Part 1 (1/2)

Andrew J. Offutt.

s.p.a.ceways.

In Quest of Qalara.

”... I came up here to Get Involved. Think I haven't missed you, s.e.xpot? And come to think, I did come to relieve you, in a way. Need relief, Quindy?” She rolled her eyes. ”Why do I put up with this man-love him, even?” Because I know what you need, he thought, and love to provide it, That's wonderful for us both- doing well by doing good! He said: ”Because we're both sensual animals who love to screw and love it rough and besides I think you're the most beautiful and the s.e.xiest s.h.i.+p-handling genius along the s.p.a.ceways. And besides tha-” ”Oh, talk talk talk. That's enough talk. Come down here.” s.p.a.cEWAYS #1 OF ALIEN BONDAGE #2 CORUNDUM'S WOMAN #3 ESCAPE FROM MACHO #4 SATANA ENSLAVED #5 MASTER OF MISFIT #6 PURRFECT PLUNDER #7 THE.

MANHUNTRESS #8 UNDER TWIN SUNS #9 IN QUEST OF.

QALARA PLAYBOY PAPERBACKS s.p.a.cEWAYS #9: IN QUEST OF QALARA Copyright (c) 1983 by John Cleve Cover ill.u.s.tration copyright (c) 1983 by PBJ Books, Inc., formerly PEI Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by an electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording means or otherwise without prior written permission of the author. Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada by PBJ Books, Inc., formerly PEI Books, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. Printed in the United States of America. The poem Scarlet Hills copyright (c) 1982 by Ann Morris; used by permission of the author. ISBN: 0-867-21236-5 First printing January 1983 for Sharon Jams, for seventy mental reasons If at first you do not succeed, Sunmother counsels, then try again. Only thus can one be worthy of the s.p.a.ceways. -Captain Janjaglaya If at first you don't succeed, it's been said, try and try again.

n.o.ble words, to which I would add these: If you try again and still don't succeed-whistle and pretend you were doing something else all along. -Trafalgar Cuw A: All planets are not shown. B: Map is not to scale, because of the vast distances between stars. SCARLET HILLS Alas, fair ones, my time has come. I must depart your lovely home- Seek the bounds of this galaxy To find what lies beyond. (chorus) Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with loving eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the wand'rer in me. You say it must be glamorous For those who travel out through s.p.a.ce. You know not the dark, endless night Nor the solitude we face. (reprise chorus) I know not of my journey's end Nor the time'nor toll it will have me spend. But I must see what I've never seen And know what I've never known. Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with loving eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the wand'rer in me. -Ann Morris Prologue The four men hand-carried each of the seven big crates down the umbilical tunnel from the s.h.i.+p and onto Fran-jistation Two. That was unusual, but hardly sinister. All the crates were checked past station scanners and thermo-sensors. Only one person on the big wheel-shaped s.p.a.ce station noted aloud that the boxes resembled coffins. They were not. Oddly, all seven were several times wrapped with hollow tubing of a bright canary color. Apparently it served as cord or cable. Who knew why those crazies on Terasaki used hollow duraples rather than stikt.i.te binding or even plain old fas.h.i.+oned carbon ropes? One end of each yellow tube swung loosely down. A station securityman made a lewd remark about the appearance of that.

So did a s.p.a.cefarer off another s.h.i.+p, and a stevedore. She was one of the two who paced importantly along, orange-coveralled and yellow-hardhatted, beside the four green-clad handlers of those nuttily wrapped big crates. Neither stevedore was doing a thing aside from walking, although the station was busy with incoming traffic and cargo to be moved. Too, there was outbound cargo, and some of it was waiting while cargo-handlers played escort to seven big long boxes. A whole load of Bose, a Franjese wine popular on a number of other worlds, languished awaiting the attention 13 14 of this very pair of stevedores. Both were members of Cargo Carriers Crosscontinental, which of course was part of LPAF-Laboring Persons of All Franji. CCC/LPAF rules demanded that at least two stevedores unload cargo of over six pieces with a weight of over 500 kilos, and the combined weight of the seven boxes was 577.886. If these green-clad baggy-pantsed fobbers off s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p Hot Squid insisted on carrying their own precious crates of Hojatocorp Duasonik insect repellors, that was not the fault of LPAF or CCC or two smug Franjese cargo-handlers. If they couldn't handle the cargo, then by d.a.m.n they could slicin' well accompany it! ”Every single person deserves whatever break they can get,” stevedore Sashah said with smug austerity and dropout grammar, and her companion nodded with smug austerity. And so they importantly accompanied the incoming cargo off s.p.a.cer Hot Squid out of Terasaki, and drew their pay.

