Imminent Danger: And How to Fly Straight Into It by Michelle Proulx Page A

hand toward Miguri as if to grab him.
    “You don’t know an awful lot about Claktills, do you?” Eris said to the scientist. After weeks of being surrounded by self-assured, knowledgeable extraterrestrials, she was pleased she actually knew more than someone else for a change.
    The scientist paused. “Small. Furry head and tail. Home planet destroyed by Rakorsians. Comical appearance. Completely pacifist.” It poked Miguri with its clipboard. “Come now, Claktill. There are tests to be run.”
    “I like my genetic make-up in its current arrangement, thank you very much,” Miguri snapped.
    “Come on, get up!”
    “Make me!”
    The scientist grabbed the Claktill’s arm. Miguri opened his mouth and sank his pointy teeth into the alien’s hand.
    “Yahhh!” the scientist bellowed, leaping away. “You little monster!”
    “Who is the monster?” Miguri asked. “Someone who acts like one out of the need for self-preservation, or someone who is one out of greed?”
    The scientist flashed Miguri a frosty look. Clutching its hand, which was oozing a greenish liquid, it scurried off down the corridor. In its haste, it left Miguri’s cell door open.
    The Claktill jumped to his feet and dashed toward freedom, but the door slammed shut a split second before he reached it. “Proximity sensor.” He sighed and then looked up and saw Eris standing unattended in the hallway. “Quick!” he said, beckoning her toward his cell. “Before he comes back! Try to open the door!”
    Eris hurried to the door and spotted a keypad, a few levers, and a bowl of gel. “Not the sensor gel,” Miguri directed. “You do not have the correct DNA authorization. Try the levers.”
    Somewhat hampered by her binders, she managed to grab a lever and yank down. Nothing. She tried another. Still nothing. Eris was about to try the keypad when a glowing orb floated across her line of sight. “Uhh …” she said, backing away from the door.
    Doctor T bobbed in front of her, pulsing light. “Get away from those controls,” the Triila snapped. “You should learn to obey your superiors. If you are unsatisfied with the current accommodations, let me assure you they could be rendered far less hospitable.”
    Emboldened by her brush with freedom, Eris said, “Just because you have superior technology doesn’t make you my superior, you—argh!” She screamed as the binders sent waves of electrically induced pain up her arms.
    “Anything else to say, terrestrial?” Doctor T inquired.
    “No,” Eris rasped.
    Doctor T floated aside when three humanoid scientists wearing thick, elbow-length gloves entered the hallway. When they approached Miguri’s cell, Eris cried, “Don’t hurt him!” She lunged forward to help her friend but was rewarded by another painful wave of electricity up her arms. “Ow!”
    “You have a shallow learning curve,” the Triila observed. “I wonder if this shows a lack of intelligence in humanity as a species or if you are a defective specimen.”
    As the scientists wrestled binders onto Miguri, he thrashed and clawed at them. But one shock stopped his resistance, and they were able to extract him from the cell.
    Now restrained to Doctor T’s satisfaction, the captives were escorted to a long, narrow room filled with tables and lab equipment. There were half a dozen aliens in sky-blue coveralls being examined by technicians. So we’re not the only lab rats, Eris thought. She cringed when she spotted one sluglike being at the far end of the hall that was soaking its clothes with its own slime.
    Two sets of blue coveralls came floating toward them—one human-sized and one Claktill-sized—suspended in midair. “What’s making the clothes float like that?”
    “Not what, who,” the Triila corrected. “It is an Aoratis from the fourth moon of Langlin V.”
    “It’s invisible,” Eris realized. She couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the creature. A shock of electricity ran up her arms, causing her to flinch