Books I've read lately.

The Tug/Cruiser Heinlein has been hauling a megaton weight research station to an orbit around a highly unusual planet when The Colonies had revolted. Heinlein had stripped The station of anything useful and had began The return to home. Unfortunately, They were eight months deep into enemy space. At The end of two months, They had been in three firefights and were trying to evade an enemy task force.

LT Georges Pierre Maurice Bingham, PhD, The Intelligence Officer and Acting Science Officer, loomed over his sensor display watching as The computer printed out a list of "EVALUATION OF SENSOR: NEGATIVE". Each report was followed by The sensor's name. Finally, LT Bingham turned to The rest of The bridge.

"We've lost all trace of our friends. In think that our sensors are about three times better than those on fleet vessels. They probably lost contact with us five hours ago.

Bingham's position was behind The Captain's great chair. In front of The Captain was The Helm, Navigation and Tug Control positions. Life support, The executive officer's position and The Engineering Officer's position were spotted around The bridge behind The Captain's Chair. The Captain's great chair was literally surrounded by displays that reflected The data his officers had before them.

"How certain are you, Mr. Bingham?" The Captain never felt embarrassed to repeat questions on old subjects.

"Fairly certain, sir. When The Rebellion occurred, The colonies took an assortment of standard Naval craft. Barring flukes, only five ships have our sensor capability. I'm reasonably certain from what little Faster Than Light message traffic we've intercepted from "Home" that The other four vessels are on "our" side. The technology for our sensors isn't secret; only a large vessel can afford The added mass.

The Captain reflected that combat vessels wouldn’t burden themselves with unnecessary mass. He also knew that The faster than light communications systems was limited to about five words per minute and was about as private as a public urinal. He also mused on Bingham's reputation for almost neurotic honesty. Bingham should have been a full Professor in Applied Gravity Engineering. Unfortunately, his honesty had alienated too many people. Now Dr. Bingham was his Intelligence/Science Officer. The captain smiled with one corner of his mouth at his good fortune.

Bingham was worried by The Captain's expression. The Captain was a scientific explorer and not a warrior. The stress of leading his ship for two months of running battle had caused an unholy amount of anguish for The Captain. Still, he had kept them through three firefights that Heinlein should never have survived...

"LADIES! GENTLEMEN! What is our situation?" The Captain's voice was firm.

The Executive Officer, Commander Mary Lynn Breece, was first to speak.

"We are approaching a solar system that we must go around to remain on course for The Naval Base at Barnard's Star. There is a certain amount of danger involved that Mr. Bingham will brief on. Our fuel situation is becoming critical. We can supply hydrogen for The reactors by using a Barnard ram; our supply of aluminum for The reactors is too low. We have enough fuel to reach Home Space if we don't go above quarter pseudo-speed. We'll be "sitting ducks" at that pseudo-speed however. Also, we need to make repairs to The hull where we've been hit and a number of systems need routine maintenance."

The Captain wondered what "sitting ducks" were and why did They sat? He had been born and raised aboard an Outstar Research station and his emotions thought biology consisted of dogs, cats, goats, vegetables and tuna fish. He knew that there were other plants and animals in existence, but, had never gone to planets to observe them. The Captain was a creature of deep space: born and raised to it.

He also knew which systems needed work but still wanted to hear The report from his XO. Cdr Breece transmitted a copy of The work orders to The main viewing screen as well as The Captain's viewer.

As They were talking, a farmer/cook from Life Support brought in lunch. The smell of bad coffee, sweat, fear and The smell of overloaded electrical odors almost gagged him. He fled to The carefully cleaned air of his hydrofarms. In contrast, Cdr Breece made a mental note to congratulate Environmental Control for their repairs on The air cleaners. The bridge hadn't smelled too badly all day...

"What are The problems, Dr. Bingham." The Captain wasn't sure why he always used "Doctor".

"The system ahead of us contains sensors good enough to pick us up if we try to circle it. That much In know from pre-war briefing literature on this system; In have no confirmation of that. In would assume that The detection equipment is manned and has been improved upon. Again, that is an operational assumption. We must obtain a supply of aluminum at once, sir!"

"Why is that?" The Captain didn't follow The change of subject. His brain felt full of feathers.

"For reasons best left unsaid, we cannot transverse this system in hyperspace. Our hyper drive uses aluminum and would use close to thirty times The normal consumption to transverse this system."

The Captain had once asked Dr. Bingham why The drive used aluminum. Bingham had lost him in The second equation which had defined an operation in Spinor notation. The math had gone into a confusion of symbols that had left The Captain thinking Bingham was trying to pull a practical joke at his expense. However, The punch line had never come; Bingham had been very sincere, The Captain realized.

"Thank you, Doctor. LT O'Brien, describe The system ahead, please."

LT John Michael O’Brien was The Navigator.

"The primary is a barely stable class G variable. It has two planets and an enormous asteroid belt. One planet is The size of Mars and is one hundred million miles out from The primary; it is The only occupied planet. The other planet is a Jovian that is about ten time further out than The first planet. I've used LT Bingham's sensors to study some of The crap, er, comets around this primary. I've picked up indications of considerable amounts of aluminum!"

The Captain knew that O'Brien meant The star ahead when he referred to The "primary".

"CAPTAIN!" LT Bingham abruptly broke into LT O'Briens' statements. "My watch chief just reported something interesting!"

The entire bridge became quiet as They watched Bingham talk to his Chief Petty Officer (CPO) via message typed on his computer terminal. Even The hull repair technicians who had been welding damaged plumbing became fully quiet for The first time.

"We are now in close enough for our gravity wave detectors to pick up a large number of small objects around The inner planet. My CPO is trying to get a doppler on their gravity waves. We are also beginning to pick up "spillage" from tight beam ship to ship and ship to planet communications systems." Bingham concentrated on what his screen was displaying. "No doubt about it!" Again The maddening pause. "The5re are low mass, high acceleration objects moving about The inner planet. A first approximation analysis of their communications reflects a naval structure; we haven't broken their codes as yet. Also, their ship's mass and acceleration profiles are similar to light scout craft."

"Are you stating that The inner planet is a scout base?"

"No, sir, Captain. This profile could be scout craft or Piper "VooDoos". However, there are not very many "VooDoos" in existence since they're The rich person's toy. In must respectfully reserve judgement on this matter."

The Captain showed his emotions as he first thought he faced combat craft and them thought he faced civilian toys. Bingham felt vaguely guilty at having played with his Captain's emotions.

"Your recommendation, Doctor?"

"Refuel from The aluminum deposits LT O'Brien has found. Then, when In have better tactical data, In will be better able to advise you concerning a safe route through or around this system, sir."

"Commander?"

"In agree, Captain. Our people need a chance to stand down. In strongly recommend that all personnel not needed for The repairs and refueling operation should be granted maximum shipboard liberty."

Commander Breece knew that her department heads and division officers would be hard pressed to grant this liberty but would do their utmost. She also knew that this shipboard liberty would take The form of much needed extra sleep and visits to The Ship's Pub and it's access to The alcohol from The "farm's" yeast vats. Breece really meant that The Captain should enjoy some of The "brew" for at least one night. The Captain's condition was starkly obvious to his officer. The Department heads has already expressed their concern to their XO in private...

"Very well. Mr. O'Brien, set a minimum time course to The nearest aluminum deposit. Mr. Bingham, find out all you can about those spacecraft and especially about those message. XO, The division officer route their "liberty plans" through our department heads. Have it to me in about three hours. In want to see any modified duty schedules before The crew does.

The Captain had read about The chaos in The United States Navy in The early nineteen seventies when Admiral Zumwalt's Z-Grams were spread to The fleet before The fleet commander had gotten their copies.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bingham was sitting in his "intelligence shop" studying The results his CPO had come up with. Bingham and Cryptographic Technician Chief(PhD) Neville had worked together ever since Bingham had graduated from Intelligence School seven years before. Chief Neville was well known in The Intelligence Community for his genius in crypto analysis; his PhD was in Mathematics (ring theory).

"Are you sure about these message, Chief?"

"Absolutely, sir. They are using some modifications of codes 2 and 3 for about half of their message traffic. The rest is unencrypted. Their messages are a mixture of letters home, tactical enhances, administrative messages dealing with supplies and chatter. In haven't been able to correlate emitter with specific hulls.

Bingham knew that when They were finally able to correlate emitters (or transmitter) to specific and known ships (or hulls) They would know how important a ship was from The type of message traffic it sent and received. This type of traffic analysis was one of The most important functions that Bingham's people did.

For several hours, he studied The immense volume of messages that They had intercepted. The deciphered messages were The most interesting of The lot.

"Chief, if In didn't have these decrypted messages, I'd say those people were just a bunch of tourists. However, tourists don't have Naval codes and don't "play Navy" They way these folks are."

"They could be reservists or a local militia. In have no evidence to back any hunches. They're too sloppy to be regulars and too well equipped to be tourists."

"Maybe The rebel Navy is a bit lax in their discipline?"

Chief Neville was about to comment on The Heinlein's crew's discipline when one of The Petty Officers walked with a pile of printouts and handed them to Chief Neville.

"In think I've correlated The major transmitters with specific hulls, Chief. The major command seems to be aboard a large, rather slow moving vessel. I've drawn a tentative Electronic Order of Battle for them also."

Bingham nodded and looked at The printouts with Chief Neville.

"That’s damn fine work Petty Officer Allen." Bingham believed in letting his people know immediately when he was angry or pleased. "In want to know everything about what The main does. I'll be in The 'club' if anything comes up."

During The "evening" hours, The ship's mess was informally partitioned into an Officer's Club, a Chief's club and an Enlisted Club. This meant that initially tables were set aside buy rank. Then, inevitably, The clubs "merged" as card games, bull sessions and bottles moved around. The ship was almost in stand down with only The intelligence crew at normal manning and a skeleton crew on watch in other spaces. They could afford to be this relaxed since their enemy apparently did not believe They could be around. They were like fox hiding under The henhouse; relaxed but alert.

Bingham sat down with The Captain. The Captain was drinking Navy Grogs which seemed appropriate somehow.

"Anything that can't wait, Georges?"

"No, sir. There is a vessel we believe to be their command vessel but we lack evidence. My people are watching it closely. Everything else can wait until The brief tomorrow."

Bingham took a sip of The Navy Grog that one of The sailors at The table had passed over to him. It had too much grapefruit but Bingham wasn't complaining. He could feel The effects of The Rum or thought he could from The first sip. The sailor who had given him The Navy Grog was a fine young lady from engineering. By Naval custom, he was now free to mention a date. She arranged one with Bingham later that night...

"How did you get into Intelligence, Georges? Your personnel record doesn't say why?"

"In made a discovery that only about five other people could understand. Then, In thought I'd found an error but no one believed me. So, They used my results to make some SWAGs - Scientific Wild Ass Guesses. In thought that a certain class of supposedly stable star could go unstable. The SWAGs were about The conditions under which these stars will go supernova. They decided one such star was safe and put a colony on a planet around it. I'm told that about three hundred people died as a result...I've been a lot of careful about putting out opinions since then.

Bingham took another sip but The Captain did not rescue him from the conversational pit he'd dug for himself.

"In was essentially blacklisted by my colleagues and some political assholes. In went into Navy Intelligence since Intelligence and my field use The same instruments. In study stellar atmospheres on my 'free' time. About two years after The deaths, In was proven correct. My colleagues tried to get me to return to Academia. In was still too bitter; I've been an officer for seven years now."

SECOND TRY AT ABOVE PARA

"In made a discovery that only about five people could understand. Then, In found an error but no one would believe me. Some of my colleagues made some SWAGs - Scientific Wild Ass Guesses based on my work. In tried to convince them that They were wrong; They were convinced when about three hundred people died. A lot of people at The time thought In had approved these SWAGs.

"What about you, Captain? You've been on board for six months and all In know is that you were in The Survey Service for eighteen years before taking command. I've heard you called The 'Bligh of Space'."

Bingham meant that his Captain was not only as superb as Navigator and explorer as The late, lamented, Captain Bligh, RN, but, was as progressive an administrator as Captain Bligh was for his time.

"I've heard that also. In was on three deep space mission that each lasted about three, three and a half years. You told me last week that two of The planets In helped find are now major enemy bases." The Captain shrugged.

Bingham knew that The Captain; was feeling The Navy Grogs; The Captain normally wouldn't refer to intelligence derived from enemy communications. At least he wouldn't make such references in public.

"I've never served on combat vessels before, you know. We were just lucky to have survived so far. A lot of our luck is in having Mary Lynn as The XO."

Bingham knew different; The Captain had a flair for dirty fighting that had saved his sh9ip in their three firefights. Most of The fighting had been in knowing when to accept his XO's recommendations and knowing when to take Control. The Captain could do no wrong in The eyes of The ship's company. The Captain appeared to bothered by this; privately, this knowledge pleased The Captain very much.

The Captain talked for a while then tried to leave. Bingham signed to The bar steward to bring another pitcher of Navy Grog's to their table and filled The captain's drink. The Captain's cheekbones stuck out like doorknobs; The Captain was carrying The weight of his duties very poorly.

One of The crewmen in The group at The Captain's table asked The Captain a few questions and The bull session was back on again.

The next morning The Captain was late for The morning briefing. The hospital corpsman who had designated himself The "Captain's Orderly" had obeyed Bingham's orders and hadn't awakened The exhausted man. The XO hadn't after Bingham informed him of this action. Bingham needed The extra time while he tried to digest a surprise that his staff had served up as Bingham had been gagging down dry, reconstituted pseudo-eggs.

The dog had turned into a fox and now looked like a Dyrewolf and Bingham wasn't The kind of man to cry wolf.

The surprise was a freshly decoded message from The large, slow vessel. It was signed by an Enhzino Ryan, Admiral of The Liberation Forces. Bingham knew that former Intelligence Captain Enzino Ryan had defected to The enemy forces; intercepts of their communications had stated this just as They had never given a coherent reason for The rebellion. Bingham went to his stateroom after breakfast to review what he had written in his files about Ryan. Ryan and Bingham had been in Intelligence Officer's school together after Ryan had switched from ship driver to Intelligence. In The years after The school, Ryan had earned The title of "Our New Lawrence." Ryan had tried hiding his love of this title without success; he loved being thought of as The "Great Intelligence Ace".

Over The succeeding years, Ryan had taken The best ideas of Lawrence, Moa and Colonor Mosley and had added a few of his own. Bingham carefully prepared a brief for the Captain and then visited the XO. They in turn drug in the Navigator for consultations. The Navigator, who was acting Operations Boss, would be vital to the Heinlein's future survival.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The XO, who had changed the Department Head meeting to an all officer meeting, brought the meeting to order.

"Captain," Bingham began, "we've received a very distrubing message. Unfortuantely, we could only decode enough to find out that Enzino Ryan is assumming command of the rebel forces. Are you familiar with Ryan, sir?"

The Captain shook his head "no" as did the Engineering and Life Support department heads.

"Captain Enzino Ryan was considered a true young Turk in the Intelligence community. Ryan switched from ship driver to Intelligence shortly after being selected for LT Commander; he had been a deep selectee. Ryan graduated from Intelligencve School with me seven years ago. He rose to the rank of Naval Captain through sheer brillance and by being right on some wild hunchs. Ruman has it that Ryan went sheketon hunting; that probably was not true, however."

"My department still hasn't been able to find out why the rebellion started. There were rumors that involentary colonists to 'the Sweat Box' were being butchered as soon as the transports had left them on 'the Sweat Box'. Then, when the Central Governments Corporation (Bingham thought that the over-government's name was assaine) took appropriate action, the Colonies 'rallied round'. The situation then escallated into the present war. Personally, I think this story is just wartime lies for the benefit of the our civilians. The news source was the homeland press and was being jammed at the time we heard the news.

"Ryan is kinown to have been the genius who planned the ambuse at 40 O2 Erdania. As you know, ladies and gentlement, a task force was destroyed by small, fast, attack craft. They gave every appearance of being harmless and were thought to be 'Q-ships'. Q-ships were merchant ships that carried heavy weapons during Earth's First World War. They lurled subsurface ships into surface attacks and then destroyed them." Bingham the professor came out at every opportunity. Most of the officers had been born on Earth and learned the history of the Twentieth Century as something that had happened four centuries before. None of the officers present had been born on Earth and had heard of the twentieth century through their history classes.

"Every indication we have is that the inner planet has squadrons of these 'Q-ship'. We can't handle them in combat and we would have to pass within their range in order to cross this system. The inner planet has communications facilites capable of reaching the enemy battle groups we've evaded. We have evolved several plans, Captain."

"Continue, LT Bingham."

The Captain was looking more rested than he had for weeks.

"We can cirdle this system. The inner planet's sensors will pick us up and summon help. They might even sortee ships to go after us. It was only a fluke and a chance stellar storm (the navigator nodded acknowledgement of this as he had given the information to Bingham) that enabled us to avoid detection on our arrival to this system.

"Next, we can try a transit of this solar system in powered down mode. We would probably be detected, however. Also, such a move would take too long and our life support system might not last that long."

"Another alternative is to make a powered, high speed, transit to cross this system. The inner planet would sence us and would vector both their ships and any battle groups within communications range after us."

"Our final choice is to hide behind a large chunk of ice. There are several chunks of ice that LT O'Briend has been studying. One ice chunk we've been looking at would not block their sensors but give us water, oxygen and aluminum. The problem with this is that their sensors would pick us up when we lit off the main drives after leaving this solar system. True, we would be going faster than light, but, the inner planet could signal picket ships between Heinlein and the frontier. Mr. Tooney?"

Ensign Tooney, the Life Support Officer, had signaled for attention.

"Sir. We can provide life support during such a transit. My supply tanks are too low for comfort (the wardroom knew the supplies were adequate but they also knew Tooney could never have enough supplies) and I can resupply from the materials the 'miners' obtain from ice balls."

"Repairs and maintenance are almost." The XO smilled grimly at Bingham. "There was one other plan you 'forgot' to mention, Lt Bingham."

"Yes, Sir..." Bingham face was so upset that the Captain knew something horrible was being contemplated.

"What is it, Lt Bingham?" The Captain's voice wa soft but as unbending as the ship's keel. A cup of coffee that didn't taste too boiled was passed over to Bingham. Bingham sipped the brew and sought strength from his reflection within the cup.

"The fial alternative is to couple Heinlein to an ice ball. We would then make a transit of this solar system. At the appropriate moment, the ice ball would be cast off. Then, the tug section would be uncoupled and sent into this system's sun. The drive units from three of our lifeboats could keep the tug section on course. The various gravity generators within the tug section could be tuned to trigger a flare upon this sun's surface."

The wardroom was in stunned silence except for the executive officer who taken a bottle from the liquor locker and was spiking the coffee cups. The boozed up coffee had an almost gagging taste that the officers seemed to welcome. War they could stomack but this was a different matter.

"The resulting flare would release heat, light and high energy particles. The heat and light would trigger massive hurricanes and the heavy particles would sterialize whatever was left." Bingham paused, then continued in his professor's voice. "If this planet is a military base and I'm still not convinced of that, we would be destroying a serious enemy threat. If the planet is a civilian one, we would have burnt a harmless planet. Now you know why I'm reluctant to discuss this plan."

"Most of your evidence shows this to be a military base, Lt Bingham. Commander Breece, you will go ahead with securring us to an ice ball; brief me on which one you pick before we approach it. We will tentatively use the ice ball as a shielf during our transit of this solar system. I don't plan on attacking the planet, Lt Bingham. I want detailed plans for initiating such an attack given to me prior to our departure. Navigation, Engineering coordinate these plans with...SIT DOWN, DR. BINGHAM"

Bingham had been swaying an dstill looked faint after he sat down. He said that "nothing was wrong" and his Captain took him at face falue. But, when Bingham went to his shop, he had a lot to discuss with Chief Neville.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bingham was studying a split screen - one side wasan encrypted mesage, the other was the tnetatvie decrypted version. Down the center of the display was the code being used. Bingham studied a hodogram of the codes being used. He and Chief Neville were studying the messages with their "chatter" (or unencrypted message traffic) expert, Chief Sheetz. Chief Nevile was about to win a bet."

The defination of hodogram is: roughly speaking, A

frequency distribution of unencrypted and encrypted letters.

"Chief Neville, let me clarify what I know about cypers," Bingham began. "Our fleet codes are based on thirty five different two hundred digit random numbers being used in 'trap door' algorythms. The encoding is by using a pseudo-random selection of these numbers. Chief Neville, just how the hell have you been breaking these codes?"

That was what the bet was all about. The Chiefs were sure Bingham would think of the difficulties and miss the obvious.

