One of the most amazing early adventures of Captain Taragus was his intervention on the planet Dros, when its artificial star malfunctioned. This was a Class 2 Emergency, with an entire planet at stake, and it just so happened that Taragus was the top space captain in range when the disaster struck.

It was an interesting, if untried crew, on the verge of undertaking a two-year mission of team-forging, when the crisis on Dros erupted.

"New parts for the star won’t be available for three months," Local Command informed all relevant crews. "Emergency rescue operations are suggested."

When Taragus’ crew received the news, a planning meeting was immediately ordered aboard the CMS Taragus. The captain had not wanted to name the great mind ship after himself, but it was standard Confederation policy that such ships be named after their pilots, and no exception to the protocol would be tolerated in his case. In the ship’s council room, Litmo explained the situation on Dros to all superior staff members.

"Before the repair teams can come up with the parts, one major cruiser, two intermediate cruisers, and our own vessel will be able to reach Dros. Local Command suggests that we model our intervention on apocalyptic sample rescues, and each take aboard as many refugees as we can to shelter until the artificial sun is restored. The casualty rate on Dros will be catastrophic and all told, we will only be able to save only a small fraction of the population. Local Command defines success as extracting and safekeeping .05% of the population until stability is recovered. "

"That’s awful!" exclaimed Cultural Specialist Hara, in horror. "That’s way too many casualties!" The other members of the planning council turned towards her, stunned, not so much for what she had just said as for the fact that she dared to say anything at all in a meeting of this import: a young student intern with no standing at all, and no reason to be here except for her doddering old mentor, who probably did not belong here either. Taragus, himself, had a weak spot for striking young women, and would attentively listen to anything that they said, this was something Litmo already knew. However, CS Hara was not exactly striking, not the way Abjoc had bound up her brain. Normally, when she was free and unfettered for mission efficiency, Dazome Hara was a lovely and alert woman, made beautiful by her vitality and inner quickness. Her face had a wonderful symmetry that seemed to be the physical manifestation of a deeper harmony, a spiritual accord between her powerful, nearly uncontrollable emotions and the cold majesty of reality with which her turbulent desires were forced to make peace; her eyes were helplessly expressive though she could, with great effort, bury their revelations by looking away from those who sought too hard to discover her. What she could not do was to mask the overwhelming surges of her feelings: the crashes into sorrow, the peaks of joy and delight, the lightning-like flashes of anger awakened by transgressions, the awful aching of love that tortured her at night, the mighty waves of her inner world pounding the shores of everything around her, threatening to wash away the entire world with who she was, that poured out of her mind, like sunlight, like tempests. Dazome was a telepath, and unfit to serve with others on a mission unless contained; for otherwise, she would unduly influence their judgments and decisions, inadvertently turning them into appendages of her soul. She would usurp them, flood their own perceptions with her own, overpower their calculations with her instincts, unwittingly, and against her will (which was utterly respectful of the chain of command), become their secret captain. And so, to utilize her anthropological skills without endangering the mission, Abjoc had had to "muzzle" her as it were – to place a tight-fitting leather cap, somewhat like a swimmer’s cap, filled with electrodes and wires generating a containment field, onto her head – to "silence" her energetic outpouring with a high-tech Mind Gag. All of Dazome’s beautiful cascading hair was dutifully tucked into and taped shut within the cap, so that the woman Taragus now beheld in the council room across the table seemed to him to be merely a small feminine boy, unduly nervous and out of place, who had no tool left at her disposal for mesmerizing him. He listened to her respectfully, because she was a sentient being, but paid her little mind, although he agreed completely with what she said.

"That is a high casualty rate," Taragus told Litmo, turning away from CS Hara.

"Well, they are only Uglies," Lavovin blurted out. Facing the horrified expressions of his crew-mates, Lavovin attempted a smile. "Hey, enough of this politically-correct crap, excuse me, Sir, may I speak my mind? But those Drosians are the most hideous beings in the entire Universe; maybe this star breakdown is a gift from Fate to put them out of their misery." Turning harshly towards CS Hara, who was beginning to say something, he reminded her: "You’re just a student, you don’t have the experience or the rank to get involved in this, or to even think you have the right to reprimand me." And plowing into practical matters, of which he knew a great deal, he insisted: "This isn’t a simple matter of kissing the lepers, Hara. From the security point of view, limited evacuation procedures are always high risk. How do you organize the evacuation? Who gets into the lifeboat, and who is left behind to die? Chaos, violence, and danger will be rampant. We may have to kill, simply to preserve enough order to save the handful who we can save, and to protect ourselves from armed panic responses. Our personnel and our equipment will be in jeopardy. I say, we should think twice about the command suggestion. These ugly bastards aren’t worth dying for. Don’t you dare hit the red switch!" Lavovin warned Hara, who had a small switch on her Mind Gag cap with which she could turn off its blocking powers and flood the room with her intense feelings.

"If you turn off the cap without my permission, it will result in a court-martial," Abjoc agreed. "That will mean imprisonment and the end of your career. You are here as a witness to history, CS Hara, not as a maker of history."

Regulus, at this point, turned to Lavovin and replied: "Your human species is not exactly a sight for sore eyes, Mr. Lavovin. How do you say – it’s like the pot calling the kettle black? The point isn’t your subjective concept of beauty, Sub Lieutenant, it’s the fact that we are dealing here with sentient beings who are members of the Confederation. If we don’t raise a finger to help them, it will seem as if we don’t care. You Emotionals are always imagining some sort of conspiracy, or, how do you say it?, ‘shaft’ or ‘double cross.’"

"Don’t wear out the idiom button on your translator," Lavovin warned him.

"You seem eternal captives of some pathological persecution complex, some deep-seeded biological fear of abandonment," continued Regulus. "And we, for our part, seem doomed to coddle you forever, to delicately carry your eggshell egos across the universe, reassuring you constantly that we do not despise you, merely because your brains are tiny. If we make an effort to save Dros – at least some members of that wretched species – we will be doing our part to prove to you Emotionals that we do not neglect those who are unlike ourselves, nor hold them in utter contempt."

"Feel free to despise the Drosians," Lavovin told Regulus. "We do. Anyway," he added cynically, "you’ve already proved how much you respect us by constructing a human mind ship, and giving it Captain Junior. That’s enough reassurance for this century. I say, leave the Drosians to themselves. I just can’t imagine someone of my looks and charm dying for a bunch of creeps like that!" That last part was a joke, of course, but within the joke there was more than a little bit of self-revelation.

"We owe the Drosians big time," Litmo protested.

"You, not us," countered Lavovin. "You’re the ones who blundered with the Karnadans. We were just a bunch of naked apemen running around at that time, completely oblivious to your folly. Hey, I thought you were too wise to feel guilt. Isn’t that a defect of the Emotionals?"

"This is not guilt," said Litmo. "This is a debt of honor."

"Sounds borderline emotional to me," needled Lavovin.

"Certain necessary behaviors and sentiments bind societies together and make group-living possible. Honor is one such indispensable aesthetic."

"Well, like I said, it’s you mistake, your debt, your honor, and as far as I’m concerned, your rescue mission," said Lavovin. "We’ll go along for the ride, but don’t ask anything from us. You can do security yourselves."

At this point, Lieutenant Boone finally spoke up, telling Lavovin: "Sub-L, if we embark on this mission, you’re going to do your part, and do it well. I won’t put up with any obstruction or apathy."

Lavovin rolled his eyes. "Lieutenant, I’m not screwing up the mission, not yet. We haven’t got that far. I’m trying to deter it, and my opposition falls within the open opinion protocol of mission planning, which is a direct outgrowth of the disastrous results of groupthink in past centuries."

Boone, a no-nonsense man of duty and competence, scowled, but held back from further reprimands.

Now, all eyes turned towards Taragus. Though they still thought of him mainly as a pilot, and less as their full-fledged commander, though, in fact, he was, his opinion was urgently needed.

The problems of Dros actually began during the final stages of this great war to decide the fate of the universe. By this time, the Karnadans had been reduced to a few isolated strongholds, and had, for the most part, been transformed into elusive guerrillas and troublesome, but not universe-threatening, pirates. The people of Dros were, at that time, a beautiful species: they were tall and radiant, class 4 humanoids with exceptional physical prowess, far exceeding that of class 3 types, like the earthlings. Glistening like fairies, brilliant and striking like angels, but without the psychological ravine that divides divine things from mortal things between them and the rest of the universe, they were admired and craved by all who saw them. There was something intrinsically graceful and magnificent about them, just the way they moved their heads or stared into space in response to their own thoughts; they should have filled the universe with terrible envy, and yet, something about them was so charming that envy could not survive in their presence. One was grateful for one’s inferiority, for the chance to behold beauty of this magnitude. Even Zabo I, the Cerebosian who first contacted them, was said to have fallen to his knees and embraced one, crying out, "Is it possible for you to take me as your husband?"

"I’m a man," the Drosian had replied, "otherwise I would say yes."

"Captain Junior?" asked Litmo, reminding Taragus that he had been lost in his own thoughts for some time, while the rest of them patiently sat there expecting some sort of opinion, if not outright decision.

