OK, I'll let you in on a little secret (and you probably knew this already if you know anything about self-publishing, Lulu etc.) - I only sold three books (as far as I know) for that huge jump in sales rankings :p

The thing that confuses me though is the fact that this jump in rankings did not take place for over a month after the sales occurred. But then again, that's probably how the Lulu sales-ranking system works. Now that I think about it, if they have a return policy, that also probably allows them to take returns into account when calculating the sales rank.

Anyway, a month or so ago, I had sold two books within a short period of time and that's when I thought about sales rankings. So I began checking the sales rankings to see if they changed. They didn't as far as I could tell. Then I sold another book. I checked the sales rankings again. Still no change. So I thought that perhaps three books weren't enough to make a dent in the sales rankings and gave up checking on them. Then today I happened to check the book page (as I normally do occasionally :p) and noticed that the sales rank had changed ... and how! I guess it just takes a while for the rankings to change ...

My question now is, how much more will my rankings go up if one more book is purchased? Anybody wanna give it a try? :D

"You know Sal, fear gets a bad rap. I don't want anybody in our outfit that doesn't get scared."

Sal tried to keep his voice steady, "Then I'm definitely your guy."

"Just don't get negative on me, now!" replied Rod who'd just realized that while a healthy dose of fear was good for you, there was also such a thing as an overdose.

"Affirmative," Sal responded in his clipped voice, you could barely notice the tiny tremor in it.

"OK, compadres, what seems to be the problemmo?" asked Rod turning to face the menacing group.

"Yeah, don'tchu know who you're messin' with?" piped in Tre.

"Chu knows who you are boy ... err ... boys! But have you plumb gone and forgot who Chu is?" asked one of the thugs.

"Enlighten ... I mean, tell us, who is this Chu? We have no idea who he is or what he's got to do with us!" Sal replied.

"They're trying to play it dumb, eh Abdul?" said the thug who'd been doing most of the talking so far, turning to another ruffian in his group.

"Oh you should know all about that Mario," jibed the only female in the group. Do you call her a thuggess or a mobstress, wondered Sal.

"Can it, Lisa!" commanded the one named Abdul, clueing Sal in on who was in charge. "It sure looks like them but I didn't know there was more than one of 'em though ..."

"Must be twins," broke in Mario.

"Triplets, you idiot!" snapped Lisa.

"Whatever!" snapped the leader, glaring at his team members. Then he turned back towards the Raiders. "One of you, or maybe all of you ... who knows if all of you were working together? ... stole somethin' valuable from Boss Chu! I've seen you when you were at the Boss' place. And guess what? Boss Chu wants his stuff back. He sent us to get it back, see?"

"But my good man, we have just arrived in this fair city! Upon our honour, we have no idea who this Boss Chu is!" exclaimed Sal, treating Abdul to a scouts-honour-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die look.

"Yeah, whatchu talkin' 'bout, Abdul?" added Tre, utterly destroying the effect of Sal's look.

"That's Boss Chu to you, you double-crossing rat! He sure knows what he's talking 'bout, 'cos he's sayin' give his stuff back and maybe he'll let you live. Or maybe he'll just give you a quick death," responded Abdul, evidently enjoying the discomfort of the Raiders.

"Yeah, instead of torturin' you for days like he did with the last guy who pissed 'im off," chuckled Mario, sounding like a gurgling toad.

"But we told you, we don't know what you're talking about!" replied Rod, in a valiant effort to take sense where sense had never been before.

"That's too bad for you then. Guess we'll have to do this the hard way!" said Abdul and motioned to his band of merry cutthroats. The Raiders watched mesmerised as the gangsters started moving towards them in a purposeful manner.

"Do somethin', Sal!" pleaded Tre.

"This is a situation for diplomacy Tre, and diplomacy requires patience."

"Well, we've got patience in spades! We are being attacked by mental patients and if we don't do something soon, we are going to end up being patients who are patiently waiting for every bone in their body to knit properly!" whispered Rod urgently.

"OK boys, that's far enough! We have no idea who you are or who this boss Chu is. We'd be happy to come over and clear this matter up with him but we can't do that just now as we are already late for an important business meeting. I'm afraid that if you don't step aside, we're going to have to go through you!" said Sal, stepping forward to meet the approaching thugs.

"And how do you think you're gonna do that?" asked Abdul, bringing his gun up to bear on Sal.

"We will beat a bloody trail through you, we are highly trained mercenaries!" said Sal, taking a combat stance. The goons facing them did not appear in the least bit fazed by this display of martial skills. In fact, they looked rather amused, if anything. Sal's brothers, realizing that fists against guns would only result in spilt blood - theirs - simply took up their guns and aimed them every which way. There certainly were a lot of places to aim at, but just not enough guns on their side.

"Err .. Sal, maybe we should think about going back to diplomacy?" asked Rod looking from one thug to another and seeing nothing but glee at the prospect of an ass-whupping.

"Umm ... I'm beginning to think you're right, Rod," said Sal, turning around to speak to his brother. But then, a gleam appeared in his eyes as he caught sight of something behind Rod and his whole posture changed. Sal turned around, straightened his back and faced their opponents with new confidence. "You might as well give up now or we'll have to hurt you," he said, looking Abdul in the eye[2].

"Oh yeah, you an' what army?" sneered Mario.

"That would be us, hombre!" said a voice from above. Heads turned and faces glanced up so fast amongst Abdul's group that it was a minor miracle that none of them got whiplash. The rest of the Raiders lined the buildings on both sides of the alley, their weapons trained unwaveringly on the group of thugs below them. The thugs stared, and then they stared, and then, stared some more. If their jaws hadn't been so tightly clamped, they certainly would have dropped with a resounding clang to the street. In unison, like a bunch of clockwork dolls, they looked at one face and then another of their enemy - always encountering the same face. They kept on going back and forth, back and forth, like hypnotized mice, almost as if hoping that they'd made a mistake.

"Did you know the others would do that?" whispered Rod.

"Heck no, I was expecting them to rush in here and help us!" replied Sal.

"I guess somebody in there had more sense than you then. We'd better watch out or we might have a new leader in the group."

Sal was about to make a sharp retort but Abdul chose that moment to break the silence which had been gripping the thugs in a tight embrace.

"What in Shima is going on? Three of them, fine. But a dozen of them?"

"We are as much in the dark as you are and you'll notice it's very dark here, ha ha. But seriously, we don't know even as much as you do! And while we'd love to stay and chat, we really must get going. So I guess we'll just have to catch up on stuff some other time. Good morrow to ye!" said Sal with a cheery wave and walked straight towards the still gaping thugs.

For a long, tense moment, it looked as if the grime of Chryme Alley might be washed off in a bloodbath unlike any other that Kabul City had seen before[3]. The three Raiders kept walking and Abdul's merry band of thugs stood their ground and even brought their weapons up to bear on the advancing Raiders. Then Abdul looked upward once again at the guns trained on them and sighed. He motioned to his companions to move out of the way and his cohorts obediently parted, like a little boy's hair when his mother applies a comb, to let the three Raiders pass.

The three, deciding that questions about the puzzling encounter they'd had could wait for later, moved at a fast trot to get out of the alley and rejoin their comrades at the other end of it. Their mercenary training finally coming to the fore[4], they immediately hunkered down, got their own weapons out, and provided cover for their brothers to come off the upper buildings. Then, in that peculiar military formation which looks a lot like constipated ducks waddling towards water, they proceeded to move out from the vicinity of Chryme Alley in an orderly fashion, each team providing cover for the other, while the thugs that they'd just confronted watched silently. The Raiders were sure that the expression on the faces of their opponents was one of impotent fury, but an impartial observer might have said that it was more like perplexity. However, whether what perplexed them was the Raiders' funny walk or the confusing encounter that had just taken place, was a mystery.

[1] He looked more like what a man would be if he had been all used up and then thrown out on to the garbage heap.

[2] Which was no mean task - they say that if you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you. In the case of Abdul, his eyes were an abyss of iniquity, sin and corruption and looking directly into that abyss required a special kind of person. But then again, when it came to such things, the Raiders were nothing but special.

[3] It is said that in ancient times, a Queen of Kabul had bathed in the blood of asses to remain forever beautiful - even she would not have seen asses like the Debian Raiders.

[4] Their military training had done rather well at camouflage - up to this point, it had only been apparent due to the Raiders' lack of any military training whatsoever.

One by one, they arrived at the meeting place. The poor ship which had laboured so hard to bring them to this planet bid goodbye to this world by way of little explosions and a few hisses and crackles, in the background. Despite the fact that none of them were seriously injured, the crash-landing had left its mark upon all of the Raiders. Some had torn clothing, others had dirt and grass smears and still others limped over carrying their gear. Alb was the last one to arrive since he'd been unlucky enough to have his ejection get caught up on the one single tree that stuck out like a sore thumb from the landscape. Alb was munching on some leaves and was going into raptures about how good they tasted. Except for that tree, it was just empty land, grass and shrubs and lots of huge rifts - no trees, no animals - for as far as the eye could see.

Once they were all accounted for, Rod suggested that they change their appearance. This started a heated debate amongst the Raiders, as almost anything did, about the merits of this idea. They really didn't need a disguise since they were physiologically identical to the race that inhabited the planet. At least, that's what their reports had indicated. So, a change of clothing and some time with their hypno-trainers should have been the only preparation necessary for this mission.