"Only some of the enemy vessels have the computers to decode fleet cypers. The cypers are written into the hardware and can't be easily duplicated. Also, since we didn't have an enemy previously, the codes were really written more for privacy than true secrecy. I just monitored the crypto gear as it was performing encryption and then broke down some spare crypto gear. I figured out the easiest ways to change the hardware and programmed the computer to try these solutions. Sure enough, the enemy was using them..."

Bingham knew that what Chief Neville had done was quite illegial; he would later sign some paperwork stating that the broken down crypto gear had been "lost in combat."

"They retransmitt the messages from the main ship to several subordinate commands. I assumed that these messages were being sent in both codes; the second code was quite trivial. From that, I was able to reconstruct the sequence of codes that the main communications channels is using. Then, I told the computer which codes to look for when instructed to decode the main channel. They are quite amateurish.

"That is totally unlike Ryan. I assume that they're using tight beam transmission equipment?"

"Yes, sir. My analysis reflects no indications that our enemy is aware of our presence. Their communications are on tight beam and it is only by using our special equipment that we were able to intercept them at all."

Bingham already knew this. The Heinlein carried equipment that would have made an astronomer give his right gonad to possess; no other ship had anything similiar. Worrying about a nonexistant ship with ridiciously sensitive receivers was something Ryan didn't have time for.

"I need a review of all information on the main planet and their fleet."

Bingham had learned long before not to jostle Nevill's elbow by going into the scratch pad section of the computer. Neville displayed his results and that of the division. Chief Sheetz sat around for a minute and then took off for lunch. Bingham ran some analysis of his own and then summorized his conclusions for Chief Neville.

"What we have is this: the planet shows no industrial activity yet has a high power fusion reactor. They appear to have on large city or base. There is a fleet of scout or civilian ships around the planet. Finally, they have Admiral Enzino Ryan directing fleet operations."

Bingham paused in his summation and continued.

"I would assume this to be a civilian planet but for the anomolies. I will have to tell the Captain, Chief Neville. Any comments?"

"No, sir, we aren't able to intercept any TV and the Captain hasn't authorized using drone probes. You'll not have an easy time of it at your briefing, sir."

"Yeah, I know that and the damned brief is tomorrow. We'd better get a probe set up, anyway."

Bingham called the XO on the ship's phone.

"Mary Lynn, I need a high-speed probe readied to go ASAP. I need to keep it quiet, however."

"You mean without the Captain or the Navigator knowing about it?"

The XO's grin on the phone's video display was malacious.

"Yes, ma'am."

"OK, if you can kep the beast off the Navigation Computer, I can keep the Captain from knowing that the probe ha been readied. I can have it for you in two hours, Georges."

Bingham and Breece had earlier discussed the need for not worrying the Captain. Bingham still remembered his awful, unfounded, suspection that had put him in shock at the staff meeting.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The brief began at ten hundred hours the next day.

The XO began:

"Good morning, Captain, ladies and gentlemen. We will mate up with an ice ball later today. Preliminary analysis from sensors and from a direct landing three hours ago indicateds that "our" iceball will provide us with aluminum, iron, carbon dioxide and ice. Repairs are coming along very nicely; we are fully operational now. There are still some small repairs to be finished. Thats all I have for you now, Captain."

The Captain nodded.

LT Bingham was the next speaker.

"We are still analyzing the intercepted communications and haven't found anything conclusive. This planet is still an eginima. It seems to be a civilian planet yet it has an outstanding communications and sensors facility, a good fleet and is commanded by one of the finest Admirals of our age. We will be putting in much work on these problems, sir."

Bingham nodded to the next briefer who was the engineering officer. After the chief engineer spoke, the life support ofgficer, supply officer, weapons officers, tug operations officer and command master chief spoke. Finally, the XO finished the meeting.

Bingham had still not voiced his fears.

Later that "day" while using their tug generators, Heinlein, nosed up to a megaton mass ice chunk like a barnicle clamping onto a ship's side. THat would be a good description of of Heinlein; the ship was like a large wood screw. The cruiser section was the shank; the tug was the head of the screw.

Engineering was able to accumulate enough aluminum for the ship's drives; they had stores of it blocking passageways in fact. The ice ball also blocked most of Bingtham's receivers. He was forced to review old data that merely confirmed that the planet was hostile. After the review was done, Bingham used his instrucments to study the gas giant which was in range. The results would later form an interesting paper of no value to his Navy.

One result of mating with the ice ball was that the Captain relaxed the water discipline that the ship had been under. Very few crewmen were needed to gather the raw material their "miners" used or to work on the twoing arrangement once the ship-ice ball mating had been achieved. These underemployed crewmen were put to work wiping down bulkheads and in general, doing cleanup. Taking showers daily and shaving even became a fad. The changes were so drastic that the putrid coffee begin to smell bad. Actually, the coffee had improved but noone had noticed the coffee's stench through the odor of too many unwashed bodies. Everyone knew water rationing would return all too shortly; the ship's reclamation equipment simply couldn't be overhauld sufficiently.

The ship's farmer even had time to grow fresh vegtestables. There was something about the flavor that being grown in zero gravity had induced. However, when thinking back to the frozen vegetables that they'd had during the water rationing of their cruise, noone was of a mood to complaign.

The Heinlein had been in orbit of the gas giant three weeks when the Captain got the ship underway. Heinlein would carry the iceball 29.7 Astronomical Units (AU) or 29.7 times the distance from Earth to the Sun before releasing it. Then Heinlein would curve past this sun and presumedly be covered by this sun's body. When this sun was between them and the inner planet, Heinlein would accelerate at maximum. Hopefully, Heinlein would be far enought out to safely activate it's hyperspace drive so that they could escape without detection.

Shortly after getting underway, Bingham had Breece launch a second high speed probe. The probe relayed intercepted messages back to the Heinlein during it's flight toward the inner planet. Unfortunately, the amount of equipment that could be crammed into a probed is quite small; the probe could only relay back the main enemy communications channel. The origional probe had by now made it's way among the enemy ship; there was a sudden flash of light from it's direction and the origional probe stopped transmitting. Brigham thought that it might have been destroyed by an automatic anti-meteor device. When the second probe "died", Bingham began to get much more concerned; the second probe had "died" far from other ships and their anti-meteor devices.

The XO wrote off both probes as lost in battle; the main tool of the XO was his mastery of the ship's computers. Commander Mary Lynn Breece was a highly proficient XO...

Bingham knew how impervious the probes were to detection and his fears stabilized. Bingham had nothing new to report based upon the ship's intelligence intercept capability which was hampered by the ice ball's mass. The Captain was noncommital when Bingham reported this.

Still, tension and the signs of fear returned to the Heinlein's bridge.

Three days into their transit to the "sun", Bingham showed some messages to the Captain.

"All these messages are from Ruan to his ships via his broadcast. Its about the only intercepted message traffice we have been able to obtain."

"The first message is obvious:"

"FLEET COMMUNICATIONS REPORTES PRESENCE OF ENEMY CRAT. BELIEVE IT HAS BEEN OR COULD BE IN VICIINITY THIS COMMAND. ALL UNITS GO TO FIFTY PERCENT ALERT."

"The second was personal."

"...MARTHA, WE'LL BE OUT FOR...SOUNDS LIKE HEAVY ACTION..."

"If we could have gotten more of that personal message, we probably could have gotten some nice information. Regretably, people still babble secret material after all these years...The final message is very interesting."

FM COMMANDER, 19TH FLEET

TO ALL MILITARY ACTIVITIES

C O N F I D E N T I A L //N05887//

1. DUE TO COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY VIOLATIONS, ALL UNITS WILL CHANGE THEIR CRYTPO GEAR TO EMERGENCY SETTING 1E. THE FLEET BROADCAST WILL BE ENCODED IN CODE 194 VICE CODE 193.

2. ALL SHIPS WILL CURTAIN PERSONAL MESSAGES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

"Captain, we are now fairly blind until Chief Neville can recover enough of the codes they've switched to for us to decrypt their messages. The lack of personal messages will definitely hurt us."

The entire bridge team was depressed by this. They knew that it would take Chief Neville an unknown amount of time to decrypt a useable amount of the enemy codes or as Bingham put it "recover enough of their codes."

The Captain had taken to spending most of his time on th ebridge waiting endless yhours for something to go wrong and his face was hallow with fatigue and worry. Shortly afterwords, the Captain left the bridge for a mild workout. Some people use food or alcohol for their personal "drug"; the Captain used exercise. When that didn't work, the Captain went to coffee and to his dark mistress: worry.

The Captain was getting insomney from not knowing what he was taking his ship into more than from just the coffee.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was a week before Chief Neville recovered enough of the key to the enemy cyuper ofr Bingham to have any useable intelligence. The iceball was arranged so that Heinlein was screened yet part of the antenna structure was extended into line of sight of the enemy planet. Shortly after getting underway,their enemy took notice of the iceball's new orbital motion. The little amount of intercept regarding the iceball wa concerned with whether or not it would strike the "sun"; there was also discussion of needing a survey of the outer reaches of the "solar system" for other surprises. Someone on the planet bemaoned the fact that noone would give him access to observational equipment; the fleet exercises were typing up all the instruments. Heinlein was like a moose trying to sneak by the wolves...

At about the second week of the transit, Bingham visited the Medical Department for a blood pressure check. He scored 142/92. When the medic advised Bingham that this wasn't critical, he let slip that the Captain's blood pressure had read 160/100 two days before. The Doctor had put the Captain on medication and a no salt diet. The Captain had been losing weight which helped some; he simply had been under too much stress for too long.

They were still a week away from going behind the "sun" and Bingham began to worry. The executive officer paid Bigham a priviate visit later that day to inform him that two more probes had been configured for high speed flybys. Bingham was amused for he had been dialing Breece's ship's phone number when Breece had walked in.

"Did you know the Captain's ulser has flared up again?" With this greeting, his XO had imparted interesting, perviously unknown, information to Bingham.

"His blood pressure is 160/110 and is giving the doc shit fits."

"I figured it would be something like that, Bingham. I have two probes ready for immediate flight. We'll be out of radio communications with them; all likely flight paths involve transversing the same volumn of space once we go behind this star."

"Does that include the 'attack' scenarial?"

"Yes, it does. Attack, flyby and "return-to-look-over-the-planet" all include a transmit of the same smallvolumn of space. That is virtually a singularity in the orbits. I just hope we don't attack... the Captain will probably insist on a reconnaissance flyby then!"

"Then launch the probes as insurance. I'll program them."

The XO nodded agreement and the meeting was over

It took them four hours to program the probes. They were launched at the end of the third week of their transit. Bingham knew that the fourth and final week of their transit to behind this star would seem to last forever.

Be sure and get the times of transit right and the details of when they can monitor correct! The flow of when/why they can copy over the air and so forth MUST be explisit. ALSO, the flow of decrypted data must be clear.

The middle of the third week dragged by. Finally, after having been awake for about seventy hours, Bingham went to bed. Although he knew the probes would have nothing to report since the Heinlein was in their iceball's shadow, Bingham haunted his spaces sitting by the computer watching NO DATA reports be displayed every time he inquired about new intelligence information. Finally, Bingham went to bed knowing that he would probably miss something significant. He did.

Bingham had been asleep four hours when Chief Neville barged into his stateroom and awoke him. He knew that Chief Neville would never do this without strong reason.

"I'm awake! What's the problem?"

Chief Neville gave Bingham a cup of coffee to drink as Bingham appeared to be on the edge of falling backwards into sleep on his bed.

"We started receiving message traffic from our probes about an hour ago. We just received and decrypted this message."

FLASH FLASH FLASH

Z 140250Z AUG 52

FM COMMANDER, 19TH FLEET

TO ALL MILITARY ACTIVITIES

S E C R E T

SUBJ: TACTICAL ACTION MESSAGE

1. ENEMY WARCRAFT DETECTED AT 140221Z AUG 51 AT......BELIEVED TO BE CRUISER OR BATTLESHIP TRANSITING THIS SYSTEM IN POWERED DOWN MODE. ENEMY SHIP EXIBITS CRUISER CONFIGERATION.

2. SET PLAN CODENAME GRESHAM DOG IMMEDIATELY.

3. SET EMMISIONS CONTROL PLAN ALFA IMMEDIATELY.

4. ALTHOUGH THIS.........I EXPECT YOU TO HONOR OUR SERVICE!

"The dots represent undecipered portions of their message, sir. The first anomaly is probably our location and the second appears to be part of a pep talki. This is consistant with some of th ereserve traiing material I've seen before."

"It has also been a 'canned ending' to every such message 4th, 19th and 22nd Fleet has issued for the last fifty years! They used it when we had that little war with 'Stones' about five years ago."

Bingham has refering to a minor border war with an alien race that had decided that leaving humans alone would be a good idea...

"Have they set emissions control yet? I don't think too much of their EMCON so far."

"Yes, sir, they have. They have been passing only what appear to be tactical messages on the fleet broadcast since this message came in. we havn't had time to decyper them; they have the external look of tactical messages. They passed a number of technical control messages concerning tight beam radio and LASER circuits between various ships. The last intercepted message was a statement that the fleet broadcast was going down and that all messages would be by ship-to-ship circuits. It is now 0400Z." Bingham had been about to look at his watch. "The tactical plot indicates that it wil be at least four hours before any enemy ships will be close enough to attack us with LASERS and perhaps four days before they can intercept us. However, considering the amount of armour we carry and the mass of the icebass, I don't think we can be hurt for several days."

"Fine. How rested are you, Chief?"

"I slept before the midwatch so I'm fine."

Bingham pulled on a set of overalls and sandals in lieu of his working blues and then he and Chief Neville left for their "shop" at a fast walk.

Bingham reviewed the tactical data and all the intercepted data for several minutes. He biterally regreted that the probes could not be "heard" through the iceball when the enemie's broadcast could be. It was all a matter of how much power each could put out. Then, he set his intercomm to the bridge setting. Then, he could see that the Captain was sleeping in his command chair and that the assistant weapons officer had the deck and the conn. The assistant weapons officer was doing the mundane task of "driving" the ship while the Captain and most of their shipmates slept.

Bingham called the CO and XO on a conference call.

"We just decoded a tactical alert. message. We can provide a briefing in fifteen minutes if that is agreeable."

"Very well, set up an all officer meeting." The CO was drinking coffee as he talked.

When Bingham and Neville arrive din the briefing room, the Captain was already there drinking coffee. Most of the officers were still trickling in as Bringham finished pouring coffee for Neville and himself.

Bingham started the bried with a background analysis of enemy locations, activities and their potential for attacking the Heinlein.

"As you can tell from the message, the enemy is aware of our presence and has initiated defensive measure. The tactical plot team estimates it will be four days before nay enemy vessels can intercept us."

The life support officer interupted.

"They have long range weapons capable of attacking us from their current locations. Why will they have to intercept?"

Bingham let the weapons officer answer for him.

"Our iceball will protect us from ship mounted energy and partical beam weapons; no one in their right mind is going to waste missiles on us. The base on the planet is the only location with the necessry power supplies for weapons capable of hurting us. Fortunately, they are facing away from us and will not be able to attack us for about eighteen hours." Bingham noted disbelief on several faces. "There type of weapons installation can be aimed only at angles close to the zenith. The planet has turned away from the optimun angle and won't be available for attack for that eighteen hours."

"If we continue on our present course, we will be destroyed in eighteen hours?" The Captain made the statement a question from the way he spoke it.

"Yes, sir," both Bingham and the weapons officer chorused.

"What are the chances of this being a training drill?"

"Very small, sir, it is customary to use the broadcast as a backup channel during exercises. All tactically important messsages are sent via ship to ship and planet to ship circuits and only administrative messages are sent over the broadcast. This is tradition in our service to ensure testing of the ship to ship and ship to planet circuits. I think it is a necessary policy since the broadcast isn't very secure." That irony got some grim laughs. "In a combat situaiton, the broadcast is securred; they securred their broadcast at 0355Z without sending a 'start-up' time."

"What are our chances of surviving a planetary attack?"

"Previous messages concerning the planet's weapons indicate particle beam weapons using antimatter nuculi as heavy as anti-carbon. Without the iceball, we would last about two minutes. With the iceball, we might hold out a few minutes longer. We just don't know how well the ship's shields will hold out. If I may remind all of you, this weapon is orders of magnitude more powerful that anything shipmounted. We can barely hold off shipmount3ed weapons now..."

No one wanted to be reminded of the damage enemy ships had done to them. Commander Breece took over the brief.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our only option if we wish to survive is to attack this star."

Breece paused for the Captain had suddenly looked distracted as if he had gone into a private reverie. The Captain abuptly snapped out of it after about two minutes.

"We have no choice then? Is there any chance of this being a civilian planet, Dr. Bingham?"

"None sir. THey show no civilian attributes in their communications; we aren't close enough to receive civilian entertainment channels, but, we show only noise on the frequencies used for these channels. No one would waste a tactical genius like Ryan on a civilian planet...We received a message yesterday from Ryan refering to his transfer orders. Ryan informed his superiors that he was extending his stay on this planet due to the tactical importance of this area."

"Very well, we will attack with the Tug Section as you suggest, Dr. Bingham. Launch a tactical probe for close in intelligence data from the planet itself. Put the ship on modified general quarters."

Bingham knew that the command would be on twelve on, twelve off until further notice. It would be very uncomfortable and the crew would be getting fairly stressed out. But, war is war and war is the providence of Stress, Bingham thought.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A clock had been set on the bridge counting down until the planet could come into attack position upon the Heinlein. The bridge once again smelt of coffe and sweat. Personnel were displaying an unnatural degree of caution and tension as they performed their duties.

Bingham looked down at the sandwich that he had been trying to eat for about five hours. He had been reviewing all their intercepted messages and their analysis of them. He could find nothing to counterindicate attacking.

Bingham was getting up for yet another trip to the head when the battle alarm went off. Immediately, he forgot about his bladder and watched as the bridge team swung into action. The ship's protective force fields had been penetrated by a projectile and a defensive weapons sub-system had automatically destroyed it.

The weapons officer had programmed the weapons for massive overkill and all five anti-mnatter batteries on that side of the ship had been fired. Bingham had almost no data to analyse. All his instruments could tell him was that the object had been steel with some impurities. All other data was masked by the weapons residue. He sent all the sensor records of the event to the Intelligence shop for a careful analysis that might be able to reconstruct the nature of the assult object in spite of the Heinlein's anti-matter residue. It was a very long shot but one that might work. It would certainly keep the intelligence and physical chemistry people busy for a while anyway...

"They would have to be blind not to notice that energy flare," Bingham commented dryly to the Captain.

The Captain nodded agreement.

"We will still release the tug as planned at 2026Z."

"Yes, sir," Bingham agreed. "It will take the 'tug' section about twenty minutes to take effect, Captain."

"DON'T WAIT! DON'T WAIT! ATTACK NOW! ONLY HOPE! ONLY..."

One of the ship's engineers was standing his first breakin watch as "Bridge Damage Control Assist While In Modified General Quarters" and had let the stress get to him. Bingham coldcocked the man; this was that individual's first and last such bridge watch. Bingham watched as the Junior Officer of the Deck summonded medics to take the unconscious engineer off to visit the ship's medics. Bingham was pleased that he could still punch after all the year's since he had boxed in high school. But, he didn't remember his fist hurting so much back in high school...

They were part of a service that placed it's empassess on working despite fear rather than on trying to hide fear. They were scared of partical beam weapons for good reason. They were also worried about the effect that the radiation caused by their own weapons on them when fired so close to their ship. The engineer would return to his normal duty and although not qualyfing fuly on bridge watch, would undoubtly still get promoted along with his peers.

The incident was immediately forgotten about by the overworked bridge crew.

The weapons officer quietly reprogrammed the weapons computer for a milder response to close in meteor penetrations of the ship's protective screens. Unfortunately, the strength of the screen had to be kept low to prevent enemy snensors from detecting their presence.

Bingham was thinking back to the night in the "Ship's Club" when he had mentioned how he'd been "blackballed" by his colegues. He had proposed an interesting usage of a tug's gravity generators: A method of inducing controlled flares on the surface of a star! He had hope to eventually cause such flare to act as lasers. The possibilites of this for destroying meteors and hazardous material around "foreign stars" was very attrative. Unfortunately, Bingham's warning about the highly theoratical nature of his ideas had been ignored by his colegues. They had tried his method out in a star system with an inhabitated planet (they wanted a well stocked base nearby). The results had been good at first but then turbulance effects had caused the flares to go out of control...

At 2015Z, the tug section was released. The iceball was forward of the tug section as the two fell into the star. Freed of the tug and iceball, the Heinlein abruptly surged in acceleration to 150 gees and warped into an orbit around the star. They knew this was near the tolerance of the ship's design.

Bingham walked to the head despite the sudden 2 gee spikes that the ship's articifual gravity control system was allowing through. He left the head with his pants throughly soaked...the ship's gravity had suddenly came from the buldhead behind Bingham as he had urinated. Bingham hardly noticed. Several minutes later the Captain orderdd acceleration reduced to 50 gees and the gravity system settled down. The ship's apparent gravity became it's usual stable 1 gee.

