Spaceways - In Quest Of Qalara Part 1

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 ship-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 ship 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 fashioned 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 ship, 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.ceship 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 ships 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 redshift. 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 shifting, 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 astonishingly 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 astonishingly 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 ship'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 shipboard 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 ship 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.ceship 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 Shiganu 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 ship 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 Shiganu. Unfortunately, both were male and each was entirely heteros.e.xual. What Shig 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.ceship 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 ship stumbled upon their world, and a "new race"

was "discovered." Already she had experienced travel on four s.p.a.ceships, 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.ceship 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?" Shig had demanded, incredulously. "Even Bleak," HReenee had a.s.sured the smallish man with the shining 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 ship. 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. Shig 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 Shig 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 Shig 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 Shiganu 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 Shig 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 Shig 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 ships. 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 Shiganu 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 Shig 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 ship 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," Shig 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." Shig 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 cushioned 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, flashing 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 merchantship 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 ship, 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 shiner 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 Shigin?" "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 ships 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-Shig 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 Shig and I are worried, too." "Worried." Implied criticism was taken, and Jonuta was captain.

He had to be noncommittal, but could not walk away. Meanwhile Sakyo was having trouble meeting his captain's eyes. "Pos, Captain. You and Kenowa are ... you go 'way back. She was with you before Shig and me-uh, before Shig and I were.

You two make us feel good and so Coronet has always felt good. Lovers and friends, I mean. Then we took the HRal onboard and you-they've come between you and Kenowa. And the ship is different. Feels different I mean.

Captain." Jonuta was Jonuta, and he was captain. He had to put a good face on it, a captain's face. At last he said, "s.p.a.cefarer Sakyo, you're so far out of line you're talking sideways. You have the con." And the captain redshifted. He thought about it as he went along the ship's corridor called "tunnel." This one was tan with the hint of yellow. He considered what the other man had said, and not with anger. "The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's right on every count," he muttered, and he was not a man given to muttering to himself.

There's nothing military about Coronet, but it's Kenowa and I who are out of line. We aren't being fair to Shig and Sak. We gave him that black eye- I did, not some fight-happy s.p.a.cefarers in a bar! d.a.m.n til It's just that I've done it again. I've fallen into infatuation-again. So has Dem, and either Kenowa has or she's compensating very well for my . . . abandoning her, for HReenee. On the other hand, that's the way it is. I've done it many times before, just not on the ship. Fortunately. Thought I was iron disciplined, didn't you, ole loverboy Jone! But this is the way it is. I'm hot for HReenee right 34 now, and now at all interested in bedding down with Kenny. It's always been that way, and then I come back and it's over, with whoever-she-was, and it's better with Kenny and me. Do Sak and Shig know that?

