Part III

History

The war was over.

They started coming back in ones and twos. I had Reggie give each of them a free drink as they entered, and the Bard waited patiently for everyone to get in a talkative mood before he started recording the true history of the war with the aliens.

When Hurricane Smith came back alone, no one asked him what had become of his beloved Langtry Lily. He just had a look about him that said such questions wouldn’t be welcomed, and might well be severely dealt with.

Three-Gun Max wasn’t his usual talkative self either. He took his drink—I never knew him to turn one down—and carried it over to a table, where he just sat and stared silently at it.

The Injuns—that’s what we call Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull—were the next to arrive, and it was obvious they were in a good mood. So was Big Red.

Sinderella and Nicodemus Mayflower entered together, holding hands and staring and sighing at each other like a pair of teenagers who had just discovered how truly opposite the opposite sex is.

More of them straggled in, some looking happy, some depressed, some tired, some triumphant. All we needed was a catalyst, someone to break the ice.

That’s when Catastrophe Baker showed up.

He walked in, clomped over to the bar like he was still outdoors, and said in his big, booming voice, “Hiya, Reg! Pour me a tall one.” He turned to me. “How’s it going, Tomahawk?”

“Pretty good,” I answered.

“I saw an alien ship out there,” said Baker. “I was half-hoping they’d taken over the Outpost. Might have been fun to throw ’em out on their ears.”

“They’ve been disposed of,” said the Bard.

“Pity,” said Baker. “I hate it when a war ends while my blood’s still up.” He stared at the Bard. “I don’t suppose you’d like to engage in a little rasslin’ and eye-gouging and the like, just for the hell of it?”

“Not me,” said the Bard. “My job is recording history, not making it.”

“Seems kinda limiting to me,” said Baker.

“We can’t all be heroes,” said the Bard.

“The hell we can’t!” said Crazy Bull. “Me and my partner managed.”

“Yeah?” asked Baker.

“Yeah,” echoed Crazy Bull. “Maybe we aren’t full-time heroes like some, but we were heroic when we had to be.”

“Or sneaky, anyway,” added Sitting Horse.

“Sometimes being sneaky is all it takes,” agreed Baker.

“They weren’t such bad guys,” said Max, speaking up for the first time. “The aliens, I mean.”

“They were monsters,” said a familiar voice from the doorway.

We all turned and saw the Reverend Billy Karma. He looked different somehow. It took a minute for me to spot what had changed: he was now sporting a pair of prosthetic hands, one made of gold, the other of silver.

“If anyone kills you, they’re gonna want more than both ears and the tail as trophies,” said Baker admiringly. “That’s mighty impressive new hardware you’re sporting there, Reverend.”

“Got new feet, too,” said Billy Karma. “Courtesy of them godless alien heathen that Max here seems to have taken a liking to.”

“I didn’t say I liked ’em all,” answered Max defensively. “But just like there’s a bad apple in every batch of good ones, who’s to say there can’t be a good apple in every rotten batch?”

“It’s against the fourth and seventh commandments!” yelled Billy Karma. He frowned. “Or is it the second and ninth?”

“Max has a point,” said Hurricane Smith. “They weren’t all bad.”

“Let me guess,” said Baker. “At least one of the ones that weren’t all bad was a lady, right?”

Smith glared at him. “You know,” he said sullenly, “I can remember when I used to like you.”

“What’s not to like?” said Baker. “I’m strong, handsome, agile, noble, truthful to a fault, and one hell of a hand with the ladies.”

“That’s six reasons right there,” said Max.

“He’s not irresistible to me,” said the Earth Mother, entering the Outpost and heading to a nearby table.

“Or me,” added the Cyborg de Milo, following close behind her.

“I am glad to see that you are well, Venus,” said Reggie. “I was worried about you.”

“You were?”

“We have so much in common,” said Reggie. She looked at him curiously. “I am all machine, and you are at least half machine. Everyone else here is merely flesh and blood.”

“There was nothing to worry about,” said Max. “I told you I’d protect her, didn’t I?”

“Protect me?” said Venus. “I never once saw you after I left the Outpost.”

“I made sure things were safe in that ancient city before you showed up.”

“Then I suppose I owe you my gratitude,” said Venus with an obvious lack of sincerity.

“Happy to do it.”

“Of course,” she said, “you managed to miss more than six hundred armed aliens.”

“Well, I got rid of the first five thousand I came to,” replied Max smoothly. “I figured with all your weaponry you could handle a measly six hundred without working up much of a sweat.”

She turned to Willie the Bard, who was scribbling furiously.

“Why are you writing all this down?” she demanded.

“Someone has to,” he said.

“But he’s lying!”

“Today it’s a lie,” he pointed out. “But when my book is published, it’ll be the truth.”

“Aren’t you interested in what really happened?” she continued.

“I’m interested in everything,” said the Bard. “You guys tell me your stories and I’ll sort ’em out.”

“But you weren’t there!” said Venus. “How can you sort out the truth from the lie?”

“I’ll keep what makes the best history and throw the rest out.”

“Can you do that?”

“History is written by the winners,” answered the Bard. “That’s why it reads so well, why it has such a noble trajectory to it.”

“It don’t read well next to the Good Book,” put in the Reverend Billy Karma.

“What’s the Good Book but God’s version of history?” said the Bard.

Suddenly, Billy Karma grinned. “You know, I never looked at it that way.”

“Of course, that means you won’t want to rewrite it after all,” said Baker.

“Nonsense,” said Billy Karma. “God’s a busy man with a lot on His mind. I’m sure it can still use a little improvement here and there.”

“I didn’t know God was a man,” said the Earth Mother.

“She isn’t,” agreed the Cyborg de Milo.

“Now just a minute!” began Billy Karma hotly, jumping to his feet.

“Sit down, Reverend,” said Venus, pointing a lethal finger at him. “Or do you want to be carrying around some molten slag at the end of each arm?”

“Maybe you each have your own God,” said Sitting Horse placatingly.

“Are you suggesting that there’s a God for every being in the universe?” asked Baker.

“Of course not,” answered Sitting Horse. “Crazy Bull and I worship the same one.”

“Is it a male or female God?” asked Billy Karma.

“I don’t think that’s important,” said Sitting Horse.

“But just in case you’re curious, She’s got really big tits,” added Crazy Bull.

“That’s blasphemy!” roared the Reverend.

“You don’t think God has breasts?” asked the Cyborg de Milo.

“Hell, no!” said Billy Karma. “Matter of fact, He’s hung like a horse.”

“And you think that’s not blasphemous?” asked the Cyborg incredulously.

“Of course not,” said Billy Karma. “God made man in His own image. Hell, me and God could pass for twins!”

“I sure wouldn’t put that in your book,” said Baker to the Bard. “Nobody’ll read the rest once they read that.”

“I haven’t put anything in it yet,” replied the Bard. “But I suppose enough of you are here that I should start.” He turned to the Cyborg de Milo. “What was all this about killing six hundred aliens?”

“I did.”

“So tell me about it.”

“Okay,” she said. “I killed six hundred aliens.”

“That’s it?”

She nodded. “That’s it.”

“It’s going to make a mighty thin chapter,” said the Bard.

“I’m into killing, not bragging.”

The Bard sighed. “Okay, have it your way. But nobody’ll ever know you were here.”

“What do I care?” she asked.

“It’s your immortality,” explained the Bard. “That’s what history’s all about. It shows you were here, that you made a mark on the pathways of Time.”

“I know I was here.”

“But no one else will know.”

“Once I’m dead, what difference does it make?” said the Cyborg.

“It’s the only way to be sure you’ll never be forgotten,” said the Bard, “that your memory will live in song and story.”

“And how does that benefit me?” she asked.

“Right,” chimed in the Reverend Billy Karma. “She’s going to the Good Place or the Bad one, and either way, that’s immortality enough for anyone.”

“But if they don’t exist, then this”—the Bard tapped his notebook with a finger—“is all the immortality she’s got.”

“Bite your tongue!” snapped Billy Karma. “God wouldn’t have invented sex except to give us a hint of what’s to come if we lead the good life.”

“You think heaven is non-stop sex?” asked the Earth Mother.

“What else could it be?” shot back the Reverend. “That’s why we call it heaven.”

“Have you ever sat down and seriously discussed this with God?” she continued. “Or maybe a good psychiatrist?”

“No need to,” said Billy Karma. “It’s self-evident.”

“I don’t know that I’m interested in either kind of immortality,” said the Cyborg de Milo, taking a swig of her drink, then signaling Reggie for a refill.

“All right,” said the Bard. “If you don’t want to be remembered, you don’t want to be remembered.” He turned to Max. “You were on the same planet, right?”

“Henry V, right,” said Max.

“You want to talk about it?”

“It’s still kind of painful,” said Max. “But what the hell, why not?”

Three-Gun Max Finds A Friend

It was after I’d made the city safe for Venus (began Max, as the Cyborg de Milo snorted contemptuously). I set my ship down a few hundred miles away, ready to take out a small alien army all by myself.

But before I did, I figured I owed myself a meal, since wiping out all those aliens figured to burn up a lot of calories. I was sitting there outside my ship, cooking some steaks over an open fire, far enough from the aliens so their sensors wouldn’t be able to spot me, when I felt the muzzle of a screecher pressed between my shoulder blades.

“Raise your hands,” said a thickly-accented voice, which I knew had to belong to one of the aliens.

“If I do, I’ll burn the steaks,” I said without turning around.

“So what?” asked the alien.

“If you’re going to kill me anyway, it doesn’t make any difference what I do with my hands … but if you’re not going to kill me, then it’s be criminal to burn ’em.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he admitted thoughtfully, walking around to the other side of the fire. He kept his gun trained on me while he tried to figure out what to do next.

“Well, if you’re not going to shoot me,” I said, “you might as well join me. There’s enough food here for both of us.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, taking a plate and squatting down next to the fire. “It’s been a long day, and I haven’t eaten since sunrise.”

“You got a name?” I asked.

“Wordsmith,” he said. “How about you?”

“Max.”

“I couldn’t help noticing that you’ve got more hands than the usual human,” he said.

“I never found it to be a disadvantage,” I told him.

“That’s curious,” he said. “Everything I’ve learned about your society tells me that anyone as different as you should be an outcast, shunned by all.”

“Just what is it you think you know about my society?” I asked.

“I’ve read all the books and seen the usual indoctrination holos,” he replied. “I find your habit of eating newborn babies especially disgusting.”

“I’m not aware of any humans ever eating babies.”

“I suppose it’s a secret ritual,” he said sympathetically.

“I have a feeling that you’re a victim of false doctrine,” I said.

“False doctrine?” he repeated, puzzled.

“Propaganda.”

“But I saw the holos!”

“You saw the wonders of computer animation and special effects,” I said.

He stared at me for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“Did you see holos of people cooking babies?”

“No, just eating them raw.”

“Well, there you have it,” I said. “I’m living proof of the fact that Men always cook their meat.”

“Yeah, I guess you are,” said Wordsmith. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is.”

“Why?”

“I’m no warrior,” he confessed. “I’m a poet. I joined the military after I read about what you did to babies. Now that I know you don’t eat your young, I think I’ll go back home and finish work on my first collection of poems. I specialize in unrhyming hectameter.”

“Will they let you leave?” I asked.

“Why not?” he said. “They have no use for a poet.” He paused. “Actually,” he added ruefully, “they have no use for anyone who doesn’t kill, maim, and torture.”

“Maybe you should think about coming over to our side,” I suggested.

“I can’t,” he said. “Men despise anything that’s different.”

“More propaganda,” I said. “A few hundred miles from here is a cyborg lady with more firepower built into her fingers than one of your battleships possesses. She has artificial eyes, and when the war’s over, she’s probably going to trade her real legs in for prosthetic ones. And yet, she’s fighting for our side. She wouldn’t be doing that if we ostracized her, would she?”

“No,” he admitted. “No, I suppose not.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Maybe I ought to tell you Man’s side of the story.”

“I’ve got all night,” he said.

So I explained to him about how Thomas Jefferson wrote the Magna Carta, and Pope John XXIII freed the Martian colonies, and I quoted as much of Babe Ruth’s Gettysburg Address as I could remember, and pretty soon he started asking me more questions, and we talked clear through to the morning.

And when the sun finally rose over Henry V, he reached out, shook my hand, and announced that he saw now how he’d been brainwashed and that he was going to spend the rest of his life fighting for liberty, freedom, capitalism, and higher property values.

We spent the next couple of days together, just getting to know each other. He recited some of his poetry to me, but it didn’t rhyme or have much of a beat to it, and hardly any of it was about war or women, which is just about all that’s really worth writing about. I spent the rest of the time telling him about how a free society works, and why we on the Frontier don’t pay taxes or vote or spend too much time worrying about the finer points of the law.

“But if you voluntarily give up your franchise, what is the point of fighting for the Commonwealth?” he asked.

“I’m not fighting for the Commonwealth, or the Monarchy, or whatever we’re calling it this week,” I said. “I’m fighting because you guys invaded the Henrys, and that’s where I spend most of my quality drinking time.”

He frowned—as much as a member of his race can frown, anyway—and tried again: “How is your government to survive if everyone flees to the Frontier and refuses to pay taxes?”

I could have explained that it just meant we’d conquer a few more alien races and tax ’em up to the eyebrows, but somehow I sensed that wouldn’t elicit the reaction I wanted. So instead I told him that for every one of us who was bold enough to emigrate to the Frontier, there were millions who stayed behind.

“It’s just simple logic,” I explained. “If there weren’t enough people to pay taxes, they’d either incorporate some of the Frontier, or they’d raise taxes.”

“That sounds very reasonable.”

“It is—unless you’re the guy whose taxes they raise.”

“And if you are?”

I shrugged. “Then you head off for the Frontier and probably open up a new world or two, and eventually the government takes it over, and that’s the way the galaxy gets itself civilized.”

“There’s a mathematical purity to that, isn’t there?” he said. “I mean, a certain amount of dissatisfaction is always bound to occur, but as your society is set up it simply leads to expansion, which in turn leads to more government intrusion and hence to more dissatisfaction and more expansion …” He paused. “Why, at this rate, Man should be assimilating Andromeda and the other nearby galaxies any day now!”

“Do you find that threatening?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I find it exciting!”

“Your race has no notion of manifest destiny?”

Well, he didn’t know what the term meant, so I had to explain it to him.

“What a wonderful notion: manifest destiny!” he exclaimed. “I like it. My race thinks only in terms of gaining a few systems here and there, and enjoying a little bloodletting. Nothing as grandiose as your race.”

Well, before long he’d made up his mind to come to the Outpost and claim asylum. I explained to him that there was no one here who could grant it to him, and that if he really wanted asylum he’d have to go into the Monarchy and find some government agency that specialized in defectors, and that given the number of government agencies we had, that could take a couple of lifetimes. I finally convinced him to just come on back to the Outpost with me and get used to Men and freedom and unfettered capitalism in slow easy stages.

We decided to leave the next morning, but as I was cooking us up some eggs and hash browns prior to taking off we suddenly found ourselves under attack from Wordsmith’s countrymen.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” I said, running to the ship.

“Watch out, Max!” he cried.

I looked around and saw an alien infantryman aiming his pulse rifle right at me. I knew as sure as I’m sitting here that I had about half a second of life left to me—and then, just as he fired, Wordsmith leaped in front of me and took the energy ball that I would have sworn had my name on it.

I went a little bit crazy then. I killed the alien with my screecher, then put a gun in each of my three hands and started walking the countryside, screaming at them to come out of hiding and face me. A couple of dozen actually did, and I blew them away, ignoring the few minor flesh wounds they managed to inflict on me. When I’d finally killed them all, I went back to the ship and gave Wordsmith a decent human-type burial.

He was my friend, maybe the best friend I ever had. Lord knows he wasn’t much to look at, and I never did understand his poetry, but he took a shot meant for me, and that’s more than any Man ever did.

The Earth Mother wiped away a tear. “I think that’s beautiful,” she said.

“So do I,” said the Cyborg de Milo. “But I went over to that encampment after I cleaned out the city, and I didn’t find any two dozen dead aliens out in the countryside.”

“Maybe their companions took ’em back and buried ’em,” said Max. “Or maybe the sunlight disintegrated ’em.”

“I notice it didn’t disintegrate the six hundred I killed,” she said dryly.

“Look, that’s my story!” snapped Max. “If you don’t want to believe it, that’s fine with me!”