"The clock is ticking," Taragus replied. "Without a star, Dros is going to become utterly freezing and unlivable in the very near future. Lieutenant Boone, please begin work with Ariel on security and evacuation preparations at once. Abjoc, please prepare your culture team for a mission-oriented sociopolitical assessment. There’s no time to waste. Regulus?"

The OB Cerebosian, who was uneasy about the idea of a human being piloting a mind ship, was nonetheless behind Taragus on this one. "No veto," he said.

"Good," said Taragus, rising up from his seat, suddenly impetuous after a moment of unfathomable quiet. "Let’s go."

As he got up to leave for the command station of the great mind ship, he did not notice with what grateful eyes Dazome Hara watched him depart for the helm of their mission of mercy.

**********

Taragus’ flight of the CMS Taragus was flawless: smooth, precise, and rapid. It was never strained, its amazing speed was concealed by its fluidity. Regulus was unnerved by the skill of the mind ship in human hands, while Dazome was impressed by the concern she felt must lie behind the expert, uncompromising trajectory of the magnificent craft. Someone else besides her cared, and had transmuted that care into unimaginable velocity. Though they arrived at the edges of the Drosian solar system far ahead of schedule, one Confederation cruiser, originally posted much closer, had already reached the planet, and reported tremendous turmoil. Summarizing the report, Ariel told them: "The CIC Ek has brought aboard 50,000, but the capital is filled with rioting and fighting. Order has broken down, except in the government citadel, which is serving as the filter for who will be saved and who will be left behind. The Ek lost three security personnel in its effort to help hold the citadel, when refugees stormed through one of the gates. The planet is in total darkness and temperatures have now everywhere fallen far below freezing. The ocean has, in fact, frozen. People are surviving in their homes and in shelters thanks to heat generated by surface reactors, but structural malfunctions are rampant and transmission systems failure is widespread. Millions of Drosians have already frozen to death."

Abjoc, taking over where Ariel left off, stated: "Transport systems for food delivery have broken down; and, of course, agriculture and fishing have been totally wiped out. Massive biosphere repairs will be necessary after the star-repair; but in the short term, we are facing widespread starvation, after existing stockpiles of food are exhausted. We are also facing severe water shortages in many areas, due to the interruption of precipitation cycles and the infrastructural breakdown of water-delivery systems. One thing that is helping, in the midst of the chaos, however is the high self-sufficiency rates prevalent on the planet."

"The Drosians," said Professor Sego, standing to take his turn at the briefing, "are very self-sufficient. This is – it is – it means that they are not as vulnerable – as if, for example, they were all living in cities completely dependent on supplies from outside sources – I mean, sources outside of the cities, which they are not living in to begin with; I mean, not to the extent of other planets, although the capital is an exception – because – did I mention that the Drosians were self-sufficient? I mean, except for their star which has just stopped working?" Aware that he was speaking to men poised on the brink of urgent and decisive action, with no time to squander, he looked suddenly horrified and guilty, as though he had just crapped in his pants; a look of utter bewilderment came to his face, then tears, as though he were a lost child: helplessly, he turned towards Dazome.

"The genetic reengineering which made the Drosians repulsive to the Karnadans also made them repulsive to each other," she said, on behalf of her beloved professor. "Eventually, they further bio-adjusted themselves to be asexual, meaning that they were then able to reproduce without the need for sexual contact, which they found absolutely repugnant. In the same way, they began to limit all forms of social contact with each other as much as possible. In their efforts to avoid each other, the Drosian economy evolved into smaller, self-sufficient units, based on solitary households and farms. A few inevitable cities and technological clusters remained."

"Thanks for sharing," said Lavovin.

"Security is hell," Boone reported, rising to his feet to complete the assessment. "As Ariel mentioned, fighting is rampant in the capital. The government has set up the capital as the only evacuation point, and we can expect to be met with violence by dissidents, and to be forced to use violence to secure space for the limited evacuation we intend to carry out."

Taragus looked at them all for a moment. He was still a pilot, not a captain in the truest sense of the word, and yet, he was about to cross the line from his private world of lonely flying to that of a leader of men. "As I see it," he said, "the rescue operation which we intend to carry out is pathetically limited and excessively perilous."

"What did I tell you?" agreed Lavovin, looking to the others in triumph.

"I intend to do quite a bit more. Within 72 hours, Litmo will brief you on my plan."

Lavovin’s eyes narrowed with concern; Litmo looked surprised, Dazome Hara hopeful.

**********

Even more than his mission to Mendoza’s Taragus’ blueprint for saving Dros illustrated the burning ambition of a man who did not want to accept limits; of a man who took the sponge of obvious answers in his hands, and squeezed it until it released ideas not thought of by others. He did not wish to be the enactor of a token rescue mission, nor a participant in a violent civil war between the privileged and the desperate. He wanted to save a whole world, not merely its elite, or its fortunate.

Although it was not customary to bring such gigantic ships in close to planets, Taragus brought his ship in through the Drosian solar system, pausing to siphon off huge streams of mass from two of its outer planets: giant lifeless balls of gas which he tapped for their atomic matter, which he drew through a compressor into an enormous containment chamber connected to his onboard factories.

"We’re overloaded with highly-pressurized matter," Litmo warned him.

"We are going to need it for atmospheric restructuring, and other crucial activities," he explained.

This step complete, Taragus coasted in even closer to Dros, alarming all on board, as if he had just pointed an ocean liner towards the shallows. "We should use our staging craft now," the little grays advised him: the solar platforms used for launching the boomerangs and saucers, with which they expected to ferry the handfuls of refugees they would be able to save back to the mind ship.

Taragus thanked them, but assured them he knew what he was doing. Highly agitated, Eyes and Brim looked at each other, then back to Litmo. "It’s his ship," Litmo said. "He feels it like we don’t. He got it through the Quasar Tombs. He saved Mendoza. We have to trust him."

Nonetheless, by the time they had reached Dros’ moon, Taragus ordered a general evacuation of the ship. "You will use the moon as a base for all operations to the surface of Dros until further notice," Taragus commanded, sending down Ariel and Boone to help expand an already existing lunar base, then shuttling the rest of his crew to the moon, now fierce, frigid and dark with nothing but the shadow of a dying world to circle. It was at this moment that Litmo, only recently informed of Taragus’ plan himself, told the rest of the crew that Taragus was planning the unheard-of maneuver of bringing his huge intergalactic ship down into the atmosphere of Dros!

Litmo countered, "Alatar, and his network of contacts, approved the mission to Mendoza, and set the precedent of allowing extraordinary risk for this craft. Do you intend to overturn that ruling?"

Regulus balked, then realized that as many Cerebosians wanted the human mind ship to fail as wanted it to succeed. If the huge impressive craft were destroyed attempting this mission of mercy, perhaps it would be just as well. At the very least, it would be an acceptable loss. "I do not approve of this mission," Regulus protested vigorously, "but I withdraw my veto, in light of the aforementioned precedent."

Litmo, however, refused to leave Taragus alone on the ship. "Captain Junior," he said, "I was with you when you passed through the cosmic whirlpool to Mendoza. I will stand beside you here, on this mission as well."

"Please leave," Taragus told him.

Litmo shook his head. "No, earth friend, I won’t. I am the Systems Overview Officer, and invoke the law of indispensability to remain."

Taragus silently stretched his hand out to the tall green creature beside him, and said nothing more.

**********

The first thing Taragus did, as the rescue mission swung into full gear, was to communicate with the planet on all possible wavelengths, official and unofficial, telling the people of Dros that he had come to help them, all of them, and imploring them to hang on and to stop fighting with each other. "Please do not impede the rescue operation."

Eyes and Brim, descending to the capital in flying saucers to establish contact with the planetary government, were fired on by ground-to-space missiles wielded by "outsiders" – groups of dissidents locked outside the citadel who believed they were about to be abandoned by a limited rescue operation. Brim actually had to fly halfway around the world to evade one of the missiles, a leftover from the days of the Karnadan War.

In the capital, Eyes and Brim delivered the mission’s political unit - Regulus, Ariel, Abjoc, Dr. Sego, CS Hara, and Boone - to government headquarters in order to pacify the Drosian leaders about Taragus’ new plan, which they feared might force them to share the dismal fate of the rest of their planet. "We must tell them that this plan can succeed," Ariel told the political unit, "or else they may become desperate, and try to force us to evacuate them from the planet. We could be threatened, taken hostage, or even killed. These are very turbulent circumstances." However, the diplomatic team, well-prepared though it was, ran into almost instant trouble. The repulsiveness of the Drosians was simply unbearable.

Not more than ten yards from the first step down from their saucer, in a protected clime-dome, a delegation of Drosians lumbered up to greet them: hideous, foul creatures, walking with a menacing limp, looking at them with beady little eyes from within monstrously swollen faces, naked with sagging folds of loose skin dangling all about, and sudden puffs of wretchedly smelling vapor periodically emanating from their bodies. Giant twisted fingernails adorned their decrepit-looking hands, while streams of blood and puss trickled out of noxious looking lesions. More than that, their hideousness had been genetically crafted to include behavioral traits as well as physical attributes. They approached with an unwanted degree of friendliness, with the unforgivable habit of attempting to greet strangers with an impassioned hug. As their hearing was poor, they were also forced to stand inordinately close to their guests and to practically lean on them in order to make out what they were saying.

