"Patch him up," said Leela heartlessly. "The sooner his nose heals, the sooner I can break it again."

While Foss vainly tried to pry Zapp's blood-soaked hands from his injured nose, Krandok whipped out his cutlass and aimed the point at Leela's neck. "What did ye do that for?" he demanded.

Leela scowled and showed no fear. "That pompous bastard's been harassing me ever since I made the mistake of sleeping with him," she recounted. "He thinks he can have any woman he wants just because he's a legendary space captain."

"I should run ye through," threatened Krandok.

Leela nonchalantly laid a hand on the tall pirate's blade and pushed it away from her neck. "I thought it was accepted practice for pirates to abuse their captives," she said.

Confounded by the girl's logic, Krandok lowered his sword as a team of three smock-clad paramedics rushed into the lab. As the two male medics knelt to examine Zapp's face, the female medic inquired, "Who's responsible for this?"

"It was an accident," replied Leela, who then proceeded to kick Zapp sharply in the ribs. "Whoops! There I go again."

Once the medics had loaded Zapp onto a gurney and carried him away, Foss confronted Leela with indignation. "That was uncalled for," he scolded her. "Captain Brannigan and I were establishing an excellent rapport."

Leela gave the professor a bemused look. "Who are you?" she asked. "You don't look like a pirate. You don't talk like one, either."

"Only the senior staff and the security guards are required to talk like pirates," Foss told her.

"It's a bolluxed-up situation," said Krandok with a crude Cockney accent, "but where else does a seven-foot eunuch find work, eh?"

"Allow me to introduce myself," said the professor with a slight bow. "I am Philaster Foss, formerly of Mars University, now science officer to Captain Balalaika of the Cerulean Pirate Fleet. And you are…?"

"Turanga Leela," answered the cyclops.

"A lovely name befitting such a lovely woman," said Foss.

"Thank you," said Leela, blushing a bit. "Coming from anyone other than Zapp, that's a compliment. If you don't mind my asking, what prompted you to leave MU and join a fleet of space pirates?"

Foss smiled, and began to lead Leela in a circuitous tour of his lab. "My reasons for becoming a pirate are my own," he stated. "Your reason for being here is as clear as the eye on your face."

"Yes," said Leela with a nod. "You know about the Mutant Resettlement Act, then."

Foss shook his head with disdain. "I can't stand Nixon," he remarked. "His politics of exclusion are as unpalatable now as they were in the twentieth century. What were they thinking when they preserved his head? Earth's museums are crammed with the heads of ancient celebrities—Leonard Nimoy, Joan Rivers, even Lucy Liu. What about the scientists and philosophers of the Platinum Age? What about Ignatz Planck, Marilyn Simmons, and the real inventor of the wave-particle converter, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky? Where are their heads?"

Leela paused in front of the Fossitron and eyed it curiously. "You and Zapp were sitting in this machine when I came in," she recalled. "What is it, some sort of hair care device? Obviously not, since Zapp's hair looked awful."

Foss ran his hand along the still-warm side of the large device. "It would be as easy to show you as to tell you. Care to have a seat?"

Leela gave the question a moment's thought. Hmm…a big computerized thingie with two helmets and lots of wires attached…looks harmless enough.

"Excuse me a second," she said. Twisting and removing her hairband, she allowed her purple tresses to cascade freely about her shoulders. I'm not totally sure about this, she thought as she stepped toward the upholstered seat, but I do need to win their confidence if my plan is to work.

In moments she and Foss were seated within the unit, their backs braced against the cold steel. Foss flicked a switch, and the wiry helmets descended, one enclosing his head, the other fitting Leela's quite comfortably. This is just like a visit to the beauty salon, she mused. And they say pirates have it tough.

Almost instantly, the dome-shaped laboratory faded from her view. She was standing again, but in the midst of a strange universe of shifting colors and ephemeral shapes. Nothing seemed familiar, except for the vague figure of a man walking in her direction on a nonexistent floor.

"Where am I?" Leela's voice was faint, almost like thought instead of speech.

The man's features became clearer. "You are in my mind," stated Professor Foss, "and I am in yours." His voice was nearly inaudible, yet she understood every syllable without effort.

Leela opened her mouth to speak, but the words that came out were words she hadn't intended. "What you see before you is the landscape of our combined minds," she heard herself say. "The Fossitron makes use of a hypermatrix of synthetic neurons to…hey, cut that out!"

The image of Foss looked at her apologetically.

"That didn't come from me," Leela reflected. "You made me say it. You're controlling me somehow."

"You can control me as well," said Foss. "We're on an equal footing here."

Leela pondered the prospect for a moment, then grinned. Foss lifted his hand, stuck his finger in his nostril, and turned it to and fro as if fishing for mucus.

She chuckled. "Well, that was rude," said Foss as he pulled out his finger.

The surrounding swirls of color began to take definite shape. Before long the pair was standing before a series of granite columns and an ornate pine door that Leela recognized as the entrance to the Mars University administration building. Once the shock of displacement had worn off, she asked the professor, "This isn't really MU, is it?"

"No," replied Foss. "You're inside one of my memories."

Ever more curious, Leela followed the scientist through the old building's long hallways. They came upon a closed door whose sign read simply, LECTURE ROOM 3. Foss carefully opened it, and they tiptoed inside. Every seat was occupied by a student of one or another alien persuasion, listening passively to the speaker at the podium.

"The final frontier is the space between one person's brain and another's," declared the academic, who was revealed to be Foss himself. "Once that distance is bridged, universal peace, harmony, and understanding will be within our reach."

"This is where it all started," said the copy of Foss at Leela's side. "I was young, idealistic, confident that science would bring about the perfection of the human race—of all races."

As Leela amused herself by passing her hand transparently through the head of an attractive male student, she remarked, "If I had two eyes and a position at a prestigious university, I wouldn't give it all up for a life of piracy. Why did you?"

Next chapter: Foss explains why!