"One second!"

Bill grabbed Irma and headed for the furthest corner. They almost reached it.

Imagine the sound that a star might make if it were made of cream cheese and bologna when it novaed.

This was somewhat the sound that the exploding bio-computer made.

The air filled with flying strips of flesh, gallons of splattering gore. A fine red mist hung in the air, like a ground cloud of beet juice, when Bill managed to struggle to his feet and looked around at the carnage.

"Not nice," said Bgr.

"Yuck!" said Irma.

"That wasn't at all friendly, Bill!" said the head of Rick, rolling about on the floor.

Before Bill could respond a strong current of some implacable ethereal force seized him, pulling him and Irma from the corner of the chamber.

"Bill, what's happening?" Irma screamed questioningly.

Bill thrashed up and turned toward the center of the room, getting exactly one second's worth of a glimpse of their unfortunate destiny.

Like a swirling spiral galaxy, sparklers of thrashing energy had popped into being where the bio-computer had once been. These were spinning like a pinwheel, causing a malevolent maelstrom in the air.

Then Bill was pulled down again, and his consciousness got mixed up with the sparklers and blackness below.

CHAPTER 17.

OLD TROOPERS NEVER DIE; THEY JUST SMELL THAT WAY.

Down through the years, in what some might call a checkered career, though he rarely played checkers, since being forcefully inducted into the Imperial Troopers, Bill had had many near-death experiences.

In any case, in all of the close calls, close encounters of the repulsive kind, in all the near-death experiences he'd ever had, this was definitely the most unedifying.

Bill dreamed, oh how he dreamed!, that he was frolicking frenetically in a gigantic beer mug with a dozen nubile women. One of the voluptuous women was Irma, who was sitting on top of a soggy potato chip, beckoning to him like a siren. Bill admired all the other gorgeous creatures who were frolicking about him, but rejected their sultry advances and breast-stroked instead toward Irma.

It was difficult indeed to ignore the others, but in his heart-of-hearts he knew that he was now a onewoman- Trooper, and so he swam the rest of the way, ignoring temptation. He clambered up the potato chip, which soggily bent and crumbled under his weight, closer ever closer to the smiling, beckoning Irma.

"Here, Bill," she said in a sweet, huskily sensuous voice. "Come here and kiss me, lover!"

In his death-dream, Bill knew that this contained all that was beautiful and mysterious in Love. All that he'd yearned for all this time was in this proffered smooch; life and death, fire and ice, yin and yang; even the code for his Captain Cosmos Secret Decoder Ring. Here was life's Promise; here was Destiny's Call; here was what all these frustrated pent-up feelings gnawing at his innards were for!

"Oh, Irma!" he said pa.s.sionately, reaching for her.

Her lips blossomed into a pink blossom of ecstasy.

Closing his eyes, he puckered up and fell toward her, surrendering his heart, his body, his soul, his hopes for Heaven and his Phigerinadon salamander-tail collection.

But instead of moist, delicious, tender lips - Reality did a belly-flop, death retreated, and Bill landed hard and headfirst on his mush on the ground, getting a mouthful of grit and sand for his trouble.

"Pfuiii!" he said, opening his eyes. They were gummed with grit. He wiped them and spat out a gobful of sand. Coughing, he managed to pull himself up into a half-crouch, peering uncertainly about him, trying to get a finer focus on this particular glandscape tune-in.

Bill sat plumb in the middle of a large stretch of desert. It looked a lot like the stuff that Great-Great- Grandfather Bill had bought on Phigerinadon last century, when he took his family to that colony planet: valuable beachfront property, without the beach. (Fortunately, they relocated to more fertile territory, but at a cost of what little money they had, resulting in generation after generation of the same penury that Bill had inherited.) As far as Bill could see (which wasn't too far - there was still a lot of grit in his eyes) cactus and sagebrush stretched out to the distant horizon. Occasionally, a tumbleweed rolled along, pushed by a melancholy, sighing desert wind. Up ahead were jagged, majestic mountains, capped by snow. In the near distance, a sign by a snaking road tilted precariously.

