This remarkable serial brought to you by Blue Coal, the cleanest burning coal on the east coast of the United States of America. Nine out of Ten housewives prefer Blue Coal to the next leading brand! Stock up on Blue Coal today and be warm tomorrow!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Space Cities of Saturn
SATURN! The ringed orb! The bejeweled crown of the solar system. While the evil Empire of Space maintains its control from Emperor Aytan Zardo's Plutonian Ice Castle, it is in Saturn that the majority of its true power resides. Without the killing radioactivity of JUPITER'S ZONE OF DEATH, Saturn is more easily navigable by the astro-spacers of this far off realm -- and so, its vast ICE RINGS have been colonized and filled with the mighty SPACE CITIES OF SATURN.
It is here that Emperor Aytan Zardo's yoke hangs the heaviest. It is here that MARK STYLES, ace reporter and former G.I in the United States Army, has come with his fellow would be revolutionaries to find the concealed force that stands against Zardo's tyranny: THE UNDERGROUND OF FREE PEOPLES. But can they find them before the evil SKAR TAILSCORN, sent by the Emperor himself, finds THEM!?
Meanwhile, on the dusty and dead world of MARS, JASMINE STARR'S long suffering maid CLAUDETTE T.S GRANT awakens from her long slumber...to find herself in a peril unimaginable by any earthly woman: Captive of the VAMPIRE QUEENS OF MARS!!!
The airlock door to the courier rocket opened with a sonorous squeal of semi-lubricated self-sealing stembolts, and from it emerged the distinct and unpalatable whiff of the long confined astro, the reek of bodies not quite cleaned enough by sponge and towel, and the harried tension that could only come from minds pushed to the utter brink by the onset of Space Madness. The two customs officials that stood before the doorway were of the most common stock of Saturnian -- Wolfmen, their ears perked up, their tails stilling as they gaped at the sight of Mark Styles emerging into the bustling spaceport that was their home.
Mark breathed in a slow, steady breath, dressed only in a castoff Imperial astro uniform, his hair bedraggled and his face covered with a thick bushy beard, and then breathed out the same sigh he had been holding in with the explosive force of a bolt-rocket pistol being discharged at range.
"Good. God. Almighty! That's...ohh, I thought Bastogne was hell and a half!" He turned back as, behind him, Robin Robinson, the Star Princess Zella, and C'law emerged onto the gangway.
"I don't want to see
any
of you again," Zella hissed.
"Bloody right!" Robin growled.
C'law clapped his hands down, hard, on Robin's shoulder and upon Zella's. "This is normal for astros who got crammed together that long," he said, clearly forcing the words out through his beak. "What we need to do is we need to take time away from one another."
"Right!" Zella hissed. She reached up, fiddling with her earrings. She tugged them free, then popped from each a single glittering gemstone, which she pressed into their palms. She leaned in, snarling. "Those are Plutonian Star Sapphires. They are worth fifty thousand space dollars each. Sell them. We'll meet here in a week."
"Agreed!" Robin, C'law and Mark all said, at the same time -- for at that moment, there was nothing that could disgust Mark more than the sight of each of their contemptible faces. Being trapped within the small confines of the ship -- even with the terrifying potency of the devil weed Marijuana -- had pressed Mark to strains that he had not thought possible. And so, he clutched the gemstone in his hand, then turned to face the two completely bemused wolfmen who were waiting for him to provide his docking information.
"...how long were you four
in
that thing?" the wolfman on the left asked -- and Mark tried to place his finger upon what was so very odd about the two of them. He ignored it, instead trying to laugh and wave his hand.
"Oh, uh...two...three months," he said.
"By the Mount of Mars!" one of the wolfmen exclaimed, dropping his stylus, while the other gaped.
"You're all
alive
!?" He asked. "And not completely mad!?"
"The weed helped," Mark said, shyly. "But, uh, yeah. We got pretty close to, uh...Space Madness there..." He shook his head. "I thought they were
exaggerating
."
The two wolfmen exchanged a glance -- and it was then that Mark realized what it was that was bothering him so much about the two aliens. He was used, by now, to the curious distinctions of the interstellar genders, the wars between the sexes as it were. Upon his home planet of Earth, there was a saying that men were from Mars and women were from Venus -- and yet, upon the Earth, the distinction between sexes was relatively slight compared to the radical divergences between the hawkmen, for instance, and their distaff counterparts. While C'law was tall and broad shouldered and a nigh perfect middle ground between man and hawk, with wings and feathers and fur and a beak...his species sisters were, by and large, nearly identical to human women save for a slightly more amazonian build, a tendency towards coppery hair, and the fact that they themselves also had wings that allowed them to fly through the air.