They certainly know that Kenowa and I have an agreement, just as she and I both know I'm not the sort who possibly could remain either celibate or monogamous! Hmm-whether Sak and Shig know that or not doesn't much matter. It doesn't help their bad case of swollen b.a.l.l.s, and it doesn't excuse me for breaking my own shipboard rules! He pa.s.sed a side tunnel, pale blue. Coronet was hardly enormous, but even a "small" s.p.a.cer wasn't small. The engines worked on, stealing matter from s.p.a.ce and turning it into energy that kept the ship hurtling on at a velocity that not even Jonuta could grasp, with all his intelligence and after all his years on the s.p.a.ceways. Axial spin provided centrifugal force, which was gravity's twin brother. On Coronet it was maintained at .8 standard G. That was standard operating procedure in s.p.a.cecraft. Since their next stop would be Qalara and Qalara's gravity was .82, it was also perfect preparation for Jonuta's next homecoming. He walked easily. "The trouble is," he muttered, and broke off to keep his thoughts to himself, is Kenny only taking care of herself with the (very!) warm body at hand, that fobby Dem, or is she really interested in him? (Whatever "interested in" means!) If that's the case, we could be in trouble, after all these years-and so could Coronet! Could we all survive it, if Kenowa and I parted? How about if we were onboard the same ship?! He paused at the blue door to his own cabin. Another thought had come skidding in on a tangential course. Can we all survive if Kenowa and I don't part, but try to continue this way? For all I know HReenee and Dem are inseparable. For 35 all I know they are even more fickle than I (am). There's more I don't know about her than about . . . bop-ball! And Jonuta, who had never played bop-ball or watched a game, entered his cabin. A reddish, gold-dotted plain ran out to lavender mountains that reared spikily under a pinkish sky. From behind the leftward peaks emanated a warm, coppery-gold glow. This was not a mural, or any sort of painting; it was the illusion of s.p.a.cious reality provided by the holoprojection that was a hobby and a love of Kislar Jonuta of Qalara. On the plain stretching away before him, red-and-tan animals, ruminants, fed peacefully. Across the sky away out there in the simulated distance a white cloud sprawled, like spilt b.u.t.termilk. By the time he walked in he had decided what he should do, like it or not. HReenee was disappointed, of course, but tried to understand when he said he had lots to do and thought she needed and would welcome some time on the con, anyhow. She straightened the clothing she had deliberately disarrayed for him, and went to join Sak. That accomplished little positive purpose save in Jonuta's mind. He felt Sak would appreciate it, too. It did little for Jonuta's mental state, or HReenee's, or of the h.o.r.n.y Terasak she sat beside in the con-cabin. 2 An exhaustive 1977-1981 [Old Style] study of twenty-seven women of widely varying ages showed the women superior to males in adapting to the physical and psychological rigors of those tests. A spokesman far N.A.S.A. [Homeworld], in response to the query why the U.S. had put no women into s.p.a.ce by 1980, said, ''A lot of reasons were tossed around, but the main one was that until the shuttle came along, there was no way to manage women's waste." "On the far lower right hand corner of a living room wall," the wise-looking computer program told Janja of Aglaya, "make a firm thumbprint and draw a circle around it. Call that Thebanis, only planet of the double star Janski. Basing distance on the same scale as Thebanis's size on the wall, take five paces to its left and, on tiptoe, make another thumbprint. Circle that and call it Jorinne, fourth planet of the double star Payne." The program blinked at her from the screen and quirked his mouth into an expression that was not quite a smile. "Now you have some concept of the size of just this central area of our galaxy, and the distance between its suns and their planets." Janja nodded, sighing. She understood-in a way. It didn't seem so, whizzing along in a s.p.a.ceship that 37 could also slip into that nonent.i.ty called "subs.p.a.ce" purely for the sake of convenience, mental and linguistic- and cover distance even faster than whizzing. Hard enough to accept that the person she was looking at was not a person at all, but had been and was dead, and was now wholly an electronic simulation. "Time is a distance," it/he said, "and distance must be measured by time. This remains so even with our ability to convert into tachyons and travel faster than light, seemingly in contravention of the ancient al-Einstein postulation and yet entirely in accord with it-when we include the few little adjustments made in arriving at the Grand Unified Theory. Time is a distance, and distance is vast, because the galaxy is vast." "Yes, yes," Janja said, impatiently drumming her fingers. "My question concerned Qalara, not catch-phrases and GUT and al-Einstein." The highly sophisticated computer readjusted and responded without so much as a blip or a pause. "Return to the representation of Thebanis at the far lower rightward corner of the wall of a good-sized living room. There is not s.p.a.ce enough on the wall to show Qalara as well as Thebanis. Both would have to be reduced to mere dots." "d.a.m.n," Janja muttered uncharacteristically. "I knew it, but d.a.m.n anyhow. It's been a year now. Will I never reach Qalara? I have gone from ignorant 'barbarian' and slave to captain of my own ship in a year-ess. Must I wait a lifetime to find Jonuta?" Presumably recognizing a rhetorical question when it "heard" one, the computer made no reply. Janja stared at the waiting image and its carefully designed friendly, receptive face. She wore no such expression. She had never lost sight of her goal since her kidnap off her idyllic, non-technological and pre-industrial planet, Aglaya. The kidnappers were Captain Jonuta's men. Slav- 38 ers, off the slaver Jonuta's slaver-ship.

