"And," Delazny sneered, "May I add my recommendation to that, pardner. Get lost. I'll see you tomorrow at sun-up! Just make sure you order yourself up a nice coffin!"

"Irma!" said Bill, feeling his vulnerable heart melting in his chest and slowly dripping down to his heels.

"What's wrong with me!"

Irma curled a disdainful lip. "Well, those fangs for one thing."

"You said you liked my fangs!"

"You just don't know how to treat a girl, Bill," sighed Irma with disdain.

"I can learn! Irma ... please ... give me another chance! Don't stay with this villain. Come away with me now!" Bill fell to his knees, begging, acting the complete idiot.

"Go, Bill. For my new love is absolutely mythic!"

Bill's head was whirling, and there was only an ache in his chest now where his heart should have been.

He turned and staggered shaken from the room, having severe difficulty breathing.

Dr. Delazny!

Dr. Delazny and Irma!

Life, which never was exactly a bed of roses, was getting a little too awful of late. Bill had never expected justice. But it would have been nice to have some. He sighed deeply as he stumbled down the stairs.

No justice. Just bribery, chicanery and the old boys network. And booze. He hurried back towards the saloon before the others got too far ahead of him.

The horizon was like a cracked egg, and dawn resembled its yellow yolk as sticky alb.u.men was spreading now over the distant mountain and desert. The smell of death was already in the air. The morning tasted of boots and graves and the cold, arid desert. Bill's spurs jingled as he walked toward the place they called the No-Go Corral, his holster unfastened, fresh bullets in his revolver, the Chinger who once was Eager Beager strolling at his side.

"Gee - I hope that you are ready, Bill?"

"I reckon," said Bill.

"This is sh.o.r.e a red-letter day in the history of the Universe!"

"Yep."

"How you feeling?"

"Murderous and rotten."

"Now that is what I call real great, Bill. Just great. Nothing like lots of violence to bring peace to the galaxy, huh?"

A hangover the size of the Grand Canyon fissured through Bill's head. His mouth felt like Death Valley filled with flies and then sauteed. His stomach resembled the fermenting vat in the Galactic Glueworks.

His liver, if he could see it, which he did not want to, must look as though the Great Railway Line had been spiked into it with twenty pound sledgehammers.

Yep. Last night he'd tromped himself over to the Saloon and taken the bartender up on the offer of unlimited free drinks, letting the other cowpokes and gamblers and pimps have a few sips here and there, in return for their heartfelt commiseration over his misfortune. The Chinger had disappeared sometime during the night, but Wild Will and Doc Sh.o.r.eleave were still there, and they gladly accepted the hero's hospitality, giving him sympathy for the loss of Irma, and telling him their own stories of lost loves, betrayals, sadnesses and heroic binges.

Doc Sh.o.r.eleave was a particular treasure trove, since his tastes ran toward the alien and the exotic, and had afforded him plenty of opportunity for odd heartbreak. At the moment, for example, he was recovering from the stress of a particularly torrid affair he had had with the science officer of his last ship, the U.S.S. CENTERPIECE, a half-human, half-Metalloid s.a.d.i.s.t with even more perverted tastes than his.

The Doc had even tried to drop his drawers and show them his scars that the pa.s.sionate affair had left him with. But that was too much for even this hard-bitten crew and they had run him out of town and settled back for more drinking.

At about ten-thirty, the Sheriff, Wyatt Slurp, had joined them as promised, making up for lost time by helping them all drink the bar dry.

Bill had pa.s.sed out sometime after midnight, lying on the bar with his feet propped on the Doc's face and his head pillowed on a bottle of Old Sewagemaster whiskey. He'd woken up to the sound of the Chinger ex-Eager Beager screeching in his ear about it being almost dawn. The only thing that got him up was Trooper reflexes. But once he got going, the thought of facing off with Dr. Delazny and filling the b.a.s.t.a.r.d full of hot lead (or rather, in his case, hot silver) gave him just the motivation he needed to bear up under his crashing hangover.

"Gee -" The Chinger had said when he told him about the events in the hotel room last night. "Too bad, Bill. But remember, there are plenty more kraxels to pringle, as we Chingers so aptly say!"

Oh well, who would expect a Chinger to understand the pain and heartache of a lost love? Particularly one who pringled kraxels. Yet the little alien glommed onto the fact that Bill wanted to waste Dr.

Delazny, and milked it for all he was worth.

"Gee, Bill! I bet there's a big, satisfied smile on that Delazny's face!" he said now as Bill marched toward the No-Go Corral, with Wild Will, Doc Sh.o.r.eleave and Wyatt Slurp as backup.

"Shut up, Chinger!" Bill sufflated.

