the chief stewardess asked.
Milissa nodded, a little too eagerly. “Ready, I guess. Blastoff time’s in half an hour, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Not nervous, are you?”
“Nervous? Who, me?” Somewhat anxiously she added, “Have you seen the passenger list?”
“Yes.”
“How’s the breakdown? Are there—many strange aliens?” Milissa said. “I mean—”
“A few,” the chief stewardess said cheerfully. “You’d better report to the ship now, dear.”
The King Magnus was standing on its tail, glimmering proudly in the hot Vegan sun, as Milissa appeared on the arching approach-ramp. Two blueskinned Vegan spacemen lounged against the wall of the Administration Center, chatting with a pilot from Earth. All three whistled as she went by. Milissa ignored them, and proceeded to the ship.
She took the lift-plate up to the nose of the ship, smiled politely at the jetman who waited at the entrance, and went in. “I’m the new stewardess,” she said.
“Captain Brilon’s waiting for you in the fore cabin,” the jetman said.
Milissa checked in as per instructions, adjusted her cap at just the proper angle (with Captain Brilon’s too-eager assistance) and picked up the passenger list. As she had feared, there were creatures of all sorts aboard. Vega served as a funnel for travelers from all over the galaxy who were heading to Earth.
She looked down the list.
Grigori—James, Josef, Mike. Returning to Earth after extended stay on Alpheraz IV. Seats 21–22.
Brothers vacationing together, she thought. How nice. But three of them in two seats? Peculiar!
Xfooz, Nartoosh. Home world, Sirius VII. First visit to Earth. Seat 23.
Dellamon, Thogral. Home world, Procyon V. Business trip to Earth. Seat 25.
And on down the list. At the bottom, the chief stewardess had penciled a little note:
Be courteous, cheerful, and polite. Don’t let the aliens frighten you—and above all, don’t look at them as if they’re worms or toads, even if some of them are worms or toads. Worms or not, they’re still customers.
Watch out for any Terrans aboard. They don’t have any color-prejudices against pretty Vegans with blue skin. Relax and have a good time. The return trip ought to be a snap.
I hope so, Milissa thought fervently. She took a seat in the corner of the cabin and started counting seconds till blastoff.
The stasis-generators lifted the King Magnus off Vega II as lightly as a feather blown by the wind, and Captain Brilon indicated that Milissa should introduce herself to the passengers. She stepped through the bulkhead doors that led to the passenger section, paused a moment to readjust her cap and tug at her uniform, and pushed open the irising sphincter that segregated crew from passengers.
The passenger hold stretched out for perhaps a hundred feet before her. It was lined with huge view windows on both sides, and the passengers—fifty of them, according to the list—turned as one to look at her when she entered.
She suppressed a little gasp. All shapes, all forms—and what was that halfway down the row—?
“Hello,” she said, forcing it to come out cheery and bright. “My name is Milissa Kleirn, and I’ll be your stewardess for this trip. This is the King Magnus, fourth ship of the Vegan Line, and we’ll be making the trip from Vega II to Sol III in three days, seven hours, and some minutes, under the command of Captain Alib Brilon. The drive-generators have already hurled us from the surface of Vega, and we’ve entered warp and are well on our way to Earth. I’ll be on hand to answer any of your questions—except the very technical ones; you’ll have to refer those through me to the captain. And if you want magazines or anything, please press the button at the side of your seat. Thank you very much.”
There, she thought. That wasn’t so bad.
And then the indicator-panel started to flash. She picked a button out at random and pressed it. A voice said, “This is Mike Grigori, Seat 22. How about coming down here to talk to me a minute?”
She debated. The chief stewardess had warned her about rambunctious Earthmen—but yet, this was her first request as stewardess, and besides there was something agreeably pleasant about Mike Grigori’s voice. She started down the aisle and reached Seat 22, still smiling.
Mike Grigori was sitting with his two brothers. As she approached, he extended an arm and beckoned to her wolfishly with a crooked forefinger. He winked.
“You’re Mr. Grigori?”
“I’m Mike. Like you to meet my brothers, James and Josef. Fellows, this is Miss Kleirn. The stewardess.”
“How do you do,” Milissa said. The smile started to fade. With an effort, she restored it.
There was a certain family resemblance about the Grigori brothers. And she saw now why they only needed two seats.
They had only one body between them.
“This is Jim, over here,” Mike was saying, indicating the head at farthest left. “He’s something of a scholar. Aren’t you, Jim?”
The head named Jim turned gravely to examine Milissa, doing so with the aid of a magnifying glass it held to its eye monocle-wise. Jim affected an uptilted mustache; Mike, looking much younger and more ebullient, was cleanshaven and wore his hair close-cropped.
“And this is Josef,” Mike said, nodding toward the center head. “Make sure you spell that J-O-S-E-F, like so. He’s very fussy about that. Used to be plain Joe, but now nothing’s fancy enough for him.”
Josef was an aristocratic-looking type whose hair was slicked back flat and whose nose inclined slightly upward; he maintained a fixed pose, staring forward as if in intent meditation, and confined his greetings to a muttered hmph.
“He’s the intellectual sort,” Mike confided. “Keeps us up half the night when he wants to read. But we manage. We have to put up with him because he’s got the central nervous system, and half the arms.”
Milissa noticed that the brothers had four arms—one at each shoulder, presumably for the use of Mike and Jim, and two more below them, whose scornful foldedness indicated they were controlled entirely by the haughty Josef.
“You’re—from Earth?” Milissa asked, a little stunned.
“Mutants,” said Jim.
“Genetic manipulation,” explained Mike.
“Abnormalities. Excrescences on my shoulders,” muttered Josef.
“He thinks he got here first,” Mike said. “That Jim and I were tacked on to his body later.”
It looked about to degenerate into a family feud. Milissa wondered what a fight among the brothers would look like. But one of her duties was to keep peace in the passenger lounge. “Is there