The same difference was mirrored across each example of alien that he had seen thusfar: Lizardmen were burly and broad shouldered and crocodillian in their exteriors with massive snouts and much sharp teeth, while their women were svelt human women with a few scales about the eyes, long whippy tails, stubby horns and otherwise normal female forms. Catmen were dangerous panthers and playful pumas and cheerful cheetahs, with muzzles and whiskers and the lot, while Catwomen had naught but ears and devilish dispositions. Devilmen were...well, there were no Devilmen women that he had seen in any of the photo-banks of the courier rocket's computer systems that he had spent months studying, but still!
Except here, that distinction was stood upon its head, for both wolfmen looked quite human, save for their fluffy ears and golden eyes and wagging tails.
"Well, I'm glad you survived without killing anyone," the one on the left said. "As it is, your ship will need to be registered and the fees paid...we have a money exchanger, if you require it!"
Mark sighed as he realized that his three long term co-prisoners aboard the courier rocket had just left him entirely alone to handle the onerous paperwork. "Take me to them," he said, gesturing and the two wolfmen led him away from the gangplank and through the warren like structure of the spaceport. The money changer was a little grumpy looking Ferretman, who measured out the space dollars that his single sapphire was worth, scowled at the exchange rate, then shook Mark's hand once he had made sure everything was on the level. With that complete, Mark simply had to fill out several space forms, to ensure that the courier rocket he was parking within the spaceport was all handled legally.
With that complete, he was escorted through the spaceport and out into the Space City known as Ringcity One.
Mark stepped out...
And took a moment simply to marvel at the sight before him.
He stood now within a cylinder of almost twenty kilometers in length, from end to end, and ten kilometers in width. The cylinder itself spun in a stately way, and that spinning itself provided the single Earth gravity that pinned him and the millions of other people who dwelled within to the floor of their artificial home, in the exact same method used by the Plutonian Ice Castle. However, where the Ice Castle had been vast and intimidating and austere, Ringcity One looked as if some fantasist had imagined a city of tomorrow -- and constructed it
today
. Gleaming white monorails smoothly wove between gently curved buildings, while glittering light projections took the place of more sedate Earthly billboards, advertising products and entertainments the likes of which he had never imagined -- all of it using the same English language he had been born and raised on, thanks to the Empire of Space listening to the broadcasts of Earth.
The adverts proclaimed the services and products that bedazzled his thoughts and imagination:
Heart Pain? Buy a New Heart, Specially Designed by the Clone Vats of Skezzinar! Our Low Rates Cannot be Beat!!!
warred with
Atomic Rocket For Sale, Cheap!
And competed against
Skellian Verge stars in FOR ZARDO, FOR LIFE, the newest film in the Cinaplex Multidome!
Mark stepped from the port and into the thronging mass of people, his hand dipping to his pocket where his wallet rested -- and whistled slowly. "Talk about shore leave, Styles," he whispered to himself. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, opened it, counted the space dollars within, then nodded slowly.
The first thing to do was to find himself a place to stay. He walked through the thronging crowds of aliens, only to see the first sign that not all was sanguine within this city in space: Three of Emperor Aytan's deadly Clone Troopers stood at the corner of the street that ran beside the spaceport, their heavy rocket-bolt rifles hung from their shoulders as they looked around themselves, clearly here to intimidate the local population. Now that he had noticed them, the last poster he had seen reinforced itself within his mind -- and then was added by the scrolling news ticker that ran along one of the skyscrapers that thrust from the curved cylinder that he was walking upon. Running there was a steady procession of Zardonian Propaganda that would have made Goebbels blanch at it's bald faced patriotism.
TERROR PIRATES IN ASTEROID BELT SLAUGHTERED BY BRAVE IMPERIAL FORCES!!! FIRSTBORN OF RESCUED TRANSPORT PILOT TO BE NAMED IN HONOR OF OUR GLORIOUS EMPEROR! PRAISE BE TO ZARDO!!!
"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we?" Mark muttered.
He came, then, to a monorail station. As he stepped within range of what seemed to be a kiosk, the floor opened and from the ground emerged an articulated steel and silver woman of outstanding beauty. The fact that she was made entirely of metal did not distract Mark from her expertly sculpted breasts, the prominent gray nubs of her rubbery nipples, the curves of her steel hips. The jointed, segmented nature of her body didn't, also, distract him from her cheerful smile and her bright copper-red hair, which was made entirely of fine wires and hung about her grayish cheeks, accentuating the artful decoration of tiny freckles that someone had painted upon her artificial features.
She had her hands clasped before her and she beamed at Mark. "Welcome to Monostation One, Mark Styles," she said. "I am GEN-E 5, the mechanical guide robot for all new visitors to Ring City One! How might I direct you?"
