AROUND THE WORLD IS NOT A TRIP

THE MAN FROM O.R.G.Y. IS BACK

… AND HOW THEY ALL LOVE IT!

Lascivious Leila, the Woman‘s Libber who made men her sexual slaves . . .

The Sensuous Sister, whose ideas of love were simply heavenly . . .

Busty Binny, the Las Vegas showgirl whose slot machine always hit the jackpot

Quivering Queen Nimm-Fetah, who took very good care of her pets, human and otherwise . . .

Steve Victor, the Man from O.R.G.Y. launches into his wildest adventure yet, aboard a luxury liner packed with lustful lovelies on a perilous pleasure cruise across an ocean of ribald action and non-stop kicks.

AROUND THE WORLD IS NOT A TRIP

TED MARK

1973

CHAPTER ONE

Amidships, on B Deck, there was an open porthole from which protruded a living, well-developed, bare female Breast. . .

It was one of the things I noticed about the S.S. Lascivia, flagship of the Monaco Line, when I first saw her from the dock at New York that wintry midnight. Breast aside, the luxury liner was an imposing sight lying at anchor. A full city block long she was, and perhaps four stories high, three stacks and six masts phallically probing the star-glutted sky, deck lights ablaze to show off her lavish facade. A sleek lady, plump in the right places, but built for speed as well as comfort. Yar is the word, to be salty about it¹ .

The Breast was still framed there in the porthole as I started up the gangplank. It rose and fell rhythmically. I wondered if it was a left breast, or a right breast.

It’s not easy to tell in the case of a detached mammary. Not that it was actually detached. Presumably, it was still connected to a body. It hadn’t come unhinged; it wasn’t a free-floating booby, nor a zip-out item hung out to dry all by itself. However, unable to see the body to which it belonged, I couldn’t determine if the view was left-breasted, or right-breasted.

No matter. The Breast could hold its own—which is just what it was doing—against all competition, port-holed or not. It was a boob to remember!

“If you’ve seen two, you’ve seen them all!” So say the cynical. But they’re wrong. I know. I speak as an expert. Bosoms are my business—well, a large part of it anyway.

You see, I’m Steve Victor, the Man from O.R.G.Y.— otherwise known as the Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth. It’s sort of a misnomer, because what I actually do is run various sorts of sex surveys, mostly for foundations who pay me to compile data which, hopefully, will make the world a better place erotically for one and all. My services, incidentally, are highly personalized. Which means my sexual investigations are strictly a one-man operation. Naturally, that brings me in contact with a lot of breasts, usually in pairs. But if you can judge two, you can judge one.

That's what I was up to as I started down B Deck. I was appraising the melon in the porthole. Closer proximity was revising my estimate upwards. It was definitely a Breastie Supreme!

Such was my judgment as I drew abreast of the Breast. Remember, I had years of tit-tabling experience to back it up. The Breast and I met as equals!

It was a large, bubble-type, fully rounded and peaked at the tip. The flesh was smooth and pink. Its firmness was manifest; a well-hung demi-bosom, self- supporting.

I stooped for a closer look at the nipple-aureole area. The aureole was blood-red and wide. The nipple, perhaps due to the cold, was distended, long and rigid. It was a deep purple color and tapered neatly to almost a pinpoint. The icy wind blew down my neck as I bent over.

The resiliency had to be tested. I couldn’t resist it. I poked gently with my middle finger.

“Oo-ooh!” A soft female voice from the darkness behind the breast-filled porthole. It was an appealing sound. I wondered what she looked like.

The flesh was soft and springy. The audible gasp of surprise had been made on the inhale, and the delectable orb swelled impressively. A second jab deflated it only slightly.

Tap for tit! I flicked the nipple. Inflation followed automatically. This time the Breast came close to filling the small porthole.

I stepped back to study the effect on the Breast. I was distracted by the effect on myself. But this was an interior knowledge; the overcoat I was wearing preventing the bulge from openly betraying itself.

The effect on the Breast was more overtly revealed. The pink aureole widened noticeably and the nipple increased its imposing size and swelled. I noticed a few droplets of water clinging to the aureole. Evidently the owner of the Breast had washed it shortly before hanging it out the porthole. Hygiene counts. She’d made a clean Breast of it.

Now it wriggled even further out the aperture. It was as if the Breast had independently decided that the touch had been pleasant and was asking that it be repeated. With something less than cool, professional detachment, I obliged. I stroked the round mound, traced the aureole, caressed the tip of the nipple, letting my fingers linger there. Someone might come along, but I didn’t care.

Poor thing! It really had no business being out all by itself like that in the chill night air. Initially, it was cold to the touch. But it warmed with surprising swiftness when I removed my glove and cupped it in the palm of my hand.

It snuggled there like a grateful puppy. When I squeezed it gently, it responded by nuzzling its way even deeper into my grasp. From behind the porthole there came an anonymous moan of appreciation.

Encouraged, I stooped over once again and brushed my cheek back and forth over its velvety surface. The moan deepened to a steady purr. The Breast moved in small circles, tracing a complicated route from my jaw to my forehead, and finally coming to rest with the soft aureole embedded in the shell of my ear. The nipple, long, hard and bold, probed the cavity of the ear itself, a maddening tickle sending a series of erotic flashes to my brain, which in turn relayed them straight down to my groin.

I stood it as long as I could, and then I moved my head and captured the Breast in my wide-open mouth. It was a sudden move, greedy, and it broke the rhythm of the pulsating nipple. But my lips and tongue quickly set up a new rhythm. The Breast picked it up, and when I loosened my oral grip slightly, it started moving in and out of mouth like a piston. The new tempo also evoked the first intelligible words from the darkness behind the porthole.

“That’s what you get for being fresh.” A giggle. “A bust in the mouth!”

“It’s cold out here,” I told the Breast. “Why don’t I come inside?”

‘Tm sorry, but that’s impossible!” The Breast reestablished its beachhead on the shores of my craw, shutting off further argument.

My tongue resumed the skirmish with the Breast’-s spearhead. The nipple charged, retreated, circled and jumped as if it was on a ball-bearing hinge. Finally I captured it with my teeth, and my tongue took its revenge.

The roseate was perfumed, and it stung my tongue-tip just enough to be titillating. My lips, summoning up vacuum cleaner suction, encompassed more than half of the mammary mound. Squeals came from behind the porthole.

Suddenly the Breast pulled away. The move took me by surprise. By the time I got my head up, the porthole was filled to overflowing with a new sight—- or, rather, offering, as it turned out. The Breast had been replaced by a Derriere!

This bare Derriere had an air all its own; it was trumps among rumps, tops in bottoms, an ass with class, the kind of sculpted behind you’d expect to find in a museum, not hanging out of a porthole. I lingered over it with my eyes for a long moment.

“You’1l freeze it off!” I said at last.

“It’s not that cold,” the Derriere answered.

“No? Then how come the brass monkey’s a eunuch?” I inquired.

“Do you want to make jokes? Or do you want to provide a little human warmth?”

I took another look at the fanny-filled porthole. The answer to the question looked back at me. It was quite an answer. Round as a pumpkin, taut as an inflated inner tube, rosy as a robin’s blushing breast, as neatly cleft as a bisected basketball, supple, delectable, rippling lightly with impatience—the sum of its parts was a whole that drove all thoughts of Weather conditions from my mind. I reached out with both hands!

It was like grabbing live twin pandas—that soft, that cuddly, and that wriggly. The cheeks oscillated in opposite directions under my hands, and while they were at first cool to my touch, their temperature went from tepid to warm to hot to burning in quick order. As I kneaded the flesh, a push-pull movement was added to the circular rhythm.

“Ahh-hh!” the Derriere sighed.

Gently, I investigated the area between the quivering cheeks. I probed until I touched the quick, and was rewarded by an even more ecstatic moan. I bent and bestowed a kiss on the now-sizzling flesh. When the Derriere thrust out for more, I embarked on a campaign of nibbling that brought forth additional moans. I slid my hand down until it located the entrance to the vagina. The lips were dewy with the oil of aroused passion. The clitoris, too, was slippery, but hard and springy. When I strummed it, the Derriere spun like a top.

I brought both hands into play, teasing the entrances to both orifices. There was a series of gasps from the Derriere. I tried to get both hands to the lower entrance, but it was a tight situation and I kept getting a little behind in my work.

“Are you ready?” the Derriere asked.

Was I ready? What a question! My you-know-what was as long and hard as the longest and hardest euphemism ever contrived by Fanny Hill! However, I had a problem.

The porthole, you see, was on a level with my waist. I came close, but even standing on tiptoe, I fell short of the mark. I considered the situation.

“What’s taking you so long?” the Derriere inquired. I explained the problem.

“Stand on a deck chair.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that? “You must have done this before,” I guessed aloud.

“If I have, it’s none of your business.”

“Don’t be testy. To each his own. But you must admit, from my point of view, it’s a little peculiar to go through all this when it would be so much simpler if I came inside your stateroom.”

“That’s out of the question. . . . Well, are you going to get the deck chair?” the unseen voice demanded.

I got the deck chair. I dragged it over to the porthole and stood on it. That put me at precisely the right level. I unbuttoned my overcoat and unzipped my fly. My shirttail was in the way. I tucked it up and under, and dropped my pants down around my ankles. It was simpler that way; I had more maneuverability.

The Derriere was bouncing with impatience. I steadied it with both hands. My position atop the deck chair was a little precarious, and I didn’t want to have to cope with a moving target until I was in a position to move with it.

I plunged the sword into the waiting scabbard. Oops! Wrong scabbard! “Sorry about that.” I started to withdraw.

“Sorry about what?”

“I seem to have gone through the wrong door.”

The Derriere shrugged. “Try it—you’ll like it!”

So I tried it . . . and I liked it . . . and so did the Derriere . . .

It vibrated frantically, plump cheeks afire, cleft clutching and unclutching—capturing and releasing my scrotum—the anus moving in small, tight circles like a cork wrapping itself around a corkscrew. The motion caused an indescribable tickling over the head of my instrument. Combined with the thrills caused by the expert squeezing of its length, these sensations excited me tremendously.

I inserted two fingers of my right hand just below where we were joined, contriving to catch the slippery, pulsating clitty between them. A trill of ecstatic laughter acknowledged the maneuver. I kept on strumming while the Derriere moved to suck me in deeper and deeper. Gone ape with passion, I was beyond wondering what my anonymous partner looked like now.

The Derriere’s passion mounted with my own. The deck chair teetered under my feet. On the verge, I paid no attention to it. One last, fierce lunge and my lust exploded, releasing the geyser of its juices. Dimly, I heard the scream—half-sob, half-laughter—which said that her climax had coincided with my own.

The Derriere released its grip, taking me by surprise. The deck chair slid out from under me. I tumbled to the deck in a tangle of fallen pants, open overcoat and sundry parts of my anatomy exposed to the icy elements.

“Welcome aboard the S.S. Lascivia, sir.”

I found myself looking up at an Oriental man. He wore the black coat, white scarf, and peaked cap of a ship’s officer. Standing over me, he looked every bit as yar as the ship itself.

The porthole, I noticed, had been hastily closed. The stateroom behind it was pitch-black. My anonymous playmate remained anonymous. And neither the Derriere nor the Breast were anywhere to be seen.

“I am Chief Purser Yenta.” The Oriental introduced himself. His English was Oxford-snotty.

“You don’t look French,” I blurted out, still confused by my fall, and thrown still further off balance by his sudden materialization.

“I am Japanese, sir.”

“But this is a French liner.”

“No, sir. Its registry is Monacan.”

“That’s right,” I remembered.

“The owner, Baron Duvivier, is French,” he continued, “but the Captain is only half-French.”

“What’s the other half?”

“British, sir. And it predominates, since he was raised and educated in England. . . . The rest of the crew is international in composition.”

“Do they all speak English as well as you do?”

“Yes, sir. Flawlessly. It was one of the requirements of being signed on for this cruise.”

“I see.”

“May I ask your name, sir?”

“Steve Victor.”

He checked a sheaf of papers, obviously a list of some sort, which was attached to a clipboard he was carrying. He found what he was looking for—my name, I guessed— and made a notation with his fountain pen. “The Captain has been expecting you, sir,” he told me. “He has asked that you be conducted to his cabin directly upon boarding.”

“All right.”

“May I help you up, Mr. Victor?” Chief Purser Yenta reached down with his hand to grasp mine.

“Thanks.”

His strength surprised me, and I was yanked sharply to my feet. My pants fell down. My overcoat, caught by a sudden gust of wind, whipped straight out behind me. A quick scurry of goosepimples spread over my shivering genitals. Chief Purser Yenta jotted down some more notes.

“What are you writing?” I inquired, trying to grab for pants and coat at the same time. The two movements were uncoordinated, and I flubbed both tries.

“Just making some notes on your dossier, Mr. Victor.”

“My dossier?”

“It’s my duty to keep a dossier on each passenger. It is compiled in advance of sailing, and constantly revised so it will always be up-to-date. It lists the cruise-guest’s habits, hobbies, talents, abilities, interests, fears, preferences, and—umm—erotic idiosyncracies.

“About that last category—?” I managed to pull up my pants.

“Your voyeur tendencies are duly listed, Mr. Victor.”

“That's not fair!” I protested. “I’m the Man from O.R.G.Y. Observing sexual happenings is part of my job.”

“Of course, Mr. Victor.” Yenta’s voice was condescendingly soothing. “There are no moral judgments implied nor made. The data is simply utilized in the interest of making social arrangements for passengers so that the cruise will provide maximum enjoyment for each individual.”

“What did you just write beside my name?”

“That you were an exhibitionist as well as a voyeur, Mr. Victor,” he told me frankly.

“I am not!”

Chief Purser Yenta made no reply. He simply stared at me with an understanding sort of half-smile on his face. I followed his stare. It led to the fly of my pants. I had neglected to zip it up.

“Appearances can be misleading,” I told him weakly, fumbling with the zipper.

“Yes.” He nodded understandingly. “But you should not be self-conscious about your tastes, Mr. Victor. Believe me, they are no more odd than those of the other passengers. It is my job to determine what they are, and to see that you meet others with similar tastes, and in every way to further your satisfaction of them. I do this for all of our passengers. There is really no cause for concern. And now, sir,” he added, “the Captain is waiting to greet you. May I conduct you to his cabin?”

“All right.” I started to follow him down the deck.

“What stateroom is that?” I asked him, indicating the still darkened porthole.

“B-47,” Yenta replied.

“I mean whose stateroom is it?” I corrected myself.

The Chief Purser consulted his list. “It is occupied by Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot of Boston, Massachusetts,” he informed me.

“Miss?” I was surprised. From her steadfast refusal to allow me inside her quarters, I had figured she must have a husband whose return was imminent. “Is Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot unusually ugly?” That was my second guess at explaining her reluctance to satisfy her hearty erotic appetite face-to-face.

“On the contrary,” Chief Purser Yenta told me. “She is considered quite attractive.”

“She is?”

“For a lady her age,” he added.

“Her age?” I repeated. “How old is she?”

He consulted his records again. “Eighty-two on her next birthday,” he told me.

Eighty-two? The Breast—firm, pink, young! Eighty-two? The Derriere—round, springy, youthful! Eighty-two?

Talk about rejuvenation! Talk about plastic surgery! Talk about geriatrics!

She was one of the best lays I’d ever had at—-

Eighty-two years of age!

CHAPTER TWO

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

That’s how I confessed to Leila my inability to rise to the erotic occasion one more time. At moments of crisis, old saws hack it best.

Her response was gut-level rage. My impotency was more than a personal affront to her; it was a dry spit in the face of all womankind. And Hell hath no fury like Women’s Lib scorned.

The scene took place in a villa on Paradise Island in the Caribbean exactly one week before I boarded the S.S. Lascivia in New York. I shudder to think what Leila’s reaction to my subsequent porthole performance would have been had she known about it. Ritual castration in effigy at the least, I should think, with Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, and Kate Millet² splitting the genital trophies three ways.

Leila was that militant. Since her consciousness had been raised, that is. Prior to that, you couldn’t have asked for a more docile, sweet, agreeably experimental, warm and loving bed-mate.

She’d been bred to the former role. She was a harem girl in the service of the Arab Sheikh who owned the Paradise villa. Initially, as my reward for certain favors I’d done the Sheikh, Leila had been provided to cater to my every erotic whim³ .

Her catering services were irreproachable during our first time together. But business forced me to leave Leila for an extended period. I returned to find my pussycat a tigress!

In my absence, Women’s Lib had caught up with Leila. She was no longer content to accept her lot as a harem houri⁴ . Her turnabout was complete, like that of a rabid Communist who turns into an even more rabid anti-Communist.

Leila, having spent a goodly portion of her young life as a sex object, was not merely determined to relinquish that role, she was also bent on revenge. Now, she must call the shots. The man must be the passive one in the sack. The man must cater to her every sensual caprice. The man must be the houri now.

And I was the man!

Circumstances dictated my acceptance of the role. Like I was stone-broke and stranded. The Paradise Island Casino had separated me from my last shekel—- and my pride. It was either Leila on Leila’s new Women’s Lib terms, or the beach. And the beach at night, even in a tropical clime, can be mighty cold on the fundament.

Besides, even in her new role, Leila strongly appealed to me. She was built like a thirsting sex maniac’s fondest mirage. Petite and slender, her body abounded with surprisingly delicious curves. Her breasts were too large for her frame, but only a disgruntled eunuch would have faulted her for that. Myself, I preferred to concentrate on their succulent, red-berry tips, and the wondrous way in which they jutted straight out—at a true ninety-degree angle—from her torso. The plumpness of her hips was not stylish, perhaps, according to Vogue, but I wasn’t one to carp at the voluptuous excess. Add sleek legs with unexpectedly strong thighs, and an impudently plump behind, capable of the most marvelous inner-spring resiliency, and the sum of her bodily allure falls into place.

It was topped by a face like a valentine framed by an intriguingly careless cascade of long, curly, blue-black hair. Her deep green eyes were wishing-wells promising to fulfill a man’s dearest and most secret erotic desires. Two dimples nestled under high cheekbones on either side of her pert nose. Despite them, there was a hint of cruelty about her small mouth with its warm, moist, feather-soft clutch of lips that seemed always pursed to kiss— or bite. And Leila’s jaw was firm, a visible indication of her stubbornness once she’d set her mind on something.

What she’d set her mind on, when I returned to her, was that this time around I was to be the erotic slave, and she the mistress. She had a lot of anger to release, and this led to her putting me through some pseudo-sado-masochistic paces. Not that Leila ever got into the heavy stuff like whips and such. But she did use her hands freely, and once or twice laid on with my belt. Mostly, though, she stuck to the simple disciplines like spanking. In particular, she liked to go after my bare bottom with a twisted, wet towel. She got pretty adept at snapping it.

Although it was a game, it could get pretty wild at times. Leila, with her hair flying out behind her, green eyes sparkling, breasts heaving and swinging, plump bottom jiggling as she bounced up and down on the bed over my prostrate body—it was a sight I’d never forget. Once I realized I really wasn’t going to get hurt, it excited me as well. She liked that because it gave her a chance to punish me further by frustrating me. The rule was that I couldn’t do anything, no matter how aroused I was, until she gave me permission.

I remember the one time I inadvertently broke that rule. Leila had me spread-eagled on the bed, face up. She’d started out by flicking the towel at my thighs, my lower belly and my groin. It didn’t really hurt, but watching her nipples harden with her exertions, and noting a certain dampness and stiffening of her clitoris which betrayed her own excitement, I became quite aroused myself.

Leila spied my tumescence. She put the towel aside, and knelt beside me. She slapped the perpendicular of my passion back and forth gently with her hand, setting up a sort of twanging rhythm which increased my lust. Then she produced a feather!

Sweet agony! She started at my ear, worked her way down to the base of my neck, the nipples of my chest, and the sensitive area of my inner thighs. She lingered over each erogenous zone, watching me squirm. And then she applied that feather to the most intimate parts of my anatomy-— front and rear. Talk about being tickled to death!

The tip of the feather described maddening, erotic circles over the surface of the underside of my scrotum. Her free hand moved urgently between the silkiness of her own thighs. When I saw that, it was too much! I moved to take her.