Bill groaned and rubbed his head. Then he got up and did a quick inventory of all the important body parts. The presence of his head and legs was already established; a quick examination proved that his hands were still intact, and that, yes, he still had a cloven hoof for a foot. However, instead of the rags he had worn before, he was now dressed in denim jeans, chaps and a red checked flannel shirt, loosely surrounded by a leather vest. Around his waist was a belt, leather as well, and upon this belt was a holster, containing an antique firearm which, possibly, might be a six-shooter revolver.

Upon his head was a ten-gallon, Texas Ranger hat.

Bill recognized all his gear from the days of his first stumbling literacy. While his speaking vocabulary had been severely limited, his reading skills then, like most of his peer group, and possibly now, were next to zilch. Which is why all comic books had verbal outputs that talked to the reader when he turned the page. Which meant that the idiot reader didn't have to read CRUNCH, CRASH or BANG since they sounded out tinnily from the page. In those days TALES FROM THE OLD GALACTIC WEST had been one of his favorite three-dee eye-screamers.

Which was fine for the past - but what the bowb was he doing now, in this strange yet familiar place?

He took off his hat and examined it.

And what was a six-limbed, seven-inch tall lizard doing inside his new ten-gallon hat?

"Hi there, Bill! Gee, it's sure good to see you're still alive, old hoss." The Chinger waved his tiny hands in greeting, and then hopped down to the ground, where he made a pot-hole in the sand. (Bill wondered why he'd not been crushed to the ground with the incredibly dense animal on his head; then put the thought aside for the moment since there were a few more pertinent things to wonder about now than that.) "Bgr the Chinger! What are you doing here? And by the way, just where is here, anyway?"

"Can't you tell, Bill! It's the Mythical Great American West of Old Earth! The stuff that dreams are made of."

Bill shook his head. "Old Earth is just a legend ... er ... oh!" He snapped his fingers. "I get it! This is like, a part of the Over-gland!"

"Not only a part, it would seem Bill," said Eager Beager, hopping around excitedly. "It would seem to be the actual base! The phor below the meta - or should it be the opposite way around? No matter ... I'll ask Delazny before I blow him all the way to the unhappy hunting grounds."

Bill could see that Bgr was dressed in miniature Western garb as well, down to tiny spurs and two tiny Colt .45s, which he was spinning fancily with two hands, the thumbs of his other two hands hooked into his cartridge belt. "Hey, watch it with those guns, guy!" said Bill. "What happened, anyway? Last I remember, we were getting sucked into the hole that was left after the Fountain of Hormones blew!"

"Gee - you got a great memory, pardner. That explosion - well done, by the way, Bill - reached out and clobbered Delazny's machines on Colostomy IV - and sucked him and me and the whole crew of the complex into the Male-Female-Strom in the bargain! Apparently, once more our destinies are interwoven, Bill! I ended up here, with you!"

Bill blinked rapidly as his groggy brain cells labored for comprehension. Thinking can be a painful process. "Right," he finally said smiling with understanding. Then frowning with unhappiness, "But I've lost Irma again!"

"Oh no, you haven't, podner! Look over there!"

Bill looked in the direction that the Chinger was pointing. Behind a particularly large cactus, he noticed the flutter of cloth, a protruding shoe.

"Well I'll be hornswaggled!" Bill shouted, whooping and yipping and tossing his hat into the air. "It's Irma." A befuddled expression crept onto his features. "Now, why'd I say that? What's a hornswaggle?"

"Best not to ask, friend Bill. It's undoubtedly a bit of the Wild West idiom. The argot! The overlay of transpositional quasi-reality in the Gland-core affects us all that way. Hence the duds, you see!" He preened in his own outfit, which sparkled with spangles.

