"About that," he said with a perturbed frown, adjusting his hold on the bulky coil. "Where we come from, the word maidenly is usually used to, well, describe certain female attributes. It's not generally used for men such as myself."
She emerged with a reactor coil under each of her brawny arms. "Are all the menfolk like you where you come from?" Hearty laughter erupted from deep in her diaphragm. "You're hilarious!" She shoved one of the coils at Hank, who hefted it with his left arms; then she went back for the fourth coil. Lugging her pair with ease, she nodded toward the end of the corridor. "This should take us straight to your ship."
Pressure suits lined the wall in an alcove beside the airlock, beyond which lay the collapsible docking bridge mating Asteria's ship to the Effervescent Magnitude. They set down their coils and suited up, tugging on the blue snakeskin-like material. Hank inconspicuously tucked the Cody 52 into his fur flab for the time being and crammed his arms into the suit. It had not been designed for his unique anatomy, but he made it work. Quasar was glad the Carpethrian had managed to hold onto a weapon; he only hoped it was still loaded.
"I'll help you with the install once we're aboard. These coils can be a real pain in the rear, but don't you worry your little head about it." Asteria winked at the captain again.
"Uh-right." Again, Quasar found himself perturbed. "I do appreciate everything, you know—"
"Least I could do. There's no way I could let them keep you in that brig. You're too good for the sperm farms. I mean, look at you!" She eyed the captain appreciatively. "You're a prime specimen of manhood!"
Hank grunted, "Our plasma weapons aren't much against your Incinerators—"
"Well now, there's no way a man could go around carrying an Incinerator. You'd burn your cute little toes off!"
Quasar stared, speechless. He cleared his throat. "I've, uh, handled much larger weaponry, I assure you. I am the captain of a star cruiser, after all."
She scoffed. "Pressing buttons is all that amounts to, Barty." She pinched his rear as he slipped on a helmet and fastened it into place. "Smarty Barty, you're so cute sometimes. I just want to stick you in my pocket and carry you around forever!"
Episode 7: Smarty Barty
Smarty Barty? No one had ever dared to call Captain Bartholomew Quasar that in his entire life. He had never even conceived of it being in the realm of possibility.
"Barty," Hank snickered.
"You got that?" Asteria asked with a concerned frown as Quasar stooped to retrieve his reactor coil. She had already hefted both her pair. "Wouldn't want you to strain anything important." A wink toward the bulge at his groin made her meaning clear.
"Got it," Quasar grunted, red in the face.
Pressure suits on, they entered the airlock, passed through the docking bridge—a transparent plasticon umbilical shielding them from the star-punctured void—and reached the Effervescent Magnitude. Captain Quasar gave a verbal command, and the airlock door slid open to receive them. Once the airlock pressure had equalized, they unclamped their helmets. Hank was the first to strip out of his suit and hover a hand near the Cody 52 in his fur.
"Need some help?" Asteria's full attention remained on the captain as he struggled to free himself from the skintight suit.
"I'm fine!" he snapped, then adjusted his demeanor. "I've got it, thank you."
Asteria raised half her unibrow. "Somebody's emotional."
Before Quasar could reply, the shipside airlock slid open, and his head of security appeared with a complement of six men sporting the latest Cody 3000 atom rifles.
"You're safe now, Captain!" Chief Gruber announced, aiming his weapon at the massive woman. "Hostile contained!"
Asteria eyed the newcomers with amusement.
"Stand down, Chief," the captain said with a weary sigh. "She's on our side." At least, she seemed to be by all indications thus far.
Gruber blinked. "Captain, permission to speak freely."
"Granted." Quasar kicked his feet free of the suit, nearly toppling over. But Asteria was right there to steady him. "I'm fine!" He declined her assistance.
"Captain, you are unfortunately exhibiting a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome. This female is not our ally. Her ship caught us in a tractor beam, they kidnapped both you and our helmsman off the bridge, they've held you well over thirty hours—"
"Long hours," Asteria added, giving the captain's rear another squeeze. His ears burned crimson.