“No!” Leila stopped me. “Not until I say so!”

“I just want to make you happy,” I wheedled.

“I can take care of that without any help from you!” She toyed with her clitoris, simultaneously resuming her feathery torture of me.

“But—”

“And stop your whining! It’s distracting me.”

Time passed. Finally Leila dispensed with the feather. She was very excited. Her tongue kept sliding in and out between her lips. She was making low, moaning sounds in her throat. Her nipples were long, hard, blood-red, and straining. Her breasts were heaving so deeply that each gasp gave the impression of over-pumped balloons on the point of bursting. Her hips and behind were writhing hard in tempo with the movements of the hand now buried deep between her thighs. I was also beside myself with aroused lust.

She bent over me, grasping one of her breasts in her free hand. She moved it back and forth quickly so that the hard nipple strummed the surface of the head of my penis. It was the final fillip for her. Her hand vibrating deep inside her joybox, her breast-tip burning as it nuzzled my steel-hard lust-spout, Leila embarked on a long, drawn-out orgasm.

That really was too much! I couldn’t contain myself! My buttocks tightened uncontrollably. My groin thrust upward spasmodically. My passion was released in one mighty geyser.

It hit Leila square in the eye!

Let us pass over her reaction, which, to put it mildly, was violent. And let us also pass over the daily lectures that followed, on the lack of sexual control of males in general and me in particular. What’s important is that the incident caused Leila to do an about-face; sado-masochism went by the boards and she started concentrating on just plain screwing.

At first I welcomed it. Then, as her demands became more and more insatiable, I began to dread her lustful appearances at every hour of the day and night. If her aim was to cure me of the sin of premature ejaculation, she was succeeding. My body was constantly weary and aching. I cursed the female capability for multiple orgasm. I entertained wistful thoughts of life in a monastery. And, finally, I quite simply couldn’t perform.

“What the hell do you mean?” Leila was indignant.

“I can’t help it. Too much is too much. I just can’t make it.”

Which is when Leila cursed me out in Arabic and three other languages. Then she sent me on my way with my tail (I checked to be sure) between my legs. I limped down to the beach and sent up heartfelt prayers that it wouldn’t rain.

It did, of course. On the third night. And believe me, the Paradise Island beach is no Paradise when the skies pee.

They must have been saving it up for a long time. I felt like a sand-flea at the mercy of a camel’s bladder gone berserk. By the time the morning sun finally came up and chased away the night-long rain, I was waterlogged. I looked like something no self-respecting cat would have deigned to drag in under any circumstances.

Such was my condition when this spiffy cat in yacht-offficer whites ambled up to me on the beach. “Are you Steve Victor?” he asked, keeping his distance and being careful to stand downwind of me.

“I’m what’s left of him,” I admitted.

“My boss wants to see you.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“Baron Antoine Duvivier.” He brushed a grain of sand from the sleeve of his nautical Good Humor Man’s uniform. “He has a job for you.” Mister Clean sniffed. “You look like you could use one,” he added.

Truth is truth. I followed him back to the Rolls Royce he’d parked on the road above the beach. We drove over the causeway from Paradise Island to the Nassau waterfront. We pulled up at the Nassau Yacht Club and walked down the dock to a waiting speedboat.

The zum-zum picked its way through the boats lying at anchor until it reached the one furthest from the shore. It was the largest and most impressive of the yachts in the basin. A rope ladder was lowered and we boarded it.

Baron Antoine Duvivier was waiting on deck to greet me. He was an elderly man, past eighty, I’d say, but he had the healthy look and strong physique that goes with wealth and the leisure of outdoor activity. He sported a Vandyke, neatly trimmed, and his blue eyes were quite sharp and shrewd for a man of his years.

Seeing me, they filled with a dismay that he quickly tried to cover. Clearly, I didn’t fit the picture of a man with whom he might ordinarily do business. But he was a courtly old gentleman, and he very smoothly put me at my ease.

A luncheon table had been set up under a canopy on the rear deck. The Baron escorted me to it and we were served cocktails and a light lunch. Light as it was, however, my stomach was so surprised at the arrival of solids after its three day fast that it rumbled an off-key version of Saber Dance all through the conversation which followed.

Baron Duvivier got down to cases over coffee. “Mr. Victor,” he said, “I hope you’ll forgive my presumption, but I took the precaution of having your organization, O.R.G.Y., checked out quite thoroughly before deciding to consult with you.” The old Frenchman smiled shrewdly. “You operate mostly on endowments from tax-exempt foundations.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you ever heard of the Duvivier Foundation?”

“I'm afraid not,” I confessed.

“That doesn’t surprise me.” The Baron’s smile turned wry. “It’s not exactly in a class with Ford, or Rockefeller, or Carnegie, or other philanthropic American giants. It’s more the family giveaway plan of a poor French family with not much left to give away.”

“Your family?”

“My family.” He nodded. “I tell you frankly that the Duvivier Foundation was set up to protect the family’s business interests. The French tax structure-—-” He sighed.

“I understand,” I assured him. “Do you mind if I ask what your business is?” I added.

“At one time the Duviviers’ holdings were quite diversified. We owned controlling interests in rubber plantations in Indochina, pipelines and petroleum distilleries in Algeria, diamond mines in Rhodesia, import-export houses in Pakistan, and sugar refineries in Cuba. The family, of which I am today the sole surviving member, also owned outright the Monaco Steamship Line, which at the height of its glory was rivaled only by Cunard. Today,” the Baron shrugged philosophically, “the Monaco Line is all that is left of the Duvivier holdings.”

“What happened?”

“Dienbienphu⁵ . Algerian independence. Racial strife in Rhodesia. Bengla Desh. Castro and nationalization. The Duvivier empire is as much a victim of imperialism as any Asian or African culture.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I believed in imperialism, and that belief was betrayed. But I’m not looking for sympathy, Mr. Victor. I want only to save what is left-—the Monaco Line. That’s my reason for asking you here. The Monaco Line is in serious trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Financial. The jet age has caught up with us. It used to be routine for travelers to sail across the Atlantic and other oceans. Today they go by jet liner. The Monaco Line has been forced out of the transportation business, and into the luxury cruise business. Only we were late in making the transition, and the competition is very stiff. In short, we've been hanging on by our fingernails. We are on the brink of being forced out of business by our closest competition, the Gaylife Line. This has pushed me into taking one last, desperate gamble for survival.”

“Which is where I come in,” I guessed.

“Which is where you come in.” The Baron nodded. “I want you to sail on a three-rnonth, ’round-the-world luxury cruise aboard the S.S. Lascivia, flagship of the Monaco Line. On the surface, you will simply be one of twelve hundred very rich passengers. Not super-rich, understand. When the super-rich want to go around the world—Hughes, Onassis, Getty, people like them -- they make the trip on their own private yachts. Still, the passengers aboard the Lascivia must be quite wealthy to afford the cruise. The average stateroom costs eleven thousand dollars. The cheapest is over five thousand. The grand suite costs almost one hundred thousand.” He paused abruptly.

“This cruise is the gamble you mentioned?” I prodded him.

“Twelve million dollars rides on the cruise.” For the first time Baron Duvivier’s wrinkled face showed strain. His years peeked through his poise. “But there’s more to it than just the cruise itself.” A quaver of age crept into his voice. “Mr. Victor, can I rely on your discretion?”

“That depends on the size of my fee,” I told him bluntly.

“Do you have a figure in mind?”

“How can I? You haven’t even told me yet what the job is.”

“You must have a rough idea of what your time is worth.”

I had a rough idea. On the beach at Nassau, it was worth exactly nothing. On a luxury liner for three months with all my needs taken care of, it was worth whatever the traffic would bear—and not a penny less. “I don’t work by the hour.” When in doubt be arrogant. That’s my motto.

“Then allow me to name a figure.” He named it.

It was twice as much as the figure I would have had in mind if I had a figure in mind, twice as much as any legitimate traffic would bear. It made me suspicious. “Whom do I have to kill?” I inquired.

‘I’m not sure.” His tone was dead serious.

“Who’s going to be out to kill me?” Which was more to the point.

“I don’t know that, either.”

“I can’t decide whether I’m being underpaid, or overpaid,” I told him with complete honesty.

“Neither can I.” The Baron’s smile was on the grim side. “On the other hand, you may not be paid at all.”

Whoa! I knew there was a hitch. Now I inquired point-blank what it was.

“If the Monaco Line is still in existence at the end of this cruise,” the Baron explained, “then the Duvivier Foundation will pay the fee I mentioned to O.R.G.Y. But if the Monaco Line dies, then the Foundation will die with it and your fee will not be honored.”

“You expect me to work for three months for nothing?”

“I expect you to gamble, just as I am gambling. I shan’t mince words, Mr. Victor. I don’t wish to be discourteous, but I have only to look at you to know what your circumstances are. You are, as they say, ‘on the beach,’ Mr. Victor. You can’t afford to turn down my proposition. Even if you forfeit your fee, you will still have had a three-month luxury cruise at no cost to yourself. And you can keep the clothing and luggage I will provide you for the voyage. If all goes well, the fee is quite generous, isn’t it? What do you say, Mr. Victor?”

I said yes, of course. “You’ve bought yourself a big chunk of my discretion,” I told the Baron. “Now let’s hear the rest of it.”

“The round-the-world cruise of the Lascivia is no mere pleasure trip,” Baron Duvivier told me, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “It will also be a race, the likes of which hasn’t been seen on the high seas since the days of sailing schooners.”

“A race against what?”

“Against the Queen William, flagship of the Gaylife Line, an ultra-modern ocean liner of Swiss registry.”

“Swiss registry? I thought Switzerland was land-locked. Doesn’t that make it a little difficult for the Queen William to dock?”

“Yes. She has to lay at anchor about twelve hundred miles offshore,” Baron Duvivier told me with a perfectly straight face. “But the registry of the Queen William is the least of the perfidies practiced by Captain Igor Grabass.”

“Who’s he?”

“Sole owner of the Gaylife Line, and skipper of the Queen William. He’s also my chief competitor. But this race will be more than merely a business competition.”

“What are the stakes?”

“The Monaco Line against the Gaylife Line. The winner gets sole ownership of both fleets. Including whatever profits accrue from the current cruises.”

“Everything!” I whistled. “What are the rules of the race?” I asked.

“The two vessels leave the Port of New York at the same time. The Lascivia departs from Pier Ninety-two, North River, the Queen William from a berth in Staten Island. Parallel routes have been worked out between Captain Crabass and myself. Each liner makes the same number of tourist stops, although not always at the same ports. Each spends the same total of hours in port. The in-port time must be confirmed by the harbor-master at each stop to insure that the minimum time is spent there. If one of the ships is in the harbor longer than called for, however, that time is not credited against any other layover; in effect, it’s simply time lost at sea—which could be disastrous.”

“Why would one of the ships stay in port longer than required?” I wondered.

“Necessary repairs. Passengers late in getting back on board. Crew members over-staying their liberties. Any number of reasons.”

“I see. Go on.”

“Basically, it’s the speed made at sea that will determine the winner of the race. Both vessels will sail around the world and return to New York—their final destination. The Lascivia will dock at the Queen William’s original berth in Staten Island, the Queen William at Pier Ninety-two, North River, from which the Lascivia will have sailed. Two sets of papers have been deposited in a strongbox in the Bank of New York on Park Avenue. One set gives me sole ownership of the Gaylife Line. The other turns over the Monaco Line to Captain Crabass. We each have a key to the strongbox. The first one to reach the bank gets sole ownership of both companies. I am turning my key over to you, so that you can act in my behalf, Mr. Victor. You are to get to that strongbox as soon as the Lascivia reaches New York, and claim the stakes for me.

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“I’m not going on the cruise. I’m getting on in years, Mr. Victor, and I have a weak heart. I couldn’t stand the strain. The first time an engine failed, or weather forced a detour, or the ship was held up in port, the aggravation would endanger my life. I’m just too old to put myself through it. Not to mention the chicanery I might be the target of from Crabass’s agents if I were on board.”

“You think he’ll put agents on the Lascivia?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“And they’ll try to sabotage the voyage?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Why are you hiring me, Baron?” I put the question bluntly. “I’m not a nautical engineer. I’m not a sailor. I’m not even a detective. I’m only a sex investigator.”

“Your role as the man from O.R.G.Y. will serve as a cover story to disguise your real purpose for being aboard. Should your activities in my behalf bring suspicion upon yourself, they can be explained away as having to do with an investigation you are conducting under the sponsorship of the Duvivier Foundation. You can admit to your involvement in a survey of the sexual practices of the upper classes.”

I chuckled. The idea tickled me. Most sociological surveys, sexual and otherwise, are aimed at solving the ills of society by studying the culture of the victims, the poor. It was about time for society’s ills to be looked at in terms of the patterns of those who run the society—the wealthy—rather than in terms of those who are ground under by it.

But that still didn’t answer my questions. “What is my real purpose for being aboard?” I asked the Baron. “What does it have to do with O.R.G.Y.?”

“There is a threat to the sexual health of all who sail on the Lascivia,” he replied.

‘I’m not a doctor, either.”

“But you are adaptable. And you may have to adapt to all those roles you mentioned. Also, you do have qualifications that mesh with the situation.” Baron Duvivier took a paper from his pocket and handed it to me. “A copy of this threatening letter has been received by every passenger and every member of the crew,” he told me.

“Then you’ve already been infiltrated,” I pointed out. “One of your personnel has been peddling the passenger list.”

“I’m afraid so.” He took it for granted.

I read the letter:

“BEWARE PROMISCUITY ABOARD THE S.S. LASCIVIA!” it warned in large, hand-printed capital letters. “THE SHIP’S OWNER HAS COMMITTED UNPARDONABLE SINS. THE WAGES OF HIS SINNINC WILL BE PAID BY ALL WHO SAIL ABOARD HIS LINER. THE WAGES ARE VENEREAL!” It was unsigned.

Have you ‘committed unpardonable sins’?” I inquired of Baron Duvivier.

The old gentleman smiled nostalgically. “My memory isn't what it used to be, but I think it would be accurate to say that I have.”

“Why would this Captain Grabass threaten the passengers and crew in this particular way?” I wondered. “Why use sex?”

“If you were familiar with the cruise business, you wouldn’t ask that question, Mr. Victor. Romance— with sex definitely implied—is precisely what we’re selling. Moonlit nights, soft ocean breezes, shipboard intimacy—these are the elements of a successful cruise. The threat of venereal punishment hits at the core of the product.” Baron Duvivier’s tone reflected how seriously he took the threat. “One or two venereal cases, even just the rumor of one, could ruin the cruise. Passengers might start disembarking at various ports of call, demanding refunds; the panic would spread like an epidemic! And there is always the chance that the venereal threat is a serious one, that somehow it will be made good.”

“And my job is to prevent that happening?”

“Your job is to see that the sexual activities of the passengers don’t interfere with the Lascivia winning the race. Or anything else for that matter. The race is the thing that’s important!”

“Doesn’t that depend on the Captain?”

“Yes. But while I trust the Captain’s nautical judgment, I can’t saddle him with responsibility in the area of sex. That will be your domain. He will be informed of your reason for being aboard, and instructed to cooperate with you. But he won’t have jurisdiction over you. I’m leaving you free to function independently because I have no way of knowing what situations will arise and how you may have to cope with them.”

“What other members of the crew will know about my assignment?”

“None. At the Captain’s discretion, some of them will be told your cover story—that you are an O.R.G.Y. investigator conducting a sex survey. That’s all. Just in case one of them is a Grabass agent, there’s no sense in revealing your mission.”

That made sense. One of the officers or crew might well have been planted to sabotage the voyage. Which meant that all of them, along with the passengers, were suspect.

Including Chief Purser Yenta. I reminded myself of this fact that first a.m. aboard the S.S. Lascivia as I followed the Japanese officer down the deck toward the Captain’s cabin beyond the wheelhouse. Yenta showed impatience when I insisted on stopping off at the head en route.

The detour was to administer a prophylactic to myself. I believe in preventive medicine. Aside from riding herd on the sexual activities of the passengers, I didn’t want to pay any personal “venereal wages.”

Certainly not for an anonymous piece of eighty-two-year-old Derriere!

CHAPTER THREE

Remember Captain Bligh?

Remember Captain Queeg?

Meet Captain Maldemerde!

I heard the skipper of the S.S. Lascivia bellowing from his cabin halfway down the deck before I saw him. “Mis-ter Jewish!” he was roaring. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear! I will not tolerate neglect of duty! One more incident such as this, Mis-ter, and you will have this simian misanthrope keel-hauled! Keel-hauled! Is that understood?”

A man in a white ship officer’s uniform exited from the Captain’s cabin. He was young, and looked like a mixture of early Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, and Omar Sharif. Behind him the Captain was still shouting.

“Number One.” Chief Purser Yenta identified the officer for me. “The Staff Captain. Mister Jewish.”

“He doesn’t look jewish,” I couldn’t help observing.

“Mister Jewish is an Arabian.” Yenta greeted the officer as he came abreast of us. “What’s going on, Mister Jewish?” he asked respectfully.

“The old man’s reaming Lieutenant Gorilla,” Mis- ter JeWish replied curtly as he continued up the deck.

“What did he do, sir?” Yenta wanted to know.

“Tried to tell him one of the engines blew a gasket.”

Mister Jewish turned a corner and vanished from our sight.

“Lieutenant Gorilla’s the Chief Engineer,” Yenta informed me. “He's from Northern Italy.”

The door to the Captain’s cabin opened again and Lieutenant Gorilla emerged. He was a giant of a man, almost seven feet tall, close to three hundred pounds. There wasn’t a hair on him, not even an eyebrow. “He’s an albino,” Yenta whispered. “The below-decks gang calls him ‘The Hairless Ape.’ ”

Gorilla was bare to the waist, his powerful, smooth upper torso streaked with oil. His bald head nodded wordlessly, like a melon bobbing high on the vine, as he brushed past Yenta. His eyes, large and white with black pupils, rolled snake-eyes, an acknowledgment of shame and disgust at the chewing-out he’d just received from the Captain.

Chief Purser Yenta smiled at him sympathetically, then turned to the Captain’s door and knocked. There was a growl from inside. Yenta opened the door. “Mr. Victor is here, sir,” he announced. He stood aside to let me enter, then closed the door behind me without following me inside. I was on my own.

Captain Maldemerde was seated at a desk across the stateroom from the door. When I entered, he swiveled around on his chair to face me. Even sitting, it was easy to see that he was a short man, barely over five feet tall. His Captain’s cap, with its insignia of rank, sat squarely atop his round head. His shirt was opened to reveal a bare paunch the size of a healthy watermelon.

He got to his feet. The paunch, combined with his unsure stance as the ship rolled gently at anchor, gave him the appearance of a teetering tenpin. He stretched, ignoring me, and sat down again.

Finally, the rheumy blue eyes over the heavy jowls deigned to focus on me. He patted his stomach. His other hand was in his lap, palm up. He continually rolled two objects there with his thumb. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that they were a pair of pasties, the kind stripteasers used to wear when it was still illegal to show their nipples. They punctuated his words as he spoke.

“Victor.” He greeted me with no particular warmth. “I have been notified by the owner, Baron Duvivier, of the nature of your business aboard this vessel.” The pasties went click-click. “I am ordered to cooperate with you fully.” Click-click. “And I am told that you will operate independently, at the discretion of your own judgment, rather than mine.” Click-click. This obviously disgruntled him. “However, Victor—” His voice dropped to a nasty hiss. “—I would remind you that I am the master of this vessel at sea. Regardless of the latitude granted you by the owner, you will remember that. My authority is absolute!” Click-click.

“I respect authority,” I told him. “It’s being ordered around I don’t like.”

“I find American humor quite feeble.” Click-click.

We were off to a fine start. Damon and Pythias in reverse! It was brotherly hate all the way.

“I’d like to go over the dossiers of the passengers and crew,” I remembered.

“I will so inform Chief Purser Yenta.” Click-click.

“I’d also like to meet the ship’s doctor and look over the medical records.”

Captain Maldemerde nodded cold agreement. Click- click.

“That’s all I can think of at the moment.”

“Then you are dismissed.” Click-click.

