"What the heck is 'Smelly Jelly'?" asked Alex.
Jo turned and looked at her as if she had just asked the dumbest question in the universe, but then remembered. "Oh. I keep forgetting you're new," she said. "Well, let's see…" She paused a moment, collecting her thoughts. "We found the Smelly Jelly a couple of years ago on Pompeii and took a sample back to the Starbase. Somehow it got loose and has been making a pest of itself ever since."
"Is it alive?" asked Alex, peering dubiously down into the gurgling morass below.
"We're not sure," replied Jo. "On the one hand, it doesn't scan as a life form, but on the other hand, it certainly behaves as one!"
"It has shape-shifting capabilities," explained Sam, "which it uses to disguise itself so it can infiltrate crowded social settings. Then it starts stirring up trouble."
"It absorbs neural energy," continued Jo. "So the more turmoil it can create, the more neural energy is created, the more it can feed."
"What does it do?" asked Alex, fascinated.
"Uh, never mind," said Jo quickly, suddenly remembering with distaste the infamous 'tushy-pinching incident' at the station's last Christmas party. She unconsciously rubbed her behind with the unpleasant recollection. A favorite trick of the Jelly's was to disguise itself as an ashtray or end table and pinch girls' tushies as they pass by. The girl naturally assumes the culprit is the nearest male, and thus the trouble starts.
"Why is it called Smelly Jelly?" asked Alex, taking the hint and changing the subject.
"Let's just say be thankful that odors don't travel through the vacuum of space."
"Oh."
"We've never seen this much Jelly away from Pompeii though," observed Carter.
"I think the fact that someone took the trouble of collecting this much and sealing it in a hollow asteroid suggests that it might be a lot more dangerous than we've been giving it credit for," commented Max. "Maybe we should signal Cross to come and get us asap."
"Good idea," said Carter. She pressed a spot on her flight suit's collar, activating the long-range communicator. "Carter to Cat's Eye. We've run into an unexpected situation here and need immediate pickup. Over."
"Roger, Commander," replied Matthew Cross' voice. "We'll be there in ten minutes."
"I hope that's soon enough," muttered Max, eyeing the blurping green goo with considerable distrust and foreboding.
"Look out!" shouted Alex, pointing at a writhing green tentacle that had sneakily slithered from the crack in the asteroid's shell and was about to wrap itself around Sam's leg.
Sam saw it and screamed and leapt away from the encroaching limb just before it made contact, but the impetus of her jump disconnected both her feet from the asteroid's surface and she floated away into the void. Flapping her arms wildly did little to stop her slow zero-gee tumble, but tiny spurts of gas automatically emitted from her flight suit served to stabilize her attitude if not slow her steady recession. "Help!" she yelled.
But Carter suddenly discovered she had no time to spare for a rescue attempt, for a hundred waving, green tentacles had burst from the crater in an eruption of slime and were whipping every which way in frenetic agitation. Several times she was struck by one of the squishy trunks, and it was only the auto-hardening feature of her flight suit and the forcefield protecting her head that saved her from being pummeled to death. In between dodging and ducking the vicious onslaught, she saw that the rest of the Banshees were in similarly desperate straits.
"Everyone jump!" she shouted to the others even as she prepared to do so herself. A mighty leap sent her flying up and away from the asteroid's surface like a comic book superhero. Looking back, she saw that the others had made their escape as well, but the Smelly Jelly wasn't to be defeated that easily and their reprieve might only be a temporary one. Angry green tentacles, denied their victims, reached into space sweeping out huge arcs searching for their elusive prey.
"We have to seal the crack in the asteroid again!" she shouted to the others, aiming her phaser. Five slender, searing orange beams licked out from the free-floating Banshees and struck the asteroid around the newly-opened crater. The combined heat from the weapons melted the surrounding rock, turning it to magma. The green tentacles whipped about in frenzied impotence against the attack, and withdrew back inside the asteroid for protection. The magma flowed around the opening and came together, sealing the hole forever.
The phaser beams flicked off and the five women just floated for a few seconds in the sudden silence, the only sound reaching through the comm system being their heavy breathing. Max broke the silence. "I'd say that was a notch worse than the tushy-pinching incident," she said caustically, holstering her phaser.
Minutes later, the Cat's Eye arrived, and after explaining to a highly amused Matthew Cross why they were all floating free in deep space, were beamed back on board. Carter was sure that after their report, everyone would begin seeing the Smelly Jelly in a new light.
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