He paused, and when there was no response, spoke once more, briefly. “I am now turning the mission over to our First Officer.” He nodded to Ease.
Oops! Kandy had assumed that the members of the Quest were more or less invisible spectators. Certainly they did not belong in this mission, about which they knew nothing. How could he be a First Officer?
But Ease handled it as if he belonged. “Thank you, Captain Murphy. I believe we stand ready to proceed.” He turned to Astrid. “Chief Engineer, is the ship operational?”
Chief Engineer? What did Astrid know about engines? She wasn’t even human!
Astrid smiled. “Most systems are now operational, Ease, but they are of course untested. We need to be far away from gravity wells such as from planets or moons before we can warp away to interstellar space. That means maneuvering the main engines to about Jupiter’s orbit. But first the engines have to be ignited. All I need now is your word.”
Jupiter’s orbit? This was sheer gibberish!
“Astrid, the word is given. Start ‘em up!”
There was a keyboard before Astrid. She set her hands on it. “This is our second star-ship,” she murmured. “Xanth only knows what would cause the first one to fail. Here’s hoping.” Her fingers touched the keys. “Raising rods from the heavy water in the nuclear fish’in pool. Power now at eighty percent. Ninety. Full power.” Her index finger hovered over her panel. “Ready to dump the fish’in energy into the sunflower fusion plants. NOW!”
This was absolutely crazy! She had to be making it up.
Astrid stabbed her finger into the icon on her board. All the lights on the bridge went out, leaving everyone in darkness. They came back on seconds later, brighter than ever. There was a muffled roar from the bowels of the ship, and a deep shudder of power.
Astrid smacked her right fist into her left hand. “Yes!” she whispered to herself. Then, to the captain: “We now have self-sustaining fusion reaction! Main engines are yours, sir.”
“Outstanding, Engineer,” Grey shouted over the noise. “We are on our way.”
The crew relaxed as the ship moved out. They had little to do while the ship forged through space. That gave the members of the quest a chance to get together.
“What have we gotten into?” Mitch asked. “I’m the Communications Officer, but I don’t know anything about the mission apart from what the Captain just told us.”
“And I’m the Refreshments Officer,” Tiara said. “Have some hard tack.” She proffered a plate of biscuits made in the shape of tacks.
“Pewter, what do you know about this?” Mitch asked.
“I am the ship AI,” Pewter responded. “That is, Artificial Intelligence. I actually operate most of the systems, out of sight; the people merely give the commands. Ultimately I control the ship, and could, if I deemed it necessary, eliminate the people.”
“You wouldn’t!” Tiara said, horrified.
“Fortunately I am unlikely to deem it necessary.”
That was not a completely reassuring answer.
“You have not answered my question,” Mitch said. “What do you know about this? How can we be here, filling positions for which we are not qualified, accepted by folk who don’t know us? What is going on?”
“It’s a dream,” Pewter said. “A gourd setting. Your bodies are lying comfortably on the ground while your minds are participating in this communal dream of a space mission. You are not actually in physical danger.”
“You’re a machine. How can you be in the dream?”
“I am in it because I choose to be. The realm of the gourd is marvelous and intricate, with many variants. I did not deem it appropriate to allow you mortals to flounder unsupervised.”
“Each sequin setting has contributed something to our Quest,” Astrid said. “Either a participant or an insight. What is the point of a dream?”
“That is what you will need to discover,” Pewter said. “Your best course is to carry on until you learn the point of it.”
“That actually does make sense,” Mitch said. “So we might as well enjoy the ride.”
“Some ride!” Astrid said, but she did seem mollified.
The three princesses approached them. They were attractive girls of Tiara’s age, wearing little crowns. “I am Melody,” the first said. She wore a green dress with matching hair and blue eyes. “I am the prettiest one.”
“I am Harmony,” the second continued. She wore a brown dress with matching hair and eyes. “I am the most sensible one.”