"Dr. Sego," Boone ordered, seeing at once what was in store for them, "you are too old for this. Go back into the saucer without delay!"

Only the Cerebosians, somehow, seemed able to endure the Drosians, perhaps because these hideous creatures were distant enough from their own form not to elicit fears of degradation and decay, the terror of degenerating into something utterly unbearable. As Ariel later explained it, "If we had approached them as versions of ourselves, we could not have stood the sight, to see ourselves so corrupted in them. But we saw them as pure aliens; they did not trigger the self-loathing that made them so abominable to you." This does not mean that the experience was in anyway pleasant for the Cerebosians. With great concentration, they affected complacency in the face of this extraordinary ugliness. But whenever one of the Drosians lurched suddenly towards them in a display of excessive friendliness, they could not help but draw back in horror, as a skittish person who, getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, turns on the light to find himself face to face with a horde of giant water bugs scuttling rapidly by. At such times, the Cerebosians, for all their intellect, could not prevent themselves from gasping and raising their hands up into the air.

There was, indeed, great tension in working out an agreement with the government of Dros, which feared that Taragus’ munificent decision to save the entire planet instead of merely a hand-picked elite, might well endanger those who were already at the front of the line for evacuation. Regulus promised to resume the original plan if Taragus’ scheme in any way jeopardized them. Then, it was on to the nearby rebel headquarters, where Ariel presented the emergency revolutionary army of inclusion with a "ball of vow" from Taragus, himself. It was a firm, nearly indestructible metal ball, about ten inches in diameter, with two switches on it – the "release switch" and the "non-compliance switch." To pacify the agitated and desperate rebels of Dros, Taragus had made a vow to stand by all the people of their desperate world, and not to abandon them by saving only a few. To symbolize and prove the genuineness of his solidarity, he had had a ball of vow made, enshrining this promise in a high-tech monitoring device and physically binding himself to it. A part of his life force had been drained from him and placed into this ball. Periodically, it would beam energy signals back to him which would keep him alive, but if he broke contact with the signals by withdrawing too far from the planet, he would die within a matter of hours. The ball of vow, which some called a curse-promise, was, literally, a way of chaining himself to the endangered world, and tying his fate to its fate. It was the same as if he, himself, had gone down to live on Dros with all the dying and the damned, to stand beside them in their desperate hour, except that he was simultaneously needed here, in the sky above Dros. With the "release switch", Taragus could be freed upon the completion of his vow; the energy he had surrendered would be returned, and he would be whole and safe again. The non-compliance switch, on the other hand, provided the Drosians with the opportunity to finish him off if they felt he had in any way let them down; to cut off the signals he now depended on to live, and to punish him for any act of deceit or indifference. Very literally, Taragus had placed his life in the hands of the people of Dros. He was no longer a savior who could rest on the laurels of a noble gesture; he was a savior who must give fully of himself, because he was also, now, a potential victim.

Regulus considered the gesture absurd and counterproductive, but was amazed to observe the way in which it mesmerized the Drosian population. The violent civil war that threatened to turn the capital into a realm of fire in a world of ice subsided, a truce was declared, and both sides waited with bated breath to behold the outcome of Taragus’ audacious venture.

**********

The amazing plan to save Dros with the mind ship began with Taragus’ unprecedented maneuvering of his craft into the atmosphere of the endangered world. Flying in the atmosphere, moving his craft that slowly without crashing or tearing up the planet with retros and hover-options, was an awful feat of skill; but for hours at a time, Taragus was able to maintain a slow, balloon-like flight over the frozen world, releasing periodic blasts of flame from his mighty engines which created intense spikes of heat and momentary warmth for millions. The control of the countervailing forces in the ship astounded Litmo, who was the only observer of the captain’s sometimes ecstatic face, and sometimes tortured visage. At times, the Captain seemed to be in some sort of sexual trance, as though the flight of the spacecraft was some vast tantric exercise; joyful light would enter into his face, and his eyelids would flutter, he looked like a glowing statue of the Buddha. Then, his face would strain, seem to wade through deep pools of pain, to become tormented and intense as though he were a master musician seeking the one perfect note on a cosmic instrument of a million strings, with every other note except that one being onerous and deadly. When the huge flames shot out from behind the mind ship, Litmo could see Taragus gritting his teeth and pushing back in his chair, as if trying to hold off a tidal wave by leaning on a dike. At other times, he was a tight-rope walker, graceful and balanced, walking over incredible heights as though he had been born far above the ground. Litmo watched him for hours, entranced by the journey of the captain’s features, only occasionally remembering to monitor the vast arrays of computer banks which reminded him of the precariousness of this act of genius.

After these amazing heating runs, Taragus would pull out of the atmosphere of Dros and rest in orbit, before descending once more to initiate a new round of planetary warming. During the heating runs, the great space captain frequently vaporized large swaths of the Drosian atmosphere, which he replaced with the broken-down and reconstituted gases from the outer planets which he had stored in his containment tanks. Litmo, working the controls of the factories outside these tanks, managed to release large doses of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to help the planet to better retain the heat that Taragus was creating. Meanwhile, Eyes and Brim, utilizing specialized weather manipulation equipment aboard the boomerangs, followed up these operations by flying support missions to help sculpt strategic greenhouse traps above major population centers.

But this was only part of Taragus’ strategy. He also focused carefully devised rays from his vaporizer potential to blast deep pathways into the earth, into which he directed a portion of his tractor beams to draw up magma from the molten core. All across the planet, he created local hotspots to serve as heat sources and refuges for the locals. In two cases, Eyes and Brim had to swoop down with saucers to rescue local inhabitants who were threatened by the volcanic activity which his operations triggered.

Wherever food was scarce, Taragus had Litmo alter the factory controls, and reconstitute the matter at his disposal in the containment tanks into a thin, sweet membrane of nourishment known as "manna", which was then spread down in enormous carpets over the vast areas affected by hunger.

The operation was staggering in its dimensions, and utterly astounding for the raw imagination which had conceived it and the incredible will which had implemented it. Back on their moon base, Regulus was exclaiming, "Why didn’t we Cerebosians think of this? Have we been outthought by a mere human being?!"

As Litmo would later tell him, "Not outthought, but outwilled. He wanted to save them more than we did." And Litmo hung his head in shame.

For four months, Taragus maintained this exhausting, brilliant operation above the wounds of Dros, battling on, through his fatigue and the constant play of treacherous forces that could unseat him in a moment. A thousand times, he flirted with being a martyr; a thousand times, he survived, because the lives of others mattered more to him than the luxury of dying unblemished in his prime. When at last the repair crews arrived and brought the artificial star of Dros back to life, Taragus’ reputation, both on Dros and throughout all adjacent quarters of the universe, was unequaled. Much restoration work would be needed, but a world had been saved, and a tentative hero consolidated beyond all shadow of a doubt.

And this is how this story should have ended, were it not for the unexpected passion of Sika Triz, the leader of the Drosian revolutionaries, the one who had been entrusted with Taragus’ ball of vow.

**********

The first one who discovered that something was wrong was Ariel, when he sent down the routine request for the return of the missing part of Taragus’ life force. In a properly worded and thoroughly polite message, Ariel said: "In view of the fact that your planet is now saved, and that Captain Taragus has loyally upheld his promise to you, I would like to request, on behalf of the Confederation rescue mission, the return of our captain’s ball of vow."

Sika Triz, however, replied that the act of saving his world was not yet done.

Ariel insisted that planet restoration was an entirely different operation, a task of reconstruction that would take many years. Taragus could not be spared for that amount of time, nor was he trained for that type of work, which was better left in the hands of Confederation professionals specializing in that field.

Something in Sika Triz’s tone worried Ariel, who asked CS Hara to confirm his suspicions that some kind of subterranean emotional dynamics might be in play. Going over the video loops of the revolutionary’s communications with Ariel, Hara was forced to agree. "There is a definite edge of resentment in his demeanor and tone. It is almost as if he were bitter about being saved."

Soon, their suspicions were confirmed, blossoming into a full-fledged nightmare. Representatives of Sika Triz demanded a video conference with the command council of the CMS Taragus, and once Taragus and the central officer corps were gathered before the screen of their council chamber aboard the gigantic spacecraft which had just saved Dros, the agitated, monstrously ugly face of Sika Triz appeared before them.

"Greetings, my dear saviors," snarled the rebel leader, terrible irony in his voice.

For a moment, no one responded, it was like having someone spit in your face.

"You are interested in a certain ball of vow?" the rebel leader demanded. The video camera panned down to show the all-important ball resting in his lap, his knarred fingers poised above the cut-off switch, then drifted back up to his face.

