They all stared at each other for a long moment. Then the three men each bowed slightly.
One said, "Sorry. Our apologies to you…"
Then they blinked out.
Their names were Jixxy and Minxi, and they had climbed the mountain every night for the past two weeks.
They were from the Mutaman-Younguska star system, a place known for its beautiful women, and Jixxy and Minxi were all that and more. They had been transplanted here recently after successfully escaping the planet Tonk, along with hundreds of their sisters.
Their savior, the Great Klaaz, had selected their adopted planet very well. Erox 357 was a paradise, temperate, sparsely populated, with plenty of natural food and easily built shelter. All of the refugees from Mutaman-Younguska were happy with their new home, and this meant the Great Klaaz was very happy.
But it was not all fun and games here — mostly, but not all. As soon as they were settled, Klaaz suggested it would be wise that they all meditate on the stars every chance they got. The reason? To get a better perspective on how they'd arrived here. He suggested they look back toward the red-halo nebula, the place that now marked where the destroyed system of Mutaman-Younguska used to be. Another evening body they should contemplate was right across the sky from them: the nearby star system that contained the planet Tonk, shining like a blue ball in the warm night sky. It was important that they never forget these places from whence they came, Klaaz had told them. That's what Jixxy and Minxi were doing this night: remembering the past.
They had brought their candles and their incense plant, and at the first sight of Tonk, they lit the first leaf. The soothing aroma covered the mountaintop. When the red-halo nebula came into view, they lit the second one.
Then they broke open a bottle of slow-ship wine and lay down together to ponder the sky.
And suddenly, both felt hands tightening around their necks.
Where the gang of spacemen came from, the two girls would never really know.
All they were sure of was, one minute they were kissing, the next they were surrounded by five heavily armed star troopers, two of which had blinked in with their hands already around their necks.
The spacemen smelled heavily of slow-ship, and though they were trying to talk to each other, each was slurring his words so badly, they couldn't be understood.
Jixxy and Minxi could not cry out; the men were holding their throats too tightly. And even if they had been able to scream, they were a long distance away from their settlement. No one would hear them.
They struggled, though, and when they did, the two men assaulting them eased up a little. Then the spacemen began babbling and somehow started to make sense.
"Where are they?" one managed to growl.
"Where are who?" both girls screamed back at once.
"Your guardian angels. The spacemen who helped you escape from Tonk."
Both girls fell mum. They had barely seen the two men who had assisted Klaaz in getting them off the snowball planet. Klaaz said that the two men had requested anonymity, and he'd respected their wishes, just so history would not be cluttered when it came time to report the heroic masterstroke escape.
"They're gone… long gone!" Jixxy managed to scream now. But the guy with his hands around her neck only tightened them further.
"She is telling the truth!" Minxi gurgled. "We never really saw them. They helped us and then took off… "
"We must know where they went, and we do not have time to fool with you," yet another drunken soldier growled.
Jixxy's assailant began squeezing the air out of her. "If you do not tell," he said, emphasizing each syllable with an even tighter squeeze, "then you will die in a manner even more painful than the one we have planned for you."
"And if not you two," the fifth soldier mumbled. "Then another two. Or three. Or four…"
Both girls began to panic now. These monsters could kill them here and then find more of their sisters and do the same, yet they really did not know the information the air devils so desperately sought.
So they fought back again, this time even harder. This seemed to convince the attackers that the girls didn't know anything. They were wasting their time.
The leader of the assailants gave a quick nod to the two soldiers holding the girls down. It was their death sentence. The final act had to be done. With a whoop from all the assailants, the two men began squeezing the life out of both girls while the other soldiers helped hold Jixxy and Minxi.
"Hurry up about it," the nervous squad leader said. "You never know—"
That's as far as he got. For when the man tried to say the next word, no sound came out. He looked down at his chest and realized he had a gaping hole going right through him. He toppled over instantly, dead before he hit the ground.
Then the two men who were holding the girls down were suddenly headless. The would-be executioners looked up and saw twin beams of blaster light coming right at them. In a flash, both were decapitated. They fell in a heap on top of the two terrified girls.
It took a few moments for Jixxy and Minxi to realize they'd been saved. They pushed the bodies off of themselves, scrambled to their knees, and hugged each other very tightly. Then the tears came. Only then did they look up to see the person who had rescued them standing nearby.
It was the Great Klaaz himself, twin ray guns in hand, their barrels still emitting some greenish blaster gas.
While he was obviously relieved to see the two girls were still alive — and it was only an instinct that had brought him to this place at exactly the right time — his very wrinkled brow was especially deep with worry now.
He helped the girls to their feet and comforted them as they cried on his shoulders. The bodies of the five dead raiders disappeared in a blink, called back to their ship, no doubt. But Klaaz spotted something on the ground nearby, a piece of uniform ripped in the initial struggle.
Klaaz picked it up to find a button was attached to the thin piece of fabric. There was lettering imprinted on the button. Two words that Klaaz did not completely understand: Solar Guards.
He studied the emblem for a few moments, then looked up into the night. Somewhere, up there, the ship these cretins had beamed down from was lurking or perhaps already leaving orbit. But that was not all the cosmos was telling Klaaz at this moment. Something else was being whispered in his ear
"My friends…" he mumbled now as the girls hugged him even tighter. "My friends are in trouble."
There first came a crack of lightning above the now-deserted peak known as Zero Degree Zero.
The bolt quickly turned into a swirl of sparks and a strange blue mist above the hilltop. Then came a sound akin to thunder. An instant later, a spaceship popped into view: a very strange spaceship.
Every space-going vessel traveling the Galaxy was shaped like a triangle. From the smallest interplanetary cargo humper to the massive, miles-long space cruisers flown by the Fourth Empire, the same basic tricornered design prevailed.
But this craft was not shaped like a triangle. It was shaped like a saucer.
Hovering over the hill for a few moments, it whirred slightly, occasionally emitting a high-pitched sound. Then a bolt of blue light shot out of its bottom and scanned the hill briefly before moving down to the valley of devastation below. In its glare, the enormous blaster craters, the miles of booby traps, the wreckage of a million robots. The rivers that ran like blood.
This went on for several minutes; the saucer's occupants were obviously looking for something or someone. But then the bolt of blue light disappeared, and the high-pitched sound went away. The saucer began spinning madly once again. There was another crack of lightning and another roll of thunder.