Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (17 page)

But Delfy, a true Gemini now joined with his second path, turned his tail to her and nosed the king, who led his court back into the dark back yards and over the back fences and across the shadowed alleys that were his new realm. Mu Mao, his small body weary from his exertions, begged his mother for a ride.

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Victoria Fredericks, Space Cadet, was just your average titian haired, emerald eyed temptress of a time and space traveller, nothing out of the ordinary really. Except that Victoria had a secret. She had an underwear fetish. Long ago, back on earth, even before she began the cadet training program, she had fancied lacy silk underthings in shades to match her eyes and clash with her hair, as well as scanties in purple or black or aquamarine, in tiger stripes or leopard spots or little pink and red hearts. She liked knowing that under her standard issue uniform, she had on something fine, something she wouldn't be ashamed to show in any emergency room.

Her mother had impressed the importance of underwear on her at an early age. “Vicky, baby,” she had told her. “I don't want to catch you goin' out to play with holes in your underpants. What if, God Forbid, you should fall off your air board or get hit by a low-flying shuttle and have to go to the emergency room? What would the doctors and nurses think to see your holey underwears?”

That was Mom all over. Not well-educated herself, she slaved for hours in a spacer bar saving the money so that young Victoria could have a better education, a broader horizon, than she herself enjoyed. And better underwear too. Mom's job in the spacer bar was such that she particularly appreciated a well-placed piece of lace. In good condition, always. Victoria was brought up to do the same.

However, once Victoria shipped out, she found that her secret satisfaction became her secret sorrow. Her lovely undies wore out, set by set, first the black, which was so basic she wore it for all occasions, followed by the white with the little pink rosettes and bows accenting the lace, then the emerald which went so well with her eyes, followed by all of the other colors until she was in desperate danger of having to wear--ugh--standard Space Cadet issue underwear. And that was just on her first mission! She sent an urgent dispatch earthside with a supply ship begging her mother to send something suitable from her favorite boutique.

The time thing had entirely slipped her mind. If it seemed like forever until another supply ship brought her special package, it must have seemed longer than that to her mother, who wrote in a shaky hand,

“Vicky, baby, forgive that I don't write so good but for God's sake I'm nearly ninety, so I think I'm doing pretty good, don't you? I hate to tell you, baby, but the port has gone to hell since you left and your favorite boutique closed up. I don't get around so good, but I got my Elderaid to go shopping for me and asked her to buy you something nice. This is what she came back with. It was in a closeout sale at the souvenir shop at the spaceport. Sorry, it was the best I could do. Just remember to change often and don't go out on any missions with holes in your scanties, okay? Take care of yourself. Love, Mom.”

Victoria sniffled, ashamed to realize she'd been thinking only of herself in asking her mother to sacrifice precious time, energy and money for her wish, but the Space Corps stuff really rubbed her the wrong way after all those years of silk. So she bravely wiped her eyes and with fingers trembling with anticipation, opened the package to pull out -- plain cotton briefs. Her heart sank. They were perfectly respectable, and would surely be more comfortable than the Space Corps ones, but they were so ordinary! And then, examining them closer, she saw that they weren't ordinary at all. The package said, “Space Panties” but at first, they just seemed to be the sort of typical days of the week panties girls had once worn in school. “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” Victoria counted to herself, “Saturday, Sunday...” but that was only the first seven. There were thirty eight more pairs to go, one for every day in a spacer's week! “Sheperdsday, Glennsday, Gurguriansday, Kristasday...” she named them in order, all of the spacer days named for the early astronauts. There was a fresh pair of briefs for each. If she was careful, washing by hand and mending when necessary, she need never be without a special pair! Or so she thought, tears of gratitude, relief and homesickness dampening the white cotton and industrial strength elastic.

As her time of service lengthened and her data bases became engorged with knowledge as she grew in wisdom, experience, and, of course, beauty, her elastic began to give out and her fabric to fray.

A few pairs of her precious undies had become ripped in the line of duty--a couple more, before she came to value them so highly, in the line of other, more pleasurable pursuits. And so the space panties were carefully stowed in her locker to be worn only for good luck on special missions.

