Their eyes met for a moment, then they looked back at me. “No,” Myrna replied, speaking for them both. “We’re too heavily morphed for that.”
I nodded. “Right.” No one who was less than ninety-five percent physically human could be rated as spacecrew in any capacity, for a wide variety of reasons. I’d forced Beauregard to make me far less a chicken than he’d wanted to by waving that very fact in his face. Trixie and Myrna were both a lot less than ninety-five percent human. “All right,” I said to them, trying to maintain my calm, reassuring tone. “Arnold is rated a Chief Steward. Get on the intercom and find him for me, please. Then have him round up all of the other stews and get the cattle under control.”
“Right!” Trixie said, looking very relieved at having something to do. The pair leapt off in a flash, leaving me alone with the gagged, handcuffed teddy bear. I looked at him for a moment; his eyes were very wide open and frightened, too. Then I shrugged and left him slowly drifting about amidst the other toys. Someone else would have to deal with the bear; I was far too heavily engaged with other urgent business.
By this time the corridors were already turning into bedlam, the gravity having failed without any warning at all. Drunken, stoned, heavily aphrodisiac-ed johns were floating about the Henhouse in various states of undress and arousal. One especially single-minded and naked individual was attempting to complete his business with Patrice out in front of God and everybody, and she was having an unusual degree of difficulty in fighting him off in the absence of gravity. Fortunately another girl was standing nearby; I snatched the pair of fur-lined handcuffs that she was holding right out of her hands, then after a very brief struggle snapped them onto the miscreant’s right ankle and left wrist. He was just an ordinary guy drugged out of his mind, I knew. Tomorrow he’d be deeply ashamed of having behaved so badly in the face of an emergency. Still, we simply had to have order. “Get these johns locked up in one of the boudoirs!” I directed Marian. “Do whatever it takes. Lock them up, strap them down, whatever!”
“Right!” she agreed, just as Winifred drifted by, kicking out frantically with all four hooves and baa-ing like a lost soul.
“And get that damned sheep locked up too!” I ordered. “Hell, put her in the menagerie!”
“First thing!” Marian agreed. I certainly hoped that they took out the teddy-bear guy first, but right at the moment I didn’t have time to be terribly choosy.
When I found another boudoir with a porthole on the other side of the Henhouse, this one mercifully deserted, I finally was able to make out at least one bit of good news. Aphrodite was still lingering nearby, it seemed, still locked to her dock. However, the dock was no longer attached to the rest of the station, and the whole affair was drifting perhaps a hundred meters out, spinning slowly in the opposite direction from us. She seemed to be receding a little, as well, albeit very, very slowly. As near as I could see, my pod’s hull was seemingly intact.
Arnold called me over the intercom, just then, interrupting my thoughts. “Marvin?” he asked. “Have I finally found you?”
Instantly I pounced on the little red-lighted button. “Marvin here. It’s good to hear your voice, Arnold! Is everything all right in the saloon?”
“Hah! Marvin, it’s bedlam up here! The drug canisters broke free when we got hit, and the goddamn powder is everywhere! Everyone except the staff is high as a kite; the goddamn johns don’t even know their names any more. I think the air filtration’s down.”
I clicked my beak angrily. “Damnit, there’s supposed to be safety clips on those lids! There are safety clips on those lids; I’ve inspected them myself!”
“And you’ve never tried to serve two hundred guests all at once, either!” the big man replied angrily. “The clips get in the goddamn way!” Then his voice mellowed a little. “Marvin, the truth is that we’re in over our heads up here; I’ve completely lost control. They’re high, they’re drunk, they’re horny, and it’s getting worse by the second. Some of them are already fighting, and others…” His voice turned into a whisper. “Marvin, I just witnessed a rape, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not a damn thing”
I nodded, though I knew that Arnold couldn’t see me. “Right,” I agreed, once more trying to sound confident and in-control for the sake of my subordinate. “I understand, Arnold. There’s only so much you can do. I’ll be getting the filters back on line just as soon as I can.”
“They’ll be stoned for hours regardless,” Arnold answered. “God, Marvin, what are we going to do? Can we get help from Lagrange?”
“I’m working on that,” I replied calmly. “And I’m working on the air, too. You just maintain as much order as you possibly can up there, Arnold, and hold out. I’ll be up soon. All right?”
“All right,” he replied, sounding a bit more confident at last. “But Marvin… These drugs can be toxic, you know, if the doses are large enough. And you can’t hardly see up here for all the stuff in the air.”
I nodded; he was right. Air filtration was now my highest priority. “I’m working on it, Arnold” I said again. “I’ll send help when I can. Marvin out.”
IV
Winifred was still baa-ing and kicking out in the corridor as I passed by, though three of the girls were making a valiant effort at getting her under control. The only johns in sight were all handcuffed or strapped neatly to railings, and each was efficiently and effectively gagged. I grabbed one of them by the hair and turned his head to face me; the man’s eyes were glazed badly, I could see, and the pupils mere pinpoints. Clearly, the effects of the drugs were spreading quickly. Then I turned to look down the long corridor; there was a faint white mist in the air.
“All right,” I said decisively, pointing to the nearest three girls. “You, you and you. I need help fixing the air system. Come with me.” Then I turned and darted down the hallway, not giving them a chance to argue.
There were two separate reasons why our air was no longer being filtered, I knew. One was that much of the air plant had been located on the detached other half of the Henhouse. The other was that, through the most cursed of luck, I’d been busily engaged in changing a filter when everything had gone south. I’d temporarily rerouted various vents to make my job easier, I remembered, though it suddenly seemed like it had happened a thousand years ago…
…and had left the only filtering element in our half of the ship in the control room, where it was now totally unavailable.
I froze in mid leap at the realization, and then the Dragon slammed into me from behind. “You incompetent fool!” she cursed as we tumbled down the passage together, end over end. “Why did you stop short like that?”
“My fault,” I murmured as I untangled myself from the leather-clad woman. “I’m sorry!”
Her narrow eyes glowed in rage, then blinked twice. “It was my fault too, perhaps” she said. “I am informed that you are on your way to repair the air filtration system. That is what you took apart in my dungeon, is it not?”
“Yes,” I answered.
She nodded soberly. “Then perhaps I might be of use? Finding things and the like? No one knows the Dungeon like me.”
I cocked my head to one side; ordinarily the Dragon was the last person I liked to have around when I was working on something. Yet she seemed to have a much clearer head than any of the other girls. “Right,” I agreed decisively. “You’re my assistant. Got it?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I will help in any way that I am able.” With a surprisingly lithe motion the Dragon caught a railing under her spike heel, using it as an anchoring point to halt our slow rotation. Then she pushed us off together down towards her working quarters. “I have worked in zero-gee environments before,” she explained. “In other establishments, for other employers.”