“I see.” The guard nodded. “A moment while I introduce you. I hope your display will entertain his Slimefullness—he has been purple-gray all evening with boredom.”
“Our display?” Cassie asked, but the guard had already touched a button, which caused the vast, round, gold doors to roll open smoothly. As he did, he bellowed at the top of his lungs,
“Announcing Mistress Cassandra of Yonnie Six, here to audition for his Great Slimefullness, Xempi Gozeriam, for the position of actor.”
“Is that so?” a deep, burbling voice remarked, echoing from the end of the enormous, shadowy room beyond the golden doors. The voice was so deep Cassie could feel it in the soles of her feet. “Send her in,” it continued. “We have not had a Yonnite to answer our add in many cycles and we wish to look upon her.”
The butterflies in Cassie’s stomach were doing loop-the-loops and barrel-rolls by this time but there was nothing to do but lift her head high and march into the throne room of the palace with Stone in tow.
They seemed to walk forever but at last the end of the huge room was in sight. It was like walking into a theater, Cassie thought, and finally getting to the stage. In fact, there was a real stage and on it was a rectangular platform draped in red velvet. Lying on the velvet drape was a creature that looked like an enormous slug.
Kat said he looked like Jabba the Hutt but I think that’s an insult to Jabba, Cassie thought, eyeing the slug-person.
Xempi Gozeriam was about the same size as an elephant, which was to say enormous. He had pale, wrinkled skin, narrow slitted eyes, and a flat, frog-like face. Two tiny sets of arms that looked no bigger than a child’s were folded across his massive belly and five tiny feet dangled uselessly from his bulk on the side Cassie could see. She assumed there were five more on the other side, since Kat had told her the porn magnate had ten in total, but it didn’t look like he could use them to walk at all—he was too huge for them to support his massive, wrinkled bulk.
But the thing that really caught Cassie’s eye wasn’t his alien body but the film of slime that covered it. A thick, glistening layer coated Xempi Gozeriam’s entire slug-like body like a second skin. It shimmered in the dim light of the throne room and at the moment, it was a dull purplish-gray.
Surrounding the alien porn magnate were a bevy of beautiful alien women. All of them were dressed in the same kind of metal bikini Cassie was wearing, though their outfits were considerably more revealing since they had openings in the breasts which revealed their nipples. Wide slits in the crotches of their metal bikini bottoms put their pussies on display as well.
Wow—I’m so glad Kat didn’t put holes in my costume! Cassie thought. Each of the women was armed with a sharp metal spear and they stood around their slug-like lord with an air of casual menace. Cassie counted six of them.
But soon her attention was drawn back to Xempi Gozeriam himself, because he spoke to her once more in his throbbing, burbling bass voice which echoed in the immense, dimly lighted chamber.
“So you have come to us looking for employment, Yonnite Mistress?” he asked, staring at Cassie with his slitted yellow eyes.
“I have, uh, your Slimefullness,” Cassie said, hoping that was the right way to address him. “I have come about the opening for, um, Yonnite pornography. And I have brought my body-slave with me to help me perform it. Bow to his Greatness, Stone!”
She yanked on the leather leash attached to the collar around Stone’s neck and her partner dropped to his knees at once and bowed low.
“As my Mistress commands,” he murmured.
“We see…We see…” Xempi Gozeriam burbled. “Do you know, we generally must cast other actors for your Yonnite pornography because we do not often get true Yonnites here. They tend to have enough wealth of their own without performing for us, to earn more. Have you fallen on hard times, Mistress Cassandra?”
Cassie thought fast, remembering the cover story she and Stone had cooked up.
“My financial problems are not known on my own planet, your Greatness” she said respectfully. “And I would rather not go into detail about them here. Sufficient to say that I have a rival who is attempting to buy my best dream gas mine and I need capital in order to fend her off. If I go to a local bank, she will know that I am in trouble. But by earning the credit I need here, well…”
She let the sentence trail off, shrugging expressively.
“So you wish to earn without your rival being the wiser. A difficult problem indeed,” burbled Gozeriam. “But easily solved if your performance is to our liking.”