Goulart, Ron - Galaxy Jane

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GALAXY JANE
By Ron Goulart
A Berkley Book/published by arrangement wiih the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition/March 1986
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1986 by Ron Goulart.
Cover art by Boris Vallejo.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by mimeograph or any other means, without
permission.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue,
New York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-425-08684-4
A BERKLEY BOOK TM 757,375
The name “BERKLEY” and the stylized “B” with design are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing
Corporation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
*******************************************************
CHAPTER 1
The three glittering robots who attacked him on the ground level of the shuttleport were only
three feet high but full of nasty tricks.
Jack Summer, a middle-sized sandy-haired man of thirty-nine, had been striding toward the glaz
doors leading to the NewzNet takeoff area, when a certain amount of whooping and hollering
commenced behind him.
“There’s the blighter!”
“That’s him! Summer the philanderer!”
“Let’s us give ‘im what-for!”
Spinning around, Summer found himself facing a trio of midget robots. There were sneers and scowls
showing on their silvery ballheads, the words Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. engraved in gloletters on
their metallic chests.
“Fellas,” said Summer, grinning amiably and holding up a hand in a stop-right-there gesture, “I
think I know who’s hired you and—”
“Dirty sod!”
“Irresponsible lout!”
“Bloody wretch!”
One of them leaped, tackling Summer just below the knees, causing him to fall over backward. He
landed on the plaz mosaic tiles with a slick thump.
A second Scoundrel Trackers robot jumped and sat, hard, on Summer’s chest. “Now give a listen to
this, mate.” Music started pouring out of a tiny speaker in his left side. Sweet, romantic music
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thick with violins.
“So?” Summer got an armlock on the squatting robot and tried to unseat him.
“Ain’t ‘e the ‘eartless one?” observed the third robot, who’d opened a compartment in his shiny
chest to reveal a small wafer-thin vidscreen.
“This here’s your song,” said the one on Summer’s chest. “The very tune you and your dear wife
loved to play of an evening whilst gathered round the bloomin’ ‘armonium in—”
“You gents do sloppy research,” Summer pointed out while trying to wrestle free of the two
mechanical men. “Maryella and I never owned a harmonium. Furthermore, that dippy tune is actually
the theme from an old Galactic Skymines commercial that aired here in the Barnum System of planets
nearly five long—”
“An’ I suppose, you cruel deserter,” inquired the third robot, tapping his picture screen, “that
this hain’t that selfsame Maryella workin’ as a-galley drudge in a cafeteria what’s orbitin’ the
worst bloomin’ planet out in the Hellquad at this—”
“Nope, it isn’t,” said Summer after a quick glance at the flickering image. “Maryella’s slim and
blond, thirty-one her last birthday. That lady’s got to be over fifty and she’s fat as well, and—”
“Well, the poor lass ‘as gone to seed since you run off to pursue your dubious career as a
muckrakin’ videojournalist, guy.”
“I didn’t run off. Maryella and I are legally divorced.” He managed to toss the robot from off his
chest, sending it smack into the one who was showing him the heartrending pictures of a woman who
wasn’t his former wife at all. Both of the ‘bots went rolling and sliding, wobbling and rattling,
away from him.
That left only the third mechanical bill collector, who had both springy metal arms locked around
Summer’s legs.
“I suppose,” asked this one now in his tinny, piping voice, “you’re goin’ to claim you don’t owe
the poor slatternly wench four bloody months of back alimony?”
“That was just an error on the part of my bank. While I was out on the planet—”
“Can the tripe, guy. All you deadbeats try to pull that
“Awk! Awk!”
Summer thrust a hand into the mechanical man’s right armpit, locating the emergency turnoff
switch. Few knew of the switch, but Summer’d done considerable research on bizbots once, for a
seven-minute vidwall essay that never aired.
Jumping to his feet and clear of the disabled ‘bot, he went sprinting for the NewzNet gates.
The other two Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. mechanical men were still struggling to return to upright
positions.
