Harry Harrison - Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers

"Though we are both crack athletes and in topnotch shape," Jerry said, "there is just one thing. Though we have had a good deal of water to drink, we have had no food, other than a mouthful of grass, in the past week. Sally is in the same shape, although she has at least seen a sandwich go by twice. So the big question is – is there anything we can eat?"

"There might be – but we must be very wary," SlugTogath responded with trepidation. "Our proteins may be poison for you, and so forth. I suggest we take samples of your blood, sputum and krakkis-"

"Krakkis?" Jerry asked.

"Well, not krakkis maybe. I guess maybe only we Garnishee have krakkis. Let's have the other samples, and our topnotch scientists will bring you a report within minutes." Not only did they bring a report within minutes but something even better: a wheeled table covered with a shining metal dome.

"Congratulations!" Slug-Togath reported. "Your vital fluids, other than your krakkis, check out to ten decimal points identical with those of the Garnishee. So what we eat you can eat, though you may not like it."

"What do you eat?" John asked, sniffing the air strongly.

"A simple peasant meal," Slug-Togath said, whipping the metal cover off the table. "Of prifl, torkootchy and korpsk," he intoned, pointing to a thick, medium-rare steak, baked potato, and black-eyed peas.

"I'll have a large prifl with torkootchy," Jerry said, seizing a long-tined fork. "And maybe the korpsk on the side."

He had to move fast to dodge the flying cutlery of his shipmates, and within seconds they were tucking into the banquet and stuffing themselves with yumms and mmmms of approval.

"My regards to the cook," Jerry mumbled without stopping chewing. "He does a great steak."

"He'll be glad to hear that," Slug-Togath rumbled pleasurably. "We have been pretty much vegetarians for years because the war used up most of the Ormoloo, but things are better now. We got a lot of chops and steaks out of the last battle."

The three Earthlings stopped eating for a moment and their eyes bulged as they realized they were eating their former allies, then enemies, now reduced back to their normal role of meat animals.

"It's as if we were fighting a war against Angus cows," Jerry explained, speaking for them all. "We wouldn't let all those steaks go to waste just because they were the enemy. And you know what happens to a bull after a bullfight."

Thus reassured, they dived in with a will and cleaned their plates under the benevolent and multiple eyes of their host. When the last scrap of food had been consumed, both John and Sally crapped out on the spot and began to snore. But not so Jerry, who knew his duty to rescue his comrade, so he staggered to his feet; besides, he had to find the head. It proved to be an interesting cubicle, and he couldn't figure out how anything really worked, but he did his best and emerged ready for work. In a matter of minutes the particle accelerator was fired up and calibrated and the ball of cheddar underwent the barrage that transformed it into a new form of matter. Jerry spared time for only one jubilant gaze before rushing to construct the necessary circuitry to activate the cheddite to generate the kappa radiation. Here the eons-old genius of the Garnishee came into play, and he was shown how to operate an incredible machine that constructed other machines from an outline of their functions drawn on a screen. In a matter of seconds it delivered a stronger, yet miniaturized version of the original cheddite projector – no bigger than an Earth flashlight. In fact, it looked very much like a five-cell flashlight with the cheddite mounted in the evacuated chamber with a glass cover just where the bulb would normally be. It could be mounted in delicate gimbals for distant work and could also be used as a hand weapon whisking anything it was pointed at into the lambda dimension, then depositing the whisked-away object one hundred feet above the surface of the nearby sun. A potent weapon indeed. The other two awoke, groaning, to a demonstration of the device.

"That's half the game." John eructated. "Now the Pleasantville Eagle must be prepared as a space vessel to continue the chase."

"Some work while others sleep!" Jerry chuckled. "Just come and look what the incredible Garnishee have done with their eons-old knowledge."

He led the way back to their plane, which looked superficially the same, though it had been polished to a high gloss. However, major changes had been made in the interior, not all of which were always visible to the naked eye.

"First off," explained Jerry, "the space between the inner and outer skin of the plane has been filled with insulite, which is a better insulater than a vacuum, I have been told. All the exterior windows are of transparent armolite, which is clear as glass and as strong as steel. We won't need oxygen for the engines, though there is now a supply for ourselves, since the fuel tanks are filled with combustite, a fuel a thousand times more powerful than our ordinary jet fuel and which does not need oxygen to burn. This is also used for powerful jets under the tail that may come in handy someday. All batteries have been replaced with ones made of Garnishee capacitite which seem to have unlimited capacity for storing electrical energy. Back here the galley has been expanded into a complete kitchen with hibachi and radar oven, and beyond it a frozen food locker that could feed us for five years if need be. Farther back is a completely outfitted laboratory and machine shop with stockpiles of raw ingredients. In this locker are extra-powerful spacesuits, each almost a small spaceship in itself, one for each of us and – gosh, I hope he uses it one for Chuck as well." He hurried on so they would not hear the huskiness in his voice, but they heard it nevertheless and understood.

"Up here on top, the flight deck has been expanded right back to take over the entire first-class lounge; the bar's a deck below now, to hold all the new equipment and controls. This chair here is for the gunner because remote-controlled gun turrets have been installed in twelve positions and armed with rapid-fire weapons firing pellets filled with destructite, an explosive a thousand times more powerful than gunpowder."

He went on to point out the various controls and other devices far too numerous to mention, though he promised to later, but he did point out and take pride in one set of controls that filled an entire end of the compartment

"I don't know if we will ever need this," he opined, "but the old Eagle has been equipped with a space drive, the same kind that the Lortonoi and everyone else in the galaxy use, the only kind of space drive that cut the mustard until the cheddite projector came down the pike and knocked it into a cocked hat It's called a space warper."

"How does it work?" John queried.

"By warping space. There is a great projector source which projects a beam of energy through a disk of warpite. This produces a new form of radiation that emerges in the form of warpicles, not wavicles, and is sent blasting through space ahead of the ship. What it does is reach out and seize the very fabric of space itself and pull it toward the ship until there is a great bulge in space flattened out before the ship, which then flies through it as the warp is released so that it emerges on the far side of the bulge, which is maybe a light year or so ahead. Clear?"

"Clear!" John articulated. "I wish I had a bit of what you been smoking."

"All right, no need to get shirty; let me give you the example that the Garnishee gave me. Imagine your spaceship as being a needle lying on a rug – you with me so far?"

"The sarcasm we can live without," John huffed. "Get on with it."

"Roger. So, the warpicles reach out and pull on space the rug now – and pull it toward the needle so that a great big bulge of rug is pulled up in front of the needle. Then the needle is pushed through just two thicknesses of rug, and the bulge is pulled flat, and zip! the needle is now a couple of feet away though it only went through two thicknesses of the rug. Simple. You can understand, can't you, Sally?"