Free The Outpost by Mike Resnick Page A

science,” answered Catastrophe Baker.
    “Sounds like a story coming up,” suggested the Reverend Billy Karma.
    “Not much to tell,” said Baker. “She was built like an opera singer, which is to say she weighed in at maybe 350 pounds. She loved low-gravity worlds, where she could move with the grace of a dancer. Last time she ever performed was on New Samarkand, in a revival of Tosca .”
    “I’ve seen the holo.”
    “You must have seen an earlier version,” said Baker. “This one ran only one performance, and no one ever captured it.”
    “What happened?”
    “New Samarkand is a temperate world, and they hold most of their operas and symphonies and other shindigs at this huge outdoor amphitheatre,” began Baker. “Anyway, there’s a scene at the end when Tosca commits suicide by throwing herself off the top of a tall tower they call a battlement. Ordinarily they’d toss a couple of air mattresses down on the stage, out of sight of the audience, to break her fall—but Diva Duva was so, well, large , that they figured she was sure to bust something, so instead of mattresses they put out a hydro-trampoline to break her fall.”
    “A trampoline?” asked Max, frowning.
    Baker nodded. “She plunged down so fast you could almost hear the wind whistle around her, hit the trampoline full force, and shot straight up. And like I told you, New Samarkand is a low gravity world. She reached escape velocity and wound up crashing through the cargo hold of a mining ship out near one of the planet’s moons.” He sighed. “Next day they got rid of the trampoline and put in a swimming pool for her understudy.” He shook his head sadly. “Nobody ever thought to ask the poor girl if she knew how to swim.”
    There was total silence for a moment, while everyone digested the story.
    Max was the first to speak. “You absolutely sure every word of that is true?” he asked dubiously.
    Baker’s jaw jutted out pugnaciously. “Are you impugning my integrity?” he demanded.
    “No,” Max assured him. “Just your veracity.”
    “Well, that’s okay, then,” replied Baker, relaxing.
    Just then Achmed of Alphard entered the Outpost, dressed in his glowing robes and sparkling turban. He towered at least a foot above Catastrophe Baker and Big Red, and even more above everyone else.
    “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, then bowed in the general direction of Sinderella and the Earth Mother. “And ladies, of course.” He looked across the room at me. “The war’s getting close, Tomahawk.”
    “Anyone figure out who the enemy is?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “Beats me.”
    “Then how do you know there’s a war?”
    “They’re firing on Navy ships.”
    “Yeah, that sounds kind of warlike,” opined Max.
    “How far away are they?”
    “Who knows?” replied Achmed. “A few days, a few systems. It all depends on how often and accurately the Navy fires back.”
    “I wouldn’t worry much,” said Gravedigger Gaines. “No war’s ever gotten this far.”
    “This one won’t either,” added Nicodemus Mayflower, nodding his lean, angular head for emphasis.
    “Well, if it does, they’re going to wish they’d gone in some other direction,” chimed in Catastrophe Baker. “I’ve killed men for lesser crimes than disturbing me while I’m drinking and socializing.”
    “Are there any greater crimes?” asked Three-Gun Max.
    “None that come immediately to mind,” admitted Baker.
    The door opened again and Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull entered. The wind was blowing, as usual, and they were coated with the red dust that covers most of Henry II when it’s not blowing through the dry, hot, thin air.
    Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull were wearing their tribal buckskins and feathered war bonnets, which looked just a tad out of place on a pair of roly-poly, fur-covered, orange, three-legged aliens, but we’d all grown used to their appearance over the years.
    “Hey, Tomahawk …” began Crazy Bull.
    “I know, I