Chapter Two:

Eye of the Beholder

The swirling neons and pastels of warpspace taunted me through the large viewport in the ship's lounge as I nursed my Glen Livet. I t was the last single malt scotch I would have quite a while, I expected, since it was the last of the eight bottles that the Gumbofucktitty had taken along from Earth. I knew that I shouldn't have drunken them so fast, but I didn't care. The voyage had been so boring. Looking out the windows at the kaleidoscopic images was great, like a really great acid trip, but the crew had warned me it would drive a man insane if he indulged in this too long.

So instead, for lack of anything else to do, I was being driven insane by this incredibly gorgeous female Gadrolphian. "Why can't she be four-armed, scaly and slimy like the Jeebies, or some gelatinous glob-thing like the Phareezi?" I asked myself, murmuring into my drink, "No, instead she has to look just like a perfectly proportioned , ideal human woman."

In fact, Nova Gloriana was built better than any air-brushed porno queen, any mannikin, any inflatable doll. She was like a living cartoon, and the name of the cartoon would be something like Pure Sexuality. She had an hourglass figure that would make an hourglass envious, and her face would have won prizes in heaven. I can't even describe her any better, because it makes me dizzy thinking about her. I stole another glance over at her. She was sitting at a corner booth with Chromin, a Rank Nine Food-Taster from Thanus.

"Don't bother, you're spit compared to him." I turned to see Klumkaly the bartender sitting down at my table. His three beady eyes looked me over with care, and his shoulder tubes pumped yellow-red sympathy fluid onto his carapace. Klumkaly and I had become great friends in the three months since I had been on the ship. He was the only member of the Jeebie crew that wasn't always horrendously busy. The other two passengers, Gloriana and Chromin, had not bother to talk to me, so Klumkaly was all the company I had, and for a Jeebie, he was a pretty cool guy.

"I don't understand."

"Think about it, Fixx. Or maybe you don't know. Thanusians are one of the oldest races in the Pig-Roast." All I remembered about them was that they were supposed to look vaguely insectoid under the voluminous purple robes they always wore. "And Chromin is a Food-Taster, nineth-rank, for Chlorba's sake. He's just coming back from a joint meeting with your United Nations and the Jeebie High Command. And who are you?"

"I dunno, who am I?" I was staring at her again.

"Okay, you are a musician. But you're human, brand new in the galaxy. It's like- like your U.S. President having his wife lured away by a wino in Central Park."

I was surprised at this creative and knowledgeable metaphor on his part, and I told him so.

"Why thank you, Zak. I've been studying." He held up a thick paperback, its pages well-thumbed. It was A Jeebie's Guide to Earth Civilization, by Phil Donahue, jr.

"Good. But you know Klumkaly, I'm not really interested in her anyway. Don't you think I would have tried something if I was?"

"Well, just keep it that way. Chromin's people have extinguished suns for less. But what am I saying? She couldn't possibly be the least bit-" He paused and stared over my shoulder. "Gotta go. Remember, be careful." He got up and headed for the bar as I turned to see Nova Gloriana walking, slinking,, toward me. Chromin had left the room.

I gulped down the rest of my scotch, literally shaking with desire as she approached. She stopped a few feet away and stared. Her voice was the most beautiful sound in the universe.

"Hello, I'm Nova Gloriana."

I gulped and managed to say, "Zacharry Fixx."

"A pleasure, Mr. Fixx. you're an Earthling, aren't you?"

"Uh, yes, " I mumbled as she slid into a chair next to me and crossed her long legs, her shimmering red dress flowing like lava.

"My friend Chromin was just on Earth. We would have met you earlier but we've been so... busy. The ship is just coming within transmat range of a Thanusian cruiser, so he's transferring over to it now. It's too bad, the three of us could have had some interesting conversation, but... there's still the 2 of us, and... plenty of time to... get to know each other..." She batted her eyes and moved one silky blue calf to touch my left knee, smiling.

At the moment of contact there was an electric flash in my brain and I had the most intense orgasm in my life. I blacked out.

I awoke in my cabin in bed, the ship's doctor looking down at me and stroking both his chins with all four hands. I felt completely exhausted, and I wanted a cigarette.

"Wha...what happened?"

"You fainted, probably due to to the toxic chemical you've been drinking-"

"The scotch? No way, I-"

"Or perhaps you've been looking out at the warp lines too much, despite our warnings. Or maybe it was just stress."

