We went into orbit around planet Dangle.
Moments later ground control sent us a Who-Are-You. That in itself was pretty unusual. Usually an orbital relay station handles that kind of red tape. It takes too long to respond to problems from planetside. But according to the background material I’d been boning up on, there were only five space stations in orbit around Dangle, and all of them were research platforms belonging to the Gravas Foundation. There wasn’t a single public station for orbital traffic control.
Giant space stations are different from dinky little satellites. There’s a limit to how many you can have in orbit; five is about the max. Seeing how planet-state Dangle was under the de facto control of the Gravas Foundation, I don’t suppose they had any choice about giving Gravas exclusive rights to station construction.
When the standard call from flight control came through, I lightly tapped one key with the glittering orange-pearl fingernail of my right index finger. An image blipped onto the communication screen.
This guy was my kind of dreamboat! Oooh, yummy! Just looking at him made my mouth water. Hurriedly I clapped my left hand over my mouth. Then I gave the young flight controller a chirpy but melting smile. He was a real innocent. In a flash he went bright red out to his earlobes. Mmm-mm, what a cutey!
I let out a little-girlish voice, just a bit nasal, and absolutely sweeter than anything else in the universe.
“Do you… want me? For, something?”
“Uh-uh-uh. Uh. Uhhh Uh. Ahem!”
Just as I’d planned, he was completely flummoxed.
“Uhem, uh, your, shi— uh, ship registration and, bo— body code, code, code numb— bum-bum-bver and your p-p-p-ppass-passengers’ na-names!”
“Goodness! Our names!”
I widened my eyes, and covered my mouth with both fists. The gesture flipped him out again.
“Yaiee I-I-I, oh no! No, this this this is reggur, uh, regulations only. I mean, that, uh, actually it’s not that I personally uh uh uh want to know, I mean..”
“I see,” I said, softly cutting him off in mid-sentence. Not dropping the shy routine for an instant, I lowered my voice even more.
“I’ll report… immediately. But—” a perfect pause. “After that, you have to tell me your name and phone number?”
“Eeee-heek!”
Driven to distraction, the controller could hardly speak. Usually when I get ’em this far, it’s my pace all the rest of the way. I raised my lips close to the built-in camera above the communication screen. Of course, on his screen that put them in super close-up.
“My name is… Kei,” I breathed. “I’m still just nineteen really I am. My ship is an 80-meter-class vertical lander. She’s called Lovely Angel. Her registry code is Amor. She belongs to Three W—”
“Di-Dirty Pair!”
My report was cut off in mid-word as the traffic controller suddenly choked out a half scream. I flung myself back into my seat and checked the screen. The controller’s face, flushed and steaming just moments before, was as white as a sheet. His eyes were fixed and staring. Even his lips trembled in terror.
“Oh damn.”
I’d struck too soon, I chided myself. But it was too late now. The panicked controller was talking like a machine gun.
“R-report-complete-and-approved-thank-you!” he shrieked, and instantly broke communications. All that was left was little old me, staring blankly at an already dark screen.
An annoying, high-pitched laugh broke out on my right. It was Yuri at the main controls. Touched to the quick, I wrenched my head in her direction. Her gaze, full of mirth, collided with mine, burning with anger.
Yuri gave another long, contemptuous laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I shrieked, unable to stand her leer and laugh.
“Stood up again,” said Yuri, narrowing her eyes triumphantly.
“Just shut up!” I retorted. “I was only toying with him anyway!”
“Stood up again,” she repeated in a tone of voice calculated to rub me the wrong way. The blood rushed to my head.
“Phooey!” I shrieked. “Stood up, stood up, you say! It’s not just me, you know! What the hell, it’s because I’m teamed up with you that it always turns out this way! You’ve got a lot of nerve making fun of me.”
In the face of my assault, Yuri promptly shut up. After a pause she sullenly added, “Always blaming someone else.”
Somewhere, something snapped inside me. I swung myself back to face the console, pouting, and gave Yuri a sidelong glare.
“Why don’t you just stop bitching and pay attention to the controls? If you get too distracted you’ll fly us right into the ground!”
“No problem,” she said, shrugging off my hysterical outburst. “I lined us up on the beacon and switched over to automatic long ago. We could land in our sleep if we wanted to.”
“Arrgh!” I growled, discomfited by her mild rejoinder. There was nothing I could use to get back at her. This just wasn’t my lucky day. I reclined my seat, and gave myself up to brooding. My legs, stretching sexily from V-cut shorts, rested on top of the console. Looking at them, I shifted my anger back to the space traffic controller.
