by Phil Geusz
"Tottson? No, I can't say that I have. He certainly hasn't been trying to get down behind the bar with us, like… Goddammit, you horny son a bitch! Get your filthy hands off of…" Then there was a loud cracking sound, and a scream of pain. "Sorry, Marvin" Arnold replied. "I don't exactly have much time to talk here."
"Right," I agreed flatly. "We'll be right up." Then I cut the connection and turned to face my phalanx of loyal Amazons. "I guess you heard," I said slowly.
"We heard," Michelle replied.
"They are ignorant fools!" the Dragon declared angrily. "They endanger us all with their childish games and desires! We must get them under control. For their own good!"
"For their own good," I echoed. "Come on, girls. It won't be so bad. Haven't you ever had to deal with a bunch of drunken johns before?"
VI
"The thing is that we've got to work together as a team," I said to my girls as we stood just outside the locked Saloon entrance. "The johns are only out for themselves in the state that they're in, and they aren't thinking very clearly."
"They tear each other up as much as anything else," Barbara said, clutching her improvised weapon convulsively. Barb was a new recruit; we'd just picked her up a few moments before. She'd been fighting off two johns single-handedly for almost the entire time since the accident, and judging by appearances had inflicted a lot more damage than she'd received. Her two assailants were now safely stuffed into mummy bags and secured to the railing two levels down, while their object of desire was now armed with a severed chair leg. "When you look into their eyes, it's like no one's at home. No one at all."
"Right," I agreed, once more trying to sound confident. After all, we were fifteen untrained police officers about to try and quell one of the ugliest riots in the history of space travel while outnumbered more than ten to one. If our confidence failed, we were utterly sunk. I hefted my own chair leg and grinned easily. "Remember how easy it was to round up the rest down below? The johns can't think of anything but sex, sex, sex."
"So this is news?" Michelle murmured. The rest of the girls giggled, and I smiled too.
"All right, ladies" I ordered. "This is it. Are we all ready?"
Heads nodded solemnly.
I fingered my own chair-leg, then gave the order. "Open it, Trixie!"
We burst in screaming like banshees, and I was the first to count coup. Just in front of me a young man in a Lagrange Environmental Controls coverall was slowly and dopily pounding a coworker into submission with his fists. In an instant I was on him, snapping one end of a pair of handcuffs over the wrist of his upraised hand and the other to a light fixture. He seemed more puzzled by what I'd done than angry, and never even tried to fight back.
The next john wasn't nearly so easy. He was a miner, judging by his black uniform, and in the process of raping an unconscious colleague. When I snapped one end of the cuffs onto him he turned angrily on me and ripped the other end of the cuffs out of my grip. I didn't mess around at all; my chair leg impacted his skull with a crack heard round the room, and his eyes glazed over immediately. Then the Dragon darted in from the side and neatly finished the cuffing job.
It wasn't nearly as difficult to secure the saloon as we'd all feared; the johns had already beaten each other to a near-pulp, and with only three or four exceptions most of those still conscious were far too interested in sexual stimulation to break their concentration over something relatively unimportant, such as being stuffed into a bag or chained to a stanchion. We only had enough restraints to safely accommodate perhaps fifty determined individuals, but even this proved to be more than enough. The vast majority were either already unconscious or else had wandered so far from reality that they merely floated docilely wherever we chose to place them. Once we had successfully raised the siege at the bar, the fight was all but over.
"Where is Commodore Tottson?" I demanded over and over again as I picked my way through the disgusting debris floating everywhere. "Commodore Tottson? Has anyone seen Commodore Tottson?"
"Here," he replied at last, his rich baritone voice unmistakable in the chaos. "Over here!"
"Commodore!" I exclaimed, making my way back through the expensive private chambers that were the prerogative of the rich and famous, like my hero. "Commodore! Thank God! I need your help, sir!"
"Marvin?" he answered. "Marvin, is that you?"
I rounded the last corner, guessed right the first time as to which door to open, and came face to face with Tottson, sitting calmly at his personal table. "Thank God, sir!" I repeated. "Sir, I need you to go EVA for me. We only have one good suit, and--"
"I see," the Commodore replied, interrupting me. "Certainly, I can go EVA for you. But what will you do for me in return?"
