Bubba And the Aliens
Herpe

Herpe

“As I said before, there were five Herpes on board. Our Pilot was named George, but he pronounced it whore-hey. His brother was Michael, but again, preferred Mish-E-el, and their cousin, Daryl. Daryl’s girlfriend was the only female of the bunch, her name was Kristin (Kay-ris-tan) and Bob rounded out the group.”

“Those are all names from our planet,” Janet observed.

“Well, it may have been the way they were translated. I don’t know how many names there are in the universe, but there would have to be some overlap somewhere.”

“I thought you said the translator things didn’t work for written stuff.”

“They don’t,” Arlo jumped in. “However, they used a thirty-three-letter alphabet similar to Greek. I learned some Greek and Hebrew over the years and was able to decipher some of what they were writing.

“Once Hello figured out what we were doing she was able to show us how to convert any written language through an onboard program to a galactically accepted language used by the government. It was interesting in many ways, but initially, I did not think I would ever have much use for it.”

“And now?” Janet pondered.

“Well, if we can get back to Sesterisia to get the ship, and get the money, it might be handy to know depending on where we eventually settle.”

Janet turned towards me. “You aren’t planning on staying on earth?”

I knew this would have great implications as far as our relationship, so I chose my words carefully. “We don’t think we will be safe on earth. We don’t think anyone around us would be safe. We have a couple of months to sort it out as far as where we might go. I was hoping we could sit down and discuss it at length in the next few days.”

“Discuss what exactly?” She asked.

“Whether or not you want to go with me,” I answered.

“You would really take me?” She asked with surprise.

“Of course, I would, but there’s a lot of other stuff to consider before we reach any finality on our decision. Your family is still around. We’re missing your sister’s birthday now.” Janet nodded. “Mine is mostly gone. Those who are still around I don’t much care for.”

I could see her turning things over in her head. “We’ve got a while before you have to decide. Besides, with my own ship, it might be possible to pop in for a visit every now and then.”

“It’s a lot to think about,” Janet said slowly. “What about the little blond girl Dingo brought dancing a couple of weeks back, is she going?”

“Oh, bugger me, no!” Dingo answered. “I ain’t traipsing off into space with no Sheila. No offense meant, but I’d like the freedom to explore the universe on my own a little bit.”

“Your experiencing the universe is what caused the issues on Herpe,” I reminded him.

“Hey, it was worth it!” He defended.

“What happened on Herpe? Did you get Herpes?”

“We went there to get Herpes,” I reminded her. “Three of them as a matter of fact, but Dingo got something else.”

“Something worse than Herpes,” Arlo suggested with a bit of laughter.

Janet’s eyes again returned to me. I had to get rid of the beers I had drunk. I nodded towards Arlo. “You take over for a minute,” I suggested. I finished my beer before heading for the hall bathroom.

“George took us to the outer edge of the solar system. We had about an eight-hour cruise into the planet. This is where things get a bit complicated. The five Herpes had all been part of the military special operation units. On Herpe, their families had been contacted and told they were killed in action on training missions. It might prove awkward if they showed up suddenly after being gone for a few years.

“George and Michael had a younger brother they wanted to contact. He was the only child left on the planet. They did not know what had transpired in the years they had been gone. They would try to locate and observe him from space and then decide if he should be contacted.”

“Kristin,” I said, walking back into the room, “had a pair of female cousins who were twins. Their parents were killed when they were ten years old. They were in an orphanage when she left the planet. The government was supposed to make sure they were well taken care of due to Kristin’s off-planet service. She did not have much faith in the system.” I headed for the kitchen.

“Sounds familiar,” Janet concluded. “What good were two ten-year-old girls going to do for you?”

“Kristin had been gone eight years. They were now eighteen. If they had been turned out by the government, there was no telling what they might be doing to support themselves. George and Michael had been gone five years,” Arlo picked back up.

“So, with the ship fully cloaked, we began orbiting the planet and hacked into their version of the internet and started searching for Sven, Ella, and Kandice, who Jack nicknamed Elsa.”

