Sam froze when he heard this. The last thing he wanted anything to do with was the Galactic Hegemony’s court system. From the tales he’d heard, the Court’s judgments were rather draconian; that is, if you could ever get your case on the docket, and provided that you could survive the preliminary visit of the Clerk of Court. Every galactic he had spoken to had expressed a decided aversion to court disputes; it was a sure way of both sides losing everything they had.
“Perhaps that is why the Bingnagians wanted a human negotiator,” Sam said hopefully. “To keep the Court out of it.”
“Quite possibly,” rasped Dratte Five as he sucked another tumbler of glycol, his fifth in the past hour, through the base of his eating foot. In the past few days his imbibing had increased markedly. Dratte twiddled his antennae as if thinking deeply about what he was going to say as he drained the last of the Glimmora whiskey. “I really like you, Sam,” he rasped quietly as he waited for the auto-chef to refill the cup.
“Well, I like you, too,” Sam answered cautiously, wondering where this startling revelation of affection was going. “I just wish that I could do something for you to show my appreciation for all you’ve done.”
Dratte Five rubbed his appendages together. “Owe me nothing. Glad to help. Like to give you something. A memento of the time we’ve spent. Small thing.” Dratte spread his antennae to indicate something about the size of a basketball. “Something you’ll like, I’m sure. Mark of my esteem, as it were.”
Sam nodded. “I’m flattered, but you really don’t need to—”
“Not another word. Be my pleasure. Can’t do it now, though. Have to, uh, get it out of storage. But, have no fear, I’ll get it to you before you leave. Now,” he said with a gracious wave of his antennae, “I’ll stand you another round. Beer still your choice of beverage?”
Sam nodded numbly. The auto-chef seemed to continue to display its hatred of humanity in general, and Sam in particular, by serving a variety of poisons that threatened to destroy Sam’s carefully nurtured health. The beer, as one sterling example, suffered no degradation of quality as it passed through his system. He even wondered if the auto-chef simply recycled the used beer from his cabin and rebottled it for his next round. It was hard to tell from the taste.
Still, it was better than the wine.
Sam was immersed in a sea of blondes, surfing over heaving bosoms, plunging into the sargasso of sweet smelling arms and legs, and tangling his hands in the seaweed of long blonde tresses. He swam blissfully abreast in the sensuously warm sea, listening to the distant squealing of the foghorn.
He awakened with a start. That was no fog horn; it was the ship’s alarm! They must be docking at the Bingnagia spaceport.
As he jumped from the bed he noticed that the air was uncomfortably humid, as if someone had sprayed the cabin with a fire hose. He checked the environmental settings and was surprised to see that Dratte had set the dehumidifier on high. Why, then, was the room so damp?
As he walked back to the bed his foot struck an object in the center of the floor. The impact sent a stab of agony racing up his leg. Sam hobbled to the side of the bed, clutching his foot in his hand, his big toe throbbing in pain. After the agony of his injury receded, Sam limped over to examine whatever had given him so much pain. He was certain that the object had not been there the previous evening.
It turned out to be a nondescript, brownish-gray lump, somewhat angular, with overlapping planes surrounding it. It was about the size of a basketball.
Sam hefted the object and was surprised at how much it weighed. He placed it on the bed and sat beside it, wondering why Dratte had left the thing sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a damp ring that was fast disappearing into the absorbent floor. The unattractive object was no doubt the gift Dratte wanted Sam to deliver.
Dratte? Now that he thought of it, where was his cabin mate? His four pairs of orange tennis shoes sat lined up neatly to one side of the cabin, and the mouselike little black hat was still on a hanger. Surely he wouldn’t have gone far in dishevel, would he? He decided to search for him.
He couldn’t find Dratte Five in the common room, in the bar, nor in any of his other, usual abodes. For all intents and purposes the Tsith appeared to have vanished without a trace. Sam decided to eat and wait for him to show up.
For his last breakfast, the auto-chef disgorged a bright-yellow pellet, which it swore was a human delicacy known as “Welsh rarebit.” The lumpy white liquid in the accompanying cup was so disgusting in appearance that he refused to ask what it was. He swore that he would never again fly Glimmora, not ever. Never!
“Oh, by the way,” he asked the auto-chef as he turned to leave, “my friend, the Tsith, seems to have disappeared. Have you seen him this morning?”
“Dratte Five Decline was last seen entering his cabin last evening after drinking twelve glycol and gingers.”
“But he’s not in the cabin,” Sam protested. “He is gone.”
“He did not emerge from the cabin. Did you eat him?” the auto-chef asked flatly.
“Of course I did,” Sam shot back, angry at the suggestion. Thanks to the auto-chef’s predator announcement weeks ago, he’d had no one to talk to except the Tsith and the truzdls.
“The ship has docked,” an announcement screeched from the overhead in several languages. “All departing passengers must leave. The ship will depart in one tiska-taska.” Sam did a quick time conversion in his head and realized that he had only an hour to get everything together and say his good-byes. He hastened to the cabin to gather his few personal things; his kit, and that ugly lump of a gift. He then rushed to the truzdl’s cabin to bid them farewell, hoping he would run into Dratte along the way, but was disappointed when he did not.
He’d spent so much time saying good-bye to his flea friends, and the ersatz-ox they rode in on, that he had to race for the dock while the departure horn blared. He squeezed through just as the hatch snapped shut at his heels, and ran into something solid and unyielding.
He rebounded from the set of four tree trunks he had impacted. As he looked up he discovered that these were incongruously wrapped in purple shorts. He continued to look up. And up.
Two meters above his eyes was a bullet-shaped head containing a pair of huge ears, neatly bisected by a flaccid, drooping tube. Two small, beady eyes peered from beneath a huge overshadowing ridge of flesh atop of what he suspected was the alien’s skull. Beneath its head was a solid block of fourarmed muscle that rested on the four tree trunks which, Sam now realized, must be the Bingnagian’s legs. This monster must be, he concluded, the welcoming committee.
The Bingnagian reached out with one of its foreclaws and snatched Sam’s kit from his hand. Nhff, it hooted through its tube. “Follow me,” the translator croaked. The Bingnagian led the way to a shuttle port and, with a casual wave of its aft claw, indicated that Sam should climb aboard.
Sam did so and climbed, with considerable difficulty, onto one of the oversized seats on the Bingnagia shuttle. Moments later, as he was struggling to settle himself on the cylindrical, padded cushion, the pilot and Sam’s escort flopped onto theirs and began throwing switches and pumping levers to build up pressure. The two seat belts on his “seat” were each as wide as Sam’s chest, with buckles the size of his head. As he was forcing the ends of one belt and buckle together the Bingnagia pilot stuck his breathing tube over his shoulder without turning around.
Hnijff, zzlig tka! it hooted through that orifice. “We’re leaving,” the translator decoded just as the engines fired and threw Sam against the unyielding seat back. The trip to the surface of the planet was thankfully short.