Security watched without particular interest. Other s.p.a.ce-farers off other s.h.i.+ps took note without paying much attention. They had more important things to do. They were on their way to the station's bar, mostly. One man openly stared. He was the master of merchant s.p.a.cer Nakaret, and he was less than patiently awaiting the loading of the last of his cargo. One hundred twenty cases of Bose. ”No wonder most of this planet is in the grip of an impossibility,” he muttered; ”an ugly recession and highflying inflation all at once! No wonder its swinish president, that jowly demagogue Mujazia, is trying to blame all Franji's problems on its people, and TMSMCo-and for p.i.s.sake, on Murph!” Beside the captain his First Mate granted. Planet Murph was Franji's nearest ”neighbor,” and pretty much ruled by T.M.S. Mining Co. ”This dam' planet's run by demagogues-union bosses 15 and their puppet politicians-and naturally they put Mujazia in office, once he dam' near ruined Velynda by caving in to every union demand! Now he seems to be workin' to save his fat a.s.s by preachin' hate-war, for p.i.s.sake!-on Murph!” ”Uh,” his First Mate grunted agreeably. Velynda was planetary capital of Franji, third planet of hot, red-orange Chandrasekhar, and the Mate of Nakaret well remembered Velynda under Mujazia. A mess. Now the planet was. And Nakaret was long since ready to reds.h.i.+ft. If Mujazia wanted to blame his failures and problems on TMSMCo and Murph, Nakaret might as well blame its current problem on Mujazia! ”Oh well,” the captain muttered on, glowering after the little parade of four green-clad Hot Squid crewmembers and two orange-clad stevedores. Cargo Un-handlers, he thought. ”Could be worse. If somebody doesn't Do Something about that maniac on Shankar, General Filatravia, they're going to have a planetary war, for p.i.s.sake! (No no-make that Fiiatravia's sake!) Half the sisterslicin' planets along the s.p.a.ceways are in the hands of idiots and TGO ner n.o.bodyelse's doin' a dam' thing about it. If it wasn't for us honest and long-sufferin' merchanters, the whole universe'd fall apart!” ”Firm,” his Mate agreed, idly rubbing her cheek. ”On the other hand, you do have to wonder why those baggy-pantsed rot-r.e.c.t.u.ms off Hot Squid have to carry their own stupid bug killers!” ”Yeah,” his Mate snarled, thinking that the four crew carrying the crates, followed by two do-nothings, looked like a funeral procession on Jorinne. The four greensuits off Hot Squid did carry their seven boxes around the station rim to the shuttle terminal, one by one. Only when the last of the big crates was on the cargo shuttle-pod and en route down to Franji did the two cargo- 16 handlers amble over to the stack of wine cases. They were ricked up before the umbilical tunnel that connected the outer perimeter of Franjistation Two to docking berth G-l. Outside the station, electromagnetically coupled to it with aklock sealed to umbilical, awaited Nakaret with an empty hold, expensively temp-controlled to accommodate the wine. Sashah and her buddy at last went back to work. Wait until Nakaret's sour-faced captain found out they were due for mandatory break in eleven and a half mins! Neither they nor anyone else had noticed that the bright yellow tube around the fifth Terasak crate was really two; or that the other end of the trailing length of tubing fed into the crate. That arrangement was the sole reason the seven cases were so strangely wrapped. The reason for that was the sole reason they were personally borne by crewmembers of Hot Squid rather than by unimaginative but ever-nosy stevedores-or that there were seven of the big boxes, rather than only one. The other six really did house Hojatocorp insect repellors. One of the baggy-pantsed greensuits insisted on accompanying the boxes-inside the shuttle-pod's cargo hold. That was against the rules. The Terasak greensuit was insistent, and then raised so much h.e.l.l that at last a wise clerk decided to look the other way. At least the dumb Terasak flainer had a breather! It wasn't as if anyone bothered to provide atmosphere inside a pod. The clerk hoped the crates floated up and crushed the sisterslicin' son of a Terasak bug en route down to Franji. On the other hand, she didn't, really. If the greensuit got himself killed in the pod by gravity-less, airless cargo s.h.i.+fting, the clerk would be held responsible. She'd be in a lot of trouble until the union bailed her out. 17 The moment the shuttle settled onto Franji's surface and was clutched close by the planet's .73 gravity, the greensuited s.p.a.cefarer in the hold dragged off his breathing mask and popped open the side-not the lid but the spring-hinged side-of the special crate off Hot Squid. The fifth. That revealed the fact that most of the big box's interior was occupied by a semi-soft silver bag. Squatting, the s.p.a.cefarer broke the hardened foam around the top of the silver bag's zipper pull. A hand the color of old gold drew down the zipper. Heat gushed out. A moment later, the very very latest state-of-the-art s.p.a.cesuit rolled out. It was silver, and it was occupied. The air-conditioned s.p.a.cesuit had fed its occupant's heat- body and breath-out to be trapped by the silver bag. The bag, 97 percent thermo-retentive, had bled some of that heat out through the yellow tube.

