Whim. And Wham

25

Whim. And Wham

    “It’s my bet the whole thing’s some sort of shield,” said BrTl glumly, at the conclusion of Jhl’s somewhat halting narrative. “You said yourself you can’t read him.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Um—these chemical things,” he said cautiously.

    Jhl’s shlaa-tinted cheeks went very red. “I said! I checked the Encyclopaedia, and there are no known instances of humanoids being able to control their pheromones!”

    “There wouldn’t be, would there? Beings that could, wouldn’t advertise the fact,” he said thoughtfully. “Added to which,” he said even more thoughtfully, and in a much more lowered voice, “if the beings that can are in the IG Y-K-W, the Encyclopaedia itself wouldn’t advertise the fact.”

    Jhl had to swallow. But managed to say: “Shut up. You’re even more paranoid than I am.”

    “Maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Um, hormones?” he said cautiously. “Didn’t some being once tell me that if humanoids do that mammalian repro stuff they sort of, um, wear off, or, um, dissipate or, um… something?”

    Jhl glared at him.

    “I’ve got it wrong,” said BrTl humbly. “Um—no, wait! Don’t humanoids sort of lower their defences, I mean involuntarily, when they do repro stuff?”

    “And?”

    “Well, kill a pair of rr’trrs with a single blas—No?”

    “No,” said Jhl through her pearlized teeth. “In the first place, humanoid hormones do not dissipate or wear off, whatever you like to call it, as the result of one act of copulation—repro stuff, to you. Not definitively.”

    “All right, there’s no need to—”

    “And in the second place, it’s true that they lower their defences, yes: that’s endemic to the male humanoid state.”

    Excitedly he began: “Well, then—”

    “You asteroid-brain!” shouted Jhl. “What if I’m lowering mine at the same time as he’s lowering his?”

    “Uh—oh. Do you have to?” he said sadly.

    She took a very deep breath. “Not clinically speaking, no.”—BrTl looked puzzled, but she didn’t bother to elaborate: the asteroid-brain would have forgotten it in approximately three IG microseconds. Nothing affective to relate it to.—“On the other hand, and kindly take my word for it, the likelihood is, with a being as attractive as him, that I would involuntarily”—BrTl glared—“lower them, yeah. You want odds?”

    “No! It was only a sugges—”

    “Fifty megazillion to one,” said Jhl through her pearlized teeth.

    “All RIGHT!” he shouted.

    When Lady Myr-Lah’s tasteful maxi-webs had ceased shivering and shaking, Jhl admitted glumly: “I’m sorry, BrTl. I’m all on edge.”

    “Well, yes. That’s why I thought some repro stuff might make you feel better.”

    She sighed. “Momentarily, it would. In the slightly longer term, say after half an IG hour, the likelihood is that the results would be disastrous.”

    “Oh.”

    After a period of silence had elapsed Jhl said heavily: “Don’t mention all this to Trff, would you mind?”

    “Okay. But it’ll probably know anyway. Well, if it bothers to look.”

    Tolerantly overlooking the affective factor that just possibly would prevent its grasping what it saw if it did look, she admitted heavily: “True.”

    Another period of silence elapsed.

    “Well, what do you think of the Collector’s genetic encoding?” said Jhl without hope.

    “Um… Very humanoid,” he ventured.

    “BR-TL!”

    “Well, I’ve been stuck in transit on the third moon of Pkqwrd for approximately a megazillion light-years,” he grumbled.

    “Mm,” agreed Jhl, trying not to laugh: it wasn’t the first time, poor old BrTl.

    “Have you ever tried to teach the principles of whim-wham to a pair of paired Feeny-Argyllians?”

    “Stop—it!” she gasped. It wasn’t the first time he’d been stuck on the third moon of Pkqwrd with a pair of them, either. They were, by and large, very agreeable beings, but the only word in her vocabulary that would accurately describe them was, not to be anything-ist, “ladylike.” Poor old BrTl!

    “Well,” he said sulkily.

    “Sorry. Go on.”

    “Um… Very Whtyllian, I’d say.”

    “Yeah. Definitely.”

