The Frick

Chapter one

The heat of the red sun beating down on his angular face like a hot laser awaken him. He struggled to sit up and failed. Taking a deep breath he tried again. This time he managed, but barely. Where am I?

Turning his head took totally concentration. And then everything was spinning so fast he couldn't recognized his surroundings. He closed his eyes. The world stopped spinning. Even so he kept his eyes closed for several moments longer.

What awaited his eyes was orange sand. Hot orange sand that was heating up fast. As far as he could see there was nothing but sand, orange hot sand. He tried turning his head again. Only to confront the wreckage of a shuttle!

The shuttle craft 's nose was half buried in the orange desert sand. It was only as he rose to his feet that he spotted the black robed body half covered with orange sand. The dead man drew him to its side as though he was alive and a rope around his waist pulling him. He knelt down beside the blacked robed man and looked at the man's face.

It's me! That's my face! I'm dead! He touched his hands to his face. Scales! He pulled his hands away from his face and looked at them. Green scales! This isn't my body! He glanced back down at the broken body. His eyes following the opened robe and saw the bloody hole in the lower part of the man chest. Arkark! That's my name. I'm a psytec bounty hunter. I was bringing the Frick back to Magellan Station aboard A Federation shuttle to collect my bounty. That me lying in the sand. I'm dead!

Suddenly his memory of the crash returned. The Frick had some how done the impossible and broken out of the stress field. Arkark remembered the Frick killing Corporal Bradly with his bare hands and then shoving his razor clawed finger into his own body, the one broken in the sand. The creature that moved too fast. And as he lay dying he saw sergeant Trigger firing his weapon at the Frick.

Arkark remember reaching out with his mind and touching the mind of the Frick trying to take control of it's mind when something exploded inside the shuttle. There his memory of the fight ended.

I somehow transferred my mind into the Frick's body. Arkark shook his head. Yes he was an unrated psytec but he shouldn't have had the mental ability to transfer that essence of his mind into the body of the Frick. Not even a level twelve psytec could preform such a feat. The act of dying must have boosted my mental powers to an unheard of level.

Arkark sat down in the sand beside the body. Again he looked at his clawed hands. I'm a Frick. I'm in a Frick's body. That thought brought forth his long and dangerous hunt for the Frick, the most feared and dangerous humanoid creature in the known universe. He had lead a special unit of Terre Patrol assigned to hunt down the Fick to the creature hideout. And even though he had managed to gain partial control the Frick's mind and hobbled the Frick movements, the creature had managed to kill four members of accompanying squad of Terre Patrol before he could be subdued with their massive weapon fire.

He over came the stress field in the shuttle! The full horror of that settled on Arkark like a heavy burden. The Frick is far more dangerous than I realized. I should have not tried to capture the last Frick. It should have destroyed it even if it meant destroying the entire planet the creature was hiding upon like they had destroyed the Frick home world. Nothing as dangerous and as intelligent as a Frick has the right to live. It is a killing machine.

But you are a Frick. The thought send a shiver through Arkark's mind because he realized that he was not alone in the mind of the Frick. There was a darkness inside the mind that he was holding at bay. A terrible darkness. The Frick's mind is here too.

To take his thoughts away from what he was or was not, Arkark turned his attention to the wrecked shuttle. The rear hatch was opened. He climbed the ramp of the rear hatch feeling the grace and power of the his new body. It was exhilarating.

The inside of the shuttle in shambles. The explosion and impact had torn equipment from the walls and litter the shuttle floor with it. He spotted the two bodies of the Terre Patrol. One was a huge muscular man in a leather uniform with a corporal's slash on the sleeve. His name was Stu. The other wore the same uniform but was thinner and taller and on the sleeve was a sergeant's slash. His name was Sergeant Trigger. Both good men. And I killed them.

It was while looking down at Sergeant Trigger's body that he saw his own image in a broken piece of mirror. I'm hideous! The image staring back at him from the piece of broken mirror wasn't remotely human. The face was all wrong. Skinny long curved nose above a huge mouth of vicious pointed teeth. The face was a living nightmare. Deep set eyes blood red. Silver scales! This is worst than death! Arkark looked away. He took a deep breath.

Arkark looked by down at his image in the broken piece of mirror. Anyone recognizing me as a Frick will try to kill me or report my presence to Terre Patrol. Arkark through back his head and let out a weird scream half human and half feline. The scream came from the dark horror that was the mind of the Frick. It was the last sounds that that many humans had heard, the killing scream of a Frick.

Seeing his back pack among the litter on the floor of the shuttle, Arkark picked it up and hugged it. Holding a possession of his dead human body had a calming affect on his turbulent mind. He opened the back flap and pulled out his spare black robe. Putting it on made him almost feel human again. You will never be human. The thought came the dark part of his mind that was the Frick.