One of them had murdered her lover and affianced, Tarkij, without necessity.

She had been sold-by Jonuta-and had suffered and fought and killed and tricked her way to freedom, and had been tricked by Corundum, and had joined h.e.l.lfire almost on a whim, and with h.e.l.lfire she had been enslaved again, on Knor. Still she knew that she was no slave and still she did not feel truly a part of this culture. Their culture, these arrogant colonizers and enslavers she called them because they were not her people, these Thingmakers. They were humans who arrogantly called themselves Galactics, the race of the galaxy, as if they were alone in it or other races were of no importance. They looked upon Jarps and Aglayans and others as inferior peoples and enslaved them. Janja knew better. She possessed an ability they did not, and thus could not be called a human. Not inhuman or subhuman, but more than human. They devoted much attention to their physical selves and appearance and they made Things. They had done very very little to get to know themselves, to improve their inner selves (save in the cases of a few individuals), for millenia. She was among them, because they had dragged her off Aglaya and thrown her among them. Still, she was not of them; merely among them. As a person named Byron had put it, time out of mind, she was often wrapped "In a shroud of thoughts which were not/Their thoughts." And for a year she had sustained herself by holding one goal, by never forgetting the one driving intent that gave her purpose. It had a name, and the name was Jonuta. She would remove Jonuta from the s.p.a.ceways his presence soiled. That was her vow. She was worthy of Sunmother and worthy of Aglii and Aglaya. She would be worthy of the s.p.a.ceways and thought that she was. She would kill Jonuta, who was not. 39 For a year now she had considered herself as being on a quest. In quest of Qalara. And still I cannot rush there, to find and confront and slay Jonuta! Instead, she must go to Thebanis. To go to Thebanis she must avoid one of the largest collapstars-a dead star or "black hole in s.p.a.ce"-in the galaxy. The Demonhole. It was an inconceivably huge magnet that once had been a star. Now it lurked invisibly in s.p.a.ce, emitting absolutely no light and doing its best to suck in anything that pa.s.sed. Should anything, whether a mote of interstellar dust or a s.p.a.ceborne pebble or stone or a ship or even a comet, dare pa.s.s too close-the Demonhole succeeded. It made that object part of itself and increased its own power by a tiny fraction. Its newly captured component it tucked away out of sight, forever. For the gravity of any collapstar was greater than the escape velocity even of light, and nothing could be seen of the Demonhole or its prey beyond its suction perimeter, its Blue Event Horizon. Not until s.p.a.cer Satana had pursued a course- "swerved"- to avoid that horrid lurking eater of matter and energy could the ship and all onboard be converted to the faster-than-light particles called tachyons. Only after Satana avoided becoming a part of the Demonhole could it defeat Einstein and jump in close to the Janski system and Thebanis. Janja wanted to go to Qalara; was compelled to go to Qalara. And first she had to go to Thebanis. Qalara* was still months away. But I am on my way, Janja thought, and her teeth were compressed with purpose. A small blond, paler than any Galactic, slave no longer and full of purpose and confi- *No letter exists to represent the soft-k sound of Qalara's first letter, in the alphabet of Erts.