The Cyborg de Milo shrugged. “It makes no difference to me.”

Max turned to the Bard. “Well? You gonna use it?”

“In the absence of a contradictory version, I suppose I don’t have much of a choice,” he replied. “Besides, Wordsmith makes a wonderful metaphor.”

“He wasn’t a metaphor,” said Max. “He was the ugliest sonuvabitch you ever saw—and the most loyal friend.”

“I suppose you can’t ask much more than that,” allowed the Bard.

“I sure can’t,” said Max.

Big Red and Gravedigger Gaines entered just then.

“You just missed one of Max’s stories,” the Bard informed them.

“How can we ever live with the disappointment?” said Gaines. “Two beers, Reg!”

The two of them walked up to the bar.

“The war over?” Big Red asked me.

“Looks like,” I said.

“Did we win?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Well, then I guess it was worth it.”

“What was?”

“What I had to do to get off Henry IV.”

“You going to tell us about it?” I asked.

“Try to stop him,” said Max wryly.

“I’m kind of dry. Let me just take a little sip of this first,” said Big Red, lifting the huge stein of beer to his lips and downing the entire contents in a single swallow. He wiped his mouth off with his sleeve. “Boy, I’ve missed that!”

“If that’s all you’ve missed, you got some serious problems, son,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.

“We’re not all as single-minded and sex-starved as you, Reverend,” replied Big Red.

“Sure you are,” answered Billy Karma. “You’re just not all as honest and forthcoming about it.”

“I wonder if God’s had any second thoughts about letting you be the one to state His case,” said the Gravedigger.

“Not a chance,” replied the Reverend Billy Karma. He held up the second and third fingers of his gold hand and pressed them tightly together. “Me and God are just like this.”

“It must be a comfort,” said the Gravedigger ironically.

“It does make the occasional sexual rejection more bearable,” admitted the Reverend.

“Occasional?” said Sinderella, laughing aloud.

“‘Let thy women be silent in the House of the Lord’,” quoted Billy Karma.

“In case it’s escaped your notice, this isn’t the House of the Lord,” said Sinderella.

“If I’m here it is.”

“He just wants the women to be silent so they can’t say No to him,” said Max.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Billy Karma. “You know, I never thought of that!”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” said Max.

“Are you ever going to tell us how you escaped from Henry IV?” the Earth Mother asked Big Red.

“When everyone else stops talking,” he answered.

“You could run smack-dab into Eternity before that happens,” suggested Catastrophe Baker. “Just step right in and tell your story.”

“Okay,” said Big Red. “I suppose I might as well.”

The 73-Hour Rasslin’ Match

Truth to tell (began Big Red), I was doing pretty well for the first couple of days I was on Henry IV. I knew Hurricane Smith and his lady were also on the planet, causing havoc a few thousand miles away, which took a little of the pressure off me.

My method was pretty effective. Sneak up behind them in the dead of night and stab ’em before they knew what hit them. I might have kept it up for another few weeks when my knife hit something metal—I still don’t know what it was, maybe an ammunition belt slung around his neck. Anyway, the blade broke off with a loud snap, which wasn’t anywhere near as loud as the alien’s screams. A squad of about a dozen alien soldiers showed up within seconds, and suddenly I was staring down the muzzles of one hell of a lot of alien guns.

“He’s the one who’s been decimating us!” cried the leader. “I want him alive!”

I waited just long enough for his words to register with his troops, and then, figuring no one would disobey orders by killing me, I launched myself at the nearest of them. I’m no Catastrophe Baker, but I was giving a pretty good account of myself, felling aliens right and left, when one of them cracked me on the head with a laser rifle.

When I woke up, I was in a damp underground cell, and one of my arms was chained to a wall. Facing me across the cell was another human, chained to his wall.

“How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“I’ve been better,” I admitted. “Where are we?”

“Under the arena.”

“They’ve got an arena?” I asked. “They didn’t strike me as all that sporting.”

“It was built by a long-dead race,” said my companion. “But our captors have put it to good use.”

He looked familiar, and I kept staring at him, and finally I knew where I’d seen him before. “Hey, aren’t you Backbreaker Barnes?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’ve seen you fight a couple of times,” I said. “I still remember the night you wiped up the floor with Meyer the Maimer.”

“One of my better bouts,” he agreed.

“It was pretty even for a few minutes,” I said. “Then you seemed to go berserk.”

“The sonuvabitch made a comment about my mother, and I just plumb lost my temper.”

“Insulted her, huh?” I said.

“No,” answered Barnes. “He said she was a bright, good-looking woman and a fine cook.” He paused and grimaced. “I hated my mother.”

“Well, I knew he said something.”

He stared at me. “I think I recognize you, too,” he said at last. “Didn’t I see you knock one out of the park against Iron-Arm McPherson?”

“That was a long time ago,” I said.

“I remember it like it was just yesterday,” said Barnes. “You’re …. damn, I can’t remember your name.”

“Rasputin Raskolnikov Secretariat Lenin Man o’War Trotsky at your service,” I said. “You can call me Big Red.”

“Big Red!” he repeated. “That was it. I don’t know how you remember your official handle.”

“It took me a few years to learn it, I can tell you that,” I said.

“Well, Big Red,” he said, “I wish I could say I was glad to see you, but the truth of the matter is that I wish they hadn’t captured you.”

“Thanks for the kind thought,” I said. “But at least we’ve got each other to talk to.”

“Not for long, alas,” said Barnes.

“Oh?”

He nodded his head sadly. “Yeah, I’m afraid one of us is gonna have to kill the other.”

“Why? I’m not mad at you, and you don’t look exceptionally annoyed with me.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” he said. “The aliens get their amusement by taking us to the arena and having us fight against each other.”

“What if we refuse?”

“Then they’ll kill us both.”

“Has this been going on long?” I asked.

“About two weeks,” said Barnes. “Well, sixteen days to be exact.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because they took seventeen of us prisoner.”

“You’ve been killing a comrade a day?” I asked.

“Don’t look so disapproving,” he said. “If I don’t kill them, the aliens will. At least this way I’m still alive, and there’s a chance, however small, that one day I’ll be able to claim my just and terrible vengeance.”

“What if a participant fakes being dead?” I asked.

“They toss the body into the river that runs through the city,” he said. “It’s filled with carnivorous fish that’ll take all the flesh off your bones. If you’re not dead when they throw you in, you will be about ten seconds later.”

“I see.”

“I’ll make it as quick and painless as I can,” he promised me.

“I appreciate the thought,” I said. “But I was kind of planning on making it quick and painless for you.”

“For me?” he said with a laugh. “I’m Backbreaker Barnes!”

“And I’m Big Red,” I said. I was going to throw back my head and laugh like Barnes did, but I had this feeling that nothing would come out, so I just stared at him.

“Look,” he said. “If you put up a fight, I’m going to have to soften you up for the kill. I’ll probably have to break a couple of your arms and legs, and maybe bust your ribcage with a bear hug. It’d go a lot easier with you if you’d just let me give your head a sharp twist and be done with it.” He paused. “I swear I’ll always honor your memory.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to oblige you, Backbreaker,” I said. “It’s just that as an athlete, I was taught to always give my best. The paying customers deserve it.”

“We don’t have any paying customers,” he pointed out. “Just godless aliens.”

“Just the same, I’m going to have to give it my best shot.”

“It’s your decision.”

“And if you feel yourself weakening,” I continued, “let me know and I’ll end it just as painlessly as I can.”

“What do you know about killing blows?” he said contemptuously.

“I’m a quick study,” I said. “Especially when my life is on the line.”

“You ever do any freehand fighting, professionally or in college?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I wrestled for a couple of semesters to keep in shape between track and baseball seasons.”

“Yeah?” he said. Suddenly he smiled. “You know, maybe we could put on a real show for these bastards.”

“What have you got in mind?”

“If we take turns throwing each other around the ring, and try some real crowd-pleasing holds, maybe they’ll like it so much that they’ll want an encore … and they can’t have an encore if one of us is dead.”

“What the hell,” I said. “It’s worth a try. And it beats trying to kill each other.”

“I wish we weren’t chained to the walls, so we could practice a bit,” said Barnes.

“Well, maybe we can just discuss it,” I said. “You know, kind of create a scenario, so we know who throws who when.”

“Why not?” he said enthusiastically.

So we fell to it, choreographing every move, every throw, every hold. We didn’t want to hurt each other, so we devised ways to make the aliens think we were gouging out each other’s eyes and banging each other’s heads against the ring support posts when we were just pretending to do so.

We figured we could keep it up for maybe an hour or two, at which time we were dead sure that the aliens would be having such a good time that they’d insist on a rematch, which meant the two combatants would have to be kept alive for another day.

Well, they gave us some slop to eat for dinner—as food it wasn’t much, but as gruel goes it was probably better than most—and we fell asleep shortly afterward. Then it was morning, and they unhooked us from the walls and dragged us up a long ramp, and pretty soon we found ourselves in the middle of a huge arena, with maybe a thousand aliens in attendance.

One alien walked into the middle of the ring with us (I call it a ring, but it was on ground level and didn’t have any ropes), and signaled the crowd to be quiet. Then he turned to us.

“You have no weapons, and there are no rules. The survivor gets taken back to his cell.” He backed away from us. “Let the battle commence!”

I charged Barnes, and let him throw me with a flying mare. The aliens had never seen anything like that, and they screamed their approval.

I got to my feet, closed with him, and gave him a hip toss. He flew across the ring, and the crowd went wild.

Well, we spent about an hour taking turns throwing each other all the hell over the ring. Whenever we’d get tired, one of us would put a headlock or a body scissors on the other. We’d scream like we were in terrible pain, but actually it didn’t hurt at all, and it gave us a chance to rest.

“How long do you figure we’re got to keep this up?” I asked during one of the times he was giving me a fake bear hug.

“Beats me,” he said. “I was hoping they’d have broken it up already.”

They didn’t show any sign of breaking us up, so we kept at it. By the fourth hour we’d run through all our choreography and started making things up as they occurred to us. I gave him a body slam, and he writhed in agony, so I knelt down to see if I’d actually broken anything.

“I’m fine,” he whispered. “But I learned that if you land with your arms and legs splayed, it makes a hell of a noise and makes the crowd think you’re all busted up.”

“Let me try,” I whispered, so he climbed painfully to his feet and slammed me, and it turned out he was dead right, and we spent the next half hour body-slamming each other.

The crowd started getting bored, so I invented the piledriver, and he invented the figure-four grapevine, and I invented the stepover toehold, and he invented the claw, and I invented the forearm smash to the jaw, and he invented the rabbit punch, and the next time we looked up it was morning again and we’d been at it for a full day and night.

“How are you holding up?” he asked as he applied a half-Nelson to me.

“I’m getting a little hungry,” I said.

“Well,” said Barnes, “if you’re hungry, and I’m hungry, then they must be getting hungry. All we have to do is outlast ’em.”

We kept at it another day and night, and by now the audience was getting kind of restless, either from pangs of hunger or unanswered calls of nature. But they had also become incredibly partisan, so much so that when Barnes threw me into the second row some of the aliens began pummeling me and sticking me with sharp objects until I could get back into the ring.

“They hate me!” I whispered as I invented the hammerlock and put it on him.

“Half of them were booing me when I tossed you out there,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “Let me throw you into them and let’s see what happens.”

So I did, and what happened is that the half of the crowd that hadn’t bothered me began hitting and kicking Barnes.

“You know,” I said when he’d crawled back into the ring and we were taking turns pretending to stomp on each other’s fingers, “there’s a hell of a profit in this sport we’re inventing. I think these aliens would rather watch us than fight the war.”

“You’ve got a point,” he said, grabbing my foot and twisting it. As I fell to the floor he said, “I figure we’ve been going at it for almost two and a half days. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need to visit a bathroom pretty soon now.”

“I don’t think they’ll let us leave,” I said, pretending to stick a thumb in his eye.

“We’ll never know if we don’t ask,” he said, staggering over to the announcer. He jabbered at the alien, who seemed to consider what he said, then entered the ring.

“The combatants will take a ten-minute nourishment break,” he said.

We were led off to the dungeon from which we had come.

“I don’t want a nourishment break!” complained Barnes.

“I know,” I said, “but it probably sounds better than saying he was stopping the fight so you could take a shit.”

We were back ten minutes later, and we went at it tooth and nail, but truth to tell we were running out of inventions, and I knew we couldn’t keep it up much longer, especially since we hadn’t had any sleep.

When we’d been at it for just under seventy-three hours, I collapsed as Barnes swung at my head and missed by a good two inches. He knelt down next to me and pretended to pummel me.

“You got to make it look better,” he said. “Everyone in the first two rows has got to know I missed you.”

“Hell, the force of the wind from a missed blow could knock me down right about now,” I answered. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep fighting, Backbreaker. Maybe you’d better snap my neck right now.”

“We started together, and we’re going to finish together,” he said. He sneaked a look around while gnawing on my ear. “I got it,” he said.

“What?”

“See that big box along the back wall?”

“What about it?” I asked.

“I think that controls all the lights in here,” he said. “What if I was to throw you into the crowd, and while you were climbing onto your feet you swiped a burner or a blaster and blew the box away? We might escape in the confusion.”

“How far do you think we could get, two unarmed men on an alien world?” I asked, bringing my knee up into his stomach.

“There’s a bunch of corridors below the arena, on the dungeon level,” he said as he doubled over. “One of them leads outside the walls of the city, pretty near where you left your ship.”

“It just might work,” I agreed.

So, with that, he got up, grabbed me by the hair, lifted me high over his head, and threw me into the crowd. I landed three rows deep, and managed to get my hands on a burner as I was disentangling myself.

I fired it at the box, and the arena was plunged into total darkness. Suddenly I felt Barnes’ hand on my arm, tugging me to my left.

“This way!” he whispered.

I followed him, and a minute later we were racing down the underground corridor. Some of the aliens tried to chase us, but even after seventy-three hours in the ring we were too fast for them.

We made it to my ship, and here I am.

“So where’s Backbreaker Barnes?” asked Max. “I thought you two were going to go into the phony rasslin’ business.”

“He said he felt too much like an actor and not enough like an athlete, so we parted ways,” explained Big Red with a shrug. “But I still think there’s money to be made staging rasslin’ matches (which I prefer to think of as insincere rather than phony), and I aim to get rich proving it as soon as I find the right partner.” He looked over at Catastrophe Baker. “How about you?”

“I still got a few years of heroing left in this old body,” answered Baker, “but I appreciate the offer, and I’ll sure consider it once I’m too old to rescue innocent damsels from fates more interesting than death.”

“You really think people would waste their money watching phony wrestling?” asked the Gravedigger.

“Sure, why not?” responded Big Red.

“But sooner or later they’d figure out that it was all an act.”

“Hell, people pay to go to the theater, don’t they? Are you telling me they really think that’s Hamlet up there?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“You’re right about that,” said Big Red. “You go to a play two nights in a row, you know exactly how the second performance is going to go. But come to my new profession two nights in a row and you’ve got no idea what you might see the second night.”

“Well,” said the Gravedigger, “maybe aliens would pay to be flim-flammed like that, but not real Men.”

“It’s been my experience that it’s easier to flimflam real Men than just about anything else in the galaxy,” said the Earth Mother.

“Amen,” added Sinderella devoutly.

“Did someone mention flim-flamming?” said Bet-a-World O’Grady, entering the Outpost.

“Reg, give the man a drink,” I said. “How did it go?”

“Not too bad, all things considered,” said O’Grady, walking up to the bar.

“What particular things do we have to consider?” asked Max in bored tones.

“Flim-flamming, of course,” said O’Grady. “That’s what everyone was talking about, right?”

“Some of us were just drinking quietly and hoping they’d all shut up and go away,” said Max.

“It figures an alien took a shot meant for you,” said the Reverend Billy Karma disgustedly. “No human being would be that stupid.”

“Sometimes I’m amazed at how stupid human beings can be,” said Max, staring straight at Billy Karma, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair for a moment and then pulled out his copy of the Good Book and buried his nose in it.

“So,” said Catastrophe Baker to Bet-a-World O’Grady, “you got some particular insight about flim-flamming?”

“Tons of ’em,” answered O’Grady.

“Care to share any of ’em with us?”

“How’s about the most recent one?”

“Okay,” said Baker, leaning back on his chair. “How about it?”