* * * *
The large toadman paused to fluff his curly golden locks, then continued, “What you don’t seem to
understand, young man, is that this—”
“I’m not young,” corrected Summer, who was seated across the shuttle aisle from the toad in the
conservative two-piece bizsuit.
“Be that as it may, this is, as is plainly spelled out on the cabin door, in not one but seventeen
major languages and a rebus, this is an Executive Shuttle to the NewzNet satellite headquarters.”
“Yep, that’s exactly where I want to go.” Nodding, Summer settled back in his plush seat.
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The shuttle was climbing silently up toward Studio One, his intended destination.
“The point is,” persisted the toadman with an angry toss of his curls, “you aren’t an executive,
do you see? You’re merely a field reporter—and one noted for his flippancy, his padded expense
accounts, his notorious tendency to seduce every and all—”
“Yes, he’s got disgusting morals,” put in a hefty humanoid lady of sixty-one who was sitting a few
seats ahead.
“Good morning, Henrietta,” said Summer with a grin. “You’re looking svelte.”
“1 am not, Summer. I’m looking fat and gross as usual,” said Henrietta Don, frowning back at him
over her broad shoulder. “Don’t try any of that dreadful blarney you work on barmaids, hookers,
floozies, skin models, tarts—”
“Henrietta,” interrupted Summer, “in the nearly eleven months that I’ve been working for NewzNet,
my life in the field has been one of exemplary conduct, spotless morality and—”
“Grout puckey,” observed Henrietta, jiggling disdainfully. “You forget, Summer, that I’m a Vice
President in our Legal Department. All the complaints that pour in about your wretched conduct
cross my desk. Why, even your poor frail ex-wife, who’s been forced to work as a hostess in an
animal shelter orbiting one of the meanest planets in the Trinidad System out—”
“Maryella lives in a villa on Esmeralda,” said Summer. “It’s just that her attorneys, especially
the android one, are fairly imaginative. They cook up various false yarns whenever I happen, due
to glitches on the part of my bank, to fall a week or two behind in my alimony pay—”
“There’s another terrible thing,” said the glowering lady exec. “You go around from planet to
planet doing reports about the faults and failings of others, while you owe that poor girl a
stewpot of dough and she—”
“Hoy!” boomed someone from up at the front of the shuttle cabin. “Give Jack a break, huh? He’s one
hell of an investigative reporter, always has been.” A big, wide catman stood up to face the other
three passengers on this NewzNet Executive Shuttle. He was wearing a onepiece paramilitary
worksuit, and had a patch over his right eye.
“Wink Bowman,” said Summer. “I didn’t notice you slouched up there.”
Bowman came lumbering up the aisle. “Now, I happen to be the best damn war correspondent NewzNet’s
got,” he admitted. “But Jack here’s the best muckraker, the absolute top man at digging out all
the sordid details of political scandals, criminal intrigues and dubious flimfiams of all sorts. I
remember when he was working in the print medium . . . Muckrake Magazine, wasn’t it? He used to
travel to the hotest hot spots and the worst pestholes in our Barnum System. He worked with a
horny photog name of . . . LaPenna, wasn’t it?”
“Palma,” said Summer.
“Palma, yeah, that was the guy’s name. Baldest and horniest chap I’ve ever run into.” The burly
catman chuckled. “I remember one time on Murdstone when they found Palma, snerg naked, in the
Sacred Convent of Our Lady of the Wobbly Knees just as the Streamlined Bishop arrived to bless
the—”
“Wink,” interrupted Henrietta, “I know all these vile tales already, they fill to fat Jack
Summer’s file. There’s really no need to repeat them.”
The toadman cleared his throat. “It certainly sounds to me as though this fellow isn’t NewzNet
material at all,” he said. “We stand, let me remind you, for a certain moral and—”
“Listen, Virgil,” said the war correspondent, pointing a furry finger at him, “Summer’s last three
reports for us were picked up by more vidwall stations across the universe than anything else
NewzNet’s done this year. The gross income from his—”
“There’s no need,” put in Henrietta, “to babble confidential information in front of—”
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“I hadn’t heard about those sales figures, Wink.” Summer invited him to sit beside him. “Can you
give me more details?”