Meanwhile it had baffled Franjistation's scanners and heat-sensors. Each of the other six crates gave off a heat-reading that varied by no more than one degree Celsius from each other, including the fifth crate. No one had thought to scan the dangling ends of the finger-thick tubes of yellow duraplas. Why bother? The Terasak s.p.a.cefarer began stripping off his baggy green two-piece. The s.p.a.cesuit sat up, stood. Its owner began removing it. The Terasak saw an astonis.h.i.+ngly homely woman with old-gold skin, in a blue skint.i.te that molded her angular leanness from neck to toes. The s.p.a.cefarer said nothing, but he did turn away. This was his first view of the person they had smuggled onto Franji, and he could live quite well without seeing another. What even he didn't know was that the s.p.a.cesuit's wearer was a decent-looking if not quite handsome man with deep tan skin. A not at all angular man, though he was rangily well-muscled. He wore a pair of tights in a 18 drab gray. And nothing else, except the holographic projector that made him seem to be an astonis.h.i.+ngly homely woman of Terasak coloration, with an angularly lean body snugly encased in medium blue. The holoproj that cloaked him with that false aura was so advanced that even Kislar Jonuta was unaware of its existence. Neither man spoke a single word. Talk was not part of the drill, but there was a time limit. Shuttle pods were too important to be allowed to sit around unloaded. Too bad Franji couldn't make its own sonic insect repellors, but once a growing conglomerate got hold of one of the only two companies, the unions really did a job on the conglomerate and despite two government bail-outs, Franji's SoundKil Co. had collapsed. The real Terasak got into the s.p.a.cesuit. It fitted him, naturally, because that was the way the operation had been planned. The other man donned the green two-piece and stuffed the pants into the green boots so that the full legs Moused baggily. The newly s.p.a.cesuited man got down and got himself into the thermo-retentive bag, the other man helping. He zipped the bag to within two sems of its closure, where the little airtight lid would clamp it. ”You all right?” ”Pos,” the silver-bagged man said, very grateful for the human contact and the concern but hardly charmed by the other's unfeminine voice. Maybe she could earn enough on this mission to get her face and voice fixed, he thought, and was zipped in. The bag's former occupant detached the sealant spray from where it had been attached, to the inside end of the crate. He gave the zip-lock two puffs and set the little sprayer down beside him, on the shuttle-pod's padded floor. He patted a little sticker into place on the silver bag. All with careful swiftness. Everything so far had been 19 practiced, rehea.r.s.ed again and again. (Not on Terasaki, where Hot Squid had not come from. As a matter of fact the s.h.i.+p's name was not Hot Squid, either.) The man in the loose greens re-closed the crate, and tested it. He nodded his satisfaction. There had been this sealed crate and a man in a green suit, beardless and jet-haired. There still was. The only added factor was the spray-can of sealant. The s.p.a.cer crewman's breather still lay on the floor where he had dropped it. The holoprojector was off. The man in the loose greens paused to listen. Good. Here came the unloaders, and their machinery. Squatting, he picked up the sprayer and the end of the yellow tube whose other end entered the crate and then the bag, that point of entry long ago meticulously sealed. Pulling up the mini-sprayer's red top until it made a little snicking sound, he gave it a one-eighty turn, counted five, pressed the top down into its proper position though reversed, and counted off four seconds. Only then did he insert its little snout into the end of the yellow tube. He had given it the required three-second burst just as the cargo door was opened from outside. The ruddy light of Franji rushed into the pod, along