“Why?” Janet inquired.

“I thought it was a cute idea when Jack explained it,” Bubba commented. “It’s one of them play on words things. What did you call it Jack?”

“A paronomasia,” I answered as I walked back in. Janet rolled her eyes. I loved innuendo, double meanings, and one-off explanations for things. “Canned ice,” I said looking at her. “Canned ice, and with a twin sister named Ella, come on! Elsa froze everything she touched in the story.”

“And Kandice was some stone-cold killer?” Janet wondered.

“Umm, actually,” Dingo started.

“She was a unique individual,” I cut him off before he got started.

“Aren’t we all,” Bubba muttered.

“Wait, back up a minute,” Janet proclaimed. “What did Dingo catch from the Herpes?”

“You want to explain it?” I asked as I turned to him.

“No, but I will, you and Arlo have been hogging the conversation.” He replied.

Arlo and I looked at each other for a moment. I took a swig of beer and motioned for Dingo to continue.

“So, there we were in outer space monitoring the planet and looking for Sven and the twins.”

“Sounds like a good name for a band,” Bubba interrupted.

Dingo was not going to be distracted. “Within a few hours, we were able to get a bead on all three of them. Arlo and Hello were keeping themselves busy comparing notes on the universe, so to speak. We decided Jack and Bubba would go down planet side and get in touch with Sven to gauge whether he would want to join his brothers. While he did, Bipodecus and I would check on the girls.”

“I realize it’s a little late to be asking, but what does Bipodecus look like?” Janet inquired.

“Like Druids or monks in green robes. He is about the same height as one of us. Their skin has a kind of green and grey hue to it. Nothing you would notice right off,” Dingo stated. “Bipodecus wore a goatee and mustache and had grey hair and light green eyes.”

“And there were no giant bugs on the planet,” Bubba threw in out of the blue.

Janet nodded and Dingo continued. “Some of Kristin’s fears had been warranted. Ella and Elsa were working in a strip joint in this little town of about twenty thousand folks. We had been able to download the government pictures of them when they turned eighteen. We thought we would be able to identify them when we saw them in the club. They had a lot of pictures posted on social media.”

“Why didn’t you just go to where they lived?”

Dingo glanced at me for a moment before turning back to Janet and shrugging his shoulders. “We thought it would be better to approach them in a public arena and see exactly what kind of life they were living. We decided to study them in their work environment. I had not met anyone on Darfo like Arlo. I had not had any female companionship for several weeks at that point.”

“You’re disgusting,” Janet commented.

“And we didn’t know if they were working as dancers or just waitresses.” Dingo continued, ignoring her opinion. “We could have been wrong about our assumptions. As we said earlier, Lakanica is a religious planet and the body is considered sacred, like the trees and everything else. Bipodecus was quite shocked by the open displays of skin and sensuality once we got inside. I convinced him a couple of drinks should be consumed while he studied the unfamiliar surroundings and considered the implications of his personal beliefs.”

“You bought beer and watched the strippers,” Janet summarized.

“You make it sound cheap and dirty,” Dingo lamented. “We were making a sacrifice so we could get the girls. We needed to get them, to help us rescue the princess. If they were so inclined,” he added hastily.

“Whatever,” Janet replied.

“We watched for a couple of hours and never saw either one of them. We left and went to look for them at their apartment after making some inquiries.”

I cleared my throat and looked intently at Dingo. “You’re telling the story. Don’t leave out any of the details.”

Janet waited quietly for several seconds before she turned to me. I pointed to Dingo. Everyone else had their eyes on him. After a few more moments he began again weakly.

“Well, the girl what had been bringing us drinks asked us if we would like to go to another part of the club and sample some of their other services. Bipodecus had no idea what she was talking about. I thought it would be good for him to expand his knowledge about Herpe interactions. Since he had never had alcohol before, abstaining from what the Lakanica made, he was quite happy to go along after three of the local cocktails.”

“You got hookers,” Janet editorialized. “You took a monk, or Druid, or whatever, to a foreign world, got him drunk, and then a hooker.”

