John Adams - Federations

“Tell me,” he said to one of the ammonia/ice blobs awaiting his arrival at the spaceport, “are your females frigid?”

Once local Galactic officials had secured his release from the hotbox… the space cadet was rather vexed at them. The ammonia/ice blobs of Amana XI tormented convicts by subjecting them to heat well above the freezing point of water, and were also inblobane enough to make them endure an oxygen-enhanced atmosphere. Some of the munchies were stale, but it was the best digs ol’ Rufus Q. could’ve found on the whole planet.

He got back into his coldsuit for a whirlwind tour of the devastated palace. Once the whirlwind subsided, he saw on the icy wall now exposed to the elements—and compounds—some writing in an alien script he couldn’t begin to read. “What’s that say?” he asked.

“In your symbology, it would stand for RD,” the nearest ammonia/ice blob answered.

“Probably doesn’t mean Research and Development , then,” Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash sighed. “That’ll teach me to hit the I Feel Lucky button, even if I did.”

“What are you going to do?” the blob demanded. “Do you not see the magnificence despoiled?”

“Reminds me more of the inside of a root freezer without the goddamn roots,” the forthright space cadet replied. He was, by then, quite looking forward to seeing the inside of the hotbox once more. The ammonia/ice blobs appeared overjoyed to oblige him, too. His only real complaint was that the seeds they fed him still weren’t of the freshest. He stuffed his cheek pouches full even so.

Once local Galactic officials had secured his release from the hotbox again, they gently suggested his investigation might proceed more promisingly elsewhere. He was inclined to agree with them; he’d discovered that spitting seed casings inside a coldsuit was an exercise in sloppy futility.

Thus it was that Cadet Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash reboarded the redoubtable Habitrail , spun the wheel up to translight speed, and sped off to Gould IV and its saurian humanoids. Past walking on their hind legs, they didn’t particularly remind him of Frenchmen. Of course, they were even less hamsteroid, which might have colored his opinion. As far as he was concerned, anything with a long scaly tail at one end and a big mouth full of sharp teeth at the other was not to be trusted.

One of the saurians at the spaceport eyed him and remarked, “You look like you’d go down well with drawn butter.”

Shup drew not butter but his trusty blaster. “You look like you’d look good on my wall,” he replied cheerfully. “In this Galaxy, nothing is certain but death and taxidermy.”

He belonged to the Patrol. He had the right to carry any weapon he chose. If he killed, he was assumed to know what he was doing. The Galaxy, as you will have figured out, was in deep kimchi, but this isn’t that kind of story. This is the kind of story where the saurians would have jugged him not for toting lethal hardware but as punpunishment. And since it is that kind of story, you may rest assured they did.

Once local Galactic officials had pulled the cork from the jug, a somewhat chaster (he was alone, after all, and not even bull-hamster horniness could make the saurians sexy) but unchastened Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash emerged. He didn’t even have to draw his blaster again—which was just as well, since he was no artist—to get the saurians to take him to their royal palace so he could view the missing throne room and antechamber (or rather, view that they were missing—he couldn’t very well view them while they were missing, could he?) and what he was coming to think of as the inevitable graffiti.

There seemed to be rather more of them this time. “What do they say?” he inquired of his guide, a stalwart, shamrock-green Gouldian named Albert O’Saurus.

Albert seemed to have inherited a full set of teeth from each parent, and a set from each grandparent, too, maybe for luck. “‘Royal Drive,’” he answered. “‘Next stop—Galactic Central!’”

Sinister organ chords rang out in the background, or at least in the space cadet’s perfervid imagination. “A clue!” quoth he.

“Faith, what a brilliant deduction,” Albert O’Saurus said—the Gouldians didn’t find sarcasm illegal, immoral, or fattening. “And how did you come up with it, now?”

Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash eyed the saurian. “Well, it’s not exactly a cloaca-and-dagger operation,” he replied.

Once local Galactic officials had pulled the cork from the jug again—it took longer this time, as second offenses, and offensive offenses, were commonly punpunished by devourment—they encouraged him to spread his talents widely across the sea of stars. “If you stay here any longer,” one of them said, “the Gouldians will eat you. With mustard.”

The hamster space cadet made a horrible, incisor-filled face. “Can’t stand mustard,” he said. “Ta-ta! I’m off! Me and the baked beans.”

“Where will you go?” the official inquired.

“Galactic Central, I do believe,” Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash answered.

Ah, Galactic Central! I could go on for pages, or even reams—the disadvantage of being an omniscient narrator. But this isn’t that kind of story, either, and I will pause while you thank your local deity or demon that it isn’t…. There. Are you finished now? Good. We can go on.

What you do need to know about the fabulous Galactic Central, and what you will most likely (probability, 87.13%—how’s that for omniscient?) have figured out for yourself, is that it boasts the grandest and spiffiest palace in all the Galaxy, that being where the Galactic Emperor and Empress hang out. Said palace boasts the most garish and over-the-top—excuse me, most colorful and extravagant—throne room in all the Galaxy, and also the most likewise and likewise—excuse me, most likewise and likewise—antechamber in all the et cetera.

“I bet the bad guys are going to try and steal them for the Royal Drive,” Shup said as he powered up the Habitrail ’s wheel. Then he said, “What the hell is the Royal Drive?” Except for the graffiti on Gould IV, he’d never heard of it.

Google had never heard of it, either. Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash wondered whether he was accessing the Chinese system. But no. It was—cue the portentous music again—Something New.

Though his electronic aids failed him, the dedicated space cadet persevered. He had one major advantage over the others whom Erasmus Z. Utnapishtim (remember him?) might have chosen to save the Galaxy… or at least its throne rooms and antechambers. Not only was he a hamster, he was a punster as well, as he had proved to the dismay and discomfiture of ammonia/ice blobs and shamrock-green saurian humanoids alike.

And as he neared Galactic Central, he suddenly slowed on the wheel in astonishment—and almost pitched the P.S. Habitrail back into normal space in an abnormal place. That wouldn’t have been good—so he didn’t actually do it.

What he did do was cry out, “Eureka!” Why the name of a not very large city in northern California should have become the cry for discovering something, Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash did not know, but it had. The Patrol could be a tradition-bound—even a tradition-gagged—outfit sometimes.

He spun the wheel up to an almost blistering pace. Then, when his feet and little front paws started to hurt, he slowed down again—but not so much, this time, as to endanger his speedster. He thought furiously, which was odd, because he wasn’t particularly furious.

“It must work that way,” he said. “This story won’t run long enough for a lot of wrong guesses.” If he’d guessed wrong there, he might have found himself trapped in a novel, but the speedster wasn’t a Fforde, so he escaped that fate, anyhow. He shook his head and snuffled his whiskers at the iniquity of the throne-room (and antechamber) thieves. “I must foil them,” he declared, and checked his supplies of aluminum, tin, and silver.