STARSHIP OF FOOLS - (C) 1986 Jerry Kindall and Rex Crossley

CHAPTER FOUR

"No matter how terrible your fate, it would only be worse in Cleveland."
                                                            - Graffiti

     I woke up.
     Melvin was slapping me.  At the same time, he was shaking me.  He
was also dabbing at my forehead with a damp cloth.  This not only seems
impossible, it is.  Not at all pleased with its rude awakening, my brain
throbbed dully and threatened to lapse back into unconsciousness. 
Between slaps, I realized what I had to do.
     I screamed.
     "Get away from m-" SLAP! "-eeeyow!"
     Melvin stopped, and whoever was shaking me let go.  The floor
caught me without ceremony as the damp cloth smacked onto my face and
lay there wetly.
     "Are you awake?" an unfamiliar feminine voice said.  It was one of
the intruders.  A female intruder.  Wait a second, this might prove
interesting.
     I answered by tearing the damp cloth from my face and sitting up. 
This was a bad move.  The bridge rocked a little and then rolled.  I
shook my head and it picked up the beat.
     Finally my vision cleared (that is, the small red dots disappeared)
and I was able to look around.  What I saw was almost enough to make me
pass out again, but I managed to hang onto consciousness.  My eyesight
was obviously still playing tricks on me.  There were two Melvins
sitting in front of me, and beside him were two females and two giants. 
When I say giants, I mean giants.  These guys had to be eight feet tall,
and they were covered with muscle from head to toe.
     When my vision settled, I focused on the woman, who was pretty good
looking.  She had been the one shaking me, and that had messed up her
long, blond hair; she tossed it back into position with a flip of her
head.  She wore makeup only sparingly, to enhance her natural beauty. 
And she had plenty of natural beauty.
     "Hiya, toots," I said.  This isn't what I meant to say, but my
mouth, like certain other parts of my body, doesn't follow orders very
well.
     "Excuse me?" she asked politely.  She really liked me; I could tell
already.
     "How are ya doin', babe?" I asked.  This really threw her.
     "You must have me confused with someone else."  That was a strange
thing for her to say, since she was the only woman in the room.  Who
could I possibly have her confused with?
     "My name's Matt.  What's yours?" I turned on the charm.
     "I'm Rhyelia Sent 'ali.  My friends just call me Rhye.  I'm pleased
to meet you... I think."
     "You know it!"  I have a way with women.
     At this point I managed to stand up and turn to Melvin, who was
busy staring at the floor.
     Melvin looked up, struggling to keep in an explosive laugh.  A
muscular arm spun me around around and my hand was grabbed by the hand
that was attatched to that arm.
     "My name's Chester.  Pleased ta meetcha."  Chester shook my arm
violently.
     I wondered what kind of relationship Chester had with Rhye.  If he
was her boyfriend, I had little hope of getting her to notice me, or,
for that matter, living.  Chester continued to shake my arm violently.
     "I was shopping and he was lost," explained Rhye.  "He was so
helpless, I just had to do something.  So I took him in.  His memory is
so bad, he can't even remember his own last name."  Chester continued to
shake my arm violently.  It was starting to get numb.
     Suddenly Chester dropped my arm and stared at me.  The limp arm
fell, tingling, to my side.  "Whatcha got pickles up yer nose fer?" he
asked.
     Melvin finally lost control of his laughter.  I turned a light
pink.  Melvin laughed harder, and then Rhye began to laugh too.  I
smiled and began to remove the Vlasic cucumbers from my nose.  Melvin
and Rhye were gripped with stronger fits of mirth, and Chester joined
them.  I burned a deeper shade of red as the first cucumber came free. 
The three of them were practically rolling in the aisles.  I giggled a
little, but my heart was not in it (because it was busy laughing at me,
along with my other body parts).  I pulled the remaining cucumber from
my nose.  Despite my dismay at being the object of their joke, I was
pleased to note that my nose was completely healed.
     I watched them in disgust for a while, then I threw the cucumbers