“It wasn’t all they got,” Bubba supplied.

“Serves you right,” Janet quipped. “What did they call it?”

“Herpederpetitus,” Dingo said with his head hung down.

“What are the symptoms, or do I not want to know?” Janet asked.

“Well, you know what a herp-a-derp is here on earth?” Arlo asked.

Janet shook her head. Arlo pulled out his tablet and brought up the Urban Dictionary page before handing it over to her.

She scanned the page and turned back towards Dingo. “If it makes you do stupid or foolish things, then I don’t see how it would have affected you. It also says it can be used as a bullying term for those who are mentally challenged.”

“Apparently, it blocks certain receptors in the infected person’s brain,” Arlo explained, “and reduces the mental capacity of the individual. Also, it can be transmitted through direct contact or even secondary contact.”

“So, what are you saying? Did all of you get it?”

“Not all of us on the ship, because the Herpes are vaccinated for it in the military, but as earthlings, we had never been exposed to it.”

“What’s the treatment?”

“I’ll get this one,” Arlo stated. “Once the ship computer figured out what we had, it gave us some antibiotics derived from the Herpes blood and knocked it out within a few hours. But it has a seventy-two-hour incubation period. Dingo and Bipodecus did not know they were infected until three days later.”

“Why don’t you go back to the part where you left the strip club and went to look for Ella and Elsa?” I suggested.

Dingo nodded and returned to the tale. “Our cover story was we represented a distant relative who was concerned with the welfare of the girls now that they were adults. Not much different than earth laws, the age of consent on Herpe is eighteen, even for alcohol. Also, like earth, there is quite a bit of leeway in certain areas where there is not a law enforcement presence.

“We did not replace the girls at home. One of the neighbors suggested a dance club not far from where they lived, and we made our way there. The Herpes on the ship had given us some pocket money to get around with, so we paid our cover and went inside.

“It was also surprisingly similar to what you would expect to replace on earth. We didn’t really understand the words to the music because they were translated kind of literally, but the beat was familiar enough.

“It did not take long to spot the pair out on the floor. I passed by them closely to make sure of who they were. I settled into a chair at a table with Bipodecus. They were a stunning duo who knew how to move to the music. They weren’t working, but they were putting on quite a show. There were several young men and women around them who seemed to be enchanted by them.”

“So, even after the hookers, you were still ogling the twins?”

Dingo looked at me for support. This was not a fight I was going to referee. “One thing I’m fairly sure of across the universe is eighteen-year-old girls who draw their amount of attention are not interested in guys in their early thirties. Bipodecus could easily pass for someone’s grandpa. We had a couple of drinks and kept an eye on them.

“However, our observation did not go unnoticed. Elsa came directly to the table and asked me what in the Hell I wanted and why was I staring at her and her sister. She tends to be very direct.”

“What did you tell her?” Janet inquired.

“I went with the truth, more or less. I told her a relative had sent us to check on their welfare. We were to check their interest in going somewhere besides their sleepy little town. She retrieved Ella, and we went to a diner where we could talk.”

“They just left with you and Bipodecus?” Janet asked with surprise.

“Well, he hadn’t said a thing to them, or me since his encounter at the strip club. He was hidden inside his robes. Even in the diner he kept his hood up. He pointed at something on the menu when we ordered.

“I told the girls I had information Kristin had not died. She was interested in contacting them, but due to the circumstances she had to remain in hiding.”

“How did you get down to the planet?” Janet asked suddenly diverting the storyline.

“I’ve got this one,” Arlo engaged. “Daryl flew them down and dropped Jack and Bubba a couple of miles out of town near the place Sven was, afterward he dropped Dingo and Bipodecus off and went back to the ship. After what happened on Darfo Seven with everyone getting split up, we grabbed some communicators from the ship. They looked remarkably like flip phones. The videos we had pulled up from the surface showed they would not be out of place. They already had mobile phones like we had back in the eighties. Everyone agreed to be discreet about using them. Daryl would pick them up as events warranted.”

