Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell Read Online Free PDF

lying!”
    “Thirty seconds to hatch closing.... Last chance for flight insurance. A mere ten million credits per head. Twenty-nine seconds....”
    Bill was starting to panic. He gave the guy a hard, quick shove. The ragged man fell backward, rolled and fell straight back and down the hatchway. He grabbed at the ladder which clattered and jerked —
    — and then collapsed, cutting Bill off from egress.
    Bill stared, horrified.
    “Twenty-five seconds. Kiss your Trooper butts good-bye!” came the reassuring rasp of the loudspeaker.
    Now, Bill had been in the deep end before, so he knew exactly what worked best in such clearly difficult situations.
    Total and complete, mind-destroying panic!
    Not thinking about the immediate danger, only thinking about getting stuck on a planet like Veniola again, Bill screamed shrilly and dived headfirst down the hatchway.
    He landed surprisingly softly.
    “Ooof!” came a cry. “Ouch!” came another. “Hey buddy! You wanna get off us! Like it's not bad enough we're doomed, we gotta get landed on by some fat goofball!”
    Fortunately he'd landed on a communal Trooper mattress, complete with communal Troopers.
    Bill would have taken exception to the word “fat” but the loudspeaker was reminding everybody smugly that they had exactly ten — no, nine seconds till the hatch closed.
    Bill scrambled off the mattress, impeded by various Trooper limbs and faces. “Hey bud, why don't you stick around!”
    “Yeah! We could use some company.”
    Bill distributed a few punches and broke loose of the tangle. He struggled toward the smudgy bar of light that was the hatchway.
    “Four seconds. Two seconds.”
    “Hey wait a minute!” screamed Bill. “You missed 'Three seconds.'”
    “Three seconds?” said the intercom voice. “Did I miss three seconds, Madge? I could have sworn I hit three. Oh well, Three seconds. One seconds.”
    “What about two?” screeched Bill.
    “Dammit. I said two! Look buddy, you want me to have to do a playback for you? I can, you know. We've got the equipment!”
    The hatchway was right in front of him.
    The door was beginning to close. Bill remembered the hellish jungle, the sweat, the horror, the pain of having to shoot off his own foot to get off the last deathworld he had been on. Spurred on by this vision, he leaped forward and through the closing door at the last possible microsecond.
    He rolled down the ramp, huffing and heaving, coming to a stop by two pair of feet. One pair was shod, the other bare and calloused and unbelievably filthy.
    “Hey, guy,” said the guard. “This guy Brandox?”
    Bill was about to say, “Hell no!” However, he was halted by a pair of bright eyes beneath the herbiage staring down at him imploringly. Bill was going to say “Hell no!” anyway because he was plenty put-out by his near escape, but something, he didn't know what, a little nagging voice of compassion, perhaps some submicroscopic scrap of conscience and compassion lingering in a dusty corner of his brain from his pre-Trooper days, stopped him. Or maybe it was just heartburn.
    “Yeah. That's him. He's coming with me.”
    “Well, I suggest you get in your grav-car and get the hell outta here because these things go off in an explosion that cinders living things for miles around.” The man then shot out of there, running hell bent for leather. Whatever that means.
    Blinking with joy, the man that Bill had inadvertently saved scrambled eagerly into the back seat of the grav-car.
    Grumpily, Bill leaped into the driver's seat and gunned the anti-grav repulsors. “I don't know why I'm doing this. I just don't know,” he said as he raced away.
    “You won't be sorry, Bill. I promise you,” said the man. He was starting to speak much plainer now. And he sounded positively familiar.
    Seconds later Bill felt the heat of the rocket taking off. Light flared all about him and the grav-car bucked. He kept on going and he heard the BEELZEBUB roaring away, cutting