That's what my father warned me, long before I encountered any of that mellifluous and mendacious breed. Let's do the Jovian moons again, my wife, Melisa, suggested more than once with genuine enthusiasm. Did I listen to my father? Did I pay any attention to my wife? No ... not me...I was the one who wanted to see the galaxy. I had to visit the offices of CosmoTours, Inc.
It began innocently enough. I was merely browsing on my lunch hour, my vacation still months away. Yet the moment I entered that room with its carpet of living tess grass, its soothing and no doubt hypnotic alien chimes, those subtle breezes wafting from hidden vents, filling the air with exotic scents and the promise of strange adventures in stranger climes, I was completely hooked.
I've since learned that the human sexual differential is irrelevant when applied to Spargans, that they reproduce by a means so convoluted and perverse that it could outrage a third level neo-decadent. Yet the Spargan who ushered me to a chair, a chair which soon began to knead my deltoids in all the right places, had taken on the appearance and demeanor of a woman ... a human woman ... and a damn attractive one at that! A cascade of auburn tresses shimmering with star bursts spilled across her shoulders. Large amber eyes, both impish and alluring, the kind of eyes that seemed to understand your secret dreams, pinned me like a bug. A voice of pure honey filtered through angels' wings twined about me like velvet bailing wire. And once I was hooked, this pseudo-vamp had little trouble reeling me in.
I explained to her/it/him that I didn't have much to spend, nothing that special in mind. Perhaps a weekend jaunt to Sirius VII. Or a few days in the Centauri System, where there was an Earth-type world just emerging from the late Triassic, complete with airborne dinosaurs and an immense primeval forest. By the time my lunch hour was over, I discovered that I'd signed up for what was billed as the Two-Week Galactic Spree. I was actually beaming on my way back to the office, congratulating myself on the deal I'd made. And that evening Melisa beamed too, forgetting the Jovian moons completely as she leafed through the brochures I'd been given. Each time she turned a page a scenic hologram would spring into view, each successive landscape more breathtaking than the last, each accompanied by a Spargan narration that sent shivers of anticipation up and down my well-kneaded spine.
It wasn't that those brochures lied about anything.
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