Loose Change
“Space. The ferking boring frontier. These are the voyages of the Universal Space Armada ship Star Blap, her seemingly eternal mission to explore the same old empty space, to seek out new ways of passing time unproductively, to timidly go where everyone has gone be -“
“Captain?” Vice Captain Tresseloon interrupted.
“Yes, Vice?” Captain Pompous asked.
“You’re narrating a gain.”
“No, no. That’s just the point of my narration: there is no advantage to be had here.”
“I believe the Vice Captain meant you are narrating once more,” Doctor Smolivaw Smarty explained.
“Oh. Right. Smarty, you’re the science officer. Doesn’t your equipment register some kind of quantum…fluxy…fluctuating anomaly thing nearby? Like, so close, it would be impossible to ignore?”
“There was an unusual build-up of gas to our starboard si – that’s left, right? Well, on our left – the left side of the ship – there was a build-up of gas that shouldn’t have been there.”
“Something we need to investigate?”
“Naah. I chalked it up to the chilli they served in the ship’s mess last night.”
The bridge was quiet for several seconds, those who had had the chilli being more embarrassedly silent than the other bridge crew members. Eventually, Captain Pompous broke the silence with: “Sparks, any emergency communications from advanced civilizations under attack from space sharks?”
“No, Captain,” Communications Officer Redruff replied. “And the name’s Tony, sir. Tony Redruff. I know that ‘sparks’ is the traditional name of the communications officer on a vessel, but, as I have explained to you many times…sir, the only time my station sparks is when you have provoked an alien ship to attack us and the bridge catches fire.”
“Thanks for the report, Sparks. Helm -“
“It’s Tony,” Redruff muttered.
“Helm, do you see any debris in our path, no matter how small or apparently insignificant – anything at all that might be the remains of a starship that could have been destroyed by an alien vessel of unimaginable power that would require us to investigate, pushing the Star Blap way beyond the limits recommended by the manufacturer and testing the bravery of every member of the bridge crew?”
“No,” Helmswoman Ketchaparian answered. Then, sensing that that response was inadequate, she added, “Sir.”
“Well, ferk, then,” Captain Pompous said. A minute and a half later, he punched a button on the big comfy chair with the impressive control panel built into the fine Corinthian leather armrest in which he sat and a cranky voice said, “Sick Room.”
“Doctor Excitable, may I see you on the bridge,” Captain Pompous requested, although it was really more of a command. Requemmanded? Comquested? Coreque…umm, well, you get the idea.
“Is this a medical emergency?” Doctor Excitable suspicioned.
“Absolutely!” Captain Pompous assured him, as the other members of the bridge crew redoubled their efforts to stare pointlessly at screens at their stations.
“A real medical emergency?”
“That’s right.”
“Like, a somebody about to die medical emergency?”
“It could happen.”
After a second, Doctor Excitable sighed heavily and said, “Oy! I’m on my way.”
Captain James T. Pompous (the T stands for Franklin – he’s such a rebel!) was not tall, or especially muscular; his authority arose mostly from a Shakespearean background and dramatic camera angles. Funny story about how he became captain of the Star Blap: he was an ensign on the ship when a janitor in Space Armada headquarters got hold of an alien artifact and used it to destroy half of the fleet. Seeing that the entire bridge crew had been reduced to puddles of green slime in the shapes of the profiles of silent film stars, Pompous took the only reasonable course of action that a young ensign could: he jumped on the big comfy chair with the impressive control panel built into the fine Corinthian leather armrest and declared himself in control of the vessel. The ensuing battle will make a great movie some day; but, this story takes place years after Pompous and his makeshift crew vanquished the errant janitor. As his reward, Pompous was made Captain of the USA Star Blap, making him the youngest person in command of a star ship in the entire Armada. Behind his back, other captains in the fleet made jokes about Pompous being breastfed on the bridge – leaders of the Space Armada can be such nudniks! His commission has been in arbitration with the union over the issue of seniority ever since he was given command of the Star Blap, but, given the way the Space Armada bureaucracy makes Sammy Snail look like Al Unser, he should be good for several more seasons. Err, missions.