“I am Rhythm,” the third concluded. She wore a red dress with matching hair, and green eyes. “I am the naughtiest one.”
Kandy found their candid introductions interesting, but she doubted that there was very much difference between the three in pretty, sensible, or naughty.
“No need to introduce yourselves,” Melody said.
“We know who you are,” Harmony added.
“And what you seek,” Rhythm concluded.
“But we do wonder how you got added to this space mission,” Melody said.
“And what your two fellow travelers are up to,” Harmony continued.
“And how your hair relates,” Rhythm concluded.
Fellow travelers? That meant they knew that Demoness Metria was along, and Kandy. What else did they know?
“It’s my dress, with the Sequins of Events,” Astrid explained. “When a sequin comes off, the dress turns translucent, and that distracts any local menfolk. When we put the sequin back on, it triggers an Event. This is an Event.”
The princesses eyed Astrid. “It’s a nice dress,” Melody said.
“And a nicer body,” Harmony added.
“And you’re nice too,” Rhythm finished.
“For a cockatrice,” Astrid’s hair said.
“For a what?” Melody asked.
“Mythical monster, bird-lizard, death-glare, poison breath--”
“Basilisk?” Harmony asked.
“Whatever,” the hair agreed crossly.
“Hello, Metria!” Rhythm said.
“So what are you doing here?” Melody asked.
“I’m keeping Tiara’s hair neat.”
“And snooping on what does not concern you,” Harmony said.
“That’s my nature!”
“And perking up dull scenes like this one,” Rhythm said.
“Of course. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it, lest we all perish of boredom. So can you bothersome Sorceresses figure out what hair has to do with the price of beans in Bohemia?”
The three circled a glance. “Not yet,” Melody said.
“But we’re working on it,” Harmony added.
“And there must be a hint on this centaur mission,” Rhythm concluded. “That’s the way the Good Magician’s Quests work.”
Then the three moved on, ending the dialogue.
“That was actually interesting,” Mitch said. “Too bad those pretty princesses are already taken.”
Tiara’s hair swelled up indignantly. “Too bad?” it demanded.
“Not that I have any interest,” Mitch said quickly.
So Metria was now supporting Tiara the way Kandy supported Ease. That, too, was interesting.
“It is time,” Captain Grey announced. “We are crossing the orbit of Jupiter. Officers and stations, report readiness for our first space warp.”
“Space warp,” Tiara’s hair muttered, keeping the volume low enough so the Captain would not overhear. “Science fiction is polluting our fantasy. It’s loathly.”
“It’s what?” Tiara asked.
“Distasteful, hideous, repulsive, revolting, loathsome, foul, yucky--”
“Disgusting?”
“Whatever,” the hair agreed crossly. “Nothing’s sacred any more.”
“This is a dream,” Mitch reminded the hair. “Anything goes, in a dream. It doesn’t have to make sense or remain unpolluted.”
“It’s still a shame,” the hair muttered.
“Fir
st Officer?” Grey asked.
“Ready,” Ease said.
“Chief Engineer?”
“Similarity drive at your discretion,” Astrid said. Privately she muttered “I have to say it. It’s in the script.”
“Navigator?”
A centaur spoke up. “Equations written and checked for one light year out.”
“Thank you, Chet. Tactical?”
A female centaur answered. She was clothed in the centaur manner, which was to say, not. “The complex curves have been calculated, sir. One is a damped sine wave with larger amplitude on the left and right hand sides, but having no amplitude in the center. The space-time wave has been plotted.”
“Thank you, Chem. Com Pewter, are you functional?”
“Yes,” Pewter said shortly. He too had to follow the dream script, though he obviously didn’t like it.
“Commence warp countdown.”
“This is all pseudo-science gibberish,” Tiara’s hair muttered. “In real life, the Captain would just push a button and it would happen. No fuss, no muss, no discommode.”
“Bother,” Tiara said, cutting the routine short.
“That’s what I said.”