The Night Bet-a-World O’Grady Met Nick the Greek

You’d never know it to look at me (said O’Grady), but I’m not a fighting man.

“You’re kidding, right?” guffawed Max.

“Getting in your interruptions a little early, ain’t you?” said Catastrophe Baker ominously, and Max promptly shut up.

I wasn’t much of a fighting man even when I was thirty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter (said O’Grady). It’s just not my style.

So when we all left the Outpost to confront the aliens, I figured I’d meet them on the battlefield where I’m at my best—a gaming table.

I sent word to the aliens that I’d meet their best gambler at the casino on Mozart II, which I figured was far enough away from the action so that we wouldn’t be disturbed by any bombs or invading armies or anything.

I got there a bit ahead of him, checked out the lay of the land (no offense, ladies), and waited for my opponent. He showed up a few hours later with a trio of bodyguards. I couldn’t pronounce his name, so he let me call him anything I wanted, and I just naturally hit on Nick the Greek, since I figured this might be the most important opponent I ever faced.

Well, we sat down to play, and I tried to talk him into a little Face-Up Draw Poker, but the sneaky bastard had heard of it and insisted that he go first, so of course I lost.

“What were the stakes?” interrupted the Bard.

“He put up all his money and promised to get his soldiers off Catherine de Valois, and I put up all my money, all my worlds—but of course I didn’t own any at the time—and I agreed to sit out the war in one of his prison cells.”

“So you spent the rest of the war in prison?”

“Not exactly.”

You see (continued O’Grady), Nick the Greek was pissed as hell when he found out I didn’t have title to any worlds. He kept accusing me of lying to him, whereas I kept pointing out that I had merely misrepresented my holdings, which is a whole lot different from lying, though he never quite understood the fine dividing line.

I could see he wasn’t happy, so I tried to come up with another bet, and suddenly I remembered that I owned a pair of casinos out on the Rim and another one in the Spiral Arm. I hadn’t visited either of ’em in years, but the titles were in my ship’s safe, so I decided to make him another bet.

“What is it this time?” he asked, and I could tell he was just waiting for me to name some scam he’d heard of.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “We’ll get a fresh deck and break it open. I won’t touch it. You shuffle it until you’re happy with it.”

“Then what?”

“Then you put it down between us and we start drawing cards, one apiece. My bet is that you’ll turn a court card face up before I do.” I paused to let him consider it, then added: “I’ll put up all three of my casinos plus my ship against all the money you’re holding.”

“But that’s just the luck of the draw,” he said, obviously disappointed that there wasn’t any ruse attached to it. “Why not simply flip a coin and be done with it?”

“I might not win with a coin,” I said. “I never lose at cards.”

“You just lost five minutes ago,” he noted.

“That’s because I tried to film-flam you,” I said. “It was unethical, and I got what I deserved. But this is an honest bet.”

“I don’t think I’m interested,” he said. “I’ve already won all your money. Why should I risk it in an even bet?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you odds.”

For just a second I saw him smile before he put his poker face back on, and I knew that I had him.

“You have no more money,” said Nick the Greek. “What kind of odds can you give me?”

“Tell me what you want,” I said.

“All right,” said Nick. “I’ll bet everything I have against everything you’ve mentioned … and, in addition, if I win, you must help me kill everyone in the Outpost and support my claim to its ownership in a court of law.”

“Done,” I said.

“What do you mean, Done?” I yelled. “You were offering to kill me and the Bard and probably Einstein!”

“It was a con,” replied O’Grady with a smile. “You know the old saying about how you can’t con an honest man? It goes double for aliens.”

I watched Nick the Greek shuffle the cards (said O’Grady), and since I’m as handy at stacking a deck as he is, I saw that the first picture card was the jack of spades, and that it was going to come up ninth.

“Since I went first at Face-Up Draw,” said Nick, “I will allow you the privilege of going first in this game.”

I could tell he was just waiting for me to refuse, which is how he’d know I had spotted him rigging the deck, and the second I made a fuss about it, he’d cancel the bet, keep my money, and stick me in a military prison. So I agreed to pull first.

Now, along with his three bodyguards, there were about two dozen Men in the casino, as well as a couple of Canphorites and a Mollutei. I waited until they all crowded around to watch and explained the wager to them so they’d know what they were watching. Then I pulled a three, and placed it face-up in front of me.

Nick pulled a six and let everyone see it, then placed it face-up in front of him. I pulled another three and turned it up, Nick did the same with an eight, I pulled a deuce, he pulled a five, I pulled a ten, and he pulled a four.

Now he and I both knew the next card was a jack. I reached out, peeked at it as I began pulling it, and immediately placed it face-down in front of me.

“Hey, what’s going on?” demanded Nick.

“Nothing,” I said politely. “Your draw.”

“What have you got there?”

“A nine,” I said. “Your draw.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Nick. He reached across the table and turned the jack face-up. “Aha!” he said triumphantly.

I turned to the nearest bystander. “What did he just do?” I demanded.

“He turned over the jack of spades,” said the man.

“What did you see?” I asked another.

“Same thing. He turned up your jack.”

“And what was the bet?”

“That he’d pull a picture card before you did.”

“No!” I said. “The exact bet was that he’d turn up a picture card before I did—and that’s just what he did.”

Nick screamed bloody murder, but there were more than twenty Men on my side, all of them carrying weapons, and his three bodyguards were no match for them. So, after spending a futile half-hour trying to find someone to support his claim that he’d been flim-flammed (which of course he had, but legally), he paid off his bet and stormed out.

As for me, I stuck around long enough to lose just about everything I’d won, and then came back here to find out how the war was going. You can imagine my disappointment when I learned it was over before I could make a bet on it.

“Fascinating!” said the Bard, scribbling furiously.

“Hey,” said O’Grady sternly, “I don’t want that little ruse to see print before I’m dead. I damned near lost everything because they were wise to Face-Up Draw. I plan to get rich on this one.”

“The people who buy Willie’s book ain’t likely to sit across from you at a gaming table,” said Max.

“Just the same, I want it kept quiet while I’m still alive.”

“We could kill you now and solve everything,” suggested Max.

“I can’t help wondering just why we fought this war,” said O’Grady. “It didn’t make me any richer and it sure as hell didn’t make you any pleasanter.”

“Every now and then folks just have to burn off energy,” said Catastrophe Baker.

“There’s better ways of going about it,” said the Reverend Billy Karma. “That’s why God invented two sexes.”

“You better check your biology textbooks again, Reverend,” said Big Red. “There’s worlds where the Good Lord created up to five sexes.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said Billy Karma.

“I’ve seen it,” said Big Red.

“Yeah?” said Billy Karma. “Well, I was talking about it with God just the other day, and He says He invented up to two and then stopped. Anything with more sexes than that was created by Satan just to confuse you.”

“If you think it confuses me, you ought to see them,” said Big Red with a chuckle.

“Might be an interesting study in group dynamics,” said O’Grady. “Put ’em all together on a cold night and—WOW!”

“Put ’em all together and wow?” repeated Big Red with a puzzled expression.

“The WOW! had nothing to do with the subject at hand,” said O’Grady as Silicon Carny walked in. “Well, only peripherally, anyway.”

She was dressed all in white in an outfit that fit like a second skin—not that there was anything wrong with her first skin, mind you.

“I haven’t seen you in white before,” noted Max as she undulated over to an empty table and sat down. “Are we being virginal?”

“We’re being a nurse,” she replied. “Or at least we were until recently.”

“I didn’t know there were any hospitals in the Henrys,” I said.

“There was an alien hospital on Elizabeth of York,” said the Earth Mother. She turned to Silicon Carny. “But I didn’t see you there.”

Which meant she hadn’t been there. Seeing Silicon Carny wasn’t a sight people tended to forget, even female people.

“When we all left the Outpost,” said Silicon Carny, “I figured that most of you were heroes and warriors, but that my particular talents lay elsewhere.”

“I’ll vouch for that!” said the Reverend Billy Karma devoutly.

“So I made my way to Trajan III,” she continued, ignoring the Reverend’s obvious enthusiasm, “which was the nearest planet with a military hospital, and volunteered my services as a nurse.”

“How did you make out?” asked the Earth Mother.

“Okay, at least at the beginning,” answered Silicon Carny. “My supervisor said I gave dying men the will to live again, just by walking past their beds.”

Even Max, who jumped on almost anything anyone said, didn’t seem to have a problem accepting that. He just nodded his head as if to say: Of course they’d want to stay alive now that they could see what they were fighting for.

“So how come you’re not still there?” asked O’Grady.

“I was asked to leave.”

“By who?” asked Mix disbelievingly.

“By my supervisor.”

“Why?”

“Evidently eight other nurses saw me and began showing signs of terminal depression.”

“I can believe it,” said Max.

“Well, I, for one, am thrilled to welcome you back,” said O’Grady.

“I’ll second that!” shouted the Reverend Billy Karma.

Pretty soon just about every man in the place was echoing that sentiment, and then the Reverend offered to buy a round of drinks for the house, and Catastrophe Baker matched him, and then even Max bought drinks for everyone, and it occurred to me that I could make a healthy profit just by paying her to hang around while all the men tried to impress her.

Once all the drinks had been passed out and things had settled down again, the Reverend Billy Karma walked over and seated himself next to Silicon Carny.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to cut the cards?” he said. “First one to turn over a picture card loses.”

“What are the stakes?” she asked.

“We’ll think of something when the time comes,” he promised her.

“Whatever odds he’s offering, I’ll triple ’em for the same bet,” said Big Red.

“I’ll quintuple them,” said Max.

“Why do I think the result is a foregone conclusion?” asked Silicon Carny.

Billy Karma smiled at her. “Is this a face that would cheat an innocent semi-virgin like you?”

“That’s it!” she declared, getting up and moving to another table. “No bet.”

“By the way,” said the Bard, “did anyone run into Faraway Jones during the fighting?”

“Why?” asked Baker.

“I’m just trying to keep tabs on everyone so I know what to put in the book.”

“I never saw him.”

“Me neither,” said Hurricane Smith.

“Nor me,” said Big Red.

“Come to think of it,” added Nicodemus Mayflower, “has anyone seen Argyle, or Hellfire Van Winkle?”

“I spoke to Argyle via subspace radio just before he was due to land on Henry V,” offered the Gravedigger. “I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Who else is missing?” asked the Earth Mother.

I looked around the room. “Sahara del Rio,” I said.

“And Little Mike Picasso,” said Max.

“I haven’t heard from Achmed of Alphard since just before he set his ship down on Henry VIII,” said the Cyborg de Milo.

“I was on Henry VIII, and I didn’t see him there,” said the Gravedigger. He shrugged. “Still, it’s a big planet.”

“I tried to warn him off,” said the Cyborg. “He wasn’t the survivor type.”

“We can’t all be heroes,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” replied Big Red. “That’s a mighty impressive alien ship parked out there where your front lawn would be if you could grow grass on this dirtball. Somebody must have done something heroic or there’d be an alien tending bar right now.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Catastrophe Baker. “You’re a writer, a saloonkeeper, a robot bartender, and a blind man. How did the four of you manage to hold them off?”

I turned to the Bard. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”

“You tell them,” he answered. “I’ll be too busy writing it down.”

“But you already know what happened,” I said. “You were here. Why wait until now to record it?”

“Nothing happens until someone says it does,” he replied. “You’re elected.”

“That’s silly.”

“That’s objectivity,” he shot back.

“Are you guys gonna argue all night, or is someone gonna tell us what happened?” demanded Baker.

“All right, all right,” I said. “Keep your shirt on.”

How Einstein Saved the Outpost

I don’t know exactly when the ship touched down (I said). I just know that one minute the four of us were alone in the Outpost, and the next minute we had company.

There were maybe thirty or forty of them, and our side was only a bartender, an historian, a blind-deaf-mute genius, and me—so I figured it was pretty much up to me to save the day.

I didn’t think matching laser blasts or energy pulses with the aliens was the most sensible way to defend the Outpost, so I picked up the molecular imploder that I keep hidden behind the bar. I’d never had occasion to use it before, but I keep it in good working order. Besides, it was the only formidable weapon I owned. It’s the kind of thing that can turn a thousand aliens and their ship into jelly in a nanosecond.

Anyway, I aimed it at the approaching soldiers, flipped off the safety, and fired—and nothing happened. All the readouts told me it was charged and working, but it sure as hell wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do.

I tried again, and again there was no hum of power, no destruction of the aliens, no nothing. So I asked Einstein what was wrong, and after giving the matter some thought he figured out that the aliens had some kind of atomic neutralizer, some device that could stop any atomic-powered weapon from working.

The problem is, he told me that when they were maybe a hundred yards away. They’d seen me try to fire the imploder and knew their neutralizer was working, so they didn’t spread out in any kind of attack formation. They just laughed at me and kept right on walking toward the front door.

I told Einstein that if he was going to save the day, he had less than a minute to do it, and he promised to get working on it right away.

Well, they got to within eighty yards, then sixty, then forty. I kept trying to fire the imploder, and I kept getting no result.

“Einstein!” I yelled. “Either think of a solution in ten seconds, or your thinking days are through!”

Eight seconds later he tapped out his instructions on his computer, and the Bard relayed them to me.

“‘Move twenty feet to your left and fire again,’” read the Bard.

It sounded like the stupidest idea I’d ever heard, but I didn’t have time to argue, so I ran twenty feet away and fired again—through the window right behind Sinderella’s head—and this time, the imploder worked and the whole alien squadron melted right into the ground.

I took the computer back from the Bard and told Einstein that his idea had worked. “How the hell did you figure it out?” I asked. “And more to the point, what did you figure out?”

“Your weapon uses atomic energy, does it not?” replied Einstein.

“Yes,” I answered.

“And the basic principle of atomic energy is E=MC2, correct?”

“To the best of my knowledge, yes.”

“Now, the aliens had an atomic neutralizer which prevented your weapon from functioning.”

“That’s what you told me.”

“Well, as you can plainly see, that was the answer.”

“What was the answer?” I asked. “How did you know the imploder would work if I moved twenty feet to my left?”

“You could have moved twenty feet to your right, I suppose,” answered Einstein. “But there’s one more letter in ‘right’ than in ‘left’, and I was given to understand that time was of the essence when I wrote my instructions to you.”

“You’re not answering me,” I said. “How did you know the weapon would work if I moved in either direction?”

“As my great-great-great-et-cetera Uncle Albert pointed out, relativity may merely be a local phenomenon. You circumvented the neutralizer by becoming twenty feet less local.”

“In a long lifetime of listening to stupid stories, that’s the stupidest I’ve ever heard!” said Max.

“You think so?” asked Nicodemus Mayflower thoughtfully. “I’ve heard lots that were dumber. Some of ’em right here in the Outpost.”

“Uh … I don’t want to be the one to criticize,” said Willie the Bard, “but that’s not quite the way it happened.”

“It is now,” I replied.

“But—”

“Einstein didn’t see what happened and Reggie’s not a talker,” I said. “I figure that makes me the only eyewitness to history.”

“Just a minute,” said the Bard. “I was here, too!”

“You’re just the historian,” I said. “Without me telling the story, nothing happened.”

“The man’s got a point,” said Catastrophe Baker. “After all, they’re your rules.”

“You’d rather have me write his version than the real one?” demanded the Bard.

“His version is the real one,” said Baker. “Or at least it will be once you write it down.”

Einstein tapped out a message on the computer, which Big Red promptly read aloud to us. “He says he finds Tomahawk’s version rather charming, and he hopes no nuclear physicist ever reads it.”

The Bard stood up and walked over to the bar. “I appeal to you, Reggie—tell them Tomahawk’s lying.”

Reggie didn’t say a word. He just kept washing dirty glasses, and when he was done with that, he began wiping the bar.

“I guess you don’t appeal to him after all,” said Max, and everyone guffawed.

“All right, you win,” said the Bard, returning to his table and his notebook. “That’s how Einstein saved the Outpost.”

“By God, if I’d known history was this much fun, I might have stayed in school!” boomed Catastrophe Baker.

“When did you quit?” asked Big Red.

“When I was about eight or nine,” answered Baker.

“They didn’t try to stop you?”

“Of course they tried,” said Baker. He shook his head sadly. “Poor bastards. Still, I suppose most of ’em are out of the hospital by now.”

“You knew even then that you were going to be a hero?” asked the Earth Mother.

“I don’t know about that,” he admitted. “But I sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to be a scholar.”

