“Sir?” I asked plaintively, while he sat up in bed. “Are…are you finished, uh, examining me now?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, little one.” He nodded approvingly. “And you did extremely well. I’m proud of you—our training is off to a good start.”
Then he got out of bed and went into the bathroom. After a moment, I heard the water running and a low, tuneful humming. He was taking a shower and in the meantime I was a ball of conflicting emotions and sexual tension.
On one hand, I knew I shouldn’t want to let a man who had abducted me to keep as his pet make me come. On the other hand, I really, really wanted to come!
All those smutty romance books I’d read when I was younger suddenly made sense. I had read over and over about heroines whose “body betrayed them” and had thought it was just bullshit. Now I knew it was true—my body had absolutely betrayed me while Sir was stroking and examining me. It was maddening that he hadn’t let me finish and reach the peak I so desperately needed to reach!
I was still throbbing with sexual frustration when Sir came out of the shower, toweling himself off. His black hair was wet and droplets of water dotted his curling horns and broad shoulders. He frowned at me.
“What are you still doing on the sleeping platform, little one?”
Actually, I’d been contemplating trying to finish myself off. I had never been successful when I tried masturbation before—not even when I surreptitiously bought a vibrator. But it seemed possible that I might do it, now that my body was “awake” in a way it hadn’t been in the past.
However, I wasn’t going to masturbate in front of my new Master. So I snatched my hand away from my crotch and sat up quickly.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to get off the sleep platform without your permission, Sir?” I said, smiling sweetly.
“Oh—well not a night,” he said. “I couldn’t have you wandering around, getting into trouble while I was sleeping. But you can feel free to leave the sleeping platform now and make use of the cleansing area.” He nodded at the bathroom.
“Thank you,” I said stiffly. Getting down off the enormous bed wasn’t nearly as difficult as getting onto it had been. I simply sat on my ass and slid down to the floor, aided by the extremely slippery silver bedspread.
I peed—after first asking Sir which brick was the self cleaning one and which was the one that activated the child safety tentacle. I made sure I only stepped on the right brick, which lit up blue. That way I got the washing and drying tentacle—which was actually kind of pleasant—without also being held down. Although I did still kind of feel like I was about to play the starring role in a hentai porno.
After that Sir and I left the sleeping area and I was able to see the rest of the ship—which I had only caught a glimpse of the night before.
The first thing I noticed was how big everything was. Of course, I hadn’t expected anything different, but it was still strange to be in a living environment that was so obviously built for someone who was literally twice my size.
The day before, when I had been abducted by the blue worms, I had estimated that Sir was somewhere around nine feet or three meters tall. Now, seeing him in his own living room, I had to readjust that—he was ten feet tall if he was an inch and all the furniture showed it.
There was a chair that glided gently back and forth when I touched it, though I couldn’t see how—the mechanism at the bottom was hidden by shiny bronze fabric. There was also a couch covered in the same fabric. Both pieces of furniture had narrow gaps between the bottom cushion that you sat on and the top cushion you leaned against. At first I couldn’t figure this out but then I saw Sir’s tail or candalla as he called it, waving from the discrete slit in the back of his sleep trousers and understood—the gaps in the furniture gave space for the tail to move around freely.
There were exotic looking plants growing from the corners of the room which Sir said were from his home world of Korrigon Four—they had blue and purple mottled leaves and deep red flowers. Across from the couch was a blank wall which Sir said was “a viewing wall.”
“Oh, do you use it to watch movies and vids on?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Sometimes. Or to do an interactive.”
I frowned.
“What’s an ‘interactive?’”
“Oh, doesn’t your species have them? It’s a show or program where you take a part in the plot.”
“That sounds like fun,” I said agreeably. I had done some Drama in high school and really enjoyed it, though I only ever got bit parts. “Do they give you a script so you can follow along?” I asked Sir.
He shook his head.
“No, of course not. You’re able to follow the plot by listening to the thoughts of the other characters.”
“What?” I shook my head. “You can hear each others’ thoughts?”
“Korrigons are naturally telepathic,” he explained. “Though usually only with close family members, by choice—otherwise life would be too chaotic. But in the case of interactives, the thoughts are pre-recorded along with the vid—they’re part of the program.”