The catman eased down next to him. “Thinking of asking for a pay hike?”
“I’m almost always thinking about that,” admitted Summer.
CHAPTER 2
His small green editor made one more slow circuit of the glazwalled office. “Well, sir, I might be
able to get you an additional 50,000 trudollars,” he said slowly. “Not much more.”
“That’ll help a little.”
“1 understand your poor wife has been forced to take employment as a groutherder on a pastoral
space colony that orbits—”
“Ex-wife,” corrected Summer, who was sitting on a rubberoid sofa and gazing down through the
vufloor at the planet Barnum below them. “Yes, it’s sad what lack of money will lead you to,
Fred.”
Carefully Fred Taliaferro made his way back to his lucite desk. “For a while I thought I might get
over my fear of heights,” he said, not looking down. “No such luck.”
Summer suggested, “Have your floor and walls opaqued.”
The green man hopped into his desk chair. “Nope, that’d make them think I was flawed,” he said as
he picked up a pile of faxsheets of various sizes and colors. “Well, sir, let’s get down to. . .
um . . . by the way, did you insult Virgil Brigmush?”
“Might have. Who is he?”
“Senior VP in Marketing. Claims you took an unauthorized ride up here this morning, were rude to
him and used gutter language.
Grinning, Summer nodded. “I did all that, except for the foulmouth stuff.”
“Jack, I keep trying to explain to you that, while NewzNet is the most liberal news and reporting
service in this corner of the universe, the management people tend—”
“I’ll control my impulses next time. Some robots were chasing me around the port down there, so I
caught the first shuttle for here that—”
“Have you ever sat down with a computer and drawn up a budget? That way you wouldn’t be dunned all
the—”
“The new assignment,” reminded Summer.
“Hum?” Blinking twice, Taliaferro glanced at the papers he was holding in his bright green hands.
“Yes, right. You know about the illegal drug called Zombium?”
“Sure, nasty stuff. Most of it comes from the back country on the planet Murdstone. I did a piece
on the Zombium traffic for Muckrake six or seven years—”
“I read it, yes.” His editor fluttered the handful of papers. “Maybe, you know, you ought not to
talk openly about how long ago you wrote for that magazine, Jack. This is a young man’s business,
afterall. At least the field reporter end of it. The fact you’re nearly thirty-five might—”
“I’ll be forty in January.”
Taliaferro gave a forlorn shake of his head. “That’s even worse. Well, sir, you don’t look that
old, so maybe—”
“Let’s get back to the Zombium story. Does NewzNet want me to travel out to Murdstone to—”
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“Yes, but not directly.” Taliaferro plucked a yellow sheet from his fistful. “We’ve been getting
rumors fairly reliable ones . . . that a spacecraft known as Hollywood II may be involved in
smuggling the stuff.”
Summer said, “That’s one of those vidmovie outfits, roams the Barnum System making flix. Yep,
they’d be in a position to smuggle most anything. Who’s the source of your rumors?”
His green editor didn’t meet his eyes. “He’d prefer not to be involved any furth—”
“C’mon, Fred, I don’t work that way.”
“Okay, all right. I’ll supply you with the name, but don’t contact him directly unless—”
“You want me to go onboard the Hollywood II?”
“Exactly, yes.” Taliaferro held up another sheet of paper, salmon-colored this time. “You’ll be
pretending to do a story on their latest production. It’s entitled, where is that memo? Yes,
Galaxy Jane.”
“Galaxy Jane was a space pirate in this system back ninety years ago or so.”
“Yes, so it says here. She had a lair on Murdstone and was also involved in some native
uprisings,” said the editor. “Apparently the movie’s going to concentrate on that phase of her
colorful career.”
“Convenient for them if they are smuggling Zombium,” observed Summer. “The weed the stuff’s
concocted from grows all over the Pegada Territory, which is also where Galaxy Jane operated in
her heyday.”
Taliaferro selected a purplish sheet of faxpaper, scanned it, frowned, let it drop to one side.