“He had his whole future mapped before he was ten,” said Big Red ruefully. “And here it took me almost half my life to decide to be a professional rassler.”

“What’s the difference between being a wrestler and a rassler?” asked Silicon Carny.

“Wrestlers get hurt. Rasslers get rich. Or at least that’s the way I’ve got it doped out.”

“I can teach you all about rasslin’,” said the Reverend Billy Karma to Silicon Carny. “Just step out back with me and I’ll show you some nifty holds.”

“And I’ll show you some kicks, scratches, and knife thrusts,” said Silicon Carny.

“I admire your sense of humor,” said Billy Karma.

“Do you see me smiling?” she asked grimly.

“Leave her alone, Reverend,” said Baker. “Or ain’t you had enough body parts cut off lately?”

“You mean these?” said Billy Karma, holding up his gold and silver hands. “It was a minor inconvenience, all done for the greater glory of God.”

“Yeah?”

“Right.” He turned to the Bard. “Get your pen out, Willie. This story’ll uplift the hell out of you. You wouldn’t want to miss writing it down.”

An Undefeated Spiritual Tag-Team

Now, I got nothing against war (said the Reverend Billy Karma). It’s one of the best ways of getting rid of godless heathen and working off a little excess sexual energy, and certainly God is in favor of war, since He’s been battling with old Satan for the better part of a zillion years, give or take a century.

But on the other hand, I’m no warrior. I don’t expect Catastrophe Baker to be able to quote the Good Book and I don’t figure Three-Gun Max can please the ladies half as well as I can, but I can’t do some of the things they can do, neither. And butchering an alien army single-handed happens to be one of them.

But just as there’s more than one way to skin a cat (which is probably why we don’t have a hell of a lot of cats left at this late date), there’s more than one way to win a war. So I flew off to Henry VI, which is one of the worlds where God, in His haste, forgot to install running water, electricity, or breathable air, and decided to confront the aliens that were holed up there.

I landed in a pretty barren spot, but nonetheless managed to find their encampment a few hours later. We exchanged a few pleasantries: I found out that they called the planet Janblixtl, and they found out that I called them Golem, which is what they looked like.

Just as I thought we were getting on pretty well, they pulled their guns and pointed them at me and demanded to know what I was doing on Janblixtl. I figured there was no sense lying, so I explained that I had come to convert ’em all.

“We have our own God,” said the leader. “Why should we worship yours?”

“Mine’s bigger and stronger and smarter, and He’ll show you how to get more women,” I explained.

“Our God created the universe,” said the leader.

“Yeah?” I said. “Well, my God created your God.”

“Blasphemy!” he said furiously. “Our God is the lord of all creation!”

“My God is the lord of this and every other universe from the beginning to the end of time,” I said. “Not only that, but He’s a four handicap golfer and He ain’t missed a free throw in more than fifty-seven centuries.”

This didn’t impress them quite as much as I had hoped it would, and before I knew it they’d marched me into one of their Bubbles, where we all took off our helmets and spacesuits.

“Now,” said the leader, “what is your real reason for being here, Billy Karma?”

“Just what I told you,” I said. “I’m here to bring you guys over to Jesus.”

“Jesus? Who’s that?”

“Well, it’s a little complicated for the uneducated layman to understand, but Jesus is God’s son.”

“Okay,” said the leader. “Bring Jesus to Janblixtl and we’ll negotiate directly with him.”

“That ain’t possible,” I said. “He’s been dead for over eight thousand years.”

“You worship a dead man?”

“Well, he wasn’t exactly a man,” I explained.

“Was he a god?”

“Not exactly.”

“This is all very confusing,” said the leader. “How did he die?”

“He was crucified.”

“Explain please.”

So I told them how crucifixion worked, and I saw them all nodding approvingly.

“See?” said the leader to a couple of his soldiers. “I told you there was much we could learn from the enemy. I trust one of you was taking notes.” He turned back to me. “I hope you see the error of your ways, Reverend Billy Karma. Your God could not even protect His own son, whereas our God has helped us defeat your Navy.”

“My God is busy overseeing the Monarchy and the stock market and certain select sporting events,” I shot back. “You’re such a minor pain in the ass that He ain’t even noticed you yet. But when He does, you’ll know who’s the boss of the universe.”

The leader stared at me for a long moment, and just when I thought he was going to agree with me and apologize for going to war, he said: “I think our Department of Propaganda would be most appreciative if you were to renounce your God and swear your eternal allegiance to ours.”

“Never!” I roared.

“We can have our holo cameras here in ten minutes.”

“Bring all the cameras you want,” I said. “Me and God are an undefeated spiritual tag-team.”

“I beg your pardon?” he said.

“You heard me!” I shot right back at him. “We’ll wipe up the floor with you. We’ll take you in straight falls. We’ll visit you with floods and plagues and pestilence and kill every firstborn son. So you just watch what you say to me.”

“You refuse to renounce your God?” he said.

“Absolutely!”

“Even if I were to dismember you for refusing?”

“Cut away everything you want,” I said. “They’re just corporeal objects anyway. You can’t cut my immoral soul.”

“Don’t you mean you’re immortal soul?” he asked.

“That, too!” I said.

“You probably think that I’m not going to do it, that it’s just an empty threat.”

“I hope it is, because I’ve grown kind of attached to my appendages, but it makes no difference—nothing will ever make me turn my back on God, because I know He’ll never turn His back on me.”

“An interesting hypothesis,” he said. “I think we shall put it to the test.”

He aimed his pistol at my hand.

“Wait a minute!” I said.

“What is it?” he asked, looking disappointed. “Are you renouncing your God already, before I get to shoot you even once?”

“No,” I said. “But ain’t we gonna wait for the holo cameras?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “The citizenry back home aren’t interested in watching your incredibly brutal and painful dismemberment. They only want the end result—your acceptance of our God.”

He aimed the gun again.

“You’re forgetting something!” I said desperately.

“What?” He checked his pistol. “Did I leave the safety mechanism on?”

“You’re forgetting that I don’t speak your lingo, so even if I did renounce my God, which I will never do, your people couldn’t understand me anyway.”

“We’ll translate,” he said. “And now, if there are no further delays …”

I was still trying to think of one when he blew my left hand off.

“Have you anything to say?” asked the leader.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It hurts like hell!”

“That’s all?”

“No, I got something more to say.”

“Certainly. What is it?”

“Can somebody lend me a bandage?”

“You have courage, Billy Karma, I’ll grant you that,” said the leader. He aimed and blew my other hand off.

“Sonuvabitch, that smarts!” I said.

“Are you ready to swear fealty to our God yet?”

“Keep shooting, you rotten bastard!” I said.

So he did, which is how I lost both my feet.

“Lord,” I said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Then I added: “But make ’em suffer a bit first.”

“You really believe that shit, don’t you?” said the leader.

“You bet your alien ass I do!”

“Any deity who can inspire that kind of loyalty must be quite admirable,” he said. “Tell me about Him.”

“I’ll be happy to,” I replied. “But could we staunch the flow of blood first, so I don’t pass out before I come to the good parts?”

He agreed, and summoned some medics, and while they were working on me I started extolling God’s virtues, and the Spirit must really have been with me, because before they’d finished patching me up I’d converted the leader, his soldiers, and all the doctors.

I stuck around long enough to convert all the rest of them and then, having done my part for God and the war effort, I stopped off just long enough to pick up some new hands and feet and then high-tailed it back here to the Outpost.

“God sure is lucky to have you on His side,” said Max sardonically.

“Truer words were never spoken,” agreed Billy Karma.

“I don’t know how He managed to get through the day before you showed up on the scene,” continued Max.

“It was rough,” said Billy Karma. “That’s probably why He lost control of Himself and had an illicit affair with Mary.”

“You mean the Virgin Mary?”

“Well, she was a virgin when He met her anyway.” He paused thoughtfully. “Hell, if I wasn’t around to take the pressure off Him, He’d probably be propositioning Silicon Carny this very minute.”

“I doubt it,” said Big Red.

“Why?” said Billy Karma. “His taste is at least as good as mine, and that’s who I’d like to sneak off with.”

“Thank heaven for small favors,” said Sinderella with a sigh of relief.

Billy Karma looked over at her. “I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. “I hate to have you suffer the pangs of rejection.”

“I suppose I can learn to live with it.”

“If it’ll boost your ego any, we can do a little preliminary missionary work while I’m waiting for Silicon Carny to come to her senses.”

“You touch her,” said Nicodemus Mayflower, “and I’ll cut off the one appendage the aliens seem to have overlooked.”

Billy Karma crossed his legs and squeaked like a mouse. “What a thing to say!”

“You heard me.”

“Call his bluff,” said Max with an evil grin.

“Right,” chimed in Catastrophe Baker. “If worst comes to worst, you can replace what he cuts off with an all-diamond version. Not only will it go with your gold and silver hands, but it’ll never go soft.”

Pretty soon everyone in the Outpost was urging the Reverend Billy Karma to lay a friendly hand on Sinderella, just to see what happened next. For a moment it looked like he was considering it, but finally he shrugged and shook his head.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “It’s obvious that she’s attached to this homely young man, God knows why when she could have an irresistible man of the cloth like me, and I’d hate to have to maim and maybe kill him if he attacked me. No, I think I’d best leave young love to blossom.” He winked at Sinderella. “But if you ever get tired of young love and start yearning for mature, highly-skilled love, you know where to go.”

She grinned. “To Catastrophe Baker, right?”

Everybody laughed at that. Everybody except the Reverend Billy Karma, that is. He just sat there and frowned, as if he couldn’t understand how she could be so completely misguided.

“You know, if you want to get a woman of any kind, you’re going to have to work on your approach and your timing,” said the Earth Mother.

“And your looks and your manners,” added Silicon Carny.

“And your clothes and your language and your personal hygiene,” Sinderella chimed in.

“That could take years!” protested Billy Karma.

“Then it’ll take years,” said Nicodemus Mayflower. “You know what they say: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

“The hell there ain’t,” said Billy Karma. “Tomahawk passes them out every day.”

“Just stay your sweet loveable self,” said Max, still grinning. “I wouldn’t know what to do if you became all dandified like they’re suggesting.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” demanded Nicodemus Mayflower pugnaciously. “Don’t you have a flock to shepherd?”

“My church is the galaxy,” said Billy Karma with an expansive wave of his hand. “And every sentient being is my parishioner.” He paused, then added: “Especially the ones with the big boobs.”

“You’re about as subtle as a supernova,” said Max.

“I learned from an expert,” Billy Karma shot back. “Or would you rather have had the Little Pop than the Big Bang?”

“Makes no difference to me,” said Max. “I slept right through it.”

“Philistine!” muttered Billy Karma, concentrating once again on his drink.

“The way he talks, you’d think Men had a monopoly on Philistines,” said the Earth Mother.

“Don’t they?” asked Baker.

“Certainly not. Do you think you’re the only race where the male of the species is ill-mannered, unprincipled, rapacious, and otherwise disgusting?”

“I never gave it much thought,” he admitted.

“Well, I assure you you’re not.”

“So who’s worse?” asked Baker.

“I didn’t say anyone was worse,” answered the Earth Mother. “Just that you’re not alone.”

“Okay, then, who’s giving us a run for our money?”

“Most recently?” she asked.

A Hospital is Not a Home

As you can tell by looking at me (began the Earth Mother), I’m not built for battle. Hell, I wasn’t built for battle thirty years ago, when I looked a lot more like Sinderella.

So I decided that I’d volunteer as a nurse at the alien hospital on Henry VII’s moon, Elizabeth of York. I figured that my best bet to help the war effort was to learn something about the aliens’ anatomy, something I could pass on to Catastrophe and Hurricane and the rest of you.

It turns out they weren’t all that different from us.

“They sure as hell looked different,” said Big Red.

“And they had more of a taste for sadism than any Men I’ve met,” added the Reverend Billy Karma. “Except maybe for Baker and Smith and Gaines and Max and the Cyborg lady.”

You’re mistaking social differences for physical differences (continued the Earth Mother). But as a matter of fact, there was one important social difference.

I saw an alien soldier who’d been all shot up pinch a nurse as she walked by. I waited until all the doctors and nurses had left the ward, and then I approached him.

“I couldn’t help noticing what you did before,” I said.

“Mostly, I moaned a lot and fell asleep,” he responded.

“I mean, to the nurse.”

“Well, it’s been a long time,” he said defensively. “I suppose in due course I’ll be sent home, and I’ll find a life mate, and that will solve my hunger.”

“Why wait that long?” I asked.

“None of the nurses would be willing to become my life mate,” he said bitterly. “I’m just a farmer who was drafted to fight this war.”

“Who says they have to become your life mate?”

“Are you crazy?” he said. “Do you know the penalty for rape?”

“I’m not talking about rape,” I answered.

He looked puzzled. “Then what are you talking about?”

“Among my race, when a male suffers unbearable sexual tension, there are women who are happy to provide an outlet for him.”

“Life mates, right.”

“More like evening mates,” I said.

“You mean, you don’t have to pair off with them for life?”

“That’s precisely what I mean.”

“But … but why would they participate?”

“There’s always money,” I said.

“You mean …?”

“It’s an old and honored profession among my people,” I said.

“Madre de dios!” he exclaimed (or alien words to that effect.) “What a mind-boggling concept!”

“You think it would meet with your race’s approval?” I asked.

“Our enthusiastic approval,” he replied.

“Your females, too?”

“Certainly. Most of them require a detailed financial statement from prospective suitors. They’ll probably be even more avid supporters of this bold new concept than the males.”

“Good,” I told him. “I am not without experience in running such an enterprise. If you will introduce all your fellow soldiers in the wards to the concept, I will explain it to the nurses.”

“But this is a hospital!” he said, suddenly depressed. “Where can we go to … uh … you know?”

“One of the things my race specializes in,” I said, “are heroes. Most of them are highly idiosyncratic, much too much to be able to function within a rigid military structure. But I just left a number of them, and they’re preparing to drive your people out of the solar system and back to your home world. I’d be surprised if this hospital isn’t deserted within forty-eight hours—except for those nurses that I can recruit and those soldiers who are healthy enough to help support this business. And of course, once word of what we’re doing gets out, we’ll move our operation to your home world and just leave a small branch here for those wayfarers who need to charge their batteries before returning home.”

“You’re quite sure your heroes will carry the day?” he asked. “Because I would hate to commit to this, and then find out that we’d won the war.”

“I think I can guarantee it.”

“But we’ll outnumber them hundreds to one.”

“That will just encourage them to fight harder,” I said. “Trust me: I know them. They are the most contrary individuals in a race of contrarians.”

“I just hope you’re right,” he said.

And I was. The aliens cleared off Elizabeth of York in thirty-six hours (except for nine former nurses who had decided to change professions). About half the walking wounded opted to stay, and so did a number of able-bodied soldiers who were willing to risk being court-martialed for desertion to sample the wares of Madame Elizabeth’s Emporium.

In fact, the only reason I’m here at all is to transfer my funds to their home world. I leave later today to scout out locations for the next branch of Madame Elizabeth’s.

Who says war is hell?

“I’ve heard of camp followers before,” said Max. “But I have to take my hat off to you. You’re the first camp creator I’ve ever met.”

“Well,” said the Earth Mother, “you do what you know.”

“Precisely,” said the Reverend Billy Karma with a lascivious smile.

“And do well,” she added.

“Are you really going to spend the rest of your life running a whorehouse for aliens?” asked Max.

“Of course not,” she said. “I’ll spend about four or five months getting it operating smoothly, and then I plan to franchise it. I’ll be back among humans in a year’s time, and I’ll be filthy rich. Hell, I might even buy this place.”

“It’s not for sale,” I said.

“You haven’t heard my offer,” said the Earth Mother.

“Doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “This place is my life. What would I do if I sold it?”

“Consider the offer withdrawn,” she said. “I envy you.”

“You do?” I said, surprised. “Why?”

“Because you’ve found something that means more than money to you.”

“So have I,” chimed in Billy Karma.

“Yeah, but you find something new every time a different woman twitches past,” said Max.

“I was referring to the Good Book,” said Billy Karma with all the dignity he could muster.

“I’ll offer you two hundred credits for it,” said Max.

“Two hundred?” repeated Billy Karma. “It’s a deal.”

Max laughed. “I thought it meant more than money to you.”

“It does,” said Billy Karma. “That’s why I got it committed to memory. The physical manifestation of a book don’t mean no more than the physical manifestation of a man. It’s what’s inside that counts.”

