Chapter 4

"Sally!"

"That's me," Sally said so nonchalantly to Don, not at all like the suddenly stiff reaction from the Lieutenant who so loved Officer Don, definitely not the too-ordinary out-of-uniform Don! A reaction that seemed to suggest there was an almost telepathic link 'twixt the two whenever one or the other entered, unannounced, into any room.

The reason for this seemingly senseless lapse in that link 'tween a uniformed Officer Don Orville and a leggy, super-sexy Sally Solomon was quite clearly the handsome Lady's Man from some forty years in the Past: Tim O'Hara.

"Sally?" Don pressed in puzzlement over the virtually irrefutable fact that this beauteous blond now no longer stood tall and stiff the instant he stepped within reasonable range. Although never even considering such could be because of this handsome man in the outmoded manner of dress and hair style. "Uh...wh-who's this? Another out-of-town relative...I hope?"

Finally fully turning toward the squat, fat, fully uniformed, complete with leather-like police issue jacket draped about an overweight frame...

"Oh...hi, Don."

Though Sally slide-stepped slightly further from Tim than at the moment of "her man's" entry into the cramped little kitchen, even Don, dimwitted devotee-to-Sally Solomon that he may be!, came to conclude that this possible suitor in Sixties attire might be a very real threat to whatever relationship Sally and Don had had.

"Uh, the name's Don Orville. Officer Don Orville. Part of Rutherford's Finest."

Tim found it hard to believe that last, because it certainly seemed, from this obese officer's appearance, that Rutherford's Finest must station themselves inside a Krispy Kreme donut shop. Still...

"Oh, uh, hi. My name's Tim. Tim O'Hara. Uh, I'm just, uh, visiting with my Martian. Er, uh, my Martin. Uh, m-my Uncle...Martin."

Once more turning his attention back to the tall, blond beauty, Don somewhat anxiously said, "Sally, did you forget our date today? You wanted to go with me to qualify on the gun range again. You know how much you love embarrassing everybody else by putting a clip of bullets into the silhouette head of a paper target."

"Yes," said Sally whilst allowing herself to briefly drift back to the last time she'd done such. Her expression shifting itself into something momentarily comical in its composition. "The way every other officer gathers around me when that little target is reeled in to show that I've put ten bullets straight through the hole made by the first. Mmmm."

Don began to brighten, as Tim seemed a-little-more-than-slightly disappointed that this sexy "sister" to Dick Solomon might be leaving. Then Sally snapped herself back to the moment, and Human men, at hand...

"But I can't leave our, uh, guests today, Don. It'd be rude!"

Thoroughly flustered and definitely baffled, not to mention more than a little hurt!, Don pointed out, "You've never cared about being rude before, Sally. In fact...you're pretty much rude all the time."

"Yeah, well," Sally lied, looking almost Comically awkward, "I've decided to break that habit. So go on without me, Don. We'll get together, maybe, tomorrow for...whatever."

Not so shortsighted this time, especially so when it came to the sensual subject of Sally Solomon!, a detectably downhearted Don Orville lamented, whilst clumsily heading for the kitchen door leading out of the not-so-roomy apartment. "I can take a hint. You like this new guy better than me now! That's fine. There's a lot more fish in the sea, ya know?"

Screwing her coquettish countenance into something usually expected of their dimwitted Transmitter, Harry, Sally stupidly said, "You going fishing, Don?"

With a manic moment of standing-in-place movement, along with some sort of short-lived sound of surreal surprise, Don stormed out...and nearly fell down the exterior stairs whilst hurrying to his parked patrol car...and backed over a couple of metal trash cans...and the tail of a cat...and maybe the toes of an innocent passerby...and...

"He, uh, seemed pretty upset, Sally," Tim finally offered. "M-maybe you should've went with him to that, uh, shooting range."

"Nah!" Sally exaggeratedly answered, as she slipped closer-than-before to this self-professed "swinger" from the Sixties.