"Shouldn't egg on a man going into a shootout like that, ought to let him relax," said Wyatt Slurp, combing his long mustaches. Two bright polished Colt .45s rode in his gunbelt. And his boots were shined to a bright finish, as were all the boots of the gun party - courtesy of the Chinger ex-Eager Beager who didn't need sleep and got a whiff of nostalgia from this function that he hadn't had in years.

"I'm relaxin' fine, thanks!" said Doc Sh.o.r.eleave, glugging down a swallow of whiskey. He pa.s.sed the bottle to Bill, who refused.

"Nope," said Bill, his eyes squinting down against the brightening horizon. "I want my senses raw and sharp and mean when I get Delazny in my gun sights."

"That's the old fighting spirit, Bill!" said the Chinger, raising up four clenched reptilian paws. "That's the way we'll defeat Delazny and Billy the Kidney and his gang! Just like we finished off the j.i.s.m brothers last night!"

Bill spat into the dust. "Yeah!"

The tops of the buildings comprising the No-Go Corral hove into view ahead. The stables and the outbuildings were surrounded by a wooden fence. In front of this fence stood a solitary man, surrounded by the ugliest bunch of spermatozoa that Bill had ever seen.

"Step aside, Bill!" called Dr. Latex Delazny. The mad scientist was dressed entirely in black, except for the silvery revolvers riding on his hips, ready for action. "We're headed for the Ovum Bank to make the Withdrawal of the Century! No! The Withdrawal of all Eternity! Right, boys?"

"Right, Doctor D.!" chorused the twenty or so sperm stationed all around him, balancing on their thin flagella just as the j.i.s.m Brothers had.

"It's bang, bang, bang, and the universe is mine!" cried Doctor Delazny. "And, Bill, Irma asked me to say Hi! to you."

"You just made that up now!" said Bill, reaching for his six-gun.

Wyatt Slurp stopped him. "No, Bill. Wait until they draw first 'cause that's the way we guys in the white hats play it."

They took a few more steps forward, then stopped short as Dr. Delazny held up a halting hand. "Wait a moment, folks. I want to take this brief opportunity before we blow you all away to introduce you to a very good pal of mine, Mr. Billy the Kidney!" Delazny looked behind him. "Why don't you step on out and take a bow, Billy!"

A particularly warped and dirty sperm wearing tattered clothes and a bullet-holed hat squiggled out and stared at his opponents with eyes that had less life than a dead fish. The Kidney was chawing something in his mouth, and a bulge worked around its body like an animated carbuncle.

Billy the Kidney spat out a gob of tobacco juice that clanged onto the hard-packed dirt, bounced and spattered into a fence post.

"Ya varmints wanna fight, huh? Ya think ya can kill my friends the j.i.s.m Brothers and get away with it?

Well, get ready to get turned to vulture chow and look forward to eternity in Shoe Hill." He drew his guns, twirled them fancily, then pointed them into the air. "And guess who's coming to dinner!"

Bill looked up. Hovering over the scene was a bunch of particularly ugly buzzards, looking down upon the good guys and licking their beaky chops.

"Don't kid me Kidney," said Wyatt Slurp. "You've spat your last spit. Since you've got a little help in your little argument with Bill here, me and the Doc are gonna settle our runnin' account with you, right this mornin'. 'Sides, it'd be a nice change if we can prevent you boys from havin' your way with the Bank!"

Delazny laughed. "That's what you think, Sheriff. I forgot to mention to you, that I have also enlisted the services of the entire Vindaloo Indian Nation in this little gunfight!" He waved his free hand. "Come on out, boys, and show yourselves!"

From behind the stables squirmed at least fifty more spermatozoa, wearing feathers, loincloths and single moccasins on their flagella. Each held a bow and arrow, and all of these were aimed at Bill and Company.

Bill's eyes widened. With good reason. Not only the threat to his life but it isn't every day you run across giant red Indian spermatozoa.

Unhappily he had a fine view of the hills, down which coursed a stream of thousands upon thousands of Vindaloo Indians, glistening wetly in the rising sun.

"I guess that's one nice thing about working with sperm!" said Dr. Delazny. "Where you find one, there's a couple of million more just hanging around!"

"Gee, guys," said the Bgr the Chinger. "It doesn't look good does it!"

Doc Sh.o.r.eleave shook his head sadly, shrugging. "h.e.l.l, I guess that's what life's all about, though, isn't it.

Staring us right in our faces. It's the never-ending, striving, yearning, heaving indefinable urge to merge.

That's what Nature wants! And what is Nature but a great cosmic pursuit of yang by yin! Individuality?

The human soul? Bah! It means nothing compared to the heaving sea of mindless, salivating critters of procreation that govern the depths of human being!" He gestured out to the sea of spermy outlaws and Indians, coughed, and then drew his six-shooters. "Our destiny gentlemen! Let us not go out gracefully!"