Or rather, that would have been enough if you'd been sane. But then again, it could be argued that you never went into the mercenary trade if you were the least bit sane. Rod had decided that an exercise in disguise would help them stay at the top of their form. While some of the Raiders muttered about what form Rod would end up in if he kept this up, they eventually went along with Rod's decision since they knew from bitter experience that it was better to give in than to argue when a notion got into Rod's head[1].

By all rights, the Raiders should have had no equipment at all due to the fact that their ship had gone up in flames. But experience can be a great teacher for even the most thick-skulled student given that the said student has the lesson knocked into his skull enough times. The brothers had had this particular lesson ingrained into them so many times that they now insisted on custom ejection seats for any ship they used - the seats had to be redesigned to hold not just a Raider but his gear as well. So the Raiders, while without any means to get off the ground, did at least have all of their equipment and weaponry at their disposal.

Now that a decision had been made, the Raiders set to with a will, putting in some inspired work with paint and powder, from which they emerged looking a lot like clowns[2]. While some unkind souls might have argued that this was the proper look for them, the Raiders decided that the new look wouldn't do. It was back to scrubbing their faces clean and a change of clothes. Finally, the Debian Raiders were ready to be on the prowl.

Navigating the ravaged land turned out to be a mission on its own. The chasms at some points were so deep that you couldn't see bottom. Given that the Raiders were not the best when it came to navigating and that they weren't very familiar with the land around Kabul City, it was another testament to their incredible luck that they got out of the badlands and made it to the city at all. But they did make it and they even managed to get through the city gates without much hassle - it was evening rush hour and the guards were too busy controlling the outgoing traffic to worry too much about newcomers. But the Raiders did not go unnoticed for long.

It had been a while since they'd been off-planet and they had completely forgotten the fact that twelve identical-looking individuals taking a stroll might cause some stares and comments. Their memories were jogged soon enough - in fact, almost as soon as they got out of the crowded lanes and were seen as a group, and periodically thereafter. A hasty council of war by the roadside had resulted in Sal coming up with the idea that splitting up into smaller groups might be the way to go since it might not be as noticeable as a large group of identical individuals. Thus it was that the Raiders made their way slowly towards the heart of Kabul City in ones and twos.

The cavalcade of clones which was proceeding on its merry way came to a sudden halt when they turned in to Chryme Alley[3]. Or rather, Sal, who was in the vanguard, stopped on hearing a voice which came from the deepest, darkest depths of the alley.

"That's 'im! That's 'im! Grab 'im! Oh no wait, the one behind 'im, that's the one! No, the other one! They're all 'im! Get 'em all!"

"What in tarnation? Varlet, step forth and let me see with mine own eyes who accosteth me!"

As the words left his lips, Sal realized that his hypno-trainer had probably slipped a relay again. The words sounded a bit strange - though they had every right to sound strange since he had not spoken this language before in his life. A quick mental review of the latest knowledge that his mind had acquired was all he needed to see that he needed to change a few things in the way he spoke. He hoped that he'd get it right on the next try.

"Varlet? Is 'e speaking to us Abdul?" came the same voice from the recesses of the alley.

"I mean, what's up, dude?" asked Sal, trying again.

"I'd say you, bro! And probably fairly high too ... and definitely swinging by your neck, when Chu gets a'hold of you!" said the speaker while stepping out of the murky depths of the alley into a slightly less dark patch of, well, darkness. Sal could see that he was an unsavoury looking character - bewhiskered, dressed in black[4] and probably smelled bad as well. That was a comfort - they had tangled with scores of unsavoury characters in their career and knew how to handle them. The only problem was that the usual venue for meeting such people had been the local bar - not a dark alley in a strange city.

     To be continued ....

[1] Notions usually found it really difficult to get into Rod's head - his brothers said that it was because how hard headed he was. Rod believed that it was because all the good notions were already in his head and there was no more room in there.

[2] This was something the Raiders excelled at - they usually emerged from all of their missions looking like clowns.

[3] This wasn't a new battle tactic whereby they became a single fighting unit by chanting some ancient mantra. They'd investigated the possibilities of doing that but it had not panned out. The cost of ancient mantras had been prohibitively steep. Even an instruction manual on the five-point palm exploding heart technique cost an arm and a leg, not to mention a heart, these days.

[4] As any self-respecting criminal would tell you, not only does black allow you to blend into the darkness, it hides dirt and grease stains well.

There were many stories about the Drum but they weren't the kind that your wife liked to hear - not unless a blackmail letter accompanied the story. Many types of people passed through the doors of the Drum, some were upright and some were not so upright - the people, not the doors. However, all the previous clients of the Drum had had to face one inescapable fact - they had to open the doors first. For the first time in its history, a customer came through the batwing doors of the Drum and he did not have to open the door first. It was John Wylie.

Wylie pushed through the thronging crowd. The cacophony inside was deafening. It was a wonder that anybody could hear anything in there. But still, most people appeared to be carrying on conversations without any trouble at all. There was a large crowd gathered at the bar. One of the bartenders, a good-looking, red haired young woman[1], was engaged in what Wylie assumed to be some sort of a strange human ritual, at the bar. She was performing some kind of fast paced dance which involved various twirling bottles and glasses as well as a lot of shouting and cheering. The crowd was stomping its feet and loudly proclaiming their appreciation of the dancing. Wylie decided to give that a miss - when you were short, there were certain places that you learnt to avoid[2]. He walked to the other end of the bar and hauled himself on to a stool.

"Hey, we don't serve kids in here, the juice bar is on the next street!" jibed one of the others sitting at the bar. He looked to have been imbibing freely of the establishment's hospitality.

"My friend, you really shouldn't make me angry," Responded Wylie conversationally.

"Why? You think I wouldn't like it when you're angry?" responded the other.

"You might not like what I could do to you. Didn't your mother ever warn you not to pick a fight with a man who reaches only up to your groin?" replied Wylie with a wicked smile.

While the words may have reached the other immediately, it took a while for the meaning to sink in. Wylie could almost tell the moment since the other spluttered, glanced down hurriedly, stammered something incomprehensible, paid for his drink and moved over to the other end of the bar. One of the bartenders, a young woman, with blonde hair this time, walked over with a smile[3].

"Couldn't help overhearing what you said to that guy. Pretty neat trick, if you can pull it off!"

"I thought that was the whole idea?" grinned Wylie again.

The bartender laughed out loud. "You're a card, you are! What will be your poison?"

"Wouldn't that be the pharmacy? Or the hospital? Or even that little hole-in-the-wall diner over by Chryme Alley?" smirked Wylie.

"You're funny." But the woman didn't look amused. "What will you have to drink?"

"Oh, why didn't you say so? I'll have a Martian Red Rum, if you've got it?"

"Sure, coming right up!"

"So anything new going on in these parts?" inquired Wylie, making conversation[4]. Wylie idly wondered about the phrase "making conversation" - You didn't really make a conversation, you had one. Sort of like a baby. Now that he thought about it, it was exactly like a baby, at least for humans it was. You needed at least two people to have one - and sometimes, both people didn't want to have it but they still did. Interesting. He must remember to put that down in his journal later.

"Well ... nothing much, except for all that business with Boss Chu."

"You mean the city boss? Something happen to him?" Wylie was interested despite the pressing nature of his assignment. Boss Chu controlled the whole of Kabul City. It was true that he was a gangster but then again, maybe they had hit upon a good solution when they let the mobsters run the city. You at least didn't have to deal with the politicians who became goons (or the goons who became politicians) and your everyday street-corner variety thug too. You just had one kind of thug to deal with and you knew exactly where you stood with them - usually, being menaced at the end of some sort of weapon and having to hand over your cash, if they managed to corner you in a dark alley. That was far better than handing over your cash for inexplicable reasons, like social security or medicare[5]. A knife, on the other hand, was pretty solid. You saw it and you knew precisely why you were handing your credits over - because the thug at the other end of the knife might not have had the benefit of a good education and might not understand that "your money or your life" is not the same as "your money and your life".

Wylie wondered if perhaps this matter with Boss Chu was somehow connected to his search for Normal. Maybe Normal had been kidnapped - not that he could think of any particular reason for anybody in the Fifty Galaxies wanting to kidnap Normal. Unless of course, annoyance merited kidnapping these days, he mentally amended.

"Apparently, some guy's stolen something valuable from Boss Chu. Some say it's a microchip, others say it's microfiche ..."

"That sounds fishy."

"You're quite the comic aren't you? Maybe we should sign you up for an act here ..."

"Nah, I can't handle my liquor ... Plus, I'm on a job already, looking for a friend of mine. Normal, Normal Kint. You wouldn't happen to know him by any chance now would you?" Wylie asked the bartender, hopefully.

"Sorry ... thousands of people come in here daily. Can't keep track of 'em all ..."

Wylie's spirits plummeted like a stalled rocketship. He'd been pinning his hopes of finding somebody at the Drum who might have seen Normal. Now it was back to combing the streets and the streets of Kabul City didn't turn up anything good when they were combed.

"Now there's the kind of name that you don't forget often - Normal Kint! Bet there can't be two Normal Kints in the whole planet. I met a guy by that name just earlier today ..." said a man sitting a couple of stools down from Wylie, breaking in on his gloomy reverie.