The bridge was very busy coordinating damage reports, requests for medical aid and analysis fo the star's behavior. At 2036Z, there was still no indication of assult from the planet.

"When do you expect them to to come up on their broadcast, Dr. Bingham?"

The Captain asked Bingham this question again.

"The first flares will occurr at about 2040Z. They will receive the flash wavefront at 2048Z. If any traffic is going to come across their broadcasts, it should come between 2048Z and 2050Z. Beyong that, flares will mask any transmission."

At 2030Z, several messages were transmitted on the broadcast.

At 2047Z, the enemy broacdast went into high speed mode and to Bingham's shock, two backup channels were activated. The 21 cm broadcast was suddenly brought up as well. Bingham knew that the 21 cm broadcast was only used in extreme emergencies. The faster than light communications system began sending an abbreviated series of tune up signals. There was no apparent attempt being made to send encrypted signals.

"This is a panic reacion beyhond anything I would have believed. I wonder if they have tactical doctrins for handling this type of emergency?" Bingham was very worried.

"And if they do, Doctor?"

The Captain had a look on his face that meant he already knew the answer.

"They'll bust ass to get into the shelfter of either planet and will then hunt us down. Our data cannot confirm nor deny this possibility."

"We'll face that danger later." The Captain paused to collect himself. "Report on that Star!"

"Massive destruption occuring in the surface layers. There are flares occuring that are building to one large flare. The energy release is indicative of a nova; the tug's telemetry reports massive local gravity and magnetic anomalies. We can expect partical radiation shortly."

Bingham watched as several displays on his bridge screen abruptly r4ead "NO DATA" and he straightened up while rubbing his sore lower back.

"The tug section is destroyed and there is no chance that the surface base can survive this induced Nova. We have not been attacked and I believe we are safe as long as we can evade our disaster."

"Excellent, dr. Bingham, I am goin gto my quarters. Keep me notified."

"Yes, sir."

Binghham, who was still fresh compared to the other senior officers, relieved the Officer of the Deck. By now, the Heinlein was moving behind the enemy star and would be out of contact with the enemy planet.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At 0924Z, on August 25, the Heinlein detected on of the high speed probes and brought it quietly aboard. Breece instructed the personnel involved that no one was to discuss the probe. She said that the Captain has wanted no discussion in the event of the ship's capture. This would have both amused and concerned the Captain.

The first analysis showed excellent data on the planet and it's fleet. Bingham had only enough time for a quick scan of the data before going to a Staff meeting. The quick scan confirmed Bingham's previous analysis of the situation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what is the current situation?"

Commander Breece led off:

"The star is settling down, we blieve. The enemy fleet will come to investigate the nova. If there are any surivvin ships, they could report our presence. We don't know what the 21 cm broadcast was able to transmite but we must assume it involved us. I suggest immediate evacuation from this area."

"No, XO, we'll make a flyby of the inner planet and scan the area around theplanet for survivers. We will take them aboard and will also destroy any enemy vessels that attack us."

"Captain," Bingham began urgenly, "I suggest we get the hell out of here while we can. The enemy fleet will begin an investigaiton as soon as they realize that this system is non-operational and..."

The Captain had cut Bingham off.

"Neverless, we WILL make a flyby of the planet. NAVIGATION! Arrange a brief of various orbits we can take for a fast flyby and then exit from this system. I want additional probes sent IMMEDIATELY!"

The affected officer said "YES, SIR!" and the Captain left the room.

When Bingham entered the intelligence office, both of his chiefs and one of the senior petty officers were sitting in shock staring at a computer CRT.

"We finally decoded the remainder of that alert message, sir."

On one screen was the origional version with it's missing portions:

FLASH FLASH FLASH

Z 140250Z AUG 52

FM COMMANDER, 19TH FLEET

TO ALL MILITARY ACTIVITIES

S E C R E T

SUBJ: TACTICAL ACTION MESSAGE

1. ENEMY WARCRAFT DETECTED AT 140221Z AUG 51 AT......BELIEVED TO BE CRUISER OR BATTLESHIP TRANSITING THIS SYSTEM IN POWERED DOWN MODE. ENEMY SHIP EXIBITS CRUISER CONFIGERATION.

2. SET PLAN CODENAME GRESHAM DOG IMMEDIATELY.

3. SET EMMISIONS CONTROL PLAN ALFA IMMEDIATELY.

4. ALTHOUGH THIS.........I EXPECT YOU TO HONOR OUR SERVICE!

"The other CRT has the missing portions filled in."

FLASH FLASH FLASH

Z 140250Z AUG 52

FM COMMANDER, 19TH FLEET

TO ALL MILITARY ACTIVITIES

S E C R E T

SUBJ: TACTICAL ACTION MESSAGE

1. ENEMY WARCRAFT DETECTED AT 140221Z AUG 51 AT ONE HUNDRED KILOMTERS RADIUS OUT FROM OUR SUN AND SIXTY DEGREES AHEAD OF THIS PLANET IN THE PLANE OF THIS PLANET. IT IS BELIEVED TO BE CRUISER OR BATTLESHIP TRANSITING THIS SYSTEM IN POWERED DOWN MODE. ENEMY SHIP EXIBITS CRUISER CONFIGERATION.

2. SET PLAN CODENAME GRESHAM DOG IMMEDIATELY.

3. SET EMMISIONS CONTROL PLAN ALFA IMMEDIATELY.

4. ALTHOUGH THIS TRAINING EXERCISE IS DESIGNED FOR REGULARS OR FOR TRAINED RESERVISTS, I BELIEVE YOU ARE CAPABLE OF PERFORMING THIS EXERCISE. I REALIZE THAT YOU ARE STILL BASICALLY UNTRAINED CIVILIANS BUT I EXPECT YOU TO HONOR OUR SERVICE!

"The data and visual imagry is worst than that, sir" Chief Neville was having trouble talking.

The imagry of the planet showed no sign of military bases. The closeups of the "combat craft" showed them to be civilian craft;;. Bingham knew that these craft could have been converted into warcraft but had not been. They summoned the XO to give her the bad news.

"What we have here then is a case of civilians playing military, then," the XO paused, "our analysis was sound...suggestions?"

"The Captain probably would be destroyed buy this information and yeat I don't want to lie..." After muttering this, Bingham grabbed Chief Neville's coffee cup and drained it; he wasn't too surprised to feel the burn of vodka going down his throat.

"We need the Captain healthy, Bingham. Breece was abrujpt but knew the beating Bingham's conscious was taking. Killing was something that Bingham could handle but mass murder and lying were different matters.

"Could that have been an operational base?"

"YES! YES, MAAM!" The intelligence analysist's responces were all uniformely positive.

"We did what we had to do. We will fake some evidence to justify our actions and I will brief the Captain later. It will appear that I did ALL the faking. UNDERSTAND?"

______ Her subordinates understood very clearly.

The orbits choosen would take Heinlein about three weeks to circle behind the enemy star and come into range of the inner planet for their flyby. During that time, the ship was able to settle down and perform routine maintenance. They were making observations of the assulted star that would result in some very important theoritical work several years after the war's end. But, this wouldn't be for another twenty two years...

Unfortunately, the Captain had haunted the bridge during the return transit. He even slept there and ate there. The Captain was informed that the mystery assult on the Heinlein several weeks earlier had been reanalyses as a meteor and not a missile. Still, the Captain waited on his bridge, fearing the worst and hoping for something even he couldn't define.

One day, when Bingham was standing Officer of the Deck, the Captain broke his silence.

"Bingham, do you think there are any surviving enemy?"

"No, sir, I think that they were all destroyed."

"Do you have any hard evidence?"

"No, sir, just a, ah, gut level reaction."

The Captain attributed Bingham's hesitation before lying to guilt at admiting having to use hunchs. This would have amused Bingham who have based many a theoretical analysis on precisley defined and stated hunches.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Finally, the dead planet came within visual range. A high speed probed had been configured for radar, visual and inflared scanning and sent with the Captain's blessings. The Captain had then refused to view the results until he could also observe the planet through the ship's telescopes at the same time. Bingham personally thought that the Captain was trying to put off finding out just what kind of damage had been done.

The first images from the telescopes were fairly graphic. They showed a planet scoured by enormous hurricanes and radiation counters showed the decline of radioactivity. Despite the bad viewing conditions, it was apparent that the planet was not military.

"OH MY GOD! I killed a harmless plante!"

The Captain had been in the survey service for too many yearsw to buy the idea of tactical necessity and calculated risks. Yet, in combat, he had proven himself to be merciless against enemy warcraft. This was a conflict that intrigues Bingham.

"Excuse me, sire, we have more data to show you. We were able to contact a probe we thought was destroyed weeks ago. It was in high orbit around this planet and missed the main effects of the nova."

Bingham began displaying data from the probe and pointed out various features from the probe and from the Heinlein's sensor suite. It was a work of art and probably the most seemless forgery that Bingham had every seen...

"Those two derelicks are two combat vessels that were destroyed in the flare. The probe you ordered sent before the attack also reflected this information:"

The screen showed a heavy warship base. This had been faked by Chief Neville and Commander Breece. Bingham pointed to the same area on the current data viewscreen. It was a baren, burnt patch of mud glowing with radiation induced from the heavy particle radiation that had vomited forth from the nova.

"The probe shows a base that was destroyed by hurricanes and induced radiaiton. The planet will take generations to settle down and for the lower life forms to respread."

"That was a civilian planet according to prewar data."

Bingham wondered where the Captain had obtained anold atlas. To the best of his knowledge, there was no such book on the Heinlein.

"It may have been once but it was a military base when we struck."

"I found an old letter from my niece inviting me to vacation with her on this planet. They could not have changed this into a combat unit in only eight months!"

Bingham mentally smiled. The Captain had been correct in his assumption that the planet could not have been made into a base during the lifetime of the rebellion. He prepared to exercise his new found talent at tying.

"Most of the enemy bases were prepared four to six years in advance of the actual rebellion, sir. We have found evidence in the form of prisioner interrigaitons, intercepted enemy communications and from that Postal Service ship we intercepted. I have found fragementary data in old shipping warnings and ship movement reports that indicate that this planet was converted to a military base some four years ago.

The Captain noticed that Bingham wasn't acting normal but attributed this to concern about the Captain. The Captain was aware of Bingham's concern about his health and knew that Bingham had given the medics lectures about better managing the Captain's stress and high blood pressure problems.

"Do you remember that fragmentary message we received, Captain? I have a full decryption of it here."

FLASH FLASH FLASH

Z 140250Z AUG 52

FM COMMANDER, 19TH FLEET

TO ALL MILITARY ACTIVITIES

S E C R E T

SUBJ: TACTICAL ACTION MESSAGE

1. ENEMY WARCRAFT DETECTED AT 140221Z AUG 51 AT VICINITY OF GAS GIANT ON TRACK TOWARDS OUR SUN. FURTHER LOCATION DATA NOT AVAILABLE; APPEARS TO BE MATED TO A LARGE ICEBALL. BELIEVED TO BE CRUISER OR BATTLESHIP TRANSITING THIS SYSTEM IN POWERED DOWN MODE. ENEMY SHIP EXIBITS CRUISER CONFIGERATION.

2. SET PLAN CODENAME GRESHAM DOG IMMEDIATELY.

3. SET EMMISIONS CONTROL PLAN ALFA IMMEDIATELY.

4. ALTHOUGH YOU ARE THE BEST TRAINED COMBAT UNIT IN THIS QUADRANT. I KNOW THAT THIS IS THE FIRST COMBAT SITUATION MOST OF YOU HAVE BEEN IN. THE CONGRESS, YOUR COMRADES AND I EXPECT YOU TO HONOR OUR SERVICE!

"This was a heavy enemy base. We were lucky that the HIGHLY TRAINED REGULARS DIDN'T DESTROY US. Twere an outstanding enemy base!

The irony was that the base was planned to have been built there in the the now defunk five year Naval building plan. In fact, several units of Naval Construction people had been sent to begin this work when the rebellion had occured. Bingham also knew that the ships carrying these engineers had been destroyed in the opening days of the war...

Commander Breece had some friends in the proper places of the construction bureau who could make ALL the records read properly...

The Captain sighed in relief and slumped in his command chair. The medic was summoned and the Captain removed to his cabin. Breece logged the doctor's diagnosis of exhaustion into the ship's log and gave his first orders as the acting Captain. The Heinlein was put onto a course that would take her back around this star again and as quickly as possible to where she could use the hyperspace drive safely.

"For a man with the reputation of being unable to lie, Doctor Bingham, you're learning fiarly quickly; I'll have to watch you more closely."

Bingham chocked on his coffee.

"Relax, Georges, you're still the worst liar I've ever seen. Waht do you think of this planet?"

"Knowing Ryan's abilities, he would have made this a very dangerous base in about five years. Right now, it was a rich man's pleausre planet. The last message he sent before we burned the planet was:"

1. I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU AMATEURS WOULD REFRAIN FROM TRYING TO ATTACK IMAGINARY TARGETS NEAR THE SUN. WE ARE AT THE END OF A VERY LONG SUPPLY LINE AND WEAPONS ARE NOT FREE! IT WILL TAKE AT LEAST A YEAR TO TURN YOU PAMPERED, RICH, CIVILIANS INTO A COMBAT SQUADRON IF ANYONE WERE FOOL ENOUGH TO GIVE YOU SHIPS!

2. WHO FIRED UPON THE SUN?

"Those playboys were stranded there when the rebellion started and I imagine they voluenteered for a Reservist or Home Guard unit. They could have been molded into a combat unit capable of infiltrating out home worlds. That was one of Ryan's best ideas."

"I agree. Now we just have to keep the Captain sane and get him healhy again."

"I thought YOU wanted to be the Captain," Chief Neville was both startled and tackless enough to blurt out.

"I do but not at the expense of this Captain!"

As Bingham and Neville left the bridge, he felt Breece's eyes on them and wondered if anyone could ever believe him again. Breece wasn't worried about Bingham's fears but was about Bingham's ability to handle his guilt. Breece had been in several violent and hushed up scrimages with the rebels during the final manuevering that lead up to the rebellion. This was stressful for Breece but he could handle it.

Now he had the Captain, Bingham and Bingham's senior petty officers to worry about...

Oddly enough, he felt good about their future...I think I should delete this sentence.

1. Point out earlier that the ship is in orbit around the big planet.

2. More about what Bingham was doing while in standdown. What was happening with the probes?

3. Put proper times throughout the story and plug in an appropriate year such as in the 23 century.

* * * * * * * * * * * * **

That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Friedrick Niechietz.

*______* * * *

PREFACE: This is a delightful little piece that I wrote in the winter of 1990; I figured that it might bother Kathie and I was right. So, without further ado, I present for your reading pleasure: The Artist!

For three days, Hawk had been working on his greatest masterpiece; it was an experimental work called his "P Phantasy".

He had thought of the concept only days before and was eager to complete it. His wife was wondering what it was. She had never seen this work for he kept the back of eisle facing toward the bedroom door.

"You can tell me, dear," she said at dinner, "I'm your wife."

She avoided looked at Hawk for Hawk had a truly classic cold; he was grateful that the cold had gone into both hisest and his larynx and that he couldn't talk. So he whispered something knowing that his wife couldn't hear him.

"Oh, you poor dear! Here! Drink this cough medicine."

"Can't dear, I just took a Sue-de-fed."

Later that evening, feeling worst then ever, Hawk returned to the spare bedroom he worked in. His work was coming along nicely. Hawk liked to work with whatever texture or colour of paint he had available; he was not one to plan ahead and preselect his material for Hawk liked to be spontaneous. Hawk just grabbed what he could and figured where it would go in the completed "P Phantasy". It would take a few more days.

The next day, Hawk's wife had guests over who sat around talking about the latest TV craze: an overweight, overly made up woman, who cried on the TV and interviewed failed ministers. It was quite amusing and also up to Her-aldo's best (that being how Hawk pronounced the one time newsman's name). Hawk was busily filling his hankies with stringy musus that noone wanted to look at yet which everyone seemed to see out of the corners of their eyes no matter where they looked. Hawk's wife and their guests were quite relieved when "the poor dear" left the room to get some rest. However, Hawk had always been blessed with excellent hearing. When he heard the way they were discussing him, Hawk / knew / that they would view his greatest work. He thought that they might not appreciate the subject matter. Hawk didn't like people who talked about him behind his back.

The work was coming along nicely and his cold was beginning to abate. He knew that with his return to health would come his return to the office ... his return to processing quality control statistics on the colectomy bags that his medical supply company produced.

The final day had come and he was almost done. His greatest masterpiece was a delicate work in red, greens, tan and clear overlays. The work was of course a Phantasy. His images were, to say the least, disturbing. Later, some would say that they were disturbed. Hawk went to his garage to get some Mountain Dew. Unfortunately, being an abstracted artist concerned with the completion of his somewhat abstract work, Hawk forgot to put on his jacket. It was raining outside and there were four inches of snow still on the ground; he returned to the house soaking wet and with his shoes caked with snow.

Hawk was crushed by his carelessness and told his wife that the work might have to wait; his cold renewed it's assault on his battered system and Hawk sat bundled in his easy chair quite miserable. His wife made him a hot lemonade that was mostly rum; Hawk never knew when his wife undressed him and put him to bed.

The next day dawned wonderfully. Hawk's cold was feeling better and he was honking like a bull goose trying to service more than his mate. He ran into his work room and began to feverishly complete his work.

His wife opened the door and gagged slightly as she saw hawk snort a strand of musuc onto his palm and then delicately attach it to the canvas. She walked around to look at the abstract images that looked like somehing taken from an old fantasy story. Then, she realized exactly what media Hawk had been working in and felt very ill when she saw the full title of the piece:

/ "Phlegm Phantasy" by Hawk Lunger

* * * * * *

From my earliest years, I remember being on the boat. My parents were there as well as my kinfolk and later my kith. For me, the world was the boat. Ah, the things we could see from it. Sometimes, the boat swam through wide, misty seas or lakes; mostly we cruised through rivers lined by exotic shores on either side.

I played, I quarreled and later I loved but never did I leave the boat. Always, life was lived on her broad decks or the lavish staterooms. There was much to do.

Sometimes people, children actually, would be brought aboard by the crew. The crew would ferry them to our boat by longboat and they would join a family the way water joins a dry sponge. How each child knew which family he or she was meant for was a mystery to us; they could never remember the kith and kin they left behind on the shore and what they may have been told before leaving the shore. Also, smetimes, people would leave the boat, ferried to the exotic or sometimes boring but always interesting shore. The ones leaving were gone; gone to whatever or whoever dwelled upon the land. The land that floated not upon water but on rock; a very strange place indeed. Often, we would sit around and discuss what the shore must be like. We even floated philosophical ideals of what it must be like. But, to know for sure, we would have to await our turn in the longboats.

For we all knew that someday we too would grow bored of our riverboat and be taken ashore by the crew. The crew that kept to itself not once did they talk with us. They supplied our food, cleaned our quarters and provided the means for entertainment. All this without us noticing them for they acted when we were elsewhere. Elsewhere you ask? Indeed, elsewhere; for on a riverboat with two sections, one crew, one passenger, there are many secrets and secret places. And, we hunted for them. Many times, I watched the shore, smelled the shore. Many times, I watched strange birds and wierder animals and things that were seemingly one thing or perhaps another cavorting about and acting in mysterious fashion. And I wondered what to make of them.

At times, I felt like throwing myself into the gentle, flowing, waters and making for that shore. That shore that was so familiar and yet hid so many things.

But, I don't. For, my wife and I have been joined by a child from the shore in a meeting like a yeast mixing with bread batter and our lives are growing in new and frightening and wonderous ways. The living is good, the sun is warm and all that I love is about me.

I will wait.

*______* * * *

And now, on to further business. Before we announce the winners of our Man of the Year awards, I should like to say a few words about the direction our beloved English language is taking.

Recently, the Women's movement has caused words such as "Postman" to be changed to "Mail Carrier", "Chairman" to be changed to "Chairperson" or simply "the Chair" and "Salesman" to "Sales Person". I'm sure you can think of your own examples. Of interest is that "Garbageman" is still "Garbageman" vice "Garbageperson" or "the Garbage."

I say this to preface my comments concerning a most unusual letter we've just received from a rather well known Woman's Organization. They reqest, no, insist that our society refer to it's annual awardees as "Man of the Year" regardless of the winner's sex or sexual orientation. I have begun to wonder if this might be a slight or perhaps an unfavorable ineundo, cast upon the sensibilities of this organization, the "Society for the Appreciation of Evil"...