My beak dropped open; something was wrong here, terribly, terribly wrong. And somehow, I'd forgotten just how big and strong Tottson was. He'd easily make two of me. Or more.
"You know," the Commodore continued, smiling gently. "I'm not normally attracted to men. Nor am I especially attracted to chickens. But I've sensed something very special about you since the moment we first met." His smile widened. "I think it's the feathers. They make you absolutely irresistible. Did you know that?"
Slowly Tottson reached into his private refrigerator and took out a beer. Expertly he twisted it open, immediately placing his thumb over the opening so the contents could not come gushing out. Then he shook it once, just so, and held the bottle's mouth up to his own, allowing a single pressurized squirt of beer to pass his lips. Clearly, he'd drunk beer in zero-gee many times before, and knew exactly what he was doing. There were few more experienced free-fall hands to be found anywhere. "Sit down next to me, Marvin" he urged, patting the empty chair. "Sit down nice and close, so that we can talk this EVA business over like real spacemen."
I gulped, suddenly totally lost. "Sir…"
The Commodore's smile widened, and then he reached under the table, producing a very wicked-looking steak knife. There was blood on it, I realized suddenly.
A lot of blood.
Then there was disturbance behind me. "Alexander!" the Dragon cried out in her harshest tones. "What on Earth do you think you're doing, slave?"
The Commodore's eyes went wide. "Mistress!" he said softly. "I didn't mean…"
"I don't care what you meant, you stinking piece of shit!" she shrieked. "Drop that knife, and do it now! Now, now, now, now!"
"Yes, Mistress" the Commodore said softly, releasing the blade. It hung motionless in the air for a moment, and then the Dragon was past me and brandishing it in her own gloved hand.
"You are not to play with knives!" she screamed brutally. "You are not to say or do anything! You are to be quiet, and stay still! You do not deserve to speak or move! You are not worthy of me!"
"Yes, Mistress" Tottson replied, staring placidly down at the floor.
The Dragon glared at me for a long moment, then cocked her head impatiently. "You!" she demanded. "Lock this slithering worm up. Now! He deserves no better!"
I didn't argue for even a second; the effect of the Dragon's whipcord voice was such that I didn't even consider arguing. In a trice it was done, and then Georgia was hauling him off to join the rest, whimpering and crying something terrible. "I'm sorry, Mistress!" he blubbered over and over. "So very sorry!"
For a long moment the Dragon and I stood side by side in the little private compartment, staring at the Commodore's bloody knife. "He did hold out better than most of them," I whispered. "In a way. I guess."
The Dragon closed her eyes and sighed. "He's as helpless as all the rest," she declared, though in a voice much softer than usual. "Completely helpless and hopeless deep down inside." Then her eyes opened once more, and quite suddenly they were hard and flashing once more. "Now," she demanded. "Now you will cease chasing little-boy-hero dreams and figure out how to save our lives, once and for all!"
VII
Real, honest-to-God terror has a very distinctive taste, I learned as I stared into the Drag
on's remorseless eyes. It's sort of metallic, laced with bitterness. For a seeming eternity I stood there, beak agape, wanting desperately to gibber and run amok. We were going to die, I knew then with absolute certainty. Tottson couldn't save us, Lagrange couldn't save us, and we certainly couldn't save ourselves. We were all going to die, one by one, and I was going to have to helplessly watch it happen, knowing that somehow it was all my fault. I looked around the Saloon helplessly, until my eyes fixed on a fifth of gin that was floating just a few feet away. I was immune to the drug powders, yes. But good old alcohol, however…
"What should we be doing?" the Dragon snapped angrily, grabbing a handful of my coveralls and pulling me to her. "We do not have time for this useless woolgathering!"
For a long moment, I could not meet her gaze; the bottle of gin was a far more appealing object of attention. Then I sighed aloud and turned to face her hard, hard eyes. "We've got a real problem," I admitted. "And I'm not sure how to solve it. In fact, I don't think that it can be solved."
"Tell me the problem," she rasped. "I will find a solution."
