Part 5 (1/2)
He's back from the dead, practicing evil Craft I am scared, I am crazy - I'm going half daft.”
No sooner said, that, than Storm Troopers attacked.
Dodging deathrays, quickly, to the DESIRE we backed.
We zoomed through s.p.a.ce, hid in nebulean bogs.
Trained hard for the battle, read old a.n.a.lOGS.
Good old John Campbell, his essays were profounding!
Hectoring lectures in the good old ASTOUNDING.
In those pre-Spielberg days you'll have to agree John would have crunched the ALIEN, barfed on ET.
”Bowb the Force,” he'd have said, ”Man the garrison!
Technology rules! Up Anderson! Up Harrison!
Alien invasion? Build a great gun!
Stay to the Right of Baen and Attila the Hun.”
So we cobbled and soldered like technology's fools A better death ray, using brains and slide rules!
John would've liked it, Doc Smith would turn green Buddy, this beamer was big, huge, and obscene!
So we hurtled on out to meet the death fleet A terrible sight - they were something to meet!
A thousand alien s.h.i.+ps, designed by George Lucas Wanted to turn us to slag and horrible mucus.
”Surrender to the Dark Side,” said Death, big surprise!
”Join the Empire! Make mythic movies! Merchandise!”
In answer we just aimed our out big beamer and happily shot 'em No way was John's boys gonna kiss the Empire's bottom.
Now, for Brain Death technology was a given!
But his scientists hadn't read Tom Clancy, Pournelle and Niven ASF's sons, all - so what if they couldn't write.
They knew their nuts from their bolts, and boy could they fight.
Our blaster, you see, wasn't loaded with energy rounds.
It was stocked with ultra and hyperfrequency sounds.
h.o.m.ocentric readings from Asimov, deCamp and Clement.
d.i.c.kson and del Rey, thrilling as drying cement.
We blasted the coup de grace! Hyperboreals!
John W. Campbell's editorials!
Stunned, the Empire's death s.h.i.+ps whimpered away.
Old Death hoisted surrender. Ours was the day!
They say good old John Campbell, he's somewhere up there.
Watching new writers with all their hot air.
Gulping aloud great celestial gulps.
”If this junk is SF - then bring back the pulps!”
The last chords of the song hung in the air between them like the final strains of Bill's favorite martial music by John Philip Soused. Big fat tears dripped down his cheeks. He sniffled and choked back his heart rising in his throat.
”Bowb! That ... that was the most beautiful song ... I ... I ever heard in my entire life.”
”Then you will be feeling better, First Mate Bill?”
”Yeah! Much better.”
”Arrrrrr! That's me hearty! You're a super trooper, Bill. Arrrrr! It's a pleasure having you aboard. Now we better get back to our hammocks and squeeze in the winks! Navigational computer says that the Holy Bar and Grill is just a matter of days away!”
Irma! He would be able to see Irma again. He sighed with pa.s.sion like a leaking locomotive. Smiling happily at the thought of her bright innocent eyes, her shapely body, her gentle feminine sighs.
He fell asleep then, still smiling. Dreaming dreams of such erotic content that his body temperature rose five degrees and moisture condensed on the bulkhead above.
CHAPTER 8.
LAST CALL AT THE HOLY BAR AND GRILL.
As it happened, it took somewhat more than a week to finally find their goal, and Rick the Supernal Hero had to resort to a variation of the Bloater Drive he'd bought in a used stars.h.i.+p lot, called a Bilious Drive.
Bill had always hated the Bloater Drive when Empire Trooper s.h.i.+ps had used it to hop between star systems and if anything the Bilious Drive was exceedingly worse, since it involved pumping the entire s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p full of a singularly repulsive mixture of xenon and hydrogen and sulfurous gases which made everything - if the Bible is to be believed - literally stink like h.e.l.l. When the right mixture of gases had been reached, their molecules were vibrated electronically until the gas, the s.h.i.+p and all of its contents were shaking like crazy and synchronized with the atomic pulse beat of their destination. The instant this occurred everything would be belched across the cosmic distances in a most uncomfortable and sickening manner. Bill even thought good things about the Bloater Drive when this happened.
But when the stars.h.i.+p named DESIRE finally drifted into the Ad Hoc System, he saw the gigantic neon signs flas.h.i.+ng out the letters ”Holy Bar and Grill,” ”On the Sands Stage: Mr. Wayne Newton!” and ”Nude Drinking” and ”Topless-Bottomless Bar” which he hoped meant more nudity and not prefrontal lobotomy and gluteotomy. A tear in his eye, a frog in his throat - and incipient liver failure on the horizon - Bill knew that his heart had finally found a home.
The Holy Bar and Grill was actually a large complex of hover-buildings, squatting beatifically in a bank of chartreuse clouds on anti-grav plates, high above the giant methane world of Zeus.
”Old Zeus loves this huge planet mostly because it's named after him,” explained Rick as he swung the stars.h.i.+p named DESIRE in to land it on a pillar of crimson flame.
”Yikes,” said Bill. ”How come there's a pillar of crimson flame down there in the middle of that s.p.a.ceport?”