Meanwhile a large white dot appeared on the left of Captain Grey’s viewing screen. It traversed the sine curve, bouncing up to the top of it, then to the bottom, slowly making its way to the center of the screen. Astrid tapped out some commands on her console. The sound of huge turbines started slowly and quietly, then gained in speed, loudness, and pitch. “Fusion plants dumping power into the warp flywheels,” she reported. “Rotations now increasing to five hundred per minute . . . a thousand . . . five thousand . . . ten thousand and increasing.”
“Just one button would do it,” Tiara’s hair muttered.
As the turbine sounds became deafening, Astrid’s control panel began chirping in time with the dot’s traversal of the sine waves on the display. “Fifteen seconds, Captain,” Chem Centaur declared. “Com Pewter is locked on the space-time fabric.”
“To be sure,” Pewter agreed, annoyed about being locked.
“One lousy button.”
“Twenty thousand rotations, Captain,” Astrid reported.
“Ten seconds, Captain. Nine, eight, seven--”
“Get ON with it!” Tiara’s hair snapped.
“Six seconds. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .”
Captain Grey took a deep breath. His hands gripped the chair rests as he saw the dot almost at the center of the display.
“One,” Astrid said.
“WARP!!!” Grey shouted the order.
“What utter crap!”
To the view of the outside observer, the ship slowly became transparent. Then it completely disappeared. Kandy knew this because one screen showed the external view. They were warping.
Inside the ship, the tactical display changed to show stars elongating into streaks, forming into a tunnel for the ship to zoom through, creating a shortcut across vast amounts of time and space.
The rescue mission to Alpha Centauri was on its way.
“Actually it is sort of impressive in its cliche fashion,” Tiara’s hair admitted.
*
The ship emerged from warp near Alpha Centauri. There was the centaur colony planet, lovely in the glow of the triple suns of the constellation. The technicians activated the large magic mirror set at maximum magnification and saw the centaurs happily going about their business. Some were cultivating mundane crops, while others were constructing highways suitable for galloping.
“Try the communication band,” the Captain suggested.
Mitch was the Communications Officer. He twiddled with settings of his console. “Calling Alpha Colony. Calling Alpha Colony. This is Xanth ship Beta. Come in, Alpha.”
To their surprise there was an answer. A centaur appeared on the screen. “Welcome, Beta! You are cleared for landing. Come on down!”
A perplexed look hovered in the vicinity. No contact for two years, then this sudden welcome? It was distinctly suspicious.
“We need to know somewhat more of your situation,” Mitch said. “Why did you not answer our prior queries?”
“Oh, did we overlook them?” the centaur asked. “A clerical error, no doubt. We’ve been quite busy here doing important things, and it must have slipped our attention. Come down and we’ll go through the records and discover the glitch. I’m sure it’s nothing be concerned about.”
Mitch opened his mouth, but hesitated. Something was definitely wrong.
Then the screen split. Another centaur appeared on the right side, a haggard creature with straggly hair and mane, sores on his body, and a general attitude of despondency. “Don’t land!” he gasped. “Flee immediately! It’s a trap!”
The centaur on the left glanced across. “Pay no attention to that creature on the other side. He’s crazy, a known lunatic.”
“They can’t touch the ship while it remains in space,” the bedraggled centaur said. “But once you land, they’ll—”
There was no more. His whole screen had disappeared.
“As I was saying,” the suave centaur said, “come on down. We’ll have a grand party and catch up on recent events. You will love it here. You’ll never leave.”
Captain Grey made a chopping motion with his hand. The screen went blank. “It seems we have a situation,” he said grimly. “Show of hands: which side seems more credible? The left or the right?”
All hands pointed to the right.
“So we are agreed,” Grey said. “The centaur colonists are captive to some dark power. That is why they have not answered prior queries, and have responded only now that our ship is in range. Should we flee?”
“The bleep!” Ease said, then added “Sir.”