    “You can stop trying not to prompt me,” he said heavily. “Of course I've never seen Lord Y-K-W’s encoding for myself, but I’ve thought from the first that your picture of it was horribly like the Collector’s. And like the Regent’s. And the other cognate’s. And from what I saw of him when he was being Whtyllian, like Captain Marvel’s, too. But I thought it was just my limited perception of humanoid genetic encoding.”

    “Mm.” After a moment she added in a very airy voice: “The Collector’s is very like the old Whtyllian she-mok’s, too, don’t you think?”

    “No!” he said in amazement.

    There was a short and rather sick silence.

    “I can hear you thinking that that’s significant in terms of humanoid repro stuff,” said BrTl on a cautious note. “Don’t blast me, you’re broadcasting like Njneeainwearia in the season when those crystal beings do whatever it is they do. Um—where was I? Oh, yes: don’t blast me.”

    “Um, no. Um, the thing is, you see, Shan and Captain Marvel were half-brothers,” said Jhl without hope.

    “Uh-huh. Oh, yes: like the Regent and D’ru-son and the female son!” he said brilliantly.

    “Mm. Same father,” said Jhl without hope. “Different mothers.”

    “Ye-es…”

    She scratched her head. “It’s—uh—not successive layers, exactly…”

    “Would a 3-D pwm board help?” he said, extra-meekly.

    Just in time, Jhl refrained from blasting him. “Yeah, it probably would. –Thanks,” she said as an s-being scurried in with one. She set the pieces out carefully. “These green ones—”

    “Nwhortlp,” he corrected.

    She took a deep breath. “Right. These nwhortlp ones represent—don’t touch that! Represent Shan’s genetic encoding from his father—see?”

    “Uh…”

    “This nwhortlp one right at the top by itself is his FATHER!” shouted Jhl furiously.

    “Got it, got it.”

    “This is half of Shan,” said Jhl, poking at a nwhortlp piece on the middle board. She added a shlaa piece. “This is his other half.”

    “But he’s not a paired being,” he said in confusion.

    “Genetically, he IS!” shouted Jhl. “All humanoids ARE!”

    “I never knew that.”

    “BrTl, you DID! Look, this shlaa one here on the top by itself, this is the old Whtyllian she-mok!” she cried, setting a shlaa piece at a slight distance from the lone nwhortlp piece on the top board.

    “Oh.”

    “Now, watch. This nwhortlp one represents half of Shan, okay?”

    “It can’t, half of a half isn’t one.”

    “Great splintered shards of quog!” she cried. “Wait!”

    After a considerable amount of heavy breathing and muttering, she had four nwhortlp pieces ranged together on the top board, with four shlaa pieces at a distance from them. On the middle board, Shank’yar was now represented by two nwhortlp, two shlaa.

    “Two and two are four,” he ascertained pleasedly.

    “Oh, very good: go to Advanced Pilot Training!”

    “Go on,” said BrTl mildly. “Where’s the Regent?”

    Jhl placed one green piece on the bottom board. “Nwhortlp, right?”

    “It probably is, to the humanoid visual organ,” he conceded.

    Grimly she placed another nwhortlp piece at a distance from this one. “Drouwh. Half of him, okay?”

    BrTl picked up a nwhortlp piece and set it down, carefully equidistant from the other two. “The female son.”

    “Quite. Now, watch this! –Mok shit,” she muttered. “This one looks pink to me, but does it look different from those shlaa ones to you?”

    “Yes.”

    “Right, then.” Jhl set the pink piece carefully beside the Regent’s piece. “This is the Regent. His nwhortlp half is Shan, and his pink half is his mother. You met her, remember?”

    “Y—Um, where is his mother?”

    “For Federation’s sake!” Jhl set two pink pieces close together on Shan’s board. The asteroid-brain appeared happy. Breathing hard, she set two black pieces together on that level, and a black one beside Drouwh.

    BrTl had got the point, more or less. Happily he set a gold piece beside the “female son” and two gold pieces on Shank’yar’s level.

    “Mm.” Jhl stared at the board, not bothering to mention the concept of full siblings. “Now for Captain Marvel,” she said, swallowing.

    “Eh? Oh, right, mm. –Hang on: what about the cognates? Tm-Wm and that lieutenant?”

    “We are NOT TALKING ABOUT THEM!”

    “All right. But they’d be part-nwhortlp, right?”

