As they looked at one another, Kiru realised he was almost a stranger. They had only known each other for a few hours, and it all seemed a long time ago. She wondered what to say to him.
“It’s good to see you,” she said.
“Good?” said Wayne. “It’s fabulous! It’s tremendous! It’s magnificent! Isn’t it?”
Kiru nodded. “I suppose so.”
“What’s wrong with your face?”
“My face?” She reached up to touch herself. Had she been hideously disfigured by cosmic radiation, or scarred by acids in the alien water?
“Yeah. You’re… I hate to say this, Kiru, but you’re… smiling.”
Smiting? Was she? She wondered why.
“Am I?” she said.
“Yeah!”
Wayne laughed, and Kiru realised he was right. She was smiting. Perhaps it was because she was—what was the word?—happy.
They kept looking at each other.
Suddenly, they were in each other’s arms, kissing and caressing, then tumbling down on to the deck of the skimmer. Kiru’s clothes were soon gone, as if melted by the incessant rain. Together again, naked again, they continued where they had left off. It was as if they had never been apart.
“You didn’t seem surprised to see me,” said Wayne.
“It’s a small galaxy,” said Kiru.
Limbs entwined, they lay staring up through the canopy at the alien sky. Scarlet rain showered down from the orange clouds.
“You knew I was coming,” said Wayne.
“I knew an escape capsule was coming,” said Kiru. “And I knew it was probably from the ship we’d been on. All I could do was hope it was you on board.”
“Who else could it have been?”
“Grawl.”
“Er… who?”
“Grawl. The guy who tried to wipe my mind and steal my body. The one I escaped from on Hideaway, just before we met. I told you about him.”
“Er… yeah, yeah. You mean… he was on board that ship with us?”
“Yes. And I thought he might have been in that escape pod.”
“That’s why you aimed the gun at me?” said Wayne. “You thought I might have been him?”
“Yes.” Kiru looked at him. “I’m still not totally convinced.”
“What?” Wayne stared at her.
“Convince me again,” said Kiru, and she smiled.
The skimmer drifted over the vermilion sea. Although the hull rippled with the waves, the deck remained level. But even if there had been a hurricane, Kiru and Wayne wouldn’t have noticed. It was nothing compared to the tempest they created between them.
“What makes you think Grawl was on that spaceship?” asked Wayne, during a lull in their typhoon.
“Eliot Ness told me,” said Kiru.
“Eliot Ness? The Untouchable?”
“I never touched him.”
“Who is he?”
“You don’t know? He knows you. Or, maybe I should say, he knows John Wayne.”
“What’s he look like?”
Kiru told him.
“That’s not Eliot Ness,” said Wayne, “that’s Colonel Travis.”
Kiru shrugged. “You can talk about all your different names when you see him.”
“He’s here?”
“We escaped in the same lifeboat, came to Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf together.”
“Tell me about it,” said Wayne, and so Kiru told him about her voyage in the escape capsule and gave him Eliot Ness’s most recent version of recent history.
It was hard to say how long since the two of them had arrived on Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf because this was a world where there was no day and night. Instead, there was day or night. In this hemisphere, it was always daylight; in the other half of the world, it was always dark.
Without day or night, it was almost like being back in the escape pod. Except there was a lot more room. It was also much wetter. As well as being redder. And she didn’t only have Eliot Ness for company.
Since reaching the watery world, things had gone better than Eliot Ness had feared. He hadn’t been killed.
His rivals had attempted to stop him reaching the planet by destroying the ship he’d been travelling on. Once he arrived, he’d wondered if their next move would be to annihilate the whole globe. Kiru had thought that a little excessive, but Eliot Ness told her that his death (and hers) would merely be a by-product. The main reason for deconstructing Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf would be to eliminate a new competitor, a planet that could soon eclipse Hideaway as the galaxy’s premier pleasure world.
Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf was relatively near the famous leisure satellite. (The closest habitable world, in fact, which was why the two escape pods from the doomed ship had made it their goal.) Because Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf was far larger than Hideaway, its potential for profit was even greater.
Built long, long ago by an unknown race, Hideaway had finally been occupied by galactic brigands as a base from which to raid starships. Then the pirates had discovered a far more profitable and less risky way of making money: by marketing the artifical asteroid as the ultimate paradise, a world where every secret desire, every forbidden thrill, every sensual delight, every hedonistic wish, could be satisfied—at a price.
The pirates’ new venture had been a tremendous success until they dared to defy the most feared and fearless organisation of all, a syndicate which operated under a multitude of names, all with the same parasitic purpose: to leech the lifeblood from every person, human or alien, on every world.
When the ex-buccaneers neglected to pay their tax assessment and failed to negotiate the narrow temporal window allowed for appeal, the Galactic Tax Authority took possession of Hideaway in lieu of payment. The pirates were evicted and returned to stealing and looting, until their new base was discovered and destroyed by an Algolan war fleet, after which the survivors were imprisoned on Arazon.
“Why are you talking like that?” asked Wayne.
“Like what?” said Kiru.
“Like a door-to-door insurance salesman who’s learned everything from a correspondence course.”
“Like what?” she said, again.
“Forget it.”
Kiru ignored it. She also ignored the part of her journey that had been on board the Xyzian spaceship because that was something she did want to forget.
“So we ended up here,” she concluded. “And now I’m Eliot Ness’s personal assistant.”
“What does that mean?” said Wayne. “You drive a boat?”
“Amongst other things, yes. It’s an essential skill on Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf.”
“But not for the natives.”
“No,” agreed Kiru. “But for you and me, Wayne, a skimmer is a good idea.” She snuggled up closer to him. “A very good idea. What about you? How did you get here?”
“Same as you. Except I was on my own, of course. I managed to get into a lifeboat, but it was the wrong one. Not the one with you in. Stayed in there forever, all alone, then finally came down here. And there you were, waiting for me. It was worth the wait.”
They kissed.
“Where are we?” said Wayne. “Caff-what?”
“Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf.”
“Everything’s very…”
“Wet?”
“… red,” said Wayne.
“Like your eyes.”
He blinked for a few seconds. His eyes no longer felt so sore.
“Ninety-nine percent of the surface is water,” said Kiru. “The Caphafers have evolved from creatures that lived in the sea. Like humans did.”
“Except they still live in the sea.”
“Mostly, because most of the planet is water. They’re amphibious. They can go on land. Not that there’s much on the land. That’s why this world is ripe for development.”
“Development?” said Wayne. “You mean like… boats?”
“People have to get around.”