In the first place, anyone who runs away from a beauty like me doesn’t deserve to live. Oh, for sure, our reputation may be a little less than rosy! But that’s the fault of the work we do for the WWWA. It doesn’t have anything to do with us personally now, does it?
Look, I’m 171 centimeters tall, and weigh just fifty-four kilograms. I measure 91-55-91. Those are just about ideal proportions, I’ll have you know. My hair’s red, and just a bit frizzy. But since I wear it in a stylish wolf cut, it’s really quite becoming. My eyes are brown, and my skin’s a creamy gold. Maybe I shouldn’t say so myself, but I happen to be a cute, maybe just a smidgin boyish, beauty. Now Yuri. Yuri, on the other hand, is 168 centimeters tail and weighs fifty-one kilograms. She measures 88-54-90. She’s built a tad lighter than I am, but she’s a beautiful girl with that lacquer black hair of hers hanging straight down to her shoulders. For a bonus, her skin is a contrasting lily-white. She’s just like a little Japanese doll. There are times when I stop short just looking at her, and we’re the same sex!
Then there are, you know, our clothes? They may have collars, but these skin-tight tops leave our midriffs bare. Add in our V-cut shorts and calf-hugging boots and we glitter in silver from head to foot, irresistibly sexy. You could search the whole Milky Way, but you wouldn’t come up with a more tantalizing duo.
But that little brat of a traffic controller! Foaming at the mouth! Losing it the moment he heard we were the Dirty Pair! People like that should be thrown out with the garbage.
“That’s right! He’s a total idiot!”
Without thinking, I had vented my anger out loud. You’d think Yuri would be surprised to have me suddenly start shouting like that, but she didn’t give me a second glance. I guess she’s used to it. Instead, there was a whine from behind me.
“Meeow?”
I felt something lightly poke my shoulder.
“Is that you, Mugi?”
I turned around. It was, just as I’d expected—Mugi. He was sitting all of a heap in one of the two backup seats behind us. Lovely Angel is a small, eighty-meter-class starship. Actually, her combat capability and performance have been upgraded to make her a match for a two-hundred-meter destroyer. But she still has only four seats in the bridge, and two of those are just for backup. Aaa-ah. Just once I’d like to flop a handsome hunk into one of those seats and go flying about the galaxy…
I drew my eyebrows together, and glared at Mugi. He was supposed to stay in the R & R room one level down when we were at the controls. Probably he’d snuck upstairs because he was worried about me having hysterics (again!). But rules are rules. Mugi gave me a mournful look, and curled up. The whip-like feeler with the suction-cup tip that he’d laid on my shoulder a moment before drooped away. He lowered his round black eyes and tried not to meet my gaze.
Mugi is a member of a near-extinct species of Mugis that have a big head similar to those of cat critters from Earth, but their jet-black bodies are twice again as large as mine. Their thick legs end in paws with razor-like claws, and from their shoulders grow two long feelers like the one that had tapped my shoulder. Since the feelers end in suction cups, they can do just about any kind of work that we humans can do with our hands. Of course, that requires quite a bit of intelligence as well, but they come equipped with that, too. They’re believed to be as intelligent, and maybe even more so, than we are.
They also boast another special talent. This rests in the curly tendril-like long hairs that take the place of ears. By vibrating these tendrils they can manipulate electromagnetic waves and electric currents any way they please. We two mechanical dunces leave all the repairs and remodeling work on Lovely Angel completely to Mugi.
On the verge of extinction, there’s only a handful left, so of course they’ve been designated a protected species. It was just by chance that Yuri and I got Mugi. I could tell you all about it, but let’s just skip that for now, okay? All you need to know for the moment is that along with all his other attributes, our pet has had his temperament improved by we humans. As for anyone else having such a pet, well, like they say, the Milky Way’s a mighty big place, but you won’t find anyone else out there who does. Once a day we have to feed Mugi a special kalium capsule, so his food bill costs us an arm and a leg. Still, Mugi’s such a fantastic pet we don’t give it a second thought.
“Mugi!” I said sharply. “Go back to your room!”
Mugi shook his head obstinately at first, but at last he seemed to realize that I really was angry. He slowly got down off the seat.
“Meeoooooow,” he whined sadly, and plodded heavily from the control cabin.
Don’t let him fool you. It was all an act. They are smart. They know exactly how to win a human being’s sympathy. I saw him off silently.