Vegans with blue skin. Relax and have a good time. The return trip ought to be a snap.
I hope so, Milissa thought fervently. She took a seat in the corner of the cabin and started counting seconds till blastoff.
The stasis-generators lifted the King Magnus off Vega II as lightly as a feather blown by the wind, and Captain Brilon indicated that Milissa should introduce herself to the passengers. She stepped through the bulkhead doors that led to the passenger section, paused a moment to readjust her cap and tug at her uniform, and pushed open the irising sphincter that segregated crew from passengers.
The passenger hold stretched out for perhaps a hundred feet before her. It was lined with huge view windows on both sides, and the passengers—fifty of them, according to the list—turned as one to look at her when she entered.
She suppressed a little gasp. All shapes, all forms—and what was that halfway down the row—?
“Hello,” she said, forcing it to come out cheery and bright. “My name is Milissa Kleirn, and I’ll be your stewardess for this trip. This is the King Magnus, fourth ship of the Vegan Line, and we’ll be making the trip from Vega II to Sol III in three days, seven hours, and some minutes, under the command of Captain Alib Brilon. The drive-generators have already hurled us from the surface of Vega, and we’ve entered warp and are well on our way to Earth. I’ll be on hand to answer any of your questions—except the very technical ones; you’ll have to refer those through me to the captain. And if you want magazines or anything, please press the button at the side of your seat. Thank you very much.”
There, she thought. That wasn’t so bad.
And then the indicator-panel started to flash. She picked a button out at random and pressed it. A voice said, “This is Mike Grigori, Seat 22. How about coming down here to talk to me a minute?”
She debated. The chief stewardess had warned her about rambunctious Earthmen—but yet, this was her first request as stewardess, and besides there was something agreeably pleasant about Mike Grigori’s voice. She started down the aisle and reached Seat 22, still smiling.
Mike Grigori was sitting with his two brothers. As she approached, he extended an arm and beckoned to her wolfishly with a crooked forefinger. He winked.
“You’re Mr. Grigori?”
“I’m Mike. Like you to meet my brothers, James and Josef. Fellows, this is Miss Kleirn. The stewardess.”
“How do you do,” Milissa said. The smile started to fade. With an effort, she restored it.
There was a certain family resemblance about the Grigori brothers. And she saw now why they only needed two seats.
They had only one body between them.
“This is Jim, over here,” Mike was saying, indicating the head at farthest left. “He’s something of a scholar. Aren’t you, Jim?”
The head named Jim turned gravely to examine Milissa, doing so with the aid of a magnifying glass it held to its eye monocle-wise. Jim affected an uptilted mustache; Mike, looking much younger and more ebullient, was cleanshaven and wore his hair close-cropped.
“And this is Josef,” Mike said, nodding toward the center head. “Make sure you spell that J-O-S-E-F, like so. He’s very fussy about that. Used to be plain Joe, but now nothing’s fancy enough for him.”
Josef was an aristocratic-looking type whose hair was slicked back flat and whose nose inclined slightly upward; he maintained a fixed pose, staring forward as if in intent meditation, and confined his greetings to a muttered hmph.
“He’s the intellectual sort,” Mike confided. “Keeps us up half the night when he wants to read. But we manage. We have to put up with him because he’s got the central nervous system, and half the arms.”
Milissa noticed that the brothers had four arms—one at each shoulder, presumably for the use of Mike and Jim, and two more below them, whose scornful foldedness indicated they were controlled entirely by the haughty Josef.
“You’re—from Earth?” Milissa asked, a little stunned.
“Mutants,” said Jim.
“Genetic manipulation,” explained Mike.
“Abnormalities. Excrescences on my shoulders,” muttered Josef.
“He thinks he got here first,” Mike said. “That Jim and I were tacked on to his body later.”
It looked about to degenerate into a family feud. Milissa wondered what a fight among the brothers would look like. But one of her duties was to keep peace in the passenger lounge. “Is there anything specific you’d like to ask me, Mr. Grigori?” she said to Mike. “If not, I’m afraid the other passengers—”
“Specific? Sure. I’d like to make a date with you when we hit Earth. Never dated a Vegan girl—but that blue skin is really lovely.”
“Vetoed,” Josef said without turning his head.
Mike whirled. “Vetoed! Now look here, brother—you don’t have absolute and final say on every—”
“The girl will only refuse,” Josef said. “Don’t waste our time on dalliance. I’m trying to think, and your chatter disturbs me.”
Again tension grew. Quickly Milissa said, “Your brother’s right, Mr. Grigori. Vegan Line personnel are not allowed to date passengers. It’s an absolute rule.”
Dismay registered on two of the three heads. Josef merely looked more smug. Another crisis seemed brewing among the mutant brothers when suddenly a creature several seats behind them tossed a magazine it had been reading into the aisle with a great outcry of rage.
“Excuse me,” Milissa said. “I’ll have to see what’s upsetting him.”
Grateful for the interruption, she moved up the aisle. The alien who had thrown the magazine was a small pinkish being, whose eyes, dangling on six-inch eyestalks, now quivered in what she supposed was rage.
Milissa stooped, one hand keeping her neckline from dipping (there was no telling what sexual habits these aliens had) and picked up the magazine. Science Fiction Stories, she saw, and there was a painting of an alien much like the one before her printed on the glossy cover.
“I think you dropped this, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Dellamon,” the alien replied, in a cold, testy, snappish voice. “Thogral Dellamon, of Procyon V. And I didn’t drop the magazine. I threw it down violently, as you very well saw.”
She smiled apologetically. “Of course, Mr. Dellamon. Did you see something you disagreed with in the magazine?”
“Disagreed with? I saw something that was a positive insult!” He snatched the magazine from her, riffled through it, found a page, and handed it back.
The magazine was open to page 113. The title of the story was “Slaves of the Pink Beings,” bylined J. Eckman Forester. She skimmed the first few lines; it was typical science fiction, full of monsters and bloodshed, and just as dull as every other science fiction story she had tried to read.
“I hope I won’t make you angry when I say I don’t see anything worth getting angry over in this, Mr. Dellamon.”
“That story,” he said, “tells of the conquests and sadistic pleasures of a race of evil pink beings—and of their destruction by Earthmen. Look at that cover painting! It’s an exact image of—well, you see? This is vicious propaganda aimed at my people! And none of it’s true! None!”
The cover indeed bore a resemblance to the indignant little alien. But the date under the heading caught Milissa’s eye. June 2114. Three hundred years old. “Where did you get this magazine?” she asked.
“Bought it. Wanted to read an Earth magazine, as long as I have to go there, so I had a man on