“It turns out the twins had been working in the strip club and saving up money so they could move to a bigger city and try to better their situation in life.” Dingo picked up the story again. “We had a late dinner. I asked them several probing questions while trying to avoid any details about myself. Bipodecus’ silence was a bit unnerving to them, but they have something similar to monks on Herpe. I explained some of his beliefs to them, they left him alone.

“We went back to their apartment and,”

“Tell me you did not have sex with those girls,” Janet demanded.

Dingo held up a hand and shook his head. “Give me some credit Janet. Once we were in a private area, I contacted the ship and let them talk to Kristin with the communicator. She did not give them a lot of details either. She offered to meet them the next day to discuss their options. A scan of the area showed a remote field about fifteen miles from where we were. The girls had a beat-up old car. It would get us to the spot.”

“So, then what did you do?” Janet probed.

“The girls went to bed. I went to sleep on the couch. Bipodecus stretched out on the floor and began to pray, or chant, or something.”

“Meanwhile,” I started, “Bubba and I had gone into Zelkfinst to look for Sven. We had been able to replace his work location and his home address. We caught sight of him entering his building in the evening. He was only there for a few minutes. We followed him to a restaurant where he met a young lady.

“Bubba and I took a table where we could maintain visual contact and settled in for a meal of our own.”

“The Herpe food was great,” Bubba chimed in, “But I never would have eaten it if I’d known what it was beforehand.”

“You just can’t let it go can you,” Dingo exclaimed.

“What was it?” Janet requested.

“The closest thing I can think of is probably Capybara.” I offered.

Janet looked at me perplexed.

“Think of the biggest rat you ever saw,” Dingo offered. “Then make it the size of a hog, say three hundred fifty or four hundred pounds.”

“You ate one too,” Bubba reminded him. “You told me you had a burger and fries in the restaurant with the girls.”

“Hold on,” Janet interrupted the argument. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me with a smile. It sent chills down my spine.

“How did the Herpes on the planet understand what you were saying?” She asked. “Arlo said he knew a little Greek. It was similar to their language, but you only know English and some German.”

“Told you she was smart,” Arlo said with a smile. He pulled out his wallet and retrieved a small, almost transparent, square of film and walked over to Janet. He held it up for Janet to see then reached down and rubbed on her forearm for a second. It disappeared completely as it soaked into her skin.

“What was that?” She demanded.

“Translator thingies,” he answered. “It will take about five minutes. Then, you will be able to understand any given language. Bob had discussed this with us on the way to Herpe. The ship was able to produce these. We still don’t know if they are microbial or technology though. Since I already have them in my body and my blood, they won’t dissolve when I touch them. However, if you don’t have the microbes, or whatever, they sink into your skin almost instantly.”

“How did you get them on the twins?” she asked as she looked towards Dingo.

“Just brushed past them in the dance club and placed one on their arms. There was so much bumping and stuff in there they did not notice.”

“And what language did they speak? I mean what was their native language?”

Arlo fielded this one. “Again, something similar to Greek, but without the translators, it would have all been Greek to us.” Janet missed the joke.

“While we wait, let’s all get bathroom breaks and clear away a few of these beer bottles,” I suggested. I started grabbing empties. I carried them to the recycling bin in the garage. I stared at it for a few moments. I had not separated trash in over two months. Dingo saw me standing there staring at the blue bin.

“Got used to dumping everything in the trash chute, didn’t you?”

I nodded. Maybe Bubba was not the only one who would have a hard time adjusting to earth for a few weeks. I wondered how Dingo and Arlo would cope with it.

I gave Dingo a quick rundown of what I had planned for Bubba. He agreed it might be a good idea. We would have to get with Arlo and hammer out some details. We just needed to keep the ruse up until Osned came back to get us.

When we got back to the living room Janet was flipping through television stations in Spanish. I could tell she understood every word. She switched to some European soccer game. We listened to the Serbian announcer for a few moments.

“The home team is expected to win, but the visitors are putting up a good fight,” I said quietly as I returned to my position beside Janet. She swiveled her head towards me. She jumped to another couple of sports channels in other languages and shut the screen off a couple of minutes later.