Call it a draw. I left the Captain’s stateroom. I went back down the deck the way I’d come, mulling over the hostile meeting in my mind.

As I approached Cabin B-47, I saw that the porthole was once again open. The lights were on in the stateroom. I remembered the Breast. The Derriere! Eighty-two years old? Unbelievable! I had to check it out.

I stuck my head through the open porthole, into the cabin. Across from it, at an angle, the door to a luxurious bathroom was wide open. Water was running in the shower-stall. The door to the shower was steamily transparent. I could hazily make out the figure behind it.

Pushing my shoulders through the porthole, I stretched my neck for a better view. The water in the shower was turned offf. The shower door opened. A hand reached out and groped on the rack beside the shower stall for a towel. It was a long stretch for the arm attached to the hand. So long that it caused a breast to bounce into view.

I’d have known it anywhere. It was the Breast -- or possibly its mate. It retreated in advance of the towel vanishing inside the stall.

I wedged my shoulders still more solidly into the porthole and craned my neck even further. I figured she’d be stepping out of the stall in a minute, and I wanted to be sure I finally saw her face. Intimate as we’d been, I didn’t even care particularly that she’d catch me spying on her.

Sure enough, the shower door opened again. A voluptuous body which included the Breast and its mate emerged. But two hands and a towel, vigorously drying the head, blocked the face. Just as the towel was lowered, the figure turned around. I nodded hello to my old friend, the Derriere. A moment later an easy back-kick shut the door to the bathroom and my view was closed off completely. I cursed to myself and decided to wait for it to open again. She couldn’t stay in there all night!

“Do octogenarian ladies have a particular attraction for you, Mr. Victor?” Chief Purser Yenta’s voice came from the deck behind me.

“Old wines are best.”

“Still, my duty is to protect Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot’s privacy, as flattering as your attentions may be to her. So I hope you will forgive me if I request that you withdraw your head from the porthole to her cabin.”

“Oh, all right.” I gave up. I wriggled backwards to free my shoulders. No soap! They were wedged so firmly they wouldn’t budge. “I seem to be stuck,” I told Yenta.

“Come come, Mr. Victor. You really must remove your head from Miss Lowell-Cabot’s stateroom.”

“I can’t, I tell you. I’m stuck!”

“I find it difficult to believe that a man with your experience as a voyeur is unable to extricate himself from a position which must surely be common to his deviant behavior.”

“It’s not common! I’ve never been wedged in a porthole before!”

“But surely there must be parallels in your experience with windows?”

“No. Windows are much larger.”

“Transoms, perhaps?”

“Dammit! No!” I struggled in vain to free myself.

“What’s going on here, Yenta?” came a new voice from behind me.

“This gentleman is stuck in the porthole, Doctor,” Chief Purser Yenta explained.

“I can see that for myself. How, Chief Yenta, did this gentleman become stuck in the porthole?”

“I was bending over to tie my shoelace and I slipped,” I told the unseen newcomer through clenched teeth.

“Really? What an amazing mishap!”

“Mr. Victor, may I introduce Lieutenant Quotabusta, the ship’s doctor?” Yenta was ever one to remember the amenities.

“Glad to meet you,” Dr. Quotabusta said.

“Hi.” I waved my foot behind me to acknowledge the introduction.

“OOF!” Dr. Quotabusta replied.

“You kicked Dr. Quotabusta in the groin.” Yenta clucked disapprovingly.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” There was agony in the doctor’s voice. “Yenta, what the hell are you scribbling there?” he asked.

“I’m just updating Mr. Victor’s dossier,” Yenta replied. “ ‘. . . sexual hostility toward black men . . .’ Just a notation.”

“That’s not true!” I protested.

“Now, Mr. Victor. Please don’t be concerned. It’s not a judgmental comment. I’m just fleshing out your personality picture so I can help make the cruise more enjoyable for you.”

“But I don’t have any sex hostility toward black men!”

“Well, what the hell would you call it?” Dr. Quotabusta grumbled. “Kicking me in the crotch before we’ve even met face-to-face?”

“It was an accident!”

“That’s just another name for a Freudian slip,” the doctor told me. “They’re always sex-derived. And in my experience, sexual fear, manifested by aggression, is universally focused on black men by white men.”

“But I didn’t even know you were a black man!”

“Perhaps you can block out my racial identity, but the days of collaboration by black men in that particular crime are over!”

“Kick me back,” I suggested, frustrated.

“ ‘Masochist.’ ” Yenta made another note.

“Dammit!” I was still straining to extricate myself.

“Allow me.” Dr. Quotabusta’s hands slid up under my armpit. He braced his knee against the middle of my back and twisted. My vertebrae crackled like frying bacon. My shoulders slid out of the porthole as easily as if they’d been greased.

“How did you do that?” I exclaimed, turning to face Dr. Quotabusta for the first time.

“In the part of Rhodesia I come from, blacks are not permitted to practice medicine,” he explained. “So I set myself up as a chiropractor. Before that,” he grinned, “I practiced as a witch doctor. The white governor, whose drunken brother was the only doctor in the village, didn’t mind that so much. But I don’t think John Hopkins, which is where I took my degree, would have approved.”

“Did you get me out as a witch doctor, or as a chiropractor?” I wondered.

“As a physician,” he assured me. “Which doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the highest of the three callings.

I found myself liking this tall black man with his Afro hair style and colorful dashiki. “I guess I’m lucky you came along,” I told him.

“I was coming from the Captain’s cabin. He called me down there to tell me to cooperate with you, Mr. Victor. I understand you want to take a look at the passengers’ medical records.”

“Tomorrow will do.”

“Not tomorrow, Mr. Victor,” Chief Purser Yenta said firmly. “Tomorrow is the day the passengers board. Only a few have boarded already. We sail at midnight tomorrow night. From midmorning to midnight will be the most hectic time of the voyage. That’s when the bon voyage parties take place.”

“But why should that involve the doctor?” I asked.

“It will be his busiest day,” Chief Purser Yenta assured me. “First there will be the seasickness.”

“Seasickness? But We’re still in port.”

“Some people become seasick the minute their feet touch the deck of a ship. In my experience, these are invariably the people who make it a duty to attend bon voyage parties. And then, of course,” Yenta continued, “there are the drunks. And the accidents. The accident rate on the day of sailing is ten times as high as when we’re at sea. People trip over luggage, fall down ship’s ladders, smash glasses in bon voyage toasts and cut themselves on them, get bitten by one another’s pets, get into fist fights over their accommodations, poke each other’s eyes out with ‘farewell bouquets,’ and-—well, I could go on, but I think you get the picture.”

“I get the picture,” I assured Yenta. “Why don’t we get together the day after tomorrow?” I suggested to Dr. Quotabusta.

“Sure.” He said good night and left us.

Yenta led me down to my stateroom, which was on D Deck, inside, and far from one of the choicest. I was too tired to care. I zonked out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I woke up late the next morning to a cacophony of sound. There were at least two bands playing, people shouting, others singing, champagne corks popping, and repeated choruses of “Bon Voyage!” But it wasn’t the din that awakened me. Noise never does. I can sleep through an eight-speaker stereo rendition of the 1812 Overture with real cannons. What had awakened me was the weight of two bodies of opposite genders sprawling on top of me and making violent movements as they tore at each other’s clothes in the dimness of the unlighted stateroom.

“Bun Voyage!” a female voice panted. A brassiere went sailing into the darkness.

“Bon Voyage!” a male voice echoed more correctly. An undershirt followed in the wake of the brassiere.

“Excuse me,” I muttered dazedly, my voice muffled by a mouthful of long, red hair.

“There’s no need to be apoplectic,” the girl replied, smothering me as she shifted her weight to her back —which was on my face—and stuck her legs straight up in the air so that she could wriggle out of a body stocking.

“What did you say?” the man asked.

“You said ‘Excuse me,’ and I said not to be apoplectic.”

“You mean ‘apologetic,’ ” he deduced. “But I didn’t say ‘Excuse me,’ Gloria.”

I tried to interject a comment here, but her shoulder blade was still stopping up my mouth.

“My name isn’t Gloria,” she said. “I wish you’d try to get it straight, Henry.”

“My name isn’t Henry. And I am trying.”

“You are?” The redhead kicked off the body stocking and shifted her weight. I was able to breathe again.

“Then how come I can’t seem to find your generals?” she inquired.

“You mean my privates,” he translated. “Listen. Let’s take a look at this. I’m not Henry, and you’re not Gloria. Right?”

“What’s in a name? A nose by any other name still smells.” The redhead wriggled provocatively. Her warm, soft bottom snuggled insinuatingly around my own “generals.”

“Excuse me,” I tried again.

“What for? I liked it,” the redhead said. “That’s a very erroneous zone.”

“I must have gotten into the wrong cabin,” the man said. “I’m supposed to be seeing Gloria off.”

“You should have mentioned it before we drank all that champagne,” the girl told him. “It lowered my insistence.”

“The champagne was for Gloria,” he remembered. “She gets sexy and her tongue gets all twisted up when she drinks champagne, too. It’s pretty dark in here, and that’s why I thought—-”

“It’s not the champagne. I always gargle my words. My analyst says it’s how I release digression.”

“You mean ‘aggression.’ ”

“No. Digression. I digress a lot when I free-dissociate. It’s funny how when you have an erotic mechanism like mine, people think you’re gargling words even when you’re not.”

“Gloria will be wondering what happened to me.”

‘Tm more interested in what’s happening to me. Keep doing what you’re doing with your hand. You’re very manically dextrous.”

My own hand, incidentally, had come to rest on her left breast, where it was tracing the outline of a large, round aureole—one of the half-dollar sized variety-— and tingling to the swelling reaction of a long, sharp-tipped nipple. The breast itself was very firm, high on the torso, and separated from its mate by a deep cleft of pronounced cleavage. The respiration was deep and rhythmic, and on the inhale the flesh swelled to proportions that overspilled my grasping palm.

“My hand is in my lap,” the man said, mystified.

“I mean your other hand. I love having my memories squeezed.”

“My other hand is in my lap, too . . . I can’t seem to get aroused.” He sighed. “I guess it’s guilt. I really should leave and find Gloria.”

“Maybe if you masticated,” she suggested.

“You mean get my teeth into it?”

“Let me try.” She grasped my penis, which jumped at her touch. “I don’t see what the problem is. You feel pretty lumescent to me.”

“I glow in the dark?” He was startled.

“No. But you certainly grow in the dark. It’s really very frigid.”

‘I’m not as a rule . . . Maybe it’s the champagne. . . . Listen, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’m going to leave.” His weight shifted so that he was no longer lying on top of her as she sprawled atop me. It felt as if he was sitting up in the bed.

“Just a minute,” she insisted. “I don’t want to lose the neurotic progress we’ve made.” She arched the lower portion of her body and then relaxed it. When she settled, I was firmly embedded inside her.

“Sorry. I’m going.” His weight lifted entirely as he got to his feet and padded across the stateroom, plucking his clothes out of the darkness.

“You forgot something!” the redhead exclaimed, the tight glove of her honeybox clutching me so fiercely that I automatically began pumping up and down. “You left your peanuts behind.”

My “peanuts” was moving like a piston inside her now.

“If I see Henry,” the man called, “I’ll tell him you’re waiting for him in Stateroom Seventeen C.”

“Seventeen B,” she corrected him.

“Seventeen D,” I corrected her.

“Henry?” she inquired as the door opened and closed behind the man. “Is that you? If it is, I must say your lustmaking has improved! Oh, Henry!”

“My name is Steve.” I introduced myself, bouncing up and down like a berserk pogo-stick. “Steve Victor.”

“I’m Blaze Buxbocks,” she introduced herself. “Daddy is Buxbocks Bock Beer. You know, ‘Buxbocks, the low-cal beer with the high-powered bubbles.’ What do you do for a loving?”

“What I’m doing!” I sat up a little, hanging onto her luscious bosom with both hands as I continued to pound away at her.

“The thing I like about cruises is that it’s so easy to get to know people at a deep level quickly,” Blaze confided, reaching behind her to tickle my scrotum as she rode up and down on the length of my erection. “I mean, I feel like I know you very intermittently, even though we’ve just met.”

“I guess we have reached a pretty high degree of familiarity.” I reached down and stroked her clitoris, which made her squeal and jump so that her legs shot straight out and locked around my neck.

“Like they say,” Blaze panted. “Familiarity breeds content.” She bent her head toward me.

I met it halfway and we kissed. Her lips were searing, her tongue a darting flame. It moved inside my mouth as if it was imitating my movements deep in- side her.

We held it all the way. My tongue entwined with hers. One of my hands cradling a panting breast with its hard, hot, quivering nipple, my other hand toying with her rigid, long, vibrating clitty, my bottom moving a full foot off the bed as I thrust still deeper inside her, I barely managed to restrain myself until the tremors that swept over her body told me she was reaching an orgasm. Then we went the route together, hanging in mid-air, straining and releasing and straining and releasing, unaware as we rolled from the bed to the floor and halfway across the darkened stateroom, first one of us on top, and then the other, a long, drawn-out, mutually ecstatic release of passion that ended with us lying a little apart, both spent and exhausted.

There was a long silence. Blaze broke it. “I wonder what happened to Henry,” she said. “Do you suppose he got into the wrong stateroom? I told him Seventeen B. But he’s so regretful.”

“This is Seventeen D,” I informed her again.

“It is? Oh, dear! And he’s probably waiting in Seventeen B. I’d really better huddle up there!” She turned on the light and started picking up her clothes.

I blinked at the sudden glare. Then my eyes adjusted and I got my first look at Blaze Buxbocks. I blinked again.

Did you ever daydream that one morning you’d wake up to find a beautiful redhead in bed with you? A redhead with long, tapered legs, strong, tanned thighs, and a fanny as resilient as untoasted marshmallows? A redhead with plump, ball-bearing hips, firm, jutting breasts like twin large mounds of clear, well-jelled aspic, and a high, plump mons veneris like a deeply bisected cue-ball of flesh surrounded by a velvet triangle of soft, red curls? A redhead with a face like a sunrise, cinnamon eyes, a classic nose, cheeks dusted ever so lightly with freckles--a soft rash of passion sneaking to the surface of delicate ivory skin—- and a mouth that even today might be banned in Boston?

That was Blaze Buxbocks! My daydream in the succulent flesh! It was too good to be true. There had to be a catch.

“Is Henry your husband?” I asked suspiciously.

No. He’s just a good friend. I’m not married or anything like that.”

That was good news!

“Henry’s the Army. He got a leave of abstinence to see me off.” She pulled on her body-stocking.

“No point to that,” I decided.

Blaze pulled on a miniskirt and blouse, smoothed out her hair and started for the door. “Still, since he went to all that trouble, I really have to go find him so he can wish me Bun Voyage.” Blaze waved casually and exited.

“Bun Voyage,” I called after her. “Bun Voyage!”

CHAPTER FOUR

“SAIL AT YOUR OWN RISK! THE LASCIVIA HAS V.D. PLAGUE! BEWARE! SHE MAY LOOK CLEAN, BUT . . .”

Copies of the hand-printed note had been received by virtually every male passenger and crew member soon after boarding the ocean liner. So Chief Purser Yenta informed me when I came on deck shortly past noon and showed him the one I’d found in the pocket of my slacks. They added to the general harassment that was his lot during the chaos of this day of sailing.

Yenta had stationed himself alongside the gangplank where he was welcoming passengers aboard and checking their credentials against his list. Each passenger seemed to be accompanied by umpteen guests come to bid farewell. The confusion was compounded by the wild parties getting underway in various staterooms, the brass band playing on the dock in competition with the ship’s orchestra blaring on the afterdeck, the horseplay and flying objects between the people at the rail and the people waving to them from the pier, the luggage piling up in front of cabin doors all over the deck, the quarrels, the drunkenness, and the various pets that had gotten loose and were tripping up passengers and crew alike.

“What does Dr. Quotabusta think about this threat of venereal disease?” I asked Yenta during a slight lull in the chaos.

“He probably isn’t thinking about it at all. Dr. Quotabusta has been occupied with a serious emergency.”

“What happened?”

“Early this morning, a newlywed couple slipped on board, went directly to their cabin, locked themselves in, and went about what it is that newlyweds go about on the first day of their honeymoon.” Yenta paused to pluck a small, sliding child from the handrail of the gangplank, saving him from a plunge into the water between the ship and the dock.

“And?” I prodded him to continue.

“Someone had put glue in the Vaseline jar.”

“You mean—?”

“Exactly.” Yenta nodded. “The bride—amazing as it may seem in this day and age—was still a virgin. I don’t wish to be indelicate, but she was—umm—tight, shall we say. The groom considerately applied the Vaseline, which was really a particularly strong variety of quick-drying cement. He took the plunge as it were, and. . . .”

“They’re stuck?”

“Like a bear in a beartrap!”

“What’s Dr. Quotabusta doing about it?”

“Well, he’s decided not to amputate.”

“Arnputate!”

“The bride, understandably hysterical, demanded it. The groom, however, refused to sign the necessary consent papers for the operation.”

“Who could blame him?” I shuddered. “Has Quotabusta managed to find an alternative?”

“He’s consulting with Chief Engineer Gorilla as to the efficacy of various solvents. The problem is that the ones that might work have a high acid content which burns away the skin while acting on the glue.”

“Sounds like one hell of a medical problem for a ship’s doctor.”

“Dr. Quotabusta says it’s a real challenge.”

“That’s the old Hippocratic spirit . . . By the way,” I changed the subject, “the Captain said you’d fill me in on the passengers.”

“Those are my orders, Mr. Victor. What do you want to know?”

“Anything offbeat or particularly interesting about any of them, I guess.”

“There’s something offbeat about each and every one of them. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Start there.” I pointed to a tall blonde wearing hot pants and a see-through blouse of some sort of net-like material. Snared in the net were two of the most imposing eye-catchers I’d ever ogled. The rest of her was built to match. With her was a well-dressed man in his late thirties, perhaps ten or twelve years her senior. He was hassling with one of the stewards over their baggage while she was brazenly sizing up the men among her fellow passengers.

“Binny Stanford.” The Chief Purser identified her. “Mrs.,” he added. “That’s her husband with her. Ogden Stanford.” Yenta leafed through the papers on his clipboard until he’d found their dossier. “Both American. He’s a self-made millionaire. A detergent manufacturer. She’s a former showgirl. Las Vegas. Never got out of the chorus. They’ve been married three years. But now," he added, “the lady has put in a request to the Captain to divorce them at sea.”

“Can he do that?”

“I suppose so. The Captain is empowered to marry people at sea. It seems logical that he’d have the authority to divorce them.”

“Why does she want a divorce?”

“The reason she put in the application to the Captain is ‘Mental Incompatibility.’ ”

“Everybody says that when they want a divorce.”

“In their case,” Yenta mused, studying the dossier, “it may be the truth. It seems that Mrs. Stanford is a member of MENSA, while Mr. Stanford failed to qualify to join.”

MENSA, I recalled, is an international organization whose main requirement for membership is that an applicant score 98 percent higher than the general population on a standard intelligence test. In the United States, this means having an IQ of 140 or over. The vast majority of people that smart are too smart to join MENSA. But for a few, MENSA is to the intellectual what the Chamber of Commerce was to Babbitt.

“Mrs. Binny Stanford,” Yenta continued, “has an IQ of 168, while her husband’s is only 123. She claims that because of this discrepancy, she can’t communicate with him. She cites MENSA evidence relating to the difficulties intellectually gifted members have in communicating with less intelligent people.”

“If they’re so smart,” I remarked, “you'd think that they’d be able to figure out how to communicate with people less smart.”

“She also says that while he wasn’t permitted to join MENSA, he was granted visiting privileges as the husband of a member, but that he wouldn’t attend meetings, claiming they ‘bored him silly.’ When he did attend, she claims he embarrassed her by asking members to explain how a ‘dumbhead’ like himself had become a millionaire, while the majority of the membership fell into a far lower income bracket. On one occasion, she alleges that he became violent and threatened to ‘crack a few eggheads.’ In conclusion, she states that he married her for her physical endowments and is incapable of appreciating her mental ones.

“Well,” I stared at Binny Stanford. “There’s a lot to be said for her physical endowments. And she sure doesn’t try to hide them.”

