MOONIE AND THE SPIDER QUEEN
By
Nicola Cuti
© Nicola Cuti 2009
WGAE Registration # R25877
The work contained in this book is a collection of fiction. All characters are the product of the creator’s imagination. Any similarities, between persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
1 THE BIG BANG
PERRY’S STORY
It all began with a dream and, yeah, it was an erotic dream.
So, I'm in this nightclub somewhere in the asteroid belt and out comes the show girls and I'm telling you they are tall and gorgeous with lots of feathers and beads and not much of a costume to hide their attributes. The robot band starts playing a jumpy little number and the girls begin to gyrate the way only women can, with hips swiveling and bosoms bouncing. Then the girls come down from the stage and begin to mix with the patrons except there aren't any patrons except for me. So they all come over to my table and press their loveliness into my face and between my legs and start kissing me and whispering what they would like me to do to them.
Now, I'm no prize, at least not any more. I'm a middle aged hustler with a keg where my six-pack used to be and my blond wavy hair is getting a might thin but it didn't seem to matter to the girls.
Oh, sorry. I didn't introduce myself. I'm Parallax Jones but everyone calls me Perry and I've been grifting my way through the galaxy searching for that Grand Ultimate Take the way those science boys search for their own Grand Ultimate Theory. Never found it but my daddy used to say it's there for those who are willing to cheat their way to it. But suppose we get back to my little distraction in that nightclub in the asteroid belt. The distraction involving bosoms and gyrating hips.
Just as one of the girls is about to give me a colossal lap dance there's a drum roll and the girls back off as if I’d just ripped off a toot. The curtain across the room part and stepping into the spotlight is one of the most sensual women I've ever seen. She has the round innocent face of a teenager, bangs with long reddish hair and a body that turns men into melting wax candles. She slowly sashes over to me allowing me to enjoy every quivering curve of her glistening form, speckled with freckles and glitters and sweat, and then stops about a foot away.
‘Do you like me as I am?’ she asks in a soft, lamb's wool voice. I can't speak so I just nod.
‘Perhaps you are too shy to ask for what you want. Maybe you would like an Asian woman?’ and she changes into a dragon lady with silken ebony hair and light amber skin and long lashed almond eyes. Her costume has become a tight, side- split skirt with a dragon embroidered across the front but weaving around back to her rounded bottom.
‘Or a teenager?’ and now she morphs into a pigtailed teen with a slender body, a tank top covering her tiny breasts and jean cutoffs, a gum-chewing Lolita.
I told her I liked her the way she was and she obediently returned to her voluptuous fullness.
Next, she offered to do anything I wanted her to do, anything. A thousand thoughts raced through my mind-- everything natural to things so unnatural it would make animals blush. And then the perfect sexual act formed in my highly aroused brain, the sexual act that would carry me to heights I’d never before been able to achieve. This would be the best, the longest, the gold medal achievement. They would have to rewrite the Karma Sutra.
Did I mention I was naked. Did I have to tell you, after all aren’t most of us naked in our dreams? So, I was naked sitting there with a stiffy to end all stiffies. My pleasure pole was like a tower of lust and she saw it and pursed her lips in a sign of approval. As she strode toward me I saw that the glittering sequins attached to her g-string panties were actually glued to her beaver because she wasn’t wearing a g-string. She straddled me and lowered her split beaver onto the head of my tower using her fingers to guide the rounded head into place. Then she lowered herself, oh so slowly, down until her moist pussy had completely engulfed my rook of manhood. She rocked up and down in rhythm with the beat of the music and I held back for as long as I could stand it but finally my tower shot off a rumbling cannon burst of pleasure and we both shuddered with total satisfaction. Though exhausted she asked if there was anything more she could do for me.
‘I want you to open your mouth wide’ and she did.
‘And then I want you to scream like a siren’. And she did.
The wailing blasted my eardrums so hard I had to clap my hands over my ears and still I heard the scream. And then, there I was on the bridge of my ship, the Big Bang, with the huge red emergency light flashing and the siren ah-ooh-going insanely. My partner Torry, Centuri Smith, came rushing in through the bulkhead door and he was angry.
‘Gees, Perry, you were on watch. Were you sleeping?’
‘Yeah, I was’. I was too stunned to come up with a lie so I did the next best thing and told the truth.’ What happened?’
‘Something hit us. Something big.’
Now the bridge, or the control room as Torry prefers to call it, is a jumble of switches and devices that are only vaguely familiar to me. I'm not a Spacer the way Torry is. I pretty much know which group of gages go to the engines and which are for navigation and which ones are for the air locks and bulkheads but when they are all going off like Christmas lights I go into panic mode and nothing makes sense. I completely rely on Torry to tell me what's going on. He may be a lanky hayseed with a mop of hair that seems as if it's never met with a comb but he does know the Big Bang as if it were his own home. In fact he was the owner before I took the ship away from him. That's the story of a card game, which should go down in poker history.
I can recall sitting at a little bar on Rigel-4 called, unpretentiously, Mac's Place, not Chez Max or Le Chat but simply Mac's place. And it was about as unpretentious a bar as you might find. The bar itself was built of planks nailed together with shelving for the bottles of booze and a few tables and chairs scattered around because friends like to sit together. I started a conversation with two miners who’d come in for a break, Old Hoot and his partner Gus, and I believe it was Old Hoot who suggested a card game and Torry, who was drinking alone, was invited over to make the game a foursome.