    Jhl shoved a nwhortlp piece at him. “Yes! Part of this would be part of them, hold it and be happy!”

    Emanating mild surprise, BrTl held it in a pseudopod.

    Jhl set down a nwhortlp piece at a little distance from the paired Shan with a snap. “Captain Marvel. Half of him was like half of Shan. –WASN’T it?”

    “Definitely,” he said quickly. “I’d say that one was more lurghple, though. Well, the lurghplish side of nwhortlp.”

    “Pick a better one, then,” said Jhl through her teeth.

    BrTl picked a better one. He set the lurghplish one down on a little side-table. “Not a cognate,” he explained to it.

    “We don’t know who Captain Marvel’s mother was, but he had a mother—Are you LISTENING?”

    “Of course! –That’s logical,” he murmured. He set two priceless blue Faindorgean glass pieces beside Captain Marvel, added another nwhortlp piece to his set, and placed four blue pieces together on the top board.

    “Bones of Brqa and all fourteen of its moons, I think he’s got it,” muttered Jhl.

    “Father,” he said, pointing to the four nwhortlp pieces on the top board.

    “Mm.”

    He pointed at Shank’yar’s set. “Father plus Mother One makes Y-K-W. Personally I wouldn’t have chosen nwhortlp, it’s a nice colour.”

    “BrTl!”

    “Sorry. Father plus Mother Two makes Captain Marvel.”

    “Mm.”

    “How can we tell,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “that Y-K-W made these bottom ones and not Captain Marvel?”

    “We KNOW that!”

    “Yes, but they’re all nwhortlp.”

    “BrTl, you’re sending me to Mullgon’ya,” she warned.

    “But—”

    “LOOK!” shouted Jhl, at the end of her tether. She slammed down the appropriate colours, so that Drouwh, the Regent and A’ailh’sa all ended up with four pieces each. The common colours being nwhortlp and shlaa. And ignoring the concept of full siblings.

    “Ooh!” he said.

    “YES!” shouted Jhl. “GET it?”

    “Yes, now it’s logical.”

    “Goody,” she said acidly.

    “Ooh, look: these ones,” he said, pointing to the bottom board, “have all got the old she-mok or Gervaynian kryy in them: shlaa.”

    “Quite,” said Jhl in an odd voice.

    He looked at the middle level. “Captain Marvel hasn’t, though.”

    “No,” said Jhl in the odd voice.

    BrTl waited for her to say: “Mother Two,” but she didn’t. He looked at her cautiously.

    Jhl stared hard at the pieces on the boards, scowling.

    After a moment BrTl cautiously picked up two more nwhortlp pieces. He looked sideways at Jhl. Then he put them on Shank’yar’s level. Then, avoiding Jhl’s eye altogether, he chose six white Porvenian marble pieces from the pwm set’s box of priceless deep orange fossilised namber. Four of them he set together, in a bunch, on the top board. The remaining two he set, very cautiously indeed, next to his two nwhortlp pieces, on Shank’yar’s level.

    Jhl said nothing.

    BrTl made a tuneless hooting noise, on two different notes, down his two noses. He looked sideways at her. Jhl still said nothing.

    “Father, Mother Three, um—Collector Kadry?” he said hoarsely.

    There was a long silence.

    Finally Jhl said limply: “You are quite sure that you can’t see the old Whtyllian she-mok in him? Um, instead of Shan’s father.”

    “Shlaa instead of nwhortlp? No. Well, was I faking my reaction, earlier? –No,” he answered himself.

    “No,” she admitted.

    “I’m no expert,” BrTl reminded her.

    Jhl looked sourly at the boards. “How true.”

    “Um… mammalian age-wise…”

    “I’ve checked. The Collector’s a bit older than the Regent. Physically, he could be one of Shan’s, but it’s unlikely, in terms of mammalian humanoid norms. But Shan’s father was very much alive at the time.”

    “Yes. Did you say you’d met the white mother?”

    “Uh—oh, Cousin J’nfr. Yes. Oh, I see! Yes, let’s hang her by her tail over a magma pit until she admits her Cousin Myr-Lah’s bond-partner got up her, BrTl!”

    “You could just look.”

    Jhl scowled.