Taragus regarded the man who held his life in his hands. "We’ve saved your world," Taragus reminded him. "I kept my word, and risked my life every day for four months to keep my word. It’s fitting that the ball should be returned to me now, or that you should pull the release switch. That doesn’t mean that the Confederation’s obligations to you will end. As you can see, a massive effort is now just underway to cope with your supply emergencies and to initiate planetary restoration activities. I have done my part to get you to this point, and now I am needed elsewhere."

Sika Triz twitched, and they could see plumes of noxious fumes flaring up from his body. His lips curled into something approximating a smile. "You despise us," he said at last.

Incredulous, Taragus regarded him.

"Yes," said Sika Triz, "you despise us. You loathe us, hate us, are repelled by us, and are sickened by us. You did not save us because you are compassionate, because your soul is great, or your heart expansive, but because you pity us, and needed a ladder with which to climb out of the pit of your egotistic pleasures towards a redeeming vision of yourself. You have used us as the cannon fodder of your halo, as stepping stones to sainthood, and now you will return home to the adoration of the entire universe while we remain here in this dark stinking hole, rotten, miserable, and forgotten. But we are not as low as you think, dear captain! You have made war on us with your pity, and now, we are going to fight back!"

Litmo remembered how important the beautiful Tocantina had been in inspiring Taragus to fight his way past the Quasar Tombs to Mendoza. Now, the great captain had just risked his life to save a world of hideous, deformed creatures; his compassion had risen to an entirely different plane, and the Cerebosian admired him for it. Litmo told Sika Triz something to this effect, but the angry rebel leader replied: "He did not save us because he loves us or even tolerates us, but because he wants to be loved. He risked his life for his own glory, his own reputation. For him, flying an intergalactic ship through the atmosphere of a planet was a work of art, and he is an artist, with all the vanity and ambition of an artist. He painted his masterpiece in the sky above our agony. We were only incidental to his moment of genius. When he is finished, you will see in the painting of what he did on Dros, only the image of his ship sailing through the sky; you will not see us, because, in the end, we were not the reason he came here, he was the reason. All hail the great space captain! Bow down to him! Strew a path of roses before his feet!"

"Perhaps we might return to practical considerations," Regulus advised. "You are speaking of your emotions, and your own sense of worth, and the way others perceive you. These are not concrete, material issues. What exactly do you want? If you are attempting to dictate some kind of terms for the return of the ball of vow to a Confederation space captain, which in my opinion would be not only immoral but also seditious, please state them. Let’s not waste any more time in this intangible quagmire."

"Good Heavens, they are disturbed creatures!" gasped Litmo.

"Confess!" screamed Sika Triz, his fingers hovering above the cut-off switch. "Confess!"

Ariel had already left the room and was in communication with the government of Dros, which expressed horror at the threats being directed by the ungrateful rebel leader against the space captain who had just saved their planet. It promised to try to help, but warned Airel that Sika Triz was a stubborn character unaccustomed to moderation, and that he had a small but powerful army concentrated beyond their reach in two strongholds from the olden days: anti-Karnadan bunkers which would not be easy to penetrate were a military option selected. Boone, presently joining Ariel, requested blueprints of the bunkers to be transmitted to him immediately.

Meanwhile, back in the council room, Taragus was confronting Sika Triz. "I won’t confess, because it’s not true," Taragus said. "I don’t despise your race."

"Oh – so then I suppose you think we are beautiful? Perhaps that is why you have never left your ship, but have chosen to love us from above?"

"Beauty is subjective," Taragus replied.

"What a discreet way to inform us that we are wretched."

"You are a beautiful race," CS Hara blurted out, surprising everyone, desperate to turn the tide of things.

"Oh?" queried Sika Triz. "Aren’t you the girl who they say fainted when you met us, after first plastering the reception center with your vomit?"

"Your beauty is not evident to us – to us earthlings – on the outside," she said, struggling to appease the rebel who was beginning to look more and more like a madman every minute. "But you are beautiful because of your power to love. You loved each other so much that you destroyed your outward beauty to protect your families, and your mates, from being kidnapped by the Karnadans."

"Nonsense!" roared Sika Triz, half laughing and half belching. "You sound like the Deeps – preposterous apologists!" Long ago, after the great genetic mutilation, the Drosian race had divided into two main cultural groups, the Deeps who embraced their newly created ugliness as an opportunity to become more spiritual and leave behind the frivolity of the flesh and its inventions, and the Superficials, who longed for a recovery of their lost beauty: a genetic restoration. The Deeps won the argument due to the fact that the Karnadan threat persisted for many centuries, and the world preferred to imagine that its inescapable tragedy was somehow positive and uplifting; but the Superficials secured one great concession, as the two groups teetered on the brink of civil war: and that was the retention of their ancient "beauty recognition genes."

Dr. Sego, now referring to this, asked Sika Triz, "Why don’t you all just get rid of those beauty recognition genes once and for all, and complete the genetic redesign by crafting yourselves to appreciate yourselves the way you are? Then it won’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. You’ll be happy in spite of us."

"Did that old man just get out a coherent sentence?" asked Sika Triz.

"Three of them," corrected Lavovin. "It’s a miracle."

"No!" Sika Triz said, returning defiantly to the professor’s query. "The Superficials would rebel, because that would destroy, forever, their chance of returning to who they used to be. And the Deeps won’t have anything to do with it, either, because if we thought we were physically beautiful, we would return to our sensual and frivolous ways, loving madly, once again, in spite of our hideousness; we would lose the hermetic, tortured condition which is the propellant of our spiritual attainment. Our justifying self-delusion. So you see – no matter how you look at it – we are screwed!" And Sika Triz rewarded himself for his cleverness with wild peals of laughter. "So then," he said, after a frightening interlude of silence, in a sudden mood shift back into the shoes of a killer. "Taragus. Dear God of Dros. Do you think we’re beautiful? Come now, no more beating around the bush. No more ambiguous answers, like the oracle at Delphi. Yes, or no?"

"You are beautiful," interjected Litmo, trying to help out, now that Hara’s answer had been warded off. "Effectiveness is, in some ways, a form of beauty. Your race has been very effective, in designing a physical form which nearly everyone in the Universe finds repulsive. That was your intention, wasn’t it? Well, you have succeeded brilliantly in it. We salute your accomplishment, your ability to materialize a concept, to so decisively attain an objective."

Lavovin cleared his throat, giving Litmo the little hand signal with which Emotionals tried to warn Rationals that they were not treading on solid ground. Sometimes, wise men are fools in the ways of fools.

Sika Triz laughed robustly at the Cerebosian’s emotional ignorance, and also at Lavovin’s secret hand signal, which he picked up in spite of the appearance of his unseeing beady eyes practically buried underneath mounds of wrinkles, which were nonetheless as fast as sharks. Very little escaped him. "Pretty hands," Sika Triz commented, "you must wear gloves when you wash the dishes," and then he laughed some more. He gave the impression of an easily distracted comedian who also happened to be a psychopath, but at the core of who he was, was a determined, methodical fighter who kept relentlessly returning to the same weak spot. Amidst all the terrifying tangents his imagination could not resist, he never forgot where he was going. With dark flourishes and curlicues, he drew a line of perfect straightness. "So, Taragus, what’s wrong? Cat’s got your tongue? What do you say? Are we beautiful or not?"

Once more, Taragus replied, "Beauty is subjective."

"This is the cut-off switch!" laughed Sika-Triz. "Are you sweating yet? Now that you saved our planet, let’s see if you can save yourself! Are you ugly enough to save? You look so young and beautiful. But maybe on the inside? Maybe you are deformed, and wretched and stinking on the inside? Maybe you would like to admit it now? You see, I can’t let you pull off a robbery like this, to steal the appearance of purity from the vault of our tragedy! That’s all I want. Tell the universe that you are a hypocrite, that you are no better than us; then you can go back to flying your spaceships. Then you can go back to being a happy little boy among the stars."

Taragus was smiling now, coldly and unafraid. Everyone in the room watched him, fearful of his great pride, which might doom him with a single word. After a while, Taragus said only, "I don’t despise your race, Sika Triz. This isn’t about me, it’s about you. I have just saved the world that is outside of you. You must save the world that is inside of you. I won my battle. Now you must win yours."

"I won’t tolerate you getting a parade for this!" screamed Sika Triz. "Stop looking down at us! Stop pretending you’re superior! I won’t tolerate being saved by someone who is so beautiful! I won’t take your hand, your shining hand, I won’t let you lift me out of the pit, you heartless snob! Admit it! Admit it! Admit that you despise us!" His hand touched the cut-off switch on the ball of vow. "Admit it now!"

"Say it!" gasped Lavovin. "For God’s sakes, tell the maniac what he wants to hear! Strategy," he whispered. "For God’s sakes, you should despise them!"

"Don’t hurt the captain!" cried Hara. "It’s not fair!"

"This will have far-reaching repercussions," warned Regulus. "Whatever it is you stand for, if anything, will be erased from the agenda book for centuries to come."

Taragus stood up, defiantly. "Sika Triz, do what you want. This meeting is at an end."

As he moved to switch off the screen, Sika Triz provided him with a final warning. "Captain Taragus! You have 24 hours to issue a public declaration stating that you despise the Drosian race; otherwise, I shall cut off the energy flow from the ball of vow, and you will cease to exist!"