It was the first time we had met and we took an immediate dislike to one another probably because I handled the cards too well. I stumbled with them a few times when I shuffled so it wouldn't show but Torry saw right through my faux fumbling and it made him suspicious. At first we all won a few hands and I’d decided it wasn't necessary to try anything tricky with the deck since it seemed it was going to remain a petty-ante game despite my occasional attempt to up the odds. We’d been playing dealers choice so most of the games were seven card stud where you're dealt seven cards, three down and four showing, and you play your best five cards for a poker hand.
Old Hoot and Gus had been friends and partners for over forty years. They had started prospecting together while they were both in their teens and would probably have given up trying to mine the asteroid belt for the mother lode but each didn't want to disappoint the other so they just kept at it though they never struck it rich. They made a comfortable living and Old Hoot was even married for a while until his wife got herself killed in a mining accident where a loose sharp stone tore her space suit open. She suffocated before he could get to her. Since then it's just been Old Hoot and Gus and the two men knew just about all there was to know about one another so it was easy to play them. I just watched how they played one another. If Old Hoot had a sour look on his face after examining his hand I knew that Gus would be able to tell if it was a real disappointed expression or if he was just putting it on. If Gus bet high then I knew Old Hoot was bluffing but if Gus dropped out right away then it was because he didn't have any good cards or he knew that Old Hoot did have a good hand. Likewise Old Hoot knew when Gus was bluffing.
Torry, on the other hand, was an enigma, not just because he was a stranger to me. But because he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. He folded on winning hands and stayed on losers. He played his cards close to the vest and tried to throw me off with his hayseed act but eventually I began to see his pattern and he even had a tell. When he had a good hand his nose would itch and he would scratch the itch with the edge of his cards. I’d begun to amass a nice pile and it didn't bother anyone except for Torry who was determined to show the city slicker a thing or two. He kept betting into my good hands when he should have dropped out. He was convinced it was only a matter of luck and eventually the tide of fortune would turn in his favor. He never caught on how little luck had to do with it. Then came, what I had decided, was going to be my round. Torry won the last hand and the deck was now in my control. I decided to change the game from stud to five card draw where five cards were dealt out and you were allow to discard up to three cards and receive up to three new cards. However, you had to have at least a pair of aces to begin betting. If no one had aces then we all tossed in our cards, anted up and a new set of hands were dealt with a pair of kings to open now. Each renewed round built up the pot until it could get quite high. I even had the opening hand twice and threw it away in order to build up the pot. Finally, Torry opened when the opening hand was a pair of Jacks or better. My hand was an ace, king, queen, seven and four. It was the worst hand I had all day and it was just about evening.
Dusk on Rigel-4 was a beautiful thing to see through the picture window of Mac's with the sky stacked up with layers of lime greens and yellows but evening was just kind of a purplish gray. The three moons were down so the sky was a sheet of boring, even color. Old Hoot and Gus were tired and I think they signaled to each other by grunting and huffing that this would be their last hand. They were just about out of money. I had most of it and Torry had the rest.
I kept my ace and king and tossed the rest away into a loosely stacked discard pile. I dealt everyone the requested cards.
Torry said, ‘I'll just play these.’ He wasn't going to let me know what he had. The only time you would keep all your cards is if you had a flush, four of a kind, a straight or a full house. Any other hand would probably benefit by asking for different cards. However, if you were trying to worry your opponents you would say, ‘I'll just play these.’
I picked up my cards and went into a cold sweat when I saw what I’d done. I’d tossed away a queen and dealt myself two more queens. If I’d kept the queen I would have ended up with one very powerful hand. This hand was weak and it arrived at what was certain to be the last round. Old Hoot and Gus were already scowling. I wasn’t worried about them. Torry and I were going to fight it out and they didn’t have enough ammunition to stay in the battle. The big question was, did Torry have the cards or was it time for him to pull his big bluff. Then he did his tell and I knew he held a powerful hand. He was even fighting to bury his grin beneath a rigid face. He had himself a good hand and he was going to make me pay if I stayed in.
At that time, I didn't like Torry any more then he liked me and I wasn't going to let him gloat over the last hand. The pot was already huge and I knew the two miners were about to drop out so it was up to me but all I had was two queens. It wasn't going to do the job. I realized being the dealer gave me an advantage because I dealt myself last and the third queen was sitting on the top of the discard pile. The discards were a mess and in the way. No one would think it strange if I stacked the pile and moved it away from the playing field. I shoved aside the discards as casually as possible trying not to bring any attention to what I was doing and while I moved the pile I palmed the extra queen and added her to my hand giving me three ladies side-by-side, a very strong hand. Of course, I had six cards in my hand instead of five but no one would notice the extra card until I tossed my hand down. I had time to get rid of the extra card when no one was looking.
The betting began. Old Hoot and Gus dropped out right away as I figured they would which, unfortunately meant they were free to study Torry and myself. Getting rid of that extra card with the two of them looking on so intently was going to be difficult. Torry, as I suspected he would, put all he had in the pot and I followed with everything I had which was 20,000 more than he put up.
‘I don't have any more money’, he announced.
‘Then the pot is mine.’
But he wasn't going to let me take it. He reached in his pocket, opened his wallet and pulled out a bill of sale card.
‘This is the ownership card for my ship, The Big Bang. It's worth a lot more than 20,000.’
‘What would I want with a star ship? ‘
‘You can sell it.’
‘Cash only,’ I insisted.
But Old Hoot and Gus said it was fair. They even offered to help me sell it. I agreed but it didn't end there.
‘As I said,’ Torry repeated, ‘ my ship is worth a lot more than 20,000. How are you going to make up the difference, city boy? ‘
Since all of my money was already in the pot this was going to be tricky. Now it was my turn to open a wallet. And when I did I removed a photograph of a house on Rigel-9.