    “Not if you’d rather not know, of course. –It’s no use sending all that mok sh—um, stuff, about mammalian humanoid kinship rights and Whtyllian inheritance and lordship stuff, because it’s beyond me. But I do get the general drift, and if we’re even halfway right about this nwhortlp business, I’d say we’d better hoik Y-K-W out of it sooner than yesterday. And I’d bet my tail that every last emanation you picked up on that grassy place with the Collector was some sort of shield—”

    “Shut—up.”

    BrTl shut up. Jhl went on scowling.

    After a sufficiently long and sick period had elapsed BrTl ventured meekly: “Where do Tm-Wm and the other cognates fit in, though?”

    Jhl bounded to her feet. She grabbed the nwhortlp piece he was still clutching in his pseudopod. “Watch,” she said viciously, hurling it to the floor. She drew her blaster.

    “Oy—” he began in alarm.

    Jhl blasted the nwhortlp pwm piece into smithereens. “See those?” she said through her teeth, pointing to the smithereens, as six alarmed s-beings rushed in.

    “Uh—yeah. –GET OUT,” said BrTl briefly over his shoulder. The s-beings shot out again.

    Jhl poked at a smithereen with her toe. “That one there is Tm-Wm, GET IT?” she howled.

    “Yeah. Um—you’ve killed part of that wtmyrian colony,” he said uneasily. “The she-mok won’t be too pleased.”

    “I haven’t, it was set at ‘Shatter’, you asteroid-brain!”

    “Oh, yes,” he recognised in relief, as the carpet drew together again round the scorched place in the… “Ugh, what are these Whtyllian lordship-type floors made of, anyway?”

    “No idea.” She eyed the laden pwm boards grimly.

    “Don’t—” began BrTl.

    Too late: Jhl shattered the Whtyllian lordship-type pwm boards and all their very pretty pieces, in precious or semi-precious stones ranging from white Porvenian marble, through nwhortlp alabaster from H’r-Ar III, to genuine o-Jno black glass and priceless blue Faindorgean glass, into a megazillion smithereens.

    “What do you think, Trff?” he said without hope.

    There was an appreciable IG microsecond’s pause. Then it said: “That IG M.C. being is definitely a cognate, yes.”

    BrTl sighed. Pretty obviously it was about as interested in all this 3-D mammalian repro stuff as he was. And, dare he formulate the thought, understood about as much.

    “Not a cognate of the old kryy or she-mok?” Trff ventured doubtfully.

    –Even less, in fact. Especially after eight days fast asleep. “No,” he assured it, sighing.

    Trff waved a dubious antenna at him. “Is you-it glum?”

    “Very glum, Trff. Very, very glum. In a state of glumness bordering on depression, in fact.”

    “She-it wants to do repro stuff with that IG M.C. being,” it decided.

    “N—Uh—yeah. Um—”

    “It means, become his-its bond-partner,” it corrected itself.

    BrTl winced. “You can’t mean that!”

    “Yes, it does, BrTl.”

    “Look, they’re different: we’ve discussed this before!”

    “This it-being remembers,” it said huffily, starting to hunch itself up within its fluff.

    “Don’t do that. Anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether she wants to do repro stuff or bond-partner with him: what I mean is, one is as bad as the other.”

    “Both?” it whistled dubiously.

    “Uh—oh. Yes, both, of course,” said BrTl hurriedly, hoping it wasn’t reading him at this precise moment. Or, since he had a fair idea it always was, that it sort of wasn’t taking much in.  “Leaving that aside, is he a dangerous being?”

    “Very!” whistled Trff in surprise.

    “No, um—Sorry. I didn’t phrase that quite correctly. Is he dangerous to us, specifically in terms of this mission?”

    “Or Lost Cause,” it agreed politely.

    BrTl glared. It was reading him. “Is he?”

    There was one of those appreciable pauses.

    “By the three-tongued blurryankers, you can’t tell, can you?” he groaned.

    “That being’s got a very efficient shield,” it said apologetically.

    “Yes. What about Jhl’s story that his story is that he’s on our side?” he said without hope.

    “It’s not impossible. He-it could be,” replied Trff dubiously.

    “Mm. But why?”

    Trff just sat there like a ball of vlohffert fluff. It was emanating bafflement, though, so BrTl concluded it was as baffled as he was.

