“You idiots!” Dr. Fen shrieked, not with fear, but with academic rage. “You’ve ruined it! We were this close to proving the ‘Great Flavor Hypothesis’!”
“You can’t fight it,” Dr. Fen said. “You have to offend it. You need a flavor so vile, so fundamentally wrong, that it rejects us like a bad oyster.”
Back on the bridge, the crew was picking themselves up off the floor.
Ed turned to Bortus. “Status?”
Just then, Dr. Fen hailed them. “Captain Mercer,” she said, a wild, maniacal grin on her face. “You’ve just committed the first act of biological warfare using a fermented beverage. I’m submitting a paper. Title: ‘Palate Cleansing at the Galactic Scale: How a Moclan’s Poor Life Choices Saved the Union.’”
The Orville emitted a concentrated burst of the Pepto-Abysmal’s flavor signature directly into the cloud’s “taste” receptors. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the entire cloud shuddered—a cosmic, full-body dry heave. The amber haze turned a violent shade of chartreuse. A booming, psychic wave of pure revulsion washed over the ship’s hull.
Bortus stared at the now-empty bottle in his hands. His voice was a low rumble of loss. “We are safe, Captain. But my vintage is gone.” The Orville
Commander Kelly Grayson tapped her console. “Nothing, Ed. No response to any frequency. It’s just… munching.”
Isaac stepped forward, his optical sensor glowing. “Fascinating. The cloud’s digestive enzymes are non-random. They target specific mineral structures and organic compounds with the precision of a sommelier selecting a vintage. The moon it was consuming was rich in tricyclic hydrocarbons and volcanic salts. A ‘complex, earthy’ profile, one might say.”
A quick transport later, Ed, Kelly, Alara, and Isaac (the Kaylon whose expression of perpetual mild disdain never changed) stood in the Sagan ’s dripping cargo bay. They found two survivors: Dr. Aris Fen, a brilliant xenobiologist, and her husband, a nervous engineer named Klytus who was trying to re-route power through a gelatinous cube. “You idiots
“It is the only logical choice,” Isaac stated.
Kelly smiled. “Because every other ship in the fleet would have tried to negotiate with it or shoot it. You? You made it throw up.”
The Orville and the gutted Sagan were ejected from the nebula like a watermelon seed, tumbling end over end into clear space. The cloud, looking visibly offended, contracted into a tight, angry ball and zipped away at warp speed, probably to find a nice, bland asteroid to cleanse its palate. We were this close to proving the ‘Great
Kelly blinked. “The what?”
“No,” Ed whispered.