The Captain’s chair was in the centre of the bridge; most of the crew stations, with their impressive screens, knobs, buttons, sliders, touchpads and more exotic interfaces that nobody knew how to use because the manual wasn’t required reading at the Space Armada Academy (but they bluffed their way around) were arrayed on a slight rise behind him. The only exception was the helm, which was on his left (is that really starboard?) side. Helmswoman Ketchaparian Vetch was a Voluble X’N’TH, a human compatible race. Helmswoman Ketchaparian was referred to as “shorty” by her friends because, at six foot three, she was of less than average height for her race. She was bald because, unlike her friends, she hadn’t given in to the hairplug fad that was sparked when the Space Armada made contact with the Voluble X’N’TH. Helmswoman Ketchaparian wore a black box over her mouth, not to translate (her English being better than half of the bridge crew): her voice was so deep it had to be muted lest the resonance shake the bridge apart. She had decorated the side of the box with butterfly stickers in order to make it more feminine, with mixed results.
The largest station at the back belonged to Vice Captain Schmeer Tresseloon. The Vice Captain was a member of a humanoidish race known as the Big Bam Boo. At the time of first contact, their language consisted entirely of words of one syllable or less (answering the time honoured question: can a race whose language consists entirely of words of one syllable or less create a civilization sufficiently advanced to build star ships?); although they had adapted to multi-syllable English to avoid using translators (which gave them bad breath), they still sometimes fell into the habit of splitting single words into their component phonemes. (Yes. Their last names are more than one syllable long. Good of you to notice. Actually, the average name of a Big Bam Boo native is forty single syllables long. When they interact with humanoid species, they are given a name consisting of the first syllable of their name followed by three or four of the least difficult syllables to pronounce in a row. Trust me: it looks better on passports.)
Big Bam Booians averaged four feet in height; if one of them put you ill at ease without knowing why, it could have been because their ash grey skin reminded you of the chalkboard in your elementary school. Or it could have been the fact that they had tentacles where a typical humanoid had arms and legs (that was the ish part of being humanoid). Completing the effect, Vice Captain Tresseloon had black slits for eyes, two rows of teeth and no hair. He did, though, look sharp in his blue and gold Space Armada togs. Say what you will about the Big Bam Boo, you had to admit that they really knew how to fill out a uniform.
Next to Vice Captain Tresseloon was the station of the science officer, Doctor Smolivaw Smarty. Science Officer Smarty was an undistinguished looking man with a near infinite capacity for petty annoyance who put on his best snark when he was around Vice Captain Tresseloon. It wasn’t that he had anything against the Big Bam Boo race, which he felt was actually slightly less annoying than most races he had to deal with, including his own human race. No, it just galled him no end that the Vice Captain had a larger station than the science officer, even though the science officer actually contributed meaningful information to actually solve actual problems while the Vice Captain seemed to exist primarily to give the Captain an alien counterpoint that he could rebuff with some homespun philosophy that he usually made up on the spot and that, on close inspection, didn’t actually make sense. Really! Science Officer Smarty could have done that with a small box, two tin cans and a piece of string!
On the other side of the bridge was Tony “Don’t call me Sparks, Sparky, Sparkman, Sparkmeister or any other pet name that begins with Spark” Redruff’s station. The communications officer was fifteen years old, but he was a mature fifteen (more Holden Caulfield than Tom Sawyer): he hardly ever got into the locked liquor cabinet in Captain Pompous’ quarters and finished his seventy-five year-old bottle of Cognac, and he only ever took one of the shuttles joyriding the one time (before he had a chance to really gauge the effect of seventy-five year-old cognac on his fifteen year-old body). Still, if you overlooked his tendency to prank call alien ships (a form of communications they found mostly incomprehensible, so no lasting damage done to intergalactic relations there), he made a vital contribution to the bridge crew. Not that Captain Pompous had much choice: the Galactic Union of Communications Officers (GUCO) refused to allow any of its senior members to work on any ship he led until the grievance over his seniority had been concluded.
The door to the bridge whooshed open. Well, it started to whoosh, then it clanked, wheezed and hoowahed until it was almost fully open. The minds of some of the finest engineers in the Space Armada had been asked to solve the problem, but the best solution anybody had come up with was to scrap the ship and start all over; apparently, nobody in this universe had heard of oiling gears.