‘It's my childhood home. When my dad passed away last year he gave it to me. I was on my way there now.’
‘I can't take away a man's home,’ Torry said but I tossed the photo into the pot and it landed next to Torry's bill of sale.
Torry picked up the photo.
‘There's gotta be something else. How about your watch? It looks valuable.’
‘Not valuable enough. My dad gave it to me but I'd rather lose the house.’
Torry agreed but stipulated, ‘If I win you can stay in the house. You just have to pay me rent. I won't leave a body with nowhere to stay. I just won't do that. Agreed?’
‘Sure.’
My dad sold the house five years ago. I figured if I won I wouldn't need to worry about the house and if I lost, heck, Torry still would have his ship and all of my money so why would he need the house as well. Still, I had to admit it was nice of him to be so concerned. He definitely had more scruples than I did.
‘So the pot's even? ‘ I asked.
‘If you toss in your watch as well.’
Not many more scruples, I decided. I tossed in my watch.
‘What have you got?’
With a great deal of relief I saw him lay down three jacks and reach over to scoop up the pot. I stopped him and tossed down my three ladies and chucked my extra cards, including the one I shouldn't have, on the discard pile.
Torry's jaw dropped. He was so certain he had it all that he didn’t even try for the full house.
It was just about then this gal who had been sitting at the bar sashayed over to us. All during the game she didn’t pay much attention to the game but now that the game had ended in a clear big winner she became interested. As I was scooping up my winnings she put her hands on my shoulders and then eased over to where I could see her. Her face was had the leathery look of a woman who had spent too many years prospecting the belt but in spite of the age lines it was a good face, almost pretty. She had a slender body but out of proportion with her thin figure were these enormous breasts, which hung down to her belly button and were clearly outlined by her tight white tee shirt. She said her name was Denise and she offered to help me spend some of my money. Human women were scarce on Rigel-4 but even so, I would have been attracted to her on Earth, so I told her I had a room at the hotel across the way. We could pick up a couple of bottles of her favorite booze and empty the bottles there. Just as we were about to leave Torry came over, extended his hand and said he was impressed the way I had beaten him fair and square, yeah, he actually used those exact words, fair and square. I suddenly liked the guy and felt sorry he was the one I had taken to the cleaners. I had never felt that way about a mark before. I asked Denise if she had a companion for my friend. She did. A sweet little gal called May Jo Montgomery.
At the hotel room Denise took off her shirt and I was treated to an unobstructed view of her boobies. They were natural and fully rounded and when she got down on all fours while I banged her doggie style they swayed like rippling water balloons. From where I was I missed the pendulous show but Torry got to see them and even as he rammed his poker in and out of May Jo’s little re-haired pussy I could see him glance over at Denise as his eyes bulged in amazement.
So that’s how I wound up with The Big Bang. Torry eventually found out that I didn’t have a house on Rigel-9 so to appease him I gave him half of the Bang back which is how we became partners but then we fell on hard times and lost our crew because we couldn’t pay them and so we became ‘in-betweeners’ the lowest rank on the cargo-transport chain.
In-betweeners never touch down on planets. The lift-offs and landings are accomplished by one ship, the ones with crews, and then the cargo and some fuel is transferred to in-betweeners like us who make the long boring haul to the destination planet where we transfer the cargo to a landing ship, which also has a crew. We were on our way for a pick-up when I fell asleep on the bridge, which Torry calls a control room, and we were struck by something.
‘Looks like a dang meteoroid,’ Torry said as he pointed to one of the screens. To me it just looked like a lozenge shape blip wedged between the vertical stabilizer and the fuel tank wire frame model of The Big Bang, but my guess was Torry was right even though my own guess was the blip was a sofa. I’ve learned to go with Torry on these technical things. Still, I couldn’t resist a needling.
‘Looks like a sofa to me. You sure it’s not a sofa.’
‘It’s about the size of a sofa but it’s a dang meteoroid. Why would ja think it’s a sofa?’
‘There’s a lot of strange junk floating out there ever since the ‘Wanderer’ blew up. Remember that twisted monkey wrench we found last month?’
We’ve been together for nearly five years so Torry knew better than to try and reason with me when I was in one of my silly moods.
‘There doesn’t seem to be no damage. Didn’t go through the hull or anything. But we gots to take it out,’ he said sternly.
‘Then you’d better get into the suit,’ I commanded.
‘Just a gol-durned minute here, Captain Nemo. I ain’t puttin’ on no danged suit. It’s the new month so‘s that means it’s my turn to be captain. You put on the suit an’ go outside and I’ll stay at the controls.’
‘What month is it, amigo?’
‘Uh...it’s March.
‘Nope, it’s still February. You forgot about leap year.’
I reached into my shirt pocket for the silver eagle insignia and clipped it to my collar.
‘I’ve still got the bird for the rest of the day. So, suit up, swabbie.’
2 THE LITTLE GAL
PERRY’S STORY
The ‘suit’ of course was a space suit, one of the most uncomfortable clothing vestures ever invented by humankind since boxer shorts. We were down to two suits and they were kept, in the air lock, in three sections: the pants, the jacket and the helmet. The pants and the jacket had two interlocking rings or belts. First you stepped into the pants and pulled them up to waist high and then you slipped into the jacket by squatting down below the hanging jacket, holding your arms straight above your head and then standing up into the jacket. Once you got your arms into the sleeves and then the gloves you joined the locking rings, picked up the helmet and slid it into the collar until the bayonet clips snapped and locked it into place. All this was done with a great deal of struggling so as I waited for Torry to go through the tedious procedure I booted up my reader and clicked to ‘Incredibly Amazing Tales’ and read another segment of ‘Crab Monsters from Cancer’ until I heard from him.