“And what about the physical manifestation of a woman?” asked Max.

“Well,” hedged the Reverend, “me and God are still trying to figure that one out.” He pulled a well-worn copy of the bible out of his pocket. “Now where’s my two hundred credits?”

“Forget it,” said Max. “I was just proving a point.”

“Hey, a deal’s a deal.”

“Go away,” said Max.

“You’re not going to pay me?”

“Nope.”

“Satan’s got a special place in hell waiting for people who go back on their word,” said Billy Karma.

“He told you that personally, did he?” asked Max.

“I ain’t never met up with him personally,” said the Reverend. “But he comes to me in visions and tells me what he aims to do to sinners.” He paused and glared at Max. “Your name was prominently mentioned the last time we spoke.”

“That’s strange,” said Max. “He never speaks to me. In fact, the only supernatural being who ever pays any attention to me is Wilxyboeth.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Argyle’s god of sexual potency,” he said, giving me and Reggie a big wink.

“Yeah?” Billy Karma tossed his bible to Max. “Here. Keep the damned thing.”

“What’s this for?”

“A reward for telling me how to conjure up this here Wilxyboeth.”

“Tell you what,” said Max. “Go a whole day and night without insulting any of the ladies here and I’ll think about it.”

“Twenty-four hours?” said Billy Karma. “For that kind of self-control, I want you to do more than think about it. I want you to guarantee me a face-to-face meeting with Wilxyboeth.”

Max threw the bible back to him. “Forget it. We do it my way or not at all.”

“All right,” said the Reverend with a sigh. He tossed the bible back to Max. “We do it your way.” He turned to Silicon Carny. “I’m sorry, my love. You’ll just have to hold yourself in check for another day, after which I’ll be happy to do the holding.”

“Not bad,” said Max. “You made it almost ten seconds.” The bible flew back across the room.

“Just a minute!” protested Billy Karma. “It was a slip of the tongue!”

“You lose.”

Billy Karma hung his head in defeat, but the mood seemed to pass in a few seconds. “Oh, well,” he said, smiling at Silicon Carny. “I’ll just have to find something else to do with my tongue.”

She pulled out a knife. “You take one step toward me and I’ll find something to do with it.”

“What kind of monster are you?” he demanded.

“The kind who chooses her own bed partners.”

“This ain’t a good year for radical ideas,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.

“Or disgusting preachers,” she shot back.

Billy Karma decided to take one last shot at it. “I’m only disgusting on the surface.”

“Right,” chimed in Max. “Deep down he’s actually nauseating.”

“Thanks for your help,” said Billy Karma, glaring at him. “I really appreciate it.”

“Any time.”

Just at that moment Little Mike Picasso entered the Outpost.

“Welcome back,” I said. “Reg, get him a drink.”

“Good to be back,” said Little Mike. “Am I the last to show up?” He looked around the room. “I see Argyle hasn’t made it back yet. Or Achmed.” He turned to Hurricane Smith. “I hope Langtry Lily’s just taking a nap, or maybe a trip to the necessary.”

“She’s dead,” said Smith.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Little Mike.

Baker walked over and threw an arm around Smith’s shoulder. “Me, too, Hurricane,” he said. “You should have mentioned it earlier.”

Smith shrugged. “These things happen.”

“Yeah,” agreed Baker. “Any lady who links up with one of us has just taken fifty years off her life expectancy. And when all is said and done, Langtry was a bug—no offense meant; she was a mighty attractive bug—but for all we know she might only have had a lifespan of two or three years.”

“It’ll be rough, but in time you’ll learn to live without her,” said Sinderella sympathetically. “Someday, when the pain lessens, you might even find somebody else.”

“I already have,” replied Smith.

“But there are only three women in the whole Plantagenet system, and they’re all here right now,” said Sinderella.

Baker laughed. “You don’t think he’d hook up with a human woman, do you?”

“Maybe it’s a better year for radical ideas than I thought,” murmured the Reverend Billy Karma.

“Did you meet her at Madame Elizabeth’s Emporium?” asked Baker.

“Certainly not!” snapped Smith. “She’s good and pure and noble and fine and decent!”

“Okay, where is this paragon of virtue and femininity?” asked Baker. “We might as well meet her.”

“She’s on Adelaide of Louvain.”

“I never learned no English history,” said Baker. “Where the hell is that?”

“The outer moon of Henry I,” said the Bard.

“What’s she doing there?”

“Everyone here just got done fighting a war against her race. We decided that she should stay there until we could be sure she wouldn’t receive a hostile reception.”

“You should have known better,” said Baker, who seemed honestly hurt. “If you vouch for her, that’s all it takes.”

“I know you, Catastrophe,” said Smith apologetically. “But I don’t know some of the others.”

“How did you hook up with her?” asked Baker.

“She saved my life on Henry IV.”

“Even aliens make mistakes,” said Max.

“Shut up!” snapped Baker. He turned to Smith. “Is that where Langtry bought it?”

“Yes.”

“You want to tell us about it?”

“I might as well,” said Smith, sighing deeply. “They both deserve to be in the Bard’s book. If he doesn’t hear my story, then fifty or a hundred years from now it won’t have happened, and that’d be a shame.”

The Bard picked up his pen. “Ready when you are.”

The Sacrifice of Langtry Lily

Langtry Lily and I had hit upon our strategy long before we landed on Henry VII (began Hurricane Smith). Since she could emulate any life form and could breathe the junk that passes for air there, we decided that she would disguise herself as one of the aliens, and I would pretend to be her prisoner. Then she’d take me to their leader, and when we got the chance I’d kill him and she’d impersonate him. And since the aliens knew nothing about her abilities, they’d have no reason to question her identity. Once they accepted her as their leader, she’d either tell them they had orders to return to their home planet, or she and I would find some way to kill them all.

It started out all right. We landed, she held a gun on me, and I walked ahead of her. A bunch of soldiers met us and escorted us to their headquarters. Their commander began questioning me, and as he did so they manhandled me a bit, which was something I hadn’t foreseen.

“You’re the bravest man in the galaxy, except for me,” interrupted Baker. “You can’t make me believe that a little manhandling, or even some serious torture, would put you off your feed.”

“It didn’t.”

“Well, then?”

“I wasn’t alone—remember?”

Each time they hit me or shoved me (continued Smith) I could see Langtry exercising all of her self-control not to come to my aid. Then, finally, they hit me once too often, and she got so furious that she lost control of the image she was projecting, and suddenly everyone could see her for what she was.

I took advantage of the surprise to ram my elbow into the nearest alien’s face and grab his gun as he collapsed. I shot two others before anyone realized what had happened.

Then the commander yelled “Kill him!”—and a second later he amended it to: “Kill them both!”

I burned his head to a crisp a second later, and Langtry began spitting that acid she spits, and pretty soon we were standing there amid a pile of dead aliens.

“Well, it’s not quite the way we planned it,” I said, “but we seem to be doing okay.”

Then I saw a bunch more aliens coming out of their makeshift barracks, all of them armed and dangerous. I told Langtry to find someplace to hide, that they were too far away for her to spit on them, and that I couldn’t concentrate on killing them and protecting her all at once.

Well, things got pretty hairy then. I must have killed about twenty of them, but then one of the ones I’d thought I’d killed right at the start reached out and grabbed my legs. I lost my balance and fell down next to him, and somehow or other my laser pistol flew a good ten feet away. I tried to crawl over to it, but the dying alien wouldn’t let go of my legs.

I looked up and saw another alien running at me, a knife in his hand. I knew the alien was never born that I couldn’t beat in a freehand fight, but I was still being held down, and I realized that if his knife pierced my spacesuit that would be the end of me.

He was twenty feet away, then fifteen, then ten, and I still couldn’t free my legs—and then, from out of nowhere, Langtry was standing in front of me. She spit full in his face, but even though he only had a couple of seconds of life left to him, his momentum carried him forward and she took the knife thrust that was meant for me.

I finally broke free, just in time to catch her in my arms. With her dying breath she whispered that she loved me and was happy to sacrifice her life for mine.

I didn’t have time to mourn, because there were a bunch of aliens taking aim at me, and I was still unarmed. Then one of them screamed, clutched at his chest and keeled over. Another’s head split open. A third flew backward like he’d been kicked by a horse.

Then an arm reached out and lifted me to my feet. It was attached to an alien female.

“Follow me if you want to live!” she said, heading off toward one of the barracks.

She’d obviously shot some of my foes, so I paused just long enough to pick up a couple of guns from alien corpses that wouldn’t be needing them any longer and then fell into step behind her.

“Who are you?” I asked her. “And why have you come to my aid?”

“I have heard stories of the great Hurricane Smith,” she said. “And now that I have seen you fearlessly facing overwhelming odds, I have decided that you are too noble to die.”

“Even though it means turning traitor to your own race?” I asked.

“I look past the appearance of things,” she replied. “I am more like you than like any of them.”

I’d have asked her more questions then, but the aliens started firing, and we were preoccupied with staying alive for the next few minutes.

I noticed that she was a good shot, almost as good as me, and that she was utterly without fear. When a laser beam scraped her shoulder a couple of minutes later, she cursed like an old spacehand.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’ll worry about it later,” she said, aiming her pistol with her other hand.

“Get behind me and tend to your wound,” I said. “I’ll hold them off.”

“We’ll hold them off together,” she said, bringing down another alien. Then: “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“My wife,” I corrected her.

“Then I am doubly sorry,” she said. “We have much in common, you and I. If she was your wife, it shows me that you also look past the appearance of things.” She paused long enough to aim and fire at another foe, who dropped like a rock. “Did you love her very much?”

“Yes.”

A momentary silence. Then: “Do you think you can ever love again?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“It would be very sad if you could not.”

“Let’s shoot the enemy and worry about it later,” I said, and that’s what we did for the next half hour, until we were the only two living beings left.

“Thanks once again for your help,” I said.

“I am only sorry we could not save your wife. I know what it means to lose someone you love.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She pronounced it two or three times, but it was beyond me. Finally she said, “What name would you like to call me? I will trust to your wisdom.”

I figured if I had all that much wisdom, I must rival Solomon, and since she and I were now partners, so to speak, I decided to call her Sheba.

“Sheba,” she repeated. “It seems a very melodic name. Who was she?”

“An ancient queen,” I said.

“Then I am honored.”

I decided not to tell her how many wives Solomon had. We spent the next few days getting to know each other better—and if the Reverend makes one of his typical comments, I just may burn his balls off—and then I decided to leave her on Adelaide of Louvain until I found out what kind of reception she would get at the Outpost.

Anyway, that’s the story of how Langtry Lily sacrificed herself for love—or for me, since to her they were the same thing.

And it’s also the story of how I met Sheba, who could see beyond the mere shape of things and somehow realized that we were not only meant to be comrades-at-arms but soulmates as well.

“You know, I had me an alien ladyfriend once,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.

“It figures,” said Max.

“Yeah?”

Max nodded. “No human woman would ever say Yes to you.”

“Right!” chimed in Silicon Carny and Sinderella.

“Wait a minute,” said the Bard. “There might be a story here. I don’t know anyone besides Hurricane Smith who’s ever had a relationship with an alien woman.” He turned to Billy Karma. “You want to tell us about it?”

“Ain’t much to tell,” said Billy Karma.

“That figures,” said Silicon Carny.

“Come on now,” urged the Bard. “Don’t be so modest.”

“It’s not all that happy a story,” said Billy Karma. “We had a tragic failure to communicate.”

“How tragic could it be if she’s not with you anymore?” asked Sinderella.

“If all you’re gonna do is make jokes, I’m not gonna talk about it.”

“They’re through making jokes,” said Baker, with a look that said they’d better be through. “I want to hear this.”

“Well, it was a Vandei woman,” began the Reverend. “I hooked up with her while I was out spreading the Word on the Rim. We just hit it right off, and when I left Vanda she came along with me.”

“A Vandei woman?” asked Baker.

“That’s right,” said Billy Karma.

“I hear they’re trained from birth to do nothing but please their mates.”

“So they tell me.”

“And with a whole planet of Vandei men to choose from, she fell for you?”

“Well, kind of,” said Billy Karma uncomfortably. “Actually, I won her in a craps game.”

Suddenly Bet-a-World O’Grady sat up and looked interested.

“Anyway, I figured I owed myself a vacation, so I headed to Seascape—that’s Alpha Ribot III—and rented a villa for the next week. Once we were settled in I figured it was time for my Vandei woman and me to get to know each other a little better.” He paused long enough to take a swig of his drink. “First thing she did was come up to me and ask what kind of sex I preferred. She made it sound like there were seven hundred or more different kinds, but I could only think of a few off the top of my head, so I told her that as far as I knew, there wasn’t a man alive who didn’t prefer oral sex if he was being honest about it.”

“What kind of stakes did you have to put up against her in the craps game?” asked O’Grady with professional interest.

“Shut up!” snapped Baker. “Go ahead, Reverend.”

“Well,” said Billy Karma, “the next thing I knew she was sitting next to the bed reading Fanny Hill aloud to me. I didn’t say anything, because I figured this was just her notion of foreplay—you know, a way to get me all hot and bothered and ready for action.” He frowned. “Except that she read and she read and she kept on reading, and finally I fell asleep.”

Silicon Carny threw back her head and laughed.

“It ain’t funny!” snapped Billy Karma.

“It is to me!”

“Get back to the story,” said Baker.

“The next night, as we were getting ready for bed, she opened up a copy of The Story of O and read it to me, and the night after that it was The Autobiography of a Flea, and finally, when she opened up Tropic of Cancer on the fourth night, I sat up and asked her what the hell was going on.

“‘Am I not pleasing you, my love?" she said.

“‘Look,’’ I said, ‘I like dirty books as well as the next man, but when do we get to the sex?"

“‘But we are doing the sex," she protested.

“‘What are you talking about?’’ I demanded. ‘Here I am, all set for some oral sex, and all you do is read at me."

“‘But that’s what you asked for," she said.

“‘The hell it is!" I shouted.

“‘I will prove it," she said, and before I could say anything else she activated the cabin’s computer and ordered up a definition, and out popped the words on a holographic screen—’Aural: of or pertaining to the ear or the sense of hearing.’’ She smiled at me. “I naturally assume this means reading classics of human pornography aloud to you.”

“‘Now I see what went haywire,’’ I said. ‘You got the wrong idea about things.’” I pulled off my pants. “Put yourself in my expert hands and I’ll lead you through it step by step.”

“She took one look at me, and her eyes widened, and she said, ‘You’re not going to stick that in my ear!’”

“Then she was out the door, screaming and running her way down the beach.” The Reverend Billy Karma sighed. “For all I know, she’s still screaming and running.”

“Somehow it ain’t quite as touching as some of Hurricane’s romances,” said Baker.

“I think our Catastrophe is a master of understatement,” agreed the Bard. “I also think, in the interest of dignity, I’ll leave that little adventure out of the book.”

“That’s okay,” said Sinderella happily. “By the time Silicon Carny and I are through spreading it around, everyone in the galaxy will have heard it.”

Baker turned to Hurricane Smith. “You ever get any head from an alien lady?”

“Once,” answered Smith.

“Yeah? What happened?”

“Not much. She was a Nexarian, so she still had five heads left.”

“That’s disgusting!” said the Earth Mother.

“You think that’s disgusting, you should have seen the head she gave me. It must have giggled for an hour before it realized it was decapitated.”

“You know,” said Baker thoughtfully, “I think it’s entirely possible we’re talking at cross purposes.”

“Could be.”

“Don’t you ever find yourself attracted to a human woman?” asked Baker.

“I try,” said Smith. “I really do. But they’re all so … so same.”

“Well, I like that!” said Silicon Carny.

Smith looked at her. “I got to admit that you’re a little less same than most.”

“I think someone here might disagree with your assessment of human ladies,” suggested Max.

“Who?”

Max jerked a thumb in the direction of Nicodemus Mayflower. “He’s been sitting there, staring at Sinderella and sighing like a schoolboy ever since he got back. I actually saw the two of ’em holding hands.”

“At least he’s got the right number of hands!” snapped Sinderella.

Max grinned. “See what I mean? It’s got to be love. What other reason would she have to insult me?”

“I didn’t know she needed any,” said the Cyborg de Milo, who seemed to have taken a serious dislike to Three-Gun Max during the war.

