Jul 5th 2011, 15:59 by E O Hatterpol | 1228 AU FROM SUN
Think, I thought. What's the one thing you could do on Starbase Octopus to win Nixie back & prove to her that you're a bad-ass?
And then, from the corner of my ear, I heard it: the ching!-ching!-ching! of slot machines dumping space booty into giant cups.
Duh! I thought, slapping my forehead. I'll go gambling, win an eff-ton of loot & then just show back up with floating hot tubs & karaoke ice cream machines! At that point, Nixie will have to reconsider!
I spun on my heels & took a beeline to the casinos. Inside, the glamorous whir & pulse of multicoloured lights hypnotized my eyedrums. Feathers fans, boa scarfs & the pretty ladies attached to them brushed past me, tickling & teasing the little hairs on my neck. My nose zeroed in through the cigarette smoke onto the smell of fresh, complimentary beer being carried about smartly on little trays.
Complimentary beer!
"Let's get this party started!" I said, sitting down at a slot machine with colourful, gaudy letters spelling out "Calamari Coins!" down the side. I threw in some of Ravi the Bookman's space booty & cranked the shaft. The first slot was an octopus, the second was also an octopus - I got excited at this point - but the third came in a salty barnacle.
"Whaaaaa!? So close, yo! This next one's for Nixie!"
I played a few more times, but always lost. It was more fun to crank the giant handle than to get the results, anyways. There were too many different numbers & combinations you could use to bet big or small, so I didn't understand how it worked. That frustrated me.
"This damn game doesn't state its rules clearly!" I complained out loud. "The only person who would be more pissed than me at this game is Captain-"
I shook the thought out of my head. I am past that dude, I reassured myself.
"Hear what happened to Ethan?"
A Starbase policeman was playing slots behind me with one of his buddies. My ears perked up like when a sleepy, Saturday dog smells bacon frying.
"His girlfriend disappeared," the cop continued.
"Are you kidding me?" said the other. "Isn't that the third this week you've told me about? And it's only Tuesday! What are the higher-ups saying about all this getting worse?"
The cop cranked his slot machine. He watched his money fly away without so much as a twitch in his face. He looked tired, like he had been working a lot.
"Nothing," he said. "They just want us to patrol larger areas of the Starbase for longer periods of time & keep the victims from talking, just like before."
"That's ridiculous! They should be going through the Starbase tentacle by tentacle until they've flushed out the kidnapper!"
"You think we aren't already doing that?" the policeman snapped. "It's just this Starbase is so big & those of us that are left after budget cuts are stretched too thin. When the fourth girl went missing after only two weeks, I guarantee we put all our manpower on it!"
"Fourth girl in two weeks?!" I blurted out loud.
The policeman & his friend turned around to see who had been eavesdropping. They found me with my hands over my mouth. I could see the policeman's friend's brain working. I remembered his face from the DSOD.
"Hey, aren't you--"
"Nope, that's not me! See ya!"
And off I dashed through the casino. Craps were a better game to play, anyways.
But those disappearances they were talking about... could they have anything to do with Master Bokor & that zonbi?
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