with city-sounds. The green-clad man picked up the other man's breathing mask and popped in the sprayer. He kept it there with his left thumb. He rose to greet the Franjese workers who had come to unload the shuttle. Both wore orange helmets and yellow CCC patches on their coveralls, which were orange. The shuttle-pod's ”pilot” was just behind them, looking anxious. Actually she was a highly paid watcher of the con, the green-clad man knew, since the shuttle piloted itself. But unions were unions. The word ”featherbedding” was lost in the upheavals and linguistic reforms of the past, but the practice remained on Franji. ”Ah,” she said. ”Are you all right?” 20 ”Firm,” the man in the cargo hold told her, and looked at. the cargo handlers. ”I am to accompany the seven crates from Terasaki to their destination. In your track's cargo hold, I mean.” ”That's against the rules, Terasak,” he was told, with a xenophobic sound highly unusual along the s.p.a.ceways. ”Can't letcha do it,” another said. ”I'll be riding in the back of the truck with the crates,” the man in green said, and he moved toward them. ”Uh-but it's against the-” A sharper stevedore said, ”You unload it if you ride with it.” The green-clad man ignored the traculence. ”Right. I'll unload it at the other end.” The cargo-handlers looked at each other, shrugged with a ”humor the dumb offplanet fobber” look and stepped back while the dumb offplanet fobber came down out of the pod. Then they went to work. He watched, un.o.btrusively testing his muscles against their planet's gravity, which was twenty percent lower than the galactic standard but only .07 lower than the usual s.h.i.+pboard G. He also noted that blue-dyed hair and blue wigs were still popular in Velynda. He rode in the back of the truck, which had to detour around the parade of a few thousand welfare recipients on strike. Somewhere between the shuttle station and the cargo's destination, he vanished. The cargo-handlers' att.i.tude was natural enough: Who gave a s.h.i.+t? (By that time his adjusted holoprojector made him seem a Franjese in a ”standard” Franjese suit, blue-haired and surly-looking. The stevedores probably wouldn't have given a s.h.i.+t about that, either. It didn't have anything to do with their job and wasn't their responsibility.) They weren't around when the crates were opened, of course. By that time, several days later, Velynda and 21 much of Franji were in quite an uproar. Planetary president Mujazia had been murdered by an unknown a.s.sailant. The conservative running mate Mujazia had put up with only in order to be elected had been sworn in. As a matter of fact he had already replaced Mujazia's personal bodyguard with a dozen dedicated career professionals, and had already accepted the resignation of every cabinet officer but one. He set about trying to get the planet into shape again, without mentioning TMSMCo and Murph. As a matter of fact, TMSMCo soon signed contracts with two separate Franjese companies, which was a more than welcome boost to the staggered economy. The new president would not have to put up with that demagogue who headed the LPAF for life, because that life had ended abruptly on the evening of the same day as Mujazia's. Mujazia's death was called an ”a.s.sa.s.sination”; an unduly pleasant-sounding euphemism for the murder of someone important. The presidor-for-life of the LPAF appeared to have been slain by his mistress who then, still naked in bed with him, had suicided. Only one man on Franji knew otherwise, and he was not on Franji for long. He was the man who had killed them both. All three; he had also ”a.s.sa.s.sinated” Mujazia. He had come a long way in the discomfort of a big packing crate to carry out the double mission, for his employer. His employer was opposed to wars, interplanetary or otherwise. He had long since departed Franji, along with the s.h.i.+p whose name was not Hot Squid. Now it and he were en route to Shankar, where General Filatravia was scheduled to be stopped.