The screen went dark, hissing as it collapsed into inertness, with a sound that was very much like the hissing of a snake.

**********

For the next 24 hours, the crew attempted to persuade Taragus to relent, and to issue a statement meeting Sika Triz’s demands. But Taragus told them: "As you know, I was raised not to be a liar, and as far as I know, I do not despise the Drosian race. I find them physically abhorrent, as they intended themselves to be, but I refuse to give up on the belief that, somewhere at the bottom of all that scarring, they may still preserve precious inner reserves of their former beauty. Their history is tragic, but it is the beauty they once possessed that makes it tragic."

"But – Captain – your life is on the line!" gasped Lavovin. "Madmen should always be given in to! That is the secret of getting along with them!"

Dr. Sego agreed: "Appeasement is very useful, it almost always works, or have I got it mixed up?"

Taragus said only, "I won’t be intimidated to tell a lie. I won’t be intimidated to undo the work I did to save a planet, by making its people think less of themselves. What good will it do to save their world, but give them back their heart in pieces? For a brief moment, I was their sun. I will not now become a dark cloud covering over their self-esteem. I will not break the glass of their self-respect, just so that I may live. There are two worlds to save, here. I can only save one of them, but the other one I will not destroy."

Lavovin looked at Taragus in utter bewilderment, while Hara, falling into Dr. Sego’s arms, began to cry.

"You must not give up so easily," urged Litmo. "Not after all you have gone through. You are too valuable to squander for a fool like this! Besides that I am – if I were Emotional – I think I would like you."

Regulus squinted, then said, "We must, indeed, manifest rapid countermeasures to avert a needless tragedy!"

Boone and Ariel, in contact with the government of Dros, were already at work on that. A storming party consisting of Confederation security troops, and Drosian police forces, was being assembled. Thousands of Drosian citizens were also offering themselves as volunteers, for the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants were immensely grateful for Taragus’ intervention to save them, and now that he had chosen death rather than to issue a declaration of contempt against them, they were zealously behind him, marching through the streets with a wild, terrifying energy, fiercely swearing to do whatever they could to rescue him, as he had rescued them. "Sika Triz, you are a Karnadan equivalent!" they screamed in fury, waving their fists in the direction of the rebel leader’s positions. But Sika Triz’s troops were solidly behind their leader. They were well-armed, and in possession of two anti-Karnadan bunkers, they were not about to budge of their own accord.

Highly disturbed, Boone went over the bunker blueprints with Ariel. "Without big diameter blasts, or intermediate specialized penetrators, we can only get into the bunkers through the vent systems, and that means slow, close-quarters fighting. It will take at least two weeks to overcome resistance, and once they pull the cut-off switch, our captain will only have a few hours left."

"We must hope that they delay pulling the switch," agreed Ariel. "Isn’t it what you would call ‘their last card’? They ought to keep it in reserve for leverage, to try to negotiate for amnesty or some such concession once their defeat becomes inevitable."

"That’s presuming they are clear and logical about what they are doing," warned Boone. "From the looks of it, Sika Triz is some kind of nut job, a mentally unbalanced cross between Caligula and the Elephant Man. I have the hunch that we can’t count on him for much of anything."

Ariel went over to Dr. Sego to ask him about Drosian military psychology. "Well, according to the Drosians, military activities are a matter of honor, combining the principles of Bushido with the pragmatic interests of the feudal superior as communicated to the ranks. Oh, wait a minute, I think that was Hannibal when he crossed the Alps."

CS Hara winced, and bringing Ariel over to the side, said, "Drosian military psychology: Standard emotional military psychology, originally tending towards the flexible; but after the uglification, a lessened attachment to life has led to a notable rise in fanatical tendencies among both rebel groups and security units."

Ariel furrowed his brow, impressive twitches rocked his great domed head, as though it were coursed by currents of thought that could barely be contained inside his brain. "Yes, Lieutenant Boone," he said, returning grimly to the table where the blueprints lay spread out before them. "We are going to have a very difficult time of it."

**********

By the time the 24-hour deadline finally came around, Taragus was alone on the great mind ship with Litmo, the others were all either on the lunar base, other Confederation cruisers, or the surface of Dros, preparing to move against the rebel positions.

"Maybe he’s not going to do it," said Litmo, hopefully, sitting beside the captain who was at the helm of the great ship, circling Dros in a high orbit. "Maybe he’s about to call with a new deadline. Hostage situations are like that, aren’t they?"

Taragus nodded. "Sometimes."

"Surely, even an irrational character such as Sika Triz must realize that his proposed course of action will only lead him to a dead end."

Taragus nodded. "Maybe."

"Perhaps he has had a chance to undergo psychological counseling in the meantime."

"Yes, Litmo, it’s a possibility."

Litmo gazed at Taragus with affection and hope. But suddenly, he noticed the captain wince. No, was it his imagination? But then it happened again. The captain fidgeted, as if uncomfortable in his chair, and torrents of sweat began to drip from his face. But he was still sitting upright. Litmo wanted to say something, but Taragus seemed busy, as if he was listening for something; as if there was a great forest inside of him and he had just heard something moving around inside it that might be a predator. Suddenly, Taragus’s body jerked, it was an involuntary spasm, he half fell out of his chair, and in a single second his face was as white as a sheet.

"No!" cried Litmo in despair. "The fool has pulled the cut-off switch!" Desperately, as he tried to aid the captain with one hand, he opened a channel of communications to Ariel and Boone below them on Dros, shouting: "Sika Triz has cut power, the captain is dying!"

"Time to get into action," Boone snarled, putting on his war helmet. Ariel shuddered, while a security agent motioned for Dazome Hara and Dr. Sego to leave the vicinity. "Controlled primal reversion is on the way!" Before Boone moved forward, he asked Hara for one last anthropological favor. "Kids," said Boone. "Whole bunches of kids are hanging out directly in front of us. What the hell are they, orphans or gamins? Hundreds of them. Can you move them out of harm’s way? Do you need a security detail? Are there orphanages on this planet?"

"Just tell them to move," Dazome told him. "Don’t worry about them. Another one of the Drosians’ genetic adjustments was to accelerate the biological development of their kids, so they wouldn’t have to take care of them for more than a few months. The thought of years of parenthood, of being forced to nurture such ugly creatures, was abhorrent to them. Nowadays, the average Drosian proceeds from childhood to adulthood in six months time. By four months, he’s already a teenager."

Boone looked at Hara, amazed, then re-grounded himself in the work at hand.

"Come on, kids, move out of the way!" Hara said, walking up towards them, while Boone and his men inspected their body armor, and charged their weapons, readying themselves for the unavoidable confrontation.

"What’s up?" one of the kids asked. "Are they going to rescue the captain?"

"They’re going to try to recover his ball of vow."

"Well, tell them we want to help!" the kids said.

Hara, wiping tears from her eyes, said, "Please just stand to the side right now. Maybe later you can help – in the second wave."

"All right, we’re going to be in the second wave!" the kids cheered, following her directions to move to the side.

Meanwhile, back on the great mind ship, Taragus was writhing in agony in his chair, while Litmo, helplessly, applied a cooling sponge to his head. "Do you want a pain killer? Do you want something to drink? Is there anything I can do for you? What, exactly are your symptoms? Well, I can see, for one, blood is streaming out of your nose."

Suddenly, rigid, Taragus straightened up in his chair, like a man who had just been shot, Litmo was sure death had just come to him; but Taragus, contorted and half-crippled, grimaced, and Litmo noticed that the mind ship was beginning to move out of orbit and to cruise out of the plane of the solar system.

"Excuse me, captain," Litmo warned, "but in the event that they recover the ball of vow and manage to hit the release button, shouldn’t you be in range of the replenishment signal? Otherwise, it will be totally useless."

Taragus growled, "Tell them to recover the ball and wait."

"Please explain," pleaded Litmo.

But it was obvious that the captain was in no condition to explain anything. The ship continued drifting into space, and then, to pick up speed, more speed, speed that was, in fact, alarming, considering the crumpled man in the pilot’s seat who seemed barely able to breathe, let alone guide a mighty intergalactic ship.

"Captain! Are you sure you are not making a terrible mistake!?" But suddenly Litmo noticed a change in the captain’s demeanor, a flickering luster attempting to return to his eyes, a strengthening of the doubled-over body which began to straighten slowly, like a bent plant sensing the sun over its twisted shoulder, which begins to right itself. "Captain…" gasped Litmo in utter astonishment and reverence. "You are escaping into the ship!"

"While I am the ship, I cannot die," whispered the captain, barely present, for now he was somewhere else, far grander and far mightier than where he seemed to be. Although his body was withering away, by merging with the ship, by becoming one with it, he was no longer himself alone; as the ship became filled with his mind, so his body was bolstered by the ship, became as powerful as its gigantic engines, its enormous storms of energy, its lofty and necessary purpose. "One drop of poison in a cup kills the man," Taragus said, staring blindly into some euphoric place. "One drop of poison in the sea is diluted into nothing. Right now, I am too big to die. Though this ship has sometimes made me feel small, like an ameba, now it is lifting me, like a mother, into the arms of everything. I am invincible, Litmo. As long as I can fly, I will live!"