"Well there ya go - you can always find what you're looking for at the Drum," said the bartender, moving away to attend to another customer.

Wylie leaned forward, peering past the other patrons sitting at the bar, trying to find the man who'd spoken. The speaker was a big man with a shock of straw blond hair turning white. Something about him screamed cop but then again, nobody probably would hear that over the really loud shirt that he had on. Wylie nodded at the guy.

"Oh, you met Normal? Today, you say? Let me buy you a drink ..."

"Why, thank you kindly! If you don't mind, I'll join you over there - this shouting around people business can be hard on this old throat of mine," replied the man, getting up from his bar stool.

"By all means," responded Wylie, signalling the bartender, "Another of whatever my new friend is having!"

"My name's Carruthers, John Carruthers. I'm a policeman."

"You don't say! I wouldn't have taken you for a cop at all. I'm John Wylie - I am an agent. I represent street artists, find new talent, that kind of thing ..."

Carruthers nodded noncommittally. "Sounds good. So what's your interest in Kint?"

"He's married to one of my employees. She returns home from a trip and he's gone! She was really worried about him and I thought I'd ask around and try to find him ..."

"Trying to do my job for me, eh?" the cop raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Well ... we weren't sure if he was really missing or if he'd just gone off somewhere and forgotten to leave a note for his wife. Somebody I met said that they'd seen him here. So I came over here ..."

"He's not here, that's for sure! The last I saw him, he was on a bus bound for Donagar. But it's funny how he'd go off to Donagar without letting his wife know ..."

Wylie could almost see the mental machinery slowly lumbering into action in the cop's cranium. "Oh, I'm sure something or other must have come up. Maybe he did leave a note but Katy, his wife, never found it. You know how it is ..." he said hurriedly, attempting to divert any further interest in the affair on the part of the law.

"Yeah, in my line of work, half the time the MP, that's what we call a missing person," he confided as an aside to Wylie, "is back at home by the time their loved ones file a report and go home. There we'd be searching high and low for them, and the next day we get a call saying, 'Oh it's OK, they came back last night - they'd gone out for a pizza.' Why can't they let us know immediately, I ask you?"

"I know. People, I tell you! Anyway, thanks for the information. Guess I'd better get back to the office and let Katy know that Normal's fine," remarked Wylie, putting a few credits on the counter and sliding off his stool.

"Yeah, thanks for the drink! Look me up any time you're here again. I'm usually here most evenings when I'm off duty."

"Will do!" replied Wylie, and then strode out with a cheery wave to the cop. He had to keep down the urge to break into a run towards the nearest hoverbus stop. Donagar? What possessed that confounded, careless, canine-stealing crack-brained cretin to go to Donagar? Did he have the dog with him still? Wylie had been tempted to ask the cop about the dog, but it hadn't seemed wise to arouse his suspicions further. Even cops sometimes tumbled on to things[6]. He just hoped that the blasted dog was safe!

[1] All the bartenders at the Drum were young, good-looking and of the female persuasion. This was the long sought after golden formula to get men to drink far more than was good for them.

[2] If you were smart, you learnt this by observing your surroundings. However, there is nothing like a good stomping to stamp a lesson indelibly on your mind, as many a dwarf and midget would tell you.

[3] They didn't serve smiles at the Drum though they might walk over with one - smiles were free and so don't make any money.

[4] A scientific method for making conversations has not been discovered yet - this is the kind of secret for which scriptwriters and novelists, not to mention aspiring Romeos, would pay a fortune.

[5] It was better to see your money go and know that you'll never see it again than to see it go and be told that you'd see it again someday, and then never get to see it again anyway.

[6] For some strange reason, the one thing that cops most often stumbled upon was the location of the nearest doughnut shop. This curious phenomenon had been observed with regards to not just human cops, but policemen everywhere in the Fifty Galaxies[7].

[7] Some of the worlds in the Fifty Galaxies did not have doughnuts but it was remarkable how many did - fried batter with a hole in the middle seemed to be as much of a universal constant as the concept of zero.

"Absolutely!" began Zafar and then the scholar in him appeared to have a word with the human in him. "Or rather, as far as we can determine, most of what has been passed down by way of word of mouth about the Age of Chaos appears to be correct. The great wars between nations during that time were the main cause of the destruction of human civilization as they knew it at that time. They used bombs that wiped out entire cities and billions of people. In a matter of days, we tumbled from the heights of technological achievement to scrabbling in the ground trying to find our next meal ..."

"And then the aliens arrived and we were back to being on top of technology?" finished Normal.

Zafar gave Normal the kind of look teachers reserved for that one kid who always appeared in every teacher's classroom[1]. "This is not exactly the top rung of the technological ladder, you know. Besides, quite a lot of our people are still living under almost the same conditions that existed before the aliens arrived."

"You can't do anything about the technophobes," Normal shrugged. "The Torvoldites hate all new technology because they think technology caused all our problems of the past. They claim that they don't want to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. What can you do with people like that?"

"Oh, it's not as simple as that, you know," replied Zafar, smiling indulgently at Normal. "The influx of new technology since the intergalactic trade route was opened has meant that we've suddenly become engorged with technology. Our people aren't assimilating all of it fast enough and so, it's only the cities which are actually using the tech we've received. Most of the people living outside the cities still don't know how to use all these gadgets. Some of them haven't even heard about a lot of these toys. We need to educate them first."

"Is that so? I thought that the only ones who didn't use the new technology were the Torvoldites. But then again, what do I know? I live in the city. I'm sure you know the trends, and the causes, better than I do," said Normal in a conciliatory tone. He then paused as if considering something, "You ever wonder why the aliens are giving us all this tech for free?"

"Well, as you probably know," began Zafar as if he was back in the lecture rooms of his university, "the first aliens to discover our world were in search of a better trade route between two sectors of the galaxy. We were in an uncharted sector of the galaxy that had not been visited in millennia. They discovered that not only was our planet right smack dab in the middle of the new route that they'd charted out but that the planet was inhabited by sentient beings."

"Yes, every child growing up today knows all of that, but that doesn't explain why they'd be giving away technology without asking for anything in return," interrupted Normal impatiently.

Zafar raised a finger, as if gently chiding a not too bright student. "Yes, being human, we would certainly think that way but apparently, these aliens have a different code of conduct that they have developed over the ages. The Martians, as everybody insists on calling them, were the first to discover us and soon the other races followed since our planet was an ideal stopover point. However, they needed our cooperation to build bases here. While they could have easily taken over the planet by force, what I've learnt indicates that their code prevents them from doing so. Since they needed our help, they had to build our technology and science up to a level where we'd be of use to them. The bottom-line is that the tech isn't free - we are paying for it in land, resources and manpower."

"I still don't understand why they didn't simply take over the world - they could have ..."

"Ah Pinky, trying to take over the world isn't that easy," replied Zafar with a smile. All he received in return was a blank stare from Normal. Zafar looked to be on the verge of explaining his cryptic remark but then he just shook his head as if to say, "Never mind".

"Yes, most humans don't understand that attitude," continued Zafar with a weary smile that said that he'd heard this particular view many times before. "But these aliens have been meeting new races for millennia and they've learnt over the ages that force is counterproductive in the long run. So they try to enlist a new race's help rather than take them over. Of course, they appear not to forget that a new race that they encounter might not always feel the same way as they do. So, they don't give us all the good stuff at once - certainly not any of the more powerful weapons. It's rather straightforward and logical if you think about it a bit," concluded Zafar, as if this was something that should have been self-evident to Normal.

"I suppose you're right," agreed Normal, nodding his head reluctantly. "I still don't trust them though, especially those Martians. I'm sure they have something up their sleeves ..."

"Never mind the fact that they don't have any sleeves, eh?" chuckled the old man.

Normal grinned and responded, "You know what I meant!"

"Yes I do my friend. But then again, you're not alone in that view either. Most of humanity still looks at all aliens with suspicion."

"Well ... they're not normal people and we have never liked anything that's not normal." Normal paused a beat and then grinned as he said, "Guess that's why everybody likes me, eh?"

"Indeed!" The old man smiled back. "And of course, since they're not normal, you don't know what to expect from them whereas we know exactly what to expect from another human, don't we?"

"Yeah, they'll either try to cheat you, lie to you or steal from you. You can always depend on a fellow human!" said Normal with a wry chuckle.

The continuous background noise of the hoverbus' air jets, which had played counterpoint to their conversation, changed at this moment. Zafar glanced out the window and turned back to Normal. "Ah, we're stopping at a rest station. It would be good to stretch our legs. Maybe we can continue our conversation later?"

"Sure, I'd like that," replied Normal as he got up and stretched, ready to get off the hoverbus and perhaps get something to eat.

[1] The one who sat at the very back of the class, always got five as the answer to two plus two and who giggled uncontrollably whenever the teacher said certain words.

It was true that she could be a real terror when she was mad. It was also true that a couple of times in their relationship he'd felt as if he'd rather be somewhere else - this had nothing to do with her deadly aim with ordinary household implements and utensils[1]. But those dark times were rare, she was the sweetest person you ever knew most of the time! He wished he hadn't been such a fool as to get rid of that mutt of hers. That had always been his problem - he tended to act on impulse and it never failed to come back and haunt him.