The easiest course is to think Khalara and say "Kuh-LAIR-uh." 40 dence and the ancient desire for what she considered justice: revenge. For this is my ship now, and soon, oh soon on Thebanis I will trade it for a better one! And then . . . outbound, outbound to Qalara and Jonuta!-as Captain Janjaglaya, by Aglii and Sunmother! She rose then from the superb "s.p.a.cefarers' Aide" on Soljer, docking station of planet Jorinne, and hurried to where the ship-her ship, Satana-awaited. Captain Janja, on her way. Graborn and Laleemis were gone, down onto Jorinne with Mehdi-daktari for tests and learning and, the "Satana Coalition" hoped, happiness. h.e.l.lfire, Cinnabar, and Quindy were onboard and waiting. Quindy lounged at con with seeming calm and patience, a jet black woman with hair the color of sunflowers (both colors by choice) who wore an extremely revealing, extremely pale blue bandeau-with-cutouts above and a pair of pale, hotly pink pants below. Soon after Janja was...o...b..ard, here came their companion who was not quite part of the crew and yet who was friend and advisor and savior and . . . definitely part of what they had dubbed the Satana Coalition. Dashing Trafalgar Cuw, dashing now to join them, in his rainbow clothing and big broad-brimmed hat. They zipped up the ship, breaking contact with Soljer-station's umbilical. h.e.l.lfire grinned. "Let's blow this joint!" Cinnabar looked around all huge-eyed and pursed the lips of its small roundish mouth. "The whole d.a.m.ned joint?" it asked with exaggerated interest, and h.e.l.lfire swatted the Jarp. "The whole furbaggin' planet, by Shaitan's b.a.l.l.s!" h.e.l.lfire snapped. "Let's just get me to someplace where I can start practicing being rich!" She clapped her hands together, a tall, angularly lean woman with tan skin and hair the color of pra.s.s-by choice. "It will have to be yours and Quindy's authority, Janja," 41 Trafalgar Cuw of Outreach said. He gave h.e.l.lfire a big blandly innocent look-one of his best affectations.

Maddeningly, disgustingly boyish. "Cap-I mean h.e.l.lf, I regret to say that you died, down on Jorinne." She stared at him. She was less volatile now than she had been before some particularly unpleasant experiences,* but still a woman who had been ship's master for several years, and a pirate besides. "I did what?" He flipped his fingers. "You died. The pirate h.e.l.lfire is dead. We will have a doc.u.ment recording her transferring ownership of her Satana to one Janjaglaya Jee, of Outreach. Sorry, Janja-you had to be from somewhere, and you don't have any official ID or numbers yet. We'll worry about your new ID once we reach Thebanis, uh, whatever-your-name-is, ma'am." "Oh, Tra-Fal-garr!

And to think that I once hated your guts and called you Trafalgar Pew." He shrugged. "Ah, that was only because I'm a man, bigot." The Satana Coalition laughed, including the (former) captain. True, she no longer quite hated all men, and Trafalgar was partly responsible, along with her experiences on Knor and Jorinne. On the other hand, she was still strictly lesbian. Abruptly, as she stared smiling at him, seemingly poised, Trafalgar raised both hands in a fending-off gesture and backed a step. "No no, don't even think of hugging me-people will talk!" "Oh G.o.d," h.e.l.lfire cried, and broke up again. "I think I'm going to throw up," Quindy observed, in her quiet voice. "Not till we've redshifted station Soljer and the whole *s.p.a.cEWAYS #4, Escape from Macho and #8, Under Twin Suns. 42 Payne-Humason system, pleasel" Janja said, smiling.

Yes, she could smile and enjoy their camaraderie, she who had not laughed or smiled for the better part of a year, and then only wanly, as if it were an effort. "Trafalgar-you really did that?" He flipped five and tried to look self-denigrating. "Oh, I had some help. We have a couple of friends or ten on Jorinne, you know. It is officially registered, though. The wanted pirate Captain h.e.l.lfire was slain on Jorinne- by other outlaws, not policers-and transferred her ship, with witnesses, just before she died." He clapped a hand over his heart and rolled his eyes upward. "Who-who were the witnesses?" "Oh, no less than the renowned Caldera-clan Mehdidaktari, respected all along the s.p.a.ceways, and the Director of Station Soljer Security, Cosi-Prefect Cosi." He rolled his eyes. They knew about his and Cosi's . . . coziness. "I'll be d.a.m.ned," h.e.l.lfire said, shaking her head, leaning against the closed airlock hatch and looking very serious. "Oh, without doubt," Cinnabar told her, and ducked a flying elbow. "h.e.l.lfire," Trafalgar said, noting her very serious expression and becoming just as sober, "you are wanted on more planets than you've ever visited. We are your friends, and we've been through more than one h.e.l.l together. We can't possibly see you step off onto Thebanis and be arrested and hauled away, or knocked off by some TGO a.s.sas-uh, eliminator. We know you've changed, partly because of mental scar tissue or something like.