As long as I can fly… That was the key. It could not go on forever, there were limits to how long a living organism could maintain the fusion; sooner or later, Taragus must have to withdraw and return the ship to its computers, and at that moment he would become vulnerable again and die. Litmo rushed to send hypersignals back to Dros. Taragus, once more, was cheating death, buying time! But he could not buy time forever! They must come through for him, they must deliver! They must storm the rebel bunkers and recover the ball of vow!

**********

Back on the surface of Dros, the capture of the anti-Karnadan bunkers was proving to be every bit as difficult as Boone had imagined. The enemy’s fortifications were formidable, and the defenders were determined and competent. A few shoulder-fired piercers were rejected by the bunkers. A barrage of disruption pulses opened a gap in the energy field around the left vent complex, and some security troops managed to get inside the system; for a time, they were able to use absorber bursts to thwart the expected counterattacks of superhot expansion clouds, and they even managed to infiltrate the bunkers with a handful of insect-sized mini-missiles. But enemy firepower was strong. When one Confederation company managed to break into a storage chamber, they were met in fierce hand-held combat by an enemy unit wielding blaster pistols. For a time, savage cracks of lightning-like energy buzzed lethally between the two forces, laced with nerve-shattering screams and the thuds of smoking bodies flying through the air. At last, a series of induced structure collapses forced Confederation troops to withdraw with heavy losses. As they drew back, instant matter reconfiguration equipment was hauled into the gap by the Drosian rebels to repair the damage and restore their fortifications to their original state. It looked bad, but Boone gained a foothold through another vent before the Drosians could savor their victory, leading this column into the fray himself. Thanks to his efforts, Confederation forces succeeded in consolidating a bridgehead within bunker two, but afterwards, could make no further progress. "Lavovin," Boone ordered, over the message scrambler. "You need to widen the attack. Go after vent cluster 7 on Bunker One."

"It seems very strongly guarded, Lieutenant," objected Lavovin.

"If it wasn’t, soldiers wouldn’t be needed, would they?" growled Boone, reminding him, "our captain’s life is at stake."

"I don’t know him that well," replied Lavovin, "and you don’t either. He is just the latest holder of the archetype. I prefer to die for real people than for titles."

"You prefer to die for no one unless it is a beautiful woman, and the death is from orgasms," retorted Boone. "Now stop stalling, and just attack, god damn it! Or I’ll have you demoted back to Private! That’s Private, not your privates! Now, attack, god damn it!"

Lavovin muttered something under his breath, like, "All he had to do was say he despised them! Why should I die for his social tact?" Not surprisingly, Lavovin’s assault on vent cluster 7, though expertly planned, did not make any headway. Sometimes, all that the most brilliant schemes on paper require to succeed is a trace element of spirit.

After a while, the situation began to grow desperate. Taragus was still alive, somewhere beyond them, but the first hours of the attack had dragged on to become days, and the flying that enlarged Taragus beyond the power of Sika Triz’s rage could not go on forever. On Mt. Vistus, the highest point on Dros where the super-universal telescope of Karnadan war days still lingered on to the delight of amateur and professional astronomers alike, thousands of Drosian sympathizers lined up to get a view of the captain’s ship, which they could see as a tiny light flying about beyond the edges of their solar system, and sometimes beyond the neighboring solar system as well. "Look, look, there it is!" they cried out. "That little point of light streaking through the sky. The one that looks like it might be a comet! That’s it! The CMS Taragus! I wonder how long he can keep flying it before he can fly no more!" During those days, Mt. Vistus became the center of a vast planetary pilgrimage, as anxious and reverent Drosians came in droves to catch a glimpse of the captain’s brilliant, desperate struggle to live, and to pray for his deliverance. "Dear Cosmic Causes, Please Give Us Jubilant Effects! Let this man survive!" They could not believe that he was willing to die rather than say that he despised them; they were shaken and moved by this as they had been shaken and moved by nothing in centuries.

Anxiously, Litmo watched the great captain in his captain’s chair, he warned the security forces on distant Dros that the captain was beginning to tire and to fade. "The fusion is too intense, it is beginning to drain him; I do not believe he can go on like this for more than another 36 hours. You must do something! You must innovate, or elevate casualty acceptance."

"He’s one damned man," Lavovin replied. "Why should we die like flies for him? What makes us more expendable than him? Do you know if I die how many girls will be weeping across the universe? Their tears will wash away the planets, and put out the fire of the stars."

Litmo said, "Can I please speak to Lieutenant Boone?"

Boone, filthy and haggard from days of battle inside the bunker labyrinths, told Litmo, "Without authorization to evacuate the capital and use a city-buster, I can’t do more than I’m doing right now. We’re advancing methodically, behind mobile defenses, taking one hall, one resistance chamber at a time. I could order an all-out assault and move my men forward faster than I can move their protection systems into place, but that would be courting disaster. I could easily lose my entire security force as well as thousands of Drosian allies within a matter of hours. "

"How much longer do you need?" demanded Litmo, crying out to him in a tormented voice that seemed to Boone to be decidedly un-Cerebosian.

"At least another week," Boone replied.

"It won’t do!" protested Litmo. "It won’t do! The captain will not last that long!"

Boone frowned. Combat had made him hard, but he recognized that Taragus was a great man, and the thought of losing the captain, especially when he was in charge of saving him, hurt him badly somewhere deep inside, in the bunker of his own concealed soul. "I understand," Boone replied, at last. "I’ll do what I can." For a moment after breaking communication with Litmo, he just stood there, in a daze that was like a prayer; stood there waiting for an idea to come to him, for a ghost or phantom of someone who had died before to rise up out of the grave and whisper unknown secrets of a war he had never heard of into his ear. Maybe the ghost of Caesar or Alexander…

That is when Ariel, absurd in a military helmet that merely rested on his oversized head like a yarmulke , came up to him, and said, "The cultural research team has come up with an option."

Ordinarily, Boone would have scoffed at the very thought, but now he merely looked at Ariel without protest. After a moment of silence which seemed to be filled with some great idea, still tentative and timid to show itself, Boone looked grimly down at his watch. Ariel understood that he must not delay or meander. "CS Hara," Ariel said.

Boone regarded him.

"She’s a telepath."

Boone’s eyes showed interest.

"We’ve injected a blocker into her olfactory nerve, so that she will not be overcome by the bodily fumes of the Drosians."

Boone waited.

"We need to find some way to smuggle her into the rebel command center. Once she is there, she may be able to overcome or influence the rebel leadership with her telepathic abilities. She may be able to get control of the ball of vow!"

"Will her abilities work on the minds of the Drosians?" asked Boone, returning from the calm of bewilderment, recovering his intensity.

"There is a strong possibility that they will. We believe we may have the instrument to save Captain Taragus!" Ariel exclaimed. "But we need you to find a way to get her inside the enemy command center!"

"You need me to build the Trojan Horse."

"Exactly."

In the background, Boone could hear Professor Sego weeping, "No, no, not my beloved pupil, not my dear princess of anthropology! She is a scientist, not a soldier! She is not cut out to be a spy or a commando! She is not one of the three hundred Spartans, she is our very own Ana Pavlova of the cultures!"

"Here, old man," cursed Lavovin, taking him aside, "let’s go have a cup of tea, we’ll talk about Chekov, the cherry orchard and the charge of the light brigade."

"Oh yes," agreed the Professor, "Rommel said ‘we must defeat them on the beaches.’ Air power, you see."

With the professor out of the way, Boone had the girl brought up to him. He looked her over, as though she were a race horse and he had five minutes to decide whether he wanted to bet his life savings on her. Respectful under most circumstances, on this bitter turf, in his private living room which was battle, he was unsparing and indelicate. "Girl, they may rip that Mind Gap off your head before you even get close to Sika. They may think you’re a suicide bomber. Stupid cap, with all those wires sticking out of it, looks like a bomb. Can you hold your feelings in at all on your own? Cause if you can’t, rebels will have you figured out before you can reach anybody of importance."

"I will try," she stammered.

"Do you know anything about torture? Do you know what it’s like to have a knife cut into you while you’re still alive? Do you know how sensitive the skin under the fingernails is?"

"How can I be sure you just won’t go in there, and crap your pants and cry?" demanded Boone. "How can I be sure I won’t be wasting Taragus’ last few hours of life and committing a sin against anthropology?"

Hara began to shake but struggled to endure the interrogation. Tears streaked her face, she looked fragile, like a china doll made of porcelain, perched on the edge of a high shelf. But then something in her demeanor seemed to change. Boone watched a fierce expression surge onto her face, like an angry angel coming down from the skies to protect those she loved. He saw a firmness enter into her trembling body, he saw a sculptor with a hammer and chisel, smashing the rock of who she was from the inside, trying to fashion a stone of fear into a goddess of courage. There was an awful determination growing inside of that small body, a gathering storm of resolve.