The view outside wasn't helping his mood much. In fact, it was further aggravating his depressed state of mind. The hoverbus was still passing through the war ravaged areas left over from the era of the great wars - the time before time began. In fact, it was mostly like that wherever you went in the world. The fact that it was such a part of your life didn't help make it less depressing when you had to stare at the signs of such great destruction.

He wondered, for the millionth time, what his ancestors must have been like to have caused devastation on such a huge scale. The wild lands, as they were called, were utterly uninhabitable. They were still radioactive in some parts and in others the geological upheavals had been such that there were great rifts in the land which had created deep chasms. Add to that the fact that strange mutated creatures roamed the wild lands, and you had some pretty compelling reasons not to go there.

"An extremely depressing sight, isn't it?" said the passenger on his left, breaking into his thoughts almost as if he'd read them. Normal turned towards his fellow passenger, whom he'd ignored completely since he'd sat down. He was a small, frail looking old man with a permanently thoughtful look etched on his face and he had an almost tangible aura of untidiness around him. It was as if he radiated untidiness, as if all the untidiness in the world emanated from him - or he attracted it like a magnet. His clothes were untidy, his hair was untidy - in fact, if they'd ever decided to search for a poster-child for untidiness, the old man looked to be a shoe-in. Normal stared at him, giving him the whatchu-talkin-bout-old-man look.

"I meant the wild lands ..." the man hastened to clarify. "Oh, I am sorry; I haven't introduced myself, have I? My name's Zafar Supari. I saw you gazing out the window. You realize that all that destruction and devastation out there was caused by our forefathers?"

"Well, I had only one - so you must have had three," replied Normal with a straight-face. "I had no idea that our combined fathers were capable of all this destruction! As far as I can recall, mine didn't do much in the way of destruction except to break a couple of windows and a plate once, and Mom wouldn't talk to him for a week over that!"

"Oh that's really droll, it is," the old man smiled dryly. "At least you didn't pick on my name - you have no idea how much I've had to suffer with a name like Zafar. But forgive an old man for straying ... are you one of those who believe that our ancestors did all that or do you belong to one of the other camps?" Zafar pointed to the destruction outside the plasti-glass window.

"You mean the ones who claim that aliens disguised as humans started the Chaos Wars? I don't really buy into that. Most people seem to agree that we, or rather our ancestors, did this. Of course, I sometimes wonder if we are just forcing ourselves to believe that so we'd think of the human race as being actually capable of something - even if it was in our past." Normal paused a moment as if considering something. "Come to think of it, we never seem to be at a loss when it comes to finding new ways of destroying things, so I guess it's not too much of a stretch. Still, it's hard to believe our ancestors had the power to wreak so much havoc when just a couple of decades ago we were struggling to just stay alive."

"But wouldn't that also indicate how good we are at destroying things? What could be greater than the destruction of civilization itself?"

"You have a point there," replied Normal. "Oh and I'm Normal, Normal Kint," he added as an afterthought.

"Nice to make your acquaintance," said the old man with a courteous bow of his head. "These days nobody remembers our past!" he continued with a little sigh. "First there were all those years of struggling to stay alive after the Age of Chaos. Then we had all these rapid changes after the aliens arrived. That has made a lot of people forget all about our ancient heritage. Sure, it might not be a heritage that we might want to remember but still, if we forget the mistakes of our past, we are doomed to repeat them."

"So you're a scholar of history?"

"Well, that's my field of study - I'm a historian. I work for the University of Donagar and I've been engaged in trying to unearth more data about humanity's past - especially the years before the Age of Chaos. But facts are scarce - most of the time all you have to go on are legends and folk tales. While they might have a germ of truth to them, the problem is in finding which bit is true." Normal could imagine Zafar wringing his hands at this point, but the old man failed to live up to Normal's imaginings.

     To be continued ....

[1] Most people have failed to grasp the damage potential of a well aimed plate. This is due to the fact that they have not been at the receiving end of a flying plate. Flying saucers had nothing on them.

Of course, they knew who Normal was at the apartment complex and Wylie'd even found several people who saw him leave the apartment the previous day with the dog. But then the blasted blathering, blinking, blinded bonehead had taken it into his head to walk somewhere instead of using a hovercab. How was one supposed to track a man on foot? People on the street never noticed anything!

Wylie had walked the streets in vain, stopping this person and that, asking them if they'd seen a man with a dog the day before. All he'd got for his pains was the kind of look which said that they were trying to decide whether it was safe to run[1]. That was, of course, after they had figured out where the voice they heard was coming from.

He really hated this world! Why couldn't these humans be a normal height instead of being so inconveniently tall? Was it so hard to realize that there were short people in the world? Was that such a hard concept to grasp? Imbeciles! Ignoramuses! Interbred iguana's with inverted intelligence indicators! Why'd he have to end up here of all places? Oh, of course, that'd been his own fault, hadn't it?

He had picked this world as a safe haven. He'd thought that the best place to lose oneself was in a crowd[2]. This world had looked ideal in many respects for getting lost. It was a recent enough discovery that it didn't have all the technological trappings that an older world would have. He didn't want people being able to locate him with no effort at all just because the world was an established one and everything ran like clockwork, where all arrivals were registered as a matter of course. A newly discovered world like this where many races moved in and out at will was the ideal choice if one wanted to lose oneself from the rest of the Fifty Galaxies.

The accidental similarity in physiology had been an added bonus. He looked so much like the humans, except for his height, or rather, lack of it, that most humans never realized that he was as alien as the "Martians", as they insisted on calling the Gaddians. So he had thought that this world would be the ideal place to lie low and run his business till the time was right for him to make his move. Unfortunately, he had not factored in the humans and their irrational behaviour!

What reason would possess that hare-brained, addle-witted fool to walk off with the dog? Or perhaps he had not walked off? Maybe he'd taken the dog out for a walk and something had happened? But he knew that Normal didn't like the dog much. It was the very situation that he'd discovered at Katy's house which had prompted him to take this particular course of action. How could he have miscalculated so badly? There was nothing for it but to keep on looking and hope that he found a lead.

"Excuse me, sir?" said Wylie and waited impatiently for the man to look around and finally decide to look down. Why was it so hard for humans to look down anyway? Was it something in their physiological make up?

As Wylie had expected, the man looked around him as if there were invisible beings addressing him. They'd believe anything, even a voice out of thin air, but they wouldn't believe somebody short could be talking to them? Interminably inbred, imbecilic idiots! Finally, the man looked down.

"Oh, I didn't see you down there! Yes?"

"Have you seen this man by any chance?" Wylie flashed a solidograph of Normal, for what seemed like the thousandth time, at the stranger. "He might have had a dog with him ..."

"You mean Normal? I know him ... We've had a few drinks at the Drum a couple of times. Why are you looking for him anyway?"

"I'm a friend of his wife's ... Actually, I'm her boss and Normal's been missing since yesterday. Just trying to find out what happened to him," Wylie hurried to explain.

"Really? I saw him at the Drum just yesterday! Didn't get to talk to him though. He seemed to be in a hurry."

"Are you sure it was him? Did he have a dog with him?"

"Why in Shima would he drag a dog into the bar? He doesn't like animals much. Not enough to buy one a drink anyways!" smirked the stranger.

"Thank you. I'll head on over there and see if I can find anything ..." said Wylie over his shoulder as he hurried in the direction of the Electric Drum ... and promptly slammed into somebody who'd been walking in the other direction. Unfortunately, the other person was tall and that, combined with Wylie being diminutive enough to win the shortest man alive contest, resulted in bowling the person over.

It would have stopped there had the person that Wylie slammed into not grabbed the nearest person for support. He only succeeded in pulling the second person down and the second person naturally grabbed onto a third. This resulted in a domino effect which would have been wonderful to watch, as long as one wasn't within grabbing distance of the human domino or had not caused the whole fiasco in the first place. However, one advantage of being compactly built was that he could squeeze through the tiniest of spaces, and a tangle of arms and legs was no great obstacle to Wylie. He nimbly crawled through the cursing, shouting, screaming, wriggling human mass and made his way towards the Electric Drum in search of further clues as to the whereabouts of Normal Kint.

[1] People had this insane notion that Wylie would jump on their back and ride them all over the city if they turned from him and ran - it was something to do with ancient fears of midgets.

[2] Philosophers through the ages have pondered the question of who came up with such platitudes. All the races in the Fifty Galaxies had at least a few such sayings. When you stopped to think about it, they either were overly simplistic or not at all logical. For instance, the humans had a saying which went "a centavo saved is a centavo earned". What did that mean anyway? How could one earn something by saving it? Didn't one have to earn it first if one were to save it?

Maybe he could brazen it out. Maybe this was just routine for the Cheese ... "Yeah, right!" said his pessimistic inner-self. He began praying to the Kabul City deities again, promising them double what he'd promised earlier if the Cheese would just leave him alone. Maybe I just look like an easy mark - better an easy mark than a marked man, he thought.

The cop loomed over him like his Aunt Petunia when she'd caught him sneaking a peek at the girl next door through his bedroom window. "What's your name, buddy?" the cop rasped out.

"N-N-Normal, Normal Kint, sir" he said.

The Cheese took his notebook out, looking all official. He even licked his pencil stub as if about to write something down[1]. Normal let out the breath he'd been holding - this had the familiar routine of a shakedown.

"How do you spell it? Normal as in formal or is it more like in thermal?"