“We’ll want you to interview the stars of this opus. Let me see . . Francis X. Yoe will be
portraying . . . urn . . . Captain Thatcher King of the Royal Mounted Stungunners and... I wish
the printer down in Backgrounding didn’t have this fuzzy sanserif typeface... Yes, this says Flo
Haypenny is going to be Galaxy Jane.”
Summer looked again at his editor. “She’s a onetime Zombium user.”
“I didn’t know that. But then I was in Sports for three years before they stuck me here in Scandal
and Crime and so I—”
“Supposedly she was cured after a stay at Greenmansions, that rehab colony out by—”
“When was this?” He was scribbling marginal notes with his electropen.
“Seven years back.”
“That long ago? Is Flo Haypenny old, too?”
‘‘Thirty-five.”
Taliaferro shook his head. “Sad,” he observed. “Well, sir, you’re scheduled to board the Hollywood
II when it docks at Spaceport A down on Barnum tomorrow afternoon. You’ll stay onboard during the
two-day jaunt out to Murdstone, hang around while they do location work. We’d like to get
something good from you—it has to play at least six minutes—within a week or less.”
“May take longer.”
“Budget and Allocations gets on my tail if my people drag—”
“I’ll give it a valiant try, Fred.”
His editor pushed the collection of papers across the desk top. “You can browse through these,
then return them to me.”
“You forgot a page.” Summer nodded at the purple sheet.
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“Hum?”
“There.”
“Oh, this?” Gingerly he lifted it. “Jack, suppose . . well, suppose I get you a raise of 75,000
trubux?”
“Who?”
“What?”
“Who do you want me to drag along on this damn assignment with me?”
“You’re making it sound like something unpleasant, whereas it might be as much fun as a barrel
of—”
“All I need is a cambot to take my footage.” Summer stood up. “The way I operate, a partner
isn’t—”
“The thing is . . . Well, sir, this directive isn’t from me.” He pointed a green finger upward.
“Comes from higher.”
“Who are you burdening me with?”
“They tell me . . . reliable sources inform me, since I’ve never met the lady... that she’s
very... hum.. cute. Bright, too. She graduated with honors from the Barnum School of Visual Arts
and Investigative Reporting last autumn.”
“Last fall?” Summer leaned, rested his palms on the desk and studied Taliaferro’s anxious face.
“You’re sticking me with a child? Some girl fresh out of a convent? Fred, these Zombium
traffickers are tough and dirty.”
“Would you care to look at her grades? She got an A— in Dirty Combat, a B+ in Wilderness Survival.
So you have nothing to—”
Straightening, Summer took a step back from the lucite desk. “Nugent,” he realized. “It’s Nugent’s
daughter, isn’t it? That blond tomboy who—”
“Jack, hush. Eli Nugent’s the Associate Chairman of the whole damn NewzNet operation,” he said in
a low, cautious voice. “Sure, Vicky Nugent happens to be his only daughter, but she’s supposed to
be a crackerjack journalist as well.”
“No, nope, not at all.” Summer headed for a door. “I’m not going to play nanny to some nitwit
heiress who thinks she’s—”
“100,000 trubux,” called Taliaferro.
Halting, Summer turned to face the desk again. “Put that in writing.”
The editor nodded. “I’ll draw up an agreement in triplicate,” he pledged. “We’ll even shake hands
on the deal.”
Summer narrowed his left eye. “Okay, I’ll work with Vicky Nugent.”
Taliaferro allowed himself a small relieved smile. “She’s supposed to be,” he said, “very
personable.”
CHAPTER 3
The three tattooed gatormen who attacked Summer in the Central Foyer of Barnum Spaceport-A the
next afternoon were carrying rolled-up parasols.
While the huskiest of the trio, who had an idealized portrait of his mother etched in glowhite on
his leathery bicep, dived and attempted to tackle the vidjournalist, the other two started
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whacking at him with their polkadot umbrellas.
“Thus to all deadbeats and alimony cheats!” cried the Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. agent who was
whapping Summer on his back and shoulders.
“It pays to pay up on time,” suggested the third. He was profusely decorated with tattooed
sporting scenes and was making swordsmanlike lunges with his furled parasol.