My God, but the Dragon was overweening and arrogant! "It's no big deal," I said after a moment. "Surely a qualified spacer of your education and experience will be able to handle it for me."
Suddenly the hard eyes were inches from my own, narrow and flashing. "Explain the problem to me!" she demanded again. Then the side of my face exploded in pain as she struck me, hard! "Explain!"
"Damn!" I retorted automatically, flinching from the blow. Reflexively my grip tightened on the chair leg that I was still carrying…
…then relaxed under the Dragon's remorseless glare. She was right, of course. I was wasting time. "Lagrange has no pods to spare," I said. "They're evacuating the entire station. That's not only never been done before, but no one dreamed that it might ever be necessary. They aren't coming for us. That means our only way out would be for me to go EVA to the Aphrodite and take us all out on her. But I don't have a suit anymore. Because I'm a chicken, I can't wear the last normal one. And no beginner stands a chance of even getting aboard Aphrodite under these conditions, much less piloting her. Dockings to emergency ports are tricky, even when they're not tumbling. She's very likely damaged, too."
The Dragon frowned mightily. "What if we cut off your beak?" she demanded at last. "Could you fit then?"
I blinked, not even having considered that possibility. My body was fairly close to human shape under the feathers; I was pretty much a cartoon sort of chicken. But… "I'm afraid not. They had to take a casting of my head for the helmet. It's odd-shaped, too.
"What foolishness!" the dominatrix muttered, her frown intensifying further. Then her eyes snapped back to meet mine. "The spare suit," she demanded. "It is in good condition?"
I shrugged. "It should be. I inspected it last week, and there's no damage to the cabinet."
The Dragon nodded in satisfaction. "Excellent. Meet me in the Control Room in ten minutes. Have the spare suit ready." Then she spun gracefully in mid air and flashed away.
The Dragon arrived two minutes ahead of schedule, I noted, with several of her fellow artists in tow and carrying a bright pink package carelessly under one arm. "The suit," she demanded. "You will show it to me."
I nodded and lifted it up out of its protective case for her to see. "It's a standard Mark Twenty-Five," I explained. "You people may think of Beauregard as being cheap, but in point of fact he believes in buying good stuff for us where it really counts." I spread the suit out a little so that everyone could see. "The bottom part is just airtight elastic fabric," I explained. "There's boots to wear over it, though they won't fit my feet anymore. The stuff is slightly porous to water and very highly reflective; the wearer is cooled by his own perspiration." I paused and looked around, meeting each pair of eyes in turn. Each and every one of the girls was listening as though their lives hung upon every word. "It's not intended that the wearer of this style of suit be exposed to prolonged periods of sunlight," I continued. "It's presumed that a user will be intelligent enough to mostly stay in the shadows, or else use a sunshade. Otherwise he'll overheat. The tradeoff, however, is that the flexibility and dexterity are almost unlimited."
The Dragon nodded soberly. "And the helmet?" she asked.
"The air fitting is connected to the helmet," I explained, pointing. "On a station like this, EVA's are so rare that expended gasses are not a problem; when the user exhales, the suit just vents the gas to space. That keeps things nice and simple. We also run a much purer mix of oxygen than standard breathing-air at reduced air pressure, to reduce strain on the suit."
“Yes,” the Dragon agreed, fingering the connection and examining it critically. "This is all very simple indeed. I have long suspected that there was nothing truly complex about space." Then she faced me once more. "So the lower portion is merely an airtight body-suit that allows for perspiration. Must you be able to sweat through the suit?"
"Not for a short hop, no. But I imagine that I'd be getting mighty warm by the time that I hit Aphrodite without any cooling at all."
"Even if you made very careful use of shade?"
I thought about it. "I'd have to make and use a parasol. Even then, I'd be mighty warm."
She nodded. "I understand. And you absolutely cannot wear the helmet?"
"Even if you removed my beak, my head is too long and narrow." I demonstrated, then sighed. "I'll have to admit, that was a very good idea, cutting off the beak. Too bad it won't work."
The Dragon frowned. "It was a stupid, pitiful idea, if it will not work. A waste of time." Her black-gloved fingers moved delicately over the helmet, tracing various contours. "And you cannot wear the suit's bottom, either?"
