That damned valet unit rolled in and adjusted my underwear.

I shot at it and it reached out and reloaded my staple gun for me.

"Arbolax, how do I get rid of this thing?"

"Tell it to color-code your book collection."

"Color-code my book collection, Raster!"
"At once, Master." It rolled away, bulging with a sense of purpose.

"I could learn to hate that thing once this feeling of intense loathing dissipates."

Arbolex threw a lightspanner at me. "Stop with the big words. Nobody is impressed. Besides, you are testing the translation programme something awful. Get over here and help me fix this thing before we lose our air scrubbers."

"Why can't we have Raster fix it?"

"Don't even think about it! Once he or one of his brothers tried to fix the water purification system and demonstrated a serious lack of ability to realize that beings have certain minimum metabolic needs. The stuff that came out of the cocks was almost poisonous and definitely gaseous! If we're gonna die from stupidity, let it be our own!"

So much for his concern for the translation programme. I happened to know, because I once dated an exo-anthropoligicolalie linguinist for her mind... (yeah, I know, but leave it alone)

that Arbolaxe's species, the Frontenax, have a language that is so far removed from any Earth form that the translation programme not only has to read their minds, but extrapolate what they might have said if they weren't so b****dy pissed at humans and human computers for existing in the first place. So I knew that what Arbolax had actually said probably would have scotched my ears and unsettled my liver.

I went to help him anyway, despite the fact that it was probably half-vivisecting him to admit that he needed assistance.


By some Joke of God or the All Mother, all known sentient tripedal beings breathed oxygen.

That also irked Arbolax to no end. He hated having anything in common with me.

That was okay. I had it on good authority from his mum that he was soon to die in some Pyrrhic Victory and then be reborn painfully in a Phoenix-like manner as the next level of evolution for their species: a space crab.

P%lforn entered the gangway, holding an Erlenmeyer filled with some orangish-grey muck. "Have you seen this? It's growing on the outer hull."

Arbolax looked up. "What does it taste like?"

"Food. That's all you ever think of. It's alive."

"Well if you don't like it wiggling as it goes down, then kill it or boil it first."

"You are not funny."

"Never are."

It is hard to tell from this conversation that they were one of the preeminent cross-species love stories. I doubt that either could reproduce from the union, but then who would want them to?

P%lforn flicked a spansule at Arbolax in a distinctly insulting manner and Arbolax blew him a kiss.

Yuck.


Then my object of desire, the pleasurebot, stuck it's head in the gangway and said in it's endearingly metallic voice," Darlings and disgusting things, I think we are about to be attacked."
The muck burst the flask and flew at my head.

Arbolax flicked out an armed braid of hair that contacted the muck in mid-air. The muck repelled the braid and Arbolax grunted. "It's not lethal," he said as it subsumed my face and I was bathed in a panoply of sensations.

I could hear P%lforn as if he was on the bottom of a well. "Pay attention," he said. "This could be an important first contact."


"To hell with that," said Arbolax. "We have an attack to rout. Let's go!"

Arbolax has always had an admirable grasp of priorities.


Then the muck infused with my cruciform and splendiform mandibular membranes and spoke to me. "Listen carefully," it said. "Billions of sentient lives are at stake and what you do in the next thirty seconds will mean the difference between the death of a hundred unborn stars and the birth of a new generation of rough-hewn but sincere pop musicians who will change the face of modern music as we know it forever."

"Ach," I said, inside my head. "I'd rather have a good stiff drink and watch an old episode of 'No Sex Please'."

"Ooo, too right, mate. Hadn't thought of it that way. To hell with everyone else?"

"To hell with everyone else!"