“You two went off in separate ships and different directions,” said Crazy Bull. “What happened out there?”

“Yeah,” said Sitting Horse. “How is it that you left in two ships and came back in one?”

Nicodemus Mayflower looked at Sinderella. “Should we tell them?” he asked.

She shrugged, which was still an attention-getter. “Why not?” she replied.

A Wedding Ring in the Wedding Rings

I hadn’t planned to wind up in the Wedding Rings at all (said Sinderella). But after I wiped out a trio of ships that were headed to Henry VII, I decided that it might not be a bad idea to hide in the Rings until they found something better to do than hunt me down

But a bunch of them found her even among all that space garbage (said Mayflower), and I headed out to try to rescue her.

To assist me (Sinderella corrected him).

To assist her (Mayflower agreed). The problem is, it’s damned hard to find a ship that’s hiding in the Rings. I mean, hell, each Ring must have close to a billion chunks of rock and ice in it, maybe more, and by the time I’d gotten there they’d crippled her ship.

To tell the truth (said Sinderella), I think it’s far more likely that a rock hit the ship than an ice chunk. But the result was the same: none of the controls worked, and the structural integrity of the hull was compromised.

In other words (put in Mayflower), she was losing air. Her radio still worked, though, so she was able to tell me that she was in Anne Boleyn, the second Wedding Ring. It became a race between me and the aliens to see who would find her first. I had her fire a couple of flares, but it’s a mighty big ring and they were mighty small flares, and I couldn’t spot them. Then I finally got the idea of having her climb into her spacesuit and leave the ship after overloading the nuclear pile. I figured when it blew I’d be able to pinpoint the explosion, pick her up, and fly us both to safety.

Well, the explosion was visible, all right. I think you could have seen it from the surface of Henry VIII. Having my instruments get a bearing on it was easy, but—

But we had another problem (interjected Sinderella). I wasn’t all that far away from my ship when it blew, and the force of the explosion sent me rocketing backward at a phenomenal rate of speed. I knew if I hit any of the rocks I was done for—and no sooner had I figured that out when I saw that I was on a collision course with a huge chunk of ice. I jettisoned about half my air supply, which acted as a jet and allowed me to miss the iceberg—but I was still racing through space in the middle of all these rocks, and I couldn’t use the jet trick again without asphyxiating myself. Then a tiny rock crushed my suit’s radio, so I couldn’t keep in contact with Nicodemus any longer, and I figured I was done for.

But my sensors had spotted her (said Mayflower), and I started maneuvering through Anne Boleyn, slowly closing the gap between us. After about ten minutes I got within sight of her, and was getting ready to bring her aboard when she pulled out her laser pistol and began firing it wildly—or so I thought. You see, I had told her to fire it at my ship’s nose when she spotted me; it couldn’t do the ship any harm, and it would help me pinpoint her location.

But she was firing about ten degrees to the left and above me, and since she was only a few hundred yards away, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong—and then, at the last moment, I realized that she was trying to warn me that there was an alien ship coming up on my left. I turned my laser cannon on it just a second or two before it could fire its pulse torpedo at me, and I blew it to pieces. This caused even more problems for Sinderella, because some of the pieces started flying straight toward her. Then I saw what I hoped would be her salvation, and I fired a laser beam at this huge rock, almost an asteroid, that was fast approaching her.

She immediately grasped the possibilities, and instead of trying to avoid it, she carefully maneuvered herself so that she could land on it. It didn’t have much gravity, but it was moving fast enough so that as long as she stayed on what I’ll call the front end of it, she wasn’t going to get thrown off.

The rock protected her from all the flying debris, and I was finally able to maneuver my ship right next to it.

I never thought an airlock could look like paradise (added Sinderella), but this one sure did once Nicodemus opened the hatch. He was standing inside it, and he threw me a line. Well, he tried to throw me a line, but since there was no gravity it didn’t work very well. Finally he just signaled for me to push off from the rock and aim myself in his direction. I was scared to death, but I did what he wanted, and a moment later I felt his hand close on my arm.

We spent the next two days hunting down the remaining ships that had come after me. They were good, those pilots, but my Nicodemus is superb, and eventually we found them and blew them away. Then it was just a matter of getting out of the Rings and returning here.

As man and wife (said Mayflower proudly). Show ’em your ring, Honey.

“Who married you?” asked Max.

“I did,” said Nicodemus Mayflower.

“You ain’t no preacher,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.

“But it’s my ship, and a ship’s captain has always been able to perform marriages.”

“Pity,” said Billy Karma. “I’d have presided over one hell of a shindig for a not-unseemly fee.”

“Yeah,” said Mayflower. “But you’d probably have kissed the bride, and then I’d have had to kill you.”

“Good God, why?” demanded Billy Karma.

Sinderella smiled sweetly. “I’d have insisted.”

“It was lucky you had a wedding ring handy,” remarked Max. “Not a lot of people go to war prepared for that particular eventuality.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” said Mayflower. “But after we wiped out the alien ships and decided to get married, I took the busted radio on her spacesuit apart and made the ring she’s wearing from its innards.” He smiled. “Now every time she looks at it, she’ll remember how we got together, and that as long as we’re a team nothing can defeat us.”

“I find that a noble and touching sentiment,” said the Gravedigger.

“Truth to tell, we just came back to make sure we’d won the war,” said Mayflower. “We’ll have another drink or two, and then we’re off on our honeymoon.”

“Where are you going?” asked the Earth Mother.

“Who cares, as long as we’re together,” replied Sinderella.

“I hear Serengeti is a great planet,” offered Big Red.

“The zoo world?” said Mayflower.

“Yeah. Species from all over the galaxy, all of ’em roaming free.”

“If he can’t think of something better to look at on his honeymoon than a bunch of animals, I married the wrong man,” said Sinderella.

“Now that you mention it,” said Billy Karma, “you did marry the wrong man, and there’s still time to get out of it and run away with me.”

“Now I know how we Christianized so many alien worlds and races,” said Big Red. “The man just refuses to take No for an answer.”

“You know, now that I come to think of it, I ain’t never run into an alien evangelist,” said Baker. “I guess their gods ain’t into recruitin’ as much as ours is.”

“How about you Injuns?” asked Max. “What’s your God like?”

“Beats me,” said Sitting Horse.

“You don’t know?”

“He doesn’t make house calls,” said Crazy Bull.

“Could be worse,” said Max. “Could look just like Billy Karma, the way he thinks ours does.”

The Earth Mother looked from Billy Karma to Catastrophe Baker and back again. “It’s hard to believe you were both created in God’s image.” She paused. “If He’s really God, He probably looks more like Catastrophe Baker.”

“What makes you think so?” demanded the Reverend.

“Because I’d like to think I worship a God Who has good taste,” replied the Earth Mother. Then she added: “Though probably She looks more like Sinderella or Silicon Carny.”

“Are you gonna start that sexist bullshit again?” said Billy Karma.

“There’s only one sexist in this room, and it’s not me,” said the Earth Mother. Then she shrugged. “Well, maybe five or six.” She looked at the painting of Sally Six-Eyes that hung over the bar as if seeing it for the first time. “Including Tomahawk.”

Little Mike Picasso grinned. “See? I told you you should have let me be the one to paint Sally for the Outpost.”

“Would it have been any less sexist if you’d painted her?” I asked.

“Probably not,” he admitted. “But she’d have looked a lot better. Right off the bat, I’d have gotten rid of four of her eyes.”

“But that’s not the way she looks,” I said.

“Art doesn’t have to mirror Nature,” said Little Mike. “Sometimes it improves Nature instead.”

“Isn’t that dishonest?” asked the Bard.

“You’re taking everyone’s word about what happened in the war without checking them out,” replied Little Mike. “Isn’t that dishonest?”

“Apples and oranges,” said the Bard. “History doesn’t try to improve Nature.”

“No—but what you’re doing improves History.”

“I’m just making it a little more interesting, so it won’t be stuck in a musty library, or a musty computer, and only read by academics and historians,” replied the Bard defensively.

“I thought academics just pontificated,” said Max. “You mean they actually read?”

“On rainy nights, when there are no cocktail parties,” said the Bard.

“You’re ducking the subject,” said Little Mike. “I still want to know what’s the moral difference between my painting Sally with only two eyes and you writing about something that didn’t take place.”

“You’re changing what she looks like,” said the Bard. “That’s dishonest. I’m just embellishing what Catastrophe and Hurricane and the others tell me. That’s simply literary license.”

“But what if what they tell you is a lie?”

“Why would anyone lie to an historian?”

“Maybe because it makes them seem more heroic,” suggested Little Mike. “Or maybe they lie for the sheer love of lying.”

“Highly unlikely,” said the Bard uncomfortably.

“Let’s put it to the test,” said Little Mike. “I’ll tell you the story of what I did during the war. Some of it might be true and some might not be. When I’m done, you tell me what you’re going to write and why.”

“Fair enough,” said the Bard, accepting the challenge.

The Lost Treasure of Margaret of Anjou

I was heading to Henry VII, hopefully to fight side-by-side with Hurricane Smith, when I ran smack-dab into a pair of alien ships just past Henry VI (began Little Mike Picasso). I immediately began evasive maneuvering, and just about the time I thought I’d lost them, a lucky shot managed to disable my subspace radio and my navigational computer.

I figured I’d better set the ship down and see what I could do about repairing the damage. I knew there was a major alien garrison on Henry VI, so I landed on Margaret of Anjou, its moon, instead.

The radio was a total loss, and while the damage to the computer didn’t look too serious, I’m an artist, not a computer tech, and I didn’t begin to know how to go about fixing it.

I decided that the only reasonable course of action was to return to the Outpost and see if I could either borrow a ship or hook up with someone else—but before I did so, I decided to get into my spacesuit and look around, just in case there was some stunning aspect of the landscape I might want to sketch for future use.

I opened the hatch, climbed down to the ground, and began walking. The rock formations were interesting, but I’ve seen—and painted—better ones. There was no air and no water, and of course no foliage of any kind, and just about the time I decided there was nothing of any value to see, I spotted something strange off in the distance. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but it didn’t look like it belonged there, so I began cautiously approaching it.

It turned out to be an alien building. Not erected by the aliens we were fighting, but something infinitely older and stranger. I don’t think I’d ever want to meet the creatures that could pass comfortably through that oddly-shaped doorway.

Centuries worth of dust puffed up from the stone floor with every step I took. I activated my helmet’s spotlight and looked around. I was in a huge chamber, maybe fifty feet on a side, and there were a lot of smaller rooms off of it, each with that same strange doorway.

I went into one of the rooms. It was empty. So was the second. But in the third I struck paydirt. Evidently this was a storage building, constructed either by some wealthy aliens from Henry VI who wanted to hide their valuables from thieves, or else built by the thieves themselves as a place to keep stolen goods until they could sell them on the black market.

It was like an ancient Egyptian tomb. Grave robbers (or the equivalent) had stolen all of the jewelry, but they’d left the artwork behind because they had no idea what it was worth—and what a treasure trove it was! There was a Morita sculpture, and a Tobin bronze, and a pair of Dalyrimple holo paintings. There was even a Rockwell from old Earth itself!

I started carrying them back to the ship piece by piece, which took the better part of the day. I spent the next week exploring Margaret of Anjou, hoping against hope that I would find another ancient treasure cache, but one was all there was. Still, given the money that museums and art galleries would pay for my haul, I had precious little reason to be disappointed.

I waited until I saw the last of the alien ships leave Henry VI. I figured they’d never have done that if they hadn’t been ordered to retreat, and that meant the war was over, so I got into my ship and brought it back here, using a slide rule and a pocket calculator.

Now I plan to celebrate with a bottle of Tomahawk’s best Cygnian cognac, and them I’m off to the Commonwealth to see what my treasure’s worth on the open market.

“That’s it?” asked the Bard.

“That’s it,” answered Little Mike Picasso. “How much are you going to use?”

“None of it.”

“Why?”

“It’s obviously a total fabrication.”

“Have it your way,” said Little Mike. “You going to be here for another couple of minutes?”

“I live here,” said the Bard.

“Good,” said Little Mike, walking out the door.

“You’re really not going to use it?” I asked.

“It’s a fabulous story!” said the Bard, finally letting his enthusiasm show. “I’m going to use every word of it. I just didn’t want to say so to that arrogant little bastard!”

Little Mike re-entered, carrying a holographic painting of a purple alien landscape.

“A genuine Dalyrimple!” he announced. “Worth at least three million credits back in the Commonwealth.” He turned to the Bard. “So you write your history and I’ll sell my treasure and we’ll see who winds up happier.”

“Nice painting,” said Max. He reached out and pointed. “I especially like this weird-looking tree.”

“Don’t touch it!” snapped Little Mike, slapping Max’s hand.

“Sorry.”

“I’d like to see what else you have in your ship,” said the Bard.

“Even though you’re not writing it up?” said Little Mike.

“I’m an open-minded man,” said the Bard. “Convince me I’m wrong.”

“Let’s go,” said Little Mike. He carried the painting out the door, followed by Willie the Bard.

“Nice painting,” remarked Baker. “If you like ugly alien landscapes.”

“Paint’s still wet, though,” said Max with a grin, holding up a purple forefinger.

“Should we tell him?” asked Big Red.

“And rob history of a story like that?” said Max.

The Bard returned a few minutes later.

“Where’s Little Mike?” I asked.

“Wrapping his paintings back up. You don’t leave treasures like those just sitting around, you know.” The Bard lit a smokeless cigar. “Him and his silly propositions! As if he could pull the wool over my eyes!”

“You saw right through him, huh?” asked Max.

“The way I see it, everything about his story was true except where it took place. He probably never set foot on Margaret on Anjou. He made that part up, just to throw us off the track in case there are more treasure caches wherever he got the paintings. My guess is that he was probably on one of Henry I’s moons.”

“Well, it sure makes sense when you explain it that way,” said Max, just before Little Mike returned to the Outpost and sat down next to the Cyborg de Milo. She immediately got up and moved to an empty table.

“It’s time for me to go,” said the Earth Mother, getting up and walking to the door. She turned to me. “Good-bye, Tomahawk. I should be back in six or eight months.”

“Good luck,” I told her.

“You know,” said Nicodemus Mayflower, “it’s time we left on our honeymoon.” He escorted Sinderella to the door. “See you around.”

They followed the Earth Mother out to the landing field.

“Our noble little group seems to be getting nobler and littler,” remarked Max.

“Well, we aren’t going anywhere,” said Crazy Bull.

“At least, not as long as our credit’s good here,” added Sitting Horse.

“Hey!” said the Bard suddenly. “You two never told me what you did during the war.”

“You never asked,” said Crazy Bull.

“I’m asking now.”

“Too late,” said Crazy Bull. “Now it’s gonna cost you.”

“Right,” said Sitting Horse. “You want a story, you pay for our booze while we tell it.”

The Bard nodded to me. “Put their drinks on my tab.”

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” said Crazy Bull.

“I guess this means we don’t get to scalp him, huh?” added Sitting Horse.

Reggie brought them each a refill.

“Okay, you’re drinking my liquor,” said the Bard. “Now let’s have the story.”

“Who gets to tell it?” asked Sitting Horse.

“You told the last one, so it’s my turn,” said Crazy Bull.

“What ‘last one’?” interrupted the Bard. “You guys have never told me any of your adventures before.”

“You think you’re the only hot-shot historian on the Frontier?” shot back Crazy Bull. “There’s a guy on Modesto III who not only buys us drinks but pays for our room while we’re there.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Sitting Horse. “He pays for first-rate stories, so that’s what we give him. I can’t say what you’re going to get, since you’re only buying us whiskey—and cheap whiskey at that.”

“In fact, if the whiskey was any cheaper,” said Crazy Bull, “I’d probably tell you a story where the aliens win.”

“Are you going to tell me your story, or are you going to bitch all day?” demanded the Bard.

“Art can’t be rushed,” said Crazy Bull.

The Bard signaled to me. “Tell Reggie that’s all the booze I’m paying for.”

“History, on the other hand, can be rushed all to hell and gone,” continued Crazy Bull quickly.

“Then get on with it.”

“Right.”

The Battle of the Big Little Horn

It was twilight (said Crazy Bull), and the wind was blowing gently from the west. Sitting Horse and me, we crawled up the hill on our bellies until we could see just beyond it. Geronimo was off to our left, and Vittorio was leading his warriors on our right flank.