That is, murdered. That is, a.s.sa.s.sinated. ”Musla's Lion” Filatravia was just one more small-country fundamentalist religious bigot and zealot who thought it would be a wonderful idea to plunge his planet into war for the glory of his G.o.d-and himself. 22 In such enormously important galactic missions, spear-carriers could not be considered important. They had to be considered loose ends. There had been one real witness to the advent on Franji of the professional killer-who went through six disguises before he left, in peace.

That witness was inside a s.p.a.cesuit inside a silver bag that bore a small sticker showing a familiar symbol and the three letters ”TGO.” The chemical in the adjusted sealant spraycan had reacted with the powder awaiting it in the yellow tube- and his own body heat-as planned. The Terasak had been dead before his coffin was removed from the shuttle pod. 1 Thomas Carlyle, as he looked up at the stars (c. 1850, Old Style): ”A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of s.p.a.ce.” The planet called Bleak receded in the distance behind s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p Coronet. And then its sun was only a reddish spot of light, and none too soon for Coronet's master and crew. s.p.a.cer Coronet's master was Kislar Jonuta. The crew were Kenowa, Sakyo, and s.h.i.+ganu of Terasaki; and the recent additions who were part crew, part pa.s.sengers: HRadem and HReenee of HRalix.

Four were Galactics- the human word for humans, now-and two were not. The furry feline people-felinoprimates-from HRalix were not the first non-Galactics to s.h.i.+p with Captain Jonuta, but Sweetface of Jarpi had long since departed his crew. Their leavetaking was not friendly. Jonuta and HReenee the HRal were very friendly indeed. So were Jonuta's long-time companion, Kenowa, and HReenee's ”step-sib” brother, HRadem. Dem, he was called. Those onboard pairings left out Sakyo and s.h.i.+ganu. Unfortunately, both were male and each was entirely heteros.e.xual. What s.h.i.+g and Sak were was h.o.r.n.y. Still, there was unity on Coronet. Their ”Captain Cau-23 24 tious” was not a military or militaristic man and while he was not so stupid as to try to ran a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p as a democracy, he was no tyrant. He was also demonstrably superior. The feeling onboard was almost a family one, with Jonuta the respected patriarch-although he was hardly old enough for that role. Too, they had been through a lot, dared and attempted and survived a lot, in triumph.

Profits were looking good, too. Besides, they were unified in their delight at putting Bleak behind them, along with its bleak capital, Zero, and its homely sun. Of Coronet's crew, only HReenee had gone down onto Bleak's bleak surface with the captain. She was only recently off her planet, whose people were not s.p.a.cefarers until a Galactic s.h.i.+p stumbled upon their world, and a ”new race”

was ”discovered.” Already she had experienced travel on four s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, rape, a pirate attack, personal killing-which was even more a thrill for the HRal than for Galactics-a hand-to-hand fight in freefall, the hours-long stressful agony of a duel in s.p.a.ce with s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p Firedancer of Captain Corundum, and Jonuta's lovemaking. All in all, she preferred the last two, in reverse order. ”Of course I shall go down onto this planet you demean so,” she had said, in the perfect diction her people brought to Erts, the language of the Galactics. She wore a loose smock-like garment in burnt orange spattered with diamond-shaped outlines the color of old wine, and trousers of that fine old wine hue. ”I want to see everything!” ”Even Bleak?” s.h.i.+g had demanded, incredulously. ”Even Bleak,” HReenee had a.s.sured the smallish man with the s.h.i.+ning jet hair. ”You'd see as much of interest and get just as big a thrill spending ten hours in the sitter,” Sak a.s.sured her. He used the s.p.a.cefarers'

current dodge-word for that facility variously called the head, the can, the John, the c.r.a.p- 25 per, the p.i.s.soir, the yahya, the bathroom, and more coyly, the rest room or powder room. The lean, seemingly boneless HReenee had laughed at that picturesque-warning, and she had gone down onplanet with Jonuta. There was doubtless some truth in Kenowa's unspoken thought that the sensuous HRal just wanted to be wherever Jonuta was. She and the others never left Bleak's small s.p.a.cecraft doeking-and-loading station in s.p.a.ce. At that, Kenowa and Dem returned pretty quickly to the s.h.i.+p. It hung in s.p.a.ce, eiectromagnetically docked to Bleakerstation. Its outer airlock was joined and sealed to the station's exterior and connected with its interior, the rim of the wheel, by Bleakerstation's scalable umbilical tunnel. Coronet's inner airlock hatch remained closed. On Bleak or its station, even security personnel were suspect. s.h.i.+g and Sak spent most of their time in the station's smallish bar. Since Bleakerstation had little traffic-as little as possible, by s.p.a.cefarers' choice, but at that it received more visitors than the planet below-the bar grandiosely named the Golden Citadel was never full. On the other hand, there were lots of other s.p.a.cefarers, when Sak and s.h.i.+g entered.