*______* * * *

Eggeyes, also known as "Deathbood, Defender of the Faith", carefully put on his black plate armour and metal helm. He had to meet with his master, the Grandfather of Assassins. That creature was known to a few of his faithful as "Gramps" (he happened in fact to be Eggeye's great-grandfather). He was known to his enemies by far more sinister names.

Eggeyes looked into his mirror and beheld his bulging eyes set in a face scarred like an old piece of firepit rock. There was little of kindness in his face and much controlled intelligence. He sniffed himself with his better than human sence of smell and decided he could pass among the true humans and half-elves that made u the town's population.

He put on the girdle with it's bastard sword and poisioned dagger. The crossbow was slung across his back. He carried no backpack with him. His vial of unholy water was in a pouch and the poisioned quarrels were in his quiver. There were five of them.

Eggeyes, looking like a prosperous fighter, carefully left is rooms at the Bloody Miscarriage. He set the alarms and traps well. He heard his watchbeast awaken and Egeyes hoped that some poor damned thief would enter. The thief would leave his soul to the watchbeast and Eggeyes would have a little extra deserved profit.

The street was safe. A guard approached Eggeyes and bid hima good evening. Eggeyes answered politely and waited until the man had turned to go before stabbing the guard with a poisioned blade. The guard had time to turn toward Eggeyes and almost got his blade out.

"You BASTARD...". The victum fell to his knees.

"I'm truly upset!" Eggeyes exclaimed in amazement. "The alchemist who sold me the poison told me it was instant acting and very painful. The Better Business Bureau will hear of this. Actually", he continued in a musing toneof voice, "I'll just have a word with the alchemist about this."

The prospect delighted Eggeyes!

"You're an assassin! You must be a..."

At this Eggeyes ripped the man's throat out with one hand. There was one thing no one would say to hime and that no one would know. Only the Grandfather of assassins knew his secret nad Gramps wouldn't give the Grandduke or anyone outside of the Assassin Guild the time of year let alone Eggeye's secret.

The body yielded two flasks of oil and a flask of holy water. There was the armour to be removed and sold. The man's short sword and throwing axe were simply added to Eggeye's girdle. There was five goldpieces which Eggeyes cheerfully added to his purse. He didin't fear a deadman's curse upon the decreased guard's property. Eggeye's diety had guarenteed him protection from such curses.

The night was cool and the smell of dung in the open sewers began to predominate over the smell of charcoal fires as the fires were douced after the evening meal. Eggeyes noticed it not at all.

The walk to the Assassin's Guildhouse was uneventful. Egeyes gave the dead guard's chainmail to the Housemouse. The Housemouse was a drab, retired, thief who gave good prices for stolen goods. Then, Eggeyes went to the Guild's alchemist.

Eggeyes put the vial of "bad" poison on a table.

"It doesn't work fast! A target almost attacked me before I ripped his throat out. And he didn't seem to be in much pain."

The wide assortment of hidden and subtle traps and poisons in the room was upsetting Eggeyes. He held out his hands toward the alchemist in a subconscious attempt to ward off any attack fromthat worthy. The alchemist feared what spells could be brought into existance from those hands, however.

"The poison might have had some old eye of unborn elve in it. Here, try this fresh batch."

"Thank you, good master, I shall try it!" With that Eggeyes left the alchemist who was secretly very relieved to see Eggeyes leave. Then, Eggeyes slowly made his way to the Grandfather of Assassins' quarter.

"Well, don't stand there boy, say 'hello'".

"Good evening, sire. I see you've enjoyed another night with 'Their Graces'?".

"Damned fooliness, if you ask me. I have to go to the Better Business Bureau meeting or people will get the wrong idea of our guild. Some of those fools, those merchants, wanted to examine our books with an eye to seeing if we pay our taxes!"

"Do you wish me to spy out the tax records that we may know who knows how much we should be paying? I'd like that!"

Eggeyes meant that he would like interrogating the BB clerks in the dungeon. Somehow, torturing humans wasn't business but was enjoyment.

"We have a problem. There are a group of giants who are plundering all caravans leaving this town. The Guard was about to roast the entire Thieves Guild over slow fires when I was able to convince the Guard Captainthat no Master Thief would cut off his source of income. Someone else is plundering the caravans. The Master Thief is the only one licenced to plunder. And that is on a quota system. We are the only technical advisors allowed to assist the thieves. Someone is using our techniques in the caravan raids. We must stop this raiding to save our good bad reputations. we have a reputation of honest 'evil' to uphold and you will protect our reputation!"

"Who is cutting in our turf?"

Eggeyes words were a bit slurred as his fangs were beginning to slid down into place. He no longer looked quite so human; he was beginning to resemble his father and great-grandfather's brother.

"The leather merchant is a spy for giants. He must be killed to stop the attacks! Others of the brotherhood will guide chaotic fighters to find and wipe out the raiders. Go to the Inn of the Whipping Post and you will find the leather merchant's grudge there. Here, take this:" The Grandfather of Assassins held out a small vial. "It will make her love you for the night!"

As Eggeyes, Priest to the Worship- Of- He- Whose- Name- Was- Not- Spoken and Assassin left, his great-grandfather mused to himself. The "love vial" contained just the opposite and the GRandfather of Assassins might this night be rid of his most serious future rival.

The Inn of the Whipping Post was a true dive. Eggeyes had to step smartly to avoid the rotting corpse of a customer who had sought to leave without paying. He had paid by giving his living intestines to an entrail reader and his soul to a creature from Middle Hell (a fun place to visit occasionally Eggeyes thought).

The main room of the Inn smelt of old shit, strange drugs, sweat, seman and fear. Woven through that was the smell of the food and drink served there. It was a hideous smell in the smokeyair that made Eggeyes think we'd gone back to his childhood home again. He ducked his head beneath the low slung rafters and sought out the barman.

The barman was an incredibly hairy man who wore a brand identifying him as a werebear. The human form of the werebear was hugh, stooped over and very old.

"Where, bear, do I find the leather merchang's hag."

He was ignored.

"GIve me a tankard of mead." Eggeyes held out a gold piece.

"The orcbitch in the corner." The barman smilled for he had gotten a gold piece for a glass of mead that was worth onlya silver piece. Rather, would be if the mead had been bought rather than stollen from the brewers.

The orcbitch was incredibly hideous. Eggeyes thought she looked like one of his old girlfriends or perhaps his sisters and went to meet her.

"Hi ya, beautiful."

"Fuck dog breath or I'll rip your balls off!"

She suddenly sniffed with a light of hope apearing in her eyes.

"Can it be?", she murmurred in Orciash.

"Sure is beautiful and watch the threats or I'll rip your tits off and feed them to my dog!" Eggeyes whispered his endearment to avoid any humans hearing him speaking Orcish.

The orcbitch gazed in lust at Eggeyes. He had extablished himself as a true lowlife. That is to say, established himself as the most desirable lust object for a lustful orcbitch, in the room.

They drank their drinks and Eggeyes made his way to the barman to order two more drinks. THe barman bitchingly took one gold piece for two tankards and Eggeyes successfully relieved the barman of a plantium piece the barman had kept in an inner pocket.

The orcbitch and Eggeyes were in a state of advanced lust when they left. Eggeyes poured the "love portion" into a drink the sleepy barhog was taking to a barbarian. As they left, the barbarian fell into hate with the barhog and most of the rest of the patrons. The barman wondered where his plantium piece went. Suddenly, he went werebear knowing where to bear down to recover his treasure. The barbarian began breaking bottles over hte heads of customers and the werebear began attacking anything that moved. A truly drunken mage used a fireball spell and then the fun truly began...

The Guard had a busy night and the Palace truth finders used many thumbscrews and hot nails on the survivors of the brawl to try finding out the cause of the brawl. The Grandduke didn't take wellt obrawls that ended up firng half a section of his town. But, Eggeyes and his love were oblivious to the fire behind them and they went to the orcbitch's quarters.

Eggeyes and his lustful orcbitch made lust in typical orc fashion. If they had been human or elven, then mere humans could stomack their actions. Violent rending reader(1), I, your narriatior, am but a retired Grandfather of the Grandfather of Assassins. To tell you of the orc and helforc's "lovemaking" would be a vomet inducing event!

On second thought, I will write down the chronicle and have it preserved until the next age of humans. It is fit to published in a magazine which will be called "Five Houses(2)" or words to that effect.

But back to my story...

After leaving his lustmate sleeping, Eggeyes had to make his way through the leather merchant's houe. He knew the general outline of the house from the orcbitch. Her quarters were in the basement.

He would have to go from the orcbitch's quarters to the pantry. From there, he would go up a set of stairs to the enterance hall. Thence, via a hallway, to the master's study where the leather merchant purportedly was. There was a dogleg in the hallway.

As he went up the stairs in the pantry, he noticed a putrid odor and a very strong updraft. Eggeyes could see no openings from which the updraft could be coming. He stopped moving and very carefully loostened his poison coated, great bastard sword in it's scabbard. He then oh-so-carefully cocked his crossbow and lashed

(1) This is a takeoff of Dr. Isaac Asimov's custom of referring to his readers as "gentle readers" when speaking as the author to the readers from within his essays and stories.

(2) "Five Houses" is reference to "Penthouse".

down the release mechanism. He fitted it with a poisoned quarrel. He went the rest of the way up the stairs.

At the open door, Eggeyes carefully did a recon down the small hallway (almost a crawlspace) that extended to the left of the door and could see or hear nothing either in that little hallway or from the room beyond the closed door; Eggeyes had excellent hearing and his vision extended beyond that of humans. He could smell nothing but the putrid odour from the stairwell. The assassin part of his soul cursed the sloopy but oh-so-orcish houecleaning. THe cleric part of him prayed for his life.

Finally, he entered the parlor. A window at one end was open and the air was hot and clear near the window. He could see no reason for the breeze in the stairwell and assumed it to be some sort of magic. If he had known what type, he might have dove out through the window. But, more likely, he would have pressed on regardless...

The room had rotting wood along the baseboards and he thought that the wall hangins were too faded. There was a desk under the window and an armoire(3) near it. A hissing sound could be heard coming from a large chest against the far wall. Eggeyes went over to the chest and investigated it. There was a distince hissing coming from the chest. Carefully, Eggeyes looked it over for traps. He found none.

Slowly, he raised the unlocked lid just a crack. The hissing was very loud now. He took out his dagger and slid it betwinx the lid and the box. He felt the blade shudder as something struck twice at it and then bit it. With a happy, happy, smile, Eggeyes waited until the creature inside quit moving. Moving back to full arm's length from the chest, he slowly raised the lid. The dagger was the only thing touching the chest and lifting the lid was tricky work even for a halforc.

Inside the chest was a dead snake and several gold pieces and platinum pieces. This was a treasure beyond belief! Inside was the lodge pin of one of the area's tribes of giants. It identified the bearer as an ally of that tribe and was a safepass. Eggeyes' mind spun with thoughts of what he could do with such a thing as he carefully picked up the pin with an unpoisoned quarrel. He could tell that the pin was poisoned and didn't want to die just yet...

(3) An amoire is a closed chest or cabinet.

From the armoire, he found nothing of value or of threat. He carefully went to the closed door

and removed his helmet. He listened so hard that he thought his heart was a kettle drum and he thought of cursing it. But, he remembered the disconcerting habit his god had of answering such curses and refrained. If only his god would answer his prayers so readily...

He went to the unopened door and gently open it. Then, he remembered to put his helm back upon his head. But, the pause to redon his helmet was his undoing. Out in the hall were two Troglodytes and they had seen him!

With hisses of hate they charged him. Eggeyes quickly slammed the door in their faces. After bolting the door, he noticed that one of the trogs had managed to hit him with a thrown axe. The sight of his own blood filled Eggeyes with the lust for revenge.

He ran silently for the stairway enterance to the parlor. He carefully opened it a crack and the door rang to the assualt of the trog's stone bvattle axe. The trog backed off to allow Eggeyes out of the parlor. Eggeyes swung hastily and missed; the trog swung and was equally inept. Then, again they attacked and both missed. The other trog was roaring with laughter and waited to see how the comedy would progress.

Eggeyes set imself nad with total concentration swung his bastard sword. He cut the trog just below it's rib cage on the right side and the large bastard killer of men and monsters sword sheared through the trog's bodyand exited through it's left shoulder socket. The body oozed to the floor. As it fell, the trog released it's most potent weapon. It released a strnch that would make a skunk gage and pray for deliverance. Eggeys abruptly jackknifed over in a spasm of vomiting. He would never have believed that a halforc could be so affected; perhps his god had intervened? The stone axe thrown by the surviving trog passed harmlessly over Eggeye's head nad the trog disappeared down the hall.

Having emptied his stomack, Eggeyes' wiped off ihs mouth nad crept up the passage. In a manner that would have made his mentors come with joy, Eggeyes moved silently thrugh the shadows and crept up upon his victum. Perhaps it had been grief that had kept the trog from noticing eggeys; perhaps, Eggeyes was simply very good at his chosen vocation...

The orcbitch smilled as she watch the action in her crystal ball.

The body had a few gold pieces and some silver pieces onit. Eggeyes figured his spoils at about four gold pieces. He thought of the 3600 gold pieces that he had been promised for this night's work and decided that he would be asking for a bonus. There had been too much shit going down for the mood he was in.

Without manking any further attemtps at concealment, Eggeyes went to the enterance of the leather merchant's study and set foot inside. He had his slightly magical shield up at the ready.

The room had a large collection of books and at a lecturn sat a darkly dressed man. THe leather merchant was dressed in the finest of brown silks. he wore no armour and had only a dagger on. Ther leather merchant picked up a staff and moving away from the lecturn, leanded upon the staff.

"I have been waiting for you to come here." He pointed toward a mirror that showed the image of the orcbitch. Most of the scratchs had stopped bleeding but scratchs were normal to orcish love (or lust play to be exact). Eggeyes felt his own scratches and his fourteen inches of warty lustfulliness began strining against his suit of plate armour. He really didn't pay attention to the walls of books in theroom or the rich decorations on what parts of the walls that were visible. He momentarily turned his attention to the useless thoughts of his lust object and the leather merchant struck in that instant.

From his hands spouted twin jets of fire that seared Eggeyes and might have blinded himbut for theinstinctive raising of his shield. On one side, the flames ignited a stack of books. With a scream of pain, the merchant turned his attention to putting out the fire with a water dispatching spell. He would pay dearly for the use of the water elemental that produced the water but the books were worth saving.

Eggeyes didn't react but merely tried to recover and watched the perchant put out the fire. Thus, his opportunity was lost.

The leather merchant turned and struck Eggeyes with his staff and Eggeyes staggered backwards.

Recovering, Eggeyes tried to ignore the smel of burnt paper and the smoke in his eyes. He brought up his crossbow and whiped off the restraining lash. His shot was instantly lethal. The leather merchant fell in a heap. Breathing hard, Eggeyes cautiously searched the body of the leather merchant. he removed a gem worth at least a thousand gold pieces.

The Guard arrived to check out the fire. Then, to Eggeyes's surprise, the orcbitch came running upstairs. She told the guard officer that her master had gotten drunk and set the room on fire. She told them of how she would give the leather merchant pure hell the next morning.

The sight of a crossbow quarrel protruding from the leather merchant made the Guard doubt that the leather merchant would be awakening again ever. But, he had his orders and the Guard COmmander had been most specific about this house: Ignore all things that occurr at that house tonight!"

Eggeyes went to the orcbitch's room for the remainder of the night which made for a truly memorable night of sin, debachery and degradation. He left early the next morning to report in. There was a spring to his step and at least 3000 gold pieces worth of loot. He had spent the morning between dawn and leaving in stealing this wealth.

When he returned to the Guildhall, the Housemouse paid Eggeyes 3100 gold pieces for his loot. Then, Eggeyes went to see the Grandfather of Assassins.

His adventure thenight before had started with meeting with "Gramps" shortly after nightfall. THe final encounter with the Guard had occurred three hours before the sun arose. It was near noon now and Eggeyes wanted his lunch and then some sleep.

"Your report, assassin!" It was the Grandfather of Assassin and not "Gramps" who gave the order to speak.

Eggeyes reported all events fromthe time he had taken the job.

The Grandfather of Assassins intrupted once to say: "You didn't have to use the lust potion?"

"No, your unholiness. The orcbitch practically raped me so I just put the potion in a barbarian's drink. I trust it gave him much happiness."

Gramps smilled. "It gave a lot of people much happiness." Gramps was more than a little sadistic.

"Here is your just reward ("Gramps" put 4000 gold pieces in Eggeye's grasping hands.). Take a few days off. Then, I am going to have you take a combat team and hunt for the headquarters of the giants."

Gramps carefully didn't tell Eggeyes that the leather merchant's body had been removed from town in a wagon that morning by the true spy. Eggeyes was not told that the true spy was a high level cleric, a High Priestess capable of performing Resurrection, Regenertaion and Restoration. He didn't know that the true spy would never heart Eggeys for she had found in him the ideal lust partner.

As the orcbitch and her dead servant, the leather merchant, went to the deep woods location of the orcbitch's god's temple, she lusted for Eggeyes. She decided that the leather merchant would have to be better trained. But, first, she would fulfill the promise she had made to the Guard Officer...

THe grat plans the orcbitch had for Eggeys would have horrified a man andmight have upset Eggeyes had he known.

More likely they would have delighted him.

THE SAGA OF EGGEYES, DEATHBLOOD DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, TO BE CONTINUED...

I wrote this story in January 1983, shortly after Kathie had gone to Navy O.C.S. I started writing a sequal but didn't get too far as I was transferred in March 1983 and never got around to finishing the story. The sequal would have featured a half elve Paladin (a holy night sworn to defeat all evil) forced to work alongside Eggeyes (a creature of quite the opposite orientation). After saving each other live's a couple of times and learning to see matters from each other’s wildly different viewpoints and backgrounds, they parted amiable enemies as opposed to blood enemies.

There was also another D&D story I started about the same time which was the same story but told from the viewpoints of four different characters. I wrote it mainly for the fun of writing the common sceens as told from the four different viewpoints (i.e. a raid on a wagon train or a night in a tavern/inn). This story is lost (alas).

*______* * * *

At six am, the sun shinning in through the window woke Herman. He shook his head to get the fur out of his eyes and then stood up. herman decided that it was time to wake up his pet humans. Herman jumped up on the bed and walked up to his pet man. He stood six inches from his pet man's face and breathed on it. The man didn't move. So Herman moved closer and licked the silly human on the nose. Still, the pet human didn't move. Herman decided that extreme methods were needed. He climbed on top of his pet human and began licking the man's ear. The man awoke and said "Go away, Herman. I want to sleep!". Herman knew better than to let his pet human say this and kept licking th eman's ears.

Herman's other pet human, the woman, rolled over and looked at Herman licking the man's ears. "I think he wants you to take him for a walk, dear."

"I can't," 'Dear' replied, "Herman is holding me down!"

When he heard this, Herman decided to be nice and moved back to let 'Dear' stand up. 'Dear' pulled on his "extra skins" (clothing) and put Herman's leash on Herman. Herman liked the leash because then his pet human couldn't get away from him.

Herman took his pet man around the yard and sniffed the trees and bushes and looked for cats. Then, Herman took his pet man down the street while he looked for dogs to talk with and cats to chase. Herman smelled another dog and made his pet human run with him over to where the other dog was.

The other dog was like Herman: a small furry dog with long, light brown fur and eyes that were almost hidden.

The two dogs sniffed each other.

"Where are your pet humans?" Herman asked the other dog.

"They stayed up late last night so I'm letting them sleep in."

"I never let my pet humans sleep in," Henry said, "they aren't very smart. I hae to keep taking them outside every day. Maybe I can get them fully trained someday. See, this pet human is almost leash trained already."

"Keep training," the other dog said, "humans are slow learners! See you tomorrow."

With that the other dog ran off and Herman lead his pet man back to their house. In the house, Herman let the man feed him some canned dogfood. Then, his pet man went back upstairs and went back to sleep. Herman decided that sleep was a good idea and he went back to sleep himself.

Late that day, Herman decided to case his pet cat. The cat was so much fun to play with. Herman loved to chase the cat fromthe kitchen to the living room and back. He also loved to chase the cat around the rocking chair and behind the sofa. Herman truly loved to stand on top of the cat and chew on it's ears. The cat would hiss in anger and try biting Herman's ears or try scratching his nose. But, Herman's fur was too long and the cat could never hurt him. The cat was only half as big as Herman but Herman didn't care. IT was the only cat Herman had.

That evening Herman found his favorite rubber cat. He took it to his pet humans. Herman let his pet man take the rubber cat and throw it across the room. Herman ran over and got the toy. Herman brought the toy back to his pet man. The pet man tried taking the rubber cat from Herman but Herman made him work for it! Finally, Herman let the pet man take the rubber cat and throw it accross the room again. Herman heard his pet woman say "He sure is playful tonight, Dear." 'Dear' just grunted in reply. Herman didn't care what his pet humans said as long as they were happy. After all, a wise dog has to keep hispet humans happy by playing with them and keeping them out of trouble!

