THE MAN WHO LOVED IN LIGHT YEARS It rained until the end of time on Gothica, a godly matrix of ancientness. A planet straining with the bulk of buttressed wieldy cathedrals matrixed in a fit of rheumy wet granite and marble. The monks built it since Whenever came once. It always rained on this spired, corniced, ballustraded, authentic ruins of a globe. It was a holy place once; now it was catacombs and charnel bones and skulls long since dislodged. Cremated with a pop in the ovens, and raked dust. The leaf of ash, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the rain kept the dust forever on the cobblestone streets whispering with antiquity. Landing on the planet, from a spaceship granted leave and welcome, they could see the roofs and spires shooting up majestically all in grey soot. Shouting to the heavens in celestial joy once, now in old favor to formidably spike the blackness of space itself in the clouds. Ever reaching upwards, in perpetual gloom amidst the tremolo incessant rains that always came. It was a place, a locus of reflecting, penitentiary. To look inward, to find your soul that had been shoveled amongst the star remnants long ago in the age of information and light years annihilated by technology. The monks and organists, the monasteries held their secrets forever. Asylum against the brute forces of out there. Gothica was a place for believing in an apostolic truth or two, to profess a faith. As the callow rain one huddled against, as it hit one's face, and to pray to your supreme. Many were converted. Opera houses were as grand as anywhere in known space. Vaulted infinite ceilings and pits with the finest orchestras bellowing out woodwinds of mellow. Strings cutting into your soul. Resounding forth cascades of Mahler, Rachmaninoff (how suiting for the rains) and requiems, sacred masses for the dead. Fauré, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, all were present as android simulacra; Liszt was holed up in his study. All composed as their attentive computer chips programmed them. Rachmaninoff could be seen striding down the stairs at La Scala, his electric handwarmer, grey overcoat, gaunt face amidst a tall frame, convict hair style, starched collar, and circa 1920s suit. To find his way to a Busendorfer or be seen with Horowitz in the Steinway basement. Playing his third concerto and proclaiming it a true workhorse. Von Bulow was conducting Brahms in harmony with the heavens borealis glowing like lanterns in the skies. Piercing the gray armored clouds once in a while with a white blue sun fiercely shouting its own solar noise. Bathing Gothica in a basking glow warm and cuddling the wetness. The entire planet was corniced but edified into a subline ancientness and craftsmanship now idiotically gone. The catacombs ran the planet in crisscrosses filled with graffiti and special offerings, incense. High masses in Latin were refrained by android bishops. Gothic Milan, Notre Dame, Chartres, Appollinaire with spire, Basilicas, olucas, rues. Saints repeated on nameless lips in reverent babble and orisons, nymphs to God. Blessings upon visitors seeking something were all there. It was the holiest of places still. The rains perpetually came but ran down gutters and runnels, and the streets were cleaned and washed of their dusty antiquity. Disinfected and lingering wetness wasn't dismal, but made one feel a sweet serendipitous melancholia of sadness and lachrymosity. Masses were shoulder-to-shoulder with those who sought themselves and smelled the dank obtuse incense that fraught over them in their communion. Transubstantiation amidst the gargoyles hanging effortlessly and until time ended in the cloudy mists outside, vigilant on haunches and grinning unknown. After a sullen silence of five days in space with boring Hugh Hudson cavorting to her great aunt's deathbed, this planet was what crept up majestically into the port window of the rattling rentarocket. They went through mists of azure. Sprinkles splatted against the hull, rockets fired with reticence against the insolent holy gravity. "This isn't the golly gooper OLD VIC planet, you geek!" Alexis said. In tap pants and lingerie top, she straddled the floor of the ship in a fetus position. Now she sat up. "How would you like to get married? Lots of couples come to this place to get married." He tried to brush her hair with his hand. She pushed it away. "I'm tired of fighting your stupid advances, you gooper wow spaceboy freak!" She added, "Besides, you are an agnostic. Since when do you believe in monk orders and the Jesuits and cathedrals?" He sat back matter-of-factly as they landed. "If you marry me