That was eminently understandable. Who in its right mind wanted to go down onto Bleak? They indulged in a wee bit of the relaxer and head-changer called repsonal and quite a bit of beer. They waited until they had a d.a.m.ned good buzz on before they decided it was time to pop a red, too. Even then each man dropped the antintoxicant pill-citromine, or ”a red”- directly into the Bleaker beaker of beer currently in use. They didn't get laid or even try to.

Booda only knew what you might pick up from a Bleaker! They merely sat quietly, elbows on the table, drinking and cracking jokes about Bleak, Bleakerstation, the Golden Citadel, and Bleakers. Until their waiter, a human (more 26 or less, anyhow; he was a Bleaker) objected and expressed offense taken. Sak snapped something unkind, urging an impossible act, and the incredibly rude waiter ”accidentally” poured beer in his lap and s.h.i.+g got up and knocked the Bleaker down. Then a chair overturned across the smallish room and here came a s.p.a.cefarer in a hurry and looking mean. He wore the chest-dagger and armored left glove that marked him as a s.p.a.cegoing Bleaker.

They did that, probably just to let others along the s.p.a.ceways know that they were ready to dispute any saot about their home planet. ”You'd think that flainer'd be so happy to be off that cesspool of a planet for good, farin' in s.p.a.ce,” s.p.a.cefarer s.h.i.+ganu later said darkly, ”that he'd be too proud to stick up for a waiter, just because he, she, or it also happened to be a Bleaker!” Instead, the s.p.a.cefaring Bleaker hurried right over and punched s.h.i.+g down. Immediately Sak hurried to his feet and punched the Bleaker one, if not down. As the fellow staggered back, the waiter rolled up onto his knees and bit Sak in the leg. And Sak yelled and kicked him, backwards. And as s.h.i.+g turned a questioning look on all that racket, the other s.p.a.cefarer punched him. With his left fist, the one in the armored glove. After that it was pretty raggedy-andy in the Golden Citadel, with the two Terasaks off Coronet beating the snot out of the two Bleakers. Then the s.p.a.cefaring Bleaker's crewmates-two men and a woman built like a man with hips-sort of hurried over to help their Bleaker buddy. And they weren't even Bleakers! Fortunately two station securitymen arrived soon after that broadening of the brawl. They took one look at the melee and intelligently decided to use their stoppers to restore order or at least a cessation of hostile activity. Having thus got the attention of the combatants, they forced every one to pop a red and one of the mild tranks carried by Bleakerstation securitymen. With the hostilities 27 ended and the combatants both sobered and softened up, the two securitymen escorted the pair off Coronet and the other four to their respective s.h.i.+ps. They took the time to see them on their way up the inclined tunnel called umbilical, and left them with stern warnings. They also made quiet a.s.surances to s.h.i.+ganu and Sakyo that the waiter would be dealt with sternly. When one asked after their captain, Sak told him the captain was down onplanet, selling some merchandise. ”What sort of merchandise?” Sak and s.h.i.+g exchanged a look, and shrugged. Sak said, ”It walks.” ”Really!” The securityman brightened visibly. ”How many?” ”Four. Wanted pirates.” ”The very best kind!” the Bleaker enthused. ”Four more warm bodies to help take up the work load,” his companion enthused. ”Right, and since they're wanted by policers they got n.o.body looking for them and n.o.body who cares! We've got 'em for life!” Having enthused that, the first securityman looked again at the two Coronet crewmembers, and he was beaming. ”You boys pop on into your s.h.i.+p and be good now, all right? Hope we wasn't too rough with you, but we can't have fighting now, can we, s.p.a.cefarers?” ”Oh my no,” Sak said, and went on into Coronet in quest of a microgram or two of endorphinol. ”Nah,” s.h.i.+g said, wagging his head and wincing because that armored fist-blow to the rearward side of his neck hurt. ”Just a few long-deprived s.p.a.cefarers letting off a little steam. 'Night, guys.” ”Uh-huh.” s.h.i.+g went on up the tunnelway and into Coronet in quest of a few micrograms of endorphinol and some antiseptic for his scratches. That woman had landed proper punches, but the dam' waiter had kept biting and scratching. 28 The waiter was being dealt with sternly, meanwhile. Not by the Bleakerstation Securitymen. His boss held him responsible for the loss of business of six easy-spending and freely-drinking s.p.a.cefarers, and fired him, cut lip and newly acquired limp and all. The poor fellow went back down onplanet, where the only job he could find was out in Snailslime Gulch. He lived unhappily ever after, or nearly. Kenowa and Dem of HRalix, meanwhile, had been onboard Coronet all along. HRadem was in Kenowa's cabin, where he had been spending a lot of time, once again watching an Akima Mars holomelodrama. The things done to that extraordinarily famous fictional m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic secret agent acted as a s.e.xual spur to Dem. Where he came from, this sort of cruelty was known as ”play-with” and ”toy-with” and was pretty standard behavior. The HRal didn't bother denying their love of it, as Galactics had always done. Tormenting was fun, anybody knew that. It was also s.e.xy, and soon Dem was responding. Kenowa liked that, and soon the holomeller was playing to a disinterested audience of two. Neither watched. Dem's people possessed eight b.r.e.a.s.t.s or ”b.r.e.a.s.t.s”-not much more than nipples, really-and not all eight of any given HRal, female or otherwise, ma.s.sed as much as Kenowa's two. They were not ”The Biggest Pair In The Universe” as Akima Mars's were advertised to be, but Kenowa was amply cus.h.i.+oned and upholstered between collarbones and waist. She and Dem had long since discovered that her un-HRal plentirude did not disgust or disturb him, or even put off the felino-man in the least. As a matter of fact, their effect on Dem was quite the opposite.