I was supposed to be back from golfing by four-thirty but had missed it by an hour. It was now approaching eight. I glanced at the digital readout on the recorder under the television.

“We can do this later if you want,” I offered. “All of us are pretty tired. We haven’t had a whole lot of sleep since we left Sesterisia.” All the other guys nodded affirmatively.

Janet shook her head and leaned back into the cushions. “We’ve got a guest room and the couch in the office pulls out. Everyone’s had several beers already. They probably shouldn’t drive.”

I agreed with her. If everyone crashed here it would make it easier to enact my plan with Bubba. A fresh six-pack was on the coffee table. I twisted the top off one and took a pull while gesturing to Bubba. “Tell her what happened while we were in the restaurant watching Sven.”

“It kind of looked like a first date to us. Sven seemed nervous. The girl he was with was cute in her own way. Our meal was messed up because we had just pointed at pictures on the menu when the waiter had brought them to us. We could understand him but figured he would not understand English. I had tried a few words, but he looked at us like we were crazy.

“Jack had pulled out the money and showed it to the waiter. He knew we weren’t a couple of bums. The Herpes on board had supplied us with clothes so we would fit in. Anyways, we just sat back and watched them from a distance and enjoyed our meal. Jack laid a translator square on the waiter’s arm when he was setting our drinks down. When he came back with our bill, we were able to talk to him.

“After dinner, we followed them to something like a mall. When the girl went into a restroom Jack went over to Sven and shook his hand and gave him a phrase George had taught him.”

“What did you say?” She turned to me.

“Your brothers sent me with a message. We will wait for you.” I supplied. “I had the microbe patch in my hand when we shook. I turned as the girl walked out of the restroom and dropped a patch onto her for good measure. I walked back over to where Bubba was waiting on a bench. The girl took Sven’s hand as they strolled along looking at storefronts, wandering in and out of the shops. He gave us a couple of backward glances, but soon returned his attention to his date.”

“We were parked in front of a video screen,” Bubba continued, “watching some kind of twenty-four-hour news show. It had cycled through about forty-five minutes when we saw Sven approaching us again. Jack waved at him. He walked over to us.

“Jack introduced us to Sven’s date and said it had been a long time since we had seen each other. In a roundabout way, it gave Sven our names and he introduced us to Kirishima. We related an old story about his childhood with his brothers and told him we would stop by the next day to visit more if it was okay with him.

“He walked off with Kirishima, with a couple more backward glances towards us. We went to replace a hotel for the night. Jack did the same kind of handshake thing with the clerk at the hotel. She could not understand us at first. We wandered to the lounge and got a drink. We went back a few minutes later. She understood us perfectly then.”

“Aren’t you worried about how these people would react when they realized they could understand anyone no matter which language they heard?”

“No,” I answered, “when we were watching the Serbian soccer game earlier, what language did you hear?”

Janet reached for the remote and flipped back to the game. She listened for half a minute or so and turned it off. “I hear it in English. The lips don’t always look right, and his syntax seems backward in a couple of places, but it’s English.”

“I don’t know how they work, but the instant translation is in your own language. We didn’t really pick up on it until Osned and Dahlia picked us up on Sesterisia.”

“Why did Osned come replace you?” Janet inquired.

“Again, we will get to it later,” I offered. “Osned and Dahlia were on Pilifin trying to work through the logistics of making him a superstar while we were on Herpe.”

She turned back to Bubba. “So, what happened the next day?”

“Sven was a nervous wreck when we got to his place. He was freaked out because we knew where he lived. We explained his brothers had given us the information. It freaked him out even more because he had moved in the last six months and his brothers would not know where he lived.

“We told him his brothers had been on a long-term top-secret mission. The government had faked their deaths so he would be protected. Now the mission was over. They wanted to reestablish contact with him. Just to make sure everything was safe; we had been sent as their envoys for the initial contact.