I was distracted from her charms by the strange sight of an old man and a small boy starting up the gangplank. I looked from them to Chief Purser Yenta, my jaw hanging open like a silent question mark. Yenta’s face was impassive except for the professional smile of greeting on his lips. Which surprised me still more, since both the boy and the old man were stark naked!

It was a cold winter day. As the pair came up the gangplank, the effect was of a boarding party of goosepimples. Genitally, the old man was a wonder. Decently flaccid, but very impressive! Like Bermuda shorts couldn’t have granted him modesty! He stopped directly in front of Yenta, towering over him.

“I am Knute Summerknut,” he introduced himself with a slight Scandinavian accent. “My great-grandson Erik and I are sailing with you.” The boy yawned, cradled his head on his small shoulder, reached up with one hand and wrapped his small fist around the old man’s penis. He hung onto it, half-dozing, looking like a sleepy subway straphanger. The old man didn’t seem to notice.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Summerknut.” Yenta greeted him. He motioned to a steward to conduct the Summerknuts to their cabin. “We sail at midnight,” he told them as they trailed after the steward.

“Who-—?” I stammered when they were out of hearing .

“Knute Summerknut is the founder and head of Danish International Nudist Camps. Among the world’s nudists, he’s known as ‘The Grand Old Man of Nudism.' ”

“Excuse me, Mister Yenta.” The steward was back. “What shall I do about the Summerknut luggage?”

“What luggage?”

“That’s what I mean, sir. I don’t seem able to locate it.”

“There isn't any,” Yenta told him. “He and his great-grandson don’t wear clothes. It’s part of their religion.”

“They sure must save on laundry bills,” I remarked us the steward departed, scratching his head.

There was a sudden flurry at the rail. People scattered, leaving a roughly circular clearing on the deck. In its center was a small Pekingese wearing a mink sweater and a jewel-studded collar. A strip of material dangled from the Peke’s mouth. Nearby a man was muttering curses as he put his overcoat back on to cover the fact that the seat of his pants had been torn away.

Chief Purser Yenta started for the man at a fast pace, pumping up oil for troubled waters. But he wasn’t quite fast enough. A petite female figure in gauzy Arabian garb, a veil covering the lower half of her face, got to the victim first.

“You tried to kick Zwing Toy!” she accused him.

“That damn mutt bit me!” the man protested.

“Because you almost sat on him! I saw you!”

“How was I supposed to know he was on that deck chair?”

“That’s no excuse!” saying which she belted him hard across the face.

Chief Purser Yenta grabbed her from behind and restrained her from repeating the clout. “Please, Your Highness—” he remonstrated.

“Take your hands off me!"

Yenta immediately released her. “Beg pardon, Your Highness.”

“I want this man put in irons!” she demanded. “I want him flogged! Publicly!” she added.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. This gentleman is not a passenger. He's just on board seeing someone off. We have no jurisdiction over him.”

“I shall speak to the Captain! He is a man, I am told, who knows how to enforce discipline. I shall recommend that he have the Chief Purser flogged in place of this culprit!” ‘

“He just might do that,” Yenta moaned to himself.

“Your Highness, I beg of you-—” he said aloud. But she wasn’t listening. She had turned on her heel and gone to pick up the Pekingese. Now she was cradling it in her arms, against her small, high, sharply pointed bosom. The tiny dog licked the light material over one breast, wetting it down thoroughly until a bright red nipple was clearly visible. The dark eyes over the face veil sparkled as she carried the dog off to her cabin.

“That was Queen Nimmfetah,” the Japanese told me, mopping his brow. “She’s the ex-wife of the Shah of Kubal, one of the richest rulers in the Arab world. He divorced her because she failed to bear him any children.”

“Really? She looks young and able,” I commented.

“Yes. But the Shah is old and feeble. It would have been impossible for him to admit to his people that he was unable to sire an heir to the throne. So Queen Nimmfetah was made the scapegoat.”

“How long were they married?”

“Three years. She was thirteen when she became Queen, sixteen when she was deposed. That was last year.”

“So she’s seventeen now. That’s pretty young to be so tyrannical.”

“It’s quite young for many of the activities in which the Queen engages.”

“Such as?” I was curious.

“Her dossier reveals a decided sexual preference for animals. Dogs, horses, camels -”

“Camels?”

“A decided preference. Probably a distorted Electra complex -- her father was a hunchback.”

While I was mulling that over, a deck steward came up to Yenta and saluted. “The Captain wants to see Mr. Victor, sir,” he told him. “Right away.”

Captain Maldemerde was waiting in the wheelhouse. The paunchy little martinet was pacing back and forth like a caged gerbil, one hand held in front of him rolling the pasties, click-click. Every so often he’d come to a stop and peer over the shoulder of Mister Jewish who was seated at a table working on some nautical charts. Dr. Quotabusta, looking a little incongruous in his officer’s cap over Afro hairdo, uniform shirt and tie, and starched white loincloth, was standing at attention beside the tiller.

“Victor, we have a problem,” Captain Maldemerde greeted me. “And this quack here—” he indicated Quotabusta with a contemptuous wave of his hand “—thinks you may be able to help.”

“The newlywed couple,” I guessed.

“Have you ever come across a similar case in your experience with O.R.G.Y.?” Dr. Quotabusta asked.

‘I’m afraid not.”

“I hoped you might know of some special solvent.”

“The only thing I can suggest is to pull hard.”

“We tried that. It didn’t work.” The Doctor turned to the Captain. “They’ll have to be removed from the ship and taken to a hospital, sir.”

“Absolutely not! The red tape would hold us up for at least one full day. Out of the question! We sail at midnight!” Click-click.

Nasty as the Captain came off, I could sympathize with him. His officers didn’t know it, but he had a race to win. He couldn’t afford to give away a one-day handicap to Captain Grabass and the Queen William at the very beginning.

“The glue will harden even more as time goes by,” Dr. Quotabusta told him. “I can’t be responsible.”

The Captain’s scathing answer was aborted by the whoosh of the ship’s intercom. Mister Jewish answered it. He listened a moment, said “Right away!” and hung up. Then he walked over to the Captain and whispered urgently in his ear.

“Hell!” Captain Maldemerde exclaimed. He and Mister Jewish started out of the wheelhouse. "You come with us!” the Captain ordered Dr. Quotabusta.

Curious, I tagged after them to the radio shack. A young officer was standing there, distraught and pasty-faced. A second officer was slumped over the equipment table, his outstretched hand a couple of inches from the telegraph sending-key, his eyes wide open and staring.

Dr. Quotabusta examined him briefly. “He’s dead all right,” he announced.

“Brilliant diagnosis,” the Captain said sarcastically. “But why is he dead?”

“Some sort of sudden shock. A heart attack, maybe. Or perhaps a cerebral stroke. It’s hard to tell without a more thorough examination. We may not know for sure until after the autopsy.”

“Meanwhile the ship-to-shore messages of the passengers are piling up,” Captain Maldemerde noticed. “Push the corpse out of the way and start sending them,” he told the young officer.

“Don’t touch that key!” Mister Jewish said sharply. He had been standing quietly, his eyes taking in the situation. Now he took a large, rubber eraser and pushed the cadaver’s elbow with it until the hand grazed the telegraph key.

Immediately there was the sharp crackling of electricity. The corpse’s hand jumped back to its original position as if it was still alive. “That’s what killed him,” Mister Jewish said quietly. “Somehow the generator wire got hooked directly into the key, and when he touched it, he electrocuted himself.”

“Why am I plagued by this inefficiency?” the Captain railed.

“It may not have been inefficiency.” Mister Jewish looked hard at the Captain. “It could have been an accident. On the other hand. . . .”

“We’ll have to notify the Port of New York Medical Authority,” Dr. Quotabusta said.

“No!” The Captain’s voice rang out like a gunshot. “We keep this among ourselves. That is an order! We tell the Port Authority nothing. We cannot afford the delay. We report nothing, and we sail at midnight.” He turned to the young officer who was still standing there as if mesmerized by shock and fear. “You fix the equipment right away. Then send the passengers’ messages out immediately. I’m promoting you to Chief Radio Operator.”

The young officer scurried over to the equipment and began checking out the circuitry.

“Captain, do you think—?” Mister Jewish started to say.

“What do we do with the corpse?” Dr. Quotabusta interrupted him. “In a day or two it’s going to get pretty gamey.”

“Do I have to solve all your problems?” Captain Maldemerde was scornful. “Put it on ice!”

“On ice? You mean in the refrigerator room, sir? Where we store the caviar?”

“Next to the red caviar,” the Captain specified. “Away from the black caviar. I’m particularly partial to black caviar.” He turned on his heel and left the radio shack with Mister Jewish in his wake.

I followed them out on deck. Mister Jewish was talking to the Captain in a low, urgent voice. “. . . too young and inexperienced to take over as Chief Radio Operator,” I overheard him saying. “He has no sea experience and he was flunked out of Annapolis.”

“For what reason?” the Captain inquired.

“He failed his course in Naval Communications.”

“We haven’t time to find a replacement,” Captain Maldemerde decided. “He’ll just have to do.”

“But Captain. . . .”

I lost the rest of what Mister Jewish was saying as they moved out of earshot. The ship was a bedlam of Bon Voyage parties now. They had spilled out of the staterooms and merged to crowd the decks to overflowing. For the umpteenth time the brass band on the dock was blaring out “Auld Lang Syne.” Guy Lombardo⁶ would never have recognized it.

Somebody tossed a lei around my neck and screamed “Aloha!” in my ear. Someone else grabbed me from behind and held a bottle of champagne to my lips while I gurgled a few healthy swigs. A girl with a pretty, clean-scrubbed face framed by a black cowl, her figure lost in the folds of a nun’s habit, fell to her knees in front of me, wrapped one arm around my legs, and proceeded to unzip my fly.

“Hail Mary!”I said reverently.

“Are you Catholic?” She fumbled inside my jockey shorts.

“No, Sister. But you are, aren’t you?”

“No.” She found what she was looking for and withdrew it.

“If you’re not a Catholic nun, Why do you wear that outfit?” I asked.

“I’m a Sister of the Zodiac.” She spread the folds of her robe until I could see that it buttoned down the middle. She undid the buttons between her breasts.

“All the Sisters of the Zodiac dress this way.” She backed me up against a bulkhead until I was flush up against her, my exposed organ hidden in the folds of her robe, snuggling between her naked, unseen breasts. “It’s our habit,” she added.

It looked like I was getting into the habit. “Sisters of the Zodiac? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them. Is it some kind of new cult?” I inquired.

“It’s not new. It’s five thousand years old. We believe in astrological predetermination.” She squeezed her breasts around me securely, locking me in.

“Is this some rite the Sisters practice?”

“Oh, no. We have no sex dogmas pro or con. We don’t practice chastity, and—”

“Somehow I knew you didn’t!”

“—and we don’t have fertility rites.” Her breasts were sliding up and down, the nipples nuzzling my groin.

“Isn’t this kind of public?” I called her attention to the mob milling around us on the deck.

“Everybody’s too drunk to notice.” She slid her hand down inside the waistband of my pants and squeezed my behind. “What’s your astrological sign?” she wanted to know.

“Libra.”

“Libra! I knew it! This meeting was meant to be! I’m an Aries!” She ducked her head and quickly kissed the tip of my penis as it emerged from between her breasts on the upthrust. “I’m Sister Stella.” She finally got around to introducing herself.

“Steve Victor. Hi, Stella.”

“Call me Sister.” One of her hands was still probing my bottom. The other had vanished inside the folds of the robe in her lap as she knelt there.

“If you insist. But under the circumstances it makes me feel incestuous. . . . Are you an American?” I asked, swelling up hard inside her hot, perspiration- slicked cleavage.

“Australian.”

“Is this a custom of the bush country?” I panted.

“You’re nowhere near the bush country,” Sister Stella panted back. “You just leave the bush country to me.” The arm attached to the invisible hand buried in her lap was moving like a piston.

I angled my body to catch one of her breasts between my thighs and squeezed it. The hard nipple seared against my flesh. “Why don’t we go to my cabin and finish this up in comfort,” I suggested.

“Oh, no! I’m a virgin!”

“A virgin? I thought you said the Sisters of the Zodiac have no vows of chastity.”

“That’s right. It’s a matter of personal choice.”

“You sure don’t come on like a virgin!” Her breasts were massaging me like a Pulmotor.

“I don’t see why virgins shouldn’t have as much erotic fun as everybody else,” Sister Stella told me. “Besides, playing this way helps me keep my virginity because I’m rarely frustrated. . . . Now I do wish you’d stop talking,” she added. “It distracts me.”

I sure didn’t want to distract her. I shut up. I braced my legs farther apart, leaning my weight against the bulkhead, and tried to concentrate on the sensations afforded by the contact between her large, warm, soft, enveloping breasts and my large, hot, hard, plunging penis.

It wasn’t easy. There were people all around us, bumping into us, pushing against us, occasionally spilling liquor over Sister Stella’s kneeling figure. One woman leaned over Sister Stella, kissed me passionately, and wished me Bon Voyage. But neither she nor anybody else in the throng, as far as I could tell, seemed to notice what we were doing.

So I stopped noticing what they were doing. I regained my concentration and focused it on Sister Stella. She was moaning now and grinding her erect, hot nipples against my thighs. The folds of the robe in her lap were parted widely now, and I could see her naked thighs opening and closing spasmodically as she simultaneously moved two fingers inside herself and caressed her clitoris with her thumb.

The sensitive underside of my scrotum bounced from one of her nipples to the other. A surge of passion swept over me and I squeezed her breasts hard between my legs so that I could feel their solid texture against the entire length of my instrument. We moved this way for a moment or two, and then we strained—-her breasts pushing hard against me, my joystick shoving hard against her.

“Bon Voyage!” everybody around us was shouting.

“Bon Voyage!” A tremor shook Sister Stella from the hem of her habit to the cowl.

“Bon Voyage!” I took the trip with her.

When it was over, Sister Stella returned my apparatus to its nesting place, buttoned her robe, and got to her feet. “I really must go and unpack now,” she told me. And she left.

I watched her wend her way through the crowd. Several people genuflected as she passed among them. She reciprocated by making the Sign of the Zodiac over them, but the discrepancy went unnoticed.

The farewell festivities continued until after dark. At about ten o’clock, the crew started to clear the visitors from the ship. Under Chief Purser Yenta’s diplomatic supervision, the last of them were hustled down the gangplank around eleven-thirty. At midnight the S.S. Lascivia slid from her berth and headed down-river toward the mouth of the harbor.

As we left the harbor, I was standing at a railing on the prow, just below the wheelhouse, digging the star-lit sight of the open sea. Suddenly a dozen or so vessels seemed to be converging on us from all sides. The nearest of them was flying the flag of the U. S. Coast Guard. Mister Jewish appeared on the deck of the wheelhouse above me. He peered at the ships through binoculars.

“What the devil is it?” Captain Maldemerde demanded from behind him.

“Just a minute, sir. One of them is signaling us with a blinker light.”

“Well? What do they say?” the Captain demanded.

“They’re asking what the trouble is.”

“What trouble?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Signalman!” Captain Maldemerde bellowed. The cry was relayed and a minute or two later a sailor carrying a blinker light came trotting up to the wheel- house. “Tell them to get out of our way!” Click-click. The Captain was fuming. “They’re costing us valuable time!” Click-click.

The light above me blinked frantically. A light from the Coast Guard ship replied.

“They say they picked up a wireless distress signal from us, sir,” the Signalman informed the Captain.

“Ridiculous!” Click-click. “Tell them we have no trouble. They’re mistaken! Tell them to get out of our way so we can proceed!” Click-click.

More blinking lights.

“They say if we’re not in distress, we’re in trouble.”

“What the hell does that mean?” the Captain wondered.

“They say we’ve broken international law by sending out a distress signal when we’re not in distress,” the Signalman translated. “All these ships picked it up and have come steaming to our rescue. They warn that if we try to proceed they’ll fire on us.”

“I don’t understand!” the Captain wailed. “This will cost us hours! We’ll miss the tide!” Click-click. “I don’t understand!” Click-click.

“I do,” "Mister Jewish said quietly. He reached into the wheelhouse, picked up the intercom and spoke into it.

A few moments later the young officer who had been promoted to Chief Radio Operator arrived on the double and out of breath. Captain Maldemerde confronted him in a towering rage. “Did you send out a distress signal, Mister?” he demanded. Click-click.

“No, sir.” The Ensign was quaking. “I only sent out the passengers’ messages like you said.”

“And then you signed off?” Mister Jewish inquired gently.

“Yes, sir.”

“And how did you sign off?”

“With the name of the ship and my last name, sir.”

“Now do you understand, Captain?” Mister Jewish asked him.

“What the hell do you mean, Number One?” Click-click. “Of course I don’t understand!”

“This is Ensign Mayday, sir,” Mister Jewish told him. “His last name is Mayday. That’s how he signed off. Mayday!”

There was a long silence while the Captain comprehended what had happened. “Mayday” is the international distress signal used by ships at sea. Finally he spoke.

“Mister!” Captain Maldemerde’s voice was death-soft. Click-click. “You will change your name immediately!” Click-click. “That is a direct order!” Click-click.

“Yes sir!” Ensign Mayday was shaking so hard that the wheelhouse deck was rattling.

“We’re going to have a re-dock and explain this, sir,” Mister Jewish told the Captain.

“Put about." Captain Maldemerde ordered the helmsman.

“Yes sir.”

“Mayday!” Captain Maldemerde said. “Shit!” he said. “Mayday!” he said.

Click-click!

CHAPTER FIVE

Queen Nimmfetah’s ermine-lined diaphragm had been stolen! The theft was discovered shortly after the S.S. Lascivia finally left New York Harbor just past noon the next day, approximately twelve hours behind schedule. Captain Maldemerde was frothing over the delay. I wasn’t too happy about it myself, since it put us at what might prove to be a crucial disadvantage in the race against the Queen William. Nor did I blame the Captain for overriding the objections of both Mister Jewish and Dr. Quotabusta in continuing to refuse to inform the port authorities of the death of the radio operator and the predicament of the glue-stuck newlyweds.

The corpse was still in the freezer with the red caviar. The unfortunate couple, covered with a blanket, had been made as comfortable as possible in a chaise longue on deck, the outside hope being that the salt air might affect them as a solvent. The Queen was in the wheelhouse raising hell about her purloined pregnancy preventer.

“What am I to do?” the seventeen-year-old ex-monarch wailed.

“I can prescribe some birth control pills.” Dr. Quotabusta tried to soothe her.

“No! They make me puff up like a cobra!”

“Abstinence,” Mister Jewish suggested.

“This is supposed to be a pleasure cruise!” she reminded him coldly.

“Are you sure you haven’t mislaid it, Highness?” Chief Purser Yenta asked respectfully.

“One does not mislay such an item! It is a priceless antique! It has been in the family of my ex-husband, the Shah, for six generations! It was imported from Egypt where it was hand-crafted by Nubian Slaves. Only the finest fur from the groins of wild ermine was used. The inscription on the inside was done by a diamond stylus dipped in molten gold.”

“What did the inscription say?” Yenta inquired.

“ ‘A Royal Muff for a Royal Muff. Love, Diver.’ ”

“ ‘Diver’?”

“It was a pet name the Queen who originally received it bestowed upon her husband, the Shah. Legend has it that she was so overexcited by the gift, that the Shah, who was a good deal older than she, was tickled to death by her reaction.”

“We will do everything in our power to recover it, Highness," Captain Maldemerde assured her. ‘The ship will be searched from bow to stern.”

“Such a search will upset the passengers,” Mister Jewish pointed out to the Captain after the Queen had left in a muff-less huff.

“The passengers. of course, must not be disturbed. Confine the search to the crew’s quarters.” The Captain revised the order.

“That will be very bad for the men’s morale, Captain.”

“So? If they complain, put them on half rations! On my ship, morale is a matter of discipline, Mister! Remember that!”

Mister Jewish was still biting his tongue as I followed Chief Purser Yenta out of the wheelhouse. We strolled the deck awhile, but the wintry air was still quite cold. It drove us indoors, to the glassed-in shuffleboard court.