I will believe in God." He tried for a second to touch her arm but reneged. The door of the ship opened after the ship settled into the granite rocketpad. Alexis walked out. He followed her. Down the ancient tarmac they went in the drizzling rain. She was hungry after his packaged gunk he brought along that tasted like mutant vomit compressed into morsels. "I'm going to give you one chance to answer this question," Alexis stood and said angrily. Her mouth was curled with tears of rain in glistening droplets in her raven hair. "Okay," Dr. Hudson said. "Is my aunt dying? After all I would have read about it in the newspaper. She is the most famous star alive. I should have known. She's not dead or sick or anything?" "She may be, or maybe not," he said. "You won't marry me?" he asked with a hint of obsessiveness. "Of course not. I'd rather join an order of interplanetary nuns than marry a bastard like you. Kidnapping me and not taking me where I want to go." She walked into the edge of the tracts of joined houses. All gloomy trenchant visages of sadness and dirt in their cracks of rotting malignancy. This ancient piece of granite was held together by mud and bones that Gothica was. Down the street the replica of the Milan cathedral was giving a high mass and choirs of android choruses sang a requiem. It was the Fauré, Dr. Hudson noted. They walked into its doors. The immensity that this humongous stately holy monstrous cathedral was! Alexis sat in a pew, crying. Wondering what had happened to her life. What about her Hollywood contract? Why wouldn't this man leave her alone? He kidnapped me. I've got to ask him to take me to my aunt's or back to Palm Springs World. He should be man enough to do that nicety for me. He adores me. She wept and she didn't know why, in a pew in the immense and spectacular interior cavern of this grand church. Outside it was thundering now. The choir sang the Sanctus, so far to the front of the church. The organ and orchestra seeped through the air in a fashion. A funeral was in progress. An android bishop performed the ceremony, a remembrance of this poor person. The 'cum sanctus qui i a pi, qui i a pi, tu is cum sanctus, cum santus in in a chel is tu a pi tu is'. They sang heavenly indeed. Incense filled Alexis and Hudson's nostrils. For a second they were swept up in the reverence to the ceremony. The wondrousness of this cathedral. It was the most noteworthy piece of architecture anywhere, Hudson thought. Hudson found himself, when he wasn't looking over at pouting, crying Alexis, (her wet robe was over her teddy tap pants and shirt and sandals), had wiped her red eyes. All this has been quite a strain on this poor creature of loveliness. All I want is perpetual happiness. In mists of shrouded incense stood a Hector Berlioz android. He conducted the orchestra machinery and android cherabim of choirs. Unfurling lachrymose blends of Faith, Hope and Charity in the eternal bliss in this closed, shunted cathedral opening up to the triumphant folds of heaven unknown. He couldn't be programmed as demented as when the real Berlioz followed Harriett Smithson the actress. Stalking couldn't be a trait given willingly from the computerheads into birth of solder liquid hellfire. Braised into solid circuit machineries of joy and celestial animation. Hugh Hudson was, through his blackened sockets of eyes haggard with glowing fires, rekindled since his Alexis so sweet nectar filled bon bon was here with him. Berlioz was who Dr. Hudson recognized from the existing daguerreotypes of the real composer. How fitting that this man was playing Fauré, a requiem composition that was post mortem, beyond his ken. As if he could reach out beyond the grave to grasp it and enfold it, to hear it shine. Berlioz was eyeing Aurora. Berlioz was just a dumbass android model here to pretty up the works of this gunky planet of dust glued together by the sweet rainy season. Berlioz: Here I am in the Dies Irae, and I need someone to possess, to create from the sticking point, my opera. This little weeping girl is she. After this tumultuous and hardly auspicious rendering of Gabrielle Fauré, I shall go over and make myself known. How could I see so well, a light year across the various pews from smack dab in the front of the Cathedral. To scope out quintessential bottled beauty, a vintage heretofore unknown. A veritable palette on my quivering lips. It was a long distance romance already, the android thought. His arms waved in the manner of Toscannini that had been stuck inordinately through his being by computerheads long dead. An idée fixe of Symphonie Fantastique indeed came up in his heads