A few minutes later, Herman decided to go for a walk outside. So Herman barked at his humans and then ran over to the front door. When his pet humans didn't get up, Herman barked a few more time. "These poor humans," Herman thought, "they are sooo slow sometimes!"

"You'd better take Herman out, dear," his pet womand said, "we don't want him to wake up the neighborhood!"

His pet man came over and attached the leash to both Herman and himself. Then, they went for a pleasant walk.

Herman sniffed in his yard and thoug that he could smell a strang cat. That was horrible! How dare a strange cat be in his yard!

Herman began running back and forth looking for the strange cat. Finally, Herman's pet human said "Loo, Herman, theres a cat!"

Herman was pleased that his pet human was finally learning how to help him. Herman ran toward the strange cat. The cat ran under a car and herman tried getting underneath it. herman coulnd't fit under the car. So, Herman barked at the cat: "Come out and fight like a dog!"

The strange cat just hid under thecar. Finally, Herman's pet man picked Herman up and carried him back to the house. Herman was so angry that he ignored his pet humans for the rest of the evening.

The next morning, Herman woke up at six o'clock. He was still angry at his pet man and decided to let his pet woman take him for his walk. Herman walked up to his pet woman's face and stared at her for a few seconds. Herman panted on her face but she didn't move, so, Herman likced her on the nose and then licked her mouth. His pet woman woke up and said "Dear, this studpid dog is bothering me. Please take him for a walk."

"No!", said 'Dear', "Herman wants you!"

As soon as they were outside, Herman lead his pet woman over to where his friend, the other dog was sitting.

"There was a strange cat in my yard last night!"

"Don't mess with that cat; it's mean!"

"Don't worry," Herman told his friend, "no cat can bother me!"

"I've warned you!"

Herman strutted off in search of the strange cat. NO strange cat was going to walk in Herman's yard and get away with it!

Herman saw the strange cat and began chasing it. They went to the left, they went to the right and Herman's pet human just couldn't keep up. So Herman did something that he hadn't let his pet humans know Herman could do. He stopped real quick. His pet woman kept running and Herman's collar slipped over Herman's head.

Herman ran after the strange cat. His pet woman yelled at him: "Come back, Herman, that cat is dangerous!"

But Herman wasn't listening.

Herman almost got the strange cat's tail in his mouth when the strange cat stopped running. The strange cat hissed at Herman. Herman charged at the cat and the cat swung at Herman.

"Ouch!" The strange cat had scratched Herman on the nose. That hurt! Then, the strange cat rushed in and bit Herman on the ear! Herman tried to get loose but the angry cat just hung onto Herman's ear.

Herman's pet woman ran up to them and the strange cat ran away.

His pet woman picked Herman up and said "Oh, my poor baby! Did that cat hurt you?"

Herman just laid in her arms nad felt sorry for himself. This was the first time a cat had hurt him. It wasn't fair! Cats weren't supposed to hurt Herman!

Herman's pet woman took him back to their house and put something on his nose and ear. They stopped hurting. Herman's pet man rubbed Herman's head and said "Dumb dog, this'll teach you not to attack cats!"

The pet man had sounded so sympathetic that Herman didn't mind being called a "dumb cat". Herman laid down and went to sleep feeling sorry for himself.

Later that day, when Herman hadn't attacked her, Herman's pet cat came over to see if Herman was okay. Herman just ignored her. Herman's pet cat went over to his food dish and ate some of Herman's breakfast. Herman just ignored this.

Herman's feeling were still hurt. How could he face his friend, the other dog, after getting scratched by a cat?

*______* * * *

In the limousine, Georges Williams began thinking of how he'd ended up there. The beginning of the chain of events leading to his presence there had started out so simply five weeks before. He and a few friends from work had gone to the Wooden Nickel Saloon.

It had been a typical day at work for Georges and five of his buddies: hard work and a lot of boredom. They were glad to have a few beers before going home.

After a few beers, they noticed a sign the owner had posted which offered a 40% discount to anyone buying "John Wayne Lottery" tickets.

"Hey, lookit that," one of the guys yelled, "they're talking about that 'John Wayne Lottery.' You pay your money and you get to shoot some turkeys. Damn that must be wierd!"

"Whatya mean turkey shoot being wierd? Mah dad used ta go shoot the range and win prize turkeys. They were good eating."

"Well, Georges, thats one way to look at it. Still, its different."

"Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Didn't expect it to happen, though. Seems too damn logical."

"Lets buy a ticket, guys, whats the worst that could happen? We ain't gonna win."

"Hey, lets buy some tickets," sang out one of the guys, "I wantta go shoot some turkey; get a little white meat, get a little dark meat, yup, shoot me some turkey."

"Do it! Do it!"

Georges joined the chorus; they were like reluctant sharks circling around some victum waiting for the first shark to bite; the bite that would start the feeding frenzy.

"Hey, Suzzie," Georges yelled at the barmaid, "bring us some of them 'John Wayne Lottery' tickets."

"None of you look like killers to me," Suzzie snapped.

"We ain't gonna win. All we're gonna get outa this is yur 40% discount!"

"OK. How many? Remember, they're ten dollars each."

"We'll get one ticket and put it one our tab."

"Big spenders," she shook her head and left to get the tickets.

The tickets were rather austere looking and as one of the guys said, "the only dignified touch about the damn lottery."

Georges looked at his buddies and remarked: "Which of you pigeons is gonna sign this thing?"

"I will," said one, "sounds like fun!"

"Then sign the damn thing."

"Can't do that, Georges, I've got real bad writer's cramp. Lets have another beer."

"Come on," Georges urged another, "you'll get a real bang outta this!"

"Maybe, but I don't wanta de-prive one of y'all from this great op poor tun it tee."

Georges got up to visit the men's room.

"Tell you what, lets get Georges to sign this thang," said one of George's buddies as soon as he disappeared into the stench of the Men's room.

When Georges returned, his buddies greated him with smiles; Georges was immediately on his guard.

"Whats happening, guys."

"Suzzies been eyeing you all night, Grorgie, maybe shes interested?"

Georges snickered at this thought but was intrigued. Suzzie would have been amused at this lie.

Georges and the guys had a couple more beers. As they were swigging and talking, they ignored Dan Rather discussing how a convicted rapist/murder had been sentenced to death by a federal court in Oregon.

Georges waved Suzzie over to him and began vigorously rubbing his face.

"Hey, Suzzie, let me clear a place for you to sit!"

"Promises, promises, all I get from you is promises." Suzzie sighed very loudly. "Maybe we can go to my place later?"

"OK, later."

Both knew that later would never come; Suzzie was fairly solidly married and so was Georges.

"Time to go home. Georges, sign this tab and we'll pay ya our shares."

Then one of his buddies stuck the 'John Wayne Lottery' ticket in front of Georges and put the pen in his hand. Georges signed without ever really looking at what he was signing.

Suzzie came over and asked: "You boys ready for your tab?"

"What I sign?"

"You just signed the lottery ticket! But don't worry, hero, we'll pay for the beer."

Georges was shocked as he realized what the guys had pulled over on him. He would be a damn sight more careful about signing anything they gave him from then on.

What would he tell his wife?

When Georges got home, he decided to break this news to his wife quickly by showing her the ticket.

"How could you do this?"

His wife's voice shook with rage and disbelief.

"Hey, I know it's expensive! But, dear, look at it this way. It's for a good cause."______ There was a bit of self doubt in Georges' voice. He held back the ultimate argument of "I was with the guys and we got carried away...

"I don't like it and I never expected anything like this from you. You just never seemed the type to me."

Three hours later, she had calmed down.

"I still don't like it."

Finally, an hour after that, she had fully calmed down.

______ "Oh, well," she conceded, "it is being advertised as the greatest thing for the economy and our way of life. I know we've both agreed it's a good idea, but, I just never expected you to actually buy a ticket.

"Hey, they don't call it the 'John Wayne Lottery' for nothing! It is in keeping with our greatest traditions."

His wife nodded in reluctant agreement

. The next three weeks until "Lottery day" were nerve wracking. There were protests against the Lottery by various groups. The right wing loved it; the left wing villified it; the vast majority of the indifferent in the middle bought the tickets if not the arguments for and against the lottery.

On the big night, Georges popped the tab on a beer can and took a gulp as they waited. His wife sat on the arm of the sofa. Before the Lottery, Dan Rather came on to give the latest rundown of global madness. He mentioned that it seemed the Arabs were about to attack Isreal (again), several criminals on death row had lost their appeals and that the leading indicators indicated yet another recession. Afterwards, Georges and his wife could not have told anyone what the news had been; it was just too unexceptional.

By the time five numbers had been read off, Georges realized that he had hit on four. His wife gasped: this meant that Georges was a standby for the group shoot. When the sixth number was read off, Georges realized that he had scored on five numbers. This meant one grand a year for twenty years and the duty of being in on the turkey shoot. True, he would have to share the shoot with three other people but "what the hell", Georges thought. Actually, he was relieved to be part of a group; this was not a solo event in his opinion. The person who was lucky enough to hit on all six numbers got the glory of a one- on-one shot.

Georges and his wife gaped at each other.

The next two weeks were nerve wracking. Finally, about a day before the Turkey shoot, Georges confronted his wife.

"Look, if you don't want me to go through with this, just say so! But, please, quit moping around.

"I've gotten used to the idea of what you're going to do. It still makes me nervous, thats all."

______ "Look at it this way: I heard the other day that the ACLU troublemakers don't mind this. If they don't mind, why should we?"

______ She had heard exactly the opposite. Georges had that story about the American Civil Liberties Union from one of his buddies.

______ "If you don't want me to go, just say so."

______ "No, dear, you can go. It just takes some getting used to."

______ "I know."

______ Their arrival at the Lottery building jolted Georges out of his daydreams. As he left the limousine, a woman with a protest sign ran up to him.

"You greedy bastard," she screamed and spit in Georges' face, "you're nothing but a ...".

The rest of her statement was lost as a cop shoved her away from Georges.

____________ After wiping his face on a towel, Georges turned to his wife and patted her on the arm.

____________"If you really want me to, I can walk away from this now, dear."

____________ "No," she sighed, "it's something we believe is good for the country. After all, we did vote for it."

Georges walked into the Federal Building to meet his fellow winners. He could smell fresh mowed grass and as he walked into the building, the stench of the cleaning fluids used there.

He met his three fellow interviewers: one was a middle aged black man named Anthony, another was a middle aged white woman named Mary Beth and the third was a young white woman named Jennifer. They exchanged introductions.

"What style do you prefer?" Anthony liked taking care of business quickly.

"I kinda think 'face to face' would be best," said Georges.

Georges was nervous about this style and therefore felt compelled to use it.

"I don't like the idea of working 'face to face'," Jennifer replied. "Lets go for the 'faceless stranger' style."

"Doesn't make any difference to me," was Mary Beth's remark.

"Are there any other styles," Anthony remarked.

"Well," Georges hesitated then continued, "there is the '1984' style. However, the idea gives me a headache to think about it." Georges rubbed the base of his skull.

"Lets take a vote. I support 'face to face'," stated Anthony.

"Face to face," stated Georges.

"You know what I want!" Jennifer was very adamant.

"I'll go with the majority," was Mary Beth's latonic answer.

In a formal voice to the lottery officials standing near them, Georges stated for the group: "We're three to one in favor of 'face to face.'"

The lottery officials smilingly took the results of this election and left to arrange the proper seating. The four winners would be conducting three turkey shoots in front of a nationwide audiance.

The lucky four were ushered into a waiting room where they had their choice of beer or wine. Georges and Jennifer chose white wine, the other two went for beer.

"How do you feel about this 'shooting contest'?

"A bit nervous, Anthony," Georges replied, "but someone got to do them and we did win the contest."

"It's just part of winning the lottery," Mary Beth remarked. Anthony nodded in agreement to both statements.

A few minutes later, a lottery official returned to escort the four to the target practice room. It was a thrity by thirty foot square room. They entered from a door in the middle of one wall. There were three people seated directly across the room from them.

Jennifer looked around the room, at the lottery officials, at the dead cameras, the spectators and her fellow lottery winners and said:

"Count me out! This is just too stressful.

With that, she left. She would get expense money for her inconvience but would lose the lottery payments.

Georges shook his head sadly.

"Shit, guys,, I'm nervous but its worth it."

"Yes," Anthony agreed, "this makes my stomach jumpy but these 'turkey shoots' have had excellent results nationwide. The advertisers love them.

Mary Beth just nodded silent agreement; she was biting her lips nervously.

A smiling man identified himself as the MC. "We're on the air in thirty seconds."

"Good evening and welcome to your John Wayne National Lottery. I'm your Master of Ceremonies, Bill Canard. Tonight's lucky winners are: Anthony, a lawyer from Universal City, Texas; Georges, a steel worker from Hagerstown, P.A.; and Mary Beth, a fishery biologist from Coos Bay, Oregon.

"Tonight, these three randomly selected American Patriots will be conducting the ultimate turkey shoot with a rapist and two murderers, ah, 'watching'."

Mr. Canard smiled at his jape with a smile big enough for one to count all of his perfectly capped teeth. Canard was close enough for the three winners to smell his manly man's cologn as he turned to the lucky three.

"Do you have anything to say to your neighbors and fellow countrymen?"

"No, Bill", said one of the three, "we came to shoot and shoot we will!"

This speech won them another view of Canard's back teeth.

With a graceful wave of his arms, Canard directed the three over to their seats.

Georges sat down at a desk identical to those his comrades were at and prepared to earn his lottery winnings. The death of the late, unlamented, Gary Gilmore had lead to the John Wayne National Lottery.

In front of him, a Remington 30.06 with scope mounted was rigidly clamped to the desk. The scope was centered on a target pinned over the heart of the first "target of the Turkey Shoot": a convicted murderer.

When Canard gave the word, Georges caressed back the rifle's trigger. The rifle's bark marked the end of any innocence he may have still retained.

Lucky Man

* * * * *

*______* * * *

*______* * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *+

Milton slid his bulk through the last of the folliage and stepped into the jungle clearing. His "pet" oranghuman, a product of the Mist Demons magic, thrust past him into the clearing.

George glanced around and sniffed experimentally at the scraggly undergrowth. "Miilton, woman went through heer soon. We hurry, she catch us!"

In the background they could hear the rumble of lust crazed elephants as they smashed their way through the jungle. Milton eased his seven foot bulk to the jungle floor. "We won't have to wait long, George. I can hear the woman coming now. She's been dogging us all morning."

As they waited for the woman to risk making contact with them, they sweltered under the tropical sun. The rains that had stopped the night before seemed to have hatched every insect in the jungle. Milton glared at George as the oranghuman lustily consumed the insects.

"You should try these lovely bugs. Yoouu humans don't know what' good for you."

Milton growled a cure at George and continued trying to kill the insects that were feeding on his body and then proceeding almost direclty to George's grinning snout. Bushs at the opposite edge of the clearing parted and a young woman entered the clearing riding her crocagator. The crocagator was a hybred creature that stood three feet tall at the should and was covered in natural armour platting. She slid down off her mount and walked to within three paces of the waiting duo. She wore her hair in a pony talk and an obsidian knife was around her waist; an animal skin rain cape was tucked behind her out of her way.

"I am Banger, sacred non-virgin and Queen of the Dungbettle people. I am going to HenryKiss to trade for the sacred powder. What are you two doing in these forests?"

"My oranghuman is called George and I am Milton," MIlton boomed. "We too seek the sacred powder! Or will if these damned bugs don't eat me alive!" The ravages of the mosquetoes could bee seen in what little of Milton's skin was visibile through the mud on it.

"We are planning on going to HenryKiss. Iit iis not hard triip."

"You're both mad! There are dangers ahead that you can't possibly survive. Return to your homes before it is too late!" She shook her head in disbelief at Milton and George's ignorance.

Banger returned to her crocagator and then walked over to Milton and began applying a salve to his bites. The bugs had begun to take an interest in Banger and Milton began rubbing the salve on her.

George gazed idly at the two for several minutes before breaking the silence of the jungle.

"Whaat aare the daangers, Banger?"

"There is the lair of the death plants...then we must fcross the river of the rabid rhinos...finally, the worst...we must persuade the Guardians of the Sacred Powder of our rightous intentions..." She stopped rubbing the salve on Milton's body and fixed George with a penetrating gaze. "Then, we must survive the journey back to our tribes!'

George stared at his feed and began plucking insects from his pelt. Milton continued to rub the salve onto Banger's back. The frustrated insects swarmed to the crocagator where they impotentially attacked his almost impervious hide.

"We must go, Banger," MIlton rose to his feet. "If we don't get the sacred powder all my people's elephants will die out. We cannot allow this to happen!'

"Fools! It is on your heads them!" Banger introduced Milton and George to the larthargic crocagator before they climbed aboard. The three could hear the sound of elephants stumping past as the herd returned to HenryKiss. In the distance could be heard the cries of the elephant riders. At Banger's command, the crocagator turned to a heading parallel to the elephant herd and moved off into the jungle. The elephant herders were jelious of the location of their city; the three did not want to encounter the herders too soon. They left the clearing and safety without a backward glance.

After several hours of travel, they noticed that the character of the jungle was slowly changing. The tall, stately, trees of the rain forest were giving way to short, waxy, pedaled plants. They continued following a heading parallel to the elephant herd. Occasionally, they would see talkl, scarlet,pedaled plants that loomed as tall as small trees.

"Milton, why are you two traveling together? Why are you traveling with a plaything of the Mist Demons?

"George represents the Mist Demons. The Mist Demons are dependent on us for their supply of fermented palm leaves. George was sent to aid me to get the sacred powder for our beloved elephants, Banger. George has been my closest friend since I was a child!"

"I suggest that we and you work together, Banger. What are these flowers beside the path?"

"My people have never seen anything like them, George. One of the older of my priest/teachers spoke of the death plants being in this region. But they were never described like this! They told of large Venus flytraps that were a threat only to the unwary."

"These aren't the death plants you spoke of, Banger?" Milton glanced at the platns on either side of the path. He covered his fear well with an air of assurance.

From behind them a group of some ten or twelve dwarf boars ran by them on the path. The path they followed was a solid, packed dirt road bordered on both sides by the mysterious flowers. None of the three had commented on the improbability of this path; none had noticed wehn the rude path they were following through the jungle had changed into this road that slowed so many of the signs of the HenryKiss people's handiwork.

The crocagator growled deep in it's throat when several of the boars dared to run under his body. Our three heroes had scant warning when the crocagoatro collasped upon the boars. With horrible garbling squeals the boars expired. The crocagator rose, skoke himself clean and began nosiily feeding upon the boards. The three left the crocagator to his repast and walked up the trail watching the surviving boars.

A large plant suddenly extended accross the trail and snapped up a board in it's pedal. The boar slid down the inside of the plant stem like a mouse down a snakes's throat. The plant resembled a hugh Venus flytrap. The appauled witnesses watched as the boar tore slices of the plant stems from the inside of the plant. Then, they watched as the boar's blood slowly drooled down the inside of the plant

s stem. The plant straightened up and the pedals closed like a miser's fist on his last hundred dollar bill. The other plants fought over the remaining boars. They watched as two mindless plan6ts struggled to assimilate the same writhering prey. One plant that had missed the orgy attacked it's more fortunate neighbor in a cannibal attempt to get some pig.

"They're impressive alright, Banger. I hope you're carrying something that can handle those plants."

"I warned you two! Can you use some of the stuff I'm carrying?"

George had been sitting just behind the crocagator's head scratchig the horned ridges covering it's ears. ALong with a massive increase in size, hybred vigor had given the crocagator the intelligence of a Marine; that is, he could take orders like a good hunting dog. Banger had been sitting just in front of Milton. Milton had been leaning back against the cargo while his hands provided Banger with a living seatbelt.

The largest part of the supply cache was the food supply. There were protein, fat and vitamin supplements provided by the Mist Demons. Banger also carried a fishing pole, violin, bullroarer, various trade baubles and some handicrafts. George grabbed some banannas and passed them around. The crocagator was still munching on his snack as they watched the carnivorous plants.

"Banger, how diid you plant on gettiing by the plants?"

"I had planned on catching some fish if necessary to throw to the plants. My people told me that this is the dorment season for the plants - I think we blundered into a trap."

"How much meat does iit take to stop the plants?"

Milton had picked up the violin and was listening intently as he tuned his instrument. Milton glanced involuentarily at his enourmous, apelike body and shuddered at the thought of how much meat would be necessary to satisfy the hellish plants.

"Based on their size, it would take about fifty pounds of meat per plant. Our plants feed until they have gotten enough protein, etc....that could be the answer!"