Ogden and Binny Stanford were playing the deck game. The MENSA blonde, taking advantage of the fact that the area was heated, was clad in a bikini. Those Las Vegas customers certainly got their money’s worth if she was an example of what the chorus had offered!

Binny bent over for a shot at the puck. Suddenly, the elastic securing the bottom part of her bikini snapped. The small triangle of cloth fell to the deck. Binny Stanford was revealed as a natural blonde with a neatly etched pelvic structure and a cushy derriere that might have been too large if not for the fact that it was sculpted like a work of classical Greek art.

Everybody within eyeshot froze—-even her husband. Binny looked down, looked up, saw the eyes riveted on her, evidently decided she was damned if she was going to let them rattle her, and took her own sweet time about bending over to retrieve the fallen bikini bottoms. When she did stoop over, an audible sigh swept over the shuffleboard court.

Binny pulled them up slowly, held them at her hip, and craned her head down to examine the tie that had parted. Then she strode over to Chief Purser Yenta and confronted him with the evidence. I wondered how he was able to concentrate on it, considering all the alluring-—if irrelevant—flesh jiggling around it.

“This was no accident!” She showed Yenta the elastic tie. “Someone cut this with a razor blade.” She held up the two ends to demonstrate how neatly and deliberately they’d been severed. “Just enough so it would hold until some strain was put on it,” she added.

“Come on, Binny.” Her husband came over. “Why would anybody do a thing like that?”

“Simple deductive logic -- a quality in which you are deficient,” she told him haughtily, “informs me that someone would do ‘a thing like that’ maliciously to embarrass me. The same powers of reasoning, which you are doubtless incapable of grasping, instruct me that the only one with such a motivation is you!”

“Don’t be silly!” Ogden Stanford objected.

“This is just the sort of practical joke your feeble mind would devise!” Binny turned back to Yenta. “Will you please inform the Captain that I would like him to perform the divorce ceremony at the earliest opportunity?”

Before Ogden Stanford could respond to that, all hell broke loose. First, suddenly, an ear-splitting siren sounded a repeated “WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP”! Then various bells clanged. Finally, the Captain’s voice sounded hysterically over the loudspeaker.

“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!”

“He must want that radio operator pretty damn bad!" I remarked to Yenta as the Stanfords, along with the other players and spectators bolted from the shuffleboard court to the deck.

Yenta and I followed, reaching the deck just as a new voice spoke over the P.A. system. “ALL HANDS ON DECK! ALL HANDS ON DECK!” It was Mister Jewish, his tone calmer than the Captain’s had been, but still filled with urgency. “EMERGENCY STATIONS! EMERGENCY STATIONS!”

“A lifeboat drill?” Chief Purser Yenta was puzzled. “But there’s none scheduled. What’s that crazy Captain up to now?”

“Passengers will please stay calm.” Over the loudspeaker, Mister Jewish was speaking in a lower, smoother tone now, trying to cool it. “Stay calm and go to your lifeboat stations. Put on your life preservers and proceed to your lifeboat stations in an orderly manner. Crew members will assign you your positions in the lifeboats. I repeat. Stay calm and put on your life preservers and. . . .”

“This must be the real thing!" Yenta looked scared.

There was pandemonium on deck now. Sailors were scurrying every which way. Passengers were milling around in terror. No matter which way you looked from the deck of the ship, there was nothing to be seen but the open and turbulent sea.

The close-packed, shoving mob pushed Yenta and me through the swinging doors to one of the salons. Four men were seated at a card table there. Otherwise the room was deserted.

They were playing bridge. The design on the tabletop around which they were seated was in the form of a compass. “Please!” The man seated “North” greeted our tumbling entrance. “I’m trying to concentrate!”

“There’s an emergency!” Yenta informed them.

“One heart,” West said.

“You’d better put on your life jackets!”

“One spade,” South responded.

“Gentlemen! You really must get to your lifeboat stations!”

“You said ‘one spade’?” East studied his cards.

“One no-trump,” he decided.

“This ship is in distress!”

“Double!” North snapped.

We may have to abandon ship!”

“Re-double.” West responded calmly.

“The ship may be sinking!”

“Hmmm.” South looked so serious for a moment that it seemed as if Yenta had gotten through to him. Then—“Two diamonds,” South bid.

“You’ll all drown!”

It was no use. They ignored him. East passed. North bid four spades. West passed. South bid no-trump, asking for honors. North’s response was reassuring, and South went on to a grand slam in spades. When West doubled, North redoubled.

“It looks like I’m dummy.” North laid down his hand.

“Then why not leave now?” I suggested. “Before the ship sinks!”

“With my partner about to play a grand slam re-doubled?” North snorted. “You must be mad!”

“The hell with them!” I told Yenta. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Just a minute.” Yenta was peering over South’s shoulder. “A diamond lead is down one trick,” he whispered to me.

I left him standing there and plunged back into the midst of the panicky mob outside the salon. On the aft deck, the ship’s orchestra was playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” Some officers were trying to maintain order-with only partial success—as they directed people to their places in the lifeboats. Crew members were lowering those boats that had already been filled.

The figure of a woman jumped from the deck into an overcrowded boat halfway lowered to the water below. The deck lights picked up the features. Click-click! I recognized Captain Maldemerde in drag.

“Women and children first!” Mister Jewish was standing beside one of the lifeboats and pulling men out of the loading line.

“What about my wife?” A couple materialized in front of Mister Jewish. A large blanket was wrapped around them. It was pulled away by the throng jostling them from all sides. The man was revealed with his hands under the girl’s buttocks, supporting her; the girl’s legs were wrapped around his hips; they were genitally joined, face-to-face. I recognized the unfortunate honeymoon couple.

“She can get in this lifeboat.” Mister Jewish answered the groom’s question. “But you’ll have to wait and see if there’s room in one of the later boats.”

“But we were just married!” the girl wailed.

‘I’m sorry.”

“We’re inseparable!” the groom pointed out.

“Only women and children in this boat. Sorry.”

“You don’t understand.” Dr. Quotabusta came up to Mister Jewish. “They really are inseparable.”

“I don’t care if they’re glued together!” Mister Jewish was losing patience.

“They are! They literally are!”

The ship was listing now, probably from the weight of the passengers crowding against the railing. The two officers were still arguing as the pressure of the crowd forced me farther down the deck to where the orchestra was seated. They weren’t playing at the moment. The conductor was berating the trombone player.

“You were an octave too high!” he insisted. “Now try it again and see if you can’t get it right this time!"

The trombone player puffed out his cheeks and blew a mournful solo: “Ma-ny brave souls are a-sleep in the deep, so be-ware . . . Be-e-e-e-wa-a-are . .

“In times of crisis it’s important to keep the passengers’ morale up,” I heard one officer remark to another.

Suddenly Chief Engineer Gorilla barrelled past me on the run, his bald head glistening, his hairless torso naked to the waist and shining with a mixture of oil and sweat. He braked to a halt in front of Mister Jewish and Dr. Quotabusta. A moment later the three of them came charging back the way he had come.

I followed. Shoving their way through the panic-stricken throng, they raced down the stairways to E Deck and through the passageway between the entrances to the inside cabins. Gorilla stopped in front of an open door and pointed.

I peered over their shoulders. There was a large double bed up against the wall facing the door. Somehow it had collapsed. Two people were pinned in the wreckage.

The woman wore a nightgown which was pushed up over her hips. The man was naked. They were, as the saying goes, in flagrante delicto. Which, if you flunked Latin as I did, means they were caught in the act.

“Get us out of here!” the man yelled.

Gorilla ignored him. He was down on his hands and knees in the doorway, pointing out a wire to Mister Jewish. The wire was very thin, almost invisible. One end was lost under the wreckage of the bed. The wire led out of the cabin and down the passageway, following the baseboard. Crawling, Gorilla started to trace it, Mister Jewish and Dr. Quotabusta trailing behind him.

“Hey!” the woman called. “You can’t leave us like this! Suppose the ship sinks?”

“The ship won’t sink,” Gorilla called back.

“But we’re trapped!" she yelled. “What should we do?”

Gorilla was gone, so I answered for him. “Enjoy,” I suggested. “Enjoy!”

I trotted down the passageway and caught up with the three officers. Gorilla was on his feet now. He was pointing to a small metal box high up on the wall. The wire led right up to it.

Gorilla and Quotabusta boosted Mister Jewish up to the box. He removed the metal cover. Inside was a maze of filaments and transistors. The wire from the stateroom was attached to a terminal buried in the maze. Mister Jewish tore it loose.

“Pretty damn ingenious!” Mister Jewish observed sourly as he climbed down.

“Yeah.” Gorilla agreed. “I had a look at that bed before. The slats were sawed almost through. Set up so the bed would collapse as soon as any strain was put on it. And lover-boy in there put on the strain,” he added.

“Is that what activated the alarm?” Dr. Quotabusta asked.

“Right. There was a pushbutton rigged under one of the slats. When the bed broke, the slat hit it. The wire ran straight from there to this relay-box.”

“But this relay-box would only ring a bell alarm in the wheelhouse and the Captain’s cabin,” Mister Jewish said. “The Captain would have to trigger the ‘Abandon Ship’ siren himself. I know he’s pretty stupid, but I can’t believe he’s that stupid.”

“He’s not,” Gorilla told him. “That’s how I discovered this in the first place. The Skipper didn’t push the panic button. As a matter of fact, he called me in the engine room and accused me of doing it. So I checked the whoosher. And I found that somebody had crossed the wires so it would go off together with the simple alarm bells.”

“Thereby turning a minor emergency into a major panic,” Mister Jewish summed up.

“Why would anybody do a thing like that?” Dr. Quotabusta wondered.

“A practical joke, maybe.” Gorilla answered him.

“That’s a pretty outlandish practical joke. And who would know the ship’s circuitry well enough to pull it off?” Mister Jewish answered his own question. “Only a member of the crew,” he realized.

“I’d hate to be in his shoes if the Skipper ever catches him!” Gorilla shuddered. “Which reminds me, where is the Captain? When I tried to find him to tell him what happened, he’d vanished.”

I could have told them where Captain Maldemerde was, but I didn’t. Letting them know that the Captain had deserted his ship would only have added to their resentment of him. And that wouldn’t have been wise. Not with the race still to be run.

The false alarm put us another four hours behind schedule, making a rough total of sixteen hours we’d lost. Most of the four hours was spent in convincing the passengers and crew that the ship wasn’t foundering. Even with Mister Jewish making calming announcements over the loudspeaker repeatedly, it wasn’t easy to quell the panic. And it was a hell of a job rounding up the lifeboats and getting the passengers in them back on board.

As I watched one of the lifeboats being raised, I noticed Knute Summerknut standing at the rail. As usual, ‘The Grand Old Man of Nudism’ was stark naked. His grandson Erik was in the lifeboat, and as it was hoisted to just below the level of the deck, the kid reached up, grabbed the old man’s penis, and pulled himself aboard. I winced, but the old Dane didn’t seem to mind.

A couple of minutes later, Blaze Buxbocks emerged from the lifeboat. She was wearing a white terrycloth robe—th-th-th-that’s all folks! Her lightly freckled face glistened with sea spray, and her red hair was in wild disarray. Otherwise she seemed unmarred by the experience.

“The insurgency caught me in the shower.” She greeted me With the explanation.

“I’m glad you’re all right.”

“I’m fine. Only I’m so incited. Aren’t you incited?”

I took a good look at her. Yeah. I was incited!

“Why don’t we have a drink in your cabin and calm down,” I suggested, doing my best not to leer.

“All right. Only give me a few minutes to titty myself up. I’m breastless.”

Not so you’d notice, she wasn’t! Not by a long shot!

“Fifteen minutes,” I told her.

Blaze nodded and shouldered her way through the crowd to the stairway leading up to her Stateroom. I headed for my own cabin. I wanted to pick up a bottle of Scotch before I joined her.

En route, I ran into a minor riot in one of the below-deck corridors. There were at least twenty angry females babbling and shouting there. In the center of the mob was Chief Purser Yenta. He was obnviously trying to cool the situation. Just as obviously, he wasn’t having much success.

“Mr. Victor! This is awful!” he greeted me.

“What’s the trouble?”

“While these ladies were on deck abandoning ship, someone rifled their staterooms.”

“And stole their jewelry,” I guessed.

“No sir. Their jewelry wasn’t touched. Neither was anything else of monetary value. Only one thing was taken from each of them—the same thing!”

“Which was?”

“Their birth-control pills!”

That was the point at which I began to suspect the interlocking nature of the events that had occurred. First the sexually threatening notes. Then the glue in the newlyweds’ Vaseline, the purloined royal diaphragm, the sabotaged bikini, and the booby-trapped bed that triggered the “Abandon Ship!” panic. And now the theft from a mounting mob of women of their birth-control pills. Obviously, all the incidents were part of some master-plan to cold-shower erotic enjoyment aboard the S.S. Lascivia!

And what about the death of the radio operator? Had that been an accident? Or could it have been deliberate murder? And if it was murder, was it also related to the anti-sex shenanigans? Was everything that had happened—the murder, the thefts, the sabotage—part of a conspiracy to keep the Lascivia from winning the race against the Queen William?

Mulling this over, I went down to my quarters. Besides the Scotch, there was something else I wanted to pick up before I joined Blaze Buxbocks. In case she’d been victimized like the rest of the ladies, I Wanted to be prepared.

The packet wasn’t there! My suitcase had been rifled and it was gone! The anti-sex fiend had struck again!

My condoms had been stolen!

So much for Blaze!

CHAPTER SIX

Dinner was served quite late that first night at sea. Understandable, what with all the confusion over abandoning ship, purloined promiscuity pills, and other bizarre happenings. Yet it came off smoothly, in the formal tradition of the luxury cruise.

I was seated at the Captain’s table-—-an honor that could only have been bestowed by order of Baron Duvivier, the owner of the Lascivia. I wore soup-and-fish—-also provided by the Baron. My place-card had me between Sister Stella -- still wearing her nun’s habit -- and an old biddy sporting a gold lamé evening gown encrusted with emeralds.

As we started on the first course, the overage dowager peered at me coldly through a diamond-studded lorgnette. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” she said. “I am Miss Amanda Lowell~Cabot of Boston, Massachusetts.”

The porthole! The Breast! The Derriere! It was hard to believe! . . . “I’m Steve Victor,” I told her.

“Are you related to the Newport Victors?”

Under the table, Sister Stella’s hand crept into my lap and unzipped my fly.

“No.” I answered Miss Lowell-Cabot.

“The Brookline Victors?”

Sister Stella fumbled inside my jockey shorts.

“Afraid not. But I do have relatives in Brooklyn.” I giggled hysterically. Sister Stella had just tickled my scrotum.

“I have never known anybody from Brooklyn!” Brr-rr! Miss Lowell-Cabot turned away and left me to cope with my appetizer—and Sister Stella.

Also seated at the Captain’s table were Ogden and Binny Stanford, Queen Nimmfetah, Mister Jewish, Blaze Buxbocks—a knockout in a topless, backless, formal black satin frock that thumbed its nose at Isaac Newton-—a young man, a middle-aged lady, and an older man in his early sixties. As to the last three, I knew something about each of them from Yenta’s dossiers. They were about as different, each from the other, as they could be.

The young man’s name was Buddy Fluker. He was an American. A high-school dropout, he was renowned as an international chess champion. Chess was his whole life. He neither drank, smoked, nor fooled around with women; he eschewed all forms of activity that might have interfered with his concentration on chess. Throughout the cruise, he rarely spoke to anyone. He simply sat and worked out problems on the small chess pegboard he always carried with him. That’s what he was doing now, his chessboard where his salad plate should have been, moving pawns and ignoring his dinner partners on either side of him.

The middle-aged lady was also an American. There the similarity ended. She was as bubbly-babbling as Buddy Fluker was taciturn. Her name was Zelda Popins and she was a schoolteacher from a small town in Kansas. A few months back, for the first time in her life, she’d bought an Irish Sweepstakes ticket. When it hit, she became richer by half-a-million tax-free dollars. Captain Maldemerde had obviously staked Zelda out for his own, and she was having a ball parrying his none-too-subtle innuendos while leaning forward to bare an expanse of saggy décolletage to his beady little eyes. With all that “Yes-Yes!” in her own eyes, she figured to succumb to his nautical charm before many more knots were steamed.

The older man, seated on the other side of Zelda Poppins, had lived in Sicily for fifty years. However, he, too, was an American by birth. His father, a Sicilian immigrant, had been deported back to Italy because of certain Mafia activities when the son was twelve years old. Subsequently, the son had risen to become one of the top Mafiosos in Palermo. The Italian government had recently uncovered his American birth and used it as an excuse to deport him back to the United States. Having influence, he’d arranged to go straight to New York where he boarded the S.S. Lascivia. By the time the liner returned to New York, three months later, enough pertinent palms would have been greased to allow him to return to Sicily. His name was Mario Brandino.

At the moment, the aristocratic-looking Brandino was expressing his appreciation of the ship’s cuisine. “My compliments to the chef, Captain Maldemerde,” he said. “This red caviar is superb.”

Sister Stella was shaking me the way a hungry Collie worries a bone.

“But you haven’t even tasted it,” Zelda Poppins responded to Mario Brandino.

“I refer, good lady, to the bouquet. That is the true test of caviar. Not the taste.”

My eyes met those of Mister Jewish. The bouquet! Unusual, no doubt, what with the red caviar’s recent proximity in the freezer to the corpse of the radio operator!

Sister Stella smiled as tumescence mounted.

“Well, it tastes delicious, too!” Zelda Poppins shoved a forkful of red fish eggs at Captain Maldemerde’s mouth. “Open wide!” she instructed flirtatiously.

The Captain’s head jerked back like the recoil of a cannon. “No!” he protested. “Red caviar makes me break out in hives!”

Sister Stella played “This Little Piggy . . .” with my you-know-what.

“Try it! You’ll like it!”

“I would sooner become a cannibal!”

Mister Jewish choked on an artichoke heart.

“This Little Piggy went Whee-whee-whee-whee . . .”

“Be a good boy now. Eat your caviar.” Zelda Poppins pushed the fork toward the Captain. When he opened his mouth to protest, she shoved it all the way in and dumped the contents. Reflex made the Captain gulp and swallow the caviar. “There now. Wasn’t that good?” Zelda beamed satisfaction.

“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!” Maldemerde moaned. -

The caviar was removed and the soup was served. Buddy Fluker put his elbow in his dish of consommé and castled to the queen side. Sister Stella took dainty sips from the soupspoon held in her right hand while her left hand encircled my penis under the table and started rubbing its length.

The gentle rhythm was having an effect which threatened to become noticeable by the time we started on the main course. “Do the Sisters of the Zodiac go in for séances?” I asked Sister Stella.

“No. Why should we?”

“Because,” I hissed into her ear, “if you keep it up, this table is going to rise!”

“You mean if you ‘keep it up.’ ” Sister Stella laughed.

Blaze Buxbocks was glaring at us. “I can be very zealous!” she snarled at me.

So could Sister Stella! Her hand performed a thrilling tattoo variation, and my knee jerked.

“Mr. Victor! If you please!” Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot reacted to my leg brushing against hers with outraged virtue. “I do not engage in shipboard flirtations!” the old biddy told me frostily.

“How about porthole peccadillos?” I inquired.

To which she turned a wrinkled, but decidedly cold shoulder.

Finally dessert was served. Peach cobbler in brandy sauce. Also espresso laced with cognac. Sister Stella bolted hers down and then apparently dropped her napkin. She stooped under the table to retrieve it.

“Have you ever thought of becoming a member of MENSA?” Binny Stanford asked Buddy Fluker. Under the table, Sister Stella quickly removed the shoe and sock from my right foot.

“He’s not dumb enough!” Ogden Stanford told his wife.

Sister Stella worked my naked foot under her habit until it was lodged solidly in the burning dampness at the juncture of her thighs.

Buddy Fluker ignored the Stanfords and successfully stalemated himself.

Sister Stella impaled herself on my big toe and moved her fulcrum in small, cautious circles.

“Do you know Count FinGemanni of Naples?” Miss Lowell-Cabot inquired of Mario Brandino.

Sister Stella’s hand released its grip and was immediately replaced by her mouth.