throughout wisps of laser beams and electronic meter pulses. Rhythm and hemiola taught by the Bernstein android (how exultant was his Chichester Psalms and Kaddish Berlioz thought in his head of grey white wispy hair on a furious old fierce face rivalling Liszt). An idée fixe when the head drops into the wicker basket in the symphony with a final plop. How atonally misguided his detractors were in their unforgiving criticism! This petulant creature. Her skin was so filled with vibrant luster. His magnifying, trajectory eyes crept all the way, swooping over heads of humpbacked molish folk saying rosaries in their own world. He could see over the masses in their clusters of vigilance to the android bishop. The statues weeped on cue through electronic mirabile dictus. He saw this girl up close, and how photogenic her portraiture was! Oh, to write another book on composition. Just to teach her to play a simple minor scale. A harmonic minor chord that struck in his metallic heart if he had one! Dr. Hudson thought he ssw something through the incense, a perjured lust from that conductor. Berlioz, or Furtwangler or whatever pitiful piece of machinery borne offworld and resided in this evangelism. Dr. Hudson looked back over and put a black veil over his faithful girl's head. She didn't brush it away like he thought she would. My little interplanetary nun, who be so chaste. And me, the defrocked codpieced priest run amok in orgiastic papal middleages. This outrageous place that transcended the white alabastic futurity of everywhere else. Of colonies and newness, of smooth pastel flush walls and spacewheels whirling away. Of planets smoothed over with concrete after being terraformed and raped and pillaged. Here I am. She won't marry me. What do I do next? Take her to see her Auntie. Or take her back. Or kidnap her and a course of bliss till I get caught by interpol and cosmic detectives that can ferret one out in a cold cosmos? MOVIETONE MARS He found himself walking the theme parks, alone in a swelling crowd of spuds. Most of the other families were checking their guidebooks and now reveling in the sudden appearance of Ronald Colman. He walked through the Three Deuces Inn attractions, having paid his pittance. Inside, he saw the androids dancing the Charleston, and wondered about his trip with the androids. Then, through the partitions and the ropes, Ronald Colman walked over to Errol Flynn, and tapped him on the shoulder. Errol looked where dashing Ronald Colman was pointing, right in the direction of himself, Paul Roberts. The tourists gasped, "Look! They are looking at us!" "Do they know we are here an' all?" one withered man with a metal hand holding a maui wowie cigarette asked, in a fog of pink hemp smoke. One fat lady carrying her own artiforg stomach in a suitcase, said: "They ain't supposed to pay attention to us, that's downright i-llegawl." The other people laughed. Errol saluted Paul steadfastly at attention as a New Zealand naval officer or pirate would! Paul smiled. It was the android to whom he had told everything, the Great Purge, Movie Stars, what humans are like. They must have unloaded and already put these new models to work. The crowd swooned with astonishment, gaping with their mouths and entertained. Paul walked around and admired some silent silver nitrate two-reelers of a robotic W.C. Fields. Drunken screenwriters arguing and sparring in replicas of famous writer's dens of iniquity like Musso and Frank's, which used to be on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where Bill Faulkner and Jim Thompson drank. The plaque on the side said the Movietone people shipped the entire actual interior of the restaurant to Mars, bit by bit. What a lot of bother. Boudoirs with stars kissing from great scenes from the past. All the various displays hawking the gloriously nebulous past. He missed Vicky. He wasn't having much luck on Mars, in these halls of malls and tubes and tunnels. And bars. His salvation. How many bars were there on Mars? He trudged back to the flophouse after several hours. He lay down on the creaky hard bed. He thought he had noticed Katherine Hepburn. Maybe the one, if it was the one, that was violated by Sam or Mike, or both, loony cargo pilots who pillaged their own cargo. He would have to try the bars out again, tomorrow. He could hear air leaking out of his room, like he was breathing Mars air too, just a bit. He had covered a lot of territory today. He had tried all the joints on the outskirts, now he would have to try and go asking around at the cheesy tourist bars, on the off chance that he was going about it all wrong. Asking the wrong people. He