“I’d like to see that,” I said honestly. “Though I don’t think I’d be able to participate.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t,” he said, waving one hand dismissively. “Your underdeveloped brain wouldn’t be able to pick up on the thought patterns of our more advanced species.”
I wanted to bristle at this condescending comment, but he clearly wasn’t trying to be rude—he was just saying what he thought was the truth. And honestly, he was probably right—I couldn’t pick up on other people’s thoughts—though it stung to admit I was somehow inferior to him.
“Just because we humans aren’t telepathic doesn’t mean we’re primitive or less intelligent than you Korrigons,” I said defensively.
“Yes, it does, little one,” Sir said breezily. “Come—let’s go into the food preparation area. Are you hungry?”
By that time I really was—it had been a long time since the breakfast burrito I had scarfed down before Aunt Maizy called to ask me to get Prissy from the groomers the day before—so I followed him eagerly. We walked into the kitchen and I wondered if I would see the alien version of a refrigerator and a stove. Instead, there was only a round metal table with round benches fixed to it—it looked like a kind of picnic bench, I thought—and a wall with about fifteen doors set into it.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the wall. The doors all appeared to be glass or some clear material that looked like glass anyway, and they were all different sizes. One of them, in the middle of the wall, looked big enough to let a Clydesdale horse walk through it. But others were much smaller—one in the far left side was as tiny as a mouse hole. The glass in each door was dark, but I wondered if they would light up if you turned them on. Were these alien ovens of some kind?
“This device is my Matter Synthesizer,” Sir told me. “It makes almost anything I need—be it mechanical, chemical, or edible.”
“It does?” I looked at the wall full of doors with even more interest. “How? And don’t say my brain can’t comprehend it,” I added, glaring at him. “I really want to know and I got A’s in chemistry, you know.”
“I can’t get into the physics of it, but suffice it to say that it gathers molecules from the air and spins them into different components to achieve the result I ask of it,” he told me.
I frowned skeptically.
“So you’re about to serve me an air sandwich for breakfast?”
“Not at all—the air molecules will be transmuted into food that will be exactly set to your human nutritional needs.”
“Wow,” I murmured, finally impressed. I had been dismissing all his talk of his people being superior to every other species in the known universe as pure arrogance. But if this wall of doors—this Matter Synthesizer—really worked the way he claimed, it was amazing. The kind of tech that could end world hunger, just for starters.
“Yes, it is quite impressive,” Sir murmured distractedly.
As he spoke, I noticed he was perusing something that looked kind of like one of those three-fold pamphlets that some restaurants print their take-out menus on. He was so much taller than me, though, thatI couldn’t see what was written on it.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing up at it.
“The nutritional guide for humans which the Commercians gave me.” Sir said. “I reproduced it in physical form so that I could refer to it when I feed you.”
“When you feed me what?” I demanded suspiciously. What did those blue worms that abducted Earth women and sold them as brides to alien men know about my nutritional needs?
“You’ll see. Now hush, little one—I must concentrate in order to communicate with the Matter Synthesizer.”
Sir took a thin golden wire, which I hadn’t seen earlier, from a hook on the wall and placed it over his head. It widened to fit around his horns and then seemed to shrink so that it sat just at the level of his temples, like a thin golden crown. Then he closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking hard.
About this time, I saw one of the medium-sized glass doors on the wall light up. A golden glow began to come from it and when I stepped closer, I saw a swirling pattern going on inside—kind of like a miniature tornado made of pink and green and blue and gold and purple glitter, I thought.
After a moment, Sir opened his eyes and the door made a ding sound—not that different from my microwave back home.
“Here we go! Have a seat at the table and I’ll bring your meal to you, little one,” Sir directed.
Obediently, I went and scrambled up onto the round metal bench—which was really cold against my bare behind, since I was still naked—and waited for my breakfast.
When it came it was…well, let’s just say it was underwhelming.
“This is it? This is what you expect me to eat?” I demanded, looking down at the golden bowl filled with little brown pellets. It looked not unlike the fancy dog kibble that Aunt Maizy fed her “babies.” And when I brought one of the pellets to my nose, it smelled dusty and dry and medicinal—like the inside of a bottle of vitamins or nutritional supplements. In a word, disgusting.
Sir frowned at me.
