Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 09 - In Quest of Qalara

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"... I came up here to Get Involved. Think I haven't missed you, sexpot? 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 sexiest ship-handling genius along the spaceways. And

besides tha-" "Oh, talk talk talk. That's enough talk. Come down

here." SPACEWAYS #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 SPACEWAYS #9: IN QUEST OF QALARA Copyright (c)

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

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 spaceways. -Captain

Janjaglaya If at first you don't succeed, it's been said, try and try again.

Noble 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 space. 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 space 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 stiktite 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 spacefarer 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

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577.886. If these green-clad baggy-pantsed fobbers off spaceship 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 damn 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 spacer Hot Squid out of Terasaki, and drew their pay.

Security watched without particular interest. Other space-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 spacer 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

pissake, 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 ass by preachin' hate-war, for pissake!-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 pissake! (No no-make that Fiiatravia's sake!) Half the

sisterslicin' planets along the spaceways are in the hands of idiots and TGO

ner nobodyelse'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-rectums 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 hell that at last a

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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 spacefarer 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 spacefarer

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 spacesuit rolled out. It was silver, and

it was occupied. The air-conditioned spacesuit 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 spacefarer began stripping off his baggy green

two-piece. The spacesuit sat up, stood. Its owner began removing it. The

Terasak saw an astonishingly homely woman with old-gold skin, in a blue

skintite that molded her angular leanness from neck to toes. The spacefarer

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 spacesuit'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 spacesuit. 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 spacesuited 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, rehearsed 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

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was the spray-can of sealant. The spacer 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

spaceways. "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,

unobtrusively 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' attitude was natural enough: Who gave a shit? (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 shit 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 assailant. 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 "assassination"; 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

"assassinated" Mujazia. He had come a long way in the discomfort of a big

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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, assassinated. "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 god-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 spacesuit 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 space." The planet called Bleak receded in the distance behind

spaceship Coronet. And then its sun was only a reddish spot of light, and none

too soon for Coronet's master and crew. Spacer Coronet's master was Kislar

Jonuta. The crew were Kenowa, Sakyo, and Shiganu of Terasaki; and the recent

additions who were part crew, part passengers: 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 heterosexual. What Shig and Sak were was

horny. 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 spaceship 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

spacefarers until a Galactic ship stumbled upon their world, and a "new race"

was "discovered." Already she had experienced travel on four spaceships, 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 space with spaceship 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 assured 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 assured her. He used the spacefarers'

current dodge-word for that facility variously called the head, the can, the

John, the crap- 25 per, the pissoir, 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

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sensuous HRal just wanted to be wherever Jonuta was. She and the others never

left Bleak's small spacecraft doeking-and-loading station in space. At that,

Kenowa and Dem returned pretty quickly to the ship. It hung in space,

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 spacefarers' 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 spacefarers, 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 damned 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 spacefarer in a hurry and looking mean. He wore the

chest-dagger and armored left glove that marked him as a spacegoing Bleaker.

They did that, probably just to let others along the spaceways 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

space," spacefarer 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 spacefaring 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 spacefarer 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 spacefaring 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 assurances 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 nobody looking for them and nobody who cares! We've got 'em

for life!" Having enthused that, the first securityman looked again at the two

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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, spacefarers?" "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 spacefarers 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

spacefarers, 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

masochistic secret agent acted as a sexual 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

sexy, 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 breasts or "breasts"-not much more than nipples, really-and

not all eight of any given HRal, female or otherwise, massed 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 breasts 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 brassy prass buttons, 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

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that of the worlds of the spaceways. 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 Chiranalli,

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 basso 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 Chiranalli 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 space 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

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military pose. "Firm, Captain! Ready to take the con, Captain!" Jonuta nodded

and headed for the hatchway. There he paused to look back. "Damn your ass,

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 assumed 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 horny up to here, and

especially since there's plenty of sexual 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, "Spacefarer 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 bastard'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 spacefarers in a bar! Damn 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 balls, and it doesn't excuse me for

breaking my own shipboard rules! He passed a side tunnel, pale blue. Coronet

was hardly enormous, but even a "small" spacer wasn't small. The engines

worked on, stealing matter from space 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 spaceways. 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

spacecraft. 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

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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 spacious 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 buttermilk. 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

horny 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 space 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 spaceship

that 37 could also slip into that nonentity called "subspace" 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 space enough on

the wall to show Qalara as well as Thebanis. Both would have to be reduced to

mere dots." "Damn," Janja muttered uncharacteristically. "I knew it, but damn

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 Hellfire

almost on a whim, and with Hellfire she had been enslaved again, on

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"...IcameupheretoGetInvolved.ThinkIhaven'tmissedyou,sexpot?Andcometothink,Ididcometorelieveyou,inaway.Needrelief,Quindy?"Sherolledhereyes."WhydoIputupwiththisman-lovehim,even?"BecauseIknowwhatyouneed,hethought,andlovetoprovideit,That'swonderfulforusboth-doingwellbydoinggood!Hesaid:"Becausewe'reboths...

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Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 09 - In Quest of Qalara

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