Boone backed away, fierce but approving, with a small bit of kindness, as much as he could allow himself to show, apologizing to her from within his sternness. "CS Hara, you may die," he said, taking out a message tablet and beginning to write something on it. "Do you understand ? Do you wish to proceed?"

"Yes," she said, adding, "I accept the risk."

After a moment, Boone handed her the tablet. It was written in what appeared to be code. "Hara, you are a messenger. We will send you from Q Company to our forward bastion, held by the Double-Ys. On the way, you are sure to be intercepted. You may be killed by snipers, but the body armor we give you will give you at least a fighting chance to be captured alive. Big attack is coming at 3 PM, with new weapons from beyond the galaxy. Something about something disintegrating. That’s all you know. That’s the worm you wiggle in front of the fish. Sika will want to see you himself, to see if he can put the jigsaw puzzle together. Once he bites the worm, it’s up to you. Your mind against his. If you can’t overcome his bellicosity, you will die a horrible death. The good thing is that the pain won’t last forever."

Hara looked at the tablet, and swallowed hard, while Ariel fidgeted in a typical display of Cerebosian anxiety. It was as though his whole body was a pair of hands searching for pockets, but there were none anywhere in the universe.

"Sergeant," Boone ordered, bringing over a frightening security trooper who seemed like a gun that had taken human form. "Please escort CS Hara to Q Company."

"Yes Sir."

Boone looked Hara over one last time, then said, "Taragus is a great man, CS Hara. It is up to you to decide if he is worth your life."

"He is my captain," she said.

"Then go," Boone ordered, "and may God be real, for your sake."

**********

For the next few hours, Dazome Hara and Captain Taragus were inhabitants of strange parallel worlds, the one fighting far away with the power of a magnificent flight that had embraced him and prolonged his life, but now bringing his ship closer in case the ball of vow might be recovered to release him; the other winding her way through frightening underground tunnels lurking with cold-hearted Drosian rebels, ready to stamp out the fire of her unknown sensitivity in an instant, to murder a thousand secret dreams and bury her untasted beauty in the numbness of their rage. The one, far above the planet, was beginning to falter, to fade, like a ghost, like a mighty eagle pierced by an arrow, falling to the earth; the other, far below the planet, was surrounded by her own pounding heart, by feelings of passion she had revealed to no one, by the terror of not knowing what she was made of. Like an ancient disciple of the Zen masters, she had hurled herself into the raging waters of the river below the bridge; now she must find out if she could swim.

Not long into her underground journey, her incarnation as a Confederation messenger, Dazome heard the deadly buzz of the energy weapon, and felt herself flying and bouncing several times off of the walls. She had been blastered, and felt as though she must surely die from the impact. Near her, she heard voices gather. "What’s that?"

"A message tablet. In code…"

"Is that a bomb rig on her head?"

"She’s still alive! Maybe she has information."

"Carry her back."

"No, wait, what about the bomb!?"

"I’m on the frequency to bomb squad."

"Drag her back, behind the gate."

"Why me?"

As Dazome felt herself held by the ankles, sliding along the floor, she smiled faintly to herself, the impact of being hit had stunned her, her telepathic energy must momentarily be very low, it might not even be detected. How cooperative Fate can sometimes be! How tenderly it covers over human omissions and human arrogance with friendly bits of reality, sometimes infiltrated into the world through misfortune. She felt the Mind Gag being removed from her head, and the bomb expert saying, "Idiots forgot to put explosives in the cap!"

Next thing she knew, she was lying on a gurney, and Drosian soldiers were crowded around her. She began to mutter something about disintegration. "Get me out of here, they’re going to disintegrate us."

"Do you know the code?" they demanded.

"One half goes with the other half."

"What’s she talking about?"

"Did she say disintegration?"

"Get a doctor, we have to keep her alive."

"Don’t worry, the blaster bolt didn’t penetrate her armor, she’s done some bouncing off of walls, that’s all."

"Get Sika."

Dazome, half awake as they rolled her gurney down a maze of corridors, watched the changing landscape of the passing ceilings, she was like a goose flying upside down, migrating towards a purpose that her flesh was about to experience. Not far ahead, a tree with golden flowers was waiting for her, the tree where fantasies become truths. The pen in her hand was writing something that would soon be real.

"Here she is," announced one of the voices just above her.

Squinting to limit the shock, Dazome found herself peering up into the face of Sika Triz himself. "Give me a pain-trode," he told one of his assistants. "Let’s see what this little lady has to offer. Oh messenger girl! Oh dear little messenger girl! Is there anything you’d like to tell me? I’m good cop, bad cop, all in one. Which one shall I be for you?"

Slowly, Dazome allowed herself to stir. Not with pleasure, she observed the large, spike-tipped pain-trode dangling in the twisted hand above her face, like an obscene phallus being forced upon her. "You can put that away," she told the monster looming above her. "I’m no martyr. Just let me sit down and get a drink of water. You’ll understand me better if I’m talking, than if I’m screaming."

"Don’t play with me," Sika Triz warned her, wary of her composure, which he could sense beneath her disorientation and her bruises.

"I won’t. Give me what I’m asking for. It’s not much, after getting clobbered by a blaster bolt."

"Very well, my little princess. I want you to know, that some warriors despise squealers, canaries, toads… Not me. I respect the good sense of traitors. You will be well treated if you cooperate. If you do not, I will have to insert this little device into your brain to turn your entire nervous system into a highway of fire. And then, perhaps, I’ll kiss you with my big, sore-infested lips!" And he began to laugh again, that terrible laugh she knew so well.

Slowly, Dazome rose, and struggled into a deep chair in one corner of the room. A withered hand reached out to hand her a glass of water. She drank slowly, peering over the edge of the glass. In the far corner, nestled in the cushions of a huge chair that seemed like a throne, she saw the ball of vow. The water, plus that sight, began to revive her, she could sense the field of her mind expanding, her telepathic power returning, and with it, the danger of discovery, and the opportunity of affecting her deadly captor. Everything is happening with perfect timing, she thought. I was stunned and contained by my injuries until I got here. Now that I am here, my powers are unfolding. Dazome Hara: it is now the decisive moment! It is the time to act!

"Something’s wrong with her," warned Sika Triz, taking a step backwards. "Something’s coming out of her, I’m not sure what. Maybe they’ve put a transmitter inside of her: a neural inhibitor! It’s some kind of ray!"

"Body scan turned up negative," a lieutenant assured Sika Triz.

Now Dazome stood up, forcefully, in the midst of them all. "Sika Triz!" she demanded. "You are wrong! Wrong to want to kill Captain Taragus! Wrong to refuse to acknowledge his compassion! Wrong to want to harm the man who has saved your world! Wrong to turn your wound into a weapon, and to point it at the entire universe!" Astonished, he beheld her. "Return the ball of vow," she said, in a voice that became suddenly low.

"Who are you?" Sika Triz demanded. "What are you?"

One of Sika Triz’s soldiers aimed his blaster gun at her.

"If you shoot me, I will explode," she informed them.

They looked at each other in bewilderment.

The actor must believe the part she told herself.

Sika Triz raised his hand, motioning the gun not to fire. "What do you want?" he demanded again.

"The ball of vow," she replied. "Nothing more. You and your citadel, here, are not my concern. I only want the ball of vow," she said, taking a step in its direction.

But before she could advance any farther, Sika Triz had caught her with his giant, monstrous arm, and hurled her backwards, into a chair and wall. Some kind of spell was broken by this act of violence, and he recovered his confidence. Seizing the ball up into his arms, as several blaster guns were pointed once more in her direction, hemming her in like a ring of serpents, he snarled, "It is too late now, you foolish, foolish girl! Your dear captain is doomed, I hear he will die within a matter of hours, and now you, too, are doomed! I am not one to be toyed with by an amateur like you!"