To distract himself, Arkark startred gathering up water bottles and emergency food packages and storing them in his back pack. Then he looked for weapons. He found corporal Stu's weapon, a deadly particle gun and tucked it into the golden sash belted around the waist of the black robe he was wearing. He search until he found several energy charges for the particle gun and added them to his back pack.

Arkark then dug a deep grave for his human body. It was a strange and sad feeling burying himself. I wish I were dead. He found himself thinking as he shoveled hot red sand over his human body. What is life going to be like in the body of a monster?

Realizing that he couldn't stay at the shuttle wreck because of the fear of a rescue mission finding the wreck and thus finding an escaped Frick, Arkark searched the horizons for signs of civilization. Nothing. No building. No fliers. I don't even know what planet I am on?

The only possibility lay in a high ridge of mountains he could see to the north or the wreckage. If there is a settlement it will be in the mountains and not in the desert.

But Arkark didn't start out for the mountains until after the burning red ball dropped below the western horizon. Only then did he began his march toward the distance mountains. And though it was a dark moonless night, Arkark found that the eyes of the Frick could see almost as well pitch dark as in full daylight.

But Arkark found he didn't have to only depend on his sight, he could smell hundreds of scents in cooling night air of the desert. Smells that his old human nose would never had detected. I don't know this new body nor what it is capable of. Arkark found that an almost pleasant thought. Exploring the powers of his new body was a welcome distraction. And at the moment he needed all the distraction he could get to forget what a monster he had become.

Chapter Two

The snake like thing jettisoned out of the sand with out warning. Before Arkark could react the thing was coiled around the body of the Frick, his body. Even with the Frick's heighten sense of smell, Arkark had not detected it's presence under the sand. But then the thing that wrapped itself around the Frick's body wasn't an animal. It was the odorless root of a whip plant. Arkark stepping on the hair fine roots buried under the desert sand had sprung the trap.

Arkark struggled but the more he struggled the tighter became the coils encircling him. Feeling the press on his torso mounting and his breathing becoming labored, Arkark panicked. He tried to pull away form the thick flexible root. It didn't work. Every moment caused the caused the whip plant to constriction tighter.

Suddenly Arkark lost control of the dark mind that he shared the Frick's body with. That subdued monstrous mind of the Frick took swift control of his body. Like a someone viewing the scene from out side of his body, Arkark watched the Frick rip the encircling root of the whip plant to shreds with his razor sharp claws. Only when he was free of the coils of the whip plant was Arkark able to gain control of the Frick's body again.

The encounter frightened Arkark! Not only was there unseen dangers in the desert that even the Frick couldn't detect, but he had to worry about losing control to the monstrous mind he shared the body of the Frick with. And monstrous it was. The hate that had flowed from the Frick's dark mind during it's brief takeover had left Arkark feeling defiled. It was as though something evil had crawled into his mind and died.

Arkark thought about stopping, but sensed that there was still a lot of darkness before the red sun would appear again. It was an instinctive feeling that he got from the mind of the Frick.

It was later than a sound caused him to look back toward where he had came just in time to see the night sky light up with a streak of brightness.

A rescue shuttle! The flashing, falling star could only signal the reentry of a space shuttle. They will be after the Frick. After me. Arkark thought knowing that Terra Patrol would not allow a Frick to escape so easily.

Turning back toward the mountains barely visible in the darkness of the night even with the air of the Frick's night vision, Arkark began to trot. Let's see what this horrible body is capable of.

Hours later he was still trotting at a steady pace toward the distance mountains when a tentacle of thought brushed against his mind. A scan hound! Arkark shook his head. The thought from the scan hound was more foul even than the thoughts of a Frick. The things were undead. Human brains wired into the head of a grossly modified blood hound controlled by terr patrol handlers aboard the shuttle. The scan hound would follow him as long as it lived using its keen sense of smell and psychic ability to sense his mind.

And of course when it found him the terr patrol would right behind it armed to the teeth and firing first and asking question later. To them he would only be a Frick. A foul deadly creature to be killed on sight. Even if he was able to speak to them, having seen his dead body they would never believe that he was alive in the body of the Frick. No they would kill him on sight!

Arkark's trot turn into a full sprint. Reaching the mountains was his only hope of survival. Yes, a Frick was super strong and fast as lightening but a blast with a laser gun would still kill him. Hunting Fricks had been a sport even since their home world was discovered. There was no greater trophy a hunter could have hanging on his wall than the humanoid head of a Frick.