didn't seem to be getting anywhere with the Martian locals. Nothing but white trash miners and criminals. Criminals didn't care about movie stars, they didn't even know who Bob Hope was or nothing. He slept that night and did some erotic dances in his fever-dreams. Vicky was making love to him and was on top writhing like a harlot, a tramp in some film noir piece of whimsy or filigree. He pleasured in this, but to his horror she had inseams of bioplasmic origin around her lovely neck. Vicky was an android. Her Death and Transfiguration was somehow because they were outlaws, or political threats to the Earth way of living. And he was out here wallowing in deprecation like all the others on the insidiously wanton red planet. And he was one of the fringe players, a down and out hoodlum on the lam. In this Sturm and Drang. He woke and sat up, breathing hard. A bottle of cut-rate bourbon next to him, after a few jiggers made him feel better, egregiously so. The mars clouds hovering low level kind of cleared at night and one could see Woodrow Wilson peak and the other ridges. He thought about the feudal lords, and whether they knew something? Could he live out there in the burthen of no air and possibly survive? He sighed and cursed the crimson darkness, the two moons way out there somewhere. He didn't stop looking at the shining orbs of the moons until the bottle of cheap bourbon was a lot lower. Like the level he was seeking in his downward trek to inferno, under the monumental volcanoes of the FDR range to the southeast, above the crusty surface away from lewd activity. The jayhawkers, the strip joint barkers, the android brothels, the android slavers, drug cartels, the leaking-air freaktents filled with live, homegrown, flippered mutant babies in jars in pensive moods, con scams, opium dens, crooked cops, the outlaws that mingled and killed and the tourists who ate it all up with a spoon. He was millions of miles away from New Orleans, the Vieux Carre, and a past that seemed so real a few months ago, and he knew there was no going back. TILTING PLANET (THE TROUBLE WITH XENODES) Jihv put the finishing touches on his kinetic painting of what he though was an ancient oil rig in Texas on Terra. He didn't seem to be feeling quite like his old neurotic psychotic self, but worse. Yesterday was Toastday, he remembered, and he had felt a violent headache right at the shank of the afternoon that dismal day. What had led that on, he wondered now? As he reached into the icebox beyond the guava fruit hybrids, he was looking for the last Supsi Cola in there. He grasped the ear-pincer friendly to and twisted the cap off. He brought the Supsi Cola to his mandible mouth and gulped two swallows. He was extraordinarily thirsty. Just another side effect of the BETAZELLERILL in addition to his ordinary medicine. Funny taste, he thought quizzically. There was, he imagined now, almost a medicinal flavor to the darned stuff. Supsi was usually so tasty. No, maybe it wasn't really that way, medicinal. But still a tasty treat. Now I've gotten tired again, and it's probably because of these lengthy bouts of torturous painting. My art should be relaxing to me, he knew, not this. But then again, I'm the only Xenode here in a thousand that hasn't lost his three lobed mind. Granted, he thought, I've overmedicated my poor self ten times over the recommended dosage of everything; the side effects are almost damaging to me. Just more indelible pain. Just heap it atop a mountain of pain that was once a brace, a deep open sewer or ravine of emptiness. At least this pain fills a void that was once emptiness. I --- wait a minute . . . I can't even sit up in my bed -- I feel that faint! He shut his small pair of yellow beads of eyes. One hundred thousand eons later, it seemed, he opened his eyes. He was in an art gallery of vast dimensions, to the horizon, in fact. All around him were the barbarians. He felt his diastolic go through the roof as he focused. Barbarians coming to get me, he thought. I will observe this. His paintings were hanging on every square inch of this infinite gallery, only at odd angles, upside down. The barbarians stood around, seeming to admire his works. Now he realized, the painting shifted and now weren't any works that he'd ever painted at all, not a solitary brush stroke. Now he froze. He saw above him, way above, the two red suns climb down, from under the vaulted ceiling 1000 kilometers high. They were cutting through a green fog and blaze with miniature glory but with the absence of heat. The urns began animated speaking in what sounded like ancient terran Latin . . . "Cum Santis tuis, qui a pi