"Irma!" Bill hurried over past sagebrush and cacti, to retrieve his fallen paramour. Unconscious, she was lying demurely on a large rock. And surprise of surprises, for the first time since Bill had met her, she was modestly dressed! She wore a long, gaily colored frock, and a hat heavily plumed with feathers. On her feet were tasteful cowgirl boots.

Coiled comfortably on her always impressive bosom was a rattlesnake.

"Tarnation!" said Bill. "Bgr ... it's some kind of a serpent. What kind?"

Eager Beager whipped out a little book labeled LOST CHINGER'S GUIDE TO THE OLD WEST.

"Gee - Bill. There are a lot of them. Kingsnake. Hoopsnake. Snake-in-the-Gra.s.s. Reckon that might be a rattlesnake. Does it have any rattles?"

The snake lifted its head somnolently, slipped its tongue in and out - and rattled its rattles nastily.

"A rattlesnake indeed! Just like it says in the book. And, PS, it also says that it is extremely dangerous and poisonous."

"Do something!"

"Gee, Bill. Ever since that traumatic experience back on Veniola when I got swallowed by one, well, you see, I kind of shy away from snakes. I think I'll go over and rustle up some chow. You've got a gun.

Tarnation, son. Just blast and shoot the gol' blasted thing!" The Chinger seemed pleased as punch with his new Wild Western persona. He waddled bowleggedly back to the campsite, leaving Bill alone with Irma and the sinister rattlesnake.

The snake wiggled its tail again. Bill had no doubt at all that it really was a rattlesnake. The noise woke Irma. She fluttered her pretty eyelashes. "Gosh alive!" she said, breathlessly. "Where am I?"

"Just set tight there, Irma. Don't move a muscle! I'll save you." Bill drew his gun and examined it. The thing wasn't at all like a blaster, where you just pointed it in a general direction and pressed a stud. No, it looked like you had to aim it. And the projectiles - Bill supposed that they emerged from the metal nozzle here.

Irma took one look at the snake and fainted dead away.

And this long curved thing, Bill supposed, was the trigger. Yes, his comic book reading was coming back to him. He pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. There was a tremendous explosion, expectoration of smoke and Bill was knocked flat on his back by the recoil.

When he struggled up, there was the plume of purplish smoke dissipating in the air, and bits of flesh and snake-hide splattered over sagebrush and sand.

"Hey!" said Bill. "I guess I'm a pretty good shot with this thing." He spun the gun expertly by the trigger guard as he slipped it back into its holster.

The explosion had woken Irma up. Shock slowly dissolved from her features. "Bill. You saved me!

Again!"

Bill grinned. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!"

"Bill, where are we? Why am I dressed this way?"

Bill was unbuckling his belt.

"Bill, why are you undressing that way?"

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!"

"Oh Bill! My hero! Do it, man!"

Finally! thought Bill. Finally his heart's desire ... to say nothing of the desire of other portions of his anatomy.

"Gee, Bill. Sorry to disturb what appears to be an imminent and highly interesting human fertility ritual!"

squeaked the too-familiar voice of Bgr. "But there's a stagecoach a-coming this way. Maybe we can hitch a ride! So could we have a rain check on the ritual? But do let me know when you plan to indulge in it again. I want to take notes."

"Eeeek!" squeaked Irma, springing gracefully up off the ground and hiding behind her hero. "Bill! It's another reptile! Shoot it, Bill. Shoot it!"

Bill scowled at Bgr the Chinger. "Sure would like to oblige, ma'am. But that there's Bgr! He might just be able to help get us out of this here fix." Bill spat on the ground. "He sure as h.e.l.l got me into it! And, no, you can't watch next time."

"C'mon, people. Hurry! We gotta catch that coach!"

Bgr scampered off, and they followed.

"Gee - isn't this just great, Bill?" said the Chinger, hanging onto the bouncing seat so hard that his fingers dug deep into the wood.

The stagecoach rocked and swayed as its four-strong team of horses pulled it along the rutted desert trail.