What I didn’t know at the time was poor Torry had been taking a lot of time putting on his suit because he had been daydreaming about May Jo Montgomery. We had hired both Denise and May Jo as part of the Big Bang’s crew and when they left, Torry was heartbroken. I had once watched them through a hidden camera while Torry had helped May Jo get into her space suit. While her arms were in the upper half, Torry fumbled with her breasts, accidently touching them at first and then, when May Jo showed no objection, he would give them a playful squeeze. Finally she just got out of her suit, stripped and the two of them were banging on the hard metal floor like a couple of rutting bunnies. Torry was a cowboy and every time he climaxed he let out with a whoop and holler as if he were busting a wild horse. May Jo complained about the rivets on the floor and so the next time Torry inserted his tally-whacker inside of May Jo’s flaming bunny hole he stood up with May Jo legs wrapped around him and holding on for dear life.
Finally the buzzer sounded which meant he was standing by the airlock door. I clicked off the mag and turned on the com.
‘You all suited up, amigo?’
‘Yep.’
‘What took you so long? I almost got through three chapters of my story.’
‘If you must know I was thinking about May Jo Montgomery. You remember her.’
May Jo was the sexiest loadmaster we ever had but I failed to see the connection between May Jo and the suit.
‘ An’, if you must know I was thinkin’ how I usta help her get into her suit. She was real nice about it and didn’t mind if I fumbled a bit, if you know what I mean.’
‘Sure, I used to help her when you weren’t around but what’s-- ‘and suddenly I flashed into where he was going’--you got yourself a woody!’
‘Had one heck of a time pullin’ my pants up.’
‘So, what did you do?’
‘As that Newton fella once said, ‘What goes up must come down.’
I’d heard enough.
‘You’re clear to go outside, if you can walk.’
A few minutes later he was clumping along on the hull of the ship using those magnetic boots which, when they’re working properly, will shut off the magnetic force in one boot when you pull your foot upward. It will never automatically release the foothold on both boots at the same time. That can only be done manually.
I was following his progress to the meteoroid when he announced, ‘I’m there.’
‘Meteoroid?’
‘Not exactly. It looks as if some asteroid miner’s hopper got itself fused with an asteroid. Those Quark engines can get mighty hot. It melted the hopper into the rock jus’ like a hot poker in a cake of wax. They’re jus’ one big unit now.’
Hoppers are open cab cars that can carry one or two
passengers. Asteroid miners use them to maneuver through the belt especially where sections of the belt are too tight to get large vehicles through without a collision with asteroids.
‘This hopper has saddle bags on it,’ Torry added.
‘Can you yank it out of there okay?’
‘Now hold on a sec. There’s still heat coming from the engine. I can feel it through my glove. Someone was riding this little contraption not so long ago.’
Then I heard a bang as if something soft had struck his helmet. The front half of the helmet is transparent to give the user a full field of vision but the back half is metallic to shield the user from harmful debris. From the sound of it the object had struck the metal half.
‘Oww!’ Torry yelled, though I suspected it was more from surprise than injury. ‘I’m gettin’ pelted out here. Let me turn ‘round a bit.’
After a few seconds he let out with another exclamation. He said each word clearly and with equal emphasis on each one.
‘Oh, my God!’
My eyes were glued to the screen. I should have seen some indication of what was there but nothing showed at first. And then I saw it. It was a tiny upright shape. It could have been a fragment of rock or a piece of the stabilizer broken loose. Only Torry could tell me exactly what it was.
‘Torry! Speak to me. What’s going on? What’s out there with you? Is it another asteroid?’
‘Not less the rock is in the shape of a cute little gal who ain’t wearing much more than a bathing suit. Hey, she’s a-waving at me.’
‘Turn down your Oxygen and get in here right away! You’ve gone space happy!’
3 STARBABE
PERRY’S STORY
It took him almost as long to remove himself from the suit as it had for him to put it on but at last he was on the bridge, or control room as he called it, and then I saw why. Poking out from the front of his jump suit was one long stiffy. It was like a tent pole. I pointed to it and asked, ‘What’s that about?’
Looking down, he showed no embarrassment as he explained, ‘You don’t see many cute little gals in outer space.’
‘I don’t see any.’
‘Then you had better turn around and check what’s standing in the doorway.’
My back was to the door so I swiveled expecting to see no more than an empty doorway. I was certain he had hallucinated about the girl. The monotony of space will make the mind conjure up anything from Christmas time in Lux City with all those virtual lights parading across the buildings like luminous scorpions to a big squeeze from your favorite aunt . I was wrong. I was incredibly wrong. It was one of those wrong moments explorers know when they think they are going to an old world only to discover they have found a brand new one or when a scientist uncovers an aberration which leads to an historic discovery or monumental invention. It was that kind of a wrong moment.
Standing in the bulkhead doorway was a little gal about five feet tall with a large head, enormous eyes and a statuesque figure which make women blush and men’s eyes bulge out of their sockets. Her hair was black and shiny, cut into pageboy bangs and the back was gathered into twin ponytails, which were fixed by two silver ring-shaped braids. Around her neck she wore this incredibly beautiful necklace made of gemstones with a huge translucent jade green gem in the center. She waved at me. Then she stepped into the room.
‘She’s not real’ I accused.
‘Then what are we seein’ here? Turn around, sweetie, and show Uncle Perry what you’re made of.’