When the bridge door was as opened as it was ever going to be an elderly man inched his way into the room, his cane plunk plunk plunking him forward. Doctor Isadore Excitable (née: Exseytibilisch; his parents, who had emigrated from Moldavia when he was smaller than a stethoscope, were given the name when they crossed into Canada, and, although they understood the connotation, kept it in a misguided effort to fit in) did not seem all that happy to be away from the Sick Room. But then, he did not seem all that happy to be in the Sick Room, either. The Pastel Pushers on the ship had a pool: how long ago was Doctor Excitable last happy? The most recent entry into the pool had twenty-seven years, six months, a week and four days.
The door made a rude burping noise as it shut behind him.
“Okay, Jim,” Doctor excitable cranked, “what’s so important that you need my presence on the bridge?”
“Is it possible to die of boredom?”
“Oy! You took me away from the Sick Room for that, Jimmelach? I’m a doctor, dammit! Not an entertainment programmer!”
“You have something better to do up there? A hangnail epidemic? A breakout of life-threatening nougies?”
Doctor Excitable mumbled something in response. “I’m sorry,” Captain Pompous gloated unbecoming an officer. “I didn’t quite catch that…”
“I said: the Sick Room is below you. The bridge is at the top of the ship!”
Captain Pompous smiled. “In space, there’s no such thing as up or down. That makes direction a Captain’s prerogative.”
Before Doctor Excitable could respond, Science Officer Smarty said over his shoulder from his station, “Captain, I’m getting strange readings from -“
Captain Pompous’ heart quickened; he knew from experience that nothing good ever came from strange readings. “Yes?” he too-quickly said, “Oh, goodie” written all over his face.
“It’s a fluctuation of the time-space continuum, as if something is trying to punch its way into this universe from…somewhere else.”
Captain Pompous adopted his serious voice. “Where. Is it. Happening?”
“The bridge, Captain.” Science Officer Smarty turned to face the Captain. “It’s happening here!”
Captain Pompous jumped out of his chair and shouted, “Battle -!” Before he knew what was happening, he was sitting back in his chair, unable to move. Hmm, he thought. This is new. I wonder… He tried moving various parts of his body, but they were less mobile than the Living Mountains of Nastrocon IV. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out Vice Captain Tresseloon standing at its station; it also appeared to be immobile. Swinging his eyeballs in the other direction, Helmswoman Ketchaparian was stilled in mid-button press. Hmm. Could be some new kind of weapon that immobilizes people in some kind of…immobilization field, Captain Pompous thought. Then, he looked at the Klippon battle boat, floating in the distance; it appeared to be approaching them with all twelve oars out.
Battle stations! Captain Pompous shouted in his head. Battle – oh, this is not good!
Suddenly, Captain Pompous heard himself saying, “Smarty, report on the alien vessel?” It didn’t quite sound like his voice: it sounded more like an actor who was trying to imitate his voice. His lips had moved, though, more or less in sync with the words, so he assumed it was his voice. Captain Pompous’ head almost smoothly turned, and he found himself looking at Science Officer Smarty.
“The Klippon ship has shields up and is arming its photo-N bombs,” Science Officer Smarty answered in a voice that, again, wasn’t quite his.
Of its own volition, Captain Pompous felt his head turn so that he could see Vice Captain Tresseloon. “Advice, Vice?” he barked.
“Fight or flight, Captain,” Tresseloon answered, turning its head to face the Captain. “Despite all of our technological advances, we are faced with the same decisions as our ancient ancestors.”
This was no time for philosophy, ferk it! I need a – “This is no time for philosophy, dammit!” he found himself saying. “I need a strategy, sta -“
He could not finish the thought, for the ship was wracked with explosions. A couple of the auxiliary command consoles exploded, sending the Pastel Pushers at them flying through the air, falling to the ground close to the Captain’s chair. As the air filled with smoke, Captain Pompous said, “Sparks! Open hailing frequencies!”
No! No! No! The Space Armada and the Klippons are at war, and their battle boat has attacked us! You never try to talk when you’re being attacked by a Klippon battle boat! You set your defences and fire back! That’s a tactic only a 12 year-old…would…oh, hell! If his eyes could widen with realization, they would have. As it was, Captain Pompous watched the battle with increasing horror…
The door whooshed, clanked, wheezed and hoowahed almost open and Able Spaceman Elliott K’voort strode onto the bridge, back so straight you would be forgiven for thinking it was made of tungsten carbide, eyes focused so forward you might think they were seeing heaven. He strode up to Captain Pompous’ chair without looking down to see where he was going; he had made the trip so often that he could now do it by body memory. Standing to the Captain’s left, he used his right hand to offer a futuristic looking handheld device with a tacky nineteenth century case to the Captain.