“Little one, I hope you’re not going to be a picky eater—that’s not desirable in a pet, you know. This ‘human chow’ is based on the recipe the Commercians provided me and it has one hundred percent of all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients your little body needs to sustain itself.”
I put a hand on my hip.
“Well it looks like pet food.”
“It is pet food,” Sir rumbled, looking at me in an exasperated way.
“I mean it looks like something I would feed to a dog back on Earth,” I said, frowning. “An animal.” I pointed a finger at him. “And don’t you dare say that I’m an animal again because I do not agree with you that everyone who isn’t a Korrigon is an inferior life form.”
Sir’s face was beginning to look like a thundercloud. His dark brows drew down and his full-black eyes narrowed while his mouth went tight.
“Little one,” he said warningly. “You’re making me very disappointed. I thought we started our training very well this morning but refusing to eat is not acceptable for a pet.”
Okay, I could see that we were headed for trouble. If I continued to butt heads (lock horns?) with my new Master, I was going to wind up back in the narrow coffin-crate, which I did not want. Maybe it was time to try a different tack.
“Sir, please,” I said humbly, looking up at him from under my long eyelashes. “I’m sorry but I can’t eat something that smells and looks like this. I’ll just throw it right back up if I do—I have a very sensitive stomach.”
He looked even more frustrated.
“I can’t help the way it smells and looks, little one—I simply followed the recipe the Commercians gave me.”
“They’re three-foot-tall blue worms--what do they know about human nutrition? They might have given you a list of all the vitamins and minerals I need every day, but they left out everything else—like carbs and fiber and proteins,” I said quickly. “Don’t you know that humans are supposed to get their nutrition from eating whole foods like fruits and vegetables and things like that? The vitamins and minerals are in the fruits and meats and veggies—not separated out of them,” I pointed out.
Sir looked thoughtful.
“Hmm, you do make a good point, little one. But I want to be certain I’m not giving you something that will be bad for you and I know nothing about how your native food looks and tastes. So I cannot convey it to the Matter Synthesizer and ask it to make those foods for you.”
“What about letting me try to talk to the Matter Synthesizer?” I asked, nodding at the thin gold circlet around his temples. “I mean, I bet I can imagine it pretty well.”
But Sir shook his head emphatically.
“No, absolutely not! The Matter Synthesizer’s control band won’t work for a non-Korrigon mind. It might short out your underdeveloped brain!”
I sighed in frustration.
“Well, is there some way to translate it from me to you to the Matter Synthesizer?”
He frowned.
“I’m not certain. You and I haven’t formed a good strong Master/pet bond yet. Though I suppose I could try to read your mind…”
I was about to agree to this, when it occurred to me that if Sir could actually read my mind, he might see my plan to escape at the first available opportunity.
“I don’t know,” I hedged. “I mean, like you said, we haven’t, uh, formed our bond yet. I know though,” I added. “Why don’t I just eat whatever you eat? I mean, you’re taking me back to your planet, right? So why don’t I start learning the foods of my new home now?”
The words nearly stuck in my throat but I forced myself to get them out. I had no intention of going all the way to another galaxy with him, but Sir didn’t need to know that.
“Hmmm…it’s a possibility,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “Though you ought to know that we Korrigons have evolved past the need to eat ‘whole foods’ as you call them. We get most of our daily needs met from a very advanced and sophisticated nutritional gel.”
Well, that didn’t sound very good, but anything was better than the “human chow” he had synthesized for me.
“I might as well get used to it now as later,” I said. “And if it’s nutritionally dense enough to keep a big guy like you going all day, I’m sure it will fill me up, too.”
Sir nodded reluctantly.
“Well…all right. Having looked over your biological composition, I don’t believe anything in it would be harmful to you, so I will allow you to try it. Then, after we form and seal our Master/pet bond, I will link with your mind and that will allow me to synthesize food that is more specific to your human needs.”
“Okay.” I nodded agreeably. I had no intention of being there long enough to form any kind of bond with him, but he didn’t need to know that, either.
“Very well.” Sir nodded and closed his eyes again and concentrated. After a moment, another medium-sized door lit up and the swirling glitter tornado began again—only this time there were two little mini tornadoes in there, I saw.
There was a ding! and Sir opened the door, revealing two golden bowls which he brought to the table. He placed one in front of me and then sat across from me with the other.