Normal heaved an internal sigh of relief. Yep, the Cheese was just looking for a bit of graft. All he had to do now was not do anything stupid which might arouse the guy's suspicion. He tried to answer with as casual a tone as he could muster.

"It's Normal just the way I said it."

"Strange to have a guy named Normal" the cop grinned, amused at his own cleverness. Normal grimaced inwards - why him? Why'd he always get the comedians?

"Blame it on my parents. My brother's got it worse, they named him Verbal and he hardly speaks a couple of words a day. Apparently, we're named after a great uncle of ours."

"So your uncle was Normal, too?" The cop smirked again, perhaps imagining how he'd use this routine at his next Comedy Night appearance.

"No. Funnily enough, he was called Kaizer Soze.  Go figure! My parents never explained how that was supposed to work. You'd think if you were named after somebody, you'd actually have their name. But, oh no, not my parents! They're just weird like that."

The cop clucked in sympathy. "Yeah, I hear you. Take my name for instance. My grandpappy used to say that his boss would always say 'If I had my druthers, I'd always take old Carruthers.' His boss apparently found that amusing, though I've never seen anything amusing about being named John Carruthers myself." The Cheese seemed to realize that he'd been getting too chummy with Normal and so reverted back to his official persona, the one where the police treated every victim[2] to their patented stare - the one a python gives a rabbit just before it swallowed its mesmerised victim.

"Where are you bound today and what's your business there?" he growled.

"I'm just on my way to Donagar - got some friends there ..."

"These friends of yours, have they got a name? Have you known them long?"

Normal had had enough of the cop's questioning. It was obvious that the Cheese was not suspicious of him. So, it was time to get a little tough, time to show him that he wasn't a complete pushover. "Look, officer, is there a reason for this questioning? Can't a guy even take a bus ride anymore without getting hassled?"

"Okay, fella, no need to go all emelkay[3] on me! I'm just doing my duty as an officer of the law!" He looked as if he was about to turn away towards another passenger but then hesitated and turned back towards Normal. "Let me see your ID tag. Normal Kint sounds way too much like a name that you'd picked off the top of your head - and speaking of heads, you need a haircut!"

Normal reached into his tunic and pulled out his ID tag. Bomb those aliens and all this new technology that they'd been introducing since they got here. Not that he was against all new technology - god knows he wasn't a Torvoldite. It's just that there were too many ways to be hassled these days - ID tags, credit cards, vidphone marketing, android riots. Life used to be so bombed simple in the good old days.

The Cheese scrutinized the ID tag carefully, even turning it over as if he expected to discover something hiding away at the back. He grimaced, wrote something down on his notepad and then handed it back without a word.

Yeah, no soap for you today, Cheese - at least not from me! thought Normal, with an inward grin. The Cheese had been expecting to find something so that he could pull Normal up on some minor technicality. Then Normal would have had to get out of it with a little greasing of palms - par for the course. Ah well, he'll find another patsy soon enough, thought Normal as the Cheese turned and made his way towards the front of the bus.

Normal's spirits rose with the hoverbus as it resumed its journey a few minutes later. His exuberance was short-lived however. He remembered that the Cheese had written down his ID number. Surely he'd include the details in his report, wouldn't he? And what if Kathryn had reported him missing? Even if she hadn't done that yet, she was bound to go to the Cheese sooner or later and if this cop's report was to be cross-linked to their search for him, they'd know he was bound for Donagar. He'd just have to trust in the inefficiency of the Kabul City Cheese, he decided. After all, they did the least possible work they could and finding a missing person wasn't likely to bring in any credits.

But the fear continued to niggle away, hiding in the dark and not-often-dusted corners of his mind. I'll just lay low in Donagar till Kathryn calms down and then maybe I'll call her. Or send her one of those CCs as a gift before I vidphone her ... Those CCs act just like real dogs without the microbes, dirt, or fleas. They say that they're real smart too. What could be better? thought Normal, trying to drown out his fears by thinking as hard as he could about other matters ... and failing miserably.

[1] The Kabul City Cheese didn't believe in splurging on all the new technology such as handheld computers. They figured that graphite had been good enough for their ancestors and it was good enough for them - it had the added advantage of being cheaper, too. Besides, licking your computer wasn't as satisfying as licking a pencil stub.

[2] The Cheese called them citizens under their protective care, but a victim is always a victim, whatever name they are given.

[3] Nobody knew what this meant but it was something which had survived from the ages past. Some said that maybe it was somebody's initials since it sounded like letters but everybody else scoffed at these misguided few, obviously, they were words of power or some mantra, they said.

He lay back and tried to get some sleep, but Kathryn's face kept popping up in his mind's eye like some angry jack-in-the-box. She wasn't really a bad sort; he loved her a lot and she loved him as much. The trouble was that she loved that mutt as well and he just couldn't take it. Not that he was the jealous type, mind you. It was the thought of all the fleas and germs that drove him nuts. He hoped she would forgive him. Maybe he could get her one of those new robot dogs. What were they called now? CCs? Yeah, that was it! "Cybernetic Canines"! The things they came up with these days - the world sure had changed a lot since the Martians arrived.

He gazed in sombre introspection at his reflection on the plasti-glass window; his hair really was too long. Kathryn had been bugging him to get a haircut for weeks now. Perhaps when he got to Donagar. Maybe that'd make Kathryn more amenable towards forgiving him when he returned? He could always hope.

He sighed and lay back on his seat again. There was nothing to see out there except for desolation. He was feeling gloomy enough already and didn't need to be brought down even further by looking at the dreary landscape outside. Soon it would be evening and the landscape would be covered in the bloody red rays of the setting sun. A fitting colour indeed for this land, which has seen so much bloodshed, Normal thought despondently.

The vehicle came to a sudden stop. There wasn't a scheduled stop for a while and they'd just picked him up. What now? Was it another person walking the highway? Or had Dick Turpentine decided that he really could use a sidekick? He craned his neck to see what had happened. As he did so, the question flitted through his mind as to how you could crane your neck - it's not as if you were one of those newfangled androids who could telescope their necks like two stories up - bombed peeping toms! They've got no morals, that's what's wrong with them - just steel, plastic and wires... no emotions. But that description could fit Kathryn when she was mad too... Maybe there wasn't much of a difference between humans and androids after all. He mentally shook himself, time to find the reason for the unscheduled stop.

Normal peered between the other passengers towards the front of the bus. Geez, it was the Cheese! For a moment, the panicked thought ran through his mind - and boy, could those thoughts run like the wind when they were panicked - as to whether Kathryn had sicced the police on his trail for turning her beloved pet into a Martian masala meal. The thought was as short-lived as he figured his marriage to Kathryn would be. This was, in all likelihood, just another routine graft stop. Ever since Chu and his gang passed the Feenster and Meaney Graft Act, it was a common occurrence for the Cheese to stop public conveyances to get their daily quota of baksheesh. There was no escape - on one hand, you had Dick Turpentine who preyed on lone travellers on the highway, and on the other, you had the Cheese pouncing on any commercial passenger vehicle. When you're stuck between the law and the outlawed, you had nowhere to run, he thought. It would be just his luck if they picked on him.

The officer, a giant of a man with blond hair bleached almost white by the sun, had been looking over the passengers like a vulture appraising a carcass ripe for the picking. And now, the Cheese was looking straight at Normal as if he could see right through Normal's soul to the soles of his rather worn-out shoes. Normal wished that there was some way he could turn invisible or just apport out of the hoverbus and appear somewhere else far away from the accusing eyes of the Cheese. But the Cheese had already turned away and was questioning another passenger.

Normal whispered a silent prayer to all the deities of Kabul City and promised them an offering each this time. When he got back to Kabul City, of course[1]. He wriggled further down in his seat to be less conspicuous a target. Maybe he shouldn't have tried that - trying to look inconspicuous just made you stand out all the more. The Cheese was looking in his direction again. Maybe he should have tried to look nonchalant like the guys in the trivid movies did, but then again, he'd always thought that those poses looked rather fake and contrived.

Normal wondered if perhaps his guilt was written all across his face for everybody, especially the Cheese, to see. The Cheese certainly was looking at Normal as if he was a thick wad of notes dropped on the sidewalk[2]. Normal's heart began beating faster and then dropped like an elevator which had its cables cut as he noticed the cop begin to move in his direction ... and then, the Cheese stopped to hassle another passenger.

Normal's poor heart, which was trembling like the bunny rabbits he'd seen in picture books as a kid, couldn't take much more of this unbearable tension and guilt. He wanted to get it over with, to know what was going on. Was the game up already? Was he to be dragged back in ignominy to Kabul City to face the wrath of Kathryn?

     To be continued ....

[1] The Kabul City Deities' Association had given up filing breach-of-promise law suits about these hasty promises of offerings which never seemed to materialize after the crisis was over. If they had an offering for each time this happened, they'd need hundred times the temples, mosques and other places of worship than they currently had, just to hold all the offerings.

[2] In reality, this would never happen in Kabul City. A wad of notes dropped on the sidewalk in Kabul City was called a riot.

This bickering about leadership had resulted in several botched jobs and had been the main cause of the semi-retirement from which the group was now emerging. Rod was determined that the mistakes of the past should not be repeated again and that the Debian Raiders should rise from the ashes like the Pyrobirds of legend, to take their rightful place in the mercenary annals of the Fifty Galaxies. To this end, he and Sal had discussed matters and divvied up their individual responsibilities. Rod would defer to Sal when it came to matters strategic - Sal had absolute command when they were in the field of battle. Rod would lead at all other times. This arrangement appeared to work fine so far - at least as far as Rod was concerned. Sal might not be so sanguine since he hadn't received the mantle of leadership yet.