We all heard you give-well, almost-Satana to Janja, now that you're rich-" "Now that we are all rich!" Cinnabar practically shouted. "-and of course now there's the business arrangement with those people down on Jorinne, and the banker on Thebanis." Trafalgar paused to shake his head. "Knorese gemstone jewelry, Jorinne 'cataract' pearls, and s.p.a.ceships, 43 too! What a complicated trade! I will tell you this, though, citizen!" He leveled a finger at her. "I am charging you an obligation, a service rendered should ever I need one and call on you. And right now I am saying that everyone else onboard-the Satana Coalition, no less-should demand the same." "Not me!" Janja said. "I have Satana and I will have . . . whatever the name of the new ship is!" "You've got it," h.e.l.lfire said, her glance sweeping them all, and they saw something they had never seen before, any of them-the liquid glint of tears in the eyes of the vicious pirate h.e.l.lfire. "And come to think, I am thinking Tarkij as the name for my ship, and you others had probably better try talking me out of it," Janja was continuing. "I've got an ob on you, Cap'n-I-mean-citizen," Cinnabar said, and poked a long, thin, orange finger into h.e.l.lfire's breast-or the place where one would have been if she had b.r.e.a.s.t.s, at any rate. "And I'll take it. You'll never be free of me, you s.e.xy Galactic!-ouch!" Trafalgar had casually swatted Cinnabar in one rounded breast; at almost the same instant h.e.l.lfire gave the Jarp a finger-flick in the crotch, where its p.e.n.i.s nestled in a pair of horribly blue trunks. Quindy came to h.e.l.lfire and set both hands on her shoulders. She looked into those moist mahogany-colored eyes. "I take no favor and demand no obligation, h.e.l.lfire. Just that if ever I set down on a planet where you are, I want you, and you know how." h.e.l.lfire nodded, and tears spilled down her cheeks bright and glistening as rolling pearls. She knew. She and Quindy had long been lovers, and their relationship was master and slave-the consummately competent ship-handler and computrician Quindy as slave. There was no masochism 44 gene for bioengineering to remove, and Quindaridi of Ghanji was most definitely m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic. There followed some hugging, which was followed by an awkward silence. "All right Quindy," Janja said at last, "let's go get ourselves s.p.a.ceborne!" 3 "An ancient writer, I understand, once asked 'What's in a name?' He wouldn't have asked that if he'd been called 60640329aO!" -Trafalgar Cuw Cinnabar suggested "Ellfira" or "Elphira," but Helifire turned up her nose and besides Trafalgar said it sounded too much like "Helifire" anyhow. Janja suggested her nickname for Helifire: "Pra.s.stop" could be used as a name. No it couldn't, Helifire said; "Pra.s.stop" wasn't any sort of name and besides the color of her hair really should be changed. As a matter of fact she was wondering if raggedy-pixieish black bangs mightn't soften the long angular lines of her face. He would come up with a name she could not resist, Trafalgar told her, and have it registered into reality on Outreach before they reached Thebanis. As a matter of fact they could easily stop off at the Outreach docking station, at least; it was a mere four light-years from Thebanis's star, Janski. (The ship was falling through starlit indigo and gray, past Bleak now and rushing on, on. s.p.a.cedust caressed them, fitfully lit by starfire in blue and yellow, ruddy orange and greenwhite as they hurtled faster than meteors through a domain never meant for their kind.) 45 46 h.e.l.lfire said, "Outreach?" Trafalgar Cuw nodded. He was positively scintillant in a prismatically colored Joser robe that made him look like the priest of some chromohedonistic cult. He wore his ingenuous boy expression, which he did well. "Pos. I can arrange ident.i.ties, you see, on Outreach. I have a lot of influence, on Outreach." Suddenly he jerked his head toward Janja and his eyes were bright with the excitement of discovery. "Janjaglaya Wye! W-Y-E." Janja looked at him. Eyebrows up, head on one side as she considered, briefly. "I ... can live with that." "Thought you could," he said, beaming. "I love it," Cinnabar said or rather its translation helmet did.