I looked down at my bowl and saw a lot of little cubes, about as big as a medium sized ice cube. But they weren’t as hard as ice. In fact, when I nudged the bowl, they jiggled slightly in a very familiar way.
“This is it? This is the ‘incredibly advanced and sophisticated nutritional gel’?” I asked, looking up at Sir.
“Yes. What of it?” He frowned down at me.
“This is Jell-O,” I said. I picked up one of the clear, jiggly cubes and examined it more closely. “You’ve made Jell-O Jigglers, Master. Congratulations, that is super sophisticated.”
“’Jell-O Jigglers?’” He frowned. “You’re being sarcastic, little one. Explain yourself.”
“It’s a children’s food back on my planet,” I explained. “You take flavored gelatin and you form it into these shapes that kids can eat and they love it.” I shrugged. “But it’s not usually considered haute cuisine.”
His frown deepened.
“Would you prefer to eat your human chow, then?”
“No, no!” I said quickly, seeing I was right on the edge again. “Forgive me, Sir—it just reminded me of my home world and my childhood, I guess.”
Suddenly I had a lump in my throat as memories of my mom making Jell-O Jigglers for me and Taylor filled my mind. They were such a treat—she would make a big cake pan filled with the extra stiff Jell-O and then give us cookie cutters so we could cut out whatever shapes we wanted. Our fingers and mouths would be stained red or blue or green—depending on the flavor Jell-O she made—for the rest of the day.
“Little one? Are you well?” Sir’s deep, rumbling voice was more gentle this time and I blinked back tears to look up at him.
“I…I’m fine,” I whispered. “It’s just…I miss my mom and my sister. That’s all.”
I was waiting for him to say something about how I would forget all about my loved ones in time, but instead he only nodded.
“That’s understandable,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” I said stiffly, swiping at my eyes. “For not acting like I’m a puppy who will forget its littermates after it gets used to its new owner.”
Sir looked at me thoughtfully.
“I do not believe anymore that you will forget your home world—you’re clearly too intelligent for that. But I do think once we form our bond, you will find separation from your home planet and the ones you left behind much more bearable.”
“Whatever,” I muttered and looked at the clear, jiggling cube in my fingers once more. I might as well try it—it might not be very appetizing but at least it didn’t smell like the inside of a bottle of dusty vitamins and look like pet food.
I sniffed at it but it didn’t smell like anything. I took a nibble from the corner, but I couldn’t taste anything either. Figuring I might as well go for it, I popped the whole cube into my mouth and bit down on it.
It acted almost exactly like Jell-O, melting away on my tongue and leaving neither taste nor scent behind.
“Well?” Sir asked as I swallowed. He was looking at me anxiously, as though he wanted to be certain the nutritional gel cube didn’t disagree with me.
I shrugged.
“It’s fine. It doesn’t taste like anything, really.”
He nodded.
“It’s not supposed to. It’s meant to meet your nutritional needs—not stimulate your senses.”
“Geeze, I’d hate to come from a people so ‘advanced’ they didn’t want to enjoy what they ate anymore,” I remarked, scooping up another cube. “Don’t you have any food that’s fun to eat on Korrigon Four?”
“We do have traditional feast day foods,” Sir said stiffly. “But we live mostly on the nutritional gel—it’s better to eat a bland food that doesn’t distract from important business matters.”
“If you say so.” I ate another cube, letting it melt into a flavorless puddle on my tongue and then swallowing. “But I think you’re wasting this incredible resource.” I pointed at the Matter Synthesizer wall. “If it can really make anything, think of all the amazing dishes you could create!”
What I meant was, dishes that I personally am too lazy to make. I love to watch vids online about making all kinds of exciting, exotic foods, but when it comes to actually trying the recipe—tracking down the hard-to-get ingredients and doing all the arduous prep—well, I’m not as into that.
But if I had a big machine that could just make anything I could imagine pop into existence, well, you bet I’d be making all kinds of crazy recipes, day and night! I’d be popping out Coq au vin and Chicken katsu curry and macaroons and all kinds of stuff—you’d better believe it!
Sir simply nodded condescendingly and went back to his own nutritional gel cubes. I finished mine—noting that while they didn’t exactly fill me up, they did at least stop my stomach from grumbling—and then sat there, swinging my legs like a little kid sitting on a park bench as I waited for him to finish.