"Okay, guys, let's go over the job one more time to make sure we are clear on the details!" said Sal's disembodied voice over the intercom while the ship shuddered like a man with the ten-day Ligian fever on the tenth day[2].

"Umm ... shouldn't we be worrying about the ship instead of going over plans?" replied Sax, looking out one of the viewscreens nervously. "Besides, we all know the details, Sal. Come on, how hard can it be? We go in, meet the guy, get the package and then deliver it to our client's representatives on Merx IX!"

"Sax, careful planning is the only way to do a job right! We need this job if we are to leave our mark and make some credits. When will you get it through your head?" snapped Rod, looking at his brother as if Sax needed a few more brain cells to start a neuron party.

"As long as we don't leave a mark on the planet's surface on landing ..." muttered Alb, munching on a sandwich.

"We've already gone through all the plans, everything's in place, and we don't have anything else to discuss! Come on, Rod, be reasonable!" said Cal, looking at Rod like a kid pleading for one last ride on the merry-go-round.

"You guys are impossible! So what if we've already discussed the plans? We should also plan for the unexpected!" Rod always thought planning would solve everything and blamed lack of planning whenever anything went wrong.

"And how do you propose to do that? Consult a priest? Read some borra-borra leaves? Gut a devil-lizard and read its entrails?" snapped Rus.

"Mmm ... devil-lizards... I'm hungry!" interjected Alb, who'd already wolfed down his sandwich, heading towards the auto-chef.

"You're always hungry, Alb!" chorused half a dozen voices in unison.

"Oh, fine! Just don't expect me to watch your backs when the unexpected catches us off guard! Don't say I didn't warn you!" said Rod, giving up any attempts to plan further. Sal chose that particular moment to chime in over the intercom.

"If you're not strapped in, better do so now! We are in orbit around the planet and I am about to go in for the landing. This crate's not in the best of shape and it might be a bit of a bumpy ride. Just hang on tight!"

The others checked their seat belts and straps while still muttering and complaining about Rod and Sal and the duo's obsession with plans. Alb was the last one to strap down since he had to first wash down the last bits of his latest sandwich with a drink. The ship settled down a bit once it entered the atmosphere, and the Raiders were beginning to heave sighs of relief and unclench their fists when things took a turn for the worse in a rather abrupt fashion.

At first, it was just an imperceptible shuddering of the framework, but bit by bit, the shuddering spread to every strut, metal plate, nut, bolt and welding seal on the craft. The Raiders found themselves shaking along with the ship like dolls in a dryer, sliding down a flight of steps, which in turn was being dragged along the railway tracks. At least, that was as close an approximation as anything was.

"Oh boy, this doesn't look too good. Maybe we should stop?" asked Tre, holding on tight to his seat's armrests and looking straight ahead.

"What, right in the middle of entering atmosphere and just hope to hang around?" replied Rod, trying to turn around to stare at Tre. For his pains, he almost had his head snapped off due to the shaking of the ship.

"Well, hanging around sounds much better than being blown to a million pieces," retorted Tre. He appeared to be praying in between talking - or at least, his lips were moving silently even when he wasn't talking.

"Who bought this pile of junk anyway?" asked Rlo from the back, perhaps in an effort to divert everybody's attention.

"Don't knock it. It got us this far, didn't it?" Rod scowled.

"Yeah, but what's the point of coming this far if we can't make it to the planet's surface?" replied Tre, still staring straight ahead.

"Guys, it's possible that it just got a teensy weensy bit worse than a bumpy ride," interrupted Sal over the intercom.

"How much worse?" asked Rod, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

"Depends on how much more could go wrong. But I'd suggest that you prepare for a crash landing or even ejecting out."

"Can we do anything to help?" It was Rlo again.

"Well, you can do what every mercenary does when in a tight spot. You can start praying! Talk to you in a bit, I got a ship to land ..."

Prayers looked to be in order as the ship juddered and shuddered its way through the atmosphere like an ailing patient for what seemed like aeons to the apprehensive Raiders. At last, the ship stumbled through the cloud cover and the Raiders could see the ground below on the viewscreens. It looked as if they might make it after all and the Raiders collectively began releasing that one breath that they'd been holding ...

Sometimes, fate leaves the death card hidden till the last possible moment - it makes for better dramatics that way. The poor craft, which had held up under all that was thrown its way with such bravery till now, gave up the ghost at the last moment and fell apart moments before touching the ground.

The Raiders had landed.

[1] The Sekhunds of Clocca would certainly have agreed. They spent their lives counting the multitudes of Sekhunds, believing that when each and every Sekhund was counted and tabulated, their world would end.

[2] The shuddering and shivering stopped on the eleventh day because the patient was one of two things - cured or dead.

The Debian Raiders sitting in the lounge of the spacecraft groaned in unison. It had already been a rough trip. They'd lost their way once because Rod had forgotten to update the star maps. Then they'd had that little mishap at the refuelling station due to Alb complaining about their food and threatening them with Ziggy's Galactic Guide[1]. And now this. What else could go wrong? They gripped their arm-rests a bit tighter, as if willing the ship to land in one piece instead of ending up scattered over the landscape in a million pieces. All of them, that is, except for Cal, who appeared to think that this was as good a time as any to get things off his chest.

"Ben, you asked me a question once, 'What has you all tied up in knots when you wake up sweating in the middle of the night?' You still wanna know? I've been thinking about it. Been thinking about it a lot. It's not the work. I love the work. I've always loved the work. It's the game. The game, Ben. And I was so good at it. I made sure all the right people liked me. At night, I'd go through the checklist in my mind: Am I cool with Jon Bovi? Am I cool with Mr. Onionson? Am I cool with all the people who can help me? Am I cool with all the people who can hurt me? Nobody thought I was weak or a loser. There was nobody I was offending, nobody I loved. That game, Ben. But guess what? You taught me how to live outside of the game. You taught me how to live. And you know what scares me even more? That I'm going back in."

Ben stared at Cal, perhaps wondering how he'd ever managed to say all of those things. Ben had never spoken a word in his entire life. Being mute would do that to you.

Cal was a round faced, curly haired, slim individual with a cheerful smile, and he was smiling now that he'd gotten the whole monologue out of his system. Cal's smile was as familiar to Ben as was his own. In fact, it was his own since Cal happened to be Ben's clone.

Since they were clones, maybe Cal did know what Ben might have said in that mythical conversation, the one which had never taken place. Or rather, it might have taken place, but certainly not between Cal and himself. Cal did have a habit of launching into these soliloquies where Ben had a starring role, and Ben was content to listen to Cal going on. Ben knew that he himself couldn't have said what Cal attributed to him any better. It was the best of both worlds as far as Ben was concerned. He never had to say a word and yet, Cal would say the things that Ben knew he'd have said for sure if he'd been able to talk.

"Damn right, we are going back in, Cal!" interrupted another one of the people crammed[2] into the little spacecraft's lounge, with considerable heat. "We've been out of action for too long and people are saying that the Debian Raiders are a bunch of has-beens. It's time to prove them wrong! Come on, show me the credits!"

Ben looked at the new speaker, though he needn't have bothered since he knew the speaker's face as he knew his own. That was because it was his own face, more or less, since the speaker happened to be his clone, too. But then again, everybody in the ship was his clone. Or rather, everybody was a clone of each other or of some other individual who'd be the original to their copies or ... He checked his thoughts, he'd been down this particular mental avenue before and it was a dead end street. Better to retrace his steps and concentrate on the conversation between his brothers.

"You're right, Rod. I might be scared of getting back into the game but the Debian Raiders need to get back out there where things are happening. We've got to let them see that, when it comes to mercenaries, there isn't a better outfit in the Fifty Galaxies than us!" replied Cal, eager for action now that he'd voiced his fears and gotten them off his chest.

He looked around the lounge of the little spacecraft as if seeking confirmation and was rewarded by nods from his brothers - some enthusiastic, some reluctant. The stars flashed by in milky white streaks on the viewscreens as the ship rocked and rocketed on towards its destination.

"By Bacu, we're going to show them that the Debian Raiders haven't gone soft! We've got a shelf life of ten years, tops. Our next contract's gotta bring us the credits that'll last us, and ours, a long time. In the mercenary biz, we're just a blip on the long range scanners. Blip, we'll be out of this game in five years. What's my family gonna live on? Huh?" asked Rod, turning to face the rest of his brothers.

"Aw, stop yer bellyachin', Rod! We all know the reasons for this job and the fact that we've gotta make enough to retire on, soon," said Tre, joining the conversation.

"Yeah, none of us are getting any younger and the mercenary trade isn't for old men[3]. But then again, I suppose it's not even for young men. But everybody's got to make a living, right?" added Rus, giving Rod a lopsided grin.

"This job should set us up sitting pretty. It's the kind of deal that should bring us a lot of publicity. Everybody in the Fifty Galaxies will be talking about us soon, you can be sure of that!" said Rod, looking at the others almost as if pleading for their agreement.