But the fate of the Fricks had changed when someone had smuggled one off their home wold. Unknown to the rest of the settlers on the planet Huntress it had laid it's eggs in a human settler's body living at the edge of a huge hunting preserve. The Frick maggots had then proceeded to eat their way out emerging small versions of hideous selves. Then had fed upon the animals in the preserve and grown to maturity quickly. It was only when another infected settler had been found by his friends sick in his station, that the knowledge of the Fricks presence become known. It had taken the sterilization of the entire preserve to eradicate the Frick infestation.

There was no way Terra Patrol was going to allow a Frick to escape on Sahara. Had they not sterilized the Frick home world after then incident on Huntress. The Frick that Arkark had been escorting to Earth Station as the lone surviving Frick from Huntress. The creature was to have been kept in a prison zoo for dangerous humanoids to be studies.

Now that he, Arkark/Frick was loose on Sahara Terr Patrol would not rest until he was captured or killed. And at this stage, Arkark was thinking that they might prefer the Frick dead! Why else would they bring a scan hound to Sahara. The reanimated dog like creatures were almost indestructible killing machines! But then so is a Frick. Arkark didn't know if the thought came from him of the mind of the Frick.

There was one thing for sure, the Frick had endurance. Although he had been running for hours now, he felt no fatigue. Hideous though his new body might be, it had super human strength and speed. He sense that that he was out distancing the scan hound and felt that he might yet make the mountains. Even how he was running through the foot hills. Although dry the ground he ran over was not hard desert. Here and there he passed scrub plants. These he made detours around after his encounter with the whip plant. Everything seem dangerous on Sahara.

Arkark tried to recall all the information he knew about the desert world of Sahara. It was truly a unique planet as he remembered. Almost every animal form and plant form was dangerous. Plants being poisonous and the animals being vicious and aggressive. The speculation of why the planets life forms were so deadly was the spice dust. Pockets of spice dust were to be found through out the desert world. It was mined legally by the Federation. It was said that without the drug the Federation would collapse. It was the oil the greased the empire. One could not travel through hyper space without the drug. It kept the mind sane during it's exposure to the abnormalities of space and time in hyper space.

Arkark was one of only a few that didn't need the drug in hyper space. It was his strange birth the made him immune to the mind bending effect of hyper space. For he had been born in hyper space. The birth had killed his mother. And being born in hyper space had done something to Arkark's mind. His psychic abilities had derived from his birth in hyper space and not for a genetic mutation like other psychics.

The first rays of the blazing hot sun found Arkark in the very shadow of the rugged towering mountain peaks. He paused a moment to scan the foot hills behind him. Although he couldn't see it, he knew that the scan hound was still on his trail.

The flier zipped over the top of a small hill and headed directly at him. Damn I should have zig zag! The path he had taken to the mountains had been too straight. The flier had came ahead of the scan hound. Now is was upon him.

A flash of light caused his Frick body to move instinctively. He dodged to the side as he burst into a flash of movement and then into a run. Behind him the laser flashed burning holes in the ground were he had been only a fraction of a second earlier. Dodging as he ran Arkark expected to feel the searing pain of the laser weapon at any moment.

The flier fired rapidly at it swept past. Arkark took advantage and burst into a straight run that took him into the rocks at the base of the mountain. He move quickly deeper into the jagged rocks. Safe for now! But not for long. The foul scan hound would track him easily through the rocks and up the mountain slop. He wasn't out of danger by a long shot. Sooner or later he would have to confront the scan hound. But now was not the time nor place. He had to be in a place inaccessible to the flier to meet the scan hound. Or those aboard would burn them both in an effort to kill a Frick.

Using the Frick great strength and agility, Arkark scampered up the mountain slop moving fast at first but then as the slop became almost vertical, he pace slowed as he picked his way from rocky ledge to rocky ledge. The climb took all his concentration. So much so that he failed to see the huge winged predator swooping down from high above until it was too late.

Scarp claws suddenly grasped both shoulders. Arkark's body was jerked upward. A sharp out cropping of a ledge caught his belt momentarily halting his accent skyward. Then the belt gave way and suddenly he was airborne. The particle gun! Arkark thought as the belt broke and the particle gun fell to the down the slop as the huge winged thing, with Arkark dangling form it's claws soared upward with frantic flapping wings. Relax! Came a thought from the dark side of his mind where the Frick dwelt. To kill the wing think now was to drop to his death in the rocks below. No he had to relax and wait until the thing landed. Then would be the time to attack it.

Although the pain was sever, Arkark found it easy to ignore and knew that was the influence of the Frick part of his mind. From what he had seen and read about the creatures they couldn't be controlled by pain. Put them in a electrified enclosure and they would throw themselves at the bars until they electrocuted themselves. And for once Arkark was glad for the presence of the Frick mental presence.