"Iif we could feed the food supplements to the plants, we could triick them. Can you fiind anythiing useful, Miilton?"

Milton replied by reaching into the bag of baubles and pulling out some lightweight glassite balls the size of his fist. Milton handed a vial of the protein supplement drops to Banger, to George he gave a jar of fat supplement drops to Banger and he kept the vitamin supplement for his use.

"According to the instructions," Milton read to his companions, ONE DROP IS SUFFICIENT FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON("THEY AREN'T TALKING ABOUT ME, are they?" "you're not average," Banger replied. George ignored this exchange with dignity)> Three drops should do it, right?"

While they put the food supplements on the glassite baubles, the unsatiated plants were creeping closer to the increasingly restless crocagator. banger stretched and stood. She tied the winds of her cape behind her and readjusted her weapon belt. Milton and George gathered up the lying glassite balls and the three prepared to attack their green foes!

Banger threw a glassite ball into the pedals of the closest plant. With an almost audible sigh of delight, the plant fell back from the adventurers. I shock with the delight that only a true junk food junkie can believe.

Slowly, the crocagator advanced forward as the food-grenade pitching people on it's back routed the plants. The plants clamped shut on one or several balls at once. They wiggled like addicts getting their first fix in weeks! To them, the treated balls had as much meat as a college football team; as much fat as a senator's expense account; the vitamins of a TV toothpaste pusher's smile. The poor damned plants never stood a chance!

As they puched onward on thepath, the vegatation slowly returned to the nice, safe, only-mildly-deadly rain forrest. it was rapidly becoming dark and the crocagator was beginning to have trouble picking thepath out from the surrounding jungle. They stopped for the night; the crocagator curled into a protective semi-circle and dropped into a restless doze. Banger made it clear to Milton that she would appreciate his help for she desired to maintain her qualifications as a sacred non-virgin and queen of the dungbeattle people; Milton always was a friendly, co-operative sort of man. For several minutes George watched but he thought that the action resembled the bug salve ritual. George then turned his back upon the enraptured couple and fell into a deep sleep.

The next day, when they awoke, they could hear the roar of the river i the distance. The sounds of the rabid rhinos were a counterpoint to the chatter of the old world monkeys, the crys of loudbeaked birds, the sounds of things going glop and squishing in the jungle. Milton dressed formally in leopard skin shorts and a large hat that was given to hime as a going away present. Milton had a concert to attend and felt it would be best to dress for the occasion. Banger shoke out the rain cape that she had wrapped around Milton andherself and began preparing breakfast.

While Banger was getting the food concentrates from the crocagator, George began foraging for fruit. George found a cluster of berries that was being visited by several large rodents. After inviting the rodents to breakfast with the crocagator, George decided that the berries looked forlon. Being a gentle soul, he removed them from the branch and took them back to camp. George stopepd at a banana tree which the

Mist Demons had brought to Africa a hundred generations before. He decdied that they would be good company for the berries. When George returned to camp, Banger added protein, etc. George, Milton and Banger entertained the fruit in much the same fashion as the crocagator had entertained the rodents.

After breakfast5, Milton began practicing his old favorites on the violin. He played vintage Steppenwolf, "Fixing to Die Rag"by Country Joe and colorfully afternated Alice cooper and Bing Crosby. Banger and George started working up ont he bullroarers. For miles around near-hearing great apes, cheetas nad bull boars began scouting around for they were absolutely certain that their territority was being invaded (I did say that they were near-hearing).

"George", Banger stopped spinning the bullroarer and lowered her aching arms, "why does Milton play the violin so well?"

"Hiis parents wanted hiim to be a famous wiin bottle maker. Back home that iis aa very honored professiion. Miilton wanted to be a poet so he and hiis famiily comprosiised...he iis one of the best violin players the humans have and studies at the Mist Demons school."

"Then why is a violin player who looks like a great ape out playing hero in the jungle?"

"We fiigured he needed a break from home. Besiides, we were getting tiired of the songs he plays. Hiis parents asked me to go along on thiis triip and make sure nothing HARMFUL happened to hiim. They fiigured iit would be a good exerciise iin practiical poliitiics!"

George and Banger were gazing peacefully at each other, when, several minutes later, Milton walked over to them.

"I think we're ready to go now. I hope that everything we've heard about these rabid rhinos is correct. Hoave you ever talked to someone who has faced the rabid rhinos?"

Banger simply shock her head "no".

They boarded the crocagator and the brave little band began it's trip to the river. Milton continued warm-up exercises and the crocagator swung it's head nad rolled it from side to side in time to the music.

They crossed a final ridge and gazed in awe at the rabid rhinoes as they waddled about their river. With grunts of rage, the animals were butting each other. Anything approacing the rhinos was attacked. Our heroes watched in shock as several tons of rhino advanced to drive off the shadow of a cloud. Groups of rhinos would cluster then charge and run other animals off. The vistorious group would occupy their new land until they in turn were run off. Into this din our heroes rode!

As the crocagator walked slowly toward the river, Milton's violin began to sing, to scream, an Alice Cooper song. Banger began knocking out the beat on her bullroarer and the crocagator added a base growl. George and Milton began singing a duet. The rabit rhinoes stood transfixed and then made a mad dash toward the river. Like a swuadron of maddened tugboats, the rhinoes began lining up in the river. Now it was finally verified as to why the rabid rhinoes had earned their name. It was not due to their obnoxious personalities; any political convention had more disgusting personalities. It was their love of groupd dancing! The rhinoes were lined up i the irver packed tighter than the boozers at Norfolk's cheapest happy hour. In perfect unison. the rhinoes began to dance: stomp (splash), stomp (splash) eftward tomp, roar. Then the same pattern was repeated but backwards as the rabid rhinoes moved back to their starting place. All this time, more rhinoes were crowding into the river.

With an unnatural composure, the crocagator began walking accross the backs of the rabid rhinoies who either couldn't attack or didn't care. Milton began playing a slow song. The rhinoes responded by standing in place, shivering happily and looking like a couple "slowdancing". THey finished making their way accross the rabid rhinoes and climbed to the top of the riverbank before MIlton dared stop playing. The rabid rhinoes begna roaring their approval of th emusic. Being a natural ham, Milton began once more to play his violin to the accompanment of Banger's bullroarer. George began singing the lyrics and the crocagator growled a base line that complemented the other very nicely. As the afternoon began fading, the sight of the musicians on the riverbank overlooking their wildly dancing audience would have been enough to blow the minds of even Salvidore Dali or David Bowie!

All roads lead to Rome, they once said. In this case, the roads lead to HenryKiss. After bludnering into the traps of the denizens of HenryKiss, our heroes were at last approaching the city itself. even the coning of the death plants and the pacifying of the rabid rhinoes would be nothing compared to the dangers of HenryKiss. This was a city whose jelous guarding of it's sacred powder was legend.

The city loomed above them; a large white citadel with but one large gate. The elephant herd they had origionally heard was sleeping sedately near the gate. The city's streets were too small to handle a traffic jam like a herd of elephants. The three rode into the city; the gate keeper ignored them with the lordly contempt of any guard nodding off on duty.

THe street they rode into was but ten feet wide and four story stone buildings were on either side. A hundred yards up the road, a market place was situated. In this area, the merchants who sold the sacred powder awaited their customers. Deciding that deicretion was better than getting put into the dungeon for studpidity, the three decided to watch the market for a while. Banger reached into her handicraft bag and pulled out knitting neefdles and a very esoteric, exotic looking yarn. Banger handed this to George and Milton who began knitting with very puzzle dexpression on their mugs.

"I know the sacred powder is necessary for our elephants, Banger but why? And I've never heard of anyone knitting while watching merchants.z'

"No one would tell Milton that the sacred powder iis an ergot deriivatiive spriinkled upon driied bananas..."

"..and used as an aphrodiasac for elephants," said Banger who completed George's sentence.

"Untiil a person is iiniiated iito adulthood - and Miilton wiill be after thiis triip - the adults treat the powder as a priivate joke!'

Milton sputtered a few chuckles and gasped as he tried to stop laughing. "You-you-you mean THIS was what was al-always cracking people up? Spainish fly for Elephants?...What are we knitting?"

Milton had a habit of occasionally changing subjects radically.

"The people of HenryKiss have a strange custom ofputting the resin of certain plants on the fiber of the HighLife plant. They place the treated fibers in the bottom of glasses and pour a mixture of honey and elephant milk over them. This produces a very intoxicating drink. The perople of HenryKiss must import all of their HighLife fiber."

"Then why don't we have it back home?" Milton was thunderstruck at the idea.

"Because the beer iindustry managed to conviince our rulers that the driink would damage the liiver and lead to HighLife slums."

"You are both knitting very well," said Banger sounding like an art teacher, "but you should make small scarfs only four fingers wide and ten or so fingers long.

During the two day journey from the river of the rabid rhinoes to the city, they had discussed how to escape from the people of HenryKiss. Although she had not told Milton and George the details of the trade goods, Banger had been very reassurring on the value of the aforementioned trade goods.

They had arrived at the city just after dawn that morning. It was now approaching midafternoon when Banger nudged the crocagator into motion towards the traders.

Banger addressed the first sacred powder merchant they approached: "Would you like to trade for some HighLife fiber scarfs?"

"Yes! Yes! I will trade weight for weight!"

The word went around the market faster that the news that the local booze shop was giving a 95% discount would go around a skid row!

The merchants rushed to the waiting visitors; agents of the ruler himself began walking in their direction.

"I will trade you two weights for one!"

"No! No! He is a cheat! I will give you three weights to one and my coveted seat at the best honey bar in HenryKiss!"

Fights broke out; George nad Banger began playing the merchants ouff against each other for the best bargins. Ever the gentle, poetic soul, Milton began composing a satrial song about the barginning.

"They're foreign scum! It is illegal to deal with them and we will have to confiscate their entire cargo!"

WIth raised clubs, the customs agents of HenryKiss's ruler were forcing their way through the crowd. Banger came to a sudden decision and stood to address the crowd.

"If you get us out of the HenryKiss, we will give you the rest of our yarn!" To Milton and George, Banger muttered: "Besides we can't carry any more powder; we're overloaded already!"

Sounding like a victorious army, the merchange repulsed the customs agents and hustled the crocagator and it's riders out of HenryKiss' gates. The guard who had been "on duty" all day had by this time slid down the wall and was gently "meditating" on the ground. At the sound of the alarm, he grogially got to his feet. Hearing the alarm meant one thing: "SECURE THE GATE AT ONCE!"

He swung the city gates shut into the faces of the ruler's customs agents who bounded off the gates like superballs off of a wall!

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________________________________________________

The merchants overturned a visitor's wagon against the outside of the gate.

It was only after the remaining yarn had been evenly distributed to the merchants that the city gates were finally opened. The guard was pouring out toward the group of merchants clustered around the crocagator. Once again, Banger rose to speak:

"Try to block the guards from reacing us! We will be back next year!" Then, in an aside to Milton an George: "Its illegal for foreigners to buy the powder from city merchants. The elephant herders who come to our tribes charge hugh overheads. They also overcharge the city merchants for our HighLife fiber. They are agents of the rulers of HenryKiss. The rulers of HenryKiss made direct trade illegal when they realized what great profits they could make! But the rulers don't dare hurt the merchants!"

The happy merchants hurried off toward the guards to fullfill their end of the bargin. They were happy "knowing" how they had swindled the barbarians!

"Toward the elephants!", Banger shouted.

She tied a bag of the sacred powder to the end of her fishing pole. Then, shouting directions to the crocagator, they raced past the sleeping elephants. With a roar like Dr. Ben Casey discovering that a patient had died after a hangnail operation had heirs who wouldn't pay the interest on his inflated bill let alone the bill, the elephants came awake!

Like the pace car leading the racers at the Indianapolis 500, the crocagator fled from the stampeding elephants. The elephants were trumpeting a lustful message that jumped, nea, leaped across the special barrier.

Who wants to be near a crowd of male and female elephants that think a crocagator smells like the ideal mate!

THe mass of trumpeting elephants swept all obsticles aside from their path like a tornado. The elephants made noises that in elephant language meant: Hubba! Hubba! Hubba! and other things too crude for a family-type story like this one!

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"...and then we can go to my home, Banger. But first lets deliver the sacred powder to your Queendom, Banger." Milton had to shout so that Banger and George could hear him over the din of the elephants.

Banger leaned toward Milton and whispered a suggestion.

Milton threw his head back and roard a laugh that shock his whole massive body. "Why not, we'll take them all and make them cheats in HenryKiss buy the elephants back from us...and do what else you suggested!"

Looking like a dust tornado, the group swept down the traditional path that lead toward Banger's Queendom.

*______* * * *

*______* * * *

The starship approached the sapce station that had circuled a dying, white dwarf star for nearly twenty five centuries. The station was worn and appeared battered but still appeared in useable shape. The starship's crew hailed the station. To their surprise, they were told to stand by for a few minutes. They watched with interest as the station seemed to remain unchanged and then clouds of vapor paaeared and rapidly disipatted into space. Their sensors told them that the clouds were impure water. Finally, they were requested to send a shuttle craft to the station and enter through one of the cargo locks.

Once inside, they saw a red carpet waiting for them and three people who were very ornately dressed in what appeared to be ancient military costumes. Their Captain recognized this attaire as being from a space Navy that had died peacefully centuries before.

They walked down the red carpet between ranks of space warriors lined up facing them; the warriors held weapons across their chests and wore spotless vacumn suits. The three station people waited for the visitors to walk past the rows of warriors.

"Welcome to our station! You are the third set of visitors we have received since this station was comm9issioned. Come! We will show you around and see to your creature needs."

The speaker was a person of indeterminate age and sex who turned around with a total economy of motion and began to lead the other two greaters away. As the visitors followed, one of them turned and noticed that the "honor guard" had completely disappeared. It was a shock to realize that the "honor guard" was a well done holograph.

They walked down passageways that smelled of cleaner and were still shinney from drying water and cleaner. In the distance, they could see a cleaning robot huridly finishing a section and they disappear into the ship.

One of the station's people commented: "Didn't you enjoy that reception? We seldom are able to bring out the full honor guard and I do enjoy their displays. They are fine young people!"

"It was a most remarkable display," commented the visitor who had seen the disappearing act of the holographs. "I trust that we will be able to enjoy more of them?"

"Yes! Yes!" The enthused station member gushed enthusiasm and then ran off.

"Thank you for your kindness," the station speaker commendted. "That old one has been putting on those displays ever since the real honor guard was transferred off the station almost twenty four hundred years ago. The joy of having such a display is a point of stability."

"Why do you do that? Also, why are you cleaning the station so thourghly?"

"Why it is Naval tradition! You are the first visitors we've received in a very long time and we do things right here! That 'honor guard' was a bit ridicious but it is harmless. DON'T tell that old dear that I said this>" With that, the station speaker's other companion began checking the state of cleaniness.

The station speaker nodded in approval and then said: "They are doing an excellent job! You programmed the cleaning robots very well!"

Shortly after, the cleaning fanatic left and ran toward a knot of cleaning robots. The visitor's spokesperson commented:

"Why are you having this ritualistic cleaning and honor guard business? Why have these rituals, anyway?"

"You don't understand the purpose of ritual here. We have been here for 2500 years and will be here much longer. We were sentenced here for crimes that only we remember and since we think the sentences are just, we will remain. ALSO, we don't understand the civilization you outsiders have created..."

"But why the ritual? Why not change your daily routines as you wish?"

"You misunderstand the reason for our ritual. Ritual can be a hollow thing that a person plods through. An empty thing without joy and which is death in life. Or, ritual can celebrate some truth or celebrate some person or event in the past. Ritual can be a living thing. Some people have 'blind spots' which they don't recognize or do not want ot recognize. We all know who has what blinde spots here. They are easy to spot...just see what rituals each person thinks are natural laws and you willknowtheir weak spots. We are always careful to honor people's weak spots. KNOWING what is ritual is a form of cynicism that runs through our station and could destroy it like a plague if it were not for the mutual compassion for our comrades' weaknesses that holds us together. THIS compassion is like thick cream poured over a strawberry desert and which binds everything together. We are very old and set in our ways. You have already seen two of the rituals of my people. Others share these rituals and have their own. Fortunatel;y, I do NOT have any rituals of my own and would never tell my stationmates how ridicious their own are...AH, it looks like the honor guard is already down this passageway." Then in a whisper to the visitors. "PLEASE comment nicely on the sweet smell of the flowers, the strong odor of the oiled weapons and the fine shine on the floors. Please do not comment on the smell of cleaning fluids.

As they walked toward the illusionary "honor guard", the ship visitors realized sadly that the station spokesperson practiced a ritual: The belief in having rituals for everything!

*______* * * *

The final flight briefing was on July 21, 2015 and was uneventful: Jason Armstrong boarded the "Spring Rose" with his partner, Enid vanAllen and they immediately went to the control room. There, they waited for the fleet tug that had pushed them up to a thousand miles per second to break off contact. They were crossing the orbit of Mars and it was time to be going.

Their ship consisted of two decks: the top deck had a control room forward, the wardroom behind it, a combination kitchen and exercise room ran down the starboard side of the ship while their staterooms ran the length of th eother side. Stil further aft was a stateroom and aftmost was the viewing room for the engines. The engine room could be entered only when the ship was in "drydock" for overhaul. Underway, they could look through glass windows at the blank faces of the drive machine air and water purification plants and the rest of the engineering spaces. The machinery was built with redundant components and had robot repair equipment. It was about as reliable as humans could build it. The viewing room was the size of four phone booths put together and was festoned with monitoring and computer interface equipment where not windowed.

The second deck contained the hydrophonics tanks, cultured yeast tanks, cold storage room, dry storage room, another storage room and the enterance to their "lifeboot".

The ship's control computer stated for the record: "The tug has broken off; now prepared to get underway. Trip time to Barnard's Star is six years objective time, six months subjective. Request advise."

"Damn thing talks like it's in the Navy!"

"That was for your benefit, Jason. Do you want it changed?"

"Please don't; it helps remind me of who we're working for." Then in a much colder tone of voice he gave an order to the computer: "You have the course and heading. Get underway!"

The engine monitors showed the main drive starting, the viewscreens pointed aft shut themselves off to protect the viewers eyes from the glare of the drive exhaust and the computer plot that showed the ship's location appeared on a large display. Otherwise, there was absolutely no indication that they were underway. They could have been in the training simulator at Leningrad or Colorado Springs for all they knew.

"Well", Jason remarked in a mild voice, "That means we'll finally have time to get to know each other. I've heard that you always marry a stranger no matter how long you've know them."

"I think I know you fairly well."

"No, not really. Training together for a year doesn't mean we really know each other."

"The computers saw we're very compatable. Almost made for each other in fact." Enid sounded very convinced.

"Well, we'll see." With that, Jason turned on a video monitor and typed in commands to let him see the ship's projected course. At the ship's top speed, relativity would slow time down enough so that the trip would seem six months long. Jason began requesting the computer to put in alternate flight plans so that he could see what effect that would cause.

Four hours later, Enid tapped him on the shoulder.

"Time for dinner. There were some calls for you and I said you'd return them later."

"Ok. It can wait till after supper."

"Why are you trying to find a better flight plan?"

"I don't trust it."

"But the current flight plan uses a very good data base of hydrogen and other gas densities. It is the best one."

"I just don't hink we know enough about those gases to come up with a flight plan this detailed. It has us doing two course changes to take us around dangerous gas concentrations. We can't know about them! The instructors in flight training said so!"

"Well, things have improved drastically since they sent those probes toward Barnard's Star. Don't you remember?"

"Well, I guess I don." For a moment, Jason looked confused then accepted the reality of remembering the lectures on the probes. He decided that the state of the art was good enough for their flight plan.

Jason didn't notice that Enid was sweating slightly. The structure of interstellar gases along their flight plan was like a vast building whose layout was burned into Enid's mind. She knew the location of carbon monoxide clouds and ammonia clouds and ice moons like she knew the interior of their ship. It was just something part of her. She no longer wondered that Jason did not have such an advanced knowledge.

"Well, I guess you're right ... somehow I seem to recall some fancy sensors.

Enid looked relieved.

****************************

They sat down to a dinner of salad, fish and a small bottle of Rose. Halfway through the meal, as Jason poured some more Rose, he commented:

"You made a good choice. Too bad we don't have much more."

"I know." The answer was a sigh.

Both knew that they would be living on freeze dried food and the products of the hydrophonic nad yeast tanks. They would have to get used to the low class beer made in the food yeast tanks.

"I had some of that freeze dried food before. That was when I wintered over in Antaractica [sic]. Wasn't the worst food I've eatten.

"I thought you people were fed better than that." Enid already had a good idea of Jason's life history but liked to hear him talk.