“Sir, I need your signature on this document, sir!” Able Spaceman K’voort crisply said. If the statement had been bacon, it would have been delicious.
Able Spaceman K’voort stood at attention for several seconds. When it became apparent that the Captain was not going to snatch the device out of his hand, sign it without looking at it and hand it back to him before turning his attention to more important matters (like the imminent destruction of the ship, which happened, generally speaking, once every three weeks), the average looking Pastel Pusher (junior crew members who all wore variations on the standard ship uniform in any colour they wanted as long as it was red) with black hair and one leg slightly longer than the other (which made his strides a matter of precise mathematical calculation as much as anything) cleared his throat and said, “Captain, if I could just get your signature on this document…”
Several more seconds passed. Able Spaceman K’voort realized that this was the longest he had ever spent on the bridge. The thought filled him with satisfaction mixed with dread. The bridge wasn’t his place; he was much more comfortable in his office on B Deck, writing requisition requests to Star Armada headquarters for additional anti-matter plasma for the ship’s Kessler Drive (one of which was the very document he was waiting for the Captain to sign). A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead. He cleared his throat again, louder, hoping that this would have greater effect.
It didn’t.
Able Spaceman K’voort did his best to stare at the wall screen at the front of the bridge, on which somebody had been playing a game of Space Invaders, but the person had lost and superimposed on the battlefield was a box that asked if the player wanted to play again or log out of the game; the beads of sweat on his forehead were multiplying faster than a computer with an iterative math problem to solve and… and… and before he even knew what was happening, out of the corner of his eye he looked at Vice Captain Tresseloon’s work station. Was that – the Vice Captain was slumped over his work station, unconscious.
Panic is a terrible thing. No longer concerned about bridge protocol, Able Spaceman K’voort looked wildly around him. The entire bridge crew were slumped over, unconscious! Even Captain Pompous! “Captain!” he urgently whispered. “Captain, wake up!” He raised the Captain’s arm, then dropped it to the arm of the big comfy chair with the impressive control panel built into the fine Corinthian leather armrest that the Captain never actually seemed to use for anything more complicated than inter-ship communications. Nothing. Able Spaceman K’voort turned to face Captain Pompous, took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Captain! Really! Need you to wake up now!” There was still no response.
Able Spaceman K’voort gulped and thought, I’m gonna get blamed for this!
Able Spaceman K’voort tapped on the comm button on the left sleeve of his uniform. “Doctor Excitable,” he commanded it. A few seconds later, the mechanical comm voice pleasantly told him, “Doctor Excitable is not responding to his comm.”
“But…but…but I need Doctor Excitable on the bridge! Now!”
“Doctor Excitable is not responding to his comm.”
“Have you tried -?”
“I have tried everything that comm technology can do, and all I can tell you is that Doctor Excitable is not responding to his comm.”
“Aaargh!” Able Spaceman K’voort aarghed in frustration. The comm had been cheerful enough, but he sensed an undertone of regret at the limited role the device had to play in the life of the ship. Not that that was important now. “Alison Blebblemann,” he tried. Alison was his shipwife – she would know what to do. She was also a Leading Spaceman, outranking him, so if blame was to be apportioned, she would get one rank more of it. Oh, and she was part of the ship’s medical team. That might come in handy.
“Hey, Elliott,” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann responded. “What can I do for you?”
“Need you on the bridge right away.”
“I’ve never been on the bridge,” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann responded. “Am I even allowed…”
“Get up here now!” Able Spaceman K’voort hissed.
While he waited for his shipwife to make her way to the bridge, Able Spaceman K’voort poked, prodded and otherwise tested the bodies of various bridge crew members. He thought he heard a sigh from Helmswoman Ketchaparian, but it turned out to be the air duct next to her work station. He did find Doctor Excitable, whose body was slumped on the other side of Captain Pompous’ big comfy chair with the impressive control panel built into the fine Corinthian leather armrest.
“Okay, what’s so…” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann’s voice trailed off as she surveyed all of the slumped over people.
“Close the door!” Able Spaceman K’voort demanded.