“Would you like to see the rest of the ship, little one?” he asked, when he had popped the last jiggling cube in his mouth.
“There’s more?” I asked, surprised.
“Just the cockpit and the control area, but you can at least get a look at where we’re going—if that interests you.” He raised his eyebrows at me and I nodded eagerly.
“Yes, please!” I was hoping to figure out how far we were from Earth and how long it might take me to get back there. It couldn’t be too far—right? I mean, we’d been traveling for less than twenty-four hours—or ahrns as Sir called them.
“Come.” He gathered both our empty bowls and put them into one of the medium-sized doors. Then he shut the door and there was a muffled pop and a flash of light.
“Oh!” I jumped, looking at the door uneasily. “What just happened?”
Sir shrugged.
“I sent the containers we ate from back to their original form. The Matter Synthesizer doesn’t just create matter, you know—it can also destroy it.”
“Wow…” I looked at the wall full of doors with even more respect. Not only could it make anything you could wish for—it could also destroy waste and turn it into floating molecules of air. Thinking of the plastics pollution problem back on Earth, I couldn’t help thinking how much good even one Matter Synthesizer could do there.
But…it could do a lot of bad, too, I admitted to myself. If it fell into the wrong hands, some crazy dictator might use it to make a ton of nuclear weapons. Or a greedy billionaire type might use it to make new products to flood the market and then keep all the wealth to himself. Yeah, I could totally see either one of those things happening. We humans couldn’t be trusted with this level of technology.
It was a sobering thought and I was quiet until we passed from the kitchen, through the living area, and to the very front of the ship. There was a single, wide seat up here and lots and lots of glowing gauges and readouts. But there was something strange too. After a moment, I put my finger on it—though I looked everywhere, I didn’t see any way to control the ship. I mean, there was no steering wheel or yoke, no levers to pull, no dials to twist, no buttons to push—just…nothing.
“Well? What do you think?” Sir asked me.
“How do you drive it?” I asked, frowning up at him. “I mean, I don’t see any way to steer.”
“Steer?” He frowned and then rumbled with laughter. “Oh, I see—you want to know how I control the ship. With this.”
He picked up another golden circlet—this one had little black pads attached to it—and brought it down on his head until the black pads were in contact with his temples.
“So…it’s like the Matter Synthesizer?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him. “You use your thoughts to control it?”
“Of course.” Sir nodded. “Most of our technology relies on mental manipulation and thought control.”
“I see,” I said, trying not to be impressed and failing. The Korrigons really were much more advanced than we were back on Earth. Not that that made them better than humans, I told myself stubbornly.
“Well—I promised to show you where we’re going, didn’t I?” Sir said. “Look at the viewscreen.”
I looked at the wide screen that was kind of like a windshield in a car. At the moment, it was showing the vast blackness of space with many tiny stars winking and twinkling.
“Okay, I’m looking,” I said. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“This is our next destination,” Sir said,
Suddenly, a glowing blue circle appeared around one of the tiny, twinkling lights.
“That,” Sir said, “Is F’too’sh Beta—a small black hole surrounded by a ring of gas giant planets. We’ll be there later today.”
“Um…you’re taking us to a black hole? Why? Won’t we get sucked in and spaghettified?” I asked, remembering a documentary I had seen once on black holes. It had talked about how anything that falls into the black hole gets pulled out long and thin, like strands of spaghetti. I did not want to be spaghettified—it sounded like a very uncomfortable way to die.
“No, of course not—we won’t go past the event horizon of the black hole,” Sir said dismissively. “But there is a spaceport there, tethered between two co-oribtal gas giants by gravity anchors, that supplies the kind of fuel my ship runs on. My fuel cells are low and I need to replenish them if I’m going to get us back to my home galaxy.”
“Why not just use the Matter Synthesizer to make more fuel for your cells?” I asked.
Sir smiled.
“A very intelligent question, little one. Unfortunately, that would be very dangerous in the small Matter Synthesizer my ship is equipped with. There are much larger Synthesizers on my home world that can and do make unlimited fuel, but I’m afraid that takes very specialized equipment.”
“Okay,” I said nodding. “So we’re going to the space port on Foosh beta—”
“F’too’sh Beta,” Sir corrected me.