    “Yes, well, put it like this,” he said heavily. “In any scheme to hoik Y-K-W out of this, let’s agree to leave that being strictly out of it: okay?”

    “Very much okay, BrTl! It could tell you-it what the scheme—”

    “No,” he said, wincing. “Don’t. Just supposing that I encountered that being in a situation, don’t get me wrong, but in a situation where there was no handy Ju’ukrterian shield specifically protecting this very specific brain of mine—”

    “All right,” it said huffily, “it won’t tell you-it the details. You-it can just obey Jhl’s orders.”

    “Yeah. For a change.”

    This time there was a very appreciable pause indeed.

    “What about a game of pwm?” said Trff kindly.

    “SHE’S VAPORISED—”

    “Oh, yes. Sorry,” it said quickly. “Whim-wham, then?”

    BrTl groaned, but conceded it might distract him from the fact that their necks were very nearly down the hyperdrive.

    They played whim-wham. Of course Trff won every game, because it couldn’t help seeing his cards, but BrTl was past caring.

    Full Surgeon Fl’nhrr’htia’s neck-gills opened and closed once. Then he went out like a light-blob.

    “Done!” said Trff happily.

    “How many messages did he get off to the Full College while you were doing it, though?” replied its Captain nastily, holding her blaster steady on the Friyrian’s prone form.

    “None. He-it tried, but couldn’t penetrate the Ju—”

    “All right! –GET HIM!” she shouted at BrTl.

    “I am,” he said glumly, picking up Fleet C—make that Admiral Lord Shank’yar Vt R’aam, and tucking him under his arm. “Those handy humanoid excreta-moppers that R’shn uses for S’zzie come forcibly to mind at this moment: I wonder why?” he wondered politely.

    “Shut up,” said his Captain grimly. “Grab old S-B’rtha and let’s get going.”

    There was an infinitesimal pause. Then Trff said apologetically: “It didn’t know that you-it’d decided definitely to take that being as well—”

    “WHERE IS SHE?” she bellowed.

    “It isn’t absolutely sure wh—She-it went out in the s-beings’ old lifter with S-Wm,” it admitted glumly. “To buy some commodities.”

    “Yeah, handy humanoid excreta-moppers, Fleet Admiral size,” noted BrTl sourly.

    Jhl took a very deep breath. “The ship’ll have to cope. Let’s go.”

    “Hang on,” said BrTl in alarm. “Trff, have you put—”

    “Done,” it said.

    “–the rest of ’em out like light-blobs,” ended BrTl feebly. “Dare one ask, where’s the Collector as of this IG microsecond?”

    “At his-its old mum’s,” it said comfortably,

    “Uh—good,” he croaked. “In that case, by all means, let’s go.”

    They went.

    ... “And don’t wake them up until we’re in hyperspace, there’s a good old Trff,” he said weakly, sinking into the Vt R’aam lifter they were borrowing.

    “If it waits until hyperspace,” it replied vaguely as it tinkered with the lifter’s blobs, “it may not attain a one hundred percent—Ah! Gotcha!”

    “A one hundred percent what?” said BrTl politely as the lifter rocketed up fifty IG fluh, apparently of its own accord—well, he wasn’t driving, he was holding the Fleet C—Admiral, trying to make it appear as if the position he was holding him in was humanoid-normal whilst at the same time avoiding actual contact with parts of his own anatomy that preferred to remain dry; and Jhl wasn’t driving, she was aiming her blaster grimly at the totally silent and deserted Vt R’aam front sweep; and Trff didn’t appear to be driving.

    “Success rate,” it said vaguely.

    “Is you-it driving?” he enquired politely.

    “What? Oh—the blobs know,” it said vaguely.

    BrTl shut his eyes. Though he did note: “Then wait until we’re very nearly almost in hyperspace to wake them up, please. And if you could manage an immobilising or two at relatively long range of a certain IG M.C. being, I for one wouldn’t object.”

    There was a relatively short silence. Then it said: “That being’s shield is—”

    “Yes. Don’t, Trff, it would be a waste of energy,” said Jhl with a sigh.

    “Good, it won’t. Though it’s not precisely energy that’s involved.” It must have noticed something in the atmosphere because it then added lamely: “–Captain.”

