By Bruce McNair
Frank and Jimmy responded to an emergency at space dock 2. A medical problem, but no further detail.
***
In the spacecraft, the two pilots flopped over in their seats. Both had gaping holes in their heads. Blood and gore spattered most surfaces.
The craft docked on auto-pilot. But who made the emergency call?
***
Frank called in, “Base, no sign of life.”
Footsteps. The pair wheeled. A tall green humanoid confronted them.
Frank touched his blaster. “Who… or what are you?”
“Grrr!” The thing stepped closer.
Jimmy raised his blaster. The creature moved faster. It impaled him with one arm and gouged his head open with the other.
***
Through the flying gore, Frank blasted the monster as it turned. Green ‘blood’ oozed from a gaping wound. But it kept advancing.
Frank fired again but missed as it knocked his arm aside. He ducked under its swinging arm. Bringing the blaster to its head, he fired. Green gore flew everywhere.
His communicator blurted. “Report.”
He surveyed the chaos. “Man down. Situation under control.”
***
Hours later, the Station Manager called. “That creature disappeared.”
A thump made Frank turn.
“Grrr!”
About the Author
Bruce McNair
Bruce is an older Australian, living in Adelaide, who enjoys reading and writing, especially short stories and flash fiction.
He has a master’s degree in science, specialising in computer science.
He has over forty years of experience in fields such as software engineering and systems engineering, particularly the development of complex systems.
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Timothy Dwyer is an American science-fiction writer living in New Zealand.
Haneko Takayama is an award-winning Japanese writer. In 2009, her short story “Udon, Kitsune tsuki no” was a runner-up for the Sogen SF Short Story Award. 
Kerrie Noor was born in Melbourne Australia in 1960 but has spent most of her adult life in Scotland.
Amy Logan's first work was published on October 29, 1970. It has been a bit of a dry spell since, so she is very excited to have the opportunity to contribute to AntipodeanSF.
Keech has been writing fiction and poetry for 40 years, and is currently working on a speculative novel of the Afterlife, focusing on Victorian literature, though it is technically set in the near future.
Myna Chang writes flash and short stories in a variety of genres.
Umiyuri Katsuyama is a multiple-award-winning writer of fantasy and horror, often based on Asian folklore motifs.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
Geraldine Borella writes adult short stories and stories for children and has been published in anthologies for both. In 2018, one of her children’s short stories placed second in The Buzz Words Short Story Prize and she won an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship. She currently works part-time as a hospital pharmacist and as an online creative writing tutor.
Although a writer of the baby boom persuasion, Ed has not boomed for quite a while.
Tim Borella has never lost his childhood passion for SF and writing in general and has been lucky enough to have worked most of his life as a pilot — in other words, he’s never properly grown up.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