Nimbly, she made a slow pirouette so I was able to see her well-rounded bottom, which balanced her full, impressively large bosom. She was wearing a brief, one piece garment, cut almost as low in the back as it was in the front and it was girdled with a wide, golden metallic belt. In spite of her full figure her movements were fluid and graceful, showing she was as much at home in a gravity environment as she was in space.
‘Hey, Perry, remember when we dropped off those shipments of fruit to the miners in the belt? They asked us if we had seen any Starbabes.’
‘They were kidding us.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Naked girls riding around on asteroids? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Then how do you explain her? Is she some survivor of an intergalactic disaster? Okay, but then what’s she doin’ a-ridin’ through outer space wearing not much more then what she’s a-wearin’?’
I couldn’t explain it unless Torry was playing a joke on me and had her suit hidden in the air lock with his own suit. He was the only one who had seen her on the hull of the ship. I was about to accuse him of the deception, a machination capable of my own devious mind, when he pulled me aside. What was the reason for the aside I don’t know since she was still in earshot of our conversation but it gave Torry a degree of security.
‘An’nuther thing, I think she understands us.’
I glanced at her and she gave me an adorable smile.
‘She did turn around when you asked her to, didn’t she? But how can she know English. Look at how she’s proportioned. I don’t think she’s even human. She looks more like an elf than a living being. She’s obviously an alien. She can’t know English.’
Winsome, high-pitched tones interrupted our conversation with, ‘I certainly do. I speak English very well.’
Torry was astonished but not me. This was the clincher. Someone was playing a gag on us. I rushed toward her and she saw the fury in my charge and tried to back away but I grabbed her shoulders and invaded her space.
‘This is a con, isn’t it? What kind of game are you playing and who taught you English?’
I wasn’t really as angry as I pretended to be, I just knew that this sudden attack was the quickest way to flush the truth out of someone.
‘Poppa,’ she said. ‘Poppa taught me.’
I could tell by the frightened expression on her face she was telling me the truth. But who was Poppa? And then it came to me.
‘Oh, I get it. You’re a robot. You got gears and wires inside you right? Look at her, Torry. She’s some spacer’s wet dream. We’ve been set up by those aster-miners. They throw the seeds around, “You guys seen any Starbabes riding on asteroids lately?” And then they send a robot after us to clinch the gag.’
‘That’s an awful lot of trouble for a gag.’
‘Then how do you explain her? Naw, she’s a robot.’
The accusation worked. She became very indignant at the implication that she was not a living creature. I was hoping she would slip with some comment that would give us a clue that would unravel the mystery before us. Well, she did and in a very big unexpected way.
‘I’m not a machine. I’m alive. See.’
With the dexterity of a strip teaser she dropped the top of her garment and exposed her luscious fun bags for us to see. Without hesitation I lunged at them, pink nipples and all, and gave them a hearty squeeze. They were as soft and supple as I had hoped they would to be. My finger pressed into them as if they were foam pillows. I expected her to jump back but she stood her ground because she had something to prove.
‘Do you feel any gears?’ she asked.
‘Nope. I’m convinced.’
‘Then would you mind letting them go?’
I remained clutching them for too long a time for it to be mere curiosity. I’d strayed into the emotion of lust. I owed her an apology and intended to deliver it as soon as I was able to let go but I couldn’t move. She had to grab my wrists and pull my hands away.
‘Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to be so rough on you.’
I suppose she accepted my regrets but if she did she gave no indication. Her eyes were fixed on the watch on my wrist, the one my dad had given to me.
‘Poppa had a watch like yours but he broke it and there was no way to replace it.’
I undid the clasp and handed it to her.
‘Then take mine and give it to Poppa when you get back to him. Meanwhile, you can wear it. I’ll adjust it for your wrist.’
‘You’re a nice man,’ she said as she held out her wrist. ‘I was wrong about you.’
I adjusted the band by pressing the links into one another until the band was small enough for her and fastened the locking clasp.
‘It’s very valuable to me so don’t lose it. Keep it with you always until you see Poppa, Okay?’
‘I will,’ she said with a sincerity that made me almost feel guilty because I had an ulterior motive for her keeping the watch. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to arrange my clothing and it’s a struggle to get my beauties back into their cozy homes.’
Oh, she was cute all right. I just couldn’t believe there were gals like her who accepted every sensual inch of their attraction as if there was nothing lascivious about it at all. Torry shook himself out of his stupor and pulled me aside, this time out of her earshot, and asked me about my uncharacteristic generosity.
‘Wasn’t that the watch your dad gave you?’
‘Bingo. You see, I was a rebellious kid, always running away from home. So, on my eighth birthday he gave me the watch. It was an expensive gift but most important, it has a transponder in it. We’ll be able to track her every move.’
‘I suppose it’s a good idea so’s we’ll know where she is. Can’t have her getting lost aboard the ship and it wouldn’t be right to keep her locked up.’
The Starbabe rejoined us with the anticipation of a child. This was a new world to her and she was anxious to begin her explorations with Torry and me as her guides. She immediately assigned these very limiting positions to us and I instinctively knew that we dared not stray from the parameters of the rank if we were to keep her near us. A kitten is very trusting until the first time you hurt it.
‘Can I give you something in exchange for the watch? I have some nice gems in my saddlebag,’ she bubbled and then punctuated her question with a little jump that caused her ample bosom to quiver like twin mounds of jelly. Abstinence was going to be a trial.
‘No need to go out there again. I’ll just take your necklace.’ It looked valuable and I thought I could get a few bucks for it at the market on Rigel-4. The request turned out to be a mistake. She clutched the dangling gem with her tiny fist and drew back. Her expression immediately became serious and I knew I had violated a taboo. The necklace was obviously very valuable to her and I felt she would return the watch before she would give it up.