Realizing that she was still standing within the door’s sensor range, Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann stepped into the room. The door shushed shut behind her. She went up to Captain Pompous’ chair and waved a Diagnostic, Analytical Medical Interpretive Transducer over his body.
“What does it say? What does it say? What does it say?”
Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann looked at the screen on the DAMIT and frowned. “All of his vital signs are normal, except…his brain waves. There aren’t any.”
“There aren’t any brainwaves!” Able Spaceman K’voort screeched.
“For science’s sake, Elliott!” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann wanted to slap him. Because he was really annoying the skivvies off of her; if it stopped his panic, that would just be a bonus. “What is your problem?”
“You know what my problem is! We’re Pastel Pushers! If we’re not the first ones to die in away teams on alien planets, we get blamed for whatever goes wrong on missions!”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I am not exaggerating! Remember what happened to Plestof the Unanticipated? Captain Pompous was the one who crashed the shuttle – hell, Plestof wasn’t even on the damn thing, but whose pay was docked for the replacement cost?”
“Plestof had…other issues…”
“My point stands.”
Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann sighed. She DAMITed each member of the bridge crew, but got exactly the same response. It’s like…their brains have been sucked out of their bodies, she thought. I was under the impression that this was a classier vessel than that – I really thought we avoided those b-movie plots! She touched the comm button on the sleeve of her uniform.
“Doctor Excitable is not responding to his comm,” the mechanical comm voice told her before she could ask it to make the connection.
“How did you know that was what I was going to ask?”
“I’m more than just a pretty voice, you know.”
Pointing to the body on the floor, Able Spaceman K’voort wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Why did this have to happen? Why can’t you wake up? Why can’t you just get on your feet and…”
Captain Pompous’ body jerked up and unsteadily got to his feet. Somebody screamed. It was Able Spaceman K’voort (although later, when the official investigation of the events was being conducted, he would vociferously deny it). “I liked you better when you sat in your big comfy chair with the impressive control panel built into the fine Corinthian leather armrest!” he shrieked.
Twenty minutes later, a sound that combined the best part of grinding gears with the worst part of a heavenly choir…rang? Pealed? Chimed? Well, it did whatever a sound like that could be said to do for two seconds. Then, a craggy face appeared on the screen at the front of the bridge. A very craggy face. Like, the model for the eastern face of Everest craggy.
“James, a Klippon vessel has been sighted within -” Admiral Adirondack Tarkovsky, in full battle sweats, started to say. Then, his face turned a shade of purple that was legally reserved for the croquet mallets of the royal family of Monaco (you may recall Grace Kelly wielding one in Dial M for Mediterranean Takeout) and hissed, “What. The Hell. Are. You. Doing‽“
Sitting in the Captain’s big comfy chair with the impressive control panel built into the fine Corinthian leather armrest, Able Spaceman K’voort was directing Captain Pompous and Vice Captain Tresseloon in a passionate kiss. “No,” he said, waving a blasé hand in the air, “I’m just not feeling the heat. Vice Captain Tresseloon, it looks like you’re trying to eat the Captain’s face. If you could just -” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann was leading the rest of the bridge crew in a cha cha down the back of the room. The moment Admiral Craggy – sorry, I meant Admiral Tarkovsky, but I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time with members of his impersonal staff who all call him…you know when he’s not in the room – started talking, they turned their heads to look at the screen, the look on their faces suggesting seven year-olds who have just been discovered playing doctor by an adult. Each person following Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann danced into the person ahead of them; finding their forward motion impeded, they cha chaed in place.
“Well, ah, sir,” Able Spaceman K’voort sputtered, jumping out of the Captain’s chair as though he had just sat on a cat, “I, ah, came to the bridge with a, ah, uhh, form for the, ah, Captain to sign…” He raised his hand to show the form to the Admiral, but his hand was stubbornly empty. He briefly glanced at the Communications Officer’s station where, for reasons that seemed unfathomable to him under the present circumstances, he had left it. “But, ah, when I arrived, I, ah, found the bridge crew, ah…unresponsive…”
“Unresponsive‽” Admiral Tarkovsky roared.
“Ah, yes. Sir.”
“They’re doing the ferking conga!”
“Actually, sir,” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann, the braver of the two crew members, corrected him, “with all due respect, they’re doing the cha cha.”