tus it; Domine, oh Domine, excelsius; Cum Santis tu is in excel, qui a pi tu is . . ." The bottom star sang out of a golden seam. The second star exploded into John Phillip Souza's "Star Spangled Banner." Trumpets of flaring flame shot out, and toots of sound came from each of these. Jihv just sat there, stunned and cowering from the barbarians, who very much seemed not to notice him, but rather literally stepped over him, admiring paintings. Bocklin's "Isle of the Dead," Munch's "The Scream," Titians, Hogarths, Remingtons, and many other famous terran masterpieces. He saw that over there was a Lichenstien, a Warhol, a Picasso, lots of those. A Matisse. A David Smith sculpture, a Jackson Pollock that was riveting, a Larry Rivers. Hmm, he wondered, through his oblivious and semi-terror as he tried to figure out what he was doing here at all. These were all terran works of art, he managed to ratiocinate that as much. The suns were now dropping from the ceiling ever closer in this immense portico, even right towards him. Then as they almost seemed to envelop him, they fizzled out as fake props. The barbarians began suddenly to wreck everything is sight, still ignoring him. Every precious Terran ancient work of art in tatters and incinerated, ripped to iotas, and stomped upon to shreds and fragments. He managed to look up again as the sun rose and were not cooled, simmering black cinders, hanging just above him. It was all he could do but look at his incomprehensible sight. He looked about him at the swarms of barbarians, which were giving him palpitations of an unmentionable degree of acing pain. Fear, literal wide Xenode psychotic fear promulgated within his fibre. The barbarians clamored around and about him, then seemed to disappear into the melting walls, which spiraled gloppily to enable them to escape as if to another dimension of reality. I've chased them away, or rather avoided them. So new, maybe I can just sleep here, right on this floor. Barbarians fleeing silently, semi-illusions. He became encased in an enormous frozen flame for what seemed a long enough wink of eternity. Then he fell asleep, somehow never figuring all this out. He awoke sometime late, with an enormous three lobed headache. He took some headache powders that danced in his pincer glass with a whistle and he gulped it down and desperately took ten times the recommended dose of Betazeliril and his own medicine. Better to die of overdose that to trip out, as the terrans coined the phrase. Now, what in Dante's Inferno happened to me? Try to think fool. Silly sensate idiot, I am. The last thing I remembered was that I drank something and then went to bed. It wasn't a dream or night gaunt, that was a full fledged hallucination. And the way he was feeling at the moment, he shuddered with white clear fear like it was Kentucky moonshine in a Pyrex beaker that he had once tried. I am here, I am safe. I am in my hotel suite apartment a the Iridium resort. There are the two suns coming up like inchworms over the sea of yellow water. Just like they always do. It's the next day, yesterday, was it Toastday, or Baconday? Tomorrow is Hamsday again. I've got to reorient myself. Artists have had enough items as they are already to go around losing themselves in these weird trance like states of hypnogogic weirdness. I've got to vidphone Fihv, my precious artistic writer. Southern Xenode gentleman. Scoundrel. Jihv dared not to go outside his penthouse suite yet. Not safe enough to be around people. His head was getting better, but why these extraordinary thing to happen to me? -- he thought, I've finally succumbed to what every other poor pathetic citizen of this mote dust globule has done, gone whacko psycho crazy mental. He sat up in bed and turned on the entertainment box. No, what if I see Barbarians? I've already seen enough of them as it is in that manifested art gallery. God of gnosticism, my Mohammed, my Sirion, what have I experienced? Allah, and Buddha and Fgshtow of Galaxia! He knew just what to do. Call the psychiatrist's union office. He dialed the old fashioned styled vidphone, circa 2100 elegant. "Hello? Yes, my name is . . ." "This is a recording for the Terran psychiatric league. All of our Tendill's are busy. If you'll please hold, we will answer your call in the order in which it was received . . ." Then a blank visage of white phosphor emptiness, and then Ingmar Bergman's ancient art movie, Persona came on . . . What a sordid thing to hold on while watching this Terran wretchedness. He waited a total of six scrambled egg minutes, almost, and then click, whirl and void filled on screen. "Hi, I'm a Tendill named