again and fully dressed, standing in the bioscience lab of Deckland University, where he had attended graduate school just a couple of years earlier.

The room was empty except for Moira Sussman, a charmingly nerdy collie that had been in his graduating class. Her cute eyeglasses gleamed on her muzzle, and her slender body was clad in a white blouse and plaid skirt. Holden had always wanted to ask her to be his lab partner, but he'd never gotten up the nerve. No, that's not all he’d wanted to ask her. That's not all he'd wanted to do with her.

“Hey partner,” Moira grinned, waving at Holden. “You ready to finish this paper on pheromone samples from Eridis 4 mammals? Or maybe you'd like to study some samples from a little closer to home?”

The female hopped up on the lab table and parted her legs. She wore nothing beneath her skirt. The cleft of her sex glistened enticingly in the fluorescent lights of the lab. Her tail swept back and forth, slapping against a gas spigot like a metronome.

“M-Moira, what if…?” Holden choked, the tip of his cock already pressing into the fabric of his boxers.

“‘If someone comes in?’ It's Saturday afternoon on a three-day weekend, silly pup. Campus is a ghost town,” she assured him, grinning. “Just keep your knot out of me and we might have time to play it off if someone decides to intrude.”

“Easy for you to say,” Holden chuckled, tugging at his zipper. “You'd have to pull your skirt down. I'd have to hide this.”

Holden’s cock dropped out of the fly of his boxers, bouncing eagerly in the direction of Moira's loins.

“Oh, wouldn't that be a shame,” she mocked, scooting her hips forward. “Guess you should practice hiding it just in case.”

The borzoi lunged forward and pressed his long muzzle against the collie’s, their tongues lancing out and sliding against one another. Her heaving chest pressed her modest breasts against him as they melted into each other. And, of course, his sex found hers like a dowsing rod–only it was guided by thousands of years of instinct rather than superstition. Sticky, muscular flesh welcomed him, squeezing and twitching. Every fold of Holden's brain throbbed with pleasure.

—

“His vitals are going right back up,” Scranton remarked, watching the numbers and graphs transition into a bright orange hue.

“No shit,” Swiftly gasped, leaning against the glass with both hands as he watched the creature’s proboscis consume the subject's cock. His own penis was well on its way to a raging erection of its own, stretching its sheath and drooling into his trousers.

—

“Fuck me! Fuck me goddamnit!” Moira growled as Holden hips became a blur of sporadic thrusting motion.

“T-The knot! Careful!” Holden warned, desperately trying to control himself enough to avoid giving in to his hindbrain’s command to fill her with seed.

“Fuck it! I want it all!” she cried out.

Holden could not deny her request.

The collie's eyes shot open. Her fluffy head wrenched backward, and her glasses clattered unheeded onto the floor. Choking sounds emerged from her muzzle as orgasm claimed her mental faculties. Her spasming flesh might have shoved Holden out had he not anchored himself in her with his canine cock. Her body twitched and chewed on his length as semen began to jet out of it.

“O-oh god,” Holden moaned, running his hand along her jaw as he filled her. “You have no idea how much I've wanted this.”

The vision continued. Beyond it, Holden’s body began to move.

—-

“I believe he's fully…engaged, in the canine sense. Correct?” Dr. Scranton asked, glancing over at the enraptured fox.

He didn't answer. His unblinking eyes stared into the quarantine room as the beast writhed on the test subject's crotch, smearing its slimy orifice over the borzoi’s sex. Swiftly didn't react at all, even as Holden sat up and rose to his feet in a series of robotic, jerky motions. The dog’s face turned toward the one-way window.

“Swiftly! Step away, damnit!” the cat admonished, looking down at the vital readout.

Nothing was elevated. Every readout was green once more. Impossible.

“You there. Fox beyond the glass,” Holden spoke in a raspy voice that was hardly recognizable as his own. “You will change the trajectory of this craft and land on Bismuth. Do this and know unfathomable pleasure.”

Scranton recoiled in shock as the fox staggered away from the window and sprinted down the hall at an astonishing pace.

“Get back here, you idiot!” Scranton called after his colleague. He considered attempting to run after him, but his feet would not move. The borzoi's eyes were now fixed on him.

“You. Cat,” the thing that has been Holden spoke, thrusting a finger toward him. “You will use your device to open this cell.”

“I…neve–” Scranton replied before trailing off. Visions of Safara Rune, a leopard pop star that he'd lusted over in high school, blossomed in his mind. Her nude form was rendered in perfect fidelity as she danced and gyrated her lithe body just for him. While his mind watched her breasts swing like a hypnotist's watch, his fingers tapped through the holographic menu of his wrist computer. After one last command, the door to the quarantine chamber slid open. Dr. Scranton then slid against the wall until his ass plopped against the floor. His hand toyed with his erection through his trousers as the visions intensified, and the leopard sang a lewd ballad just for him.

Holden Crawford, wearing only the symbiotic creature attached to his groin, walked out of the cell and into the bowels of The Darwin.