"That's for sure! After this mission we'll have jobs coming our way like debris to a black hole!" said Tre with enthusiasm, nodding his head like a puppet on speed.

Several of the others nodded in agreement as if they'd had the same thought. Not surprising since the Debian Raiders tended to come to about the same conclusion on most matters, which is what made them a good mercenary unit - the fact that they could act in concert even when they hadn't planned it out that way. Of course, there were instances when it worked against them - like the time on Rigel 7 when they'd all gone after the same girl, or that time they'd all decided to use the same bar window to escape a fight on Carillus. But most of the time, it worked out in their favour.

Some people assumed that being clones, they'd all think, act and feel the exact same way. That just went to show that most people didn't understand clones. The life experiences you've had dictate your reactions and behaviour, and even clones couldn't have the exact same life experiences. Otherwise, they would have turned out to be twelve peas in a very big pod.

Of course, they'd look a lot more like each other if Ben hadn't gone and gotten his hair singed off for good in that selfsame brawl on Carillus; or if Rus hadn't grown that moustache to impress his girlfriend. One had to accept that kind of thing sometimes, even from your own clones.

The ship did another wild belly-flop as the comm unit crackled to life again. "Rod, you told me to let you know the moment we entered the planet's atmosphere."

"So?" Rod was irritated. He didn't like to be disturbed when he was on his favourite subject - credits.

"We've entered the planet's atmosphere," said Sal's clipped voice. Nobody knew how his voice became clipped - maybe it had been those training lasers on the military academy he'd attended. None of the others had had a hankering to join the military. They'd preferred experience from the school of hard knocks, or so they'd said. In reality, they'd spent most of their time in bars while Sal was in the academy. They had indeed gotten a lot of hard knocks, but mostly from falling off bar stools after a night of heavy drinking. Sal had come away with his clipped voice and the rest of them had a good collection of mugs swiped from a variety of bars in the system - it had sounded like an equitable exchange at the time.

That was before Sal had proposed that with his military experience and their practical experience the logical career path for them to follow would be to become mercenaries. They should have thought things through at that point. Unfortunately, the school of hard knocks as experienced at a bar tended to leave one with a rather reduced capacity to think matters over in a coherent and logical manner. They figured that one out later - much, much later. By that time, it was too late. Sal had already committed them (and more to the point, their total credit reserves) to being mercenaries. From those confused beginnings, a legend[4] had been born.

     To be continued ....

[1] No, he hadn't threatened to write to the ZGG. Instead, Alb had threatened the owner with a thump on the head with the guide. It was a big galaxy and the ZGG was rather bulky. But then again, Alb took his food seriously.

[2] One might have said "like sardines in a can" except that sardines would have kissed their can and given thanks to the big fish in the sky if they'd seen how crowded it was in this particular spaceship.

[3] Everybody said that being a mercenary wasn't for old men. Mostly due to the fact that there were hardly any old mercenaries around - people took this to mean that old men did not like the mercenary trade.

[4] Most people said that it certainly was a legend, but one about a bunch of fumblers so inept that they bungled all jobs. But what did they know?

Wylie was working himself up to a rage, as he often did, and Katy looked on in silent misery, unable to voice her fears since she had no idea how her employer would react. She watched Wylie rant and rage and pace the room, half expecting him to start frothing at the mouth. She wanted to ask him what he meant, who had got her darling Ringo (and of course, Normal too, she thought, doing some mental editing) but she didn't want the infuriated little man's anger directed at her. She knew from her limited past experience that Wylie's anger, while it had a tendency to burn white hot like a supernova, subsided almost as fast as it flared up. All she had to do was wait in silence while Wylie wound down like a clockwork toy.

"Porcupines!!! Porcine, ponderous, peregrinating pumpkins!! Pontius Pilate on a plate! Pirates! Pollywogs! Pandora's pancake pullers!" Wylie raged on and then, without warning, as was usual for him, he stopped to draw a breath and then fell silent. He began pacing again at a furious rate, pulling so hard on his right-earlobe that Kathryn was afraid that the whole ear would come off. He was a small man but didn't have the usual disproportionately large head and stunted bodies of those affected by dwarfism. In fact, he looked more like a small child who had dressed up as an adult - if a small child could manage to look rather muscular and have an elegant goatee, that is.

"There's no help for it, Katy. I guess I'll have to go after them and get it back," he said after a while as if he'd come to a decision.

"Get what back?" asked the bemused Kathryn.

"Never you mind what, Katy. I don't want to involve you in this any further. I'll find them myself. Just mind the office for a few days while I'm gone, will you?"

"But John, where are you going? What happened to Ringo and Normal? Why won't you tell me anything?" Kathryn was fast approaching the point where she would, under normal circumstances, have grabbed Wylie and tried to shake some sense out of him. But she'd just started on this job and wasn't sure that it was wise to be that familiar with her employer just yet. Besides, her pragmatic side whispered, if something's happened to Normal, you're going to need this job.

"It's for your own good, Katy. The less you know, the better it is. Certainly for me, but probably for you as well," Wylie said as if he was thinking aloud. He then looked up at her and his expression became kinder.

"Come now, child. Don't worry. Your husband and your dog will be fine. I promise that I'll get them back safe and sound. Just take care of the office and tell anybody who might inquire that I'm away on business but will be back in a couple of days," he said, giving her a rather weak smile. He might even have attempted to pat her hand if he'd been tall enough to reach it.

"Are you sure you'll be back in a couple of days?"

Irritation flared in Wylie's eyes for a moment. "Of course I'll be back in a few days! Even if I'm not, just keep on telling them that I'll be back soon! They don't have to know how soon I'll be back! I'll have my comm unit turned off. I'll contact you when I can and let you know if I have any further instructions for you."

"But ... but ... how can I reach you if there's an emergency?" This really wasn't going well. First Ringo and Normal disappeared with no warning, and now her boss was trying to skedaddle off somewhere. What was going on? Was she going to be left husbandless, dogless and now, jobless too?

If Wylie had a chance of whispering in her ear, he might have attempted it. Instead, he stretched up on tiptoe and said in a rather low voice, "I guess you'll just have to manage the best you can, Katy, because I don't want them to trace me using my comm unit."

"Them? Who's them?" asked Kathryn, pouncing upon the word. She wondered if it was possible that Wylie had gone insane. He had become a total paranoiac all of a sudden, and it wasn't as if he was a government agent or a detective or a teacher or some such profession where a little bit of paranoia was part of the territory. He was just an agent. Not a government agent, but your run of the mill agent for the graffiti glitterati, as they called themselves - the street artists. She didn't know what had come over Wylie for him to start acting in such a strange fashion. But there was nothing she could say since she was afraid that anything she said would only result in triggering one of his sudden rages. She contented herself with nodding her head as he gave her a few more instructions, took some items out of his cluttered desk drawer, stuffed them in his pockets and turned to leave.

"Oh yes, hope you remember that Jello's got a job at the Electric Drum today?" said Wylie, turning back.

"I haven't forgotten. She'll be fine. She's had gigs like this before," said Kathryn, sharply. She was a little irritated that he would doubt her efficiency. After all, she'd been working here for several months now.

"Yeah, just making sure," said Wylie, giving her a grin which seemed to say that he knew he'd managed to irritate her, as he continued out the door. He stopped short as he was about to leave the room. "Oh yeah, they'll be here soon. Bomb it!" he said, almost to himself. Then he turned back to Kathryn. "There will be a bunch of guys looking for me. Tell them that there's been a little complication and that they should call you-know-who for further instructions."

"Who?"

"They'll know who!"

"But you said to tell everybody who asked that you'll be back in a few days. So how do I know who should call whoever-that-they-know and who should be told that you'll be back soon?" Kathryn was beginning to lose all patience with her employer.

"You'll figure it out, I'm sure. Well, see you soon, Katy!" With a cheery wave, John Wylie left his office. Kathryn found herself alone, worrying about her husband and her dog. While most of her mind was occupied with worrying, there was a tiny part of her mind debated with itself trying to figure out what she should tell whom and wondering who these mysterious strangers were.

Normal shrugged. "Yeah, they do, but can you blame me if Rover Roast sounds delicious to them? I just sold them the bombed animal. What they do with it is their lookout!"

"Isn't that a bit ... cold?"

"No, I'm told that they heat up the ovens before they make the roast ...," began Normal, all wrapped up in his description of Martian culinary habits.

"I meant selling your wife's beloved pet to a Martian!" Dick was beginning to wonder if Normal was crazy or if he was just stupid[2].

"Oh, that. Yeah, I did think of that afterwards," Normal admitted with a hint of contrition. "That's my problem, I never think things through before I do them and that's why I always end up in messes like this. By the time I thought of Kathryn and what she might say, it was too late. I was back at home, and the dog was probably on its way to Mars, or wherever those bombed aliens come from. Besides, I don't actually know this alien - they all look alike, you know. I just met it at a bar."

"You've been meeting aliens in bars? Just what do you get up to when your wife's away?" interrupted Dick, fascinated by this new facet in Normal's character.

"It's not like that   I was at the bar looking for somebody to buy the dog!"

"Sure, sure ... we've all been there at one time or another," replied Dick, soothingly.

"What? At the Drum?"

"No, I mean at a bar looking for somebody to ... umm ... buy our dog ...," Dick leered.