at Melvin.  That was a mistake; it only made him laugh harder.
     "'Hiya toots!'" Melvin managed to quote as he gasped for air
between fits of laughter.
     I flushed again and turned away from them.  I walked over to the
command chair and sat down heavily in it, swiveling it so that I could
survey the empty control stations.  Not coincidentally, it also faced
away from Melvin, Rhye, and Chester.
     As I sat there, one of the cucumbers sailed over the top of the
command chair and landed in my lap.  The laughter doubled in intensity.
     Then I noticed something outside the viewport.  It was hard to make
out, but maybe it was just what I needed to break up the laughter and
restore some of my former pride.
     "Melvin, there's something out there."  I turned the chair to see
Melvin and Rhye sitting on the floor, wiping their eyes and giggling. 
Chester just sat there, a perplexed expression on his face.  He had
forgotten why he was laughing, which suited me just fine.
     "What is it, Matt?" asked Melvin, managing a halfway serious tone
of voice.  He stood and started toward the viewport.
     "I can't tell exactly, but it looks like it might be some sort of
spaceship."  I pointed to it, and Melvin gazed at it thoughtfully.  Rhye
and Chester walked over to join us.
     "Yep, that definitely looks like a spaceship," Melvin agreed.  He
strode over to one of the control stations.
     After fiddling with the controls for a while, he turned and
announced, "I think that I'm picking up lifeforms, but I never was very
good with the scanning equipment."
     He walked over to another console and spoke into a microphone. 
"This is the AFS Glorkwinkle; please respond."  Rhye looked at Melvin
oddly when he said the name of the ship, but she said nothing.  Melvin
repeated the message after another few seconds.
     "I'm not picking up anything on the communications panel, but then
I never was very good with the communication equipment."  He frowned as
he looked at an indicator on the panel.  "They are, however, sending a
distress code."
     Rhye suggested, "Why don't you fly us over to take a look?"
     "Well," Melvin explained, "the ship is locked on course and I've
forgotten the access code, and besides, I never was very good with the
navigation equipment."
     "Exactly what position do you hold on this ship?" asked Rhye,
frowning slightly.
     "Well, I uh... that is, um... I'm the captain," admitted Melvin.
     I started the laughter this time, relieved that it wasn't at my
expense.  Rhye joined me as she caught on, and Chester joined soon after
that.  We laughed for a couple of minutes before we pulled ourselves
together and returned our attention to the matter at hand.
     "Do you recognize the ship?" I asked Melvin, who was staring at it
intently to disguise his embarrassment.
     "No, but then, it's hard to tell what it looks like, with all the
scratches and burns."  The ship was closer and its shape was now
distinguishable.  It was (I hesitate to say it) cucumber shaped, and was
pretty beat up, as Melvin had noticed.  At first it seemed to be
drifting, but it soon became apparent that a feeble trail of fumes was
shooting from its tail as it struggled to intercept our course.
     After ten minutes, which we spent anxiously trying to respond to
its distress call, it lined itself up with our airlock.  Melvin led us
to the docking bay.
     In the docking bay, Melvin fumbled with a few switches, and a
flexible tunnel extended itself to the other ship, hooking it up with
us.  Melvin smiled.  He didn't seem to realize that these could be
hostile aliens who wanted to take over the ship.
     "What if they're hostile aliens who want to take over the ship?" I
asked uncomfortably.
     Melvin looked at me strangely.  "What?  Don't tell me you haven't
read the next chapter yet!"
     I matched his strange look, and as he turned back to the hatch, I
inconspicuously stepped back three paces.  I'd seen too many movies with
hostile aliens.
     Melvin flipped the switches that activated our airlock.  The
pressurization gadgetry equalized the slight difference in air pressure
with a puff.  The hatch opened with a grinding, clanking sound.
     A few uncomfortable eternal seconds passed before the other ship's
airlock opened and three figures emerged.