“The Count used to be in my employ,” Brandino replied.

I bucked and almost went over backwards on my chair!

“Really? The Count worked for you, you say? What is the nobility coming to?”

Sister Stella contrived to synchronize the movements of her tongue and my impaled foot.

“I do hope Zwing Toy is all right,” Queen Nimmfetah remarked.

Thank goodness I’d remembered to cut my toenails!

“He certainly should be, Highness.” Mister Jewish reassured her. “After all, he has a de luxe stateroom all to himself.”

“But he gets so lonely. . . .” Queen Nimmfetah sighed.

Yes-yes-yes! . . . It wouldn’t be long now! . . .

“The Steward has instructions to look in on him regularly,” the Captain interjected soothingly.

“Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah . . .”

“What did you say, Mr. Victor?” Zelda Poppins stared at me.

“Nothing.” . . . Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh! . . .

“There’s something fleshy going on!” Blaze was openly suspicious.

Sister Stella tensed on the verge of orgasm. Likewise yours truly. . . . Now-now-now-now-now-now-now . . .

“The Sister seems to be having trouble finding her napkin,” Mister Jewish observed. “Perhaps I should help her. He got up and started to stoop under the table.

“No-no-no!” I bounced up and down frantically, an ecstatic gush of release.

Sister Stella’s head bounced off the underside of the table as she received it and matched it with her own eruption. Mister Jewish stared at me, surprised by my hysterical reaction. The others also stared.

“She’s found it!” I babbled. “She doesn't need any help! She’s already got it! Haven’t you?” I pleaded.

Sister Stella came out from under the table, looking pure and demure and sexless as ever in her voluminous nun’s robe. “Oh, yes.” She held the napkin up triumphantly.

“Then if you’ll excuse me, I have to check over some charts in the wheelhouse.” Mister Jewish bowed and left.

“I too must attend to the duties of navigation.” The Captain shot Zelda Poppins a look that said he’d catch up with her later and bid the rest of us a formal good evening.

The others left right after him. Now I was the only one left at the table. I had problems.

There were still plenty of people left at the other tables in the dining salon. Without any of them noticing, I had to retrieve my shoe and sock from somewhere under the table and put them back on my foot. I also had to replace my penis in my jockey shorts, tuck the shorts back inside my pants, likewise my shirttail, and then zip up my fly. With waiters, busboys and guests all around me, that wasn’t going to be easy!

Still, I managed it right up to the final movement. Everything in place. Good. I groped for the zipper and found it. Good. One clean pull and—- *

“HOLY MOTHER OF SHIT!”

I’d caught myself in the zipper!

Everybody turned and stared. Tears of pain poured from my eyes. If that zipper had moved one silly millimeter longer, I would have come up a soprano!

I pulled the zipper back down. I tucked everything into place very carefully, making sure my tender flesh was shielded with an abundance of shirttail. Then I pulled the zipper up once again.

Getting to my feet, I started across the dining salon to the exit. There was a sudden clamor of dishes tumbling to the floor. That hadn’t been all shirttail I’d tucked into my fly. I’d snared the corner of the tablecloth along with it! And now I was trailing the tablecloth and sundry dishes in my wake as I passed among the diners dawdling over their coffee!

I grabbed a steak knife from a table and snipped off the tablecloth at the root—being careful, of course, to leave the root itself intact. Then I continued toward the doorway, smiling winningly at the stares and open mouths of the onlookers. The smile was intended to prove that my savoir faire was intact. As I exited, I bumped into Chief Purser Yenta.

“You have a large piece of asparagus stuck between your front teeth, Mr. Victor,” he informed me.

I stopped smiling.

Yenta fell into step with me as I started up the deck. “What happened back in the dining salon?” he asked. “I thought I heard someone yelling in pain.”

“That was me.”

“What happened, sir?”

“I got nipped in the bud!”

Yenta looked at me questioningly.

I offered no further explanation.

He let it go. “There’s Bingo in the main recreation hall,” he told me.

“No thanks. I think I’ll just take a stroll around the deck and turn in.”

“Looking for new portholes to conquer, Mr. Victor?” His Oriental face was all tolerance. "

“I’ve given up on portholes since formally meeting Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot at dinner,” I assured him.

I was feeling the chill by the time we drew abreast of the main recreation hall. I didn’t want to play Bingo, but I did want to get out of the cold night air for a little while. I went inside, Yenta affably staying with me.

As we entered, the Bingo emcee was making an announcement from the stage. “. . . and the winner of our next drawing, ladies and gentlemen, will receive a special surprise package as a prize. I can assure you that this mystery gift will be a luxury item to tickle your fancy! . . . Are we all ready? . . . Very well!” He spun the birdcage and withdrew a small, numbered tile. “N-23,” he announced.

I saw Knute Summerknut, naked as always, reach over to his grandson Eric’s Bingo card to cover a numbered square with a blank tile. Then he checked the card on the board across his own lap. The board provided only partial modesty to the fantastically well-hung old Dane. He shook his head philosophically. The number didn’t appear on his card.

“G-17.” The emcee called out the number from the second tile he’d drawn.

Blaze Buxbocks squealed delightedly and covered a number on her card.

“N-9.”

Miss Lowell-Cabot, playing six cards, capped squares on three of them.

“O-32.” The drawing continued. Six more numbers were called and you could feel the tension building in the room. “G-2.”

“I only need one more, Grandpa!” Little Eric Summerknut was bouncing up and down with excitement.

“I-20.”

Queen Nimmfetah clapped her hands.

“G_43.”

“Getting warm!” Zelda Poppins blushed at the laugh which greeted her enthusiasm.

“B-12.”

Mario Brandino moved a tile impassively.

“BINGO!”

All eyes turned to focus on the source of the dual shout marking the winner. It was the unfortunate newlywed couple. The husband was seated on a chair facing the back of the room. His wife was on his lap, facing him. She balanced the board with the Bingo card on his shoulder. A blanket was wrapped around them.

“They’re newlyweds,” I heard a lady whisper.

“Aren’t they cute? They’re always cuddling together like that.”

“That’s how it is when you’re just married,” a second lady replied. “You can’t bear to be separated."

“If you’ll come up on the stage, Madam, I’ll check your card and you can accept your mystery prize,” the emcee announced.

The bride was distraught. “I can’t come up on the stage!”

“They can’t bear to be parted even for a minute,” the first lady agreed.

Chief Purser Yenta moved quickly to smooth over the situation. He went to the couple, picked up the bride’s Bingo card, and brought it up to the stage. The emcee checked it and handed Yenta the fancily wrapped package. The japanese deck oflicer delivered it to the bride.

“What is it?” people around the winning couple were asking. “Open it,” they prodded the bride.

She reddened under all the attention. She tore the wrapping from the package. She opened the box.

“What’s inside?” the neighboring players wanted to know.

“Another box.” The bride giggled and withdrew it.

“Open it, honey,” her husband urged.

She opened it.

“What is it?” he asked, trying to crane his head to see, but failing.

“Another box.”

Curiosity spread. By now everybody in the hall was watching the couple. Embarrassed, the bride hurried to open the smaller box. She withdrew the contents and emitted a loud wail of anguish!

The mystery prize was Queen Nimmfetah’s ermine-lined diaphragm!

“What is it?” The groom was alarmed at her reaction.

She flipped it back over her shoulder so he could see it.

“Too late!” Tears sprang to the groom’s eyes as well.

“That’s mine!” Queen Nimmfetah was yelling.

“Disgraceful!” Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot protested.

“‘A luxury item to tickle your fancy’!” someone jeered at the emcee.

The bride wailed louder.

“It was supposed to be a gift package of the Lascivia’s own specially prepared red caviar,” the emcee tried to explain. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“Someone poked a hole in it!” Queen Nimmfetah grabbed the diaphragm from the bride and held it aloft.

The anti-sex fiend had struck again!

“This desecration must be punished!” the teen-age ex-monarch howled. “It’s a priceless antique! It’s as if some barbarian had bayoneted the Mona Lisa, chopped the nose off a Rodin sculpture, or hammered spikes into a Stradivarius!” She waved the hallowed contraceptive device over her head as if it was a banner for her army to rally around. “The infidel who did this must be punished!” she screamed.

Yenta tried to calm her in vain. The Captain had to be summoned. Maldemerde assured the ex-Queen that the vandal would be apprehended and strung up to a yardarm by his thumbs. She obviously felt the punishment was too mild, but she was nevertheless at least somewhat mollified.

Meanwhile, Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot had left in an outraged huff. Dr. Quotabusta administered a sedative to both bride and groom and arranged to have them transported back to their cabin. Yenta darted around calming sundry people.

Finally things settled down enough for the Bingo game to resume. The emcee was obviously shaken as he began calling the numbers for the next round. I didn’t stay for it. The day had been a long, active and exhausting one. I was very tired. I left the recreation hall and started for my cabin.

On the way, I passed the open porthole to Cabin B-47. I glanced inside. The wrinkled old face of Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot stared back out at me, first startled, then filled with revulsion.

“Peeping Tom!” She closed the porthole, locked it securely from the inside, and drew the curtains. I continued on to my quarters. Entering my room, I turned on the floor-lamp and discovered a hand-printed note pinned neatly to the lampshade. I read it.

“STEVE VICTOR--YOU HAVE SINNED! YOUR BUSINESS IS SIN! YOUR PLEASURE IS IN SINNING! THE DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING! HE WHO LIVES BY THE SWORD WILL DIE BY THE SWORD! MEN WHO POKE HOLES LIE ASLEEP IN THE DEEP!”

It seemed the anti-sex fiend was a compulsive metaphor mixer. That’s what I thought to myself as I undressed and stretched out on the bed. I was even more tired than I realized. I zonked right out.

I was awakened the next morning by the deafening roar of a cannon shot. The cannonball cleared the bow of the ship by less than three feet. A second shot exploded off the stern.

By the time the third was on its way, I was in my pants and running!

CHAPTER SEVEN

Another cannonball raised a geyser off the port side as I emerged on deck. By now the Lascivia was well on its way to our first port-of-call, Trinidad, and the weather was balmy. The overnight change in the climate had brought the passengers out on deck to sun themselves in the sixty to seventy-five degree temperatures. Such was the lassitude induced by leaving winter behind that they seemed not to comprehend that the ship was under attack.

One exception was Ogden Stanford, stretched out beside his wife Binny in a deck chair. “Hey!” he sat up straight. “That ship over there is shooting at us!”

Binny, blonde and voluptuous as ever in her repaired bikini, was contemptuous. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she told him. “They’re merely saluting us. That’s what ships do at sea. It’s tradition. If you’d ever taken the trouble to read a book, you might have learned that.” She calmly rubbed suntan lotion over the exposed upper halves of her brazen breasts. They jiggled and gleamed with the treatment. “You dumbhead!” she added gratuitously.

Another shot hit the water and the two of them were drenched.

“If that’s a salute, the gunner must have stuck his thumb in his eye!” Ogden exclaimed.

“Your naiveté is bad enough. Your paranoia is too much. That’s why I want the divorce.”

“Aw, Binny. . . .”

I continued up the deck to where I could get a clear view of the ship shelling us. It was a large luxury liner, very similar in design to the Lascivia. One difference was the small cannon mounted on the forward deck. Squinting, I could just make out the letters spelling “QUEEN WILLIAM” on the prow.

Another shell whistled over my head. They were coming at about one-minute intervals now. Still, the people on deck were unalarmed. They accepted the onslaught as if it were some minor spectacle arranged for their enjoyment. Some of them were bored by it and expressed the sentiment that Chief Purser Yenta could have saved himself the trouble of presenting this little diversion.

Buddy Fluker, seated at a table on the promenade deck and working out countermoves to the Sicilian Defense on his little chess board, merely scowled with annoyance when the roar of the cannon interfered with his concentration. In a nearby deck chair, Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot was crocheting. “Vulgar display!” I heard her muttering to herself as I passed. Queen Nimmfetah, Zwing Toy’s nose buried in her lap, didn’t even bother opening her eyes when her chaise longue was rocked by the impact of a shell hitting the water.

In the wheelhouse, the feeling was quite different. Captain Maldemerde, frozen with fear, was crouched down behind the helmsman. “They’re going to sink us!” he was moaning. Click-click.

“No, sir.” Mister Jewish calmly disagreed. “If they wanted to do that, they’d have done it already. At this range they couldn’t miss. Captain Grabass is just trying to throw a scare into us.”

“Suppose the gunner miscalculates,” Maldemerde whimpered.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t. . . . Thirty degrees starboard.” Mister Jewish directed the helmsman to take evasive action.

“Does this mean we’ve caught up with the Queen William?” I knelt beside Captain Maldemerde and whispered the question.

“No. It means they’re even further ahead of us than I thought.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “They’ve already completed their first layover in Nassau. That puts us a full day behind. We stay in Trinidad eight hours.” Click-click.

“They’ve stopped shooting,” Mister Jewish said. “They’re bearing down on us.”

“They’re going to ram us!” Click-click.

“No. They’re drawing alongside. I can make out Captain Grabass on the foredeck. He’s got a megaphone.”

“A boarding party!” Maldemerde’s teeth were chattering. “Those pirates will slaughter us all! Run up a white flag! Tell them we surrender!” Click-click.

“Ahoy, Captain Maldemerde!” The high voice screeched out across the narrowing area of ocean between the Queen William and the Lascivia. “This is Captain Grabass speaking. Can you hear me?”

Mister Jewish looked at the cowering Captain Maldemerde and shook his head sadly. He picked up a megaphone and went out on the wheelhouse deck. I followed along.

“Ahoy, Queen William!” Mister Jewish yelled through the megaphone. “What do you want?”

“Where’s that little sparrowfart Maldemerde?” Captain Grabass inquired.

“Captain Maldemerde is indisposed. This is First Mate Jewish speaking. I’ve got the con. Repeat. What do you want?”

“Well, hello there, Sugarpie. Haven’t we met somewhere before?” It wasn’t close enough to see, but it sounded like Captain Grabass was fluttering his eyelashes.

“Repeat. What do you want? Why are you shelling us?”

“What time do you go off duty, tall, dark and handsome?”

“Why have you fired on us?” Mister Jewish wanted to know.

“Just a friendly greeting, Number One,” Captain Grabass crooned. “So you’re Number One,” he added. ‘Tm a Captain now, but I used to be One, too.” He chortled. “Truth is, I still am one. How does that grab you, big boy?”

“Your shells were dangerously close for a greeting. A formal protest will be lodged when we get to port.”

“A formal protest? Oh dear! I had hoped that you and I could keep it informal, honeybunch.”

“You’re impeding our progress. Stand off!” Mister Jewish said firmly. “Stand off and let us proceed.”

“It won’t do you a bit of good, sweetness. Still, if you insist.” Captain Grabass waved a graceful hand at the Queen William’s helmsman. A moment later the liner banked slowly away from us. “Ta-ta.” Captain Grabass waved a limp wrist at Mister Jewish. “Look me up at the Gay Barnacle if you ever make it back to New York, sweet-muscles. I’m simply dying to see your tattoos.” He blew a kiss as the Queen William picked up speed and steamed away from us.

“What did he want?” Captain Maldemerde had finally gotten up the courage to join us on deck. Click-click.

“My ass,” Mister Jewish told him.

“Number One! I will not countenance foul language or insubordination from my officers!” Click-click.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Let there be no mistake about that.” Click-click.

“No, sir.”

“It’s one thing I want to make perfectly clear!” Click-click.

“Yes, sir.”

“I run a tight ship, Mister!” Click-click. “No sloppy permissiveness! Discipline will be maintained!”

“Ah beg gezunt.”

“What was that, Mister Jewish?”

“Sorry, sir. It’s Arabic for ‘Yes, sir.’ I sometimes forget myself and fall back on my native tongue.”

“Well, speak English, Mister.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s an order!” Click-click.

“Yes, sir.”

“Excuse me, sir.” Dr. Quotabusta had entered the wheelhouse.

“What do you want?” Maldemerde snarled.

“I don’t want to be an alarmist, sir, but I’m worried,” Dr. Quotabusta told him.

“I’m not your psychoanalyst! Why do you bring your anxiety attacks to me?” Click-click.

“I mean! I’m concerned about the passengers, sir. About their health.”

“That’s what you’re paid to be concerned about,” the Captain sneered.

“There have been five people in the dispensary already this morning and—”

“Am I to understand that you’re complaining about being overworked, Doctor?” Click-click.

“No, sir. What I’m trying to tell you is that all five had the same complaint.”

“Colds are catching.” The Captain shrugged.

“It’s not colds, sir. All five of them are suffering from an uncontrollable itching sensation in the groin.”

“Do they have rashes?”

“I can’t tell, sir. In all five cases the crotch area is so red and raw from scratching that it’s impossible to make an accurate diagnosis about a rash.”

“Jock itch.” Maldemerde made his own diagnosis.

“Three of the patients are women, Captain.”

“Oh.” The Captain’s eye fell on me. “Since our ship’s doctor seems incapable of coping with this obviously simple matter, perhaps you’ll be good enough to consult with him, Victor.” Click-click.

It was a dismissal. I followed Quotabusta out on deck. “The Captain doesn’t realize how serious this could be,” he told me. “From a medical standpoint, I mean.”

“I don’t think I’ll be much help,” I answered honestly.

“What I’m afraid of,” the African doctor said, “is an outbreak of venereal disease.”

“Are there symptoms of that?”

“Just the itching. As I said, I can’t tell about rashes. I did some research on VD in Africa and I learned some frightening things about both syphilis and gonorrhea. Venereal germs are very adaptable, very hardy, and they can mutate. There are new strains that don’t respond to penicillin or the sulfa drugs. If that’s what we have here, in a close-quarter shipboard environment, we could end up with a full-scale epidemic on our hands!”

“BEWARE PROMISCUITY ABOARD THE S.S. LASCIVIA!” I remembered the threatening note Baron Duvivier had shown me back in Nassau. “THE WAGES OF SINNING WILL BE PAID BY ALL WHO SAIL . . . THE WAGES ARE VENEREAL!”

I told Dr. Quotabusta that I didn’t think I could be of any use to him with the medical problem, but that I’d appreciate his letting me know if any more cases turned up. He said he would, and he kept his promise. The following morning he reported six additional cases to me. Eight more turned up during the next two days.

Still, Dr. Quotabusta couldn’t pinpoint the cause, nor identify the ailment. His suspicion that it was contagious, however, had become almost a certainty by the time we docked at Port of Spain, Trinidad. He went ashore with the first boatload of tourists to consult with a British VD specialist he knew there.

I stayed on board during the eight-hour layover. I’d been in Trinidad before, and with the possibility of a venereal plague looming over the Lascivia, I wanted to put the time to better use. I spent it with Chief Purser Yenta, going over the dossiers of the passengers and crew. One of them, maybe more than one, had to be the saboteur.

By a process of elimination that was at least as much intuitive as anything else, I managed to rule out about three-quarters of the people aboard. Of course, that still left me with a list a mile long. On it were all of the passengers I’d encountered personally and most of the officers, including Yenta.

Dr. Quotabusta fared no better ashore. The specialist he’d seen had been cooperative, but not very helpful. There was no way of being sure if the malady was some new strain of VD or not.

That’s how things stood when we sailed away from Trinidad. We’d picked up a strong current, and Yenta told me that the Captain had given Chief Engineer Gorilla orders to maintain full speed ahead. The cruise-leg from Trinidad to Rio de Janeiro, our next port-of-call, was scheduled to take four and a half days. By riding the current, keeping the speed up, and hugging the coastline of South America, Maldemerde was hoping to cut a day off that sailing time. If he succeeded, the Lascivia would put into Rio almost on schedule and we’d make up the time we’d lost between New York and Trinidad.

Two days later, in the afternoon, the passengers on deck got their first look at the jungle shores of South America. It was a post card view, and I admired it along with everybody else. Still, I didn’t have to see the tropics to know we were there.

The weather told me that. It was extremely hot and muggy, with little trace of a sea breeze. All those on deck, myself included, wore the briefest possible bathing attire.

“The Captain would like you to come to his cabin, Mr. Victor.” Chief Purser Yenta materialized at my elbow.

“What’s up?”

