The Outpost Read Online Free Page B

careful!”!” the Dragon Queen cried out.
    “Hell, there’s only six of ’em—and they’re little ones at that!” I hollered back.
    Twelve or fifteen warriors jumped me, but I just shrugged ’em off. Another one grabbed my leg, and I kicked him clear across the room; he hit the far wall on the fly, which has to constitute some kind of record if I just knew what record book to report it to.
    When I was maybe fifty feet away from the warlords, I raised the body over my head and hurled it at ’em. Four of ’em went down in a tangled heap. The other two reached for their weapons, but I was too fast for ’em, and after I broke their arms they kind of fell to the floor, and having nothing better to do they started kissing my feet and begging for mercy.
    I looked around and saw that the rest of the invaders were either dead or at least not in any mood to continue the fight, and then the Dragon Queen raced over to me and threw her arms around me and gave me one hell of a passionate kiss.
    (See this here black tooth? That’s what caused it. Burned the enamel top to bottom. I really ought to replace it with a gold one, but it’s almost all I got to remember her by.)
    Anyway, after she ordered her bodyguards to drag the warlords and the surviving soldiers off to the dungeons and have a little fun with them, she turned back to me and said, kind of sultry-like, “Catastrophe Baker, as a reward for your heroism, you may have any single thing in this room.”
    “Well, Miss Dragon Queen, ma’am,” I said, “that seems like a pretty easy decision, since I ain’t never seen a woman to measure up to you.”
    “Surely a man of your broad experience has seen many beautiful women.”
    “Yeah, but you’re head and shoulders and other things ahead of ‘em all.”
    “It’s kind of you to say so,” she said modestly, “but there must be three or four others in the galaxy who are even lovelier.”
    “You really think so?” I asked seriously.
    “Out of trillions and trillions of women? Surely.”
    “Well, then, it’s an even easier choice,” I said.
    “Yes, my love?” she said eagerly.
    “Absolutely, my love,” I replied. “If you tell me there are prettier women in the galaxy, I got no reason not to believe you. But,” I added, plucking the ruby from her tiara, “I know there ain’t no more perfect ruby, so I’ll just take this as a remembrance of my short but happy stay on Terlingua.”
    “I don’t believe it!” she said furiously.
    “And as a token of my high esteem, I’ll dump the plutonium before I leave,” I told her.
    “You are a fool, Catastrophe Baker!” she said. “Think of what you could have had!”
    “You won’t never be far from my mind, Miss Dragon Queen, ma’am,” I said.
    And sure enough, I think of her every time I sit by a blazing fire.

    His story done, Catastrophe Baker displayed the ruby again.
    “And that’s how I came into possession of the most perfect ruby in the galaxy.”
    Everyone seemed properly impressed with his story. Everyone except Hellfire Carson, that is. The grizzled old man walked up to Baker, held out his hand, and asked to see the ruby.
    “Handle it carefully, old man,” said Baker, offering it to him.
    Carson rolled it around in his hand for a few seconds, then held it up to the light and peered at it. Finally he tossed it back to Baker.
    “You made a bad bargain,” he said. “You should have took the Dragon Queen.”
    “What are you talking about, old man?” demanded Baker.
    “That thing ain’t no ruby.”
    “The hell it isn’t!”
    “The hell it is.”
    “What do you think it is?” I asked him.
    “Not a matter of ‘think’. I know what it is. I seen enough of ’em in my day.” He paused. “It’s an eyestone.”
    “A what?”
    “A Landship’s eye. That’s what we used to call ’em when we hunted ’em back on Peponi.”
    “And what’s a Landship?” asked Baker.
    “Landships were big suckers,” answered Hellfire Carson,