“Once he was over the shock of everything, we contacted the ship with the communicator and let him talk to his brothers. It was a pretty happy reunion. Unfortunately, their parents had died while they were off the planet. It left Sven alone except for a few relatives he saw occasionally.

“Basically, he said he would do anything to be reunited with his brothers. We explained it would mean leaving behind everything he knew for a secret life. We gave him some time to think about it. We watched him pace around his apartment for a few minutes as he mumbled and argued with himself about a variety of details.

“Eventually he turned to us and simply said yes. He would go with us if we could get him back to his brothers. He took a while to pack a bag. He drove us to a remote spot. Daryl came down and picked us up. Michael was on board with him, while George stayed on board to monitor the ship.”

“So, what was the incident on Herpe?” Janet wondered.

“It wasn’t really what happened on Herpe that mattered,” I explained. “What Dingo did on Herpe was the important factor. The Herpederpetitus virus Dingo and Bipodecus brought back with them affected us over the next few days. Any contact we had with the natives had been quick and meaningless.”

“I do not suppose Dingo found any special meaning in his encounter?” Janet questioned.

“We will get to it in a little bit,” I deflected. “I’m trying to keep things as linear as possible. Daryl and Michael arrived where we were quickly. They had just dropped Kristen off to meet with Dingo, Bipodecus, and the twins. Michael had come along hoping Sven would be there.”

“All three of them were willing to consider giving up their lives to reunite with their relatives, without knowing the details of what the reunion fully entailed,” Dingo observed. “Michael had walked out of the woods after Daryl dropped him off a little way away. We couldn’t just have him pop out of thin air.”

I jumped in, “Sven drove away after talking to his brother. There were a few things he wanted to wrap up. He said he would meet us at the same location the next evening. After he was out of sight, Daryl pulled us back on board the shuttle. We called Kristin. She was going to stay planet-side with the girls for about the same length of time, while they decided what to do. Once the three of them had cleared the area we went and picked up Dingo and Bipodecus.”

“I could tell something was wrong with Bipodecus as soon as they got back on board,” Arlo stated. “He did not speak to anyone and went straight to his room. Dingo seemed happy as a lark and strolled off to the galley to get a drink. Bubba and Jack told me about Sven. Michael went to tell George about their brother.”

“Was Bipodecus already feeling the effects of the Herpederpetitus?”

“No, he was having an ethical and moral dilemma,” Arlo replied. “He was coming to terms with what he considered a lapse in judgment and a defilement of his body. Not only had he become drunk and given into lust in a moment of weakness, but it was with an alien who was not pure Lakanican.”

“She wasn’t even a little bit Lakanican,” Bubba commented. “And, I wasn’t anywhere near them, so it was definitely not my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I agreed, giving Dingo the evil eye for a moment. “However, at the time, none of us, besides Dingo, had any knowledge of what had transpired in the strip club. When we asked Dingo what had happened, he claimed there was nothing out of the ordinary in their contact with the girls.”

“There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary,” Dingo defended. “Not in what happened with the twins anyway. As for the strip club, it was nothing that hadn’t happened in many other ports here on our planet back in my Navy days.”

“What about you Jack?” Janet said leveling a stare at me.

“Not ol’ Jack,” Dingo replied before I could answer. “We’d walk into a club or bar somewhere to have a drink. Next thing you know there were ten girls standing around begging for his attention. Jack never had to pay for affection.” He was not helping my cause.

“And why was that?” she was asking him, not me.

“Nobody ever had a good explanation for it. I guess Jack’s attractive enough, no offense brother, but he ain’t no bleedin’ movie star. The damn Irish girl made him a legend.” Dingo was just rambling along without a care in the world for the collateral damage he was causing. He had not even noticed my look of concern.

“What about the Irish girl?” Janet queried intensely.

Dingo must have caught the change in her tone or seen the flush on her face. He opened his mouth to reply but stopped with his mouth hanging open. He took a drink of beer and swallowed hard. “Perhaps it is a story for another time.”

“Oh no, if Jack is a legend because of the Irish girl, I need to hear about her!” Her eyes bored into Dingo.