"Humph," said Hank. Translation: The captain hadn't been taken for questioning last night, but for something else entirely. Quasar had feared as much.
"Enough speaking freely," Quasar said. He pointed to the four reactor coils. "Have your men do something useful instead of threatening our guest. Take these to engineering. Those geeks down there should know what to do. But I want the cold fusion near-lightspeed reactor to remain offline."
"Very well," Gruber managed. "Men, you heard him."
Shouldering their weapons, the security team moved to obey, struggling with the coils and ending up carrying one between every pair of them, staggering out of the airlock.
"Aren't they just adorable?" Asteria clucked her tongue after them. "Flexing their little biceps like that. Might want to spend more time in the weight room, boys. Works wonders!"
Quasar parted his lips to object—the security personnel being among the beefiest of his crew, besides himself, of course—when his gaze fell on the remaining reactor coil.
"That one, too," he told Gruber.
"Don't think I can manage it by myself, Captain."
"Let me give you a hand," Asteria offered. "Honestly, I don't know how you men fend for yourselves out here!"
Quasar turned to Hank. "Assist the chief."
The very hairy helmsman didn't appear content about leaving the captain alone in the airlock with this dangerous female. The situation was bad enough already. But he couldn't disobey a direct order without drawing attention.
So Hank whipped out the Cody 52 and aimed it at Asteria's head. "Beat it, lady."
Confounded, Gruber and the captain could only stare, while Asteria merely offered a bemused smile.
"I don't think so, Hairy. Your captain has invited me along as part of his crew. One with benefits." She wrapped both arms around Quasar, nearly compressing all the air from his lungs, and started running her masculine hands up and down his torso. He resembled a ventriloquist's dummy in her grasp.
Gruber didn't seem to know what to do with his rifle, aiming it first at the woman, then at the floor, then at his left boot. "Captain?"
Quasar fixed his gaze on the last reactor coil. "Get that down to engineering!"
"Show me my quarters, Babe. We've got to make sure the bed's plenty big enough," she cooed into the captain's earlobe, giving it a nibble.
"The captain does not intend to make you a member of our crew," Hank said, his voice oddly harmonic. Phlegm in one of his throats had cleared, but the other one hadn't.
She curled back a lip at him, baring her gargantuan teeth. "He doesn't make promises he can't keep."
"Yes he does. All the time."
Quasar winced as she squeezed him, her eyes bulging with intensity. "He wouldn't lie to me!"
"How long have you known him?" Gruber blurted with a puzzled frown.
"Thirty hours or thirty years, what does it matter? We're soul mates! I knew it when you were just a blip on our proximity sensors!"
Hank's gaze narrowed. It might have looked like the giant woman was using the captain as a human shield if not for their height difference. She stood a full head and shoulders above him, so Hank still had a clear shot between her eyes.
"You scanned us when you caught the Magnitude in your tractor beam," he said.
"And I found me the pick of the litter!" Another squeeze; Captain Quasar wheezed like a dog's squeaky toy, incapacitated by her grip. "Too bad you had to come along," she sneered at Hank. "I assumed you were the captain's fur coat."
Gruber chuckled at Hank. "She took yo
u by accident!"
Episode 8: An Amazonian's Scorn
Hank whipped the atom rifle from the chief's grasp with one of his four hands and gestured toward the remaining reactor coil with another. "You heard the captain. Take that thing to engineering."
Hank was the only one currently armed, and by the fierce look on his furry face, Chief Gruber knew better than to question him. Hank never looked so ferocious as he did while wielding a plasma rifle—or any weapon, for that matter. Gruber did as he was told with only an annoyed scowl, nearly breaking his back walking the reactor coil down the corridor like it was an old refrigerator.
Asteria eyed the chief's backside with appreciation until he was out of sight. "Mmm-mm, I know I'm gonna like it here. The women on my ship don't know what they're missing! Some haven't even seen a man before. The kind we have back on Theta Six, they're nothing to look at, you know—pale, scrawny runts we hook up to donor machines on our sperm farms. But you?" Yet another squeeze. "You've got real spunk!"