“Mrs. Stanford asked him to send for you.”

“What for?”

“The Captain’s performing the divorce ceremony for the Stanfords. They need a witness. Mrs. Stanford specifically requested you.”

“Why me?”

Yenta didn’t know. But I picked up some signals when I got to Maldemerde’s cabin that gave an idea why Binny Stanford had asked for me. The bikini-clad divorcée-to-be looked at me with hayrolls shining from each of her blue eyes. Evidently the MENSA siren thought I was smart enough to decipher the message.

I was. But Ogden Stanford wasn’t so dumb that he missed it, either. Divorce or no divorce, he didn’t like it one little bit.

“Are we all ready?” Captain Maldemerde inquired. Click-click

“Yes.” Binny scratched at the triangle of her bikini bottoms and shot me a hot-eyed look.

“I guess so.” Ogden Stanford scratched his groin moodily.

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together. . . .” the Captain began in a sonorous voice.

“Do we really need all that?” Ogden Stanford interrupted, still scratching.

“It’s part of the ceremony,” Maldemerde told him. Click-click.

“Of the divorce ceremony?” Binny rubbed her shapely thighs together vigorously.

“Well, of course, I’ve adapted it from the marriage ritual. Actually, I’ve never performed a divorce before. But if you want me to change it—-” Click-click.

“The hell with it!” Ogden Stanford dug his nails in his crotch. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Very well.” Click-click. The Captain took a deep breath and started over again. “Dearly Beloved. . . .”

Scratching away, Binny Stanford filleted my swim trunks from my torso with her eyes. Evidently she liked what she found. She sighed deeply and her luscious Las Vegas bosom swelled like twin balloons on the verge of escaping their bikini mooring.

“. . . by the authority invested in me as Master of this Vessel,” the Captain droned on, “to free this man and this woman from the bonds of holy matrimony. . . .”

Yenta sniffled. “I always cry at weddings,” he corifided to me.

“This is a divorce,” I reminded him, whispering.

“That’s not quite as sad,” he admitted, “but it still makes me cry.”

“. . . If there be any person present with knowledge why these two should not be unjoined in holy wedlock, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace. . . .”

“I have knowledge,” Ogden Stanford muttered, scratching vigorously.

Binny’s elbow connected with his ribs, an order to be quiet.

He shut up.

“. . . Do you, Binny, promise to no longer love, honor and obey this man, Ogden, to no longer have him, and to no longer hold him until death do you dirt?”

“I do.”

“Do you, Binny, absolve this man, Ogden, from being your lawful wedded husband?”

“I do.” She scratched.

“And do you, Ogden, promise to no longer cherish this woman, Binny, and to renounce her as your lawful wedded wife?”

“I guess so,” Ogden whined. He scratched.

“Remove the ring from her finger,” the Captain instructed.

While Ogden was doing that, the Captain signaled Yenta to turn on the record player. The strains of “Oh Promise Me” filled the small cabin. Yenta sobbed audibly.

“What God has put asunder, let no man join together . . .” the Captain intoned.

Mister Jewish, who had been quietly standing in the background up this point, came forward now and placed a beer bottle under Ogden Stanford’s heel. The ceremony, I realized, was multidenominational.

“. . . by the power invested in me as Captain of the Lascivia, I now pronounce you Bachelor and Spinster,” Maldemerde concluded with a sentimental vocal flourish. Click-click.

Ogden Stanford brought his heel down on the beer bottle and smashed it.

“Shalom!” Mister Iewish exclaimed.

“Kiss the former bride goodbye.” Maldemerde beamed more informally.

Scratching their groins furiously, the couple kissed. Then Maldemerde grabbed Binny and kissed her, squeezing one breast with a pudgy hand like a grapefruit freak turned loose in a citrus grove. Mister Jewish and Chief Purser Yenta bussed her more conventionally. And then it was my turn.

Binny’s lower torso arched like a catcher’s mitt forming a pocket as she received me. With only the skimpy bikini top between my bare chest and her lavish breasts, I felt the full heat of her erect nipples and the pliant softness of the flesh surrounding them. Her mouth was a warm cupboard with the door invitingly ajar and snacks of spicy tongue on which to nibble. I forgot the others were watching us and gave myself up to the sensations which promised even greater thrills to come.

But when the long kiss was finally over, Binny couldn’t wait to scratch her crotch again, and that brought me back to reality. What ever it was that was going around, she had it. And if it was venereal, as Quotabusta suspected, tempting as the MENSA siren was, I didn’t want to catch it.

“Your cabin, or mine?” she whispered in a voice too low for the others to hear.

I was saved from having to answer by the loud, clear, unmistakable sound of a pistol shot ringing out. Startled, we all looked at each other. There was the crack of a second shot.

Somebody meant business!

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mister Jewish was the first to react. He left the Captain’s cabin quickly and headed down the deck in the direction from which the shots had come. Chief Purser Yenta and I tied for second place behind him. A third shot brought the three of us to a halt outside the swinging doors to the card salon.

We entered cautiously, alert to the possibility of any more bullets flying around. At the rear, the bartender was crouched behind the bar, his nose resting on it, his eyes popping, the rest of him hidden. Two men were standing flat against opposite walls, facing each other and trembling, out of the immediate action. A third man was scampering back and forth, holding up a card table defensively, as if trying to shield himself with it. The fourth man, the one with the revolver, was trying to draw a bead on him.

Captain Maldemerde slithered in behind us, making sure the two officers and myself were between him and the man with the gun. Click-click. Yenta, comprehending the cowardly maneuver, looked at me and raised a contemptuous eyebrow. Like myself, he had recognized the four men and formed a rough opinion of the situation.

Bridge is a serious game. Those who play it take it seriously. Very seriously. Just how seriously may be gauged by the tableau involving East, West, South, and North which greeted us.

East was stammering that the hand had been made by default because the opposition had aborted it by pulling a gun. West kept moaning that he was dummy and that the cards he’d laid down had insured an over-trick. South, wielding the bridge table, was shouting and pleading at the same time, babbling something about the need to get the lead in his hand. And North, still holding his cards fanned out in his left hand, still aiming the revolver at South with his right, was screaming “YOU TRUMPED MY ACE!” over and over again.

A serious game, bridge. . . .

Mister Jewish tiptoed up behind North just as he squeezed the trigger again. He grabbed North’s arm and the shot went wild, putting a hole in the muraled ceiling. The Captain panicked—-Click-click--and fell to his knees behind Yenta. Mister Jewish managed to wrestle the gun away from North.

With North disarmed, the Captain managed a remarkably speedy recovery. “Gentlemen! What is the meaning of this?” Click-click.

East, West, South, and North all began speaking at once.

“Silence!” the Captain roared. “One at a time,” he added. “Clockwise!” Click-click. “Starting with the dealer.”

“I dealt and opened with one heart,” East said. “South passed. West jumped to two no-trump. North passed. I bid four hearts. North, doubled. I redoubled. South led a diamond and West laid down the dummy.”

“Declarer led a low spade from dummy at the fourth trick,” South picked up the narration. “North put up the ace.”

“Declarer followed suit,” West interjected.

“And this nincompoop—!” North pointed a trembling finger at South. —“ TRUMPED MY ACE!”

“The only way to set them was to get the lead in my hand!” South insisted.

“By trumping your partner’s ace? Brilliant!” North snorted sarcastically. “Any novice knows better than that!” He turned to Maldemerde. “Captain, do you play bridge?” he asked.

“I was a member of the championship team of the Trans-Atlantic Bridge Conference three years running!” the Captain boasted. He thought a moment. “There’s only one way to settle this matter,” he decided. “Put down that table,” he ordered South. “We’re going to replay the hand.” Click-click.

North, South, East, and West arranged themselves around the table. Following the Captain’s instructions, they laid their hands out in front of them with the pasteboards face up. “Now play out the rubber just the way you did before,” the Captain ordered. “As far as it went,” he added, studying the cards.

At the fourth trick, Maldemerde evaluated the cards in the center of the table carefully. Then he restudied the hands, pulling at his jowls thoughtfully. Finally he nodded to himself. Click-click. “And you trumped?” he asked South in a flat voice. Click-click.

“To get the lead in my hand. Yes.”

“Mister Jewish, hand me the revolver.” Click-click. Mister Jewish gave it to him. Captain Maldemerde checked to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber. Then he handed the weapon to North. “Finish the job,” he told him.

Mister Jewish grabbed the gun back from North before he could comply. “Captain Maldemerde—-!” he protested.

“Justifiable homicide!” Click-click.

“But, sir--!”

“No jury in the world would convict him.” Click-click.

“Captain, I don’t think-—-”

“Do you play bridge, Mister?” Click-click.

“No, sir, but—”

“Then don’t interfere, Number One.” Click-click. “A man who trumps his partners ace in such a situation deserves to die!” Click-click. “Return the gun. That’s an order!” Click-click.

South, however, bolted the room before Mister Jewish could comply. He darted through the swinging doors. Almost immediately, they swung back the other way and Chief Engineer Gorilla came running up to Captain Maldemerde.

“Captain!” The Chief Engineer’s voice was filled with urgency, but he spoke in a low tone, not wanting to be overheard and cause alarm among the passengers present. “Someone has wrecked the fresh water converter.”

“WRECKED THE FRESH WATER CONVERTER!” the Captain screamed at the top of his lungs. “What will we do for water?” he wailed. Click-click.

“Get‘ hold of yourself, sir.” Mister Jewish tried to hide his disgust. “We’re only two days out of Rio. We can have it repaired there.”

“Afraid not,” Gorilla told him. “There’s a hole in the tank two feet wide. Also the valves are cracked and the gears have been smashed.”

“What about the fresh water reserve tanks?” Mister Jewish asked practically. “They should see us through to Rio.”

“Negative,” Gorilla answered. “The Captain said they were slowing us down and ordered them jettisoned. I tried to tell him their weight was a negligible speed factor, but he insisted they be cut loose.”

"We’ll all die of thirst!” the Captain moaned. Click-click.

“Not in two days, we won’t,” Mister Jewish reassured him. “We’ll just wire ahead to Rio for a new unit and arrange for immediate installation. It will cost extra, but there’s no other way. With luck we can have it working before the passengers get back on board from their sightseeing. And meanwhile, we’ll ration whatever water we can melt down from the ice in the refrigeration units. Salt water will have to do for the swimming pools and washing.”

“Ration?” The Captain thought a moment and calmed down. “No rations for the crew,” he decided. Click-click. “Of course there will be full rations for myself and the senior officers,” he added. Click-click.

“If the men can’t have water, then I won’t drink any!” Mister Jewish declared staunchly.

“Suit yourself, Number One. If you don’t wish to avail yourself of the privileges of rank, I won’t force you. But the welfare of this vessel is dependent on the welfare of its master, and to function at peak efficiency, I consider it necessary to shave and bathe in the morning with fresh water. Also, I will not suffer a toilet flushed with sea-water!” Click-click.

“The toilets!” Gorilla’s face fell. “I’d forgotten about them. We can’t pump sea-water to them. It would clog the pipes. The plumbing of the entire ship would be stuffed up in no time!”

“I want fresh water to flush my toilet!” the Captain insisted. “That’s an order, Mister!” Click-click.

“I guess I can rig something up for you, sir. But what about the other toilets aboard? Nobody will be able to flush them.”

“Can you fix something for the crew’s head, too, Gorilla?” Mister Jewish wanted to know.

“Mister Jewish!” the Captain roared. Click-click. “You will not pamper the men in your usual bleeding-heart manner! The first concern is the passengers! Let the crew relieve themselves over the side!” Click- click.

“What about the men below decks, Captain?” Gorilla asked. “If the crew goes over the side, the propellors may suck it in and spew it all over the engine gang.”

“Now hear this, Mister Gorilla! And pass it on to the engine gang! If that should happen, here are my orders: If the crew shits, wear it!” Click-click.

“I wasn’t pampering the crew,” Mister Jewish interrupted, returning to his original idea. “The thing is, sir, there are twenty-four toilets in each of the four heads used by the crew. If Gorilla can temporarily fix them up, we can put three of the four at the disposal of the passengers. That would help solve the problem between here and Rio.”

“This is supposed to be a luxury cruise, Mister.” Click-click. “These passengers have booked private johns.”

“We have no choice, sir. And it’s only temporary.”

“Very well then. But put all four at the disposal of the passengers. There’s no reason to coddle the crew.” Click-click.

“Yes, there is, sir. We can’t risk the sanitation problem. It could endanger the health of everybody aboard. Ask Dr. Quotabusta if you think I’m being an alarmist, sir.”

“I’ll do that, Mister!” Click-click. The Captain turned on his heel and left.

“I’d better roust out my plumbers and get to work.” Chief Engineer Gorilla also departed.

I strolled up the deck with Mister Jewish. “Do you have any idea who could have sabotaged the converter?” I asked him after we’d walked in silence for awhile.

“Somebody familiar with the operation of a luxury liner. That’s for sure. I don’t know why, but someone is trying to foul up this cruise.”

I knew why. The race. But Mister Jewish obviously was in the dark about that. I was tempted to fill him in, but for the time being I decided against it. “Who would have access to the converter?” I wondered aloud.

“Access is simple. There’s no way of locking up a unit that large. The question is, who would have the mechanical knowhow to wreck it? And why? Somebody’s trying to slow up the Lascivia and keep us from meeting our schedule. You know something, Mr. Victor?” He looked at me solemnly. “I’ve never been convinced that the death of the radio operator was an accident.”

“Why not?”

“He was a knowledgeable technician. He knew his business. I just can’t imagine him being careless enough to electrocute himself that way. No. Someone on board is out to wreck this cruise. And if I’m right, they’ll go to any lengths to do it. That scares me, Mr. Victor! If they won’t stop at murder, they won’t stop at anything!”

We’d reached the radio shack. Mister Jewish excused himself and went inside to wire ahead to Rio. I went down to my cabin to dress for dinner.

After dinner, I went down to the engine room and spoke with Chief Engineer Gorilla. Then I went up on deck and sat there for awhile, mulling over the situation. The timing of the sabotage of the converter, as nearly as Chief Engineer Gorilla had been able to pinpoint it, had coincided with the divorce ceremony in the Captain’s cabin. That ruled out the Stanfords, Yenta, and Mister Jewish as suspects. But it still left me with a list of possible saboteurs half a mile long.

I was stretched out on a chaise longue overlooking the Lascivia’s two large, heated outdoor swimming pools. Between them was a giant-size trampoline. It was about midnight when the four girls appeared. I was hidden above them in the shadows and they didn’t see me. All of them were wearing bikinis, all were well-built, and all had obviously been drinking.

They frolicked in the pool, unaware that I was watching them. Perhaps a half-hour passed. Then one of the girls, a deeply tanned beauty with long bronze- red hair, slipped out of her bikini. “It’s skinny-dipping time!” she announced. Her three companions—a slender brunette with short-cropped hair and a small, uptilted bosom; a short, silver-blonde with plump, jiggly breasts and hips; and a Junoesque brownette with long, tapered legs and a derriere like twin basketballs — also shed their bikinis.

I kept watching as they dived and swam nude in the pool, obviously higher than four kites. They sure were a sexy quartet! And their sexiness increased when they took to the trampoline.

The Amazonian brownette was the first to try it. She bounced a low bounce and squealed with delight. The other three, their naked bodies shining with droplets of water in the moonlight, joined her and started jumping and laughing and bouncing all over the trampoline. After a few moments of this, the petite blonde organized a contest, the object of which was to see who could bounce the highest.

It soon became obvious that the slim, dark-haired girl was the champion. She rose higher and higher with each impact, leaving the others behind. Finally her resiliency carried her so high that I found my face looking into hers as she soared past. She cupped her small bosom with her hands and flounced it at me flirtatiously as she descended. The breasts may have been small, but the nipples were long and sharp as rifle bullets. The memory of their bright redness stayed with me after she’d fallen away.

“There’s a man up there watching us,” she told the other three as she bounced expertly to a full-stop land- mg.

“A man!” the blonde exclaimed. “That’s just what I need!”

“He’s not playing cards, I hope,” the statuesque brownette said.

“Not all men are bridge nuts like our husbands!” the tawny redhead told her.

“If they were,” the blonde sighed, “there wouldn’t be any overpopulation problem.”

“Like there wouldn’t be any population at all,” the sharp-nippled brunette declared.

“Because bridge players have no time for sex!” the redhead summed up. “Come down here and join us!” she called to me.

Why not? I went down to them.

“He’s all dressed!” The blonde was disappointed.

“In dinner clothes.” The redhead frowned.

“Into the pool with him!” The Amazon led the charge.

They swarmed over me, eight breasts pummeling me from all sides. I was enveloped in perfumed flesh. They lifted me off my feet and dumped me in the pool.

When, bedraggled and sopping wet, I fished myself out, they descended on me again. They pulled the clothes from my body and tossed them in the water. I stood there completely nude, the spotlight from the diving board tower illuminating my torso.

“Not bad,” the brunette judged. “What’s your name?” she asked.

I told her.

“I’m Mrs. West.” The brunette’s fingertip pushed one of her long nipples by way of identification. The nipple popped right out again. . . . So did my eyes! . . . “This is Mrs. South.” She introduced the blonde with the jiggling, soft pink aureoles. “Mrs. East.” She pointed to the tawny redhead. “And that’s Mrs. North.” She pointed to the Amazon who was busy scratching the area above her shapely but somewhat heavy thighs.

I noticed then that all the girls were scratching their groins. I wondered if Dr. Quotabusta knew just how far this malady was spreading. I also wondered if it was being spread by sex.

“I think I’ve met your husbands,” I told them.

“I wish I’d never met mine!” the blonde Mrs. South said bitterly. “Damn bridge player!”

“They’re all the same,” agreed Mrs. West, moodily flicking her long nipples. “They’d rather play bridge than play with us!”

“You can say that again,” the mammoth-breasted Mrs. North sighed. “Like last night. It was four a.m. when Wilbur finally got into bed after his bridge game. And then he turned on his side facing away from me. I cuddled up to him and pushed my breast against his ribs.” She held up one of her tremendous breasts and thrust it forward to demonstrate. “No response. So I pushed up on my elbow until I was over him, and I shoved it in his mouth.” Again she demonstrated with an appropriate movement. (For a moment I could sympathize with poor Wilbur; a man could choke to death!) “Still he pretends he’s sleeping. So I worked my leg between his, and I got hold of his hand and put it here and moved it around with my own hand.” Mrs. North’s hand moved over her mound and into the cleft.

The sight of her hand dipping into that large, juicy area inspired me.

“Oh, my!” Mrs. South, the blonde, pointed admiringly.

Mrs. North also looked on with pleasure. She was panting a bit, and her hand remained between her legs as she continued her story. “After rubbing against him for awhile and trying to get him hot, I was in a dither. So, finally, in my sultriest little girl voice, I said ‘Wilbur, darling, don’t you want to play with me?’ ”

“He said ‘All right, we’ll play.’ And he turned on the light, picked up this deck of cards from the night table, and began shuffling. ‘You cut. I’ll deal,’ he said.”

“Bridge players!” The redhead snorted.

“I wondered where Wilbur got that bump on his forehead,” Mrs. South murmured.

“I hit him with the lamp,” Mrs. North admitted.

“Enough talk!” Mrs. East’s bronze torso rippled as she urged the others to pick me up off my feet and toss me onto the trampoline.

The impact bounced me about a foot into the air. The girls scrambled onto the contraption. I came down on top of Mrs. South and the petite blonde squealed with delight as my tumescent organ skidded off the triangle of curls covering her mound.

Mrs. North raked my rear end with sharp nails. I pulled her hair. Mrs. West came to her rescue, biting at the matting of hair covering the nipple on my chest. I jumped hard to get away from them.

I rose four or five feet in the air and as I descended toward the trampoline again, Mrs. South bounced up so that we collided in midair. With the blonde’s legs wrapped around me, I landed only to have Mrs. North embrace us both and spring so that the three of us went flying back up in the air in a tangle of hot, bouncing breasts, eagerly oiled vaginas, and my own hard, thrusting penis. The blonde was using it like a stunt pilot pulling back on a joystick, while Mrs. North was smothering me with her large breasts and whooping with excitement.