From a faraway point in relativistic Time wherein the Lieutenant had placed her purple tubed Self inside some especially fierce-looking being on a planet a long way off from not only this third-rate world, but from the Milky Way galaxy as well. "He'll be back. Today...it's just you and me. And, uh, Dick and Martin. And, uh, maybe Tommy and Harry. But mostly you and me."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," said a smiling-a-little-too much Tim, as the two gazed a-little-too longingly into one another's a-little-too amorous eyes.

As to Dick and Martin in the other room...

"I did not!" an angry Dick loudly, and with an over-the-top attitude to match his comically-shamed mien. "I was the perfect gentleman, when I took out your cousin Segaxius 10-and-three-quarters! In fact, we were the cutest couple at that family reunion you and your parents put together near Olympus Mons. Remember?"

"Actually," insultingly recalled Uncle Martin, aka Exigius 12-and-a half, "you were secretly voted the 'Least Likely to Have a Second Date'. And, believe me, you had some pretty stiff competition...but you still won hands down!"

"Oh! You are so jealous of me, 'Martin'!" an overly-animated Dick childishly sulked. "Just because I'm the smartest person in six-and-a-half galaxies..."

"Ha!", mock-laughed Martin, having already dropped the CCTBS onto the seat of the overstuffed chair in which he had so-stiffly sat a little earlier. "If you're so smart, why can't you help me reprogram my Cathode-ray Centrifugal Time BreakaScope to ensure that Tim and I make it back to our Past-time point without significant side-effects?"

"Maybe," bellyached a balding Dick, his childishness swelling to ludicrous levels, "because I don't feel like it! I'm not gonna waste my considerable intellect on some piece of crap you put together! I'm the High Commander...and you're not. So there!"

Just as Exigius-slash-Uncle Martin was about to counter with something especially insulting and intelligent, his Human-bot body telepathically picked up, scant seconds prior to entering through the ground-level door and quickly climbing the main stairs leading in and up...

"Someone named Mary is coming...now."

Even as Martin dropped his hands, after briefly touching fingertips to temples to employ the telepathy equipment inside the faux-faced red-haired head of what he had earlier revealed to Tim as being an android carrier for a far smaller, green-skinned, almond-eyed, but blue not black!, Self seated therein...

...and as Dick suddenly shifted into a silly exaggeration of someone hopelessly In Love with someone else...

"Dick? Are you up? I thought we had a...oh!...hello."

From the moment Mary Albright reached the top of the stairs to stare into the hypnotically haunting gaze of a seemingly Human man as handsome, for his apparent age!, as Tim...

"Hello."

Uncle Martin made what, in the Sixties, might've been referenced as "moon eyes" in regards to staring back at a still-staring Mary...

"Uh, hi, Mary," Dick Solomon said in an animatedly hyper manner. A blatant attempt to capture his True Love's currently averted, to Martin? No way!, attention. "I, uh, I'm ready to go right now. So, uh, let's just scramble down to the Rambler and..."

"It can wait, Dick," Mary too-calmly remarked, her wide-eyed attention still very much on Martin and vice versa. "Who's your guest?"

"Him?" desperately, and somewhat stupidly, said Dick. "Oh, uh, he's nobody. Just a very old friend from a very long time ago. Uh, come on, Mary, we don't want to be late for, uh, for, uh..."

"My name's Mary. Mary Albright," Dick's date and love-of-his-only-recently-Human life said by way of a hand-extended introduction with a sweet smile to match Martin's own wide-eyed expression of romantic interest.

Gently, and gentlemanly, taking Mary's hand, Tim's pseudo-Uncle half-bowed whilst delivering a very continental kiss to the knuckles of that self-same extended hand.

"My name's Martin...O'Hara. And I am more than pleased to make the acquaintance of such a lovely, lovely lady."

"Ooo," shivered Albright, causing the expectedly overly-dramatic reaction from Dick...

"Damn!"

END OF CHAPTER 4