    “Captain, have you thought,” asked BrTl delicately, as the kidnapped lifter approached the spaceport, “how we’re actually going to, so to speak, um—”

    “Trff’s going to put them all to sleep. Or such is its claim,” replied Jhl grimly.

    “It’s the middle of the afternoon, isn’t it?” he said feebly.—Local time, agreed his chrono-blob.—“Well, yes: there’ll be one or two Whtyllians about, won’t there?”

    “Shut up!” snarled his Captain.

    BrTl shut up but peered uneasily out at an all too rapidly approaching view of the spaceport.

    “Do it now,” ordered their Captain grimly.

    “Done,” reported Trff.

    The Vt R’aam lifter drifted down like a feather right next to the ship. No beings came rushing out with visors, not to say shades, lowered and blasters, not to say probes, at the ready, so it must have done it, all right.

    ... “I’d delay waking that lot up until we’re out of Whtyllian space,” BrTl noted, as, having fended off an over-excited Flppu or two and assured the ship they were not going to leave it to the mercy of the two Flppus any longer, they took off.

    “Put the Fleet C— the Admiral in a cabin,” replied his Captain grimly.

    Glumly BrTl mooched off with the Admiral. He was drivelling: in fact he’d drivelled all down his, BrTl’s, right forearm and some of it had got into his neck-hair: ugh!

    ... “WHERE IN FEDERATION HAVE YOU BEEN?” bellowed his Captain.

    “I’ve been to the hygiene cabinet to wash the drivel off, and any being that objects—sir—can haul Y-K-W round the ship any old time they like!”

    “He-it means drib—”

    “I KNOW WHAT HE-IT MEANS!”

    Her crew shrank.

    “Wake them up, Trff,” ordered Jhl grimly.

    “It has woken the spaceport beings up, Captain.”

    Jhl goggled at it. “Oh, goody! And?”

    “It miscalculated,” whistled Trff uneasily.

    “Blerrinbrig’s, have you killed all the beings on Y-K-W’s estate?” gasped BrTl.

    “Not that.” It waved an antenna anxiously.

    Jhl concentrated, but they were too far away. “Well, WHAT?”

    “The Collector picked up that... that something was wrong at the palace, Jhl.”

    Jhl took a very deep breath. “Action stations!”

    “He-it isn’t sending any ships after us!” hooted Trff quickly.

     She goggled at it. BrTl also goggled at it.

    “No; he’s there. At Y-K-W’s palace.”

    “AND?” shouted BrTl.

    “And he-it’s waiting for it to wake the palace beings up.”

    “Literal-minded—WHAT’S HE GOING TO DO?” he bellowed.

    “Gl’g?” it offered in a bewildered way.

    BrTl breathed heavily, baring his crunchers.

    “I think it’s all been a bit much for it,” said Jhl hurriedly.

    “It hasn’t!” it whistled angrily. “It’s perfectly all right, it’s just had eight Whtyllian days’ sleep! That being is thinking of gl’g! And don’t blame it for it!” It fluffed itself up dangerously.

    Jhl passed a hand over her brow. Her fevered brow, yes. “Great steaming piles of mok droppings,” she muttered. “I think possibly the Collector is thinking that a nice hot cup of gl’g should be administered once the beings at the palace—particularly the older female beings—have woken up.”

    “Yes. That,” it said pleasedly.

    “Then wake them up, Trff,” she sighed.

    “Done, Captain!” it said quickly.

    “Thank you, Trff.”

    After a short silence BrTl ventured: “Look, you two may have it all worked out, but would one of you mind explaining how we’re going to manage to land on you-know-where? Presuming that is where we’re heading for. Because they’re in the Federation, now: the place’ll be bristling with—um, well, pretty much like it was when we left,” he ended glumly.

    “IG Militia. Space Patrol. IG C &—”

    “SHUT UP, TRFF!” When the reverberations had died away he noted acidly: “It’s not wrong, however.”

    “No. It claims,” said Jhl carefully, “that, now that the World Shield and x’nb-web have been lowered, we can fly right in under this Ju’ukrterian shield that’s round us and land wherever we like.”

    “Oh, really? Dare one mention the point that this might have been a useful move of which to have been aware at certain times in the past?” he said sweetly. “Recent and not so recent, in terms of the commonly perceived Y-K-W,” he ended, not so sweetly.