"Well, Bill," the Chinger said ruminatively, "I think I was rather foolish to even think I could stop this phenomenon!" Eager Beager's tail swished around and he touched it to his mouth, ceremoniously.

"What's that?" asked Bill, trying to recover his nerve and not quite succeeding. "A Chinger religious ritual?"

"Not quite, Bill. I'm just kissing my tail good-bye!"

A war-whoop rose up from the a.s.sembled Indians. They started to slide down the hills, waving spears and chanting. They were savage-looking sperm, no question, done up in warpaint, looking fierce and mean as a group of Galilean gophers on Galactic Ground Hog day.

"Shee-eet," said Wyatt Slurp. "This morning's going to make the Little Big Horn look like Custer's Last Ice Cream Stand!" He raised his gun and aimed. "Well, if we're gonna die - we might as well die like men!" He plugged a j.i.s.m Gang member right between the vacuoles.

"But I'm not a man!" observed Bgr. "I'm a Chinger! I really don't think I should be here."

"Tough t.i.tty, reptile," said Doc Sh.o.r.eleave as the bullets and arrows started whizzing past their ears. "Get those guns going!" His own weapons started blazing and a row of the nearest Indians bit the dust messily.

Eager Beager hastily jumped behind a rock, from which he blasted away at their mult.i.tude of attackers.

As the first arrows flew any vestige of his Western manliness suddenly fled from Bill. This was no fight, this was a ma.s.sacre. The only reasonable thing any one with a grain of intelligence should do was vamoose!

However, when Bill turned to run, he saw that he was cut off at the pa.s.s. An enormous quant.i.ty of Vindaloo Indians had flowed behind them.

They were surrounded!

"Bowb!" commented Bill intelligently as he started blasting away, hoping to shoot his way out, exploding Red-membranes w.i.l.l.y-nilly. But for every Indian he blasted, another took its place. And he was running out of ammunition.

They were all running out of ammunition!

Wyatt Slurp had an arrow through his arm and a bullet in his belly, but he just kept on firing.

"Sheee-eet," he laughed. "Ah only got one bullet left!" Streaming blood, he snarled out to the outlaws, "Billy! This one has your name on it!" With a war-whoop that sounded like a Hoop's worth of rebel yells, Sheriff Slurp charged toward the blazing group of outlaws. Splat splat spat! went the bullets as they tore into his manly body. But the Sheriff just kept on walking, though soaked in blood, until he was within spitting distance of Billy the Kidney.

"Kidney," he gasped. "Suck on this!"

Billy the Kidney turned to run, but Sheriff Slurp's bullet caught him in the back. The Kidney exploded like a water-filled balloon, and slapped hard onto the ground.

"I can die happy now!" groaned the Sheriff.

"We'll help you along!" cried the j.i.s.m Gang, who immediately filled the Sheriff so full of lead that gravity instantly dragged him down. But the firing continued until Sheriff Wyatt Slurp was finally and truly dead.

This was too much for Doc Sh.o.r.eleave. He simply cracked.

"Beam me up, Beagle!" he cried to the skies. "Beam me up!"

Arrows whistled through the air, pin-cushioning him, making him look like a walking hairbrush. Or rather a standing one. He really was dead on his feet - so bristled with arrows all around him that even though he was quite dead, he couldn't fall down; he was propped up by arrows.

Bill blasted, reloaded, and blasted some more until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber and there were no more silver bullets to be had.

Somehow, through the unknown manifest workings of destiny, or stupid luck, Bill so far had escaped without a wound. But the way the volleys were flying, he knew he was going to catch some any second.

He was going to die. Croak. Expire. Bite the big one, go out for a Burton, snuff it, buy the farm, take the Black Hole Express. His life pa.s.sed before his eyes. Though he'd been remiss of late, since he was four years old, and had not gone to church, he nurtured the secret and irrational hope that soon he would be dropping through the great Tunnel of Light within moments, and that his Great-Grandfather Bill would be waiting for him with his good old Robomule, Rusty, just a-rarin' to start plowing the heavenly sod.

An explosion cracked the sky.

"I'm coming, Great-Grandad!" cried Bill. "I'm coming home!"

Closing his eyes, he braced himself.

Trying not to whimper, he readied himself for Death's sting.

But Death did not sting.

In fact, the bullets stopped whizzing and the arrows stopped whistling.

"Gee! Bill, look at that!"

Bill opened his eyes. Bgr the Chinger was jumping up and down, pointing up at the sky excitedly.

Bill looked up.

The rocket ship was coming down on a sun-bright plume of fire, silvery and needle-shaped. Bill shielded his eyes and studied the starship more closely.

Could it be! Yes, it was!

There it was, proudly printed on the side: the name!

It was the starship called DESIRE.