hey did their best to compre-
hend the attraction of what Fly calls the old mud
ball.
     Hidalgo suggested there might have been a
Fred observatory on Earth for even longer. For
this insight, S&R pronounced us a most logical
unit. That turns out to be why the hyperrealists
only risked a small base and a single star-drive
ship, the one that brought them to Earth.
     S&R admits that there is something strange
about us humans, other than the problem of
     dealing with us in odd-number combinations. I
never thought of S&R as understanding subtlety,
because that seems to go with the concept of
privacy, but they hinted there is something very
strange about human beings. Apparently this
     amazing discovery fit right into the plans of the
Freds. S&R didn't want to tell us what it is!
We played a trick on Captain S&R. Once we'd
     convinced ourselves that the ship was safely on
automatic pilot, Hidalgo, Fly, and I surrounded
the spearmint twins in a triangle and began firing
rapid questions. The questions didn't really mat-
ter. Fly asked who won the World Series. Hidalgo
wanted to know if the Soviet Union would have
toppled without a nudge from Ronald Reagan. I
wanted to know what the outcome would be of a
fight between one spider-mind and ten pumpkins.
S&R couldn't figure out who the hell was
     talking to them. They were so totally freaked at
being assaulted by three entities at a time that it
wouldn't have surprised me if they'd left the ship!
Let's face it, Albert, we were torturing our new
friends. But it's not as if we had any choice. We
had to have that information.
     With all of us talking at once, S&R couldn't
figure out the proper pairings of two. It must have
been like finding themselves in the middle of an
Escherian geometrical figure that cannot exist in
the real world, or in this universe, anyway. S&R
collapsed as if we'd let the air out of them and
they'd decompressed.
     Fly and Hidalgo started a swearing contest. If
we'd killed them, we'd buggered the mission and
any hope for Earth. Fortunately, all we'd done
was give them a splitting headache--like in the
old TV commercials where your head hurts so
     much it takes two of you to feel all the pain.
We got what we wanted--except maybe we
     didn't want it after all. When S&R recovered,
they told us all they knew. Humans, it turns out,
are different from every other intelligent species
in the galaxy. You'll never believe what the differ-
ence is. Then again, maybe you will.
     Humans die.
Hidalgo spoke for all of us when he asked, "So
what? Who doesn't?"
     We didn't want to hear the answer about all
intelligent life forms except us. I've never been an
egalitarian, but the news didn't seem fair.
     When a member of an intelligent species other
than Homo saps is damaged beyond repair, the
body becomes totally incapacitated, the same as
us, but it doesn't end there. The individual (and
here we may even refer to S&R as individuals) is
still conscious. If the body is totally destroyed,
that consciousness remains. We would call it a
ghost.
     These ghost-spirits are easily and consistently
detected. They commonly jump into new bodies
as they're being born--on those rare occasions
when there is a birth. As soon as the physical
components mature sufficiently to allow commu-
nication, they indicate who they were in the
previous incarnation. Then they can pick up
     where they left off.
When I learned this, I naturally thought of our
many arguments in the time we've known each
     other. Maybe we aren't as far apart as we think.
My materialism has run into a brick wall of the
spirit. Your general faith may be stronger with
this knowledge, but the details must disturb any-
one with orthodox convictions. I never did ask
you if you were bothered by the nearest English
translation of the name of the life-saving entities:
"soul spheres."
     Even though S&R weren't deliberately holding
anything back from us, it was difficult to piece
together everything I'm writing you. Sometimes
it seems as if they're starting to master our
language, but then out come the fractured sen-
tences again.
     The ghost-spirit-consciousness is freed only
when the body is totally annihilated. Naturally
Fly asked them what they meant by "totally."
Neither Hidalgo nor I desired to learn that partic-
ular fact. We were still reeling from the discovery
that our mortality was unique to humankind. Fly
acted as if he was in the market for an alien body
and wanted to check out the mileage.
     S&R answered that total annihilation occurred
when less than eight percent of the original body
mass was chemically dispersed, but there were
different rules for different individuals. I'm not
sure how this applies in the case of the Klave
collective, but for other species they take an
especially useful specimen and destroy the body
before the final death rattle, thus freeing the
ghost-spirit to be reincarnated and to continue
working that much sooner.
     You'd think that would be sufficient to conquer
death. But wait, there's more. S&R had described
the way the system worked, stretching back into
the dim mists of time. But science marches on,
even with slow evolvers. Techniques were devel-
oped to repair almost destroyed bodies. Dead
people could be revived in their original forms. In
all sorts of ways, the aliens of our galaxy defeated
death before we ever encountered our first doom
demon.
     Mortality simply didn't occur to them. Why
should it have? They had all sorts of ways to deal
with the limbo of endless waiting. They didn't
need to deal with death. This was true of both the
good guys and the bad guys. They collected their
dead and arranged them in temples and theaters
where they staged elaborate entertainments, de-
bates, classes, lectures, and you-name-it to keep
the "deceased" occupied. This was necessary
     because there are not enough births to accommo-
date the soul supply. So untold number of con-
sciousnesses remain in a death trance until a
body becomes available.
     Albert, you were closer to these creatures in
your certainty that consciousness goes on forever.
My atheism is inadequate to describe their reali-
ty. But from our point of view, the human point
of view, this seems a victory for me. I'm not
happy about it. They say no one ever fully dies,
except humans!
     I can hear you answering me right now. I
imagine your mouth pressed to my shoulder,
     forming the word that resolves all these problems
for you: God. What will you say when I inform
you that no other intelligent species in the galaxy
has a belief in gods or God? Only we do, Albert.
Only the human race.
     At last I have a faith as deep as yours, beloved.
We've made a contract together, and I intend to
live by it. That's why you had such a struggle
talking me into it. When I make a plan, or agree
to someone else's, I stick to it. I don't change it on
a whim. A contract is a sacred trust.
     So I know what I believe in at last. It isn't
religion. It isn't God. It's you, Albert dearest. You
are the meaning of my life.
     Your faithful Arlene



     29

     It was my fault. Good old Fly Taggart can't
leave well enough alone. The mission was proceeding
without a hitch. So what if I was pissed about being in
zero-g again? Arlene was in her natural element.
Hidalgo was doing all right. Only Yours Truly had a
problem with it.
     I was bored. We'd only been out from the base a
couple of weeks, Earth standard time. We'd learned a
hell of a lot about the galaxy in which the human race
counted for one lousy enemy village. Talk about
waking up and smelling the coffee. Finding out you're
a member in good standing of the most ignorant
"intelligent species" in the universe is depressing. At
least it was to me.
     So we were poured onto an alien spacecraft where
we were about as useful as Girl Scouts at the Battle of
the Bulge. While S&R upshipped us to Fred Land,
there wasn't much for us to do except sit back and
twiddle our thumbs.
     I shouldn't squawk. Jeez, Arlene finally bedded
down with the man of her dreams and then she ships
out with the rest of us. My best buddy had a few
quirks of her own, though. If she and Albert weren't
going to be separated this way, I could imagine her
putting off the moment of truth indefinitely. As it
turned out, she never hesitated for a moment about
following orders. Hidalgo had won her respect, but
even if he hadn't, she would have come along for the
good of the mission. I know Arlene Sanders.
     I mean Arlene Gallatin. I'll never forget Albert
ordering me to take care of her. So what else is new?
The stupidest thing a soldier can do is wish away
the tedium. He may receive a face full of terror.
Trouble with me is I've never been a soldier. I'm a
warrior. Which means I don't relish long periods of
enforced idleness, especially if I'm floating around
like an olive in the devil's martini.
     Sears and Roebuck tried to find work for us. Trou-
ble was that the shipboard routine was more auto-
mated here than it was on the Bova. Of course, that's
like saying there's less for an Apache warrior to do on
an aircraft carrier than in a canoe. Aboard the Bova,
the navy was in charge. Here the high technology was
so high that no one needed to be in charge, except
S&R. I don't know why I thought it could have been
otherwise. Stupid human pride is not a monopoly of
the Marine Corps, no matter what the pukeheads in
the other services say.
     There was one useful task. Someone had to prepare
the program for insertion and figure out what we were
going to do when we lifted the eight-week, forty-year
siege and returned. One guess who was the least
qualified member of the crew for that job! Not that I
couldn't have stumbled through it. And my bud
would have been the first to admit that Jill was more
qualified than Hidalgo or her. (How I would have
loved to pass that information on to my favorite
teenager.)
     I became so desperate that I hunted around for
something to do. We had plenty of the special space
suits but no need to go outside. I hinted to the captain
that maybe one of us should take a look-see topside,
but they saw right through me, as easy as looking
through one of the suits. They did at least show me
the weapons we'd be using at the Fred base. Ray guns!
Honest-to-God ray guns. They required no mainte-
nance whatsoever.
     At least on the Bova there were books. I had found a
copy of The Camp of All Saints. I didn't have a
memory like Albert's, but I remembered the passage
about how civilization is what you defend behind the
gun, and that which is against civilization is in front
of the gun. A good marine credo. I'd thought about
that while we were on the hyperrealist base. It was
strange having no weapons the entire time we were
there. But nothing was attacking us. The subject never
came up except with Albert, and he said, "There's no
gun control where the mind is the only weapon."
When we first arrived at that base, Albert may have
thought he'd entered heaven. Before we left, Arlene
did her best to convince him he really had. I was going
to miss Albert.
     Arlene showed me a copy of the letter she lasered
her man. She crammed an awful lot in there. She is
endlessly fascinated by S&R and their ship. I'm still
depressed. I wish faster-than-light were possible.
Whether we succeed or fail in upcoming missions, I
have the sinking feeling we'll never see our own
civilization again. If that's how it comes down, then
the Freds and their demonic hordes will have suc-
ceeded in ending my civilization for me.
     "You've got to hand it to the Klave," said Captain
Hidalgo. "The food is getting better."
     He was right about that. The last batch of experi-
mental food tasted almost like a passable TV dinner.
Sort of a combination meat loaf and chocolate pud-
ding. At least it was edible.
     "Yeah, they're real pals," I said. Realizing how that
sounded, I went on. "I'm not criticizing them.
They're the only friends humanity has on this side of
the ditch."
     Arlene drifted into the conversation, "they were the
official experts on humans. The other message aliens
didn't have high enough security clearances to deal
with us."
     That was a revelation. "So the others weren't actu-
ally bored to death with us?"I asked, attempting not
to sound too autobiographical.
     "Well, maybe they were," said Arlene thoughtfully.
"What matters is why Sears and Roebuck became so
interested in Earth. They had no idea why we were so
different from them. We were considered counterbio-
logical because perpetual consciousness is considered
essential to the definition of intelligent organisms
used everywhere else in the galaxy."
     Hidalgo shook his head in wonder. "If it bleeds, it
lives," he said. "The monsters must think we live just
long enough to massacre us."
     "Remember we're talking about how these ad-
vanced beings view sapience," said Arlene. "We con-
sider ourselves biological because we define a biologi-
cal system as one that works like ours."
     "These guys have a definition we don't fit," I
volunteered.
     "Right," agreed Arlene. "Let's say they have a more
universal definition. Just as they have expanded our
horizons, we've done the same for them."
     "So where do the monsters fit into this?" asked
Captain Hidalgo. A damn good question. Seemed like
a long time since we'd had to blow away any hell-
princes, deep-fry an imp, or barbecue a fat, juicy
spider-mind.
     "I've thought about that a lot," said Arlene. "The
Freds understand humanity better than the Klave and
the other message aliens. I believe the Freds are afraid
of humans. Their ultimate goal is not to enslave but to
wipe out humanity."
     "They've made a good start," muttered Hidalgo.
There was no arguing with that. Arlene did her best
to lift our spirits, assuming we had any: "Sears and
Roebuck are dedicated to saving us from the Freds.
Their logic is sound. If we weren't a threat to the
Freds they never would have launched a full-scale
invasion."
     I respected the way S&R thought. They didn't have
a clue to what made us special, and neither did I. But
we hadn't spent all this time swimming in sludge,
muck, and blood to no purpose. We rated because we
were hated.
     That conversation was the high point of a whole
day. Earth. Standard. Time. Twenty-four hours. Lots
and lots of minutes. Being ordered to relax is hard
enough. It takes a real genius to do plenty of nothin'.
So, just like the rawest recruit, I wished something
would happen to break the tedium. And something
did. And I felt that it was all my fault. I didn't used to
be superstitious. Or at least not very. But that was in
the days before Phobos, before Deimos, before Salt
Lake City and Los Angeles. Back when I thought
Kefiristan was a problem.
     Back when the universe made sense and I didn't
believe in space monsters. I'm not talking about
monsters that come from space. It was enough of a
stretch to accept a leering red gnome stumbling
through an alien Gate. However, some things should
be impossible. Like the space monster that came out
of nowhere--there was a lot of nowhere out here--
and attacked the Klave ship.
     At first I thought S&R were projecting an entertain-
ment program. The three-dimensional object darting
over our heads looked like a refugee from a Japanese
monster movie. I'd never been into those when I was
a kid, but when Arlene and I were going to movies
together, she dragged me off to a whole day of
Godzilla and Gamera movies sponsored by Wonder
magazine. She'd picked up free tickets because she
was a subscriber.
     I didn't care for any of the films, but the images
were too ridiculous to forget. Naturally I assumed--
always a bad idea--that the thing on display, courtesy
of S&R, was of the same kidney. It even looked like a
kidney, but it had a shell, and several tentacles and
heads stuck out of it at odd angles. At least it didn't
have wings. Wings would've been really stupid.
"Bile nozzle!" screamed Sears and Roebuck. I
didn't know they could scream. They were so freaked
that their stubby little legs started a running motion,
even though it made no difference in zero-g. I sud-
denly realized how fast these suckers could move at
the bottom of a gravity well. Here their legs only
looked funny, like hummingbirds' wings, as they
became a blur. These guys were definitely upset.
"Bile nozzle?" echoed Arlene.
     "Closest in English," they answered, more calmly
now that they were past the initial shock. Their legs
slowed down, too.
     I didn't think I'd ever be bored again. Not only
were S&R aware of this flying space organ, they had a
name for it. Just like in those Japanese movies where
the kids automatically know the name of every over-
sized sea urchin that has designs on Tokyo.
     "The ship is attracting to bait," said S&R. "Inertial
energy turns into heating."
     God help me, I understood them perfectly. "From
outside, this ship must look like a star," I said.
"Unless . . . until we decelerate," Hidalgo re-
minded himself as much as the rest of us.
     "So that monster is chasing a small star," said
Arlene. "What does it eat?"
     "Anything," said S&R. "Not only carbon. Other
chemistries! But only from the inside. We must go to
away. We're already burning fuel now."
     "There isn't any way we can fight this creature?"
Hidalgo asked, his voice icy.
     S&R had one of their periodic attacks of schizo-
phrenia. One head nodded while the other shook.
That didn't mean they intended the same meaning by
those motions we did; but it sure fit the situation like
a glove.
     "No time for going to escape maneuvers," they
said. "Bile nozzle already matching velocipedes."
"Velocities!" I shouted. I couldn't stop correcting
these guys, but I understood the problem. This ship
was not a Millennium Falcon we could use in a
dogfight or a monster fight. The ship used inertial
dampers to get rid of the incredible amounts of energy
we were using. At 100,000 gravities acceleration, S&R
didn't want to make a trivial error that would turn us
all into smears of jelly.
     All that I understood. Bile nozzle was beyond me.
Just outside the ship. And whether we sped up or
slowed down, that thing was going to stick to us like
blood on a combat boot.
     "How will it attack?" asked Hidalgo.
"Becomes one unit," said S&R. That could only
mean the thing split into two. "Inside ship part."
"I've got an idea," said Arlene with an eagerness
that meant she had a damned good one. "How soon
will some part of this monster be inside the ship?"
"Going to now," said S&R worriedly.
     She nodded, and I knew what the movement of her
head meant! "Tell me, if we can hurt that part, how
will the outside part respond?"
     "Bile nozzle will go to elsewhere," said S&R. They
sounded hopeful.
     "Okay," said Arlene. I recognized her patented
early-bird-that-got-the-worm smile.
     "Out with it, marine," Hidalgo ordered, as hopeful
as the rest of us.
     Arlene said, "Bring me three space suits, every
portable reactor pack in the ship, and the biggest
goddamn boot you can find!"



     30

     These were the best marines I'd ever served
with. Corporal Taggart-Gallatin's plan was brilliant. I
never would have thought of it. I doubted the aliens
would have come up with it because they were so
terrified of the thing they called a bile nozzle.
While we suited up, we could see the space entity
right next to the ship. It was difficult to distinguish the
heads from the tentacles--if those were heads ... or
tentacles. The new menace reminded me of the sea
beast we'd encountered in the Pacific. I didn't see how
either of these creatures could actually be alive. Their
shapes shifted and changed when you tried to get a
good look.
     The largest of the bile nozzle's heads, which was
right next to the ship, was a cloud of swirling colors in
which one shape kept repeating itself: a crow's head,
with a bright dot that bounced around where the eye
ought to be. The damned head seemed to regard the
ship like a tasty treat.
     Sears and Roebuck insisted that the thing wasn't
dangerous until part of it was inside the ship. Arlene's
plan couldn't stop it from joining our little party, but
she was one woman who could handle a gate-crasher.
S&R insisted on coming with us. They didn't act as
if they were the captain and we were under their
command. Cooperation was more natural to them
than command. A few years ago I thought Earth was
the only inhabited planet. Now that I'd had my eyes
opened to new possibilities, I didn't expect everyone
in the universe to follow my military code. Only a
martinet butthead would expect that.
     The marines could handle this assignment, but
S&R were probably afraid to remain inside. I couldn't
blame them, because right before we cycled through
the airlock, some damned thing materialized only a
few feet away.
     "Hurry! Go to outside," urged S&R.
Fortunately the monster hadn't finished forming
itself yet. When it became completely solid, we'd be
the first items on its menu. According to S&R, the
monster liked to start with carbon-based life forms as
an appetizer. Then it would go to work on the ship
itself.
     Before we went outside, I had a good look at the
face forming so close that I could have spit at it.
Steam demons were handsome compared to it. Hell-
princes would have been first choice for a blind date.
The most hideous imp could have passed as Mr.
America by comparison.
     The eyes were the opposite of the glowing orb in the
crow's head. All three were burning black dots, remi-
niscent of a fire eater's. They were attached to a tube
ending in an orifice that was apparently both mouth
and nose. Yellow liquid dribbled out of the tube and
sizzled against the side of the ship. An acid that
sounded exactly like frying bacon! All this happened
while the head was blurring around the edges as it
struggled to complete itself. The thing made a snuf-
fling, snorting sound.
     "Bile nozzle" seemed an apt name.
Arlene went first, kicking off from the bulkhead and
hurtling out through the hatch. We exited from the
starboard side of the ship. Seemed like a good idea,
because the remainder of the monster was on the port
side. We worked fast before the enemy could become
curious.
     Every time I used one of these transparent space
suits I became a little less nervous about how flimsy
they appeared. If Corporal Gallatin had been wearing
one of the navy pressure suits when he had his
accident, his lungs would have ruptured in the vacu-
um. I was beginning to understand what Gallatin
meant about faith. I too had faith in this alien
technology.
     We implemented Arlene's plan before the monster
got wise. Our extra-vehicular activity consisted of
attaching the portable reactor packs to the outside of
the ship. Then we turned them on and let them do the
work.
     Slowly, oh, so very slowly, the packs began to turn
the ship. We hovered in space like a hung jury. We
were counting on one thing: that a creature which
spent its entire existence in a weightless condition
would have no familiarity with gravity. If our ship
had been spinning it would have left us alone.
If Arlene's theory proved correct, the bile nozzle
would experience something brand-new: the with-
drawal of an invitation. A subtle hint he should go
elsewhere. Or go to elsewhere, as S&R would have
said.
     We were patched into the ship through our suits.
Before the monster realized there was a problem, it
made a kind of contented snoring sound. It didn't
take much to get the creature's attention. The ship
was spinning at 0.1 gravity when the snore changed to
a howl of rage and desperation. Heavy thudding and
liquid noises preceded its exiting the craft.
We didn't witness the part reuniting with the whole.
We saw something better: the huge creature--maybe
a third the length of the ship--zooming off into
infinity. From this angle we could see what passed for
its back--a series of tubes boosting the cloudlike
swirling mess that was the rest of it. Right before it
went out of range, the mass seemed to grow solid into
something I'd compare to a turtle's shell. If I ever met
Commander Taylor again I'd recommend this thing
for membership in the Shellback Society.
     I never did find out why Arlene wanted the biggest
goddam boot we could find.
     When we were safe aboard, there were new trou-
bles. S&R's ship was not designed to take such
acceleration along its radial axis. The structure had
sustained severe damage and was leaking air like a son
of a bitch. There were so many split seams we would
never be able to patch them all.
     "We have no plan for to use airless ship," said S&R,
"but not to worry."
     Not to worry? Where had I heard that before? Oh, it
was from Mad magazine. Alfred E. Newman looked
just like the last president of the United States. A fire
eater had turned him into toast. It was worse than any
congressional investigation.
     "Why shouldn't we worry?" I wanted to know.
"Space suits," they answered.
     "We've lost time dealing with this monster," ob-
served Arlene. "There can't possibly be enough air in
the suits for the remainder of the trip."
     Both Arlene and Fly insisted that S&R had no sense
of humor, but the sound that came out of the alien
mouths sounded like laughter to me. "Not to worry,"
they repeated. "Enough air in belts for human life
span!"
     I wasn't the least bit surprised. We were ready to
prove what tough guys we were. Marines! We could
hold our breath longer than anyone, even those Navy
SEALS on the Bova. We could hunker down in our
suits as we slowly ran out of air . . . and not complain
one time. Tough guys don't complain. We could take
it. We'd die without complaint, because we weren't
weaklings. We weren't some inferior form of life. We
weren't civilians.
     As I looked at Fly and Arlene--they'd be first
names to me for the rest of my life--I wondered if
they felt the way I did. I've never met a sane marine.
I'm not sure there is such a breed. That's why my wife
divorced me. Damned civilian.
     Arlene shot off one of her clever remarks: "A
sufficiently advanced technology greatly reduces the
number of cliffhangers."
     So we'd come to this: we were a charity case in the
custody of superior beings. We could kid ourselves all
we wanted, but we were not as good as the aliens who
ruled the galaxy. It was our good fortune to become
pets to one side in a galactic war. The other side saw
us as a nuisance.
     Fly spoke for all humanity when he demanded to
know more about that other side. "No more sur-
prises," he told S&R. "You should have warned us
about creatures like that bile nozzle thing. Did the
Freds send it?"
     "Not coming from the Fred," they assured him.
"Just another creature who has received the Lord's
precious gift of life," Fly sneered. "Well, it doesn't
matter, now that we've kicked its butt. Fill us in on
the Freds. What are they like?"
     S&R hadn't fought the Freds all this time without
picking up a bit of knowledge. Our alien allies weren't
idiots. I was the idiot for not having requested this
information myself. I feared that I was beginning to
lose it. When the devils first appeared on Phobos and
Deimos, it was a surprise to Fox Company. There was
no briefing for Fly and Arlene. There was only survi-
val. Before my fire team set foot on Phobos, I had
pumped our fearless heroes for everything they re-
membered about Phobos and Deimos. S&R were the
duo to pump now.
     The briefing consisted of projected images and a
basic description of the main enemy, delivered in
S&R's funny English. I gasped when I saw that a Fred
head looked like an artichoke. Eyeballs were sprin-
kled over their domes like raisins in a cake. The heads
seemed a little small to me, but there was a good
reason for this: The brains weren't in the heads; the
gray matter was housed in a safer place, down lower,
in the armored chest. There was room there for a very
large brain. The arms attached to the chest were
rubbery affairs with semiarticulated chopsticks for
fingers.
     "Avoid them sticking into you," said S&R.
"The fingers?" I prompted. The image showed us
just what those fingers could do. Contained in tough
but flexible skin sacks, the chopsticks were hard and
sharp. With a flick of its rubbery arms, a Fred could
make any or all of its fingers opposable.
     Moving on down the torso, we came to a waist so
narrow I didn't see how it could support the weight it
carried. Then there were two thick legs, each ending
in a foot that was very like a human foot, except that
it included one feature of a bird's claw: a toe in back,
protruding from the otherwise human-looking foot.
I wondered what S&R's feet were like, but I wasn't
curious enough to ask them to remove their boots.
Fly told us that the Freds wore tightly fitting boots.
"Magnetized to them walking," said S&R. "They are
not liking free-falling."
     "How reasonable!" Fly blurted out, and then the
reality hit him. "Shit. You mean their ships are zero-g
too?"
     "Same principles appliance," said S&R.
"The same principles apply." Arlene corrected
them this time.
     "Tell me something else," demanded an irritated
Fly. I didn't stop the sergeant, because I agreed with
him. "Were you going to let us fight the Freds without
giving us any background?"
     "Humans like going to be surprised," answered
S&R.
     "Maybe humans like going into situations blind,"
said Fly. "Military men have more brains than that."
And their brains are in the right place, I added
mentally.
     Then we reached the important subject: weapons.
The Freds did not keep an armory on their ship
equivalent to what even a self-respecting imp or
zombie would pack. Basically they didn't expect to be
attacked. Pride goeth before the fall.
     Despite their confidence, every Fred carried a per-
sonal weapon that was fairly nasty. S&R warned us to
keep an eye out for that. The weapons looked like
slingshots with more moving parts and used an elec-
tromagnetic field to fire little flying saucers.
S&R summed up: "We have no plan for to fight past
making sabotage at Fred base. Other weapons they
may be bringing to exteriorize."
     "Do you mean exterminate?" asked Fly.
The briefing improved my morale. I threw out:
"Whatever you mean, Captain Sears and Roebuck,
rest assured the United States Marine Corps always
has a plan to kick butt."
     After the crash course in Freds 101, the remainder
of the trip was nothing to write home about. It was
like the first part of the trip. The only difference was
that we were wrapped in cellophane so we'd be nice
and fresh at the other end.
     All good things come to an end.
All bad things come to an end.
     "A teleporter ought to be nothing for you after your
Gate problem," Arlene said, trying to cheer me up.
The damage to S&R's ship provided an unexpected
tactical advantage. We might never return to the
message alien base, but now we had a nice decoy to
distract the Freds while we used the teleporter. S&R
sent the remains of their ship straight at a Fred
defense satellite. We hated to see it go. It was a good
ship.
     Disembarking from a ship had never been easier.
There was no damage to the airlocks. We were already
suited up and ready to go teleport-hunting. All in a
day's work.
     I would have said that if you've seen one transmat-
ter device, you've seen them all, but that wasn't true.
This one didn't have a stone arch built over it with
lots of weird crap carved into it, though.
     I might have used my experience with the Gate on
Phobos as an excuse for being superstitious, but there
was no point. Much of what we'd seen since leaving
our solar system made no sense according to our
physics. So there was nothing for us to do but have
faith in the engineering that worked. None of the
amazing alien technology had let me down yet, except
for one small Gate glitch.
     I waited my turn and took a deep breath. Then I
stepped forward to meet my destiny.



     31

     I'd never heard a hairy bag of protoplasm call
out my name before: "Fly!"
     Looking down, I noticed something glistening on
the floor near my boot. I was slow on the pickup
because I had my priorities. First, the boot. That
meant we still had our clothes and weapons. Second,
we were back in gravity. So what if my back hurt and
my arches complained? Gravity, sweet gravity. Third
. . . third, there was some kind of problem.
Liquid was leaking from the flesh bag. It was sort of
a faded pink I'd never associated with blood. I took a
closer look at the bag and recognized a human mouth.
I'd never seen a mouth all alone before, surrounded
by a wrinkled mass of skin sweating pink stuff.
The little voice in the back of my head was about to
give me hell for not being more observant, and for not
thinking at all. Arlene saved it the trouble with a
scream. I didn't blame her for screaming. I screamed
too, the moment my brain started firing on all cylin-
ders. The nitwit who came up with the idea that a
strong woman should never scream had his head so
far up his ass that daylight was a myth to him.
S&R didn't understand what had happened. They
asked what had happened to the other units. They
meant Hidalgo-Fly, and Hidalgo-Arlene. We tried to
explain that the dying thing on the floor was Hidalgo.
S&R would always have problems with the idea of
death.
     Arlene and I were more acquainted with that idea.
Even as the blob of protoplasm begged for us to
"finish" it, we were simultaneously firing our zap
guns. The two beams of heat crossed each other,
carving the blob into smaller pieces that didn't talk.
We kept at it past the point of necessity.
     "Why did you send new unit away?" asked S&R.
The Klave mind found what had happened intriguing.
They may have thought Hidalgo had been trans-
formed into something closer to them, a duality of
some kind. I didn't know. I didn't care.
     The officer, the man Arlene had once considered
spacing out an airlock, had proved himself one of
Earth's best. He'd been the leader of our fire team. We
owed him what we had just done for him.
     Funny thing. He'd fought his quota of monsters. A
steam demon had taken his wife. He'd kicked butt
with hell-princes and spiders. On Phobos he was a
bud, helping take down the imps and the flying skulls
and the superpumpkin. He was a veteran of the Doom
War.
     And a freakin' teleporter nails him. Shit. A bleeding
technological foul-up. It made me so mad I saw Mars-
red. We owed him more than putting him out of his
misery. We owed him words, a proper farewell due an
honorable man.
     We gave him a different kind of farewell, worthy of
a good marine. Our first Freds made the bad mistake
of showing up just then. I didn't leave any for Arlene
or S&R. The ray guns made my job too easy.
     Yeah, right. Isn't technology grand? It fries Hidalgo
and then gives me a push-button method of avenging
him. We kicked ass. Nothing made me feel better. The
guns were light, and they didn't need reloading. S&R
mentioned they'd need recharging eventually, but
they were good for a thousand kills per charge. I tried
my best to use it up.
     A few Freds fired off a few saucers. Their aim was
not up to Marine Corps standards.
     S&R aimed at the Freds' chests to get the brain
right away. When I realized the aliens could feel pain I
started aiming for the artichoke heads and the arms
and the legs. Arlene reminded me that we had a
mission to perform. That didn't help. I'd been inac-
tive too long, bottled up too much. Now it was
payback time.
     We came across two Freds making love. I recog-
nized the process from S&R's lesson. Their normal
height was six feet. When one extended to over seven
feet, it was ready to copulate; but only if another one
was ready to be on the receiving end. The tall one
would find a mate that had shortened down to under
five feet. Then the tall one would insert its pyramidal
head into the cavity in shorty's head.
     They shared genetic information that way. The
"male" turned bright red and the "female" turned a
rich purple. A scientist would have found the demon-
stration endlessly fascinating. I found it more reward-
ing to interrupt the festivities by choosing my shots
with imagination. Before they died, I'm certain these
Freds felt some of what Hidalgo suffered.
     While I was amusing myself, S&R and Arlene
found the main computer and loaded the program.
Then they found me in a room running with alien
blood. The color reminded me of iced tea.
     "What now?" I choked out the words. They tried to
tell me the mission had been accomplished. This
didn't cut it. We hadn't finished using our zap guns.
"We have no ship any longer," sighed Arlene. She
turned to S&R and asked if they had any suggestions.
Those boys sure did. There were functional teleport
pads on the base. In the immortal words of
     S&R, "Gateways must go to Fred ships. Not safe to
go."
     The little voice in my head pointed out that we had
run out of enemies to kill here. At no point did it
bother me to think that I was failing to snuff out
mind-consciousnesses or ghost-spirits. These alien
monsters were dead enough for me.
     I shouldered the burden of command. Sergeant
Taggart had a plan. "Let's go!" covered both my
strategy and my tactics.
     We booked. In my rage I forgot the ship would be in
zero-g. But the moment I felt that old free fall
spinning in my stomach, I reminded myself that the
wonderful ray guns had no kick and were perfect
weapons for this environment.
     Too bad they didn't make the trip with us. Neither
did our clothes or equipment. Yep, it was as if we'd
gone through the Phobos Gate again. Stripped
nekkid. There was Arlene to port, her long, firmly
muscled legs kicking slightly as if she were swimming.
Kid sure had a nice ass. And there were Sears and
Roebuck. Naked, they looked even more like Magilla
Gorilla. But their feet were far more human than
simian. I'd wondered about that.
     "What do we do now, Sergeant?" asked Arlene. She
didn't say it like my best buddy. She said it like
someone who has been thinking more clearly than her
superior officer.
     S&R came to my rescue. "We had no choice but to
be remaining baseless."
     While I tried to decide if that counted as a pun,
Arlene began to cry. That was so unlike her that it
helped bring me back to a semblance of sanity. I
noticed her hand on her neck. Then I realized what
was wrong. Her last link with Albert had been wiped
out--the second ring, the honeymoon ring. No way
could S&R re-create it outside their own lab.
We didn't have long to worry about that problem,
however. The Freds on the ship soon noticed their
stowaways-pirates-boarders. They had better aim
than the ones at the base. They came clomping along
the bulkhead in their magnetized boots, some below
us, some above us. The saucers they were firing were
coming closer and closer while we floated around,
naked and helpless.
     This was when I realized I could have done a better
job of planning for contingencies. In the few seconds
of life remaining, I gave some cursory attention to the
ship. Details might come in useful in the next life,
always assuming this death theory for humans was
inadequate to cover the facts.
     The ship was the same design as the Klave cruiser,
but much longer. I'd guess it was 3.7 kilometers from
stem to stern. The Fred spaceship had to be the largest
cigar in the universe.
     While we ducked little flying saucers, I quickly
reviewed what I'd learned and deduced from S&R's
briefing. They were too busy ducking to engage in
dialogue, so I had to trust my memory.
     S&R had never come right out and said it, but the
Freds were more like humans than the Klave in one
important respect--they too were individualists.
This was carried to a lunatic extreme in the lack of
cooperation among the demonic invaders. I'd lost
count of how many times Arlene and I had saved
ourselves by tricking the monsters into fighting each
other. In a choice between slaughtering humans and
trashing each other, hell-princes and pumpkins opted
for the latter every time.
     So if it had worked a hundred times before, why not
try for one hundred and one? "Hand-to-hand com-
bat!" I shouted. "I don't think they're that much
stronger than we are." I was certain that none of us in
this ship were as strong as S&R.
     "Maybe we can grab one of their guns," suggested
Arlene.
     "No Fred guns can be used for going to kill by you,"
said S&R. It took a moment for their meaning to sink
in--namely, that the weapons could be activated only
by a Fred.
     I set the example. Much as I hated zero-g, I'd spent
so much time in it lately that I'd developed a knack
for turning it to my advantage. A new form of martial
arts could be developed in free fall.
     Kicking off from the wall, I grabbed the nearest
Fred and yanked that s