"You're not so bad yourself," Quasar wheezed.
"Let him go," Hank said, activating the sights on the pistol and rifle. Twin red dots danced across Asteria's forehead.
"Or what?" she chuckled. "Really Babe, have you no control over your crew?"
"Can't breathe," the captain rasped.
"Oh." She released him. "My bad."
Captain Quasar bolted from her grasp and made a mad dash past Hank, charging headlong down the corridor until he was at a safe distance inside the Magnitude. Asteria lunged after him with thick fingers curled and grasping, but the laser sights in her eyes halted her in her tracks.
"It's not you, it's me," the captain called back, hands on his knees as he fought for breath. "I can't settle down, can't commit. Gotta sow my wild oats and all that." He had a million of these excuses ready for any occasion, and this situation seemed to call for all of them at once.
"Who said anything about commitment?" Asteria laughed. "I'm planning on having full run of the ship!"
Cautiously, Hank stepped backwards into the ship's corridor, his aim steady. Asteria made no move to follow him out of the airlock.
"Not this ship," he growled. One of his arms shot out to the side, pressing the wall-mounted control panel. The door slid shut, and Quasar gave the voice command to lock it.
"What is this, Babe?" she demanded from the other side of the transparent plasticon window, her voice muted somewhat.
"Goodbye," Quasar said with an apologetic shrug.
She flushed with anger, raging, "You'll never get away! We'll catch you in our tractor beam and tear you apart!"
"Better return to your bridge then," Hank said, handing Quasar both weapons. "We're not sticking around." With that, he stalked off to take his position at the helm of the Magnitude, where he'd be ready the instant the propulsion reactor came back online.
"Hank," Quasar said, extending a hand as the very hairy biped passed. "I always know I can count on you."
"Humph," Hank said as his superior right hand met the captain's in a firm grip. Translation: Don't mention it—but next time, keep me in the loop. The captain knew he would, as long as he could figure out what the loop was and why it was looping in the first place.
Quasar approached the airlock with some hesitation in his step. "Sorry it has to end this way, Asteria."
She shrugged her massive shoulders. "I screw you, you screw me. Guess we both got what we wanted." A coldness festered in her gaze. "You do this a lot? Play with a young woman's affections?"
He raised an eyebrow and flashed his winning smile. "Never one like you."
Her expression melted just a bit. "Most men steer clear of our space, and for good reason. They usually come to a bad end—from their perspective. Guess I was lucky you came our way."
"What do the women of your planet have against men, exactly?"
She answered his question with a question: "What good are you? But as I always say, 'Men. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.' Or something like that." She chuckled. "Seriously though, without men's seed, Amazon Theta Six would die out in a single generation."
"Captain," came a nasal voice from engineering on internal comms. "We've got the reactor back online—"
"Not the cold fusion one." That was the last thing they needed.
"No sir, we've disabled it for the time being and have the back-up propulsion reactor running in its place. With these new coils installed, we're good to go, ready when you are. Over and out."
Quasar glanced down at Asteria's helmet on her side of the airlock. "You might want to put that back on. We'll be pulling away any second now." He met her gaze. "You should return to your ship."
She shook her head slowly with a meaningful look. The helmet remained by her side. "Can't live without you, Barty."
Captain Quasar could only stare. Was she going to let herself die out there?
"Kidding," she chuckled, fastening the helmet into place. "Shoulda seen the look on your face!"
"Right." Quasar managed a smile. He opened the exterior airlock door to the docking bridge that would take her back to her ship.
"Well, I guess I'll see you in three months," she sighed, half-turning to make her exit.
"How's that?"
"We women of Amazon Theta Six are known for our short gestation periods."
"Gestation—" His mouth tasted like old glue all of a sudden.
"You know I'm pregnant, right?"
The corridor lost its gravity. Quasar reached out a hand to steady himself. "Already? How is that possible?"
"Kidding!" she guffawed, slapping her thigh. "Oh, you shoulda seen—!"