He and Bill rode shotgun on top of the coach, seated beside the grizzled, sunburnt old coot named Alf Bob Barker, who smelled like a wet goat. Irma was in the pa.s.senger section of the coach below, along with the other pa.s.sengers. The sun was creeping downwards through the azure sunset toward the horizon - like a bra.s.s coin falling towards a dusty desert destiny.

No, thought Bill. It wasn't great, not at all. His innards felt like they were being stirred by an ax handle, then wrapped around a spiny cactus. Or something like that.

"The fresh desert air! The smell of the wilderness! The scent of leather! The feel of honest clothes on one's hide!" enthused the Chinger.

"Shut up, Chinger, or I will shoot you!" said Bill.

The coach that had picked them up was headed for Mulch Gulch Falls, or that was what the driver claimed anyway. Bill had absolutely no idea what the significance of that town might be in terms of any cosmic happenings that might be controlling their destiny. All he wanted to do was get off this primitive travel apparatus which was just a new kind of torture machine. And get a cold and hopefully alcoholic drink down his dust-filled throat. And after that - Irma!

Ah, yes! Finally, he had found her. His heart fluttered dyspeptically even as his stomach churned.

The old codger to his side chomped messily on his wad of tobacco, and then shot a squirt of brown saliva from the side of his mouth. "Yep!" he said. "Sure a good thing I ran across you people out there in the desert! Mulch Gulch Falls is a fur piece from there, and that's a mighty thirsty trek, yes sirree, bob!"

"We certainly appreciate the ride, Mister. Being as we don't have any money and all."

"You got a gun, that's ticket enough." Another tobacco splat, this jet blinding a gopher peering out of its hole. "Lost my shotgun man, Jeb Hawkins, just last week to Injuns. Apaches. Done filled him so full of arrows, coulda doubled for a porcupine! Yep, and I need a gun by my side, being as Ah'm headed for the roughest town in the territory."

"Mulch Gulch? A tough town?" Bill parroted nervously.

"You betcha! That's where the baddest bunch of outlaws west of the Messasucki hang out."

"Gee - and who would that be, Mister?" asked Bgr.

"Cute little toy ya got there, partner. Like your vent-tree-lo-quism act, too." Alf Bob scratched his b.u.t.tocks and then tossed out a whip tip at the back of a lagging horse, neatly picking off a large horsefly at the same time. "Anyway, that would be Frank and Jesse j.i.s.m, folks. None other than the notorious j.i.s.m Gang. They just keep on riding into town, shooting up the town - and then forcibly dee-posit their illgotten gains into the First Fiduciary Fertility and Ovum Bank of the Wyoming territory. They just get the biggest kick out of injecting their loot into that bank, rather than robbing it! It's all for fun, anyway - 'cause it's all illegal anyways. And you try and stop 'em.... They'd shoot you down, sure as look at ya!"

Bill rolled his eyes and wished he was dead.

An escape from the Fountain of Hormones only to splash into a really truly sticky situation.

"Gee - you don't mean Chism, do you?" asked Bgr.

"Nope! That's j.i.s.m like I done said. What, can't hear me, boy? Ain't Ah projectin' right?" Alf Bob slapped his knee and wheezed with laugher. "Lord have mercy! And what I hear lately is that the dangblasted orneriest outlaw east of the Messasucki just signed up with the gang for a spell. You probably heard tell of him, Bill. He's yore namesake! That'd be William b.o.n.e.r. Alias Billy the Kidney!"

The Chinger bounced on the seat with excitement, splintering and crunching it. "Gee - this is it! This is the place."

"What the bowb are you talking about?" Bill blubbered through the bitter bite of bile on his lips.

"Once in a while, Delazny would babble about what seemed to be at the very core of the Fountain of Hormones. The paradigm of human heteros.e.xuality. I heard him mention this j.i.s.m Gang and Billy the Kidney! Why, it all makes sense, doesn't it Bill?"

"Could you kindly shut up for awhile and let me die." Bill suggested.