Elemental by Steven Savile Page B

it out and strapped it on. “ This way I won’t miss,” he told himself, his newly healed lip taut with a grim smile. “There’s nothing like the up-close-and-personal touch.”
    He slid over to another part of the ship’s controls, flickered his barbs over buttons, switches, sensors and knobbly things, then stepped into the center of the glowing disc that materialized in the middle of the deck. The light was cool and smelled of vanillaworms, a superfluous sensory input that allowed the traveler to relax and forget about the fact that his disassembled particles were being spewed through space. It was also mildly hallucinogenic.
    The alien enjoyed a good snort of vanillaworm as much as the next entity. He was always sad when the light of the translocator beam faded and the trip was over, but work awaited. Thick grass cushioned his bulk until his gravitation adjusters kicked in, making his atmospheriskin crackle loudly. He was right under the tree and ready for business.
    It was just then that his former visitor chose to rear up to a magnificent height, bringing him eye-level with the creature in the branches. “Be not afraid!” the alien’s erstwhile guest declared cheerily, extending an olive branch that became the biggest banana the young world had ever seen.
    It was history’s worst case of bad timing since the last comet strike. The creature in the tree looked from winged messenger to blue blob, from titanic banana to bells-and-whistles ray gun, bared her fangs, let out a screech that got the attention of every pack of giant hyenas on the plains, and launched herself from the branches. She hit the ground running on all fours, but soon picked up speed and was skimming along on her hind limbs until she was no more than a speck in the distance.
    The alien and his former guest exchanged a significant look. “That does it. I quit,” the alien said at last. “I’m going home and I’m going to
tell them that the creatures were all extinct when I got here.”
    â€œBut that’s a lie,” the visitor chided.
    â€œThe truth is as much a matter of when as it is of what ,” the alien countered. “I live a long way away from here. Who’s to say what the truth will be by the time I get home? I mean, come on, honestly, do you think something that weak and scrawny’s got what it takes to survive much longer?” He picked up a chewed-over legbone and used it to point in the direction his elusive target had bolted. “No claws, no horns, and did you get a look at those sorry excuses for fangs? Pitiful.”
    The visitor shrugged his mighty wings and absently took a bite of the banana. “I suppose you’re right. But still, I can’t lie about this to my superiors. We’ve got all sorts of administrative policies in place against stuff like that. They’re going to insist I come back and do something about that critter, Who knows what. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe by the time they do decide what to do about it, it will be extinct.”
    â€œYou can always hope,” the alien suggested amiably.
    â€œAnd pray.” The visitor stopped chewing a mouthful of banana long enough to notice that he’d been snacking on his symbol of office. “Want some?” he asked, blushing.
    It was a slip that never should have happened. It was an action forbidden by every basic regulation in the alien’s training, but the higgledy-piggledy state of his mission made him forgetful and careless. He took the fruit and ate of it, relishing its sweetness. Only then did the full knowledge of what he’d done hit him.
    â€œOh, my God!” he cried.
    â€œYour what?” asked the visitor.
    The alien wasn’t listening. “What have I done? I’m contaminated! Doomed! I consumed extraplanetary nourishment! Who knows what sort of microbes it’s carrying? Even if it doesn’t kill me, I can’t go home again