"Hank," Captain Quasar switched to internal comms.
"Yes, Captain?" the very hairy helmsman replied from his post.
"Fire up the engines."
Episode 9: Cold Fusion Magic
The conference room aboard the Effervescent Magnitude carried a thin layer of dust, having never been used much since they left Earth. Captain Quasar was not the kind of commanding officer who asked for his crew's input before making decisions. He was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-one's-pants type, and so this oblong room with its equally long, artificial oak table and wide portholes that opened into the star-punctured depths of space had gone without use—until tonight.
Bartholomew Quasar sat slumped over the head of the table in a plush swivel chair. It too held a millimeter of dust, and he wished he'd taken a moment to have the room robo-vacuumed before entering. Beneath the transparent tabletop before him, a computer screen displayed his first contact with the Amazonians who had caught the Magnitude in their tractor beam.
The good news regarding the footage was that he looked as heroic and dapper as ever. The bad news was that he didn't remember it ever occurring.
A warble came from the door. Quasar flipped a switch on the arm of his swivel chair, and the door slid open with a swish. Hank appeared, shuffling his furry feet.
"C'mon in, Hank ol' buddy." The captain gestured to a chair off to the side from him.
Grunting into his thick facial hair, so thick the captain often wondered what sort of face hid beneath, Hank shuffled inside. The door shut behind him, and Quasar locked it.
"Captain?" Hank glanced back at the door with a quizzical tone.
"I don't want anybody interrupting us. What I've got to ask you—and tell you—" Quasar clenched his fist and struck a meaningful pose reminiscent of Rodin's Thinker.
"Humph." Hank plopped himself into the chair and stared at the captain. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"
"Always."
"You haven't really been yourself. Not since the, uh, reactor exploded and kind of killed us all."
"Right. That." Quasar nodded pensively. "I'm beginning to think that's when all of this started."
Hank leaned forward. "You think maybe that black hole put you back together wrong or something?"
Quasar frowned. "No, nothing like that." Just to be sure, he'd looked his nude self over in front of a mirror
for more than an hour and hadn't discovered a single flaw. "It's just that I'm having a little difficulty—" He stopped himself. This would be his first time admitting difficulty with anything to another living soul. "At first, I thought I was dreaming, you see. When I was back on Earth, and we were preparing to ship out for the first time—a year or so before you joined the crew."
Hank raised an eyebrow—the bushier portion of his very hairy face above his sparkling black eyes. "Earth?"
"Before the incident with those Amazonians, I was there, Hank. It was as real as any of this. I thought it had to be a dream! But if it was, I haven't woken up yet."
Hank shook his head slowly. "No dream, sir. Not that any of this really makes much sense, but it's happening."
"Right," Quasar mused, nodding. "The whole thing with the reactor and a black hole putting us all back together—how is that even possible?"
Hank's superior set of shoulders arched and fell. "Cold fusion."
The captain almost chuckled, remembering their earlier conversation before the explosion. "Magic." What else could it possibly be? Yet he felt ridiculous even contemplating the word. "It was just the two of us left on the bridge, Hank. When the reactor went kaput—" He tightened his fist, resuming his pensive posture. "I guess what I'm saying is, why are we here? What higher power brought us back from the brink of oblivion? Do we have some greater purpose? Did the galaxy decide it wasn't our time to enter the black? And what about the rest of the crew? Where did they go before that black hole returned us to ourselves? Were their essences just floating around between decks? And if so, what does that say about the nature of our lives?"
Hank's shoulders shrugged again. Quasar had given him a lot to think about.
"Sorry." Hank reached one finger toward where his left ear lay hidden beneath shaggy fur. He dug around a bit, retrieving a clump of something that resembled a hairball. "I might've missed some of that."
Captain Quasar sighed. "Never mind. Let's just keep this between you and me. About the whole dreaming thing. The crew needs to have total faith in their captain." They couldn't be allowed to know he was having a little trouble with his grip on reality.
Captain Bartholomew Quasar: The Space-Time Displacement Conundrum Page 3