Captain Hawley, Starship Captain vs. THE MALLS

by Phil Robertson 70313,3725@compuserve.com

Captain Hawley, the interstellar trader, was mad. Madder than her humanoid
crew had ever seen her. In all her years of trading, nothing like this had
ever happened before. First, the hypercold storage on deck nine had failed
allowing the swine destined for the miners on Deneeb III to emerge from
cold sleep. The little porkers were eating her out of house and starship.

Second, she had promised her young nephew a Ferdinand Feghoot doll from
Earth. Unfortunately, Hawley had arrived on Earth during Winter Solstice,
the peak of the shopping season. She had beamed down to mall after mall
with no success. The clerks had ignored her or treated her with utter
disdain.

Starship captains do not make promises lightly, and Hawley was not happy at
the prospect of disappointing her favorite nephew. What could Hawley do to
punish these rotten mall owners for employing nasty clerks? And how could
she dispose of her swine?

"I have it," Hawley exclaimed. Turning to her Transporter Engineer, she
asked, "Can the teleport mechanism be modified to handle one million female
pigs?"

Captain Hawley motioned the perplexed engineer closer and whispered into
his center ear. Two of his eyes widened with horror at what she was
suggesting while the other two narrowed in gleeful anticipation of a cosmic
joke. As the Transporter Engineer strode purposefully from the bridge, he
could be heard singing, "Wreck the Malls with Sows of Hawley..."
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