‘I was joking. You don’t have to give me anything for the watch.’
‘I should give you something.’
‘How about a name? You can give me your name. You do have one, don’t you?’ I inquired.
‘Sure I do. It’s Moonchild but everyone just calls me Moonie.’
We introduced ourselves and asked her if she wouldn’t mind if we X-Rayed her. I was about to explain what an X-Ray was but she said Poppa used to X-Ray her all the time and it wouldn’t be a problem.
We didn’t have the sophisticated X-ray machines which the research centers on Earth had, just the industrial machines we used to check our cargo to make certain it was all legal and no one was trying to slip in a shipment of blasters in a canister of farm tractors. I explained it to her, again trying to keep that trust thing. She didn’t seem to mind, especially when I told her she could keep her cloths on so she wouldn’t think I was as lecherous as I am, and we escorted her to the cargo hold where we were about to uncover the very bizarre physiology of Starbabes.
She sat on the assembly line belt, where we rolled packages aboard. We positioned her between the two plates of the X-Ray and she waited patiently as we warmed up the machine and watched her through the scanner. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Torry was certain there was something wrong with the X-Ray or for some reason it wasn’t picking up the details of her alien anatomy.
Simply stated, with the exception of her brain, she was missing all of her vital organs. She had a skeleton and some weird circuit of nerves but no alimentary cannel, or heart or lungs or liver or pancreas or uterus or anything. There were passages from her mouth, her butt and her quim but they ended gradually into the mysterious mass that filled most of her internal body. There was a sort of voice box device in her throat and passages from her eyes and ears leading to her brain but no life sustaining organs at all. No wonder she could live in outer space without any life support. She was completely divorced from her environment. She could sustain herself almost anywhere-- under water, in a desert on a frozen wasteland, or on a world with poisonous atmosphere.
We couldn’t take our eyes away from the screen. Then suddenly she was gone from the screen. She’d moved to somewhere else but where?
Then we heard her voice saying, ‘Surprised that I haven’t any organs?’ and we glanced in her direction. She was playfully leaning on the top of the scanner, staring down at us. Her huge eyes were blinking rapidly from the extremes of light and darkness.
‘If you don’t eat or breathe then what keeps you alive?’ I asked.
‘Light, or any sort of radiation, actually keeps me going. That’s why I find clothing so uncomfortable. It blocks the radiation but Poppa says I should wear clothing whenever I come in contact with people so I keep some outfits in my saddle bags. He says people are very shy about showing off certain parts of their bodies. Why is that? Poppa never told me.’
Why should he? She hadn’t any reproductive organs to worry about. Since there wasn’t any possibility of pregnancy why warn her against sex.
‘Does Poppa have organs, inside organs? Lungs? Heart? Stomach?’
‘I don’t really know. Poppa is always checking on us but I don’t know anything about what he’s made of. I do know one thing about him though, he’s not a Starbabe.’
‘Tell me more about Poppa… and the other Starbabes.’
I had asked one question too many which was considerably less than the amount of questions I had planned to ask her. She frowned and walked away from the scanner. Obviously, she’d told us all she was going to tell us for now.
‘Do you have a place for me?’ she asked timidly. ‘I’d like to take a bath and then get some sleep.’
Relying Torry’s impression of my still being in charge, because this really wasn’t a leap year, I told Torry to take Moonie to May Jo’s old room.
The ship is not a luxury ship so all instruments, gages and cables are exposed in the walls protected only by lightweight girders and piping. Although the cargo hold is in the rear the main corridor is constructed with loops and straps to secure extra crates. Since we were on our way for a pick up there weren’t any boxes in the corridor therefore I had a clear view of the corridor through the overhead camera. I was also able to listen in on their conversation and since I am a voyeur by nature, I can’t pass an apartment house at night without being painfully curious as to what dramas are going on in each of the lighted windows, I watched and listened.
They were walking side by side through the narrow corridor with Moonie’s big dark eyes shifting in all directions. After a long silence she asked, ‘Isn’t there anyone else aboard?’
‘We had a crew once but when our money done run out so did they. Perry and me been a-runnin’ the Big Bang alone for mos’ a year now. So long as we don’t land or take off we can keep our freight service a-goin’. We jus’ act like in-betweeners and jus’ transfer cargo from ship to ship. ‘S nuff to keep us afloat.’
A door with the symbol for hazardous waste material, three radiating ‘C’s’ locked together by a circle, caught Moonie’s eyes and she stopped to study it.
‘Is that where you keep the deadly alien specimens?’
‘That’s a bathroom but it’s best if you use the head in your own room. We haven’t gotten around to cleaning that one for a while. Say, you don’t use a bathroom, do you? Nothing goes in so nothing comes out, right?’
‘I do take showers and baths.’
‘So to you a bathroom is really jus’ a bathroom. You don’t have to concern yourself with no… euphemisms.’
Moonie smiled crookedly. I don’t think she understood how Torry was using the word or maybe she just didn’t know what the word meant. They continued on to the May Jo’s old room and went inside.
There is when my surveillance should have ended because according to Intergalactic Code all crewmembers and passengers, aboard star and space ships, had the right to expect privacy when in the area of their rooms and toilets. The rules were very specific. Areas designated as proper for observation like cargo areas and public areas and such areas had to be marked. Private cameras in intimate places were forbidden.
