Bud Sparhawk - Sam Boone and the Thermal Couple

Illustration by Kelly Freas

In 2172 Earth managed to get one cranky and primitive starship a single light-year from home where, coincidence of coincidences, it managed to get itself rammed by a Stellar class cruise ship which was far outside its approved lanes.

The Greebnean owner of the ship was so anxious to avoid the galactic Hegemony’s court system that it gave the human crew a replacement ship from the inventory as payment. “Never to speak of this event,” it had pleaded desperately as it clamped the viewer for the ship’s instruction manual over the captain’s arm, thinking that appendage was the human’s primary sense organ, much like its own. “Never to make a claim,” it said in closing as it sent the remains of the ruptured Earth ship, the pinnacle of humanity’s scientific and engineering genius, into the furnace of a local sun. It wanted no evidence of its transgressions hanging about.

Earth was ecstatic when the crew returned in their new ship, just three weeks later. The gift that had been placed in their hands provided enough engineering and scientific data to build an entire fleet of workable starships. Humanity could start to explore “local” space quickly and economically. Humanity could finally enter the galactic community and fulfill its destiny among the stars.

Much to its chagrin, humanity also discovered that far from being unique, intelligent life was quite common. Nearly all of the niches of life were already filled, as were more habitable planets (and quite a few that were only marginally so, like the Earth.)

The Galaxy was literally brimming with life in its manifold forms. The only thing that had prevented that knowledge from becoming apparent to mankind centuries before was humanity’s strange methods of using electromagnetic radiation for communications, something most of their local races had abandoned early on because of the problem of static and the inverse square law. Besides, there were so many other obvious and cheaper methods, such as the phloomb-driven ansible.

Lacking any places to settle and exploit, and lacking capital to enter the markets of the Hegemony, human explorers and entrepreneurs flailed about for years trying to find a niche where they could earn credits and become a part of interstellar commerce, the market in primitive human gewgaws and souvenirs notwithstanding. After all, how many Mickey Mouse hats (the Hegemony’s favorite item) could the galactic community absorb?

Finally Earth discovered its single marketable and very human, talent of negotiation—and began to earn valuable trade credits by sending arbitrators among the galactic community.

Sam Boone was one of the first of these.

Sam lay on his back in the lounge of the starship Perlieu with a cool bottle within reach on one side and a warm blonde on the other. Before him the immense sweep of the Milky Way arched like a brilliant sparkling rainbow across the velvet background of extragalactic space. The luxuriousness of the lounge and view were his very personal reward for the miserable months he’d had to spend on the fetid and overheated Scrofulous Five.

Even Ahbbbb, his supervisor, should have been happy. After all, Sam had finished the job nearly on time; normal for him and the reason he had become Ahbbbb’s key negotiator in the Periglena arm, which is to say, the only human around for about a jillion or so cubic light-years. Sam regretted that she hadn’t assigned him to some better venue, closer to home, closer to occasional human companionship. But life out here in the outer reaches of the Hegemony wasn’t too bad: Ahbbbb could charge whatever she damn well pleased for his services and squeeze every centime from each transaction. His fee usually included the normal cash in advance, a cut of which went into humanity’s trade account, some to Ahbbbb, and the rest to his personal account that she managed for him.

Usually all of Sam’s accommodations and travel were taken care of in a non-revocable advance, with an occasional luxury or two thrown in for his trouble; which was why he was enjoying the cool bottle, the warm blonde, and the spectacular view. There were a few drawbacks to interstellar travel, however.

His ears popped as one of those drawbacks became reality. The sudden increase in pressure signaled the ship’s arrival at his next assignment. He sighed deeply, squeezed the blonde one last time, took a swig from the bottle, glanced at the magnificent view, shook himself, and disconnected the leads at his temples. With a sad sigh of resignation he watched the rough, gray-speckled ceiling appear just a meter overhead as Milky Way, blonde, and bottle faded away from all of his senses. Little illusions like those were one aspect of Hegemony technology that made these trips in alien ships so bearable. Briefly, he wondered how long it would take before he became addicted—and then wondered if he really gave a damn: That had really been a nice blonde!

He wormed himself over to the annunciator, trying to keep his head from coming into contact with the rough surface of the ceiling, pulled a long pink tube from the wall, put it over his mouth, and blew hard four times in quick succession. He hdped that his lung capacity was equal to the task of depressing the tympanum of his steward, or whatever it called itself, at the other end of the communications device to alert it to the fact that he was ready to debark.

It would be a relief to finally get out of this terribly cramped compartment. The suite was luxuriously wide and roomy by the standards of the Needke, who were only one meter high and three across. Since he lacked the assortment of legs, tentacles, cilia or whatever they were that the Needke used for locomotion, Sam had been forced to crawl on his belly to get around the suite for the entire trip. He’d also grown extremely tired of eating out of his spartan and limited travel kit, a cuisine forced on him by his inability to digest the rock-like creatures that appeared to be the Needkes’s sole food supply.

He’d also discovered to his dismay that the small dusty depression in the floor that possibly served as a Needke bed was of no use to him. Instead he’d used a soft pad he’d found in a compartment, and whose real purpose he had never discovered, as a bed roll.

The Needke toilets had been the worst part of the trip.

Soon enough the narrow entrance to the stateroom slid open and one of the Needke huffed a modulated puff of musty smelling breath toward him. Since Sam’s ears weren’t the half meter wide tympani that could convert the light breeze into anything with a semblance of meaning he assumed that the steward was informing him that it was time to debark. In eager response he grabbed the handle of his kit and dragged it out into the hallway, a narrow chute that he hoped would lead to someplace where he could finally stand erect. It would probably take weeks to work out some of the kinks that the long voyage had created.

The Ja’aar station where he emerged from the chute was a huge, compartmented helix of pearlescent hues. The Ja’aar had developed spaceships from the gas-filled creatures of their world. These not only had skins capable of surviving the vacuum of near space but used the production of various biological gases for propulsion. Some, such as this station, grew hard bony shells that could be used as permanent housing.

Every Ja’aar around him was twittering and chirping and trilling in a nearly unbearable cacophony of sound that echoed back from the smooth walls. Sam found himself confronted by a vaguely bird-like character with a twittering voice that endlessly repeated the same song, “La-la-la” over and over and over and… He recalled from the prep tapes that these Ja’aar communicated by varying the tone and volume of their individual songs, the melody being each Ja’aar’s individual signature while the overtones carried the information. As a matter of fact, he recalled from Ahbbbb’s briefing that the last portion of each Ja’aar’s name was the key of its unique song.