High Dragon Bump

Excerpt

A young and very beautiful girl with golden blond hair and smooth skin the color of creamed sweet potatoes floated in the middle of the windowless metal room into which Wayne Brighton drifted. The girl was not exactly naked, but her few filmy clothes concealed nothing.

Wayne cleared his throat, his apprehension changing rapidly to confusion.

"You are going to reduce me?" he asked.

"The word is seduce, mister," the girl said. "They told me reduce, too, but they don't talk real good, and I think I'm supposed to seduce you so you'll tell 'em something, and then they'll let me go. I guess. I hope. What is it they wantcha to tell 'em?"

Wayne cleared his throat again, striving merely to keep a firm grip on his sanity. Things had been happening much too fast for him to have retained anything like his customary composure.

He said, "Well, they want me to get them a, uh—well, a high dragon bump." He pronounced the words carefully.

"So why dontcha?" the girl asked.

Wayne's voice rose. "I don't even know what it is. I told them and they don't believe me. Now you're here! I suppose if I can't be reduced—seduced—into getting them one, it will wind up with torch hair. Believe me, I never heard of a high dragon bump."

"Now, don't get panicky!" the girl pleaded. "After all, I'm scared too."

"I am not scared!" Wayne replied indignantly. But he realized that he was.

So far, in the hour or so he'd been a captive of the Cirissins, he'd managed to keep his fright pretty well subdued. He'd understood almost at once what had happened, and his first reaction had not been terror or even any great degree of surprise.

He was a scientist and he had a scientist's curiosity.

And at first the Cirissins—or the one that had done all the talking—had been cooperative in answering his questions. But then, when he wasn't able to comprehend what they meant by high dragon bump, they'd started getting impatient.

"What's your name?" he asked the girl. She was making gentle swimming motions with her hands and feet, moving gradually closer to him.

"Sheilah," she said. "Sheilah Ralue. I'm a model. I pose for pitchers. You know—for sexy magazines and calendars and stuff like that."

"I see. You were posing when—?"

"When they snatched me, yeah. Couple hours ago, I guess. The flash bulb went off and blinded me for a second like it always does, and I seemed to be falling. Then I was here. Only I still don't even know where here is. Do you? How come we don't weigh nothing? It's ghastly!"

"We're in a space ship," Wayne told her. "In free fall, circling earth a thousand miles or so out. I thought you at least knew we were in a space ship."

The girl said, "Oh, bull. We can't be in no space ship. How'd we get here so fast?"

"They have a matter transmitter, but I haven't the slightest idea of how it works. Obviously it's limited to living creatures or they could just as well have taken whatever it is they want instead of ... You don't happen to know what a high dragon bump is, do you?"

"Don't be dumb. Of course I ... well, unless it's a dance or something. I use to be a dancer, ya know. Sort of."

"With bubbles, I imagine," Wayne said.

"Tassels. They was my specialty. But there's more money in posing for pitchers, and the work ain't quite so—"

"I doubt that a high dragon bump is a dance," Wayne said....