No one would believe her, but she was absolutely sure she saw it.
Suzanne was standing in Litchfield's yard, engaged in a lively discussion with herself about the merits of pickles marinated in apple sauce, when she saw its outline. There, above the treeline! Refracted light bent around its edges, forming the faintest silhouette against the backdrop of smoky clouds. A starship!
She realized that if you watched it intently, and tried really hard not to blink, its optical camouflage would fail for the briefest of milliseconds, revealing the ship in an almost-unconscious flash, like a single frame of something obscene inserted into a film reel.
After several minutes, Suzanne closed her eyes, committing the starship's form to memory. It was magnificent! Its hull was all obsidian plating and elaborate stonework, giving the ship the appearance of a massive cathedral floating in space. Instead of towers or minarets, the ship's spires extended skyward in the form of rock-hard, throbbing penises. The penile spires were capped by sculpted cockheads, flanging out from their shafts, with bulbous observation bubbles forming the testicles below.
The front of the vast ship was marked with a prominent logo, a glowing, stylized rendering of two cocks twisting around each other like a double helix, superimposed over the letter R.
The Timehumper was exactly as Suzanne had imagined it, and for a minute she wondered if she was really seeing the starship, or if the bitch from Minnesota had sold her bad valium again. Really, which was more likely? Bad valium, or a cathedral-size starship festooned with spires and cannons that looked like erect cocks?
Suzanne nodded to herself. Bad valium.
"That's settled, then," she said, turning to go back across Litchfield's yard...
...when a mud-brown starling arced across the cloudy sky, and struck something invisible. For a half second, the ship's outlined shimmered before the optical camouflage corrected itself. The starling dropped like a sack of rocks.
"He's here."
Suzanne spun around, startled by the voice. It was Luscheck, standing a few paces behind her, hands in his pockets as his gaze remained affixed to the same spot in the sky where the bird met its untimely demise.
"Who's h..h..here?" Suzanne stammered.
The corners of Luscheck's mouth curled into a sinister grin.
"The Two-Pronged One, He Who Fucks the Galaxies, Lord Protector of the Bukkake Supplicants, Exchequer of the Milky Way," Luscheck said gravely. "Admiral Rodcocker."
Suzanne fainted.