The HRal were as fascinated with the exotic and variously erotic as humans. He was entranced by her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her strange inner coolth, just as she was both fascinated by and delighted with the extreme warmth of him, beside her and inside 29 her. The normal body temperature of a HRal was forty degrees, which was feverishly high to a Galactic. Onscreen, actress Setsuyo Puma as Akima Mars was once again enduring the shredding from her of her skimpy, skin-tight clothing by a rapacious badguy captor, who showed his enjoyment in tourniqueting both her meaty thighs. And leered as he took up his electrowhip while staring fixedly at what he had just bared: The Biggest Pair In The Universe. Onbed, the Pongida-anthroprimate Kenowa was not acting. It was she who made purring noises as her alien lover forgot the movie. Both hands clamping while he chewed away at her superb superstructure, felinoprimate HRadem was soon deeply into interracial relations, and Kenowa. The holomeller played on, to a disinterested audience of two. The sounds of panting and gasping emanating from the movie joined those from the bed. Captain Jonuta and HReenee, meanwhile, took a shuttle down. Jonuta, a romantic with a fine sense of drama, was attired as usual: He wore a piratically long coat of dark red, flas.h.i.+ng up the front with two rows of bra.s.sy pra.s.s b.u.t.tons, pale laurel-green tights, and gleaming boots into which the pants vanished without a trace of rumple or wrinkle. His stopper, slung at his side, was not disguised. Its holster trailed two strands of rawhide-imitating equhyde. With them went four others, as prisoners. They wore pants and nothing else; their boots were in a duffel-bag on the seat beside Jonuta, who was their captor. Captives, he had observed, tended not to run so fast or so far, barefoot. The four were Menekris, captain of Satyagraha until he had attacked the merchants.h.i.+p bearing HReenee and had been captured by Jonuta-to-the-rescue; and his three surviving crewmen. Pirates, all. Ex-pirates, now. They had become what Jonuta called walking cargo. Jonuta was an independent businessman. His business was the selling and buying of people-which aided both his 30 personal economy and that of the worlds of the s.p.a.ceways. He sold more ”walking cargo” than he bought. Certainly four murderous pirates were better off earning their keep as slaves on Bleak than receiving that form of public welfare called imprisonment. In two hours on Bleak he and a happy mines manager struck a bargain. Menekris and crew became slaves to expiate their sins; Jonuta received enough for them to pay for his trouble in capturing them and conveying them here. Since Bleak always needed more warm bodies of the working type and these four were able-bodied, strong, and beloved by no one (meaning they were stuck on Bleak for life and good riddance), Jonuta received his price. Expenses and then some. He was offered an amount equivalent to the price of all four men for the fascinating exotic woman accompanying him. She continued to look proud and serene while he affected minor insult at the offer. That brought them both an apology from mines manager Chira.n.a.lli, followed by exaggerated politeness and niceties. That was that, on Bleak.