“Spare me the commercial messages.” Summer dodged the thrusts of the umbrella, moving out of the
way of a line of scurrying wheeled baggagebots, and got in three good solid jabs to the collection
agent’s protruding snout.
The gator’s massive jaws clacked twice, his eyes rolled back as he proceeded to fold up. He
tumbled against a stationary candybot, clutched at it and then sank to the rippled glaz floor.
“Oops, oops!” The copper-plated candybot started making apologetic hooting noises. Plaz-wrapped
carobcoated grasshoppers were starting to spout out of a nozzle in its chest.
“The tab is mounting,” said the gatorman, who’d succeeded in tackling Summer and was struggling to
bring him down. “Four months back alimony to that poor foresaken lady who must toil as a tapdancer
in a stage-door canteen orbiting Perennial War Planet Number 22 out in the boonies of the
universe. Add to that the cost of massive repairs and mental anguish balm to our three personable
pint-sized robots yesterday. And now you’ve rearranged Otto’s schnozzle and broken a servomech—”
“G’wan, your damn insurance covers all that.”
“Don’t step on those disgusting candied bugs, my children,” warned a Streamlined Bishop as he
escorted a dozen and a half catkids toward an excursion rocket gate. “Don’t become entangled in
this loathsome and brutal brawl.”
“Are these guys soused to the eyeballs?” inquired a little catgirl in pinafore and sudostraw hat.
“Alas, one fears so.” The furry cleric hurried them out of range.
“We’ll add that to your bill, too,” said the gator. “Tearing down our reputations by associating
with you, Summer.”
“Hooey,” he observed, jumping free of the gatorkman’s armhold. As he rose in the air, Summer
kicked him a good one on the chin.
“Unk.” His tattooed assailant went staggering back, crossing the path of a birdpeople honeymoon
party before passing out at the foot of a decorative plaz palm tree.
The bride shrieked, yellow and green feathers standing on end. “Oh, I told you this junket was
jinxed, Jerome,” she said. “We should’ve settled for that skyvan trip daddy offered to spring
for.”
“Relax, Martha, relax,”soothed her duck-billed husband, urging her around another of the stately
palms. “Nothing more than a few nitwits clowning around.”
Summer turned to face the Scoundrel Tracker who’d been attacking him from behind. “My Banx
branch’s taking care of the alimony situation even as we speak,” he explained cordially. “Why
don’t you just gather up your fallen comrades and slink quietly—”
“In a snerg’s valise, buddy.” This one had intricate pastoral scenes emblazoned on his powerful
arms and the large patch of broad chest showing through his lowcut tunic. “Notice the ferrule of
this bumbershoot I happen to have aimed right smack at your goonies. Looks a lot like a stungun
barrel, don’t it now?”
“You try to use a stungun on me, chum, and I’ll shut down your whole and entire—”
“Won’t use it if you trot along peaceable to our local STL office, which is conveniently located
only minutes away from downtown—”
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Zzzzzzzurnrnmmnm!
Summer flinched and dived sideways at the sound of a stungun.
When the third and final billcollector fell over, Summer realized the parasol hadn’t been fired at
all.
Glancing around, he noticed a slim blond young woman standing next to a pile of space luggage a
few yards to his left. She was pretty, not more than twenty-two, clad in a short-skirted two-piece
cazsuit. As she smiled tentatively across at him, she tucked a small silver-plated, jewel-handled
stungun back into a thigh holster.
The curious little catgirl had strayed from her group and was now perched on a floating plazbench
watching the slender blond. “Is this one of those crimes of passion?” she inquired, her straw hat
now clutched between her furry little paws.
“Kathryn, come away from this scene of horrible depravity.” The Streamlined Bishop snatched her up
off the bench, tucked her under one stout arm and went trotting away through the small curious
crowd that was building a circle around Summer, the fallen gatormen and the helpful blond.
“I sure hope I haven’t offended you or anything, Mr. Summer,” she said, taking a few cautious
steps in his direction. “What I mean is, you may have some darn masculine code that compels you, I
don’t know, to handle any and all attackers singlehanded without the least little bit of—”
“Nope, I accept whatever help I can get,” he assured her. “So, thanks.”