“I don’t care if they’re doing the ferking dance of the seven veils complete with a choir of fallen angels and the head of John the ferking Baptist!” Admiral Tarkovsky screamed. Taking the hint, Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann waggled a hand towards the chorus line at around butt level and urgently whispered, “Stop dancing. Stop dancing right now!”
The dancers stopped.
“And what do you call what Captain Pompous and his Vice are doing‽” Admiral Tarkovsky continued in his very loud voice mode.
Able Spaceman K’voort looked at the embrace, then back at the Admiral and suggested, “Fan fiction?”
“Oh, is that what they call it these days? Because, when I was a ship’s Captain, behaviour like that would get you court-martialled – if you were lucky!”
“And if you weren’t lucky?” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann asked.
“Pictures of the incident would be transmitted on communications networks throughout the galaxy. Then try to get anybody to take you seriously when you needed to have defensive shields up or photon lasers fired on enemy vessels!”
Able Spaceman K’voort leaned towards the Captain and his Vice Captain and whispered, “Okay, cool it, guys. Take a couple of steps back from each other.”
As they did as they were told, Admiral Tarkovsky exploded, “What the devil’s unwashed sweatsocks is going on out there‽”
“The, ah, bridge crew seems to be, ah, open to suggestion…” Able Spaceman K’voort informed him.
Admiral Tarkovsky fully opened his mouth in anticipation of a broad verbal assault, then slowly closed it and took a breath. …Okay, a craggy breath. If Darkseid was the “AFTER” picture, the Admiral was the “BEFORE” picture. Before the others could gain their ease, he loudly continued: “Don’t you know what to do in a situation like this‽”
Able Spaceman K’voort and Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann looked at each other, hoping that the other knew the right answer. “Oh, don’t look at each other hoping that the other one knows the right answer!” Admiral Tarkovsky shouted, bringing their attention back to his image on the screen. “This isn’t a final exam at the Space Academy! Regulation 452 Archie Instagram dash 557 – ring any bells?”
“Advanced Emergency Procedures was, ah, full when I chose my fourth year courses,” Able Spaceman K’voort quietly explained. “I, ah, chose to take, ah…Intermediate 20th Century Cultural References instead.”
“I was sick when we studied the 452 series of emergency regulations,” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann, said, her grin much chaed. “And, well, honestly, I didn’t feel the need to catch up because it wasn’t on the exam.”
Admiral Tarkovsky looked like he was about to spit up a humidorful of cigars, and he had quit several years earlier owing to an unfortunate incident at a universe discovery potluck where somebody had told a slightly off-colour joke and, in response, he impaled one of the Grigolex Hydroplane Ambassador’s husbands with a half-smoked stogie. “Oh, for science’s sake!” he exploded. “Check the Excited Tachyon Indicator. You know – on the control panel of the Science Officer’s station?”
“What got them excited?” Able Spaceman K’voort smirked. He just couldn’t help himself. “Were they watching tachyon porn?”
“Good science!” Admiral Tarkovsky muttered. “It really is like you’re still at the Space Academy!”
Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann, who had made her way to the Science Officer’s station, reported, “Admiral, sir, the ETI appears to be flashing.”
“What colour?”
Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann looked at Able Spaceman K’voort, who shrugged most unhelpfully. Turning back to the screen, she said, “Uhh, purple, sir.”
This took some of the fight out of the Admiral. “Purple, hunh?”
“Not anywhere near as distinguished a shade of purple as your face,” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann hastily added. “More of a pale purple – some people might even think of it as mauve…”
“Purple, eh? Well, shit.”
“Sir?” Leading Spaceman Alison Blebblemann said at the same time as Able Spaceman K’voort said, “Admiral?”
“This means I’m going to have to talk to Xaviera Finesailing,” the Admiral said to himself. Notwithstanding that they could hear him. Privilege of rank. Then, just as the silence was shading into the uncomfortable zone, he snapped to attention and barked, “Okay. In a few minutes, somebody is going to appear on the bridge to sort this mess out. If you haven’t stopped fooling around and gotten the bridge crew back to their stations, it will go down on your permanent records!” Before either of the Pastel Pushers could respond, the screen went blank.
After a couple of seconds of silence, Able Spaceman K’voort asked, “So…time for one more smooch?”