HReenee wanted to tarry and look around; to observe as a tourist of another race. Jonuta wanted to take the next shuttle up to Coronet. ”That was a rich offer you turned down, my love,” she said. ”Are you sure you don't want to sell me?” Jonuta's cultivated ba.s.so rumbled up from his chest: ”I am not even smiling, HReenee.” She took his arm with both hands and pressed against him, unconsciously moving with the sensuous rubbing of her kind. Men stared, swallowed, and tried to keep their minds on their business. Jonuta and HReenee took the next shuttle up to Coronet A short time later they were onboard s.h.i.+p, zipped up, cleared, and easing away from Bleakerstation with the aid of a reversed magnetic repulsion. Then they were hot-tailing it out of that solar system. 31 ”Up” toward the double star Payne-Humason and their six planets (including the single really inhabited one, Jorinne), and on ”up” and out toward the star named Galileo. One of its planets was Qalara, and Qalara was Jonuta's home. (The four pair of boots he had kindly given to Chira.n.a.lli on Bleak. In addition to the cred-exchange, Jonuta bore away with him his duffel-bag. In it were four stoppers of the Outer Planets type, unregistered and not signed for. Their second setting was frowned upon by most planets here toward Galaxy Center-the area long ago misnamed the Outer Reaches because the original settlers of s.p.a.ce came from the Sol system, way out at the edge of the galaxy- although those same governments did not frown on the third setting, which was death by complete disintegration.) Past the canary yellow FO Payne and its blue dwarf companion, Coronet and all onboard would convert to tachyons and thumb their noses at light-speed and Einstein. In terms of time, Qalara was not all that distant, across the surrealistic arabesques of stars in all their colors. A few million kloms out from Bleak and its fading sun, Jonuta called Sak to the con. Sak came, to find his captain standing as was his wont. The captain was also staring at the s.h.i.+ner on that old-copper face with its high, sharply etched cheekbones. ”What's the other guy look like?” he rumbled. Sak heaved a sigh and affected a bowed head. ”Not too bad, Cap'n. There were five of them.” The reply was silence, and Sakyo looked at the console. Anywhere but at Jonuta. At last the latter spoke. ”How clever of you! Five of them! What kind of shape is s.h.i.+gin?” ”He's all right too. A few cuts and bruises.” ”No broken bones, no stab-wounds.” ”Neg, Captain,” Sak said quietly, addressing the console with its multicolored lights. 32 ”Two against five and only a few cuts and bruises! What were they, children?” ”Negative, Captain. The, uh, station security got there before they had time to do a better job on us.” Jonuta snorted, but grinned inwardly. One thing about Sak-the man was honest even when it hurt! ”Umm. Just sittin' in the bar, sippin' a few and making remarks about Bleak?” ”Pos,” Sakyo nodding, almost swallowing the word and showing great interest in the sensor readouts.

He added, ”Cap'n.” ”Anything serious, Sak?” The Terasak shook his head. ”Neg, Captain. Nothing serious at all. We're sorry, Captain.” ”But you've kept the black eye rather than cover it up. Can you see all right? Ready to take the con?'' Sakyo abandoned the self-denigrating posture that was part of the ancient culture of his people-Terasaki having been settled by two s.h.i.+ps full of people from a Homeworld district called Nippon, centuries ago-and adopted a military pose. ”Firm, Captain! Ready to take the con, Captain!” Jonuta nodded and headed for the hatchway. There he paused to look back. ”d.a.m.n your a.s.s, Sak, a fight in a saloon! That was flainin' stupid!” ”This pitiful person absolutely knows it, Captain sir.” Suddenly Sak turned to look at him, and both a.s.sumed postures were gone. ”Captain . . .” he said, in a normal voice. Jonuta remained where he was with one eyebrow lifted. It was reply enough: Let's hear it. ”Uh-s.h.i.+g and I are both h.o.r.n.y up to here, and especially since there's plenty of s.e.xual activity onboard.” All that came in a rush, Sakyo relieving himself of the words in the way of a nervous youngster saying his first public ”piece.” And before Jonuta could answer the shorter man 33 went on: ”That's neither gripe nor excuse, Captain. But s.h.i.+g and I are worried, too.” ”Worried.” Implied criticism was taken, and Jonuta was captain.