“Dang, what am I thinking, knocking on the door to my own office. I really have been away for too long.” Jim smiled at hearing the familiar scratchy voice of his friend and now master. He had been worried a second there when he heard someone knocking on Aisha’s door. Images of one of the many hungry Ctarl-Ctarl’s coming in and gobbling him down ran rapid through his young mind. He’d seen the hungry looks in the hallway and only a few of them had vanished after seeing his collar. Jim wanted to remain by Aisha’s side, but if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up as an unruly crew-members snack.

“Hi Jimmy, how’s slave life treating you. The job might suck, but you’re getting paid what you’re worth,” Aisha chuckled, then closed the door and locked it. She couldn’t have any of her subordinates walk in and see her talking openly with a mere Terran. It would ruin her reputation quicker then if she declared herself a vegetarian.

“You’re not paying me anything.”

“And you're worth every penny, my bucko.” Aisha let out a whiny laugh at her bad joke. Jim just raised his brow and looked at Aisha with no amusement. He knew she was only kidding, trying to lighten the mood in the room. However, she only did that when she was about to tell him something bad. A terrifying thought struck Jim and he took a deep breath to calm his nerves before talking.

“Aisha, did you find out something about Gene? Is he all right? Has he been captured or something?”

“Please, this has nothing to do with the perv. I haven’t heard anything new about our former shady captain. For all I know he might be on some vacation planet, stringing around the local women so he can get into their pants. Utterly pathetic.” Now Jim was really worried. Aisha insulted Gene all the time, usually to make her feel better. Whatever was going on had her worried, not only for him, but also her.

“Aisha, what’s going on?” Jim asked, wondering what bad news Aisha was trying to hide from him. The cat-girl looked down at her feet, taking her time to break the bad news to Jim. She was still trying to deal with it herself and it only affected her slightly.

“We had a air leak in livestock and most of our Terran food supply is gone. The nearest Ctarl-Ctarl supply ship is about a weeks away, near the home world Right now, we have only a few dozen Terran’s left, plenty of other foods, but nothing as good as a Terran. The crew isn’t aware of the shortage, but they’ll find out soon.” Aisha finished and sat down in a chair at her desk. Jim walked to her side and put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her that everything was going to be all right.

“Don’t worry, you’ve gone weeks without eating a Terran, I’m sure you can do it again.”

“You don’t get it,” Aisha muttered with a sigh. She looked up at Jim with big, emotional eyes. “I might have practice, but no one else on the ship does. Once they realize there aren’t any Terran left in the kitchen, they’ll eat all of the extra ones they’ve save for these emergencies and any other Terran’s on the ship, including you. In the next week, every single one of the crew is going to be starved for Terran meat and not giving a damn about who the Terran belongs to.” Aisha groaned and placed both her hands over her face. Why did bad luck have to follow her wherever she went? It was like a black cloud was following her. Raining down rainstorms of shit over her seemingly perfect life. Next thing you know, Jim was going to get a skin rash that tasted like gravy.

“What are we going to do,” Jim asked, beginning to panic a little. If the Ctarl-Ctarl’s had so little control with a steady supply of Terran’s, what were they going to do when they had a shortage.

“Other then barricading you in the office, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll run into a ship full of Terrans’, who we can ‘acquire’ in this time of emergency. If not…” Aisha left the last pat unsaid, but Jim knew what she was going to say. Either they got lucky or Jim was going to be hunted down by an army of supper strong and hungry Ctarl-Ctarl.