"Captain Janjaglaya Wye." Rather plaintively Janja said, "I don't know anything about Outreach." "SIPAc.u.m does. So study." "I don't either, dammit,"

h.e.l.lfire said. "So study," Trafalgar repeated, in the same bland tone. "What was your name before? I mean, you weren't named h.e.l.lfire at birth, were you?'' "None of your business. I hate that name. How do you have influence, on Outreach?" "Oh-" (He gestured, robe's polychromatic sleeve streaming, flapping so that its colors flowed in a beautiful blur.)"-family. You know. It's not important. A person gains influence. Consider-we all have some on Jorinne now, for instance. Anyhow, would you rather whisper your old name to me, let me see if I can make anything out of it? Another name, I mean.'' He evades questions better than anyone in the Galaxy, Janja mused. Now there's something I want to learn to do! h.e.l.lfire made a face. She sat on the edge of her bed in her cabin-the captain's cabin of s.p.a.cer Satana. "No." She was looking down at her tight blue shimmerfabric pants, idly scratching at the metallic glint on her thigh with 47 a close-trimmed fingernail. "Oh, Tao's b.a.l.l.s, all right! My birth-name was Aljareh. And a string of numbers. I really believe I've managed to forget them." "That's not so terrible," Janja said. She was already tap-tapping the cabin's SIPAc.u.m link, initiating a computer scan for planet Outreach. "It is to me," h.e.l.lfire said petulantly. "I never liked it and besides you don't have my memories, Cloud-top. Besides, it won't do, anyhow.

It's known too, that name. I mean-more than one policer organization's records have my real name in the banks. And description." "And all of them have the names h.e.l.lfire and Satana on file," Trafalgar said rather quietly, feeling her morose-ness. She shot him only the briefest of dark glances. Those almost-black eyes were hardly soft, but they were a lot less hard and mean, these days. In a way h.e.l.lfire really was dead. "h.e.l.lfire's real name, not yours," Cinnabar corrected her lightly with a pretense at solemnity, but h.e.l.lfire didn't smile. She sat on the edge of the luxurious bed she had caused to be installed on Satana for her comfort and her s.e.xuality, and she stared at her hand at its idle work on her thigh. Her friends were trying to help. Her friends!. Friends were new to her, and the acceptance of them. So were the concepts of wealth, and retirement, and ident.i.ty-change with disguise. Her pensive dolor was an aura that stretched out to darken the thoughts and faces of her companions. Her friends. A vicious s.p.a.ce pirate, with friends! Cinnabar bit its lip. With its orange skin and carmiana-red hair, the Jarp knew how good it looked in the skin-hugging red jumpsuit Janja had bought for it, back in Komodi on Jorinne. It matched the one Janja wore, sitting hunched forward toward the little terminal. The viewscreen, small but 48 equipped with a holomagnifier, was full of a beautiful big swirl of luminous blue and indigo and lavender all traced through with ribbons of true black. The remnants of a long-dead star, richly decorative. Now that it was dead, it could be looked at and enjoyed as natural art. Gas and dust, sprawling majestically off to their "left." Way off to their left. Janja wondered idly what color the nebula had been when it was aflame, a living hydrogen furnace among billions, but she was not sufficiently interested to ask SIPAc.u.m for readings and a.n.a.lysis. (SIPAc.u.m was running the ship as well as monitoring constantly, inside and out in s.p.a.ce, close to hand and long range. For it to detach a portion of its microcircuitry to access every Outreach reference it held was less trouble than for Janja to scratch her nose while reading.) Janja was calling up peripheral/ancillary refs to Outreach and Outies, before bringing up the main entry onto the screen. "Rich," Cinnabar murmured for the nth time, nervous in the silence laden with dark thoughts. It stared at nothing at all with its great big round, soft eyes. SHONDEKAYAN EPH, SIPAc.u.m printed, "first Insarch of reunified Outreach," and followed with a date two hundred years old.

