Captain Tkarro ran into the head, where Borodon was up on a stool to get at the sink. He asked,"Dumped the cat-pixie hostess creature somewhere?" The Captain went to the urinal and said,"For a moment. She's insufferable! She's in to everything and I cannot believe she's a 'representative' of the Tapponok! She's overly sexed and quite condescending." Borodon said,"Don't ask me! I don't have genitalia and shaped like a potato with little arms and legs. If you lot hadn't picked us up from that moon of Tartessos as it went flying off into intergalactic space... I'd be a frozen potato! I need to get back to RIF Engineering. If you'll excuse me?" Several minutes later, Dokka Tkarro ran into him again just outside the engineering bay. Borodon said,"You'd best steady yourself." Dokka asked,"Why? What could she have possibly have...done?" Dokka's voice choked off as he entered the bay. The Hostess exclaimed,"Pretty,eh? MUCH better than that awful GRAY color!" Dokka gasped,"SHE...SHE TURNED ENGINEERING PINK!" Borodon sighed,"It's more of a 'salmon' color than PINK, and it's not just RIF engineering...it's most of the ship!" Dokka choked out,"HOW? I told you NOT to leave that chair and to hold onto my hat! I thought that would keep you out of trouble!" She giggled,"Oh, it was no trouble at ALL! These are powered chairs, so I just steered it over to a control panel and changed the phase resonance of the Relative Inertial Frame frequency through the ship and POW--new color!" She beamed,"I LOVE this ship! It's SO frightenly primitive! It might fall apart or blow up at any moment! How does it not do that?" Captain Tkarro gritted his teeth and muttered,"Must just be our dumb luck!" She exclaimed,"Such a laughable design. It's like a ride from an amusement park floating in space! VERY exciting!" She giggled again. Acting Chief Engineer Perro growled,"Oh THAT is IT! I'M GONNA PERFORM AN INJURY!" Slicy-Dicey dug in and tried to push him back, saying,"No,no,NO! You mustn't strangle the little cat person thing from another planet!" He growled,"But it would be SO SATISFYING!" Borodon asked,"What can we do?" Dokka said,"Rose told me she was working on a special weapon for this problem. This is going to give us all strokes! Someone save me from this!" Out in the hall, Toxic sang out,"Here I come to save the day!" She skidded to a stop inside the doorway and exclaimed,"TAH-DA! WHY would a day need saving anyway? Isn't like a place...except in time? I'm hopped up on sugar and been briefed! SEE? I'm wearing briefs!" Dokka covered his face after seeing her fake cat-ears and growled,"Aw,GAWD! Forget saving me--just SHOOT ME!" He blindly reached for his hat, and wished he had ended up where ever Narchi and Neblae had ended up, going through the mysterious portal on Hel, the wandering moon of Tartessos. Hostess said,"Here you go, Captain Tkarro, your hat!" He took it and jammed it low over his brow. Toxic ran over and exclaimed,"OHMYGOD! You are So cute! You are SO short! How do you keep your face out of other people's BUTTS? I mean you're around giant sized people--to you everyone else IS gigantic, so in elevators and stuff, how do you prevent it? Unless you like smelling other people's butts? I'm not into that kind of shaking hands. That is how dogs shake hands, you know. Do you like people pulling on your ears?" Hostess's mouth opened as she tried futilely to keep up with Toxic. Dokka inserted when Toxic took a breath,"Hostess, go with this woman! She'll complete your tour! I'm needed on the bridge!" He turned to the other stunned looking in Engineering. "Perro, you have that inspection in the circuit bay! Borodon, you have those upgrades to the Borodon suits in the mech bay! Slicey, you have to...do that thing on deck two...that I can't remember!" As Slicey and the Captain left, he said to her,"Rose plays dirty!" Slicey nodded,"She plays to win!" --TO BE CONTINUED!--