GALAXY TOUR ADVENTURES - "The Grand Residency" - 81

   With the classic synchronous jump the two singers brought the screaming crescendo to a merciful, ecstatic close. Instantly plummeting the Grand Galactica ballroom stage into darkness. Applause erupted.
   A few seconds later a shaft of light split the darkness and there stood Zana in its searing glow, casually bringing her guitar back in tune.
   "Thank you!" She paused for breath. From somewhere in her layered costume she brought out a capo. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, aliens and combos, gamblers and gobblers, we come to the part of the show where we play you a brand new song."
   Some of the crowd, the overly merry ones, found this absolutely brilliant.
   A second spotlight beamed down on Rivqua. "That is, should we be fortunate enough to have one."
   "Tonight, as it happens, we are." Zana struggled a bit to clamp the capo onto the guitar neck, gave up and held it up for a second. "Incidentally, I'm using this little device only because my guitar's robot capo stopped working some gigs back. Here, look."
   She pressed a button on the body of her sparkling six-string, a small mechanism whirred and a narrow rod folded across the neck over the nut, and started moving up the fretboard.
   Rivqua displayed a winning smile, her hands toward the spectacle, like a magician's assistant. The small rod stopped before it even reached the first bar. Zana looked hopelessly out over the audience. "See that? That's what serious thrashing will do."
   "Gotta up your gear, Zana!" someone in the crowd hollered. People laughed.
   "That's what we keep telling our manager!" she replied and got more laughs.
   "Any managers in here?" Rivqua asked the audience.
   "I'm up for the job!" someone shouted.
   "See us after the show!" she replied. "A word of warning - the pay sucks!"
   They enjoyed that one. From somewhere in the wings a phone rang. Zana shouted over her shoulder, "If that's for me, tell them I'm otherwise engaged!"
   It was a good night in the Galactica ballroom.
   Rivqua shook out her hair. "Right. Where were we?"
   "New song," said Zana. She got the trusty old capo good and clamped on the neck.
   "Yes! Folks, this is hot off the hit foundry. Only about six hours old."
   Appreciative voices hollered.
   She went on, "It's kind of a tribute, I guess you'd call it. An affectionate summary of our experiences thus far in this extraordinary, magnificent, incomparable desert city of yours!"
   The room cheered. From out of the dark behind them a figure approached with quick, self-conscious steps, crossing the stage and up to the girls. The Bandroids looked at him. It was the stage hand, Mister Wizzbipp, holding a phone, shielding his eyes from the sudden glare of the spotlight.
   "Don't tell me it's my mother," said Zana.
   Seeing his serious, almost shocked face, the girls turned to him, covering their mikes.
   Mister Wizzbipp swallowed and whispered, "It's Fadda Bing! He's back from the dead!"
   The girls stared at him like he'd taken leave of his senses. He went on, chin quivering, "It's really him! And he demands to see you immediately after the show!"

GALAXY TOUR ADVENTURES - "The Grand Residency" - 80

   "Let me see if I've got this straight," said Sir Morris on the other end of the line. His voice was that of someone who faced a growing problem requiring growing involvement from himself, much to his dissatisfaction.
   Rivqua lay on the bed, phone to her ear, other arm covering her eyes for a comforting bit of darkness.
   Sir Morris laid the facts out for himself. "The Grand Galactica manager, the first one, died."
   "Correct. That was Fadda Bing."
   "He was replaced by his brother, called Luffy Bing."
   "Correct."
   "Then Luffy Bing died."
   "Murdered. Just like his brother, except with a laser as opposed to poison, which we were witnesses to. But we had to identify the last one. After the event."
   "Wait, not so fast." Sir Morris was silent for a second. "And during all this carnage, no money has been paid out to you."
   "Not once cent."
   "Despite all manner of promises of advances, cards issued, visits to the bank, the good shows you've done, solid crowds you've pulled in?"
   "A Toss Vague-Ass welcome, it's called. Makes the old 'your check's in the mail' look good. At least you got hope."
   "Well let's not lose what's left of that just yet. Just out of curiosity, are there any more of these Bing brothers to spare?"
   "Who knows? If there are, the only ones likely to reap any benefit from them would be the undertakers."
   "Mm." He paused for a moment. "Are you eating well?"
   When things got tight, as they inevitably do in show business, Sir Morris had a way of giving off what sounded like fatherly concern, sort of out of nowhere. Perhaps he was buying time while figuring out how to deal with the problem with the least amount of effort, yet not putting the Blonde Plutoz in deeper straits than his conscience would allow.
   "Yes we are," Rivqua sighed. "The food works, as do the coffees. Endless supply actually. Who knows, perhaps we're being slowly poisoned."
   "Let's not run away with our imaginations."
   "Perhaps there's a hidden laser gun trained on my head as we speak."
   "Enough with the ridiculous. Where's Zana?"
   "She's in the other room, composing a satirical ode to this town. Thought we'd play it tonight."
   Sir Morris whistled. "Uh-oh."