As we hit the trampoline again, the other two girls also fell on us. I found one of Mrs. West’s long, sharp nipples in my mouth, and Mrs. East rode up and down one of my outstretched legs like a Valkyrie, her red hair streaming behind her like tongues of flame. The five of us bounced back and forth over the surface of the trampoline, not rising very high any more, but moving with a helluva lot of enthusiasm nevertheless. I was a bit mindful of the itch all over the place, but there was too much fun to be had.

Mrs. South had been displaced from proximity to my quivering blunderbuss, but she was so excited that she grabbed the mammoth breasts of Mrs. North. Mrs. West impaled herself on me as the group bounced. Her hand was hooked inside Mrs. East for balance and the tanned redhead, far from minding, was clutching at it with her honeybox.

Things became very confused, and it’s hard to sort them out in retrospect. Still, certain moments from that wild spree on the trampoline stand out in my mind. For instance . . .

Mrs. West and Mrs. South, heads buried between each others thighs, legs locked around each others necks, silver-blonde and jet-black curls vibrating with the movement of probing tongues as they bounced higher and higher toward the stars in a frenzy of oral ecstasy . . . Mrs. North enveloping me in her Amazonian flesh, her heavy breasts squeezing my neck, the hot aureoles still moist from the pool, probing inside my ears, her strong thighs forcing me deeper and deeper inside the tightly pulsating tunnel of her lust, while all the time Mrs. East was sprawled atop my back, the weight of her mound on the nape of my neck, her tongue laving my scrotum and inspiring me to pound harder and harder at Mrs. North . . . the four girls arranged around me roughly like a pinwheel as we bounced up and down in unison, gently at first, and then harder and faster with an erotic rhythm we all somehow managed to maintain; one of my outstretched hands deep inside Mrs. North, the other playing with the stiff red clitty of the bronzed Mrs. East; Mrs. South’s blonde head dipping and rising from the vicinity of my feet, her tongue licking the surface of my sword from the hilt to the crown, while her milky breasts with their wide, pink aureoles danced this way and that in the sea breeze; Mrs. West at my head, her thick brunette triangle sliding over my mouth in a rotary motion that made her squeal each time the rhythm brought her pulsing clitoris in contact with my gently nibbling teeth; the five of us slowly spinning as the trampoline shot us higher and higher . . .

Finally we arrived at the point where the five of us were a close-clutching, high-bouncing mass of flesh, all pressed together, burning with the mounting pressure of the need for release, mindless to the ups and downs of our soaring flight. My mouth was buried in Mrs. South’s silver-blonde muff, my tongue interred full-length, my lips fastened to her straining joy-button. The blonde was shuddering over the entire surface of her small body, her head was thrown back and screaming with delight. She was holding onto Mrs. East’s breast with her right hand and squeezing one of Mrs. North’s outsized flesh-melons with her left. Suddenly her fulcrum spread wide over my face and the muscles tensed spasmodically and then were released in a long, drawn out convulsion. Mrs. South gave one final whoop and let go of everything. She fell away from the cluster of the rest of us, bounced a few times off the trampoline, and then came to rest. The petite blonde stayed there, all played out, exhausted.

Still the four of us kept bouncing. . . . Mrs. East, her bronze skin shiny with perspiration, had slipped when she impaled herself on me and I had made the entrance by the back door. The redhead didn’t seem to mind. Facing my feet as she straddled me, her mouth was fastened to the small, sharp-nippled breast of Mrs. West. Mrs. East’s own tawny breasts were being fondled and kissed by Mrs. North. I held Mrs. North by her shapely, oversized buttocks for support, and she maneuvered so that my hand knuckled its way into her hot, wet socket. Finally Mrs. East let go of everything else and started spinning on top of me, her legs and arms sticking straight up in the air, her stuffed derriere bearing down hard untill my very scrotum sack was sucked in by it. She screamed a scream of anal hysteria, and then her muscles relaxed and she, too, fell away, coming to rest beside the blonde on the trampoline and remaining there as our threesome bounced off it and shot up toward the sky once again.

Mrs. West took over her perch, the difference being that she came down right on target. The slender brunette was so agile during the bouncing that she was able to manipulate me with the muscles of her vagina. She was facing me, and those long nipples of hers stuck straight out like twin miniature penises. She leaned her head way forward and licked at Mrs. North’s gaping, juicy joybox as we rose and fell. Mrs. North was squeezing her own giant breasts and, every so often, probing my rear with her sharp-nailed fingers. With Mrs. North providing the weight, and Mrs. West directing our threesome with her athletic agility, we were soon bouncing very high indeed. And with each bounce, Mrs. West was squeezing me like a vise, causing me to turn inside her like a corkscrew. I felt myself swelling with the fluid of lust, growing larger and larger, thrusting deeper and deeper into that honeylined glove-finger. When Mrs. West yelled—“I’m coming! Whee-ee! I’m coming!”-—I could contain myself no longer. The release left me limp; there was no longer a staff for Mrs. West to cling to; she toppled from her perch and settled alongside the pair on the trampoline below.

Mrs. North and I bounced near them and then rose into the air again. The highly charged Amazon had wrapped herself around me and was trying in vain to force entry on me. No way! As we soared, I told her that as gently as I could.

“What do you mean?” she panted. “The other girls all got theirs! You’re not going to leave me hung up!”

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Premature ejaculator!” Mrs. North snarled at me.

“If that was premature, I’ll eat my hat!”

“How about a different menu? Since that’s all you’re capable of.”

“All right.” As we hit the trampoline, I tried to swivel around to meet her request. Because of this, however, the bounce caught me off balance and we lost our hold on each other. We sprang apart and soared separately.

“First my husband his goddam bridge! And now this!" Mrs. North wailed as she rose in a flight path paralleling my own.

She was quite a sight, and I felt a resurgence of desire as I watched her fly. Her heavy breasts, panting, preceded her like aerial balloons straining at their moorings. Her hips moved like quivering masses of sculpted Jello flung at the stars. Her legs strained, white thighs tensing the muscles more with frustrated passion than athletic intent. Her lush derriere was a bisected meteor streaking through the night and blurring with its own frenzy. Her hands, her fingers, were a flock of wild birds frantically trying to crowd into their own nest. Mrs. North was nothing less than a giant-sized Venus on the wings of lust.

I came to rest on the trampoline, a little distance from the other three girls. As Mrs. North bounced near me, I called to her. “Light somewhere, and I’ll give it a try.”

“Oh, yes!” She became so excited that she aborted her upward flight, twisted in midair, and came down hard on the trampoline some distance away from me. But instead of coming to rest, she shot up again — hard and fast; surprisingly so by comparison with the way the trampoline had been reacting all evening — almost as if she’d been shot from a cannon. She soared off at an angle, for all the world like a shell gone wild. She zoomed high up in the air, just clearing the tallest of the ship’s masts before she started her descent. Watching the parabola her Amazonian body was describing, I could see she wasn’t going to land back on the trampoline. Nor in one of the swimming pools. Nor on the Lascivia at all!

She disappeared into the night. There was a moment of silence. And then I heard it. A loud splash! Mrs. North had landed in the ocean!

The lookout on the bridge had heard it too, or perhaps dimly seen the body flying toward the ocean. Now he raised the most dread cry that can be heard at sea. “MAN OVERBOARD!”

Alarm bells sounded. The ship’s engines were suddenly silenced and then thrown into reverse. More bells, and then a voice over the P.A. system.

“MAN OVERBOARD! MAN OVERBOARD!”

The crew scampered to the railings. The passengers flocked from their staterooms. Soon everybody was out on deck. Everybody but the bridge players. Their game continued as usual, despite the cry of—

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

CHAPTER NINE

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

With the confusion mounting around us, the three ladies and I managed to scramble back into our clothes behind the backs of those crowding the rail. My formal get-up felt clammy, to say the least — cold, soggy and dripping, to be more accurate. Chief Purser Yenta, arriving on the scene, took note of it.

“A midnight dip, Mr. Victor?” He raised an eyebrow.

“In the good old F. Scott Fitzgerald tradition.” I refused to be chastened.

“This is not the fountain at the Plaza,” he pointed out.

“Has anybody informed Mr. North?” the bikini’d Mrs. West demanded, coming up to Yenta and scratching .

”‘No, Madam. Why should he be informed?”

“Because it’s his wife that’s gone over the side,” I told Yenta.

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

“Tell that sailor to stop shouting that!” Mrs. East snarled, scratching above her tanned thighs.

“It’s traditional, Madam.”

“It’s sexist!”

“Beg pardon, Madam?”

“It’s a woman overboard, not a man!”

“I believe the phraseology is all-encompassing. As in ‘mankind,’ it includes the female of the species.”

“That’s male chauvinist pig etymology!” Mrs. East scratched.

“Mr. North should be informed!” Mrs. South joined us, scratching.

“That’s what I said.” Mrs. West rubbed against a bulkhead.

“Why?” Mrs. East demanded, nails digging into her bikini bottoms.

“Because he’s her husband!”

“And that makes her his property? And a man should be made aware that his property is in danger?” Mrs. East snorted and scratched. “You’ve been brainwashed!”

“I still think -”

“I will go and inform Mr. North immediately.”

Yenta took the opportunity to cop out on the discussion. He headed down the deck toward the bridge salon.

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

“Discrimination!” Mrs. East kept insisting each time the cry was repeated.

A spotlight on the bridge was sweeping the water. The engines had stopped and everybody was very quiet as all eyes followed the beam, searching the inky sea for some trace of Mrs. North. Then, suddenly, there was a shout: “There he is!”

“There she is!” Mrs. East was furious.

“MAN OVERBOARD AHOY!”

“Think how she must be feeling, being robbed of her identity like this!” Mrs. East scratched and grumbled, grumbled and scratched.

“Ready the harpoon gun to shoot off a life jacket to him,” an offficer commanded. '

“Beg pardon, sir.” A sailor on the bridge was peering through binoculars. “I believe he’s already wearing a Mae West.”

“You see where sexism can lead!” Mrs. East took a deep breath and stopped scratching long enough to yell at the officer on the bridge. “That’s a woman! She’s not wearing a life jacket. Those are her breasts!”

“Breasts?” The officer took the binoculars and looked for himself. “They’re awfully large for—By Jove, so they are! I’ve never seen a pair as buoyant as those before!” He kept staring.

“They’re going to lower a boat.” Yenta returned with the information.

“Where is Mr. North?” Mrs. West and Mrs. South asked, scratching in unison.

“He’s just finishing the rubber.”

“Did you tell him his wife was drowning?”

“Yes, madam, I did.”

“And?”

“He’s the declarer, madam. Four hearts vulnerable.”

“Here he comes now.” I spotted Mr. North approaching.

“Isn’t it awful?” Mrs. West greeted him, scratching.

“Damn right! I went down one trick!”

“She was over the side before we even realized what was happening.”

“I ducked in dummy when I should have ruffed.”

“Look!” Mrs. South pointed excitedly. “The boat’s reached her.”

“I should have figured from the bidding that West had the king of diamonds.”

“They’ve got her! They’re pulling her into the boat!”

“She’s nude,” Yenta noticed.

“They’re starting back. The boat officer is giving her artificial respiration. . . . Now he’s giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at the same time.”

“Are you sure that’s what he’s doing?” Mrs. West panted, scratching.

“West bid and East passed. I should have known about that damn king!”

“Some guys have all the luck!” The officer on the bridge refocused his binoculars as the longboat pulled up beside the Lascivia.

There was an awkward moment of disengagement, and then Mrs. North was helped aboard. Sobbing, the naked Amazon flung herself into her husband’s arms.

“It was just awful!” she wailed.

“I know.” Mr. North sobbed back. “If only I’d ruffed!”

“I almost died!”

“That’s how I felt when he came up with that diamond king!”

“If you’ll take the lady to your cabin, sir, and-— umm—get her some dry clothes,” Yenta suggested diplomatically, “I’ll have Dr. Quotabusta come down and give her a sedative. She’s been through a harrowing experience.”

“Harrowing!” Mrs. North echoed.

“Harrowing!” Mr. North agreed. “That hand should have been ours!” He led his wife down the deck toward their cabin.

“Stay with me, darling,” she pleaded, scratching.

“Of course I will. I’m dummy now. I wouldn’t think of leaving you before the next rubber.” They turned the corner of the deck and vanished from sight.

The passengers on deck dispersed and went back to their staterooms. The off-duty crew members also returned to their quarters. The engines started up again, the Lascivia banked thirty degrees, and continued on its previous course.

But the damage had been done. The time the Captain had been trying to make up in the race against the Queen William had been lost in the search for and recovery of Mrs. North. Not only had we had to backtrack, not only had we lost the momentum we’d had, but also we’d missed out on the current helping us along on the last leg of our journey to Rio.

The result was that we reached Rio a full day behind schedule. Fortunately, the new fresh water converter was already on the dock awaiting our arrival. Even as the passengers were disembarking for their full day ashore in the most glamorous city in South America, cranes were lifting the giant machine aboard.

I, too, went ashore, but I returned early. Mister Jewish was the officer on watch when I came back on board. “Mr. Victor,” he greeted me, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something. You were there when Mrs. North went over the side. Could you tell me exactly what happened?”

“She hit the trampoline and took an unusually high bounce. It shot her off at an angle and she went into the drink. As far as I could tell, that’s all there was to it

“That’s not all,” Mister Jewish insisted. “That trampoline was very carefully designed and engineered. Every safety precaution was taken. The sort of bounce you’ve described is supposed to be impossible the way it’s built.”

“Accidents happen.” I shrugged.

Mister Jewish spotted Chief Engineer Gorilla walking up the gangplank, his albino features shining in the Rio moonlight. He called to the hairless officer to join us. “We’ll see if accidents happen,” Mister Jewish told me. He led the way to the trampoline. “Do you remember where she hit before she went overboard?” he asked me when we got there.

“Roughly about there.” I pointed.

The two officers eased themselves onto the trampoline. Gorilla leaned on his fingertips and moved in a widening circle, testing the resiliency of the area I’d indicated. Finally he zeroed in on one spot and struck it two or three times with his fist. “This must be where she hit,” he told Mister Jewish.

Number One took a quarter from his pocket and dropped it on the trampoline. It bounced. Then he dropped it where Gorilla indicated. The coin bounced three times as high and shot off at an angle, clearing the edge of the trampoline by about six feet. “A flaw in the rubber?” Mister Jewish asked Gorilla.

“Nope.” Gorilla had been studying the material. “There’s something underneath. I’ll have a look.” He got off the trampoline and crawled beneath it. A few moments later he emerged, dragging something behind him.

It was a coiled spring embedded in a block of concrete. It stood about two feet high with the spring at a twenty degree angle to the base. Gorilla showed us how it worked.

“See this hair trigger?” He pointed it out. “The way it’s balanced, the slightest weight —like that quarter you dropped before—will set off a response. And a heavy weight hitting it, like a human body, would make it spring back with the force of a cannon recoil. This is what did it all right.”

“Another deliberate act of sabotage!” Mister Jewish said. “What next?” He looked very worried.

But there were no further incidents during the next leg of the cruise. The epidemic of groin-itch continued, and Dr. Quotabusta still feared the venereal worst, but otherwise all was tranquil. Calm prevailed as we sailed down the coast from Rio, through the Strait of Magellan, and then up the Chilean peninsula to Valparaiso.

It wasn’t until we were halfway to our next port-of-call, Tahiti, that this serenity became threatened. Like the H.M.S. Bounty of old, we were asea in the doldrums, having just passed far to the north of Easter Island. We’d been at sea for twenty-four days. New York, our port of embarkation, had faded into memory. In every direction, the vista of the sea merged with the horizon. Land itself was seemingly becoming no more than a memory.

Evening. I’d just finished dinner and was strolling past the radio shack. Loud voices came from inside. I paused to eavesdrop. First I heard Mister Jewish, and then—Click-click.

The argument concerned a distress signal that had been received from a ship foundering in a hurricane. Mister Jewish, insisting that the endangered vessel was only about ten degrees off the Lascivia’s course, wanted to go to its rescue. Captain Maldemerde, pointing out that on her current heading the Lascivia would miss the storm by fifty miles, was firmly reluctant to endanger the lives of his passengers and the safety of his vessel by responding to the S.O.S. Ensign Mayday, the radio operator, was caught in the middle of the argument.

Click-click. “hat ship sent out that distress signal, Mister?” the Captain asked him.

“The Queen William, sir.”

“That settles it.” Captain Maldemerde lowered his voice and grinned an exceedingly nasty grin. “I’m sure as hell not going to risk this vessel to help Grabass!” Click-click.

“Sir! Regardless of personal feelings about Captain Grabass—” Mister Jewish protested.

“A hurricane, eh!” Click-click. The Captain chortled. “That should slow him down considerably!” Click-click. “Might even knock him out of the race altogether,” he mused to himself.

“ ‘Race,’ Captain?” Mister Jewish picked it up.

“What, Mister?” Click-click.

“You mentioned a race, sir.”

“You’re hearing things, Mister.” Click-click.

“But, sir, you said ‘race’! I distinctly-—-”

“We will not go to the aid of the Queen William! We will avoid the hurricane! We will not alter our course!” Click-click. “Those are my orders, Mister Jewish!” Click-click. The Captain left.

“Did you hear him say something about a race?” Mister Jewish asked Ensign Mayday.

Ensign Mayday didn’t reply.

Mister Jewish sighed to himself, picked up the intercom and called the wheelhouse. “No alteration in course,” he told the helmsman. “And tell Gorilla to maintain speed. We’ll pass safely about fifty miles to the northwest of the storm.”

Continuing up the deck, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a break. It was the Lascivia’s chance to catch up in the race, perhaps even to forge ahead. The Queen William might even sink in the hurricane. But I wasn’t quite callous enough to exult over that possibility.

“Hello there, you licorice louse!” The voice broke into my thoughts.

I peered into the shadows near one of the bulkheads and saw Blaze Buxbocks seated alone in a deck chair there. Her red hair flowed down over the top of the mini cocktail dress she was wearing. The top seemed to consist of only two white silk straps about an inch and a half wide. Her lusciously rounded breasts overflowed them on either side.

“You mean ‘lecherous,’ ” I returned her greeting.

“You’ve got it. I shouldn’t even be talking to you after the way you depraved with that woman at the dinner table.” Her cigarette glowed in the shadows.

I remembered then that I’d had virtually no contact with Blaze since that first night out when Sister Stella had assailed me during dinner. I’d changed my seat after that, but still Blaze had been avoiding me. She wasn’t avoiding me now, though. I wondered what had lowered her resistance. Then the wind shifted slightly and I sniffed the answer. “You’re smoking pot,” I realized.

“Valparaiso Gold. Picked it up back in Chile. Want a huff?” She held the joint out to me.

I took it and inhaled deeply. It was very good grass. I felt the wrinkles inside my head smoothing out.

We passed the joint back and forth for awhile in silence. When it was down to nail scrapings, Blaze tamped it out neatly and flipped it over the side. Then she lit another one. Time drifted by . . .

“I wonder where the turds go at night,” she drawled lazily.

I translated automatically. “You mean the seagulls?”

“The wingy thingies you see all day, but never after toilet when the sun goes down. I thought they were crows.”

“They’re seagulls.” I took a deep puff and the ocean splashed lavender.

“Then why do they call it a ‘Crow’s Nest’?” She pointed to the top of the tall mast looming a few feet away. “The thing over there. On top of that phallic thimble.”

“Tradition.”

“It’s because those turds are crows!” she insisted.

“Not seagulls, crows!”

“You’re absolutely right.” I passed her the roach.

“And that must be where they nest at night,” she deduced. “They seek refuse from the cold night air there.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you’re not pure!”

“No,” I admitted.

“Well, I’m going to cook for myself.” Blaze got to her feet and strode over to the base of the mast.

“Hey! Wait a minute! I don’t think you should-—”

Too late. She had already started up the rope ladder leading to the top of the mast. A gentle sea breeze lifted her miniskirt to reveal strong, bare thighs and neatly filled bikini panties. About a quarter of the way up she paused, resting her ample breasts on one of the rungs of the rop ladder and called down to me. “Come on! You could use some exorcise! Don’t be chicken!”