I frowned as I left the sleeping chamber and made my way to the front of the ship, where the ship’s cockpit was located. Sliding into the pilot’s seat, I picked up the control band and placed it on my head, making certain that the thought- conduction pads were pressed firmly against my temples.
Closing my eyes, I attempted to start the ship and set a course for the nearest spaceport. But my mind was full of my new pet—the little Earthling which I had bought from the Commercians.
She was a fetching little thing, though I had not yet thought of a name for her. She was rather loquacious, but that was probably just because she was frightened. I hadn’t owned a pet in a long time—not since my boyhood—and I had never owned a sentient pet before. She would get used to me eventually—it would just take a lot of patience and training to tame her, that was all.
Still, I couldn’t help remembering her fear when she had thought I was buying her to gratify my sexual appetites. The terror in her big, brown eyes had truly bothered me. I had no intention of using her as a Sex Pet, though there were, regrettably, others from my planet who would have no compunction about doing that exact thing.
In fact, my main rival, the Overlord of the Southern Continent, was rumored to make much of his income from the Sex Pet trade, which I found wholly disgusting and wrong. I would never use a creature that was mentally inferior to me for sexual gratification.
No, I comforted myself. My new little pet was quite safe from any kind of molestation. And it didn’t matter that she had a lovely, curvy body with full breasts and hips and long silky fur on her head, and those big brown eyes—I would never allow myself to see her as more than a pet.
At that point, I realized that I was going nowhere. The control band couldn’t work unless I gave it my complete attention. Instead of steering the ship, I had been focused on the little female locked away in my sleeping chamber.
Frowning, I pushed all thoughts of my new pet out of my mind and focused on uncoupling from the Commercians’ ship and navigating a course to the nearest spaceport. Later I would read the pamphlet I had been given about my new pet’s care and feeding and start her training. She would also probably need a bath, to get the Earth bacteria off of her smooth skin. But first, I had to refuel my ship—the fuel cells were running quite low after traveling all the way from my own galaxy to this primitive one.
Concentrating hard—it was surprisingly difficult to push aside the thoughts of my new pet—I finally got my ship on its way. I had a long way to go and much to do before I could return to my own galaxy and my home planet of Korrigon Four, where I was the Overlord of the Northern Continent.
I just hoped that the research I was doing here would save this galaxy from the predatory plans of my rival, the Overlord of the Southern Continent.