"No," I explained, shaking my head sadly. "The suit can only be made with just so much stretch in it, or else it will puff up like a balloon and immobilize the wearer in vacuum. I'm still human-shaped, but not that human shaped."
"I see." Then the Dragon removed the pink package from under her arm and thrust it towards me. "Put this on!" she commanded.
My reflexes were plenty good; I snagged the projectile cleanly before it could knock me in the chest. It was some kind of rubber suit, I could see…
…one with little rubber knobs on the inside at strategically located places, and oversized rubber breasts affixed to the chest. "Hey!" I cried in outrage. "This is…"
"Put it on," the Dragon commanded. "We are not here to play games!" Then she turned to Jeanine. "He will require much powdering. He was correct when he said that his shape is no longer quite human."
"Gotcha," Jeanine replied, producing a bottle of talcum. Then she smiled at me. "Come on over here by the air inlet, hon. We don't want to be breathing any more of this stuff than we can help."
"Hey!" I cried out again, this time louder. "This is a goddamn sex suit! And a girl-type one at that! This is for guys who like to pretend to be women; I'm not into that kind of crap!"
Jeanine laid her hand on my shoulder. "Please, Marvin!" she explained. “We need for you to do this!"
"It will be airtight," the Dragon declared flatly. "It does not leak a drop; I have proven this many times."
"And the girl one is closer to your size than the boy one," Trixie added, her big rabbit eyes appearing very solemn. "With your tail-feathers, we think that it may be more comfortable for you."
Still smiling, Jeanine reached out and touched my shoulder. I slapped her hand away. "How about the helmet?" I demanded. "How am I going to get air?"
The Dragon's eyes flashed dangerously, but Jeanine silenced her with a glance. Then she was smiling at me once more. She was very, very pretty, I realized suddenly. "One thing at a time, Marvin" she explained in a reasonable tone. "One thing at a time. How can we decide how to hook up the plumbing until we see what you look like with it on?"
The girls were all looking at me expectantly then, and the Dragon was fingering the handle of her whip. So I blushed, then removed my pants and began changing.
&nb
sp; It was terrible, climbing into that girl-suit. Jeanine powdered and powdered, but I was still half-plucked by the time that I was totally wrapped up inside. The mouth had a sort of bit-thingie built into it; I didn't want to put that part on, but Jeanine pointed out that cutting the rubber unnecessarily might not exactly be a good idea. In fact, she pointed out, cutting the suit was probably an even worse idea than leaving me mute. After all, once I was out the lock no one would be able to hear me anyway.
"Whew!" Patrice exclaimed, once it was done. "For a while there, I didn't think that we were going to make it."
"It's very tight," Jeanine agreed as I stood and listened, unable to say a word. Very much against my will, the little rubber knobs were beginning to have their way with me, and I feared that I was about to become aroused in a very public way. The talc was tickling my nose too, and I sneezed explosively.
"Poor dear!" Barbara exclaimed. "Trixie, run and get a tissue!"
"We need to get his air hooked up as soon as we can," Marilyn agreed. She turned to the Dragon. "Have you something in mind?"
She nodded coldly and produced a large black hood that appeared to be made of rubber. "He will wear this on top," she declared, "and we shall seal it to his neck with liquid latex. This hood is cut very large, for a special slave that cannot wear ordinary headgear. We will glue the air fittings to the back, and fix lenses in the eyeholes. Then we shall strap the bottles to his back and tape him up tightly so that the suit cannot balloon out any more than can be avoided." For the first time ever in my experience, she smiled prettily and dimpled. "It will work."
The taping seemed to take forever, even though several of the girls were very accomplished at it. Poor Trixie fumbled a little at one point, and the Dragon snatched the roll of tape right out of her hands. "You blithering idiot!" she had snapped. "Haven't you ever taped a man up into a sex suit before?" Other than that one incident, however, things had gone pretty smoothly. Jeanine had been prescient enough to tape up my feet triple-thick so as to minimize the chance of a leak, and the Dragon herself had taped my hands very carefully and with great attention to detail, so that they remained fairly flexible.
