At that moment, as if on cue, the door to the sheriff's office opened.
A woman walked in with a tray full of food and two vodka bottles. It was Annie, of course.
Hunter unconsciously pressed himself up against the cage. She looked even more beautiful than before — which he would have thought was an impossibility at this point. But it was true: she was now slinky in her very tight, very revealing saloon hall dress. And her face was full of makeup. She was tarted up, in a way.
But was something wrong here? She ignored both him and Zoloff in the cage and walked over to the pair of SSG men. She gently shook both awake, stopping to massage one's shoulders.
"I thought the sheriff and his deputy might be hungry," she said sweetly.
The SSG man getting the massage reached around and grabbed her by the waist. She cried out playfully. Now the "deputy" wanted some. He pulled her away from his partner, and let her wiggle in his lap for a while.
One of the vodka bottles was opened. Three glasses materialized, too. Drinks were poured out, all three began to imbibe.
Hunter leaned even farther into the bars. The two Solar Guards drained their drinks and poured out two more. Annie was openly flirting with them. Her dress being very low cut, every chance she had, she bent down in front of them, giving them a view of her twin nebulas. One guard put his hand on her back. Another started stroking her hair. Hunter was enraged. He tried to bend the bars, but it was no go. Not this time. This wasn't Ping's Palace. This was real life.
Wasn't it?
Annie extended her arms and pulled both men toward her. Then she looked at Hunter — and winked.
In the next moment, both bottles of vodka came crashing down on top of the SG soldiers' heads. They both hit the floor with a simultaneous thump!
Then Annie herself nearly collapsed. "I didn't think I could ever do that!" she cried.
She retrieved the electric key from the wall, and soon the electron cage was open.
Annie fell into Hunter's arms and squeezed him tight. He thought he was going to melt. But then the reality of the situation returned to him.
"Is there another ticket booth close by?" he asked Zoloff urgently.
The doctor only had to think a moment. "Yes! Of course!" he roared. "Follow me!"
They ran out of the sheriff's office, across the street, and into the basement of the brothel. Sure enough, there was a battered PC waiting there. Zoloff overrode all the security functions and quickly hit the Enter button.
An instant later, they were all standing on the grand pile of socks.
Out of breath but safe, they did a group hug. But Zoloff was instantly worried again.
"Our problems do not end here," he said. "In fact, they are just beginning."
Hunter slumped into the soft pile; Annie automatically snuggled up to him. What he would have given just to stay like this with her — for a couple million years.
"Those two mooches were foolish enough to reveal something very disturbing to me," Zoloff said.
"Do I really want to hear this?" Hunter asked with a groan.
"There is an officer in this hideous Solar Guards. He's part of a special unit of theirs."
"Yes, the Special Solar Guards," Hunter said. "The SSG. The real bad characters."
"Exactly," Zoloff went on. "Well, on the strength of what these two found, he is due to come down here very soon. Within hours, even. They were supposed to meet him. He is said to be very well-versed in the ways of torture and extracting information from the reluctant. He, of course, will be looking to work me over. And you, too, I would imagine. His name is simply Commander X."
Hunter wearily took out his quadtrol and asked it for information on Commander X. The reply came back that an officer of that name was known to be one of the top interrogators within the SSG. His methods were known to be so brutal, he was even feared by members of the regular Solar Guards.
"He probably knows a lot of what the SSG is up to," Hunter thought out loud. Then he explained the rumors about Warehouse 066 and the so-called magilla to Zoloff and Annie.
"Well, before we know it," Zoloff said. 'This monster will be here, in our midst. And if he doesn't find these two waiting for him, he'll have half the SSG down on our tails."
Hunter tried to think, but it was hard to do. He was tired, hungry. And now, very hungover. Finally, he just looked back up at the Mad Russian.
"So… what are we going to do?" he asked.
Part Three
Grand Finale in C Major Diminished
9
Commander X wore his best combat uniform down to Alpha Moon.
It was black, of course, with aluminum insignia on both shoulders, signifying his rank in the SSG. Just 210 years old, he was a small man, both in stature and in his respect for the human race. He was a tough nut to crack, though, a man who'd vowed that should he ever get captured by an enemy, he would take his own life before giving up any information to them. Conversely, he was an expert at wearing down a victim, physically and psychologically, to get them to the point where they would tell him anything, even though they knew their own death would be the result. Officially, his job description was mortis inquisitorus.
He'd brought his ion-silver ray gun as a side arm this day. Also, his ceremonial silver dagger, his new super quadtrol, which was the latest in know-it-all technology, his electro-shock wand, and just in case he had occasion to grow bored, a flask of gold slow-ship wine, the best of the best.
CX, as he was also called, knew very little about Alpha Moon, the so-called Mad Russian, or the concept of a dizzylando. He'd been directly involved with the renovations on the Big Generator, lording over the Empire scientists and supervising the beating of any one of them who did not seem to be working hard enough. But when the top echelon of the SSG discovered, through a paid informant, that there was a person somewhere in the Galaxy who actually had the knowledge to thwart what they were trying to do to the big black slab, they ordered CX and his men to track him down. Once found, he was to be tortured, brain wiped, and then executed — three talents that Commander X and his men reveled in.
They'd discovered information about the Mad Russian and his amusement park simply by breaking into the inner sanctuary of O'Nay's palace on the floating city of Special Number One and reading one of the Five Secrets. These sacred mysteries at one time were guarded by entire armies of O'Nay's bodyguards. But since the Emperor fled to a second, top secret floating city — Special Number Two — currently riding the airways up near the Earth's North Pole, it was no trouble at all for the SSG to have the run of his first floating palace. Gaining access to the Five Secrets' vault had been surprisingly easy.
So they read about the Ancient Cosmonaut and the deal he made with the early rulers of the Fourth Empire, and how he'd been given a handful of moons around Saturn and tons of secret technology to essentially create a fantasy world of his own. They also learned how brilliant he was, especially in the area of super electricity, which, was believed by many to be the principle behind the mysterious Big Generator. After reading his dossier, they were convinced, as was anybody who knew him, that the Mad Russian would be able to counter anything they did to the BG, first by passing a cure on to the Space Forces, and then by spreading the same message throughout the Galaxy.
Just what that cure would be, the SSG didn't know, and frankly, they didn't care. Their mission was to find this guy, beat the daylights out of him, drain all the knowledge out of his head, and then grease him.
CX sent his best two men down to the dizzylando first. No sense in him getting his own uniform dirty — or his dagger for that matter — until absolutely necessary. He'd received word just that morning that his men had indeed tracked down the Mad Russian — after a rather unusual pursuit that started out with them crash landing on the wrong moon. The last he'd heard from them, their message insisted that the collection of moons was so crazy it was "best to start at the beginning," which sounded logical to him. It was now time for Commander X, the closer, as they said in the torture business, to make his appearance and bring this mission to its inevitable conclusion.