"I was out alone in a small station with very little storage space."

"Why were you alone?"

"They needed someone to check on an experiment being run about fifty miles from the base camp. I took a snow tractor out there and stayed about six weeks. The experiment went better iwth someone watching it and I was working on a project of my own."

"weren't you lonely?"

"No. It was quite pleasant. Now, you tell me about you! You know how little I was told!"

"Later, dear, we'll have a long time together."

The second day, Star Fleet called them.

"Spring Rose. Star Fleet. We've given you a couple of days to get settled down. Are you up to an interview with the world press?"

Jason glanced at Enid who nodded "yes" and murmurred "you should hae called them back yesterday!"

"Sure."

"Good morning, my name is Dan Cerebureus representing InterPlanetary Press. How are you two adjusting to your mission?"

"Fine."

"And you, Ms. vanAllen?"

"We're adjusting very well, Mr. Cerebuerus. Mr. Armstrong and I are quite compatible. Also, we have sufficient work to keep us very busy."

"Why are you going to Barnard's Star?"

"It's there. It's human nature to explore the unknown and it's the greatest dream of our time."

"It will also give us an excellent test of the ship design and will open the stars to all humans."

Jason was surprised by her furvor.

"How does it feel to know that the people on Earth will age much more than you?"

"Simple relativity. No big lose, actually."

"Don't repeat that please," Endi interjected.

"I won't. How about you, Ms. vanAllen?"

"I sai good-bye to my family and they will be waiting for me to return."

That was news to Jason who decided he'd ask her about her family. While reflecting on why he was so ignorant about her, he began to wonder if their trip was really important. It seemed to him that he had the feeling of repeating something worn thin and tired. Jason decided that he'd read too many anti-spaceflight editorials and had planned this trip too much. The anticlimax of actually making th eflight was getting him down, Jason decided.

"What do you two hope to accomplish?"

"Knowledte. Proof of concept."

"Jason means that we will proove that this ship design is a sound one."

Jason was feeling embarrassed at being so verbose to a stranger; Enid thought he was being curt.

"Thank you for that interview. We will be talking with you later..."

Star Fleet came back on.

"Congratulatoins! That was very well handled." That Star Fleet communications officer had a very delicate but sure tough with sarcasm.

"Sure was. Nothing like repeating dead news." Jason hadn't been impressed with the interview either.

"Are you planning on accepting any other interviews? Playboy/Penthouse and the Star/Hustler have been printing articles about you two!"

"Definitely not! I want your lawyers to take action if they print anything truly obscene about Jason and I!"

Jason, who still remembered when Playboy and Penthouse were deadly rivals and the Star and Hustler worked different sides of the street, privately hoped that anything printed would be very obscene. he remembered masterbating while reading "dirty magazines" and hoped it would entertain some lonely people. He wasn't about to tell Enid about this fantasy however. Besides, it probably couldn't be any worst than what was printed about the three male astronauts NASA had sent to Mars. Those men had been on a three year trip and they had lived up to NASA's expectations that they would all turn gay. Three years alone was a long time. He was just glad that he had Enid and not Ernie. (Jason drew the line there!)

"Well, the legal beagles will growl away. Is there anyth9ing we can get for you folks? We can still get a supply drone to you within the next two weeks."

"More champaign and the latest issue of Penthouse."

"No!" Enid and the Star Fleet communications officer echoed their answer but to different request. Jason smilled in delight.

"Sorry, people, but that is not an emergency item. If there is nothing else, then adios. Star Fleet out."

"We have three hundred people living in space stations and on the moon and ten on Mars and he calls himself the InterPlanetary Press! Egotist!" Jason was disgusted.

"Playboy/Penthouse! Men!"

Jason just smilled at Enid's reaction.

****************************

Jason didn't say much for the next two days. He spent his time in a brown study while watching the Earth and Moon recede into the distance. He was using the remote TV system instead of the highly shielded windows because it was too much hassle to remove the shutters. Besides, he liked the magnification of the TV system. Endi left him alone and busined herself with studying the engines and working with the hydrophonics tanks.

"What are you studying?"

"I just got started studying navigation. I know which buttons to push but not the theory behind it."

"I can help you with that. I did some research on the subject when I was younger."

"When was that?"

"When I was on the ice."

Enid knew that he was refering to his time in Antaractica. She also knew that it was his research that had really earning him the starship billet.

"Jason, why are you so quiet?"

"It's my nature."

"Do you ever miss people? Places? Your home?"

"No, not really."

"I miss my family; we had a house on the Sein overlooking the Paris skyline. I miss it."

"If you miss it so much, how can you stand to be here?"

"People change. Places change. Paris will still be there when we return...and I have you now."

Jason had the grace to blush.

****************************

After about a mohth of very quiet, almost monastic, life, Jason stormed up to Enid absolutely livid. No one who hadn't lived with Jason could have told that; anyone else would have though Jason was having a slight case of gas.

"Damnit! This place is a pigsty. Please pick up your stuff!"

Enid had taken to leaving her laundry neatly folded on the desk in her stateroom rather than putting it away. Also, she was fond of using the same coffee mug without washing it.

"It is not! I have never seen a place that is cleaner than this! You scrub this damn place every day and clean things every time they're used!"

"I like clean places."

"There is no dirt here. This place has less germs than an operating room!"

She put her hands on his cheeks and pushed them gently together so that his lips were forced out into a pout. Jason had just shaved and his skin was roughtened.

"Lighten up!"

Jason sighed and relaxed.

"I;m sorry if I hurt your feeling. I can't help it if I like clean places."

He patted her on the arm; this was the most intimate gesture he had yet given her for he was uncomfortable with the apparently wideheld assumption that he would have seduced Enid as soon and as often as possible.

Later that day, Jason carefully hung her clothing up or put it in her closet while Enid was checking on a batch of "beer". The "beer" was brewed using the scraps from the hdrophonics tanks. Enid just sighed when she discovered this little "favor". The next day, she raided the storeroom for some "read food" that they had been saving for a rainy day. She knew that emotionally, they were experenceing a typhoon and not a mere rain shower!

She brought out some vegetables, chicken and strawberries with whipped cream. She even sacrificed some of their small wine supply to make things proper.

"Jason, do you ever miss anyone?"

"No." He paused. "Not really. Sometimes I sort of miss my family. How about you?"

"I don't have a family. They were killed in a light plane accident when I was fifeteen. The past ten years, I've been in school or traiing. I've had lovers but they're all married now. How about you?"

"I thought you said you had a family?"

"No, dear, I just said that I miss them and that they will be waiting for me to return. BUT, I have you now!"

Jason was surprised at how goo9d it felt to hear that and was surprised at his sudden realization of howmuch he had somehow come to like and need Enid.

"I have an Uncle and two brothers living in Melbourne. Didn't see them very often before this flight. Funny thing; I've begun to miss them lately and wish I could see them again."

"Do you miss them a lot?"

"Not really. I just think it would be nice to see them but my visits in the past were never much fun."

Jason paused for a second with his face looking empty. Enid knew without having to be told that the ship's psychology computer was reinforcing Jason's feeling that visiting his kinfolk was an overrated pleasure. her primary job was sihp's doctor. All this was information that she was forbidden to mention to Jason. In fact, Jason had been carefully conditioned to believe that the ship could not slip into his head in that way. The ship couldn't read his mind but could reinforce or change what it thought was his emotional state.

"No, I don't feel any strong urge to visit them. Besides, they'll still be there when we return. If not, the Red Cross will send us a message!"

They both smilled at the absurdity of the Red Cross sending them a "deeply regret" message. It would be years before they would hae received it and Star Fleet would never have allowed such a message to be sent to them in the first place. They looked forward to a subjective year of receiving happy, happy news about his family and their respective friends.

Jason had the sudden feeling that this conversation had occurred many times before. "It was funny", he thught, "how many times he had wished he was outspoken and extroverted". Yet, when the chance had come, he had retained his silence. He had cursed himself for that when younger...

"Finish your wine, Jason, I feel sleepy!"

"Damnit", Jason thought to himself, "the story of my life. Just when I'm having a good time, she gets sleepy!"

"Well, good night then. I'll clean up."

"Clean up can wait!"

Enid delibertly and slowly kissed Jason and then pushed him in the direction of his room. She unzipped his jumpsuit and Jason finally got the diea and began to cooperate. She had expected him to be a "gentleman" but had never expected to have to seduce him.

For an almost virgin, Jason proved himself to be a rapid studywith much potential for further growth.

Afterwards, they sipped the leftover champaign as they lay on Jason's bunk.

"Jason, have you always been so quiet?"

"It's just the way I am, I guess. I've never been much of a talker." He squirmed slightly. "Also", he thought, "when you're quiet nothing you say can be used against you by your loving brothers or your fucking uncle. The uncle who kept saying he was raising you 'only 'cuase you're me brother's blood', boy."

"I have always been just the opposite; I've always talked a lot. You poor dear!"

Jason squirmed slightly but said nothing; silences in conversations didn't bother him.

"Why do you think we're aboard when the computer runs everything anyway?"

"Backup pilots is what we were told. Although, if th ecomputer couldn't naviagate, the backup computer and us couldn't do a very good job of getting us back alive. I figure we're here for emergency repairs."

"But why two of us?" Enid paused then answered her own question: "I suppose we're to keep each other sane and serve as backups."

Briefly, jason remembered once being told that a two person crew was less stable than a one person crew but didn't persue the thought; he had the incredible urge to "seduce" Enid. Jason demonstrated that he had learned a thing or two from her.

Afterward, Enid helped Jason change the mattress sheet and they showered together; truly, that was a day of firsts for him.

****************************

Four days later, Jason sat at the control panel seeting with anger. Normally, he could control his feelings but he felt like he had a balloon of rage in his skull. Everytime he breathed, the hot balloon got bigger and closer to popping. He tried surpressing this rage but that did not help.

Enid wondered in and sat down in the chair next to him.

"What is the matter, dear?"

"NOTHING is the matter! NOTHING!"

"Then quit shouting at me!"

"I am not fucking shouting at you!" After taking a few deep breaths, he continued. "Everything. Is. Fine. I just feel upset. Thats all!"

"Why are you upset? Now you're upsetting me and I wasn't feeling upset before!"

"Cleaning up this dump upsets me."

"BUt I've been helping you."

"I know. I know. Thanks for helping me. I really appreciate it."

His remark had come across as sarcastic to Enid and she stiffened in anger. His anger was partially abated but now he felt guilty as well.

"Why are you upset?"

"I learned to live without other people, I guess. Before, ah, before we became intimate, I could just sort of ignore you." He glanced away and didn't see her expression of hurt outrage flicker to one of curiosity and then back to hurt outrage. "I just don't know how to live with someone as closely as we have been living together. The manual says to keep everyone busy and I guess we've been doing that. But, it doesn't say much about how to live together."

He leaned back in his chari and closed his eyes. She walked over to him and rested her face against his.

"What really bothers me is the feeling that we've been through this conversation before." He looked very puzzled.

"Maybe in some past life? Maybe something that happened when uyou were a kid or read sometime before?"

"Maybe. I sort of remember hearing my uncle arugeing with my aunt before she left him. But, that was so damn long ago, Twentyfive or thirty years ago. I was about eight or ten at the time."

Maybe you're afraid we'll be like your aunt and uncle?"

"Never!" His voice and body language reflected the exact opposite beliefs.

"Well, it won't happen to us! Do you hear me? It won't!"

"Ok, ok, I believe you!"

"Now, I feel guilty about getting angry about something as trivial as cleaning the ship."

"Well, it is only human to feel human, dear. Besides, we're running low on cleaning supplies. How about we just sponge everything off as necessary?"

She kissed him. A few minutes later, she realized that he needed to be alone.

"I'm going to the engine room to run some simulations on the instruments there. I'm still weak on engine theory."

After she had left, Jason finally totally relaxed when he realized that he was alone. This desire for absolute privacy was so fundamental to his spirit that he no more thought of it than he thought of his heartbeat.

It was interesting, he mused, that Star Fleet control would send just two of them out as the crew of the first starship. He was an engineer, navigator and electronics repairman. She was the MD, ship's farmer, computer expert and astronomer. Well, if he could study his engines, he could study farming, computers and astronomy. It would never have occurred to him to study medicine especially psychology.

****************************

Turnover at the halfway mark had been without problems. The SPRING ROSE two point eight lightyears from Barnard's Star and all aboard was well.

By this time, Jason and Enid had settled down to a routine of work, study and play that left them little time for sleep. Standing watches ammounted to running simulated disaster drills and that was something they could do in their sleep. In fact, some of the drills were surprise drills staged in the middle of the "night".

After a trip that had lasted six years to an observer watching from the earth but which had been only six months to them, they were close enough to Barnard's Star to shut down the main drive. Now, they were moving at a mere eleven hundred miles per second as they fell accross the sky heading for Barnard's Star.

Enid joined him in the control room as he ordered the ship's computer to launch photometric probes. The Earth based observatories had mapped the locations of this system's three planets and two astroade belts. The SPRING ROSE had been updating this database with their own observations during their flight.

"For the record, I am allocating two probes to the major planet. We will send three other probes to handle the minor planets and the two astroade belts." Jason knew that this information would be relayed back to Earth as part of the telemetry but wanted the satisfaction of waying the words himself.

"Jason, that isn't what Star Fleet wanted." Enid was frowning.

"I know; they wanted more observations of the astroades and the star itself. Somehow, I think that th eplanets are more important."

"It was almost a week before the probes were close enough to their target planets to make observing their imagery worth while. By then, the probe images were incredible. Both the minor planets were larger than Jupiter and contained enough mons tomake this system a major attraction for astrophysicists, chemists, geologist, geographers and every other speciality that Jason could think of. It reminded him of the excitement of seeing the first voyager pictures of Jupiter.

They spent most of the day watching the incoming photos before reluctantly leaving the control room. But, they noted the time they left so that they could "catch up" later.

After about three weeks in the Barnard Star system, they finally were able to receive data from the two probes sent to the "major" planet.

They had been wondering just what the major planet could be like and figured it must be impressive or the astronomers would never have called the two "minor planets" "minor planets". They were not disappointed. The first images they received were infrared or heat spectrum and displayed very intricate cloud features. The "major planet" was believed to be a "brown dwarf" or a sub-stellar mass or a star that just didn't grow big enough to become a star.

In visual light, the "major planet" clearly had an impressive "red spot", the colour banding of the clouds was awe imspiring and the ring structure around the "major planet" was enough to put those of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus to shame. There were also several earth sized moons amoung the hoard of moons and moonlets orbiting this God of a "Major Planet".

The radiaton belts surrounding the "major planet" made that planetary system as deadly as the core of any nuclear reactor.

After falling across the sky of Barnard's Star for a month, Jason and Enid "lit off" the main engines and accelerated into a tight orbit of Barnard's Star that slingshot them back toward Earth. They felt some anticlimat at the end of their stay yet were still receiving very interesting data from the probes; it also felt good to be going home.

Shortly after their return was officially consumated, Jason began to suspect something errie. It seemed that ever since his temper tantrum (or so he thought of it), if he felt like being alone, Enid would disappear. It took some doing to disappear on their ship but her duties could enable her to do so. If he felt like having company, she would suggest a "day off" or her duties would keep her near him. He decided to test this theory out at dinner.

have to ensure that it integrates well with the rest of the text and any future description of the "major planet"!

"What have you ben doing lately?"

"Studying engineering, dear. THe 'heart' of the engines would make nice modern art."

"They're not supposed to be modern art. Besides, modern art is just a bunch of crap." He knew she appreciated modern art and thought she even liked it.

"It depends on your viewpoint. some is very nice."

"None is worth a damn!"

That'll piss her off, he thought, she'll leave for sure.

Enid looked angry and concentrated on eatting her dinner.

"I'm getting tired of the same old stuff for dinner."

"Then. Fix. Your. Own. Dinner! Aren't you the 'I-can-eat-anything' guy? I'm getting tired of your carping. Why don't you cook?"

"You're the farmer."

"That is not an excuse. Besides, I think you're trying to hurt my feelings!"

Oh, shit, he thought. I didn't want it to go this far.

"I'm sorry, dear, I guess I'm in a rut or just got cabin fever."

"Fine."

"I love you, dear, will you forgive me?"

"I love you too but you're being a bitch andI'm still upset."

"I said I was sorry!"

"I can't calm down in a fucking heartbeat! (That was an expression Jason had used a time or two himself).

She maintained a silence for the rest of the evening tht was intimating to him. ALthought they slept together as usual that night, they did not touch.

The next morning, Jason fixed breakfst and took it to Enid who was in the engineering room. After that, Jason began doing routine preventative maintenance. Around lunchtime, he began feeling slightly lonely and called Enid on the intercom.

"Lunchtime. Can you wrap things u and come out?"

"No, dear, I'm on a roll and don't want to quit."

When he took lunch to her, he found her intently studying a video and respected her desire for privacy.

Later that afternoon, he realized that he had been staring at the same image of a moonlet for ten minutes without seeing it. he was beyond feeling lonely and had begun to feel a strong desire to be with Enid. This was a type of emotion that was new and painfully raw to him. He tried telling himself fuck her if she doesn't want to be aound me, I don't need her. Yet, a part of him cried out for her and wondered why she was forsaking him. Occasionally, a rational part of him asserted that she was merely working and was not sadistically abandoning him. This calmed him momentariarly and then thesurge of dispair would flood over him again. The worst part was that he could not force himself to go to her or even call her on the intercom and blurt out his feelings. And so the pain went on for several hours. Finally, he drank some freeze-dried coffee and fixed dinner for both of them. He went back to the engine room to see her. She was not there.

The door to her room was closed but he knew better than to go in there. On the ship, each stateroom was the ultimate place for privacy; he could not imagine himself entering there uninvited if the door was closed.

He slept late the next morning and only awoke when Enid walked in and kissed him.

"I forgot to say goodnight to you last night, Jason. I just got worn out working."

"Thats ok, what are you doing today?"

"Tracing the power supply wiring."

With that, she left him and he went back to sleep.

That evening, jason broke two of their five remaining Cornish game hens out of the freezer and fixed a feast. Then, he laid out their formal dinnerware and invited Enid in from the engineering space.

"This beats the yeast tank. Whats the occasion?"

"Celebrate you learning the entire electrical distribution system."

The computer had updated her training record to reflect this achievement and had notified the Training Officer, Jason.

The truth was that the meal was the best way for him to get her out of engineering long enough for them to enjoy a long, quiet, meal.

"It is very interesting but not hard to understand. I've gone about as far as I can without tearing the ship apart. Maybe during overhaul?"

"Yeah, we can work on it together. Although, the 'shipyard' willprobably tear everything out and replace it."

"No, on second thought, they proably won't. They'll just put the ROSE in the Air and Space Musieum."

Jason had the sudden image of the Air and Spce Musieum having been moved to high earth orbit and filled with spacecraft that would have made the SRING ROSE look like a small sailboat comared to a Clipper Ship. Such a pleasant fantasy, he thought, and decided to work on making it come true.

"I missed you."

"I just had some thinking to do."

For a moment, she looked like she was going to speak but sai nothing. jason knew when to keep his mouth shut and decided to wait it out.

"What are you planning on working on next?"

"The yeast tanks need cleaning."

"I can help you wiht that", Enid suggested.

Jason raised his glass in a silent toast to her.

****************************

For several days, they cleaned the yeast vast. To their mutual disgust, it was necessary to swap out two pumps that were going bad. THe highly aromatic yeast solution had pooled at the bottom of both pumps and had a way of splashing out of th epump and onto both of them. It was not pleasant.

On the last day they worked onthe vats, Jason began to feel the old urge to be alone. However, he didn't want to offend Enid so he said nothing.

"You've been more quiet latley, dear.'

"Just running out of things to talk aobut, I guess."

"What is next on the preventative maintenance schedule?"

Checking out our landing craft."

"Good; we can work on that tomorrow."

After cleaning up, they spent the rest of that day watching old moving.

The next day, Jason examined the landing craft's engines while Enid checked out the landing craft's medical supplies and it's computer. Althought they could see each other, they didn't speak often and thus Jason's urge to be alone was partially satisfied.

The landing craft was only good for landing on a planet and then returning to the SPRING ROSE. It didn't have the star drive so it was useless for abandoning ship. Also, it didn't have forcefield generator that was needful for protecting the ship. Outer space is not quite a vacumn; it contains some gases. Moving at almost the speed of light means that the ship was in extreme danger from the impact of interstellar hydrogen. jason and Enid both knew that leaving the ship while in flight was a death sentence. If the intense radiation caused by the hydrogen hitting the ship at almost the speed of light didn't kill them with a second, the hydrogen sandblasting most certainly woulc.

The landing craft was as useless as a life preserver on a submarine! Basically, Jason thought that it was included as a sop to the "folks back home" and took up room that could have gone for beer and popcorn!