Like saving whole entire planets. Such as the one she was saving now, while wearing the Glennsday pair. Not only were they her most especially lucky pair, they were also the only ones left that had no holes, not even the tiniest. She'd cried when she opened her locker to find her entire stack of treasured unmentionables full of bitty little holes. Nobody had told her about space moths or she would have brought along space moth balls.

Only the Glennsday pair had escaped with the tiniest of punctures. Barely noticeable, really, but it worried Victoria, as she set forth to save the simple, quaint, low-tech inhabitants of the earthlike planet known in space jargon as Hotel Whiskey.

“But, Commander,” she had protested to her gruff, stern-but-fair commander, when given the assignment. “Why don't the Hotel Whiskonians simply zap the silly Hasslebads into the next dimension?”

“Because,” Commander Helen Highwater replied, “they have chosen a simple, quaint, spiritual life and aren't good at fighting. Unfortunately, the Hasslebads are much more sophisticated technologically and are
very
good at fighting. So your mission, Space Cadet Victoria Fredericks, is to defend the planet from utter destruction and the domination of the forces of evil and so forth. Okay?”

“Sure, yeah, okay, fine,” Victoria said, with a snappy salute.

“Here are the keys to the top secret battle-shuttle, the Rikki Tikki Tavi. If, and when, you return with your mission successfully completed, you will have passed your final test and will no longer be a Space Cadet but a full, entire, completely commissioned and graduated officer of the Space Corps, and in a really swell ceremony will receive your insignia as
Ensign
Victoria Fredericks of the Space Corps.”

“Just for defending one little planet and destroying the forces of evil that threaten it? Gee, Commander Highwater, piece of cake. Send me in there, Commander.”

With only a brief stop, so to speak, to don her special lucky lingerie and her space suit, she had gone to the shuttle bay and inserted the keys into the ignition of the battle shuttle Rikki Tikki Tavi and, prudently waiting for the bay door to iris, had blasted off into space.

What a rush!

It was the first time the commander had let her take a shuttle out on her own, though of course she had practiced flying in simulators and under the supervision of seasoned Space Corps veterans such as Captains Flash Morgan and Chuck Rogers. But this was her premier solo flight
and
fight.

She continued being really thrilled right up until, as she approached the tasteful emerald and purple sphere that was Hotel Whiskey, she saw her enemy sneaking up on her from the far side of one of the planet's pretty lavender moons. She knew it had to be the enemy ship because it was this really ugly, mean looking black thing with a nose-cone flanked by what looked like twin spikes, or fangs, but which were really space-to-dirt missiles. No doubt meant to blow the peaceful, gentle, quaint Hotel Whiskonians to smithereens! The rest of the Hasslebad ship rose like a hood behind the slitted dual view ports on either side of the nose-cone.

Mere badly conceived exterior design wasn't about to intimidate Victoria, however. She got right on her com set and opened the pre-programmed Hasslebad hailing frequency and said, “Hey there, you in the cobra ship! Come in. This is Victoria Fredericks, Space Cadet in the Space Corps battle shuttle Rikki Tikki Tavi and if you don't stop picking on that poor little planet beneath us
this very instant
, I will open fire and you will be really, really sorry.”

“Ha, brave and beautiful but sadly doomed and deluded earth woman, we defy you and your dainty little space shuttle to keep us from enslaving the puny world beneath our jets! Surrender now and you can have a ringside seat as the consort of our emperor while watching us make that world go away.”

“Absolutely out of the question!” Victoria replied spunkily. “Your sort are evil, odious, wicked and mean and wish only to dominate others
and
you have a very ugly spaceship. I would never feel comfortable as the consort of an emperor who employs such tacky designers.”

“Impudent earthling vixen, we will blow you out of the cosmos for that! The emperor himself designed this vessel. Prepare to die!”

“Oh, grow up!” Victoria retorted, and opened fire just in time to intercept their volley, which rocked her sideways. Fortunately, since the days when prescient science fiction had predicted ships of her sort, appropriate seat belts had been designed so she was only slightly stirred, not shaken loose from her command console.