We saw a number of the enemy gathered around their campfires, but there was no sign of General Custard yet, and—

“What the hell are you talking about?” demanded the Bard.

“You wanted a war story, I’m giving you a war story.”

“But you’re making it up! It’s set on Earth, for Christ’s sake!”

“Nobody in the Outpost ever made up a story for you?” asked Crazy Bull.

“Not like this!”

“Well, of course not like this. How many Injuns come out here, anyway?”

“But you’re making up a story about a battle that took place more than seven thousand years ago!”

“Sure—but it was a doozy.”

“I’m not getting through to you at all,” said the Bard, totally frustrated. “I want to know what happened when you left the Outpost to fight the aliens.”

“We won,” said Crazy Bull. “But the story of the Big Little Horn is much more exciting.”

“Right,” said Sitting Horse. “There’s no General Custard in the story about the aliens. Take my friend’s word for it: you’ll like the story he’s telling much better.”

“You drive me crazy!” muttered the Bard.

“Maybe he doesn’t like having Geronimo and Vittorio in it,” suggested Sitting Horse.

“Well, I could replace them with Tonto and Shoz-Dijiji, I suppose,” said Crazy Bull.

“Who the hell are they?” asked the Bard wearily.

“They’re fictional, but they’ll do just as well as Geronimo and Vittorio,” answered Crazy Bull. “After all, me and my partner here are the stars of the story. They’re just spear carriers.”

“Bow-and-arrow carriers,” corrected Sitting Horse.

“You guys still don’t seem to understand my problem,” said the Bard. “How can I write this up as a battle against alien invaders in the Plantagenet system?”

“Change the names,” said Crazy Bull.

“That’s dishonest!”

“Who’s to know?” asked Sitting Horse. “We won’t tell if you don’t.”

“Look,” said the Bard, who seemed on the verge of tears, “all I want to know is what happened when you went out to fight the aliens.”

“It’s dull,” said Sitting Horse.

“Not all history is wildly exciting,” answered the Bard.

“You really want to know?” asked Crazy Bull.

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure you wouldn’t rather hear about how the Sioux defeated General Custard at the Big Little Horn?”

“No!” screamed the Bard.

“Okay,” said Sitting Horse with a shrug. “We found the aliens’ flagship and blew it up.”

“Not much of a story, was it?” said Crazy Bull.

“You expect me to believe that the two of you blew up the biggest ship in the aliens’ fleet?”

“I don’t know if it was the biggest,” said Sitting Horse.

“But it might have been,” added Crazy Bull. “It was at least a mile long.”

“And you destroyed it all by yourself?”

“That’s right.”

“How?”

“We put a bomb behind the captain’s toilet.”

The Bard looked from Sitting Horse to Crazy Bull, then back again. “Just how dumb do I look?”

“Just how honest an answer are you looking for?” asked Sitting Horse.

“I’d be more likely to believe you actually fought at the Little Big Horn,” said the Bard.

“The Big Little Horn,” Crazy Bull corrected him. “And we told you you’d like that story better.”

The Bard turned to me. “They’re paying for their own booze from this moment on.”

He stalked off to his table.

“We really did blow it up,” said Crazy Bull to the room at large.

“I believe you,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.

“You do?” said Crazy Bull, surprised. “Then I must be remembering it wrong.”

“Why does everyone hate me the second they meet me?” demanded Billy Karma self-pityingly.

“To save time,” said Silicon Carny.

Willie the Bard threw back his head and laughed.

“Don’t you even think of putting that in your magnet opium,” threatened Billy Karma, “or me and Jesus will both come back from the grave to haunt you!”

“I thought one of you had already come back from the grave,” said Big Red.

“He did,” admitted Billy Karma. “But he didn’t have no staying power. With me by his side, we’ll haunt this hack historian day and night.”

“Well, it’s good to know you’re going to straighten him out,” said Big Red.

“No matter what I do, he’ll still scribble lies about me in his notebook.”

“I meant Jesus, not the Bard.”

“Jesus’ll take a lot less work than the Bard,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.

“That’s comforting to know, since a few billion people still worship him,” said Big Red.

“I don’t know that they worship him so much as they hope he’ll pull their coals out of the fire,” said Max.

“You mean their souls,” Billy Karma corrected him.

Max shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

“You know,” said Catastrophe Baker, “we ought to take up a collection and buy a wedding present for Nicodemus Mayflower and his lady.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Reg, pull a hundred credits out of the strong box and give it to Catastrophe.”

Pretty soon everyone was ponying up, and finally Baker did a count. “Twenty-six hundred credits,” he said. “We ought to be able to get them something nice for that.”

“You could get something nicer for fifty-two hundred credits,” suggested Bet-a-World O’Grady.

“Are you offering to match the pot?” asked Baker.

“Not exactly,” said O’Grady. “Are you willing to bet it on a double-or-nothing proposition?”

“With you?” said Baker. “Not a chance!”

O’Grady shrugged. “It’s your loss.”

“It’d be our loss if we took you up on it,” said Baker with absolute conviction.

“What kind of bet were you gonna offer?” asked Billy Karma.

“Oh, something simple and even-handed,” said O’Grady. His eyes narrowed. “Have you got any money on you?”

Billy Karma emptied his pockets. “I got exactly seventy-three credits, four New Stalin rubles, and six Maria Theresa dollars.”

“Precisely the sum I had in mind,” said O’Grady, walking over to the bar. “Reggie, have you got a pack of matches?”

“Forget it,” I said. “He’s never even seen a pack of matches.”

“Okay, we’ll do it the hard way. Reggie, find a piece of cardboard and cut a piece two inches long and an eighth of an inch wide.”

Reggie did as he was ordered and handed the thin strip of cardboard to O’Grady a moment later.

“Now, usually matches are one color on top and one on the bottom,” he said, “so I’m going to take my pen and just turn one side of our match substitute black.”

“Now what?” asked Billy Karma when he was through.

“Now I toss it in the air, and you call it before it lands on the bar—white side or black side. We’ll bet a credit on the outcome.”

“White,” cried Billy Karma, and sure enough it came up white.

O’Grady tossed it four more times; it came up white twice and black twice.

“It occurs to me that we could spend all day tossing this stupid thing, and when we’re all done one of us might be three credits ahead,” said the Reverend.

“Let’s make it more interesting,” said O’Grady.

“How can it be more interesting?” asked Billy Karma. “All you can do is call white side or black side?”

“Not exactly,” said O’Grady. “What if I say that it’ll land on its edge?”

“You’re crazy!” scoffed Billy Karma.

“Are you willing to bet seventy-three credits, four New Stalin rubles, and six Maria Theresa dollars to prove it?” asked O’Grady.

“Let me make sure I got this straight first,” said Billy Karma. “You’re going to toss the thing, just like you’ve been doing, and it’s got to land on its edge. If it lands white side up or black side up, I win?”

“That’s right.”

The Reverend Billy Karma looked around the Outpost. “You all heard him.” He pulled out his money and slapped it down on the bar.

O’Grady grinned, bent the cardboard into a V-shape, and flipped it in the air. It came down on its side, of course.

“Just a minute!” bellowed Billy Karma. “That ain’t in the rules.”

“You all heard me,” said O’Grady. “Did I ever say I wouldn’t bend the thing before I flipped it?”

“Nope,” said Baker.

“Not a word,” said Hurricane Smith.

“Looks like the Reverend’s going to need to pass the poor box,” added the Gravedigger.

“You cheated!” said Billy Karma, pointing an accusing finger at O’Grady.

“You can’t cheat an honest man,” answered O’Grady.

“So if I admit I’m a fake and a fraud, you’ll admit you cheated?”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t—but I won’t give you back your money.”

The Reverend Billy Karma raised his eyes to the heavens—though the ceiling got in the way, and moaned, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

“You’ve got him speaking in tongues,” noted Baker with some amusement.

“I’m surrounded by illiterates and ingrates!” muttered Billy Karma, going back to his table.

“That’s okay, Reverend,” said Baker. “We ain’t proud. We’ll let you hang around anyway.”

Bet-a-World O’Grady turned to the Bard. “I give you my permission to put that one in your book. I haven’t seen five packs of matches in the past twenty years.”

The Gravedigger walked to the door, as he’d done a couple of times already, and looked out.

“Who’re you looking for?” asked Baker.

“Argyle,” replied Gaines. “I keep hoping the little bastard listened to my advice, but I guess he didn’t.” He sighed and returned to the bar.

“Did you see him once the fighting started?” continued Baker.

The Gravedigger shook his head. “Last I heard from him, he was planning to land on Henry IV. I tried to talk him out of it. He was a philosopher, not a fighter. By the time I got back from Henry VIII, there wasn’t any sign of him.”

“Was it rough on Henry VIII?” asked the Bard.

“No more than I imagine it was on any of the other Henrys.”

“You want to tell us about it?”

Gaines shrugged. “Why not?”

High Noon on Henry VIII

I hope Nicodemus and Sinderella don’t spent their honeymoon on Henry VIII (said the Gravedigger). It’s got a chlorine atmosphere, terrible visibility, heavy gravity that wears you out after a few steps, and the temperature’s more than halfway to absolute zero.

I claimed Henry VIII for my own, because I’ve had more experience in hostile environments than anyone else here except maybe Hurricane Smith. I knew they had a small garrison there, and I made it my business to take it out.

I used my ship’s sensors to spot them, landed maybe half a mile away—and found a dozen of them waiting for me, guns drawn, as I clambered down to the rocky ground.

“Kill him!” ordered one of the officers.

“No!” cried another voice. “He’s mine!”

I looked around and saw a familiar alien face peering at me through his helmet. It was the Gray Salamander.

“I thought he died on Daedalus IV a few years back,” said Baker.

“I heard he’d bought it in the Roosevelt system,” chimed in Hurricane Smith.

“Last time I checked the Wanted posters, he was worth half a million credits dead or alive,” said Venus.

“And there was a footnote that no one really wanted him alive,” added Smith. He turned to the Gravedigger. “So it was really him?”

Yeah, it was really him (continued Gaines). He made his way through the aliens that were crowded around me until he was just a couple of feet away.

“You arrested me on Barracuda IV,” he hissed. “I’ve never forgotten you for that. I think of you with my every waking moment and curse your name. I’ve planned and plotted and prayed for the day I could face you again—and now here you are at last.”

“It’s your move,” I said. “What do you plan to do with me?”

“Kill you, of course,” he said.

I didn’t see any way to stop him with a dozen burners and blasters trained on me, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for him to speak again.

“You are the only being ever to defeat me in any form of combat,” he said at last.

I could see where he was leading, so I thought I might as well encourage him.

“It wasn’t all that hard,” I said. “I know ten or fifteen Men who could have done it, as well as a handful of aliens.”

“We shall see!” he screamed. “I have spent the past decade dreaming of the day when we would meet again and I could demand a rematch!”

“You’ll just lose again,” I said.

That seemed to drive him crazy. He began jumping up and down and yelling so loud and so fast that my translator couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Finally he calmed down a little and leaned forward, so his helmet was touching mine.

“You will be allowed to retain your weapons if you promise not to use them on my companions.”

“If they don’t fire on me, I won’t fire on them,” I said.

He turned briefly to his soldiers. “You will not interfere upon pain of death.” Then he faced me again. “We will meet when the sun is at its zenith. Visibility will be minimally better then.”

“Where?” I asked.

He pointed to his left. “There are a dozen Bubbles housing our garrison half a mile in that direction. I will meet you on neutral ground, halfway between your ship and our garrison.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “By the way, how long before the sun’s at its zenith?”

“About an hour,” he said. “Don’t be late. It will be more than a thousand hours before it reaches its zenith again.”

And with that, he turned and led his men back to their Bubbles, though I lost sight of them before they’d gone fifty yards.

Since I had an hour to kill before high noon, I wandered around, trying to acquaint myself with some of the landmarks. I came to their ship after about twenty minutes, marked its location in my mind, and then walked over to the area I had mentally designated as Main Street and waited for the Salamander to show up.

He could probably have shot me before I even knew he was there—his race has much better eyesight than ours in the pea soup that passed for atmosphere on Henry VIII—but his honor had been challenged, and I wasn’t surprised to see him emerge from the fog and approach to within twenty yards of me.

“How I have longed for this day!” he said.

“I didn’t know you were in that much of a hurry to die, or I’d have hunted you down again,” I replied.

He reached for his burner, but I’d had more experience with heavy gravity worlds. I had my screecher out first, and an instant later it shattered his helmet, and that was the end of the Gray Salamander. I gave a moment’s thought to collecting the bounty on him, but he was such a pulpy mess there was no way anyone could have identified him.

I’d promised not to fire on his companions, and I kept my word. I walked over to their ship, disabled the life support and ignition systems, and went back to my own ship. If the garrison hasn’t run out of air yet, it will soon—and that will be the official end of the war.

“But if he’d been on Henry VIII longer than you, how come he hadn’t adjusted to the gravity?” asked Silicon Carny.

“He’d adjusted to all the normal activities,” answered the Gravedigger, “but reaching for your weapon is an instinct. When he went for his gun, gravity pulled his hand half a foot too low.”

Hurricane Smith was busy studying the clock on the wall.

“Was it that dull?” asked Gaines.

“I enjoyed it,” said Smith. “But it made me think about Sheba.”

“What about her?” asked Baker.

“She’s on Adelaide of Louvain with a limited air supply. I really ought to be leaving in the next few minutes.”

“Got time for one more drink?” asked Baker. “I’m buying.”

Smith glanced up at the clock again, which was just to the left of the painting of Sally Six-Eyes. “Yeah, I suppose so,” he said.

The Gravedigger turned to Willie the Bard. “So can you use it?” he asked.

“Of course,” answered the Bard enthusiastically “It’s like a shootout in the Old West. I’ll make it as famous as the shootout between Billy the Kid and Jesse James at the O.K. Corral!”!” He paused. “I don’t think I’ll mention what you said about the gravity.”

“Why?” asked Gaines.

“Men need heroes, not scientific explanations,” replied the Bard. “And so does history.”

“I thought history needed facts.”

“History interprets facts,” said the Bard. “It’s a whole different union.”

“And it gets you off the hook,” said Max dryly.

“Not if I get it wrong,” answered the Bard.

“Now even I’m confused,” said Max. “If you interpret facts instead of report ’em, how can you get it wrong?”

“You never heard anyone interpret something the wrong way?” asked Baker.

“Yeah—but I was on the spot to point it out to them. A hundred years from now, who’ll know if Willie interpreted things right or wrong?”

“If I do it wrong, no one will know, because no one will read the book,” replied the Bard patiently. “The job of the historian is to make history come alive for those who weren’t around to experience it. You make the wrong choices, it just lays there like a dead fish.”

“I thought the job of the historian was to report the facts as accurately as possible,” said Hurricane Smith.

“The greatest history of all is the Good Book that the Reverend Billy Karma totes around in his pocket,” answered the Bard. “How accurate do you think it is?”

“So much for setting down the facts,” said Max.

“Sometimes you got to sweep the facts aside to get at the truth,” said the Bard.

“I thought they were one and the same,” said Baker.

The Bard shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything listening to all the stories at the Outpost, it’s that more often than not facts are the enemy of Truth. (You can’t see it, of course, but I just spelled Truth with a capital T.)”

“You mean I keep telling all these true stories,” said Baker, “and you keep rewriting ’em so that they fit your notion of truth?”

“I told you before: I don’t rewrite, I embellish.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I keep the basic structure of your stories—the who, what, when, why, and where of them. But I try to make them more meaningful, so that future generations will understand that great things were taking place here.”

“And what if they weren’t?” asked Max.

“They’ll still feel some pride in your accomplishments, however trivial they really were,” said the Bard. “Is that so sinful?”

“I never said it was sinful at all,” said Max. “Just dishonest.”

“Why can’t I make you understand that there’s a difference between lying and embellishing?” said the Bard in a frustrated voice.

“Maybe because there ain’t any in his life,” suggested Baker.

“Look,” said Max. “He’s an historian. He’s supposed to tell the truth. He lies. That’s wrong. It’s as simple as that.”

“You never shot a man with a gun you had hidden in your third hand?” asked Baker.

“Sure I did,” said Max. “But that’s different.”

“It wasn’t dishonest?”

“It was a matter of life and death.”

“So is what Willie’s writing,” said Baker.

“How do you figure that?”