    Jhl eyed her Chief Engineer somewhat nervously. It just sat there like a ball of pale green fluff. “I’m sorry, BrTl. I would have explained it all before, but—”

    “That’s all right: I didn’t want to know while we were still within any sort of range of a certain IG M.C. being,” he said hurriedly,

    “No, that’s what I thought. Um, well, I think, if my humble mammalian humanoid brain got anything like the gist of it, which I don’t claim it did, that that sort of thing takes more of whatever it is the it-being uses than the individual Trff can—uh—supply. Though ‘supply’ probably isn’t the word.”

    BrTl joined her in eyeing their Chief Engineer somewhat nervously. It went on sitting there like a ball of pale green fluff. Finally he said feebly: “Does it, Trff?”

    “‘More’ isn’t exactly the word,” it murmured.

    There was a pause.

    “Nor is ‘use’,” it murmured.

    They waited, but it appeared to think it had answered them. Tacitly they agreed to give up.

    “Let’s hope it works,” he sighed, creaking to his feet. “I’ll look in on him, but don’t expect me to do anything about anything,” he warned. “Especially not about handy humanoid excreta-moppers.”

    The ship informed him brightly it was taking care of all that, so he creaked off, feeling a bit better, to look. The Admiral was blowing bubbles and making crowing noises and playing with his toes. He looked clean, and as far as it was possible to tell with immature humanoids, appeared happy, so BrTl shrugged and left him to it.

    “It’s got him in a sort of nest of senso-tissues,” he reported.

    “Clean ones?” said his Captain, swallowing.

    “As far as I could tell, yes.”

    “Good.”

    “And Fl’Oo-ooueroii and Fl’Jfaffl are in there, sort of... cooing at him, I think’s the word.”

    “Good. –Hold on: they’re not trying to feed him, are they?” she gulped.

    No, confirmed the ship.

    “Oh, good,” said Jhl, sagging.

    BrTl waited, but she didn’t hurry off to check up on Admiral Vt R’aam. He eyed her sideways but didn’t say anything.

    “Ow!” gasped BrTl

    “Ow!” whistled Trff.

    “GREAT SPLINTERED SHARDS OF QUOG!” shouted Jhl.

    Sorry, Captain.

    “That’s perfectly all right. It isn’t your fault that Old Rthfrdia’s still got a World Shield up,” said Jhl courteously to her ship as World Shield Alarms went off all round them and Space Patrol vessels swooped towards them from all points of the quadrant.

    “How can they afford it?” croaked BrTl.

    “I—” Jhl broke off, as the demand to STAND AND DELIVER, THIS IS THE INTERGALACTIC SPACE PATROL! momentarily immobilised, in fact nigh to crystallised, their thought processes.

    “I’ve always wondered what you’re supposed to deliver,” admitted BrTl morosely, tapping the side of his head cautiously. “Ouch! –Given that their probes are going to find it anyway.”

    The ship’s manifest, First, explained the ship politely.

    “Clears that mystery up,” he noted sourly.

    “Yeah,” agreed his Captain. “–I was about to say, I don’t suppose they can afford it, and I’d bet a raft or two of oddlis that it isn’t Old Rthfrdia that’s paying for it.”

    “Ugh,” he noted glumly.

    Trff had been remarkably silent, not even an emanation, since its initial “Ow!” Now it admitted sadly: “It should have looked. It apologises, Captain.”

    “That’s all right, Trff,” said Jhl with a sigh. “I should have asked you to look.”

    And they all fell glumly silent. Though BrTl did mutter under his breath, as a Space Patrol Captain with her shades lowered ascertained that their bubbling, cooing, undeclared supernumerary was Admiral Lord Shank’yar Vt R’aam: “Whim!”

    “–And wham!” he concluded sourly as they were ushered none-too-gently at the business end of a probe into a large, grey, featureless hangar in the quarantined section of the Old Rthfrdia spaceport and a slim, elegant, dark-haired humanoid figure in IG M.C. Collector’s uniform strolled unhurriedly towards them.

    “Wham, indeed, Lieutenant,” agreed Collector Athlor Raj Kadry politely, eyeing them sardonically. “Welcome to Old Rthfrdia. Or should it be, Welcome back?”

    No-one replied. There seemed very little point in it, really.