Greg, can I help you?: It was a computer bank of tendill mindblower chips all rigged in a lan, a phone bank. "Yes, I'd like to schedule an appointment with Dr. Chomsky. No, can I switch? I loathe Dr. Chomsky . . ." "Sir, your location, please?" the Tendill chip said. "Oh, Rue de Madeleine, near Huntestrasser section, at the Hotel Iridium, Bungalow 13, Penthouse Suite. My vidphone number is 857396829a . . ." "Okay and you say you do not want an appointment with your accredited doctor?" "No. And I am receiving paranoid schizophrenic delusions, you know, like everyone else is . . ." "Are you calm?" it said. "Yes, but I've overmedicated myself." "What medication have you taken?" "Well, I've been taking 200 milligrams of Tornidolathixine, my usual medication, and a mild anti-depressant five times over, called tasifolidol, and your best friend, Greg wants to know if you have been satisfying new codicil law 375 as ordinated by our Prime Minister, have you been taking you Betazellerill, kind sir?" "Yes, about ten times worth what I am supposed to take. But I hallucinated last night. Terrible dream vision." "Hmm, I see," it said, programmed to sound soothing and wise and dedicated. It continues as the holographic face smiled at him by the false name of Greg. I loathe you, Greg, Jihv wanted to say. "So what should I do, Greg? Can you find me another doctor? I'm feeling rather psychotropically drugged." "Hmm, this sounds like a medical emergency. There are good chances I can connect you with one of our finest doctors on staff here at the exchange." "Fine, Greg. What's his name?" "I will laser page a one, Dr. William Radner. He is staying at your Hotel Iridium. How does that sound? Would you like to se him now, or can I set you up for an appointment of Eggsday of next week?" "I don't know. If I'm finally crazy I guess overmedicating myself the way I've been doing isn't going to do anything for me but kill me?' "Hmm, I see. How do you feel, and your name is?" Gawd of Allah, why didn't they ask me earlier, he thought. "Jihv Rallagoon. I used to be with Dr. Chomsky." "Hmm, I see," Greg said, smiling and nodding like Homer himself. Even Homer nodded, you blithering cartoon, Jihv thought as he waited and his poor grey head ached. GALACTIC SMUT MERCHANTS The movie shoots continued in their adulterous lustiness on Rodie under the blazing coloration of monster gas planet, Tiresius. The whole lot of humans were now engaging in relations with each other regardless of sex, creed or color. And with the beckoning Tryphen who welcomed them with open silver thin arms. Threeways, fourways, Sheila on the bottom, Gretchen on top, Kippleman and Dr. Kerry with two Tryphen females. Sheila looked at herself in a laser mirror in her old bedroom on Earth. She loved her little pigtails today. Mommay and Daddy were fighting again, but now they had made up in the other room. “Daddy! I’m going to go out and play!” “Okay, Sheila, darling,” Ned Baxley replied. “But be careful. Don’t talk to strangers and stay off the pedwalk!” “Okay, daddy!” Whoopee, she thought. I’mgoing to the pedwalk and travel to Tammy’s condo. We’ll swin in her luster pool, she mused joyfully. It seemed that this orgy thing was getting out of hand. The hallucinations were an onslaught of confusion. The Tryphens were continuously being fed sexdrugs because the ones from the previous day would wander off on their own, vigorously fucking each other and never make it back to the movie set near the red emerald pond paddock. Dr. Kerry blinked. He knew it was coming: He looked up and saw the Pacific ocean. He had justgraduated from Medical School in Aukland, New Zealand. So today he was celebrating in a small way, on the beach--alone. Just him and a bottle of Tasmanian Port wine. He drank slowly from the plump bottle as the majestic waves roared and crashed on shore. The crew sometimes didn’t bother to eat and started getting very fond of each other, almost like primitive animals. They were transforming into sexual beings much like their friendly neighbors. “I feel as if I am becoming a Tryphen, Dr. Kerry,” Kippleman said as he sat in his cot, once again spent from the orgy of the earlier part of the day. Gretchen Thomas blinked. She saw herself at the holocinema on her first awkward date. It was a holo extravaganza, “Two Mutants for the Pedpath” with Anizette Maui and Todd Rideship, her favorite movie stars at the time. Her date was dreamy, Tim Bowers, all-star football quarterback at the charter school. He put his arm around Gretchen, who was wearing his laser letter jacket. He kised her on the cheek as they ate their new-age caramel popcorn fluff. “How much footage do we have?” Sheila asked Rance Holliday, whose decadent vices knew no bounds. “About one hundred hours of pure, unadulterated fucking, my dear,” he said casually. “Enough,” he added, “to make you a star. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were already a star throughout the known galaxy. We are all stars. I never knew Gretchen could fuck like a little bunny. She’s a porn star too,” he cackled. “I can’t help it,” Gretchen said, “None of us can.” “I have had you about fifty times myself, and I’m already dreaming up new positions,” Rance boasted. “Oh shut up,” she rejoined. “Oh, come now dear. You’ve fucked everyone, including Sheila and your favorite Tryphen. You are a STAR.” Gretchen didn’t know what to say and went to clean up the dishes. The crew slept soundly just as they did many nights before. “I wonder what they think of the footage back home,” Kippleman mused to the hunk. The hunk, the ever-silent Dirk, said nothing. Kippleman sighed. We are all unadulterated sex maniacs. I’m sure Bendixson is rich now, he thought. “Will the hallucinations happen tot he folks watching back on Earth and all over the galaxy?” he wondered. Kippleman then remembered for some reason that he was still married. And he missed his wife dearly. Another week. The looming monster planet winked its red eye at them every evening. The stars twinkled and the sunsets were immaculate. And then the Tryphen who were drugged first began dying. “Why are they dying?” asked Gretchen to her erstwhile colleague and recent sex partner. “I don’t know. Perhaps they are so sex crazed they haven’t bothered to eat. He squatted above a dead silver Tryphen. “Poor creature.” “We’ve got to do something, doctor,” said Sheila. “We’ve got to stop drugging them,” he replied. “Yes,” Kippleman said. “This wouldn’t look good, and I didn’t think that the drug was good for them. And you also had that gut feeling too, Dr. Kerry, need I remind you?” Rance was waiting on the set. “What’s wrong, you guys?” he asked. “We can’t drug them anymore, Holliday. The shooting is over.” “No, nonsense! We’ve got more scenes to shoot,” the director said. “Sorry, Rance, it’s not going to happen.” “Give them the drug, Dr. Kerry, I insist.” “Can’t you see, you idiot, we are killing them!” Kerry said, getting angry. “I don’t care!” Rance replied. “I like my little hallucinations too much!” Kerry stood near him, getting beet red. “You’d better back off, you third rate has been.” “You twisted fruit, why you’d—” and Kerry swatted him with a right cross. He fell. “I’m glad you did that, Kerry,” Kippleman said, “or I’d of done it.” They looked at the carnage around them. “Look at this. It’s terrible.” The Tryphen on the set were dead, turning pinkish grey. Young Tryphen offspring were obviously hungry and starving. They investigated the nearby Tryphen village. When they arrived, they noticed a rotted carcass odor ensuing. All tryphen were dead. There were a good bit that hadn’t been given the drug, they were out in the fields, copulating as they picked juicy yellow berries. “They’re still alive, that’s good, isn’t it?” Gretchen asked Dr. Kerry. Kippleman stood by. “Our work has led to this. I’m packing up camp,” Kippleman said. They went back to camp. They packed. The suns climbed down the sky in tandem beauty. That afternoon, a bit late, a scout ship landed which looked just like their ship. It was about a quarter of a mile away. They went to meet it through the lush verdant forest. It was Hans Bendixson, Barbara whatsername, Kippleman couldn’t remember. Pierce. That actress, his mistress. The spokesperson lady. And Bendixson’s goons were standing there with rifles. “Hey, Kippleman old boy! We made it! We’re here!” “What are you doing here, Mr. Bendixson?” “It’s a success, my boy!” Bendixson beamed, arm around Barbara. “What a trip that was,” he continued. “Ah, sir, there seems to be a problem here.” “What’s that?” Bendixson said. He stretched his short, pudgy legs. “Take me to your camp,” Bendixson ordered them. They trekked across the crimson fields through verdant, emerald forest and made it to the camp. Kippleman told him what had happened. About the hallucinations. “Oh, a few Tryphen dead, what does that matter?” said Bendixson, practically bellowing out orders. “I want more footage!” he demanded. “But sir--” “Don’t I pay you enough? Now, Henry, you ought to know better! I’ve got big plans for you, now, when we get back to Mars.” “But...” “Hallucinations did you say? Why that’s even better! More bang for our buck, these little creatures,” as he saw silver carcasses laying about with strange flies buzzing about them. ORDERING INFORMATION