Several days later, Jason was finaly and firmly convinced that Enid was not timing her presence with himto suit his moods. He was almost embarased by his assumptio! A couple of week after that, Enid began matching her time with Jason to match his need for company; Jason never noticed.

When they were three months (subjective time) away from Earth, Enid found Jason in the control room using the ship's telescope.

"Sometimes, I think that I can almost see the Earth," he stated. "Although we're too far out to even see Jupiter."

All that could be seen on the screen was a faint star outlines by computer generated white lines. If you didn't know it was "The Sun" you'd never had seen anything special about it.

"Give it time, dear."

"Ok, I know, I know, we're too far away. Still, I keep getting the feeling that we're coming home. Its sort of a comfortable feeling." He paused. "Funny thing, I don't remember when I've ever felt this way before."

"What about when you were in the Navy? Didn't you feel it then?"

"No. Going home was nothing special. Sort of a duty. It became easier after my family moved to Australia 'cause then I had an excuse for not going home. I can remember pulling into 'Diego (Enid knew that Jason meant San Diego, California), seeing all those family members and friends greeting me shipmates and there wasn't a God Damned one of them there to greet me! Not a one! The family said they couldn't make it to San Diego from Cleveland and I pretended to believe them. I just don't think it mattered to them. That hurt. If we could have pulled back out to sea immediately after 'homecoming', I would have given a lot to do so!"

"Somehow, I just feel we'll get a good greeting!"

Jason couldn't tell if the wetness he felt on his scalp was sweat or Enid's silently shed tears; he just knew that the rest of him wasn't sweating.

****************************

They were six week out from Earth one morning when Enid left the shower and found Jason at the communications panel.

"What are you doing?"

"We're close enough to Earth and going slow enough that we should be able to pick up commercial broadcasting. I can't pick up a damn thing."

"Maybe you have the wrong frequencies?"

"Nope. I sent a message to Fleet Communications Central a week ago and I'm using the freqs that they sent back."

"Maybe something is wrong with the receivers?"

Enid typed something at a computer keyboard, then read the screen:

"Says here that you have the receivers set for low gain."

"Bull! I know that I set them for high gain!"

"Well, do it again."

Jason reentered the commands into the keyboard in front of him. The computer responded with: COMMERCIAL SIGNALS FROM EARTH BLOCKED DUE TO INTERFERENCE FROM THE JUPITER SYSTEM IN CONJUNCTION WITH INTERFERENCE DUE TO UNUSUALLY HIGH PEAK SUN SPOTS. INTERFERENCE IS EXPECTED TO CLEAR UP IN FOUR WEEKS.

Jason immediately typed in orders to the computer to effect a course change that would put them away from a direct line drawn from the Earth through Jupiter to the SPRING ROSE. This would allow them to receive signals from Earth.

The computer replied that Fleet Central would have to approve such a course change now that they were within Earth's traffic control pattern.

FOur hours later, Fleet Central's rejection came back. However, Fleet Central began sending a selection of commercial broadcasting on a spare Command and Control circuit. Jason had to be content iwth that.

Jason read Fleet Control's reply then remarked bitterly:

"They won't let us change course since we're too close to the solar system and because it would delay our return. But," his voice dripped with sarcasm, "they'll give us our choise of stations and will send them over a spare communications circuit."

"Well, it's better than nothing."

The ironey of the situation was that if Jason had called up a projected flight path for the SPRING ROSE, he would have seen that Jupiter wasn't between the SPRING ROSE and the Earth. However, it never occurred to him and Enid didn't wish to bring the subject up. Earth had changed socially since they had left and Fleet Central wanted to make sure that they were briefed before their safe womb. Spaceflight had always been a controversal subject and one the politicians could latch onto.

Late one afternoon, Fleet Central sent them a message requesting that the two handle an interview with the news people.

Jason looked at Enid who nodded in agreement, then Jason replied to Fleet Central.

"Go ahead, Fleet Control".

"Mr. Armstrong, Ms. vanAllen, this is Dan Cerberus representing the newscasters of Earth. How have you two held up on your voyage?"

"Good", Jason replied, "it took some getting used to but we've done just fine."

"How about you, Ms. vanAllen?"

"Like Mr. Armstrong said, we're doing fine. we had some disagreements wile learning to live together but nothing major."

"It is a relief to hear that but it also sounds a bit phony. Our readers and viewers will wonder how two peole could survive together in such cramped quarters for over a year without kiing eachother. How have you managed?"

"We're just compatible."

"Good. There have been a number of nasty remarks made by comedians and religious groups about an unwed couple being together as you have been. For example, Joan Rivers totteredout of retirement to lambast you and the religious right wing has been fairly nasty. I'm just warning uyou inpreparation for your return; be advised that you've provided a stone for people to grind their axes against."

"Tell them they can all go to HELL! Enid and I were maried shortly before we left Earth and consumated the marriage after leaving Earth!"

"THAT IS PRIVATE! I dont't want to discuss this any further!"

"My appologies, Ms. vanAllen. Cereberus out!"

Fleet Control vcame back on:

"Well, folks, we didn't know what he was going to talk about. Unfortunately, he is correct about the bad press and we are trying to bring pressure against the worst offenders. But, that will take time. In the meanwhile, what type of wedding do you want our records to show you as having had? Also, who should we dub in as the witnesses and minister?"

"Hindu fo rme," replied Jason who had been rasied Southern Baptist. "Irish Catholic", replied Enid who was a member of a Unity church. Neither felt any urge to let th epublic in on something as personal as their religious beliefs or lack thereof (in Jason's case).

Fleet Control's spokesperson laughed in appreciation of their jest.

Two days later, they were contacted by Andr Hefner, the granchild of Hugh Hefner. Fleet control recommended that they take the interview.

"We understand that you're both doing fine but that also sounds a bit phony. Our readers will wonder what kind of life you've had together."

"A nice one. Ms. vanAllen and I get along very well together."

"I agree with Mr. Armstrong."

"Why are you two refering to each other so formally?"

"We're being interviewed. It is the polite form of address. Don't you agree, Jason, ahhh, Mr. Armstrong?"

"Most definitely, Ms. vanAllen."

Jason bit his lip to try aborting his smile. That failed and they both continued speaking in the same sickeningly sweet voices.

Then a random thought occurred to Jason.

"We're just inside Neptune's orbit. There should be about an eight hour delay in communications between us but there is only a second or two delay. How come?"

"We're broadcasting from the Fleet Research Centre orbiting Neptune. We're quite close, actually. Pity you can't drop by."

"Yeah, right."

Impossible was more like it they knew. Maybe some other year or trip or a miracle drive system for the ship.

"now, for the benefit of our listeners, could you give us a description of your daily routine and what you found?"

"We found three planets around Barnard's Star and a lot of junk. THere was something odd about those planets, however. I kept getting the feeling that Rod Sterling was lurking behind an astroade fixing to say 'and now for your Entertainment, we present...'. Or was it Hitchcock? Anyway, there was just something passing strange about those planets that I couldn't figure out."

"Perhaps your studies had lead you to believe that they would be quite different than they actually were?"

That is probahbly the case", Jason conceded.

****************************

Enid was relieved to see that Jason had bought his own explanation.

The interview continued with the three tastefully sparing about the couple's sex life. Hefner would hint and they would tastefully change the subject. Jason wanted to tell Hefner what to do with the questoins but had a problem. From voice and appearance, he couldn't tellwhat sex that this Andr Hefner was and that seriously inhibited the nasty remarks he wanted to make. Besides, he knew that the shrinks were listening for evidence of anti-social attitudes. Anti-social attitudes could get him washed out from the Space program and that would mean that he would have to live the rest of his life on Earth. This was a fate far worst than mere death to Jason considering that there was a universe to explore and he wanted to get on with the exploring. He couldn't understand why anti-social attitudes would harm someone who was in an anit-social lifestyle but he never did understand bureaucrates very well...

****************************

When they were four days out from Earth, Enid found Jason packing his suitcase and getting ready to press their dress uniforms.

"What the special occasion? We don't need to dress up for our last bottle of Dom Perone."

"Nope, we're not dressing up for that."

"Then why the ironing?"

"I want us to look good for our homecoming."

"They probably won't have a very bit reception for us."

"Sure theywill! Have you forgotten? We're the first starship and I expect them to do us up right. I'm surprised that we haven't been asked to give more interviews!"

"This will be the 'homecoming' I've dreamed of", Jason half muttered to himself.

Enid felt pity for him as she could almost feel the weight of his lonliness she knew Jason carried with him; lonliness and the pain that hurt so much it had often spilled over into a bitter sort of joy. This was a type of emotional ocnfusion that was both pathetic and yet intensely human. She feared it even as she wept for Jason.

Later that night as they laid together in the post coital letdown, she tried reasoning with Jason.

"Jason, my dear, homecomings are often a letdown. We spend so much time rehearsing for them that the reality is often a letdown."

"I know! I know! But, this time I'm not letting myself think ahead!"

From his intensity, Enid knew that Jason had harboured this fantasy for weeks at least.

"Where there any good homecomings?"

"No, there never were."

"Jason, my love, you're home now!"

Jason just burined his face in her hair; for a mement she thought he was crying but then she realized that he could never let himself do that. She could and would cry for the both of them.

****************************

As they approached the Fleet Central space station, the Earth was blocking the sun so that they were able to watch an eye scorching sunrise on the visual monitors. The sunscreens were still on the ship's windows.

"I just thought of a poem to celebrate this sunrise over the Earth. It is our first sunrise over the Earth in some time!

"Go ahead, dear, let me hear your poem."

He recited an attempted at haiku:

"The Earth bleeds

red to space

birthing Piranha life!"

"That is very interesting and weird, dear...thank you for sharing that with me."

"You're very welcome, me dear."

Jason sounded very pleased with himself. Unfortunately, Jason was too inexperienced a poet to realized that Enid coudn't stand his poem and was being polite about it.

Two hours before the rendezvous with the Star Fleet Space Station, Enid went to the hydrophonics room to secure it. Jason continued to monitor their approach from the control room. Somehow, seeing the Earth through the hull mounted TV cameras wasn't good enough. Jason punched a button to retrack the micrometeor shield from a window; this was a command that the computer couldn't countermand. Now, he was really seeing again. The Earth didn't look any different; there was a hurricane near Florida and a cold front over Michigan and a witch on a broom flyng alongside the ROSE.

A witch flyng alongside the ROSE!

He did a double take at that!

It wasn't a witch but some kind of advanced spaceship. There was a cable running from it to the ROSE so as Jason's mind reeled, he thought that they sure have changed the design of fleet tugs! He glanced back into the SPRING ROSE looking for Enid.

As he turned to look at her, he suddenly was aware of reality and she simply wasn't there. He knew where and guessed when he was; the SPRING ROSE looked far different to him now.

The computer immediately put him to sleep.

****************************

After the tugs placed the SPRING ROSE in parking orbit around Earth, a two person lighter carrying two physicians certified for organic and cybernetic (MDoc) patients came alongside. THey passed the vast length of the two kilometer long open cargo bays now being refurbished and refilled. The SPRING ROSE could carry almost eight cubic kilometers of cargo. Near the bow of the ROSE, the drive generators were being swapped out. Repair techs, both human and cybernetic, were conducting other repairs.

The cabin they entered was small and featured a human enclosed in a life support capsule; the crew area that Jason thought he lived in was as imaginary as was Enid. The doctors opended the capsule, moved aside the exercise equipment and sensors and casually moved Jason's body into their portable surgery. After taking readings, the doctors typed in commands that caused the automatic surgery to swap out Jason's heart and lungs, replace a number of glands, add some replacement cortex material and generally fine tune Jason's body. The junior MDoc swapped out the computer module that contained the essence of Enid vanAllen and placed it in an analysis unit. A few minutes later, the reprogrammed module was placed back into the master computer.

"Why do we keep sending him out?" The junior medic asked.

He was young the older physician decided, he was only 120 years old and quite new to this medical service. Therefore, she was gentle with his ignorance.

"Someone has to command these sips and Jason is one of the few who can. He is almost totally unique."

"Why not send out cybernetic lifeforms?"

"That is against tradition. For eight hundreds years we have sent out ships commanded by organic humans with cybernetic companions. Jason was the first star ship commander and has spent virtually his entire life riding star ships."

"Why him? There doesn't seem to be anything special about him."

"He couldn't adjust to the 20th century and he most certainly can never adjust to our. We regressed him to the time of his first mission; it really was a solor mission, however, accoring to the historical records. He still has emotional scars from that isolation." The older physician paused while controlling her emotions. "I've been his doctor for over twenty decades now".

"WHy not send a robot? WHy the imaginary lover?"

"He knows what he want; but what he wants is probably not what he needs." There was no mistaking the sadness in the senior physician's voice. "Again, this is traditional!"

The two doctors concentrated on adjusting the psychological drugs to be fed Jason and then scanned the psychological programme adjustments the the Bethesda Naval Hospital Mental (Space) unit had transmitted up to them. It didn't occurr to either physician that Jason might prefer the final sleep and had been trying to find it when he had riden his first starship so many centries before.

"We're trying to breed more space pilots but the organized religions and various 'concerned citizen' groups are opposing this. We're making covert progress however."

The junior physician noded and was pleased to know that he had just be admitted to a wider level of knowledge and also to a rather tightly controlled secret society. He showed his youth by the pleasure he took in "having a secret". THe senior physician was gentle with him and didn't tell him how meaningless this "sister/brother-hood" really was.

The two physicians replaced Jason in his life suport devices; there was no danger of infection and Jason would be completely healed in several days. The operation had taken four hours. The reprogrammed physchological computer sections would be able to handle any further crisis, they thought. They felt that the Enid vanALlen module would be able to retain her sanity also.

Then, with a gentle smile for her poor, damned, "son" Jason, the senior physician programmed in a homecoming for Jason and Enid that would fill the hours with sea stories; sea stories that would be told during their "second voyage" which was to Tau Ceti. Fortunately, since both had spent time apart during their vacation (or thought that they had), there would be enough difference in their stories so that both would have many entertaining hours ahead of them.

As the doctors left to visit another incoming starship, a starsip commanded by a 22nd woman who thought she was John Wayne riding wild in a cattle stampded, the tugs were coming alongside the SPRING ROSE. The ROSE would be carring vitally needed medicines, fertalized whale ova for the oceans of Tau Ceta II and future colonists.

****************************

After only an eight hour turnaround, the SPRING ROSE was heading out again. She was like a car being driven through the countryside in a cold Michigan wanter day. The road was clear with no cie, snow covered fields on either side and nothing to get in her way.

She kicked up her heels and moved out!

///NOTE TO ME: Earlier I mentioned Enid knowing much about the interstellar cloud structure. Have her use this information later in this story?///

PREFACE: This is one of my favorite stories and was written in fall 1985; I wrote this story while in Bob Bauch's class at the Northern Virginia Community College. I didn't get a chance to show this story to anyone as I finished it on Guam. A friend of mine, Greg Vayda, really liked the Enid character.

One of the things that was autobiographical in this story was my feeling of "homecoming" that I had when the USS Forrestal (CVA-59) returned to Norfolk in June 1973. My parents couldn't make the trip from Tigard, Oregon to Norfolk, Virginia and I understood the reasons why. However, it was hard to be understanding when I stood on the flight deck and watched "friends and relatives" of my shipmates waiting on the pier. It was especially hard when I left the ship shortly after the brow went over (i.e. the "gang plank" was put ashore) and felt so alone at not having someone there who cared that I was there. Oh, well, such self pity 18 years after the fact!

*______* * * *

The war game was in it's fifty-sixth hour and JaBee's unit had been in a deep probe into the People's Block Hive City 904 for fourteen hours. They were a thousand meters below the surface. JaBee's troopers were now blooded Combat Specialists. The survivers were all due to promotion at the end of the war game.

JaBee's unit drifted down an access ramp leading to a large, open, plaza. The Combined Staff Intelligence office had informed JaBee that a full combat unit of the People's Block army was approaching the plaza from the opposite side.

JaBee and his first officer, Karge, halted their unit well back from the enterance. Then they crept up to the entrance and cautiously surveyed the plaza. Their combat suits changed color to blend with their surroundings and their equipment was very well shielded. They were effectively invisibile.

Across the plaza, JaBee saw three combat suits appear and jerk around in a confused attempt at reconnaisence. Karge aimed a radiation sensor across the plaza.

"JaBee! Radiation in the very high radio freqs and IR spectrum! They must be mudbrains!"

"They move like stoned roaches! Call the stompers, Karge!"

As Karge issued her orders, a ragged groups of troopers from the other side appeared and fumblingly made their way across the plaza. JaBee's stompers paused in the mouth of the exit per doctrine and military custom. They laughed hughly as the Peopl's Block mudbrains shot at the exit and missed them; laughed as the mudbrains sought cover behind objects that were transparent to both the sensors and energy weapons of JaBee's stompers. The mudbrains accidentally killed several of their own number who had experienced the misfortunate of being in front of their comrade's shaky aims.

JaBee sent his stompers into the plaza. The armour of JaBell stompers easily deflected the mudbrains's bullets. The ranks of the mudbrains melted rapidly as they blundered incredibly. Their suits were little protection again JaBee's stomper's energy weapons.

"They're worst then our own incompetence corp", JaBee snapped as some more troopers appeared in their enemy's doorway. These newcomers carried energy weapons and moved with the fluid grace of JaBee's stompers.

JaBee and Karge had wasted most of their incompetance corp early in the war game and a number of their lesser qualified stompers. Karge took a reading with her sensors.

"They've moved a large number of their stompers up to their doorway and appear ready to assult."

One of JaBee sensor's chimed and he turned to yell at a senior level "free press" worker. The man had ridden his anti-grav lifted camera along after JaBee's stompers in the plaza and hung in midair holographing the conflict.

"Back, you fool! You're an unprotected target!"

"Captain selectee JaBee, I must cover this 'invasion'. How else will the public know that you are counterattacking to get more living space for the Amera-Mexican Republics?" The "Free news worker" spoke with heavy sarcasm.

His newscasts along with those of his People's Block counterpart were relayed to their respective "Newsrooms" by a People's Block communications crew in the senior level of tunnel between the two cities. The Ameri-Mexican Republics "free news worker" was directed by people in Amera-Mexican hive city 217. A-M hive city 217 was built against People's Block hive city 904. The two cities looked like a long rectangular block set in the middle of a wasteland; the city rose four hundred meters into the poluted air and sank two thousand meters into the dead dirt. The air outside was unbreathable and only fusion power kept the human hives alive. In spite of "Programmes to Augment the World Deathrate", the hive cities of the 22nd century held fifty billion people.

The People's BLock stompers advanced forth to meet JaBee's stompers. Both sides slaughtered the Block's mudbrains indiscriminately. The mudbrains were people who had shown outstanding incompetence. The mudbrains were cannon fodder whose primary duty was to teach the stompers of both sides what not to do in combat. Many were too inept to even that little...

In side passages leading away from the plaza were some of the jobless rabble who made up nearly all of humanity's vast numbers. These unfortunate, useless, people had been trapped when the energency doors had slammed shut at the beginning of the combat. Both sides killed the unprotected rabble like so many flys. In their protein starved world, however, flies had great value as food...

"JaBee, what is the official doctrine about this exercise? I wan't briefed on that." Karge spoke without looking away from her battle scans.

"Our citie's rabble are being told that we were defending the city for the first fortytwo hours of combat. Now we are counterattacking and will take part of People's Block City 904."

"Will we win?" Karge was totally disinterested in the answer.

"People's Block will say that they won the war and are colonizing our city. Our 'free news workers' will say the same thing to our city - but with us as the winners."

At that time, JaBee and his counterpart received new orders from the Combined General Staff. The Combined General Staffs were ruled by a Swissneutral. JaBee was ordered to send his elite stompers into the fray. For a short time, both sides slaughtered carefully selected members of the People's Block's mudbrains.Those mudbrains who showed promise were spared. The elites of both sides were forbidden to attack each other.

Finally, the battle was declared over. JaBee withdrew to his team's training area to promote his surviving mudbrains to stompers and some of his stompers to elite status.

Then, they left for their quarters.

They passed underneth pipes carrying protein from the Amera-Mexican city to the People's Hive city. Control of these pipes could lead to starvation in the People's Hive city; these pipes were guarded by fanatics of both "sides" to ensure that nothing harmed them. After all, the Amera-Mexican city got most of it's oxygen and drugs from the Peoples Block city.

That night JaBee and Karge went to an orgy that was being thrown for the survivers of the war. There, the warrors of both sides partied peacefully together. JaBee liked these parties since he could visit with his old classmates from People's Block hive city 904 War School; after all, he was on an officer exchange programme to Amera-Mexican hive city 217...

*______* * * *

*______* * * *