The problem was the celebrity.
The stewardess was used to galactic celebrities. This was the first-class shuttle, after all.
But this was the most famous galactic supercelebrity she had ever met.
And the most insistent.
“Mr. Loc Rhod,” she said, “you’ll have to assume your individual position.”
He pulled her into his cabinette and down onto his lap. “I don’t want an individual position,” he said. “I want all positions.”
The stewardess pulled back.
But not too hard.
“We’re going to take off soon, Mr. Rhod!”
Loc Rhod buried his nose in her hair. “I’m gonna take off right now!”
In the cockpit, the captain was flipping switches on a long row of identical switches.
clikclikclikclikclikclikclikclikclikclik
They fell before his finger like bowling pins at a tournament.
“…axis authorization confirmed…” droned the copilot.
The head stewardess entered the cockpit.
“Zone 1. Snooze regulators operative,” she said.
The captain checked out her cute little see-thru suit.
“Roger that,” he said.
She left with a smile.
Suddenly a green light flashed on the control panel.
“Alert the ground,” said the copilot.
“There’s a problem?” asked the captain impatiently. He was busy watching the stewardess’s elegant departure.
“We’ve got parasites in the landing gear.”
Moments later, on the ground, a truck pulled up under the massive underbelly of the galactic shuttle.
Two men in hi-tech, lo-risk hermetically sealed disinfectant suits got out.
They uncoiled a hose and sent a bright beam of deansing fire up into the shuttle’s wheel well.
Screams were heard. High piched screams, low pitched groans, curses, cries, exclamations and imprecations. A rain of hideous creatures dropped from the well, falling onto the stained tarmac.
While the disinfectant crew was vacuuming the still twitching parasites into the morguetank on the truck, another truck pulled up.
Two men climbed out and opened a trapdoor under the shuttle.
A phosphorescent tube as big as a log fell out.
“Yeah, it’s me,” said Right Arm. “Put Zorgon.” Right Arm was standing in the airport lobby, using one of the mobile phone booths that wandered around looking for customers.
“I’m listening,” said Zorg coldly.
“The real Korben Dallas is on the plane!” said Right Arm. “He took my place!”
Zorg’s voice was as cold as midwinter midnight. “This is a joke, right?”
Loc Rhod’s arms and legs were wrapped around the stewardess as his hands explored her erogenous zones.
“No!” he whispered in her ear. “I swear to God. I’ve never been this sincere…”
The stewardess wavered. He was, after all, more than famous. He was superfamous.
“Power pressure,” said the copilot.
The captain knocked down another row of
switches.
clikclikclikclikclikclikclikclikclikclik
“Primed.”
The stewardess had six buttons on her blouse. Loc Rhod made up a poem for each one.: Her brassiere had two hooks.
Each was a sonnet.
“Protection?” asked the captain.
A shield dropped into place around the shuttle’s
engines.
“Confirmed,” said the copilot.
The stewardess’s legs rose slowly into the air. They spread wider and wider and…
Zorg punched in the phone number his right arm, Right Arm, had given him.
“278…”
Just as the captain pulled back on the throttle. “Ten seconds!”
“Power increase…”
Just as Right Arm fended off an angry phone customer. “Come on, come on…” he muttered,
Just as the stewardess dropped her shoes, one by one, and crooned, “I’m on my way…”
Just as Zorg punched in more numbers: “645…”
Just as the engines peaked: RRRRRROOOOOAAAARRRRRRRRRR!
And Loc Rhod began his climactic Byronic stanza.
And the shuttle lifted off.
And the stewardess likewise: “Yeeeessss!”
And Zorg, smiling demonically, punched in the final numbers:
“321…”
BARRROOOOOM!
The mobile pay phone exploded.
Right Arm was no more.
Along with everyone and everything else that had been within sixty feet of the pay phone.
Zorg hung up and lit a cigar.
The stewardess’s scream softened to a satisfied whisper.
In the cockpit, the copilot said, “Landing gear secure.”
The captain locked in the autopilot and disabled the cockpit smoke detector.
‘Let’s light one up.”
Her face showed a mixture of relief, anticipation… and terror.
20
“Sir, we’re finally getting something!”
First Class! What’s not to like?
Particularly with the new FTL (Faster than Light) Warp-Hop-FoId&Jump drive, which uses the elasticity of stretched superstrings to pull both Space and Time into conveniently traversed, commercially viable trade and travel routes.
Certainly, Leeloo and Korben were enjoying their trip.
In Korben’s first-class cabinette they slept soundly. Leeloo’s little hand was cuddled comfortably in Korben’s big one, just as the two of them were cuddled in the warm, safe passenger area of the quarter-mile-long intragalactic shuttle.
Across the galaxy, however, a malevolent force was waiting:
The Dark Planet.
The Ultimate Evil.
Lights flashed across its surface, like random electric storms.
Nearby (relatively) in the admiral’s starship, a technician turned away from her view screen.
Across the galaxy in the other direction, the President was slumped at his desk.
A giant of a man, President Lindberg had, like Lincoln (an ancient leader of one of the constituent political entities of the United Federation), poor posture.
“It’s sending out radio signals!” said one of the President’s scientists, who was standing with the other scientists behind the line of generals.
The President groaned. “What the hell does it [want with radio waves?”
“Maybe,” the scientist said, “it wants to make a call”
The President and all the generals turned and looked at him in astonishment.
Zorg sat in his office at his teak desk.
He loved his desk.
The last teak tree on the planet had been cut down and sawed up to make his desk That made it
Picasso sat (or slumped, or squatted, or whatever it is that whatever it was does) on the desk, purring contentedly.
(Or whatever.)
BBBRRRIIINNNNGf The phone rang.
Picasso growled. (Or whatever.)
Zorg activated the intercom.
“I told you, I don’t want to be disturbed!”
“Mister Shadow on the line,” said the receptionist, enunciating slowly.
Zorg got to his feet. Picasso tumbled (or what
ever) to the floor.
Zorg picked up the phone with trembling
hands.
“Zorg here.”
The voice that came through was dim, weak, feeble, as if it came from the remotest reaches of Time and Space.
But it was no less impressive for all that.
“AM I DISTURBING YOU?”
“No! No! Not at all. Where are you?”
“NOT FAR NOW.”
“Gr-great!” stammered Zorg.
“HOW’S OUR DEAL COMING ALONG?”
“F-fine,” Zorg stammered. “Just fine. I’ll have the four stones you asked for anytime now. But it wasn’t easy.”
Silence on the line,
A black, slimy liquid began to ooze from the top of Zorg’s head.
“MONEY IS OF NO IMPORTANCE,” said the voice on Zorg’s line. “I WANT THE STONES.”