“Hey, and listen. You aren’t, are you, chagrined or anything because I overheard all this guff
about your darn marital problems and all? What I’m getting at is this: you probably weren’t
planning to much like me anyway and this on top—”
“You’re Vicky Nugent.”
Her smile became somewhat less timid and she moved closer. “Matter of fact, I am, yes,” she
answered, nodding. “See, I got myself here a little early so I could, I don’t know, take a look at
you before I finally introduced myself. I’m not, as you probably’ve figured, exactly timid, but
when I get a chance to work with galactically renowned reporter like you, I tend to get—’
“Half a moment, you two. What say we knock off this old home week crapola and get down to cases?”
A burly spacesailor whose tanned face and arms were rich with tattoos of a patriotic nature
stepped free of the onlookers to scowl, hands on hips, at Summer and the young woman. “Now, in my
book gatormen are the scum of the universe. To me they’re only one step above lizardmen, who are
known far and wide as the sludge in the booptube of humanity and—”
“Hold it, schmucko,” growled a lizard commando in full regalia. “I’m passing through on me way to
the 19th Annual Purebred Aryan Lizard Conclave out on the planet Barafunda. Your ethnic slurs
don’t sit well with me nor—”
“Whyn’t you let me speak my entire piece, blockhead,” said the spacesailor. “I was about to
explain that, while I wouldn’t wipe a grout’s toke with your average gatorman, I have an affinity
for anyone who’s had the wisdom to have him or herself tattooed at some juncture in life.
Tattooing, if I may wax eloquent about my hobbyhorse for a bit, is a much maligned artform in this
benighted corner of the universe. Therefore, anybody what belts not one—” He held up his tattooed
fingers as he ticked them off. “Not two—but three handsome walking examples of the tattooists art,
I am—”
“Scram,” suggested Vicky quietly.
“Whoa now, sister,” said the sailor with a scowl. “No beanpole of a bimbo can tell Mr.
Spaceshipman Easy to fire his rockets and—”
“Gents,” said Summer to the spacesailor and the commando, “unless you want to join this
unconscious trio of art specimens, I suggest you cease blabbing and get the hell out of our way.”
The lizard man said, “We space commandos, kiddo, don’t take orders from middle-sized ginks who—”
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“We really don’t have any more time to stall I around,” said Vicky near Summer’s left ear. “I’ve
spotted a couple of those darn Port Security cops starting to push their way over here. Let’s make
a dash for our ship.”
“Okay, you start and I’ll settle with these two louts.”
“No need for that, Mr. Summer. Scoop can handle them.”
“Scoop?”
“Scoop/104P-IK. He’s my camera robot—well, our camera robot actually,” she explained. “Except he’s
sort of special, customized and all. My father gave me Scoop when I graduated from—”
“All we need is a regular everyday cambot on this—”
“What’d I tell you, angelcake, about teaming up with this superannuated yawp?” A large mechanical
man emerged from behind the pyramid of baggage. “He can’t even dodder across the port without—”
“Scoop, dear, would you take care of these annoying gentlemen?”
“A snap.” The robot was chrome-plated, trimmed with glittering semiprecious stones. His head,
based vaguely on that of a handsome humanoid, had a camera lens mounted above his two gleaming
ruby eyes.
“What’s the flaming big idea?” demanded the irate sailor. “Our squabble is with you two, not this
tool of—”
“Couple of snurfheads,” observed Scoop as he raised his right hand and pointed a metallic
forefinger at the spaceshipman.
Zzzzzittttzzzzzz!
A thin beam of intensely green light jumped from the tip of the robot’s extended finger and hit
the illustrated forehead of the spacesailor.
He flapped his muscular arms twice, rose up on his toes, made a low yowling noise and then fell
over backward into a faxpaper newsie.
“Wuxtry! Wuxtry!” yelped the kid-sized newsbot.
The lizard commando swallowed, tipped his helmet and said, “Nice meeting you, one and all.” He
pushed away through the by-standers.