"Bu, bu... but... what about Gloriana?"

"What about her?"

"I....oh, never mind." He told me to get some rest, then left. Gloriana came in just as he was stepping out. I watched from across the room as they spoke momentarily, the doctor seeming to caution her, then he left. She came in and sat down in a chair next to the bed.

"Zak? I came to apologize."

"Apologize, I'm not even sure what-"

"I think some things need to be explained." She produced a photograph from her large handbag. Weakly I took it when she handed it too me, her fingers carefully avoiding mine. I realized that I was again sweating and nervous- she still exuded eroticism. "This is a picture of me," she said.

It was a very high quality color photograph, but all I could see in it was a strange fuzzy blur of white light, with an alien landscape of orange vegetation in the background. I t was like a small shining cloud hanging about three feet above the ground.

She sensed my confusion even before I mustered up the strength to say, "Huh?"

"That is what I really look like, what all Gadrolphians look like, objectively."

"Objectively?"

She frowned slightly, which made her look even more ravishing. "We don;t usually need to explain this. Most beings already know about us, or else there is never a need for them to know. But considering what happened, it's only fair that you know the whole story.

"We Gadrolphians are beings of pure energy. Mostly psychic energy." She paused. I suppose my look of enrapt amazement startled her. "Only inanimate devices can detect our true appearance, because we transmit powerful telepathic signals that are picked up by other beings' subconscious minds and translated into sensory data. The data is interpreted so that we appear to the being as that which is most sexually desirable to him or her. Hence we, in our dealings with other species, provide large amounts of pleasure and, in return, we derive sustenance from the sexual energy released by the other being."

"You.... you feed off... you support yourselves by..."

"Yes. I believe your scientists would call it a sort of symbiotic relationship."

I was flabbergasted. "Wow... talk about give and take.... But, wait, if you're appearing as my ideal sexual desire, why are you blue?"

"Female humans aren't blue?"

"No."

"Subconsciously, you must want me to be blue," she shrugged.

I thought of how many different appearances she must have had as she travelled the stars. Then I thought of another thing that puzzled me, "What about the Jeebie crew? They seem to ignore you completely unless their work demands it."

"The Jeebies are asexual hermaphrodites.... unfortunately." She frowned again.

"Wha!? Oh! Nothing turns them on, so you appear almost invisible to them! Huh!" I chuckled slightly. "But, uh, other than cases like that, your species must be quite popular around the galaxy."

She smiled sadly, "Yes, but unfortunately, there are but a few hundred of us left."

"You're becoming extinct? Why?"

"Twelve of your centuries ago, our planet was visited by a fleet of Vorshognoi. They were a horrible, warlike race. This fleet meant peace, but their sexual preferences..." She stopped, a look of repulsion on her face. I waited, and eventually she continued. "They, as a race, would make your sadomasochists look very tame. The resulting bloodbath destroyed their fleet, our world, and exterminated nearly all our species. When word got back to the Vorshognoi homeworld with descriptions of us, they plunged into a civil war which resulted in their complete extinction within about one Earth year."

Remembering my abnormal psych classes, I put two and two together. "My God... they must have had some kind of racial psychosexual persecution deathwish genocide complex. Or something."

"That describes it well. Now only a few of us Gadrolphi are left, scattered throughout the galaxy. We try to stay scattered, so that something like that can never happen again on such a large scale."

"That's terrible.... I'm sorry."

"It was long ago, and we live on, but as wanderers, rare travellers who seek new companions to please. As I said, what happened with you is completely new... the best explanation that I can find is that merely by touching you I overloaded the pleasure center of your brain. We can conclude from this that... you humans have very good imaginations."

"Or maybe it's just me. A lot of humans are pretty dull."

"We'll see about that later. This is the first time a Gadrolphian has met a human. One thing is sure, I did receive an enormous amount of energy from you just before you became unconscious. As for now," she said, pulling a thick blanket over me, "we should see if we can avoid that extreme, while still... fulfilling each other's goals..." She smiled.

"You mean you're still hungry?" I asked, beginning to grin.

Without replying she pulled a pair of heavy, padded gloves out of her bag and slipped them over her hands. Then, licking her lips, she gently touched one finger to my big toe under the blanket.

I gasped as sweet electric tingling ran up my spine. "So far, so good....."