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resting and were yet to become aware of the current problem.
    “Tell the captain,” Sofus insisted, waving the fumes away from his scent receptors with his 100 hands. He was the largest and most solid of the Kail siblings traveling aboard the Wichu liner Whiskerchin . “They must fix the system again . We must bathe! I cannot function smelling like these creatures.”
    Phutes signed assent with a curt motion of his right forearm. This made complaint number 101001 since they had come on board. Satisfaction would be achieved, or he would find it difficult to restrain himself or his siblings from violence. He stamped out of the cabin and down the corridor toward the lift chute. The deck thundered under his heavy, solid feet. Soft, inefficient, filthy capsules, made for soft, inefficient, filthy beings. He hated being among them, but he had little choice.
    Only with the greatest possible reluctance had Phutes and his companions taken passage on a Wichu freighter from the Kail sector. Few native commanders wanted to pass out of their well-protected systems and into the realm of the slimy ones. Phutes disliked the necessity of interacting with the soft-fleshed beings. One could smell the decay coming from them. And what about the effluvia that issued from each? Every orifice emitted noxious compounds. And they could not be far from a repository of one kind or another, all of which had to be constructed with complicated mechanisms and the waste of good clean water or pure gaseous elements. Or both. They left trails of distasteful organic matter wherever they went. They even exhaled smelly organic particles. He had tried spraying the cabin with powerful mineral-based disinfectants, but the Wichu captain had taken his canisters away from him, using many words that the language chips in its system refused to translate. Phutes spoke no Wichu. He saw no reason to interact further with the crew and other passengers than the exchange of fare for transport. At the captain’s insistence, he and the siblings who spoke for the Kail on board wore a steel wristband embedded with an electronic chip that translated his speech into the uncouth sounds Wichu made.
    His demands for quarters to suit his party’s comfort had been met, but not without argument and many other untranslatable phrases. In the end, sanitized metal bins filled with purified silicate sands for them to burrow into during resting and excretory periods had been provided. It had taken more negotiation and arguments until they were satisfactory to the Kail. The Wichu did not seem to care. Phutes saw the way they cared for themselves, and was not surprised at their disregard for the comfort of others. They seemed unaware that they had risen even marginally from the unspeakable slime that had engendered them. The Kail refused to be ignored. Phutes shoved his way into the lift shaft, ignoring the annoyed looks and remarks of crew members of many species who had been waiting in line. Kail did not wait.
    He allowed the jets of force to carry him upward toward the bridge deck. He would only speak with the captain.
    Carbon-based life forms had become disgustingly prevalent on all planets with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Even some methane worlds were infested. Wherever they went, the soft ephemerals soiled the pristine silicon landscape with excrescences that burgeoned and reproduced themselves until the beauty of the land could no longer be felt underfoot. The comfort of stone and metal were obscured. Only the squishiness of green plant life met the soles of his feet. Every step Phutes took on one of those planets made him seethe with hatred.
    The acid circulating through his internal organs bubbled vigorously at that memory, threatening to overflow out of his orifices. Phutes did his best to control himself. The Wichu had made it clear that if the Kail damaged the ship any more than the captain claimed they already had, they would be put off on the nearest asteroid large enough to hold