Fast Cars and Intergalactic Speed Dating

35: These Guys Again?

The wall behind the closed doors, the wall of the central hub of the station, began to move.

Richard threw his arms out as the sight gave him the sensation of moving, grasping hold of the hand rail on the side of the bridge. After a moment, he realized it wasn't the bridge that was moving. It was the huge, spherical center of the waystation.

After about a minute, the whirring quieted, and the double doors slid open. There was a grind and squeak that Richard did not find comforting, but then the way was clear for them to enter the waystation's hub.

The closest parallel in Richard's experience to what he saw was, honestly, a petrol station. There were shelves laden with a variety of things Richard did not recognize, but which seemed like food. An entire wall was hung with what looked like tools, equipment, and materials for spaceship maintenance. And at the center of the room, seated behind a counter examining their nails, was a very bored-looking pink person with eyes on either side of their head, rather like a fish's. They had other very piscine attributes, in fact: scales, fins along prominent features, and what looked very much like frilled gills on the sides of their body.

"Hi!" Garth said, waving at the pink person. "We're from Earth!"

"Wow, that's—true, but also probably not a good idea to just go around advertising," said Richard in an undertone.

The pink person looked at Garth. They pointed to an aisle and spoke in a raspy, accented voice. "Earth food is yonder being."

"What? No way!" Garth nearly ran in the direction the stranger had indicated. A moment later, his cry of triumph reverberated throughout the station, causing the attendant to flinch, their fins flaring up in an unsettling display of spikes.

"What? What's wrong?" asked Richard, dashing toward his friend. Kavita came behind a bit more cautiously.

"They have Cheetos!" Garth had an armful of snack-sized bags. "This is awesome!"

"Seriously?" Richard leaned in, plucking one of the bags out of Garth's arm. "Wow. Incredible."

Kavita took the bag from Richard, a skeptical arch to her brow. She examined the packet and then said, "Garth, these are expired by nine months."

"Don't care. What kind of money do you take?" he asked, addressing this question to the finned attendant. "I've got dollars. Do you take dollars?"

The attendant frowned at him and made a shooing gesture with their hand.

Garth cocked his head at the attendant. "Is that good? Is that a yes?"

"I am not accepting the dollars," they said.

"Balls." Garth hugged his armload of Cheetos to his chest with a crinkle of plastic. "What about American Express?"

"Garth, I think we're going to have to let the Cheetos go," Richard whispered. He was eyeing the price placard on the shelf from which Garth had taken the snacks. He couldn't make out the symbols and had no idea what the snacks cost, but he imagined the import fees were breathtaking.

At that moment, Ol-Maran entered the station. They brought with them a heavy, oily scent Richard guessed was the smell of the eylar gas. Ol-Maran approached the attendant. They said something in Karran; the attendant responded in another language, and Ol-Maran seamlessly shifted into that tongue.

"I have got to get one of those translators," Kavita whispered.

Ol-Maran waved a device from their pocket in front of a screen the attendant held out. There was a chirp, unfamiliar to the humans but unmistakably the beep of the robot hive mind of commerce conducting a financial transaction.