However there were several cameras in May Jo Montgomery’s bunkroom and I had put in every one. If you think I am confessing to wicked behavior with a tall red-haired beauty that was covered in freckles from the top of her sculpted forehead, down long the hill and valley counters of the rolling landscape of her well developed form, then you are wrong. Granted she had a forest of thick red hair, all natural, and rich red lips never in need of lipstick, and fun bags which defied gravity whether she was in a gravity field or not, but I was spying on her for perfectly legitimate reasons. Lechery never was a part of the action I was forced to take.
We had a spy on board who was relaying our schedules to the Colton Mining and Freight Company so they would undercut our estimates and manage to show up at our pick up points days ahead of us. And one day, while I was idly passing the time observing May Jo, through one of those well placed cameras, lounging on her bunk and counting the freckles on May Jo’s balloons, not an easy task when deciding which of them I should accept as separate units and which were actually part of her areolas, I saw her reach for her cell and put in a call to Jerry Colton himself. My weeks of dedicated vigilance had paid off. She’d made her fatal slip and I had her.
I showed a recording of my surveillance of May Jo to Torry and, being the naive country boy, he insisted on seeing it several times before he was convinced of May Jo’s larcenous activities. We fired her the next time we were in port and she left tearfully proclaiming her innocence even though we insisted we had visual proof. This confounded her since she’d only contacted Colton when she was alone and naked but before she could make a counter accusation Jerry Colton himself was waiting at the port to hire her as his full time loader. Her spying days had ended but at least she still had employment. When she discovered her predicament was not so glum, she gave us each a hug, playfully pressing her supple bumpers into each of our chests, and cooed that she hoped there would be no hard feelings and then ran off to join Colton.
Of course we’d contacted Colton, which was why he’d been waiting for her and I’m sure May Jo knew we were responsible for letting her off easy. In truth, there was not much we could have done by way of the authorities. The space ways were fairly lawless and industrial espionage was usually dealt with privately. We also doubted May Jo or Colton would ever locate those nano-transmitters I’d secretly injected in her bloodstream. They would be active for at least two years before they decomposed. Those nano-robots had incredible range and I once thought about becoming a nano-technician but changing the batteries in those things was murder.
Anyway, the cameras I installed in May Jo’s bunkroom was still there and still active. As soon as Torry left Moonie alone I wondered what secrets I would uncover.
4 MOONIE’S BATH
PERRY’S STORY
I watched them stand at the doorway together and then Moonie excitedly pushed past Torry and entered her tight quarters. For some reason, she was delighted with her accommodations and ran from her bunk to the bathroom, to her closet and then back to her bunk with the tingling energy of a child on Christmas Morning. If all this enthusiasm was genuine and not just a show, for Torry and me, then I was beginning to like her. There was an honest quality about her, similar to the personality of my partner, Torry. I had never been a friend with anyone as long as I had been with Torry so who knows what was fermenting between this Starbabe and me.
‘As soon as you get some rest,’ Torry advised, ‘I’ll take you on a tour of the Big Bang.’
Moonie grinned at Torry and asked, ‘Why do you call your ship ‘The Big Bang’?’
‘It’s a sorta double meaning.’
This was another word beyond Moonie’s innocent ken.
‘The ‘Big Bang’,’ Torry explained with some wishy-washy stops and starts,’ is about the beginning of the universe and the best sex a person’s ever had. Two meanings. There’s your double.’
Moonie stared at him with her eyes wide open and if I haven’t made the point before, her eyes were many times larger than human eyes.
‘I like sex,’ she said. ‘It’s so much fun.’
Again, to a being who does not have the internal organs to procreate, but has all the outward openings to do so, sex would be...amusing. There was an inordinate amount of nerve endings in her boobs, butt and nookie.
Sex without responsibility, was an extraordinary concept.
‘If you need to contact Perry or me,’ he said as he pointed to a audio grid on the wall beside the doorway,’ just push the button below the speaker and tell us what you want. We’ll be happy to accommodate whatever you need.’
Moonie nodded and Torry left.
Okay, so Moonie was alone and had expressed a desire to take a shower, which meant that she intended to strip down to her basics, a condition which normally had quite an erotic meaning to me, but, surprisingly, at the time I was only interested in observing if she was a dangerous alien life form in with a deceptive or honest purpose. Was she one of the cutest, sexist little beings I had ever come across in my trek across the galaxy or was this all a deceitful intention of keeping us off guard so she would be able to revert to her true form and devour both Torry and me? I would soon know because the first thing she did was to loosen her top and allow those beautifully designed ta-tas to come cascading out from her supportive top as if they were oversized water balloons tumbling from cupped hands. No. I intended keep to my mission.
The belt came off next, certainly, followed by the rest of her brief garment. Now, for the first time, I was observing her in her total, unadorned nudity. Cloistered in the dewy innocence of her belief she was not being observed, she went about her business with the awkward, jerky movements associated with the gathering up of her garments. She absently exhibited her generous bottom or turned to flash the curly hirsute triangle tangle of pubis below her mound of Venus, or stooped to allow the heaving and swaying of her pendulous breasts. Glamour photographers know there are only a limited amount of postures a woman can contort herself into and still be considered alluring but such poses were reserved for the camera and backdrop of the erotic craft. Moonie, devoid of awareness, went through every pose-- awkward, artistic and salacious. How I adored her at those moments and changed my preferences of a snide villain desiring a malicious end of her sweet presentation by observing her morphing into a monstrous deviant with a multitude of slimy, boneless limbs, instead of a hero quite content with her comely form just as it was. Oh, yes, her form was just perfect without the need for revision. She was plump but with absolute respect to the female figure. Her shape was convex and concave exactly where it should have been and her rich pink nipples were focal points to her creamy mounds as they bounced with her movements. All thoughts of May Jo Montgomery vanished from my mind replaced, vividly, by the persistent and highly animated image of absolute female perfection.