GALAXY TOUR ADVENTURES - "The Grand Residency" - 79

   "That him?" The detective inspector's two heads took in the girls as they leaned in for a guarded glimpse at the face of the corpse.
   "That's him," Rivqua confirmed, backing away with a grimace.
   Zana pointed to the entry wound in Luffy Bing's forehead. "What kind of weapon does that?"
   "Cold laser, would be my guess," The detective nodded to the robot who covered up the body again. "Quick, precise, silent. Impossible to trace since there's no actual procectile to match with a barrel." He shook one head. "What wouldn't I give to have the old days back."
   "We have lasers onstage, the safe ones," Zana said as they stepped back out into the sun. "Take out a winged insect at best, but no worse than that."
   "Wish all lasers were like ours," Rivqua said, fanning off a touch of nausea.
   "You're tellin' me. Fancy a cup of coffee? You ladies got time?"
   "Do you, Inspector?"
   "Sure. I'm back to square one, what's the rush? Plus, I might get lucky and you'll confess."
   "For a lousy cup of coffee? Fat chance."
   Both heads stared. "Excuse me?"
   "It was a joke!" Zana said and got in the cruiser.
   Rivqua said, "If you need a confidence booster, Inspector, you could try and figure out why the Grand Galactica has such a difficult time paying us. And when they finally do, they still don't."
   The unmarked police car hovered up to a couple feet above ground and took off down the road, heading back toward the shiny centre of Toss Vague-Ass.
   Fifteen minutes later the three of them sat in the Grand Galactica bar, sipping coffee.
   "What's your next move, Inspector?" Rivqua asked and leaned back in the plush couch.
   "Do I have to have one?"
   "I assume you're being paid to eventually find one. Although, not by this place I imagine. Which should be to your relief."
   He shrugged and looked away for a casual scan of the wide lobby.
   "How about you?" he said.
   Rivqua gave Zana a glance. "I suppose we'll be giving Sir Morris a bell."
   Zana nodded, stirring the frothy white cap of her latte with an absent-minded look. "They do one thing right in this place, and that's these creamy coffee jobs. How long that remains a perk, or the guy who makes them stays alive, I dare not guess."
   The detective snorted and took a sip with one head and spoke with the other.
   "Sir Morris. That was your manager, right?"
   "Executive troublemaker. A former civil servant actually. Stays clear of all the action while being the chief cause of it."
   The inspector sighed. "He has my unsullied admiration."

GALAXY TOUR ADVENTURES - "The Grand Residency" - 78

The detective inspector brought the police craft to a sharp halt on a small street. He'd taken them way down the far end of town, passed the spaceport, down where the main Strip was no longer a boulevard but an ordinary road leading through an ordinary industrial district.
   The girls couldn't help noticing how the worn billboards and lack of eye-catching neon signs stood out in sharp contrast to the retina-slamming playground just a few miles back.
   Cisterns loomed in the distance. Not far off the scattered prongs of an electric substation reached for the sky. Beyond all that, mountains. Then desert presumably, forever. The girls got out. The cruiser shut down and settled on the ground. A sudden rumble startled them. A freighter ship thundered past at low altitude.
   "You guys nervous or something?" The detective made an impatient gesture.
   "Just taking in the scenery," Zana said.
   "Welcome to the business end of Toss Vague-Ass. Pretty different, huh? Consider yourself privileged." He headed for a set of doors.
   "Not the vacation spot of choice," said Rivqua. "But oddly reassuring none the same."
   They followed him into the low non-descript building. An old robot looked up from behind the desk. He, or she, hard to tell, that's how old it was, greeted them without a smile, for lack of servo strength it looked like.
   "Identification of the body, Inspector?"
   The detective nodded and leaned against the counter. The robot looked back down.
   "What's that smell?" Zana asked.
   "A whole concoction of carcass-prepping substances," replied the detective. "That and assorted lunches."
   "Smells like baked beans."
   One of the inspector's two heads chuckled. "You wouldn't believe what dead bodies are capable of in the first thirty-six hours, alien ones in particular."
   A door slid open and the inspector led the way in.
   "Wish you hadn't said that, Zana," Rivqua said, following him.
   Tiled surfaces all around. Except the ceiling, which was a maze of ducts and pipes and tracks. An upside down robot hung from there, arms at the ready and a cold, narrow face, at the moment suspended over a long mound on a steel table.
   "Getting a bit nervous now," Rivqua admitted, glancing at the detective.
   "Okay, let's see him," he said to the robot, who whirred into action and lifted the sheet off the face. And there he was, Luffy Bing, face up, with a third eye on his forehead, his head resting in a patch of caked dark-green fluid.