Scoop rubbed at his gleaming chest with the fingers of his right hand. ‘What say, sugarbunch, we
leave this antiquated newzhound here and catch the—”
“Now you can escort us to the Hollywood II docking area,” requested Vicky, “before yonder cops
reach us.”
The robot’s disappointed sigh rattled various components within him. “Here you’ve got one of the
journalistic lights of the whole snurfheaded universe working for you and you prefer Summer, who’s
been obsolete since—”
“Scoop. Now.”
After letting a smaller sigh escape, Scoop stretched out both arms. He slipped one around the
young woman’s waist, the other, gingerly, around Summer. “Hold on to your rug, granpappy.”
The mechanical man rose right up off the floor, leveled off at an altitude of twenty-five feet and
flew them swiftly away from the scene of the altercation - just in time to miss the arrival of the
green-clad security officers.
Leaning across Scoop’s wide, highly polished chest, Vicky said, “Gee, Mr. Summer, I hope you don’t
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file:///F|/rah/Ron%20Goulart/Goulart,%20Ron%20-%20Galaxy%20Jane.txt
mind this. What I mean is, you don’t think I’m showing off, do you?”
“Not at all,” he assured her.
CHAPTER 4
The incredibly beautiful auburn-haired android smiled a dazzling smile and pulled up her Lycra
tunic. “If you’ll just look here, Mr. Summer,” she requested.
Summer was just stowing his luggage in the wall bin of his compartment on the Westwood Deck of the
immense Hollywood II spacecraft. One of the things he’d unpacked just before doing that was his
palm-sized bugsniffer. “Be right with you.” He grinned in the direction of the stunning andy’s
entirely believable breasts.
Built into her smooth, evenly tanned midsection was a rectangular vidscreen. “Let me ask you for
your frank and candid opinion,” requested the gorgeous mechanism. “You’re a man known for his
integrity and perception—or at least you used to be. We’re wondering if this method of
indoctrinating new passengers aboard the Hollywood II strikes you as being gauche.”
Crouching, Summer swept the detecting gadget over the trim of his floating hydrobed. “Gauche isn’t
exactly the word I’d use.”
“Tell me which word you would use.”
“Cheesy.”
His compact bugsniffer made a small pinging noise. There was an eardisc stuck to the underside of
the neowood bed frame.
“That’s ours,” explained the android, blushing slightly. “As I told you, Mr. Summer, I’m with
Public Relations. We don’t always see eye to eye with Internal Security.”
Nodding, he ground the listening device under his boot heel. “You have a vidtape to show me?”
“Yes, it’s entitled 'So You’re Going to Travel Through the Limitless Infinity Of Space Aboard the
Fabled Hollywood II.'”
“Catchy.”
“You’re being sardonic.”
“Yep,” he admitted as he continued checking out his compartment.
“Installing the viewscreen here”—she gestured gracefully to just below her breasts—”was PR’s
idea,” she said. “There was some debate about which location would be the most effective. You’d be
surprised what a variety of portions of the female anatomy are considered provocative. Trying to
arouse the interest of the variety of guests we get from sundry planets and—”
The bugsniffer binged.
“Another one.” Summer removed a wafer-thin minicam the size of a trubux coin from behind his wall
mirror.
“Really? That isn’t one of ours.”
He held it between thumb and forefinger. “Looks like the brand the Barnum Drug Bureau uses.”
Dropping it, he stomped on it with his heel.
“Oh, them.” She shook her blond head forlornly. “I thought those awful rumors had been laid to
rest.”
“Rumors about what?”
“You know, drug smuggling and all. Honestly, the public notion that anyone remotely connected with
show business is a dope fiend or—”
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Ron%20Goulart/Goulart,%20Ron%20-%20Galaxy%20Jane.txt*******************************************************GALAXYJANEByRonGoulartABerkleyBook/publishedbyarrangementwiihtheauthorPRINTINGHISTORYBerkleyedition/March1986Allrightsreserved.Copyright©1986byRonGoulart.CoverartbyBorisVallejo.T...

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