Unconsciously, she tossed her clothing on her bunk and trotted to the bathroom where she drew a steaming bath. On a shelf above the gurgling bath water she found a bottle of liquid soap in a teardrop shaped bottle and sprinkled droplets into the water until it bubbled to three times the water level.
There was also a yellow rubber duck on the ledge of the tub and she cuddled it like a child as she brought it into the bath with her. Just as I was thinking of her as a total innocent unaware of the lascivious thoughts Torry and I were having about her she did something unexpected. She submerged the rubber ducky and pressed it between her legs. Slowly she worked the rounded bill and head of the duck into her soapy boolya, pushing it deeper into her happy hole and then nearly out, over and over, working the bill against her clit. Her face became a gentle mask of satisfaction as her body trembled from a climax.
Just then I heard the door slide open behind me and I knew Torry had just entered the room. I figured I had about two more seconds to feast on Moonie’s visual epicurean offering before I had to hit the ‘shut down’ button but my timing was off.
‘What’s all that there ‘pink’ on your screen?’ Torry babbled. ‘Ohmigosh! You’re spying on the little Starbabe!’
Torry was a powerful man, an ex-farmer used to lifting bales of hay with ease. He pulled me up out of my seat as if I were a bale of hay and kept me lifted while he spit his anger in my face. Did I complain? No.
‘She’s a human bein’ and she has a right to privacy and not have some two-bit pervert gawking all over her body. She came to us ‘spectin’ privacy, protection and a place to stay and I’m a-gonna see the little lady gets all of it!’ Every ‘p’ word was emphasized with spittle.
‘Okay,’ I said in the calmest voice I could muster with my feet dangling a foot off the ground. ‘First of all, she’s not a human being. She’s an alien creature with ‘...powers and abilities...’ we know nothing about. She’s the cutest little alien I have ever seen, I’ll grant you, but that may be what makes her so dangerous. In a split second those big blue eyes could become black, bulging, horsefly monstrosities and those full, bow-shaped lips could thin out into a mouthful of pointed teeth and that luscious bosom of hers could lengthen into tentacles lined with rows of suckers with snapping beaks in each little hole.’
He lowered me to the ground and released his hold on my collar.
‘Ware do you get this crap from?’
Before I could answer he punched in a code on my computer and an issue of ‘Slashing Stories’ popped up on my computer screen. On the cover was a breasty blonde in a shinny, low-cut, yellow dress being menaced by a hideous reptilian monstrosity with a bizarre array of fishlike accessories including gills the size of hand-held fans and coiling tentacles. Surprisingly enough, even I had to ponder why the blonde was wearing a cocktail dress on a hostile alien planet.
‘Why do you read those nineteen fifties junk rags?’
‘They’re handbooks,’ I tried to explain.’ Everything in there is out there. Somewhere.’
He was softening. I could see it in his eyes. He was beginning to believe my line of bull but, in a way, so was I. She could be everything I said she was. She could.
‘There’s some validity in what you’re a-sayin’, I suppose.’ He pronounced ‘validity’ as if he’d just read the meaning of the word and was anxious to use it in a sentence.
‘There’s the only reason you’re a-watchin’ her, ‘cause you think she might be dangerous.’
‘No.’
‘Ah-ha! You admit she turns you on, you know, sexually. Ya psycho. You jus’ like peekin’ in on pretty little gals,’ he accused. But I had my counter answer all ready.
‘You got me all wrong, partner. Moonie isn’t my type. She’s too short, too busty, too curvy, too everything. If she’s got ‘sex appeal’ then I don’t see it.’
Now, here’s where I made my mistake. I punched in the code, which allowed me to view Moonie in her bath.
She’d tied her pigtails up into a bun emphasizing her long, slender neck. Most of her was immersed below a sea of foamy white bubbles but she turned and rose slightly giving away glimpses of her rich pink nipples and tangle of garden hedge drenched with glistening soap. Her knees ascended from the surface like mountains from the foamy rage of breaking waves and when she turned over and was lying prone while the water ran between the cleavage of her butt like an arroyo between two smooth hills. Water and bundles of bubbles cascaded from the arches and bows of her curvy form, coating her with a thin layer of glittering glycerin, emphasizing her dimensions with pools of highlight.
She reached for the rubber ducky, tumbling in the rolling waves of her bath water, and spoke to it in baby talk as if it were her child. Torry and I were transfixed on her for what seemed like hours, as if we were trapped in a pixie ring where time was irrelevant, but I supposed in reality we watched her for only a few seconds before I had the courage to shut off the view screen. I was careful to continue to have her actions recorded but I had to turn off the screen because she wasn’t supporting my ‘no sex appeal’ argument at all.
‘Okay, okay. So she does have some sex appeal but I was keeping an eye on her for a third reason.’
Torry sat himself down and crossed his arms.
‘This I gotta hear. So, what’s your plan? You’ve always got a plan.’
‘Now you’re talking like my partner but I thought it would be obvious even for a ‘Nimby’ like you.’
I sat in the chair next to him and leaned forward as if to expose a stunning secret.
‘She can live in a vacuum. No Suit, no helmet, just her bare, adorable bod. Do you know what the Fortune 500 companies on Earth would pay to learn how she does it? Can you even take a guess? No, you can’t.’
What I didn’t know was that Moonie was listening in to our conversation even while she was being recorded and the part she was listening to was exactly what I didn’t want her to hear.
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