“Hurt? Why… I can make a racket that will shiver these chambers and rattle your soul! A cacophony to show you I’m nobody’s meat. It’ll petrify your very bones, shrivel your guts, shake your teeth—”

“We heard that part already,” Lorg complained, a little churlishly. I really was doing my best, under the circumstances.

“Enough!” Besh roared, setting off his own reverberations and sweeping the plate of cutlets off the table, crashing to the floor.

“Enough braggin’! Just do it, meat. Give it a shot.”

He crossed his arms, waiting.

My mind whirled. What had gone wrong? Was it a problem with my microphone or nanos? Or had something gone amiss with the Clever Gamble, in orbit?

The eyes of the Lik’em chieftain told me, I had but seconds left.

Improvise! Part of me insisted.

But I’m no demmie! Another part replied. I’m a logical Earthman!

That thought cheered me, just a little. Enough to find some saliva in my dry mouth, to wet my lips.

I brought them together… and blew.

This isn’t going to work, I thought, as I began a softshoe tap-shuffle, to my own whistling accompaniment.

I had never been so right in all my life.

4.

The next time I awoke, it was under a vast canopy of stars, damp, bruised, and in pain. Still, I gasped foremost in surprise at still being alive. My last recollected image hadn’t been all that promising.

After the ship didn’t answer, and the Lik’ems called my bluff, what else could I do but wing it? Starting with the very first thing to come to mind. The Colonel Bogie March was followed by a brief rendition of I got Rhythm, which segued into a blues version of that ancient, venerated Earth melody, Zippedee-doo-dah – attended by every sound effect I could muster with hand in armpit.

Slack-jawed, the four Lik’ems had stared in astonishment while I moved on through a half-dozen of my best animal calls, then a syncopated chant of The Ballad of Eskimo Nell – in some faint hope they’d like the raunchy bits. Or else, perhaps, that sheer tedium would put them to sleep.

No such luck. Of the four of them, the two laconic Lik’em henchlupines had simply stared with glazed expressions. And while Lorg seemed willing to give me points for effort, the giant leader simply glared.

At last, Besh told Lorg – “I guess you’re right, after all. This meat’s no good. I’ll help you throw it out.”

With that, four huge creatures – each about the size and density of a Harley space scooter – buried me under a blurry avalanche of hair and burlap.