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The next hour moved like a blur for her. Apollonia was moved swiftly off her shuttle when it docked with the Sol Brilliant. Aides and orderlies and officers and all sorts of people directed her, led her, through the ship to other spots. A room to wait, another room to wait near the hangar, then the hangar where she waited, then onto the shuttle where she waited for departure.
It was a large shuttle, reminding her of the one that Brooks had brought to New Vitriol. She couldn’t even remember the name of that ship, she realized, and it had been her salvation from that hellhole. Funny how the mind worked.
Everything was so clean, so spotless on the ships. It was impressive and she had no desire to go back to the filthy stations she’d known growing up, but it also bothered her.
“Do you have any dirt?” she asked one orderly, on a whim.
The man looked confused. “No, miss, we keep the ship spotless.”
Ah, well. It wasn’t like she was going to get a bucket of dirt and put her feet in it just to pretend she was back on Earth, but damn did she wish she was back there.
The main hall of the shuttle had multiple rooms – all neatly labeled with things like Officer’s Rest, Study, Observation, and she drifted down it, kind of hoping to find one reserved just for depressed napping. It seemed that for all its crazy size and impressive qualities, the Sol Brilliant didn’t have artificial gravity like the Craton.
All of the doors were open, and she was still trying to pick one to wait out the trip, when a strange smell caught her nose.
It was unpleasant, yet it reminded her of the ocean. She moved towards the source, peered through a door, and recoiled slightly as she saw two beings within.
One, she knew, was a Qlerning. Tall, lanky aliens with tiny, wideset black eyes on a mostly featureless body. Very human-like, if you blurred out all the features of a human and made the head wider. It was sitting behind a table, holding a small string instrument that reminded her of a ukulele.
Next to it was something she had never seen before.
The top of it came up to about her nose, but it was not at all humanoid. The body was cylindrical, like a barrel, in three sections. Eyes dotted it, small round things that seemed to blink too often. The sections rotated independently of each other to some degree, and as she stared, its sections rotated so three of its eyes were focused on her.
Along the top, which just appeared to be an open cavity, were short, thick tendrils capped in odd pale pods. They reminded her of a weird earth animal she’d heard of once, a goose barnacle.
It walked on five stocky legs, and every bit of it was chitinous, shaped into spikes and bumps that seemed borderline dangerous. No, not quite like chitin, she thought. It was almost stony.
It clumped a step to the side, its eyes following her, and she just watched it.
It made some rumbling noise, then something like a belch that someone didn’t let out, and then a sound like falling pebbles.
“Staring is what humans do when surprised,” the Qlerning said to it.
“Oh – I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.” She started to move back and close the door, but the creature let out a rattling sound that made her flinch.
“The entrance of the room is for entering,” the Qlerning said cryptically.
“I can get a different room . . .”
“A bundle of travelers are less likely to die.” The Qlerning punctuated its words with some plucking on its ukulele. It wasn’t really musical, just seemed like random strings to her.
“Ah, well . . .” The smell was definitely coming from this room – from the weird pillar rock thing – and she kind of wanted to be around it just to be reminded of the ocean. “I hope I didn’t offend . . . I don’t know your names, sorry.”
The Rock Pillar grumbled, and the Qlerning nodded to it.
“He introduces me as Plep,” Plep said.
“And what is its name?” she asked.
The Qlerning did not look at her. “She did say ‘it’. I don’t think she can tell you’re a male. And I just referred to you as ‘he’.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My system . . . uh, it doesn’t really translate what he’s saying. And I’ve never . . . seen one of his kind before.” She really wasn’t sure of the appropriate behavior here. It was her first contact with whatever he was.
She looked at her system, but it offered no useful information.
“I’m Apollonia Nor, by the way.”
“I have had breakfast,” Plep said, looking at her intently.
“Oh,” she said, clearly missing the connection of that to her introduction. “That’s good? I often skip it because . . .” Well, she often slept late. But she didn’t want to say that. “I’m not hungry in the morning.”
The Qlerning’s hand twitched, and it plucked at some discordant strings on its instrument.
An awkward silence filled the room, until the Rock Pillar started bouncing up and down slightly in a jittery way, its parts scraping and clacking together.
“To not know is a sign of not caring,” Plep replied to him.
“What?” Apollonia asked.
He said nothing else, and now the Rock Pillar had rotated its sections to look at the Qlerning. She wondered if she should leave anyway, but now that seemed ruder than staying. She pulled up a chair and sat at the table.
The Qlerning plucked some more strings, but then leaned forward, and suddenly held out the ukulele to her.
“Uh, no thanks, I don’t know how to play,” she said.
The Rock Pillar did its rattling thing again. She looked to Plep, hoping he’d translate, but he did not comment.
“Why can’t I understand him? My system doesn’t tell me anything,” Apollonia asked.
“Abmon and humans often do not mix,” Plep said, in a tone her system could translate as almost . . . huffy. “Certain scents, for delicate senses do not bring joy.”
Other Terrestrial 
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