Only, for a moment, whatever lay in the foreground did not seem to matter much to me. Instead, while belting out a starlight serenade, I felt my attention plunge ahead, far beyond, to that milky, galactic vista, a vast nursing-ground of stars that – I knew – sang melodies far more imposing, yet more subtle and sustaining, than could ever be grasped by the unweaned planet-bound.

7.

Again and again, during my years of service, I have reflected upon the high likelihood that I must be insane.

Perhaps it is a job requirement – or the result of repeated head injuries. For, among the inhabitants of Earth and all her colonies, only completely out-there optimists are qualified to be assigned as Human Advisors, dispatched to live in full-time contact with our beloved allies, rubbing elbows and other close-packed parts amid the mostly-demmie crew of some mighty Alliance starship.

They take this trait very seriously at the Academy, testing for it rigorously, by hooking candidates up to a Voltaire meter. In order to be accepted for advisor-training, you must view reality through rose-colored, panglossy VR specs. Taste life’s candide-coating. Perceive this as the best of all possible universes.

Still, on this occasion, it was hard even for me to look at the bright side. What cause had I for optimism? Zooming just above alien rooftops that positively glittered with pikes, broken glass and countless other implements of paranoia, suspended in mid-air by a mere slender cable that thrummed and jerked and vibrated unnervingly as I slid along – while singing at the top of my lungs – plunging through the night toward a great, dark pyramid, where awaited (almost certainly) many, varied monsters who shared one common trait…

…a ravenous taste for blood.

Any sensible person might lapse into silence at such a moment, perhaps curling into a quivering ball. But I could not. For it was the singing itself that made the cable dance and hum, thrusting me across the night – returning to me some of the energy that Gala Morell had added in her swift descent, swooping down to pay me a visit. A sonic-amplifying wire of impressive technological sophistication, it responded to just the right melody, exactly the way a laser does, when an excited medium is provoked by specific frequencies and patterns of light.

And if the ditty that I had to bellow was coarse and immature? One fit for boobs? Well, I’ve been corseted in tight situations before. There was nothing new about having to use a brazen gambit, in order to bust out of a breathless predicament. Anyway, I work with demmies.

No, that wasn’t what forced me to re-evaluate my sanity. Nor was I much daunted by two days of loneliness, or several near-death pummelings by a planet of the danged. Look, our service isn’t called SNAFU for nothing.