The Velour Spaceship
The swivel-hipped designer slapped the colonel on his big oafish knuckles and insisted "That spaceship design is appalling! It would give your poor mama a heart attack!"
"She's already dead," answered the colonel, morosely. "And what do you care? You don't have to fly it." 'And its soft--" he concluded - and it was - appallingly ugly or not, it was comfortable.
"Lavender, puce, and fuchsia are not requisite colors, though the design strangely speaks to them. The Thelonian stabilizer field allows for a crushably soft hull, and the Paltanian engines don't produce enough heat to melt the synthetic fabric. What more could you ask for?"
The colonel dropped his pen as he dug it out of his pants pocket. When he bent to retrieve it from the floor, his arm brushed the exterior of the ship. "Oooh." He looked at the beast in surprise, surprise tinged with something else. He repeated this process twice more, then gave up on pretense and hugged a landing strut. He came back to, abruptly noticing the regimen still standing at attention.
"I think I see what you mean," he said, guiltily, sulkily appeased.
"If you only had enough left for the couches, we'd be in business. Still, its a great touch for fighting all those beasties you fellas encounter. Love them into surrender, I always say."
* * *
They had an opportunity to test this strategy 4 days later. They were banked head to toe in the fifth dock, all awaiting the arrival of reinforcements, when his entire staff was relocated and commandeered. When he looked down into the vastness of space, he saw what was really important. Companionship? No; he was losing that. Duty? He wasn't sure about that any more. But a good environment - that was crucial. He would stick to his guns on that.
And he'd need them, the Vor-flan were on his left wing now; and readying weapons. "Ready the satin torpedos! Arm the fore and aft detergent cannons! Their leather and zinc-studded parody of a ship won't stand a chance!"
