Fruit

“Thank you so much for your business, and we hope you enjoyed your stay!”

It was fairly rare to get a send-off like that from a station, but here we were, being handed a literal basket of fruit by the station master.

“Uh, thanks?” Captain Ryan said.

“Oh, again, thank you! And please, have a safe journey!” The man waved as our docking hatch closed, and we heard the clamps release as the docking gangway disengaged.

“That was weird,” I said.

“Yeah, but fresh fruit,” Ryan said.

We walked to the bridge carrying the odd-shaped basket. “Fruit?” Shandra asked as we stepped into the bridge.

“Weird station master,” I said, sitting at the console next to her.

“Oh, I like pineapples,” she said, picking through the basket. “Mangos, too. Wonder where they tropical fruit out here?”

“Hydroponics, I expect,” I said.

“Not pineapples,” she said. “You need the whole tree. Anyway, you want to take us out of here?”

“Sure thing. Where to?”

“Coordinates are on the board already.”

“Off we go.”

“I swear to you, I cannot figure out where it’s coming from,” I said, exasperated.

“Me either,” Adam said.

We were in the salvage bay which was, blessedly, empty. We’d dropped our salvage at the station we’d just left, and were on our way to a new job, so we had a chance to clean the place out. I’d pressurized it, and Adam and I had gone down to get started. Problem was, there was this clacking noise every so often. Rhythmic, almost, which made me worry about something mechanical getting loose. But we’d been down here for an hour, and we hadn’t seen any sign of anything. More annoyingly, it wasn’t continuous. Just, every so often, you’d sort of feel the thrum of the warp engines a bit sharper, and then this clacka-clacka-clacka would kick in alongside.

“You think it’s something with the warp engines?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Beats me. I haven’t heard it back in Engineering, though. Just here. There it is again.”

I listened. Sure enough, a soft, staccato clack-clack-clack, pause, clack clack clack clack!.

“I’ll call Shandra,” I said.

“Buzz,” I said, “I thought Shandra cut up that pineapple already?” I was standing in the rec room, looking at the apparently untouched fruit basket on the main galley table.

“She did,” he said, poking his head out from his cabin. “Why?”

I pointed. “Still there.”

He walked over to the table. “That’s impossible. I put the fruit in the chiller and tossed the basket.”

I pointed again. “Still there.”

We stared at it for a bit. Buzz poked the pineapple, which seemed solidly fruity. “Okay,” he said. He picked it up, put the fruit in the chiller–which demonstrably had fruit in it, already–and said, “maybe Adam got one, too.” He took the empty hat-shaped basket to the disposal. “You’re my witness,” he said, pushing the hat in.

“Seen,” I acknowledged.

He stared at the disposal for a second, and then shrugged, and walked back into his cabin. A moment later: “Um, Don?”

“Yeah?”

“Come here.”

I walked in. He was standing just inside his cabin, pointing at his bunk. Amidst the rumpled sheets was a full fruit basket.

Between the annoying sound of maracas in the salvage bay and the seemingly endless supply of free fruit baskets, I was a bit on edge by the evening. Buzz was taking a shift on the bridge, while the rest of us were in the rec room discussing ways to use pineapples. “I need a bio break,” I said, and walked down the corridor to the head. As I turned the corner, something orange rolled toward me on the floor. It rolled to a soft bump against my foot. I reached down and picked it up. A tangerine.

“Buzz?” I said, looking down the corridor. There was a figure, but with the ship’s lighting on night mode, it was dim. “Lights up,” I said, toggling the switch in the passageway.

It was a woman, wearing a sparkly green crop-top, a sparkly violet skirt, and a fruit basket on her head. I blinked. She smiled. I blinked again, and she was gone.

“SHANDRA!” I yelled.

She and Adam ran over. “The ship is haunted,” I said flatly.

“You’ve had too much rum,” she said.

“I have not,” I said. “This,” I added, holding up the tangerine, “was just rolled down the corridor to me by a woman wearing a fruit basket on her head.”

“Is that where they’re all coming from?” Adam asked.

“She had maracas on her fingers,” I added.

“Ah,” Adam said, nodding. “The ship is haunted.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever had a ship give me a fruit basket,” the station master said, holding the laden basket and eyeing the pineapple appreciatively.

“Well, you’ve all been so hospitable to us, and so accommodating what with us not having a reserved berth, that we wanted to do something small to thank you!” Buzz chirped. “Anyway, it’s been really lovely, and we hope you have a great day!”

Buzz and I stepped back and sealed the docking hatch.

“Was that all the fruit?” I asked.

“Every bit of it,” he confirmed.

“Shan,” I said over the intercom, “get us the hell out of here.”