Splootalien Official

The research station’s lead technician, a jittery being named Klik, waved six of his arms from a reinforced window. “It’s been like this for three cycles! It slid under the perimeter fence, splooted in the main courtyard, and now we can’t launch probes. Every time we try, it mrrps and the gravitational stabilizers go haywire.”

Dr. Xylar Voss, a xenobiologist who had seen enough horrors to fill three field guides, was dispatched immediately. When her lander punctured the ammonia-sulfur atmosphere, she expected tentacles, teeth, or at least a good old-fashioned acidic ooze. Instead, she found it . splootalien

The splootalien’s googly eyes crossed. Its tiny mouth opened. And then, with the slow, inevitable majesty of a continental drift, it un-splooted . It gathered its legs underneath itself, rose to a wobbling crouch, and took one step. Then another. Then it belly-flopped directly onto the comfort cube, smooshing it into a pancake, and resumed full sploot. The research station’s lead technician, a jittery being

The splootalien went very still. Its googly eyes focused. Then, with a sound like a thousand squeaky toys being stepped on, it shuffled —not walked, but oozed—until its fuzzy side was pressed against hers. It rested its strange, flat head on her shoulder. And it splooted. Every time we try, it mrrps and the

Finally, Dr. Voss did the only thing that made sense. She lay down on the warm mud, belly-first, arms and legs splayed out in perfect imitation.

It was the size of a beached cargo pod, shaped like a deflated bouncy castle, and covered in short, orange fuzz. Its four limbs—if you could call them that—splayed outward at cartoonishly perpendicular angles. Its belly, a pale cream color, was pressed flush against the cracked mudflat. Its face, such as it was, consisted of two googly eyes (genuine, not metaphorical) and a tiny, pursed mouth that made a soft "mrrp" sound.