“Point taken. We stay, of course,” Grey said. “We will orbit the planet while we decide what to do. We will not act rashly, but we will act. We shall now dissolve into separate discussion groups to consider our best course of action.” He turned away.
“Now this is interesting,” Tiara’s hair said. “Of course we know who is behind this.”
“We do?” Mitch asked.
“Capital D Demoness Fornax. She hates Demon Xanth and is always messing him up if she can. Far out as this colony is, it’s still in Xanth’s territory, because Fornax is from a whole separate galaxy far far away.”
“Fornax,” Mitch said. “I’m not conversant with big D Demons. How does she fit into the hierarchy?”
“Well, that’s complicated to explain.”
“I’m curious too,” Ease said. “If there’s any likelihood that we shall have to deal with the Demoness, we’ll need to know as much about her and the Demon framework as we can. Aren’t Demons all-powerful?”
“Oh, yes. But that’s not the whole story.”
“Anyone else want this information?” the hair asked.
“Yes, demoness,” Captain Grey said. “We are all interested.”
Metria was so startled she floated right up out of Tiara’s hair and coalesced into a cloud. Tiara’s hair sprang immediately to wildness. Then the demoness formed into a luscious woman figure with tight clothing just shy of the minimum standard of decency. Half an instant before all male eyes glazed, her bikini expanded into more competent coverage. She was of course a tease. “If that’s the way you feel,” she said. “If I may borrow the mirror for this purpose.”
“Borrow it,” Grey said.
Metria drifted up to the mirror, which illuminated for her. “No mortal or lesser demon knows how many Demons there are, or whom they may be,” she said. “But I have been around a while, a few centuries, and have picked up tidbits. There are about ten local Demons, and innumerable Dwarf Demons, which are below the Demons but above anything else. Each has its associated world and power. The Demon Xanth, for example, governs the Land of Xanth. In fact, all of the magic of the land of Xanth is the mere leakage of radiation from the skin of the Demon Xanth.” The screen showed the outline of the peninsu
lar Land of Xanth, with the word MAGIC.
“Similarly the Demon Earth associates with Mundania, and his magic of gravity suffuses that dreary realm.” The globular planet Earth appeared on the screen, together with the word GRAVITY. “The Demoness Venus has her own planet as the weak force, though it is weak only compared to the power of other Demons. The Demon Jupiter has his own big planet and the strong force. The Demon Mars has electromagnetic force. Demoness Saturn has the power of dimension; anything measured in any way relates to her. The Demon Neptune relates to mass and energy, and the Demon Nemesis to dark matter. There are others, but you get the picture.” Indeed, the screen was now full of planets and descriptive words.
“What about Fornax?” Mitch asked.
Metria flashed him with a brief fade-out of her clothing, showing her overstuffed bra and panties. That shut him up. “I was getting to her. She’s from a whole other galaxy, a million or so light years away. Why she messes with us I don’t think anyone knows. Her power is contra-terrene, CT (seetee), or anti-matter, the reverse of ours; it would take a scientist to explain it properly. Let’s just say that any of us who might touch any of that would disappear in a horrendous flash of energy, unless special arrangements were made. She and Demon Xanth have had Demon run-ins. I think she had her eye on him and thought to seduce him, but he married a local mortal girl instead, and that annoyed her.” Metria smiled grimly. “It is not wise to annoy any woman, but especially not a demoness, and totally not a Demoness. They say Hades has no fury like that of a woman scorned. That’s an understatement. Hades is too tame a term; that region associates with the Dwarf Demon Pluto, and Princess Eve now helps him govern it. So if we are up against Fornax, and I think we are, that second centaur’s advice is good: we need to get far, far away from here in a hurry hurry hurry, because she will have no mercy.”
“Thank you for that summation, demoness,” Captain Grey said. “Assuming that we are not going to flee, what is your advice?”
“Appeal to some other Demon to help. Nothing short of that will balk her.”
“And if there is no Demon convenient?”