“Right, F’too’sh Beta,” I said. “To fill up the gas tank…er, the fuel cells. Later on today, right?”
“Exactly.” He nodded. “And I may allow you to come with me into the spaceport, if you do well with your training.”
“All right, I can do that.” I nodded eagerly. “Um, are there lots of ships at the spaceport?” I asked him, hoping I could find a kindly alien to give me a lift back home.
“Thousands,” Sir told me. “Which means you’ll need to stay very close to me, little one. There are many males there who wouldn’t hesitate to snap up such an adorable, curvy little female,” he added, giving me a half-lidded look from those full-black eyes of his.
“Oh, um…thank you.” I wasn’t sure what to say and I could feel myself blushing.
He kept calling me his pet but then he would come out with a statement like that which made me think he might see me as something more. Not that I wanted to be more to him—it was bad enough being his pet!
“Where are we headed after that? After the spaceport, I mean?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“After I refill the fuel cells, we’ll be on our way to O’nagga Nine,” Sir told me. “It’s a frozen world on an arm of the galaxy across from the one your own planet Earth sits on.”
“A frozen world? Why are we going there?” I asked, frowning.
“To study the Naggians and their culture, of course,” Sir told me. “They are the most elusive of the Twelve Peoples and I need their data for my report to my Sovereign.”
“Wait—Sovereign? But I thought you were an ‘Overlord,’” I said, frowning. “You have someone over you?”
“Only one—Splendara the Third and Thirtieth who is the Supreme Ruler of Korrigon Four,” Sir told me.
“Okay.” I nodded. “I guess even Alien Overlords have to answer to somebody. Can you show me, uh, O’nagga Nine on the viewscreen?”
“Certainly.” Sir nodded and another lighted circle appeared on the viewscreen—this one considerably further away than the pale blue circle around the spaceport. “It is a frozen world, as I said—we will both have to wear protective gear—especially you, little one.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine—I love ice and snow,” I assured him.
“Not to this extent,” Sir told me. “The Naggians actually live in towers built of ice and sleep on blocks of it as well.”
“Wow…sounds like the ice hotel, back on Earth,” I murmured, remembering a documentary I’d read about the place. It was in the far north of Sweden or Norway—I forgot which—and everything there was made out of solid ice.
“You have such a place?” Sir asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a hotel all built out of blocks of ice. Of course, it’s only there during the Winter season and they have to build it again every year.”
“The people of O’nagga Nine endure freezing temperatures almost year-round,” Sir informed me. “But we won’t spend long. And of course, after we finish there, we will be headed back to my own home galaxy and my home world of Korrigon Four.”
“Okay.” I shrugged. I had no intention of going to the frozen planet with him—let alone all the way back to Korrigon Four. So none of it mattered to me. But there was one more thing I wanted to know. “Er, can you show me Earth?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t get suspicious. “Just so I can see where my home world is in relation to these other inhabited planets,” I added innocently. “I’m curious.”
Sir nodded approvingly.
“A very good thought, little one. I’m glad to see your views are expanding and you want to learn about the universe around you. Here is your little planet, Earth.”
Yet another lighted ring appeared on the viewscreen. I stared at it and my heart jumped in my chest—it was barely six inches away from the lighted ring that represented the spaceport on the edge of the black hole!
Why, we’re not far from home at all! I thought. I bet to any alien with a fast spaceship, that distance will be nothing. Asking him to drop me off on Earth will be like asking for a lift to the nearest convenience store! No big deal at all.
I found this idea so cheering, that I grinned up at Sir.
“Thank you for showing me all this. It’s been most instructive, Master.”
Sir smiled down at me.
“Of course, little one. And now that we’re finished with the tour, I think it’s time to get to your training.”
My stomach dropped and some of the elation I’d been feeling turned into anxiety.
“Um…training?” I had forgotten all about that.
“Yes,” Sir said firmly. “I must see to your training before you can accompany me out in public. You do want to see the spaceport, don’t you?”
“Yes—yes, I do, so much!” I couldn’t keep the eagerness out of my voice.
“Good. Then do a good job and I’ll be happy to take you with me,” Sir said.
I still felt nervous, but what could I do except agree with him?
“I’ll do my best, Sir,” I said, nodding respectfully, and followed him back into the living area.