But their next volley knocked out her auto controls, her life support systems, her computer, and the communications system. All she had was her viewport, her manual controls, and her wits. She was flying by the seat of her panties!

Fortunately, she also had her laser rockets and they could be fired by manual control.

She sent another volley right into their guts and, since she was a dead shot, with or without computer control, she watched with satisfaction as the ship exploded into many many...

Her satisfaction evaporated as a particularly large chunk came flying, despite the lack of atmosphere, toward her viewport, smashing into it.

The last thing she remembered was the jar of the impact, the hiss and sizzle of the control console as it tore apart in sparks, and the feeling of thousands of tiny pricks of fire burning through the cloth of her suit.

Then all she saw was stars and darkness as she descended down, down, ever downward.

To awaken, bruised, burned, in terrible pain, but still apparently intact, in drastically compressed darkness, lit only by the still flickering mini-fires of the Rikki's electrical bits.

Fortunately, the impact of landing had jarred open the shuttle's hatch. Victoria wriggled toward it. Her leg hung at a peculiar angle and she couldn't feel her toes, but she scooted on the bottom of her shredded space suit across the rubble strewn deck and out the hatch.

What a mess! The shuttle crash had produced a crater many feet deep, with sides so steep she could barely squirm between her vessel and the grave encompassing it.

The ground was also still very hot, though the outside of the shuttle, made of special heat-repelling space ship stuff, was still cool. Her leg was killing her. She ought to have splinted it, but long pieces of anything weren't part of space shuttle design. If only she could climb on top of her shuttle, she might be able to hoist her well-conditioned though still curvily feminine form out of the pit with her strong but shapely arms. She had aced Space Cadet basic training and worked out daily in the ship's gym.

Her leg hurt so badly that she nearly passed out from the effort. She planted her hands on the roof of the shuttle and pushed--and to her surprise boosted herself three feet above the shuttle before coming back down on its roof, rather lightly, and with ample time to protect her injured limb.

That was easy, she thought, and bounced again, with a slight change of direction that landed her beside the crater.

About that time, the press arrived.

That is, a press of robed, girded, masked, painted spear carrying folk Victoria could only assume were indigenous Hotel Whiskonians arrived.

They didn't look quaint and charming. They looked--well, dangerous.

But of course, Victoria Fredericks. Space Cadet, laughed in the face of danger, or at least giggled nervously. “Hi,” she said, twitching her fingers up and down in a little wave she hoped did not have a radically different meaning in their cultural milieu. “I guess you've come to welcome me as a conquering hero, on account of I just saved your planet and all.”

One of them nudged her with a the shard of pointed crystal borne on the end of his spear and she yelped. “Please don't do that. My leg is broken, I think. I don't suppose you could call my ship, could you? My communications unit was destroyed in the crash when I was nearly killed defending
your
home world,” she paused for a moment with significant glances into each set of masked or painted eyes she could make contact with. Her mother had taught her a thing or two about responsibility, not to mention guilt, a weapon that, like primitive magic, was very effective on those who believed in it. It probably wasn't fair to use psychological warfare on these simple people, but it was nicer than skewering them, as they seemed willing to do to her. She intensified her gaze, mentally projecting the words, “Naughty naughty. This is a nice way to treat a person who gets herself crashed to save you?”

Gradually, first spears and then eyes dropped groundward and toes began describing semicircles in the lush violet petals blanketing the ground.

Two or three of the Whiskonians edged toward the lip of the crater and, looking in, pointed and began speaking in gibberish. They consulted, jabbering among themselves in their simple native tongue. Then suddenly they surrounded her and two of them grabbed her leg. A bolt of agony shot through her and the last thing she thought as they attacked her leg was that if she lived through this, she could never wear her Glennsday panties again.

Sometime later she awakened, still suffering but not so acutely, to find herself floating along atop the shoulders of her erstwhile attackers, who were singing a charming native folk song of surprisingly complex melody and interlaced harmonies.