Staring, Janja was thinking about the patterned oddness of Outreacher names when she heard the voice of one called Trafalgar Cuw: "Once, on Outreach, I had a friend named Varnalgeran Yuw. We . . . went to school together. And I have a cousin named Calcutta Kay, did you know that? We don't get much on Outreach, but we Outies get good names. Varnalgeran Yuw, and Calcutta Kay, and Trafalgar Cuw and Janjaglaya Wye. And"-abruptly, happy-faced and triumphant, he pointed at h.e.l.lfire-"not Aljerah, but Kalahari Kay I" "That's beautiful,"

Cinnabar said, whose Jarp name was of course unp.r.o.nounceable by any but Jarps and who 49 had been Raunchy before it decided that was no proper name at all, and Janja had come up with "Cinnabar." h.e.l.lfire had twitched her head up to stare at the Outie just as Janja had done. She glanced at the blond. Janja had looked around; she smiled. "I like it, Pra.s.s-top." " 'Kalahari Kay,' "

h.e.l.lfire said, tasting the sound of it, testing the feel of it on her lips.

"Kalahari. Pretty enough, I guess. Does it mean something?'' Trafalgar shook his head. "A very ancient word, we're sure of that." "Kalahari," she said again. "What about 'Kalahari Cuw'?" "Merciless Theba! You want to be my relative!" Cinnabar and Janja laughed. Oddly h.e.l.lfire, who had once scornfully called him "Trafalgar Pew," did not. "I could do worse, Traf. Could you?" "Oh, I might have to think about that a little!" Trafalgar said. "Particularly with Corundum gone. But-" He made an extravagant gesture-a Trafalgarish gesture-smiling ingenuously. h.e.l.lfire s.n.a.t.c.hed up an empty drinking pla.s.s and threw it at him. It was both empty and lightweight. Its lip caught air and it drifted for a moment, then fell leisurely. Trafalgar's smile became a grin. "I'll go to con and get us patched through to Outreach," he said. "My cousin Saratoga Jee." "To Outreach! That'll cost a fortune!" "We have a fortune, my dears! So-Janjaglaya Wye and Kalahari Cuw?" h.e.l.lfire smiled a little. "I like it. Unless . . . Janjy wants to be sisters." The orange non-human looked from short, pale-skinned blond with bluegray eyes to tall, lean, deeply tan h.e.l.lfire with the mahogany-hued eyes. 50 "I don't think you'd pa.s.s," Cinnabar said, and both Janjaglaya and Kalahari broke up. Trafalgar grinned, made a sleeve-flutteringly deep bow, and headed for the con. He moved like a breeze; like lazily trickling water. Easily, unself-consciously. That was Trafalgar Cuw of Outreach, who was both enigma and hero and who blithely denied both. The others gazed after him, each wondering, none voicing its thoughts and emotions about him. "Trafalgar," Janja called when he was in the hatchway called doorway, "the head of government on Outreach is called an 'Insarch.' Why Insarch?" He looked back at her, eyebrows up. He blinked, then spread both hands. "Who wants to be governed by an Outsarch?" And he left. "Fascinating," Janja said in an unfascinated voice. "Logical, too,"

Cinnabar said, and they exchanged a glance and chuckled. "Well," h.e.l.lfire a.k.a. Kalahari said, "I guess that's that. Please to try to call me by my new name. And . . . with Traf and Quindy in the con-cabin, let's be kind and leave them alone for an hour." "Shall we synchronize chrons for this operation?"

Cinnabar asked, and they chuckled, all three. Maybe it was a giggle. The ship fled past a triad of stars that took no note. A family of suns, sullen ruby and flaring golden topaz and tired old slate-blue, strung all about with their litt