“It ain’t his life or death,” explained Baker. “It’s ours. Somebody picks his book up two hundred years from now, I’ll be alive for as long as they’re reading about me. Once they close it I’m dead again. That’s the life part. The death part takes place if he never sells it or no one ever reads it.”

“Sonuvabitch!” said Max. “I never looked at it that way.” He turned to the Bard. “You have my permission to lie whenever you want.”

“Embellish,” insisted the Bard.

“Whatever,” said Max.

“There’s one story I haven’t had a chance to improve upon, because I haven’t heard it yet. How about it, Catastrophe?”

“Me?” said Baker.

“You fought in the war, didn’t you?”

“Not enough to work up a sweat.”

“I’d like to hear about it anyway,” said the Bard, notebook at the ready.

“What the hell,” said Baker with a shrug.

Catastrophe Baker and the Ship Who Purred

I figured it was up to me to end the war (began Baker), and I decided that the direct way was probably the best way. I knew there was a major encampment on Henry III, so I flew there as soon as I left the Outpost.

I didn’t try to sneak up on them or nothing like that. I just walked into the middle of their camp, told ’em who I was, and offered to fight their champion, mano a mano.

My notion was that whoever won the fight won the war, but that didn’t sit right with their chief, who didn’t have the authority to surrender his garrison, let alone the whole Plantagenet system, to a force of one. While I was talking to him, I was introduced to a good-looking lady gun-runner, so I came up with a counter-offer: if their champion won, I’d fight on their side for the rest of the war, while if I won, they’d give me Queen Eleanor of Provence, which is what I’d named the gun-runner.

They decided I was so formidable that they ought to be able to throw a pair of champions at me at the same time, and they were such earnest little fellers that I agreed. I figure the whole fight took about two minutes, and I’m sure the thin one will walk again someday, though I got my doubts about the short muscular one.

Anyway, they were men of honor—well, aliens of honor—and they turned Queen Eleanor over to me. She wasn’t none too happy about it, but I escorted her to my ship and, just to make sure she didn’t run away, I stayed on the ground while she opened the hatch and entered the airlock. And then, before I could stop her, Eleanor locked the hatch and took off, leaving me standing on the ground looking foolish as all get-out.

The aliens laughed their heads off, and for a minute there I was thinking of challenging the whole batch of ’em to a freehand fight to the death, but then I decided that it wasn’t really their fault that I’d found a lemon in the garden of love, so I had ’em show me her ship, which I figured was mine now.

It was the strangest-looking damned spaceship I’d ever laid eyes on, but I couldn’t see no reason not to appropriate it just the same, so I bade all the giggling aliens good-bye after signing twenty or thirty autographs, and climbed into the ship.

The control panel was like nothing I’d ever seen before. All the readouts were in some alien language, and the chairs and bulkheads felt kind of soft and almost lifelike. I didn’t pay much attention to them, though. My main concern was trying to figure out how to activate the ship and take off.

Hurricane Smith got up and walked to the door.

“I don’t mean any disrespect, Catastrophe,” he said, “but I’ve been keeping an eye on the time, and I really think I’d better go pick up Sheba on Adelaide of Louvain before she runs out of air.”

“No problem,” said Baker. “It wouldn’t do to have your lady love suffocate while you stay here drinking and enjoying yourself.”

“I’m glad you understand,” said Smith. “I’ll see you in a day or two.”

One button on the control panel caught my eye (said Baker). It was a little brighter and a little shinier than the others, and since I couldn’t just stare at the panel all day and do nothing, I reached out and pushed it.

And heard a very high-pitched human squeal.

“Who’s there?” I said, drawing my burner and spinning around.

“Me,” said a feminine voice.

“Where are you hiding?” I demanded.

“I’m not hiding at all,” said the voice. “I’m the ship.”

“Are you a cyborg or an artificial intelligence?” I asked.

“Neither.”

“I’m running out of guesses,” I said.

“I’m a living, genetically engineered being.”

“You sound female,” I said.

“I am.”

Baker looked up and saw Hurricane Smith standing in the doorway.

“I thought you’d left,” he said.

“I did,” said Smith. “But I heard what you were saying as I walked out, and I came back for the rest of the story.”

“It’s just about an alien spaceship,” said Baker. “Or an alien that happened to be a spaceship.”

“A female alien.”

“I thought you had your own female alien to worry about,” said Baker.

“You mean Sheba?”

“Right. Ain’t she busy running out of air on Adelaide of Louvain?”

“She’s got big lungs,” said Smith with a nonchalant shrug. He walked back to his table, sat down, and leaned forward intently. “Go on with your story.”

Baker stared at him for a long moment and finally shrugged. “Whatever makes you happy.”

“Do any of these make us take off?” I asked, hitting another couple of buttons on the panel (continued Baker).

“Oh, my God!” she breathed.

“Did I hurt you, ma’am?”

“Do it again.”

So I pressed the buttons again, and the ship started purring just like a cat.

“You got a name, ma’am?” I said.

“Leonora,” she sighed.

“Well, Leonora, ma’am,” I said, “can you maybe tell me how to get the hell off Henry III before these here aliens decide to bust the truce I kind of threw on ’em when they weren’t looking?”

“Just sit down,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

So I sat down, and before I could strap myself into the chair its arms grabbed me and kind of wrapped themselves around me, and then I looked at the viewscreen and saw we were already above the stratosphere.

The arms released me and kind of stroked me here and there before they went back into place, and then I got to my feet again and continued looking around.

“What’s your name?” asked Leonora.

“Baker,” I said. “Catastrophe Baker.”

“What a romantic name!” she crooned.

“You really think so?” I said. “I always thought Hurricane Smith and Gravedigger Gaines grabbed up the really good names.” I walked to the back of the cabin. “Where’s the galley? I ain’t eaten since before I landed on Henry III.”

A wall slid away. “Just enter this corridor,” she said, “and it’s the first room on the left.”

So I took a step into the corridor, and the ship shuddered a little like it was going through a minor ion storm, and I stuck my arms out against the walls to make sure I didn’t fall down.

“Oh!” said Leonora. And then: “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“I’m sorry if I’ve discommoded you, ma’am,” I said. “I don’t mean to do you no harm.”

“You’re not doing me any harm!” she said, and I could have sworn she was panting.

Well, I kept walking down the corridor and she kept saying “Oh!” with each stop I took, and then I came to a room on the left, and I entered it, and sure enough it was the galley, though it wasn’t like any galley I’d ever seen before. There was a table and a chair right in the middle, and all kinds of incomprehensible controls and gauges along one wall.

“What would you like, Catastrophe Baker?” asked Leonora.

“Maybe a sandwich and a beer, if it’s no trouble, ma’am,” I said.

“No trouble at all. Do you see the glowing pink button on the wall, just to the left of the holographic readout?”

“Yeah.”

“Just press it.”

“Don’t I have to tell it what I want?”

“Just press it!” said Leonora urgently.

So I walked over and pressed it.

“Wow!” purred Leonora.

“What do I do now, ma’am?” I asked.

“Now you eat.”

“What I mean is, where’s my food?”

“On the table,” said Leonora—and sure enough, it was.

I sat down and started chewing on the sandwich.

“You’re so much more considerate than my last owner,” said Leonora.

“I ain’t your owner, ma’am,” I said. “I’m more like your borrower.”

“We would make such a wonderful team!”!” she said. “Won’t you consider it?”

“Well, sure, if you want me to keep you,” I answered.

“Oh, yes!” she whispered.

“Well, as long as we’re man and ship, how about heading over to Barleycorn II?” I said.

“Done.”

“As simple as that?”

“Well, you could get us there faster by adjusting the navigational control,” she said.

“How do I do that?”

A wall panel slid into the floor, revealing a whole new bunch of flashing lights and buttons and controls and such.

“Do you see that little wheel on the Q-valve?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Turn it to the left.”

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

I walked over to it and gave it a quick spin.

“Oh my oh my oh my!” she shrieked.

“Did I hurt you, ma’am?”

“No!”

“Is that it, or is there anything else I should do?”

Well, I never knew you had to fiddle with so many controls to adjust a navigational computer, but finally I must have hurt her because she told me she couldn’t take any more, and I said that was okay, if we got there an hour or two later it wouldn’t be no problem.

The trip took two days, and she was just the sweetest thing you’d ever want to meet or travel with. She insisted that I eat three meals a day, and we kept working on that navigational system whenever I had a chance, and then finally we touched down on Barleycorn, and suddenly I noticed a note of concern in Leonora’s voice.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m off to visit an old friend,” I told her.

“Will I ever see you again?”

“Sure you will,” I said. “I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life on Barleycorn II.”

Actually I just planned to spend one night there, renewing an old acquaintanceship with the Evening Star, a lady embezzler who doubled as an exotic dancer. I took her out to dinner, and during the course of the meal I mentioned Leonora, and nothing would do but that I took her there later in the evening so she could see the living ship for herself.

“She’s certainly cute,” she said as we stood in front of Leonora.

“So are you,” I said, kind of gently nuzzling her neck and ear and starting to subtly remove her tunic. “And you got racier lines.”

“My, you’re impetuous!” she said, giggling and slapping my hand—but not so hard that I took it away.

“Could be,” I replied, since I hadn’t never seen my birth certificate. “But my friends call me Catastrophe.”

Well, we started renewing our friendship in earnest, right there in the shadow of the ship. We kind of did a little of this and a little of that, and by the time I took her back home she decided that no woman in her right mind would ever call me Catastrophe again.

It was when I came back to the ship that the trouble started.

“I’ve never been so insulted in all my life!” said Leonora.

“What are you talking about?”

“The second I turn my back you seduce that ugly little tart!”

“She ain’t ugly, and besides, I done it in front of your back,” I said, figuring I had to speak up for the Evening Star since she wasn’t there to speak up for her own self.

“And you’re filthy!” continued Leonora. “Get out of those clothes and take a bath immediately!”

“You’re sounding a lot more like a mother than a spaceship,” I complained.

“Did I upset you?” she asked.

“Yeah, a little.”

“Good!” she snapped. “Then we’re even!”

Well, from that moment on things just went from bad to worse. Every time I gave her a new location to visit, she gave me the old third degree about what woman I was planning to ravish. She wouldn’t send or accept any subspace radio message that had a female at the other end. If I talked in my sleep and mentioned a lady’s name, she’d wake me up and demand to know who I’d been talking about.

Finally, after three or four more days, she announced that she was taking me back to the Plantagenet system.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I can’t stand it anymore!” she said. “I can’t concentrate on navigation! I can’t compute my fuel consumption! I can’t focus on meteor swarms and ion storms!”

“You got some kind of headache?” I asked.

“I have a case of unrequited love, and it’s driving me crazy!” she said. “You are my every thought, and yet I mean nothing to you.”

“Sure you do,” I said.

“As a woman?”

“As a spaceship.”

She screamed in agony.

“I’m sorry, truly I am,” I told her. “I wish I wasn’t so goddamned attractive and irresistible to women, but it ain’t something I can control. It just seems to go with being a practitioner of the hero trade.”

She didn’t say another word until we entered the atmosphere of Henry II. Then she asked in a very small voice: “Would you adjust my gyros, just once, for old time’s sake?”

“Sure,” I said. “Where are they?”

A couple of knobs started flashing.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” I explained. “I thought you used them to home in on different radio frequencies.”

I reached out and started turning the knobs.

“Mmmmmm!” said Leonora.

I spun the left-hand one.

“Ohhhhhh!” she said.

I twisted the right-hand one.

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” she screamed. Then: “Was it good for you, too?”

We landed a couple of minutes later, and then she let me out and took off for parts unknown.

And that’s the true story of the Ship Who Purred.

“Did she give you any hint about where she might be going?” asked Hurricane Smith.

“No,” answered Baker. “Last I saw of her, she was heading out toward the Quinellus Cluster.”

“How much of a start did she have?”

“On who?”

“On me, damn it!”

“Ain’t you got a lady friend what’s fast running out of oxygen on Adelaide of Louvain?” said Baker.

“Never interfere with someone else’s romance!” said Smith severely. He looked around the room, and finally his gaze fell on Billy Karma. “You’re broke, right, Reverend?”

“Well, I always got the Lord and the Good Book,” replied Billy Karma, “but truth to tell, neither of ’em will bring all that much of a price at a pawn shop.”

“How’d you like to make a quick two thousand credits?”

“Who do I have to crucify?”

“Just fly to Adelaide of Louvaine and pick up my … uh …. this female alien named Sheba, and bring her back here.”

“It’s a big moon, and I assume she’s just a normal-sized godless alien heathen,” said Billy Karma. “How will I find her?”

“I’ll transmit her position to your ship’s computer.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Billy Karma. “But I’ll want the money up front.”

Hurricane Smith pulled out his wad and peeled off a pair of thousand-credit notes. He handed one to the Reverend and one to me.

“Half up front, and Tomahawk will give you the other half when you show up with Sheba. And Reverend?”

“Yeah?”

“Leave right now and go as fast as you can. If she suffocates, I’m going to want my money back.”

“I’m on my way,” said Billy Karma, running to the door.

“I’d better go with him,” said Big Red, getting up from his table.

Hurricane Smith looked at him curiously.

“I assume you want her brought back intact as well as alive,” explained Big Red.

“If possible,” answered Smith without much interest.

“You ought to know that you never send the Reverend out without a chaperone.” Big Red took Billy Karma by the arm and walked out the door. “Let’s go, Rev.”

Hurricane Smith turned to Baker. “The Quinellus Cluster, you say?”

Baker nodded his head. “That’s right.”

He walked to the door. “Wish me luck.”

Then he was gone.

“Best luck I could wish him is that he never finds her,” said Baker, emptying his glass.

“But it would make a nice story,” remarked the Bard.

“Yeah, it probably would.” Suddenly Baker turned to him. “I want you to sell that goddamned book before you die.”

“I’ll do my best,” said the Bard, surprised. “But why do you care?”

“That book’s my immortality,” continued Baker. He took a deep, heroic breath. “And on days like this, I feel like I just might want to live forever.”

“Trust me, you will,” promised the Bard. He patted his notebook. “I’ll see to it.”

Those who were left drank and told stories deep into the night. Then, one by one, they began leaving.

Little Mike Picasso offered to capture Silicon Carny on canvas. She liked the notion, and they went off together to his studio on Beethoven IV.

Bet-a-World O’Grady remembered that there was a high-stakes game on Calliope, the carnival world, and decided that if he left at dawn he just had time to make it.

Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull went home to spend a little time with the other Injuns and replenish their cash supplies.

Truth to tell, I don’t know where the Cyborg de Milo went. One minute she was sitting there, and the next she was gone. I never even saw her leave.

Einstein announced that he’d come up with a new approach to transmuting base metals into gold that was even more efficient than the last such method he had devised, and Gravedigger Gaines offered to fly him into the Commonwealth so he could register it at a patent office.

Catastrophe Baker stayed a few hours longer, but I could tell he was feeling restless. Finally he decided it had been too long since he’d encountered any Pirate Queens, so he borrowed a ship and went out looking for some at the edge of the galaxy.

So it was just Three-Gun Max and the permanent residents—me, Reggie, and the Bard—for an afternoon. But this is the Outpost, and it never stays empty for long.

Doc Arcturus showed up at twilight, followed by Treetop Quatermaine, and the Sapphire of Sappho, who could have given Silicon Carny a run for her money. By sunset they were arriving in force, Cyclone Jim Crevich and the alien Br’er Rabbit and Spidersilk Sally and Billy the Blade and the Titanium Kid and a couple of dozen others.

Before long there wasn’t an empty chair in the place. Then Snakeskin Malone walked in, strode across the floor like he was still outside on one of his beloved jungle worlds, and had Reggie pour him a tall one.

“Hi, Snakeskin,” said Max. “Long time no see. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“I’ve been out making history,” he replied.

“Let’s hear about it,” said the Bard, pulling out his pen and notebook so he could graft yet another story onto his epic chronicle before both the adventure and the adventurer were lost forever.

That’s pretty much what we do at the Outpost—live a little history, make a little history, tell a little history. It’s not an easy place to find, but if you ever get here, I think you’ll agree that it was worth the effort.

About the Author

Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He is the winner of 5 Hugo Awards (from a record 37 nominations), plus a Nebula and many other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Croatia, Poland, Catalonia, and Spain. Mike is the author of more than 70 novels, close to 300 short stories, and 3 screenplays, the editor of 42 anthologies, and is currently the editor of Galaxy’s Edge Magazine. He was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon.