SF: Universal Solvents #14

[Gary]

                               UNIVERSAL SOLVENTS
                              (a Tale of Sfstory!)
                                    Episode 14
                                   "Cerulean"
                                       by
                                  Gary W. Olson

                                       -~-_-

<<The Nega-Cell (somewhere in Nega-Space)>>

      Kissy Hitowers was ready to scream.
      That was, in and of itself, no great shock.  She could, and 
frequently would, scream at the drop of a hat.  Her scream, in turn, 
could cause other hats in the general vicinity to drop, which would 
incur more screaming, and by the time everything got sorted out, 
she'd have been inconveniently kidnapped by ravenous beasts or 
strapped to a Space Villain's electro-lathe or forced to lounge about 
in a chain-mail bikini at the feet of an evil barbarian.  In short, 
she was a professional Space Ingenue, who in more prosperous times 
would have had no shortage of employment opportunities working for 
Space Heroes who couldn't get enough of battling beasts, villains, 
barbarians, or hearing loss.
      But the economy was in the dumps of late, a fact that had 
compelled Kissy to accept an Ingenue job: working for a couple 
seniors from Interstellar University on their senior project (the 
rescue of a captive Space Heroine).  The seniors in question, Ronald 
Hastings and Norman Sassafras, had been able to pay up front because 
of their success in speculating on the interstellar Pudding Futures 
market.  So off they went, and through a convoluted series of events 
managed to get captured by the enemy and held in an apparently 
escape-proof cell.
      Which brings us back to Kissy Hitowers being ready to scream. 
 From boredom.
      Three days had passed since the velour-shirted minions of the 
High Spock had managed to get herself, Ronald, and Norman to trap 
themselves in the Nega-Cell, which had been inexplicably fashioned 
into a replica of the bridge from the original 'Star Trek' series. 
Three days of listening to the would-be Space Heroes bickering over 
whose turn it was to record the Captain's log, over what Kirk would 
do in this situation, and over just which damn planet was on that 
never-changing side viewscreen, anyway.  Three days of listening to 
those annoying beeps and whirrs that lingered, sourceless, in the 
recycled air.  Three days of tea, Earl Needlewarping Grey, hot.
      The one upside of their confinement, the fact that they had 
finally found the Space Heroine they had sought (one Toni Williams by 
name), had also soured.  Toni occupied the Captain's Ready Room, 
which she had apparently converted into a bedroom of sorts. 
'Apparently,' because after her initial greeting, three days ago, she 
retreated into the room and had not come out since.
      Ronald and Norman were busy playing three-dimensional chess, 
having managed to improvise chess pieces from cheese provided by the 
food synthesizer and the boards from panels around the bridge.  At 
the moment, they were, as far as Kissy could tell, either 
concentrating fiercely upon the game, slightly constipated, or both. 
Neither looked up when she stood, marched over to the door separating 
the bridge from the Ready Room, and started pounding.
      "Open up, damn it!" Kissy yelled at the top of her lungs.  "We 
came all this way to rescue you, and the least you could do is hang 
out with us some!"
      "No point bothering," said Norman.  "She hasn't answered in 
three days.  And there's no way to open up the doors from outside."
      "Have you tried?" Kissy asked.
      "Every day," said Ronald, as he moved a roquefort pawn up a 
level to confront Norman's swiss rook.  "The door won't move."
      "What, exactly, have you tried?"
      "We tried the panels around the door," said Norman.  "But the 
wiring's just for show, like most of the rest of the bridge.  We 
tried using our personal nukers to blast the doors down, but like she 
said, they got deactivated once we arrived here.  We tried kicking 
them down, but only hurt our feet."
      "There's got to be some way," said Kissy.  "How does the High 
Spock get in?"
      "Er," said Ronald.  "What?"
     "The High Spock.  Your archenemy.  Leader of Team E.  You don't 
think he'd just let Ms. Williams seal herself off without having a 
way to get in so he could taunt her, do you?"
      "A point," Norman admitted.  "He probably has some kind of 
remote control to override her lockout.  But that doesn't help us 
any."
      "Why not?" Kissy asked.  "Can't you guys try different 
frequencies, see if you can set it off?"
      "I don't see..."
      Ronald's voice trailed off as he started to think.  Norman 
raised an eyebrow, which he apparently did whenever he was trying to 
think extra-hard.  After three minutes of this, Ronald snapped his 
fingers.
      "I know!" he exclaimed.  "I'll have the food replicator build a 
xylophone out of cheese!  We can test the full signal range in 
minutes!"
      Kissy clapped her hand to her forehead as Ronald and Norman 
raced off to do exactly that.  She removed it only when she heard 
Ronald exclaim something else.
      "No, wait!  We just find a way to alter the background beeps and 
whistles, using a standard vector tau modulating transnoberator!"
      "Where are we supposed to get one of those?" Ronald asked.
      Norman thought a while on this.
      "Make one out of cheese?" he finally asked.  "I mean, they 
didn't teach us about the cheese-based technologies of the Bovinian 
Hegemony in Unlikely Tech 401 for nothing..."
      Kissy, at this point, redoubled her efforts to tune out the 
conversation.  She considered screaming some more, but before she 
could make up her mind as to which of her various specialty screams 
fit her current circumstance, she heard Norman shout.
      "That got it!"
      She turned in time to see the Ready Room door whoosh open. 
Ronald and Norman charged into the room, and Kissy waited for them to 
fly out, courtesy of the fists of Toni Williams.
      Several moments passed without either aspiring Space Hero 
exiting the room by any means.
      "Hey, Kissy!" Ronald called.  "Could you come here a sec?"
      Kissy took a deep breath, steeled herself to give one hell of a 
scream, just because there had to be *something* in that room that 
merited it, aside from Ronald and Norman themselves.  She ventured 
toward the doorway.
      There wasn't much to see.  A desk, a cot, some clothes piled in 
the corner, a large glowing rectangular machine thing against the far 
wall.  Ronald and Norman examined said thing while consuming what she 
assumed was their cheese-based transnoberator.
      "Er," said Kissy, feeling oddly cheated.  "Where's Toni?"
      "Not here," Norman said, without looking back at her.  "Probably 
skipped off three days ago.  Those are the clothes she was wearing 
over there."  He pointed at the pile of clothes in the corner.  Kissy 
recognized the tattered uniform Toni wore at the time.  It was lying 
atop several not-so-tattered uniforms.
      "We think she went through this," said Ronald, indicating the 
rectangular part of the glowing rectangular machine thing.  "It looks 
like the same kind of thing we went through when we got trapped in 
here."
      "So she wasn't a prisoner here at all?"
      "Probably she let herself get captured," said Norman.  "To throw 
them off their guard.  And she comes back from time to time, so they 
think they have her locked away.  Meanwhile, she's off doing... 
whatever it is she's doing, wherever it is she's doing it."
      "Pretty common tactic, really," Ronald added.  "We Space Heroes 
are crafty like that."
      Kissy knew an opening for insulting banter when she saw it.
      "Well," she said, "if you're so crafty, why did it take you 
three days to think of using cheese-based technology to get in here?"
      "Are you kidding?" Norman asked.  "Some people go their whole 
lives without even once trying to use cheese to stymie electronic 
locks!"
      Kissy found she could not refute this, and decided to scream instead.
      "AIEEEEEEEE!"
      It was your standard Extremely Loud Scream in the key of Oh God 
My Ears, heard in situations ranging from Little Kid Being Menaced by 
Acid-Dripping Aliens to Dumb Teenager Being Confronted by 
Mask-Wearing Serial Killer to Man Who Paid Too Much for His Muffler. 
It had the intended effect of making Ronald and Norman clutch at 
their ears and writhe on the floor.
      Several phaser beams lanced into the room, missing the three 
inside by wide margins -- an unintended, but very welcome, secondary 
effect of the scream.
      "Needlewarp!" Ronald exclaimed.  Kissy turned and saw the High 
Spock and two other velour-shirted members of Team E, all with Type I 
phasers aimed in their general direction.  Norman took advantage of 
their captors momentary disorientation by balling up what was left of 
the cheese transnoberator and throwing it at the door lock switch.
      The doors whooshed shut, and the 'locked' sign lit up on the 
screen above the switch.
      "That'll hold them for a few minutes," said Ronald.  "But they 
should be able to burn through quickly with those phasers.  We've got 
to get this Nega-Transporter working and get out of here!"
      "But with what?" Norman asked.  "We're out of cheese!"
      Fortunately, Kissy had an 'Out of Cheese' scream that was 
exactly appropriate for the situation.

                                       -~-_-

<<_Challenger III_, Mydrus System, Goornashk Sector>>

      "We're now emerging from overly-hyped space, sir," Commander St. 
Thomas reported.  "Twenty degrees above the solar plane of the Mydrus 
system."
      "Enemy vessels?" Captain Vogel asked.
      "None in the immediate vicinity," Steve's second-in-command 
replied.  "Initiating long-range scans."
      Steve Vogel nodded.  "Very good, Commander."  He shifted in his 
Captain's chair and pressed his fingertips together.  It was the 
_Challenger III_'s third day of following the Goornashk Authority 
ship that Jerriphrrt and Gham were on, and so far, everything had 
gone according to plan.  Transmissions from the Goornashk vessel shut 
off the appropriate scanners and diverted the appropriate security 
ships at the appropriate times.  There was absolutely no sign that 
their intrusion deep into Goornashk space had gone detected.  Which 
was all the more worrying, because Steve knew his luck was just not 
that good.
      An emphatic yawn erupted from somewhere about the region of his 
feet.  Steve looked down at Lucky, the ship's mascot-by-default.  The 
large, six-foot-tall-at-the-shoulder mutant black cat looked back up 
at him, yawned again, and proceeded to gnaw on a mega-sized cat toy, 
one specially created by Steve and laced with catnip, sedatives, and 
appetite suppressants.  Which in most cases wouldn't be what one 
would give one's mascot, but was appropriate in this case, at it kept 
Lucky from clawing, eating, or mating with his crew.
      "Long-range scans coming back, sir," Jean St. Thomas announced. 
"Heavy concentration of ships around Mydrus, as expected.  Some in 
the asteroid belt further out.  That's about it."
      "Any sign of Jerri and Gham's ship, Commander?"
      "They're on approach to Mydrus," Jean said.  "It looks like 
they're getting in undiscovered."
      "It's too easy," Steve said.  "I don't like it."
      "We won't be able to get any closer," Jean said.  "We're just 
beyond the edge of their sensor arrays now.  Once the security net is 
down, we should be able to get in."
      Before Steve could respond, the turbolift door opened, and in 
walked four men wearing cerulean blue jumpsuits and carrying a large 
chunk of oddly shaped metal.  Steve inwardly groaned, knowing that 
whatever these four men did, it would rapidly bring his luck level 
back in line with reality.
      "Good day, sir," said J. Michael Spaulding, Captain of (on 
leave, or possibly AWOL, from) the space station Freedonia 5. 
Spaulding tipped his cigar in Steve's general direction.  "You're 
looking in top form today, Captain -- you're making my eyes spin. 
You look like you're ready to either invade enemy space or Deal a 
Meal, or possibly both."
      Steve frowned, in what he hoped was his least effeminate manner. 
"What do you want now?"
      "We finished the job you gave us," said the man next to 
Spaulding, one Zeppus Coleslaw by name.  "I think you'll find we've 
exceeded the specs we were given, but if you could just give us some 
windex, we'll clean those specs right off."
      Steve tried to remember what job he had given the irritating 
foursome that had stowed away aboard his vessel and proved too 
troublesome to try to eject.  Something inconsequential requested by 
Jerriphrrt and Gham three days ago...
      "We present-a to you," said Lt. Chicobaldi, "Meester Funboy Ay-yi."
      "That's two, you poor excuse for a soldier," Spaulding said. 
"Can't you read Roman numerals?"
      "No," Chicobaldi replied.  "Only tha ones that-a stand still. 
An-a the twos, an-a the threes, an-a the fours..."
      "Are the fours with you?" Spaulding asked.
      "The cat ate them," Zeppus said, gesturing at Lucky, who yawned again.
      Spaulding knelt before Lucky and peered into his mouth.
      "I only see the dark side of the fours," Spaulding reported. 
"On the in side of the cat.  And I hear a lot of heavy wheezing."
      "He does that," Steve snapped.  "He's an old cat."
      "You shouldn't talk about your elders that way," Spaulding 
replied.  "I have half a mind to give you the back of my hand, or 
half a hand to give you the back of my mind, whichever is messier."
      Steve felt his head start to throb.  "Tell me," he said, already 
sure he would regret it, "about this 'Mr. Funboy II.'  I think I 
remember about it now.  Will it do what Major Lalan expects?"
      "Oh-a, you bet," said Chicobaldi.  "Hey-a, Zacko, show da boss 
what-a the gun does, hey?"
      Steve, while not being necessarily the most accelerated particle 
in the particle accelerator, was still bright enough to pick up on 
what would happen next.  He immediately adopted the best defensive 
posture he could achieve (i.e., hiding behind his chair, and that 
only because the general stampede for the turbolift was too much to 
break through).  Seconds later, bright plaid beams of light flashed 
overhead, smashing into vital control panels.
      Zacko, his eyes bulging as he huffed and puffed as aggressively 
as possible, spun around and fired at everything that looked like it 
might make a good target.  Steve wasn't sure if the man was insane, 
or was just doing a really good Zark Flyby impersonation.  He cringed 
as Zacko used the ungainly weapon to thoroughly shoot up his bridge.
      Of those still on the bridge, only Lucky seemed unimpressed.  He 
yawned again, which caught Zacko's attention.  Zacko yanked the 
loader of what looked like a grenade launcher strapped to the 
underside of the gun, and fired a high-velocity fish directly into 
Lucky's open mouth.  Several more fish followed, which clearly made 
Lucky's day.
      "Okay, partner," Chicobaldi said, from where he was crouched on 
the floor.  "You-a can stop now."
      Zacko looked down at Chicobaldi, smiled, and pulled the trigger 
again.  A noxious green gas billowed from the gun, filling the bridge.
      "Oh, needlewarp," thought Steve as he slipped into unconsciousness.
      It was, perhaps, a mercy that he could not hear the 'approaching 
warship' alert that blared through the ship a second later.  That 
would have *really* ruined his day.

                                       -~-_-

<<Alpha Rio VI (The Planet of Casinos)>>

      There comes a time in even the most intricate conspiracies or 
plots when there is no more conspiring or plotting left to do.  The 
final details of the final orders to be given to one's agents have 
been given.  The final double-cross has been laid, the final 
deceptive red herring has been planted, the final trap has been set. 
Everything is moving precisely according to plan, and the points at 
which the plan is most vulnerable to being scragged by a hero or a 
passing asteroid or what have you are still well in the distance.  It 
is this time, betwixt finally putting the neatly-printed Universal 
Domination plan into its bloodstained three-ring binder and having to 
throw it into the shredder, where the Master Plotters were separated 
from the Master Plotter Wannabes.
      Kalvin Certain was determined not to repeat the mistakes of his 
predecessors in the field of Master Plotting.  He had learned from 
the example of the Reddish Claw of Scalron Six, who filled the 
downtime between his plots and their fulfillment or failure with 
round after round of Scalronian Uber-Golf, to the point where his 
merely taking out a Laser Putter was a signal that a plot was under 
way and it was well-advised to take a vacation or dump one's shares 
in Reddish Claw, Inc.  He would not, as the Dark Empress Mahimba of 
the Throttolian Nebula had, celebrate the implementation of a 
fool-proof plan to take over the universe by getting smashed on 
Pailong Smoke, which has the unfortunate effect of interfering with 
even the most basic verbal commands.  (There is the famous example of 
how she once tried to order Buzz Williams fed to the Ravenous 
Wildebeest of the Temple and also order her manicurist to give her a 
manicure, which, thanks to a grievous misunderstanding on the part of 
her guards, resulted in the Empress being fed to the Wildebeest, 
which also got a manicure out of the deal.)  He would, in short, play 
it cool.
      Right at that moment, playing it cool meant taking care of 
business as usual.  He was on the main floor of Vino the Three-Headed 
Yak's House of Merriment and Extortion, mingling and schmoozing with 
the higher-rolling patrons of the casino that employed him.  The 
silver tuxedo he wore was the same he wore every night at this time, 
as was the pattern he walked, the small talk he made, the deals he 
supervised, and the George Clooney lookalikes he had taken off the 
floor and made to watch "Batman and Robin" until they promised never 
to pretend they were in a Steven Soderbergh film ever again.  He was 
doing what he always did.  He was playing it cool.
      Soon, he thought, the wait would be over.  All the pieces he had 
put in motion were moving without hindrance, and soon he would be 
able to play it hot.  The universe would never know what hit it--
      "Hey, boss!" yelled a yak.  "Message just came in for you!"
      Kalvin, who had been in the process of instructing the guards on 
what to do if they saw anyone who looked like Matt Damon or Brad 
Pitt, and how often to recharge the electric cattle prods while doing 
it, looked up and frowned.
      "Take a message!" he yelled back.  "I'm busy!"
      "It's from the Security System, sir!" the yak replied.
      Kalvin sighed, then nodded.  The Security System was an expert 
computer system mandated by Vino the Three-Headed Yak, and when it 
had a message, it was best to not be tardy in checking it out.  Vino, 
as his name implied, had three heads, and absolutely no sympathy for 
anyone who begged not to have one of theirs cut off just because they 
didn't have a couple backups.
      The walk back to his office took only a minute or so, as he had 
been nearly done with his rounds for the afternoon.  He flicked on 
the wall screen and immediately froze.
      The security cameras had zeroed in on three patrons who at first 
glance appeared to be no different than any of the other patrons in 
Vino's casino, in that they were gambling, drinking, and happily 
losing money.  Indeed, they might have fooled even the Security 
System, so well were they blending in, were it not for the fact that 
one of the three was Sajon.  He wasn't causing slot machines to 
explode with coins this time, unlike the messy scene he had caused 
when he unexpectedly was teleported in three days ago, but that was 
probably due to the numerous Typical Luck generators that had been 
strapped to his person in an apparent attempt to disguise his 
odds-busting nature.
      But Sajon was a known quantity who could be dealt with.  It was 
the two who were with him that had Kalvin's attention.
      The reptilian Slithis he recognized immediately, despite the 
nun's habit Slithis wore as a disguise.  It took a few moments more 
to remember Shadebeam.  He had only seen her once in person, in the 
middle of stealing a spaceship from the OmniDean, and her look was 
somewhat different than it had been, but... it was her.
      Two of the original Renegade Anarchists in his casino.  Coincidence?
      Hardly, Kalvin thought.  The waiting period was simply ending 
more quickly than he had anticipated.
      But even now, he would play it cool.
      "Security System," he said.  "I have new orders for you..."

                                       -~-_-

<<Shoon-Ma's ship, somewhere in overly-hyped space>>

      Benjen held his breath as two red-velour-shirted zombies glided 
past his hiding place.  They were not turning their heads (zombies 
are not big on being thorough in their searches), but if he let out a 
breath, they would hear.  He had found that out yesterday, the hard 
way.
      Three days had elapsed since he escaped from Shoon-Ma's 
captivity, and he was no closer to finding a way off the weird alien 
ship he was stuck on than when he started.  Most of his time was 
spent blundering about in the dark, breathing air through a mask 
attached to a U-BREETH-E-Z compressed air tank, relying on the 
sensors from a stolen tricorder to navigate about the mostly 
lightless, airless, and gravityless ship.  The only rations he'd been 
able to scrounge tasted bitter and suspiciously like grey-meat 
meatloaf, and the only water he had been able to find caused him to 
hallucinate dancing Jacksons for hours on end.  He had barely gotten 
any sleep, and he was close to sure there were no escape pods on the 
ship at all.  The aliens who formerly owned it apparently had not 
believed in such extravagances.
      The zombies reached the end of the oblong room, opened the door, 
and left without any theatrical pausing as if they had heard 
something.  Benjen slowly let out his breath and considered what to 
do next.
      He had no idea what to do next, so he considered what had 
happened to him so far, instead.  It had been something he had lately 
been doing a lot.  (Well, that and feel glad it was his hallucination 
of Janet that had the wardrobe malfunction and not Michael or Tito.)
      There was something about the events on the ship as he knew them 
that did not make sense, even by the relaxed 'sense' standards that 
years of living in Sfstory had given him.  When he and his 
compatriots on the W.S. _Universal Solvent_ first investigated the 
derelict alien spaceship, they had found it powerless, apparently 
crewed only by a number of pudding-bloated dead humans in velour 
shirts.  There had also been a frozen bagel floating aimlessly 
around, and Benjen had brought that with him when he returned to his 
own ship.
      The bagel turned out to be Shoon-Ma, who revived and 
telepathically forced him to return to the alien vessel, which 
immediately started up and took off.  A bunch of people came and 
went, as people are wont to do, but Benjen ended up stuck on the 
ship, the subject of (staged) experiments at the hands of Dr. Bing 
Von Spleen.  Thanks to the intervention of the tiny robot named 
TH1K1, Benjen escaped, and thus started his marathon of avoidance of 
zombies and trying to find a means of escape for himself and Dr. Von 
Spleen.
      None of this failed to make sense to him.  He was used to these 
sort of things going on, though it had been a few years since such 
goings-on were this intense.
      While he had been on the bridge of the alien ship, listening to 
Shoon-Ma gloat, he learned the chronology of what had recently 
occurred to the ship.  A group of alien archaeologists (the original 
owners of the ship) found Shoon-Ma buried on a forgotten world and 
were heading back home when their ship was hijacked by the 
velour-shirted fools, who started taking the ship back to wherever 
*they* had come from.  So far, so good.
      At some point, Shoon-Ma must have tried to take over.  Hell, it 
had probably been his influence that let the velour-shirted men 
defeat the archaeologists in the first place.  But when the 
_Universal Solvent_ crew found the ship, it had been powerless, 
drifting in space, and the men all had bellies full of pudding and 
victorious expressions on their dead faces....
      That was it.  There had been no explanation for the situation 
they had found the ship in.  It was as if the humans had found a 
means to resist the ur-Bagel's mind-control abilities, long enough to 
shut down the ship.  And it had to do with the fact they had bloated 
themselves on pudding, he was sure.  Perhaps pudding interfered with 
Shoon-Ma's ability to control minds, but why would the men have been 
travelling with that much pudding about in the first place?  Would 
the archaeologists have had that much pudding?  It was an extremely 
valuable commodity in the interstellar futures markets, not the sort 
of item one casually brought on archaeological or 
hijacking-of-archaeological expeditions.
      He had located no pudding reserves in his search of the ship, so 
it seemed a moot point.  He had yet to locate even a simple computer 
terminal, an item which would have solved a lot of his problems--
      The door at the far end of the room hissed open.  Benjen 
crouched behind the desk that had been his hiding place.  He heard a 
series of high-pitched whistles and squeaks.
      "TH1K1!" he exclaimed.  The words were muffled by the airmask he 
wore, but the tiny flying robot seemed to understand him 
nevertheless.  It emitted a lot more whistles and squeaks.
      "Okay, okay, you want me to follow you, right?" asked Benjen. 
TH1K1 bobbed up and down in the air, which Benjen took to be an 
affirmative.  "Fine, I'm with you.  I hope you've had better luck 
than I've had."
      He followed the small robot through a confusing series of 
uniformly dark corridors and doors.  It wasn't until, some twenty 
minutes later, when he saw the dim green glow from a computer screen 
on an otherwise black wall, that he truly started to feel things were 
going his way.
      The little robot was humming.  Benjen was sure it was only a 
leftover fragment of hallucinatory liquid that made him think the 
humming was in any way malevolent or homicidal.
      Benjen examined the screen.  Sure enough, it was a main 
interface terminal, one which, given his skills, he was sure he could 
use to take control of the ship away from Shoon-Ma.  Which wouldn't 
mean much if the ur-Bagel re-mind-controlled him, but it seemed to 
Benjen that its powers were already extended to their limit in 
controlling the zombies and the ship and keeping Dr. Von Spleen in 
line.  If he did things right...
      Suddenly and without warning, the readout turned red, and began 
flashing in the universal and time-honored 'you're screwed now, 
bucko' tradition.
      "Oh, needlewarp," Sajon muttered.  "What did I do now?"
      "Self-Destruct Program activated," a printed message on the 
screen informed him.  "One hour until I go boom."
      Benjen stared at the screen for a while.  He tried typing in 
commands, but the screen was locked.  He tried glaring at the screen. 
He tried hitting it.  Only when he looked up from this did he notice 
that TH1K1 had gone missing.
      Probably off to rescue Dr. Von Spleen, Benjen decided.  He was a 
good judge of character, and he was sure TH1K1 was the most 
dedicated, most selfless robot helper any of them could hope for. 
Von Spleen was no doubt in good hands, but Benjen was not.  Surely 
there was something in his training that covered this situation...?
      There was.  Benjen stood, looked around to make sure he wasn't 
observed, then put up the screen saver and briskly walked away.

IS DR. VON SPLEEN IN GOOD HANDS?
WAIT, DOES TH1K1 EVEN HAVE HANDS?
WHAT IS KALVIN PLANNING FOR SAJON AND COMPANY?
WILL IT INVOLVE FREE DRINKS AND A SHOW?
WILL THE CREW OF THE CHALLENGER III AWAKE IN TIME TO FEND OFF ENEMY ATTACK?
WILL RONALD AND NORMAN BE FORCED TO CUT THE CHEESE?

SFSTORY happens, and you are there!
--
Gary W. Olson
swede3000 at earthlink.net
The Sfstory Page: http://home.earthlink.net/~swede3000/index.html