"Huh, fancy that, I thought I was the only one," said Normal, wide-eyed. "But to get back to what I was saying, how in Teller's name was I supposed to find the Martian anyway?" If it was possible for somebody to look both helpless and defiant at the same time, Normal would have been that person. Dick wasn't sure if he was pleading for help or just making excuses.

"So you're running away from your wife and going to Donagar because of a dog. Is that what you're telling me? Isn't that a little drastic?" Dick decided to use a bit of logic, which was as interesting a spectacle as a butcher using a scalpel, and just as effective.

"Drastic's my middle name!" Normal looked Dick straight in the eyes and drew closer as if to impart a great secret. He continued in a lower tone, "Well, not really, I never had a middle name, you know. Always hated that," said Normal, drawing away. "All the other kids had middle names, but I never had one. But I do have this bad habit of doing drastic stuff. Like that time I destroyed a brand new holovision set because they showed an image of a cockroach. Did I tell you that I hated creepy, crawly insects?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm getting the picture," said Dick, thinking to himself that in fact, it was more like the whole art gallery. He was on uneasy street, heading straight downhill towards fear junction. "How'd you end up in the middle of nowhere, on foot?" he asked, to keep Normal's mind occupied, just in case Normal was prone to homicidal rages as well as destroying household furniture.

"Did I tell you Kathryn gets mad? I love her to death, but boy, can she get mad! When she's mad, she's got this habit of throwing stuff at people ... Well, mostly me. And she's a good enough shot that she usually hits her mark. I tell you, she sure can put quite a dent in my credit card, not to mention my head, with all the stuff she throws around. Anyway, I figured it's safest to be somewhere else till she cools down. You know, till it's safe to return home and explain stuff to her." Normal finished with the air of one who says, 'There, that should explain it all. Doesn't it make perfect sense now?'

"Yeah, I got that bit ... well, most of it anyway. But that still doesn't explain how you ended up here." Dick resisted the urge to scratch his chin again - he'd been told by his publicist that it made him look lousy.

"If you'd hold your turbos, I'll get to it. Sheesh! It's like this: I hitched a ride with this guy who was on his way to Donagar. I figured I might as well save some money. He wanted to know why I was going to Donagar, and I told him the whole story. Guess what? He was a dog lover. I just can't catch a break! The guy gets upset at me and leaves me in the middle of nowhere and takes off. Can you believe that?"

"That's not a trick question, is it?" Dick wasn't sure of anything by this point, least of all, how he was going to handle the loony that fate had dropped in his lap.

"What?"

"Never mind." Dick waved his blaster dismissively and hurriedly lowered it as Normal looked ready to dive to the ground. "Yeah, so here we are," said Dick, not quite certain what else he could say.

"Yep, here we are. You're not a dog lover by any chance, are you now?" asked Normal, looking in apprehension at Dick and his gun, now pointed, like Pinocchio's nose, at somewhere between the ground and him.

Dick, however, had his own worries. His worry was that he had no idea of what to do with this crazy guy. He didn't want to turn his back on Normal and walk away since Normal might take it into his head to follow Dick all over the place, asking about joining Dick's outlaw band or something. On the other hand, he couldn't stay here since he knew Normal would bring up the question of becoming his sidekick, and saying, 'Sorry, the vacancy has already been filled!' didn't sound like the safest course of action either, not when you were dealing with a nutter.

"So how about that sidekick job? I think I'd make a pretty good sidekick," began Normal, confirming Dick's worst fears. Dick looked around in the wild hope of finding something, anything, to distract Normal. He could have whooped for joy at the sight of fresh hope moving towards them along the highway in the form of a hoverbus - the sleek, rounded, red tube of the passenger compartment nestled amongst the inflated tan skirting, looking for all the world like a giant hotdog rushing down the gullet of the black python that was the highway.

"Oh drat, there's a hoverbus!" He tried to hide his relief but didn't quite succeed. "Can't hang around, gotta do that dashing thing, you know. I'm sure you can take the hoverbus to Donagar. They'll stop for you since you are stuck here in the middle of nowhere," he said over his shoulder while running off towards the shoulder of the road and safety, away from the crazy, crazy man.

"Wait! What about the sidekick job?" asked Normal after the departing bandit, hope still apparent in his voice.

"If it doesn't work out in Donagar, why don't you look me up? We can figure something out and we'll definitely do lunch," Dick shouted as he made his getaway and left Normal alone on the road, looking back and forth between the departing highwayman and the approaching hoverbus. As he ran off as fast as his legs could carry him, Dick wondered if the sight of hoverbuses made Normal hungry, too.

[1] Dick's strength was in not letting others, most notably the Cheese, catch up.

[2]When Dick wondered if somebody was stupid, that was saying something. About the other person's IQ, that is.

At the moment, Ringo, looking like a woolly blanket himself due to the fine long white hair that covered all of his body, was leaning against his cage and growling at the Martian as it approached the cage. Ringo was the sort of dog who looked rather unbalanced - his long coat of hair made his body look big, and that in turn made his head look small. It also made him look as if he was always leaning forward. The effect was further accentuated now because Ringo actually was leaning forward, trying to get at the approaching Martian.

It was a rather large room in the ship. The biggest room in a Martian ship was reserved for the food storage, preparation and testing and this was it. On one side of the room, you could see large boxes and bales and stacks of various foodstuffs. The central portion of the room was equally divided between the food testing and food preparation tables. Kerr had been working at one of the testing tables, going through a sample he'd gotten from Ringo. This was the sixth or seventh sample he'd obtained so far.

Kerr was perplexed. He'd run the tests several times over and they still said the same thing - Ringo was not a dog! It looked like a dog, sounded like a dog, and even smelled like a dog. The human who'd sold the creature to him for a large number of credits (and it had been a pretty hefty sum even for a Martian - he'd never had dog before) had appeared quite genuine in his declaration that it was indeed a dog. Kerr had been eager to try out this rare delicacy that so many others of his kind raved about.

It was getting more and more difficult to get a good mutt roast. The humans, in their own topsy-turvy fashion, were now getting rather nasty about the sale of dogs to Martians for food. Never mind the fact that the poor animals were starved and ill fed, never mind that some of the human cities were teeming with dogs who had no owner and were scrounging around for scraps thrown into garbage heaps. Never mind, too, that most humans never even gave one of these mongrels a second look (except perhaps to complain to the city authorities about them), but let a Martian come along and offer to take all that trouble off their hands - in a most humane manner of course - and all of a sudden, they get humanitarian and decide that the poor doggies were better off starving in the streets than being eaten by those wicked, nasty Martians! Kerr suspected that the ones who made trouble were the ones who didn't have any dogs to sell to the Martians - the real reason they made trouble was because they weren't the ones who got their grubby paws on some credits.

Kerr had often wondered how, or even why, humanity let dogs continue to roam their cities in packs when they had made as many advances in technology[2] in such a short time as they had. They hadn't simply climbed the ladder of technology, they'd leapfrogged up it, two rungs at a time.

In fact, he'd never seen a species like the humans for surrounding themselves with gadgets that made life easier. And yet, they still continued to have slums in their cities, dogs roaming the streets, and cockroaches in their houses. Inexplicable! Were they just too lazy to take care of these problems, or were they, at some subconscious level, unable to live without these reminders of how their lives used to be in what they called "the old days"[3]?

He came out of his reverie and began thinking again about the problem he'd been mulling over - the inexplicable test results. Only one conclusion could be drawn - he'd been deceived by the human. He had been duped into buying another animal which resembled a dog down to the tiniest detail. The puzzling thing was that he'd never heard of any such animal. Nor had a search of his race's rather extensive databases provided him with a previous case similar to this. But the test results were infallible, therefore, he must have been the fallible one. He'd let a human trick him! He could imagine the sneering pity of his fellows if they knew a mere human had deceived him with such ease.

He knew how most of his people considered the humans. They thought the humans were amusing creatures who were several rungs below them on the evolutionary ladder. Perhaps quite similar to the way the humans had considered Chimpanzees - Kerr had learnt all about them (and other simians who now no longer roamed the almost non-existent tree tops of this world) in his research into this world's history. To be tricked by such creatures! Oh, the ignominy of it all! They were sure to take him down at least a couple of rungs in his crèche's totemic ranks if the story ever got out.

There was only one possible course of action - he must find the human and get his credits back. At the same time, he must teach the human a lesson so he'd never forget that it never paid to pull a fast one on one of the alien races. Yes, that was it! He must make sure that no other human tried such a trick again!

With the decision made, Kerr sprang into action. He had to find the human and he had to do it fast! He decided that it would be wisest to take the fake dog with him. The logical course of action would have been to dispose of it then and there instead of taking it with him, but Kerr was disposed to be cautious. All the members of his race that lived to reach adulthood had learned the value of being cautious and covering all the bases - in the school of hard knocks, his world tended to start with a ten-ton truck right on the noggin in kindergarten.

Kerr took Ringo with him and set out to search for the human, Normal. He didn't have a clue as to where the human would be, but decided that the best place to start was where they'd first met - at the Electric Drum.

[1] Perhaps only by a dog, though.

[2] The humans had a lot of help from many different alien races of course but still, it was always amazing what they could come up with given the right incentive - such as the chance to idle away time or to kill, maim or hurt somebody else.

[3] Humans also tended to prefix the "old days" with "good", though given that they complained about the "old days" such a lot, Kerr couldn't understand what had been so good about them.