CHAPTER 3

THE HAZARDS OF BEACHCOMBING

What a wonderfully mediocre day to be half-alive, thought Bill.

Tiny waves surged idly up the dun-colored beach. A greenish-orange sun sat over the horizon like a bloated and festering fruit. A bank of leaden clouds was slowly drawing across the sky, thankfully shuttering out the sickly light with torn, damp gray veils. The smell of rotting fish assaulted Bill's already tortured nose as he walked along the deathly still sea. He sneezed hugely and wiped his nostrils with the back of his hand. His morale slumped to rock bottom and remained heavily there.

Ah, yes! What a wonderful place for R and R, thought Bill. Permission had been reluctantly granted to him to go out for a morning stroll. Get some fresh air. Ha! What a bowby joke! He half-wished they'd shipped him to Dental School World. At least they had nitrous oxide dispensers on every corner there, guaranteeing a lift and quick high whenever you needed it. Which, of course, was all the time.

Still, a Trooper took what he could get, cursing and complaining the entire time. The bar was still closed, all of his own booze long drunk and he couldn't find Dr. Delazny. In desperation he figured maybe a little exercise might do him good before he settled down with a newly steamed-and-cooled BLEEDER'S DIGEST.

Bill had taken off his shoes to walk on the beach. He turned back and contemplated the tracks he'd left in the sand, being sluggishly lapped at by the now snotgreen sea. A regular human foot, along with a good-sized cloven hoof! Wouldn't an exploring xenobiologist get a wrinkled brow and excited jollies over that!

Perhaps a little wade would cool his tootsies. He took a flat rock and skipped it over the surface of the water. A fish hurtled up out of the sea, roaring angrily, caught it in a great gaping mouth, and flopped back into the water, leaving the flash of sharp gleaming fangs on Bill's retina.

Bill stopped. Oh well. He didn't really feel like swimming anyway. He was a simple man, with simple needs and even simpler pleasures. All of them involving the opposite sex. Or food. Or drink. Or dope. Or, preferably all of them at the same time. Or best of all out of the Troopers — but that would never be. Unfortunately, walking along the beach barefoot, contemplating this good ole quixotic Motherbowber Nature, did not involve any of these. He sighed mightily, sneezed explosively, then went back to get his shoes, and head back for the hospital, where surely the bar would be open and he could make his simpler pleasures even simpler.

Walking back, he got a good view of the water — and the dehydrator plant past the hospital, belching forth great black greasy gobs of smoke. What was in this seawater anyway? Bill wondered absently. Some godawful gunge, no doubt. He went up a little closer to inspect the dark stuff.

It looked a little like treacly black beer, or the infamous Von Guinness Stout from the green sun-bathed shores of Paddy's Planet, thought Bill. There was even a tan foam that flecked the wavelets. This made Bill even thirstier for some good brew. Not that the hospital served anything near as good as Von Guinness. Bill strongly suspected that the stuff on tap was closer to the blendered contents of the cloacus magnus spiked with formaldehyde. But it got him drunk enough, and his accepted practice was never to question an alcoholic drink too strongly.

He was just about to pull back from the edge of the sea, when about five yards out, a foamy eruption of water geysered up. The spray splattered back down, but the subject that had caused it remained, dark and dripping.

"Hi, big feller!"

For several moments, elation filled Bill. Standing in the water was a naked woman, her high-nippled breasts rising triumphantly and expansively in the air, her oval and beautiful face animated by an expression of rampant sensuousness.

By the Sacred Spirit of great Ahura Mazda, thought Bill hopefully. I'm going to be sexually attacked!

She began to walk toward him, rising up out of the foam — and the few precious moments of elation ended. From the waist down, the woman's flanks were covered by thick, goatish hair, the same dark brown as the mane of long wet stuff dripping down her aquiline features. When she walked up to the beach, Bill saw that the legs narrowed to two cloven hooves very much like his own, but much more petite.

"Hello," said Bill. "Glad to make your acquaintance, if even so briefly but, well, I gotta be going. I have an appointment to get a shot for a real virulent case of an unspeakable disease that I dare not speak about!" He stumbled backward, but his foot (the moody one, natch) chose a particularly soft batch of sand to step upon, and he lost his balance and fell.

The goat-lady continued walking toward Bill undeterred, licking her lips in a most lascivious manner. This close she looked like a walking gynecological close-up from GALACTIC HUSTLERHOUSE MAGAZINE.

"You're kind of ugly," she husked in a husky voice. "But you've got an okay bod — and just one heck of a nice foot!"

Bill howled with horror and tried to get up and run away. With amazingly strong hands, the strange woman grabbed Bill's belt and hauled him back.

"Really, ma'am — it's not my foot! I mean, if you really like it, take it!" Bill was only sorry that it was so firmly attached. Perhaps if it hadn't been, though, it would have been long gone by now.

"Ah, c'mon, Trooper. Don't you want to play footsie with me?"

Bill didn't. He just wanted to get away. Unfortunately, for all his hard-packed, well-trained muscle, the pretty but frightening goat-lady held him, unmoving in her grip. She seemed to have incredible power stashed somewhere in those slender arms, that well-proportioned back. She hauled Bill back to the sea, leaving behind two deep furrows where his scrabbling hands tried to find purchase in the sand.

"Noooooooooooo!" said Bill. The "No" turned into wild screaming as the lukewarm, foul water folded over his legs.

"Take a deep breath, big guy. I can tell you're already in over your head about me!"

So saying, and cackling hoarsely with insane alien glee, the female satyr dragged the thrashing and splashing and yowling Bill down into the mysterious, murky sea.