"Taragus is a hypocrite!" raged SikaTriz, determined to beat her into dust before he had her strung up and tortured, ripped open for a few tidbits of probably irrelevant information. Savagely, Sika Triz clutched the ball of vow in his hands. "He dares to pretend to care for us! He dares to trample over us with benevolence to win the admiration of the Universe! And when it is all over, we shall remain despised cripples, and he shall be raised to be a god! It is a rape, that is what it is! Just like the Karnadans! He has plundered our misery to enrich himself!" Tears flying like spit out of his eyes, he brandished the ball in one of his unending hands, while he waved a finger from the other over the depressed cut-off switch, shouting, "I am proud to be the killer of such a man, of such a moral coward, such an opportunist, such a thief of images, who has turned our pain into his gold! Dear sweet ball, my dearest friend in all the universe! Inside you is a dying man, a dying man who the whole universe loves! Withering in here, right in here you little fool who probably love him too, his heart and liver and kidneys collapsing and failing right in here, his nervous system folding, bitten by a cobra right in here, shot by a gun right in here, in here, in this delicious ball of his demise! And there’s nothing you can do about it, you can only imagine that this great man is dying because of what is in my hands and because of what you cannot get to be in your hands, I am crushing him in this ball, punishing him in this ball, strangling him by the throat in this ball, and you can’t reach him in this ball! Oh, and with the delight of the release switch so close to you, little girl, who loves him I think, though you haven’t told anyone, have you?, because so much love in a little girl like you would be like walking utterly naked into a crowded room, and you’re so discreet, and cannot give away the inner tidal wave, but how you love him!, and this release switch is so close, so painfully, painfully close, but you are tiny and weak and I am huge and strong, you are like a glass fairy and I am like an iron demon who can shatter your tenderness as it reaches for him, and you are a weeping little girl and I am a soldier, and you are soft and I am hard, and I am killing him and you can’t stop me because tears mean nothing to me, they are like the dead skin of something I was long ago and your tears are filling up the room and seem to have voices, like the voices in my head, and they have hands that are reaching for something inside of me, and no! No! Stop it! Stop loving him! Stop loving him! The ball is mine! I will not let him gloat in his superiority! The only way I can be better than him is to kill him! But no, then they will hate me by his grave, he will always be more beautiful, his rotting corpse will be garlanded with flowers, and your tears, your tears, they are out of their cages, stop them, they are running loose like tigers and lions of gentleness, no! I need my hate! It is the last wall against Karnada! Karnada which pushed me off of a cliff inside myself! Stop! Stop!" he screamed, suddenly writhing in despair, and seizing and shaking his head as though he were trying to tear it off and put it back on right. "The ball is mine! Stop feeling! Stop feeling! Stop loving! Oh God, please, stop loving!" And suddenly, brutal, uncompromising Sika Triz fell to his knees weeping, and his men, likewise, collapsed in grief and confusion. "I love him!" gasped Sika Triz. "I love him," he whispered, as though he had drunk a glass of poison. Tears fell from his face, mixed with slime.

"Then do it," Dazome wept, lying huddled in a corner amidst the wailing monsters.

"I – I’m afraid," Sika Triz whispered.

"Do it," she said, barely able to see through her own clouded eyes, too sincere to have any grasp of tactics left. "Go on," she said, choking on her words. "You said you were a warrior. Now what? You can’t even pull a lever?"

"I love him," wept Sika Triz once more, helpless like a maiden buried alive in her own heart, his blaster pistol lost on the floor like something strange and distant dug up by archaeologists. "I love him." And gently, broken yet still alive, the proud monster reached for the release switch on the ball of vow, touched it softly as though it were a clitoris, and caressed the dying captain, who he found through Dazome Hara, back to life.

**********

High above the planet Dros, Taragus, informed only that a last-ditch effort to recover the ball of vow was underway, was on the verge of death. "Please, stop whatever fighting is going on," he urged Litmo. "I don’t want people to die for me. My life is only worth as much as the next man’s, how should a hundred men die for this one life? Just because I can fly the mind ship? Give someone else a chance – or return it to the jurisdiction of the computers. I am wearing out, dear Litmo. My time in this world is short. I have enjoyed your company. You have not been as irritating as I thought you would be. Humor," he explained.

"Sometimes a form of courage," gasped Litmo. When they were deeply moved, Cerebosians sometimes ceased breathing and went into cardiac arrest. Grief-stricken, Litmo reached for a resuscitator, and shocked himself back to functionality. He watched the captain’s eyelids grow dim.

"I am withdrawing from the ship so that it does not crash when I succumb," Taragus informed his friend. "Restore it to computer control."

"Do you have any regrets?" Litmo asked him.

"Of course. But now, amidst the deep and painful chasms of regrets, a golden light is beckoning. More than the sum of things not done and things done wrong is the vast shape of a sincere effort. It pleases me. I could have been better and I could have been worse. Between the two is the beautiful landscape of what was. I thank every single thing that enriched my life, I bow down as I die to what was mine and to what did not belong to me, to what I could reach and to what I could not reach. I bow down to the realities I left behind as fantasies, to the dark stones I did not inlay with gold. I bow down to the visions that were too heavy for me to carry, and to the dreams that were too thin for me to walk on. I bow down to the wings I removed from the wrapping paper of heaven, the great gift of my life: the wings I could not figure out how to assemble! Something inside me that was needed to put them together was missing - some nut, some bolt! I apologize for my failures, but the wine of death is sweet, the wine of death that is nothing more than the best of life. On the edge of extinction, even one drop is enough! I am deeply sad, but within the sorrow of my premature death contentment reigns. The majesty of slowly gliding one last time across the lake of my life has turned despair into pride. I leave as a king. Litmo, I leave as a king."

"Oh please, no!" gasped Litmo. "Don’t go, not yet Grullon! Perhaps they will reach the ball! Try to hang on for just a moment longer!"

"Did you call me Grullon?" Taragus asked, incredulously. It was the Cerebosian word for "brother", it meant "companion in thought" and was less literally translated as "the twin of my brain." It was only used among Cerebosians.

"Yes, Grullon! Grullon!" exclaimed Litmo, shocking himself back to life once more.

"You are pure OI," Taragus jested with the last whisper remaining him.

"No, Grullon! Hang on, Grullon!" Litmo urged, shaking Taragus’ slouching body, fighting against his dimming, departing eyes.

But suddenly, there was a change. Taragus, who was for a moment inert, opened his eyes again, they seemed focused but uncertain. No one who is dying gracefully wants to have to start all over again and face the possibility of an agonizing death. The eyes stayed focused on nothing, but intensely focused, like a hunting cat’s. "Grullon! Grullon!" exclaimed Litmo. "Are you recovering? What is going on!?"

"Don’t close the coffin lid quite yet," Taragus said, slowly, cautiously.

"You are not in a coffin," Litmo informed him.

Taragus said, "Humor."

Litmo watched him carefully, euphorically, but trying to reel in his joy, because it might not be warranted, he could not yet tell. Then a communications buzzer sounded, Litmo blurted out, "Proceed!"

It was Lieutenant Boone’s voice. "Litmo, the ball has been recovered. The release switch has been hit. Is the Captain still alive?"

Boone heard nothing but a wild shrill yelping from the other end of the transmission. A moment later, Litmo, in a calm voice, was telling him, "Thank you, Lieutenant. I will inform the Captain."

Some thirty seconds later, Taragus’ voice was on the frequency. "Thank you, Lieutenant, I owe you my life."

"Captain Junior, you are my captain. It was my duty to fight for your life. And, in fact, I am not the real hero of the story."

But just then, Regulus took control of the transmission, and informed Captain Taragus that Ariel and the cultural specialists team had helped Boone to discover a psychological weak spot in the Drosian defense which enabled them to unexpectedly overcome rebel resistance. "They were essentially psychoanalyzed into submission." No mention was made of Dazome Hara’s daring concept, of her great personal bravery to put herself into circumstances of which she was not master, and of the way she finally prevailed over Taragus’ hardened enemies through the telepathic outpouring of her own undeclared love for him, which overwhelmed and washed away the rage and blindness of Sika Triz. Shortly thereafter, this fearsome rebel leader surrendered his positions to the government, on mutually acceptable terms. The planet would recover peace, and once more be able to focus exclusively on the technical aspects of its post-disaster restoration.

In the meantime, Taragus was informed by Regulus that he had just been appointed a Zan, a Great Captain. He was no longer a captain junior, nor even a captain. He was a Great Captain. Litmo clapped his hands in delight, then bumped heads with Taragus in the Cerebosian manner while Regulus looked on in surprise.

Before it was time to pull away from Dros, a great planet-wide festival was offered in honor of the captain. It was not easy, but to perfect his work, Taragus was finally compelled to descend to the surface, and to meet with the people he had just saved. He had his sense of smell temporarily numbed, and then, with the others, flew down in a saucer to the capital to receive the blessings of those whose life came from his hand.

For hours, giant masses of Drosians marched past, singing, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" This poor wretched race which had long ago lost the spark of life was now revived; the fact that a man this great, this precious, this talented, had risked his life for them with the daring unprecedented maneuvers of his spacecraft, and with the making of the ball of vow, and then chosen to sacrifice his life rather than to say that he despised the Drosian race, in some way resurrected them, reached down into some last undiscovered resource of self-esteem preserved within their tragedy, giving them the hope that they might, indeed, still find beauty within themselves. "If a man such as this was willing to die to protect the possibility that we might have something in us that is not yet utterly contemptible – if a man such as this was willing to die to preserve the belief that something undiscovered in us may still be beautiful, and even worthy of his dying – then it is clear, we must not give up on ourselves. We must seek, become explorers of our wreckage, believe in the pearls underneath our wounds, follow his eyes back to the horizon of our tomorrow, where the last resilient traces of greatness we could not exorcise from our souls remain to revive us, to raise us from the shadows of ancient harm and restore to us the warmth of days still waiting to be lived."

Taragus, with a great act of will, embraced the president of the planet, waved to the enormous crowds, and said: "The Confederation has given you back your sun. Now, it is for you to give yourselves back your self-esteem. Self-esteem is the sun that lights up the inner sky of men. Without it, darkness rules the soul. May you be blessed, and may you find your way back to the beauty you choose."

And then the flying saucer was rising up into the sky, like a chariot of hope. The angels had given the world back to men. The work of men was beginning.

The Adventures Of Zan Taragus

Short Fiction Contents

Creative Safehouse Contents