He sat with his head hung down. He looked at me for help.

“It was nothing,” I said, drawing her attention. “We had three days in Bahrain when we were in the Gulf. Someone asked what I was going to do when I got off the boat. I said I was going to see the sights and then replace an Irish or English girl to spend the night dancing and drinking with.”

“And the son of a bitch did!” Dingo said emphatically.

“So,” Janet said.

“Bahrain,” Dingo exclaimed. “Muslims, Burkas, twenty different dialects of Arabic language, laws against alcohol, dancing, bare ankles and whatever else. He replaces a cabbie after dinner, who took us to some out of the way place, sent us down an alley to a door, and up a few flights of stairs. Jack whispers some password to a guy in a hallway and hands him some money.”

“You were with him?” Janet asked with surprise.

“How do you think the story got out,” I asked, turning to Janet.

“How did you know to do all of the stuff?” She asked.

“I just told the cabbie we wanted to go to a disco where there were other Europeans.”

“Why not Americans?” She wondered.

“We never told anyone in the Middle East we were Americans,” Bubba stated. “Most of them hated us. They didn’t care one way or the other about the English, French, Italians, or nobody else.”

“We have a beer and then I walk off to the bathroom,” Dingo says. “When I get back, Jack asked me if I wanted a blond or a redhead to dance with. He gestured to a table across the club. I looked at the girls. I wanted the blond if I had my choice. We walked over and asked them to dance. There was a guy sitting at the table, but they both got up and went to the floor with us.”

“Why?” Janet asked me.

“While Dingo was in the bathroom,” I explained. “I went and asked the blond to dance. She said the guy at the table had sat down and would not leave them alone. She would not leave her friend with him. She proposed, if I had a friend, they would be more than happy to be rescued.”

“And you slept with these girls?” Janet demanded to know.

“The blond was from some little village outside of London and the redhead was from Dublin.” I stated. “They were on two-year work visas to teach English to elementary kids. The guy at the table was some kind of prince or something and they were afraid of being kidnapped, so we danced for a few minutes, then they grabbed their stuff and we left together.”

“That is not an answer to my question,” she spoke quietly, but firmly.

“They were very thankful,” I responded. “The next day we said our goodbyes. We went back to the ship. By dinner time Dingo had managed to spread the story to just about all six hundred members of the crew, it seemed.”

“One incident does not make someone a legend,” she accused.

“It was all a decade ago,” I said. “Let’s get back to what happened on Herpe.”

“We aren’t done with this,” she replied softly, but with menace. I was more than aware of it. She took a couple of deep breaths and grabbed her drink. “Okay Dingo, what happened the next day?”

“It was fairly uneventful. Kristin called the ship in the morning. She said the twins were coming with her. We already expected Sven to meet his brother and Daryl. They coordinated a way to pick everyone up in the evening. Arlo and Hello were still infatuated with each other. Bob and I watched video feeds from the planet. He was giving me background on the events and trying to teach me a game like three-dimensional Chinese checkers. Jack was working with George to learn how to pilot the ship. We needed to be able to use the one the Khelids were going to give us. Later, he went to replace Bipodecus and talk to him.

“The shuttle came back. Once everyone was shown to quarters, we started heading out of the solar system so we could jump close enough to Khelid to check on the progress with the ship and the weapons.”

“After we got a good night’s sleep and made the jump, we found out they were still a few days away from finishing,” I supplied. “But they had managed to do some preliminary tests on the Cryogenics idea. It was diverting a lot of their manpower supposedly. They asked if we would mind making a delivery for them. It was a small delivery they said, hardly worth the shipping costs. If we made it, they would pay us the fee. We could spend a few days on Octavia while they wrapped our order up.

“I talked to Bipodecus about it. He said very little. He agreed because his share would help offset some of the cost to his government for the rescue the princess. We went to Khelid, loaded the shipment, and then headed off for Octavia. They would contact us when everything was ready.”

“Sounds a little fishy to me,” Janet observed.

“It would have been fine, if there had been no incident on Herpe,” I responded.