The huge winged creature soared over the very top of the mountain Arkark had been climbing. Beyond the mountains lay a rugged plateau of jagged badlands. It was toward one of the jagged peaks that the creature carried Arkark. And even before afar Arkark spotted the creature's nest. A mound of brush and stone piled into a circle. In the circle waited three smaller versions of the creature that carried Arkark.

The wing creature dropped Arkark into the circle of stones without landing. Like a cat his Frick body landed on his feet and true to the nature of the beast, Arkark found himself lashing out with the Frick razor sharp claws. He disemboweled the first wing chick that attacked with open beak. The second one he neatly decapitated with a single stroke. The third chick fled to the far side of the nest squawking .

Help came in the form of the winged creature that had plucked Arkark from the mountain slop. The huge creature alighted on the rocky ledge of the nest and peered down at its two dead chick. Then it to let out a squawk as he leaned forward and struck at Arkark with it huge beak. The powerful beak missed the furred skin of the Frick by a hair's breath, but it did snap through the straps of the back pack instead of laying open the Frick chest.

Letting the back pack drop away, Arkark dived over the rocks and brush and out of the nest. But he found no place to escape. The winged creature paused to nuzzle its lone surviving check before turning it attention again to Arkark. It's beak shot forward like a striking snake. The body of the Frick move faster! Arkark ducked right then before the winged creature could retract its beak he slashed its neck with his clawed hand.

The monstrous winged creature let out a painful squawk. It neck dripped blood, but the leather hide of the beast had resisted even the razor claws of the Frick enough so that the wound was only minor. Yet Arkark counter attack had instilled caution into the winged creature. It paused and regarded Arkark with it's small red eyes as it opened and snapped shut it powerful beak.

Arkark used the lull in the creature's attack to gather up a fist sized rock. Then taking aim he hurled it with all the strength of the Frick at the winged creature. The rock struck the winged one in the breast with a loud thud! The force of the rock drove the creature back a couple of steps. It shook its self and let out another squawk of pain. And then stood there staring at Arkark. Finally it seemed to make up its mind and turned back to the nest.

Arkark wasted no time in climbing down from the rock ledge. He half expected the wing creature to attack again but it remained in its nest and from what Arkark could see from the ground it was feeding the remains of it two dead chick to the surviving one. This is a savage world. Fit for a Frick. Came the thoughts from the Frick's part of his mind. Not while I'm in control. Arkark responded.

Once again with feel planted on firm ground, Arkark surveyed the plateau even as he kept a watch out for the winged creature. Looking at the badlands about him, he realized that he was safe from skyward Terre Patrol attack. There was too much cover for him to hid among. But there was still the scan hound. Nothing would stop the undead half animal half machine. It was relentless and there was no hiding the trail his thought left for it to follow.

Deciding to keep heading north, Arkark headed out dodging in and out of the small rock canyons that forced him to take a zig zag course through the badlands. It was about an hour later when he pushed out of a narrow canyon and came on a group of small rabbit like creatures hopping around eating a green moss that grew on the rocks.

Having lost his back pack and it's food supply, Arkark looked upon the little hopper as a his next meal. He studied them closely for a time and seeing nothing threating about them and realizing that the Frick was capable of enough speed to easily catch one of the rabbit size creature, Arkark pounced.

Like a flash he was out of hiding. He dove onto the nearest of the hoppers slashing the creature where just below it head with the razor sharp claws of the Frick. As the hopper flopped in it death throws, it let out a shrill squeak. Arkark reached down to pick up the now dead hopper when suddenly hoppers were attacking him for all quarters.

At least a hundred of the little creature rushed him with bared needle like teeth. It only took the first bite from a hopper for Arkark to realize that he as in a fight for his life. Moving like a whirl wind, he struck out with his claws as the little hopper threw themselves at him in mass. It seemed to matter not to the little creatures that they were running into death itself. Not one hesitated. No mater how man Arkark killed another one took the dead one's place.

As fast as the body of the Frick move, his speed did not save him from all the attacking teeth of the little vermin. When the last hopper lay dead upon the ground, Arkark was bleeding from several cuts on his legs and torso. Picking up one of the fallen hoppers , he sat down on a near by rock. Then before he knew what he was doing, Arkark found himself eating the hopper fur and all. God! What a disgusting creature you are?Arkark thought at that part of his mind that was Frick. Yet he didn't stop eating the hopper. As much as he hate to admit it, the taste of raw meat wasn't disgusting.

His meal finished, Arkark headed north again knowing that he couldn't linger long anywhere because the relentless scan hound was on his trail. After his encounter with the hopper, Arkark stayed clear of any live form he encounter no matter how innocent looking it might appear. He was fast learning just how dangerous a planet Sahara was.