The knob turned easily and the door opened.
“Huh—no lock?” Cassie looked up at her partner who shrugged. Well, all the better for them. It certainly made breaking into the lab easier when they didn’t have to do any actual “breaking in.”
They both walked in but as the door swung shut behind them, it emitted a short, sharp beep!
Oh crap! Cassie looked around to see if anyone had seen them. Sure enough, a man in a long white coat came bustling out from a back room somewhere.
Well, he had a body like a man’s. But his head was that of an insect—something like a beetle crossed with an army ant with long, twitching antennae and big serrated mandibles that looked sharp enough to cut a hand off at the wrist.
But when the insect man spoke to them, his voice came out in perfectly modulated tones—it even seemed to have a slight British accent.
“Yes, hello?” the insect man said to her. “What may I do for you?”
“Oh, er, hello,” Cassie began and then remembered she was supposed to be a demanding Yonnite Mistress. “I am here for a tour of the laboratory,” she said, lifting her chin high and staring the insect man directly in his bulging compound eyes.
“I’m very sorry but the laboratory is closed at this juncture,” the insect man said. “If you could possibly come back during daylight hours—”
“What?” Cassie exclaimed. “You’re denying my request? How dare you? Do you know who I am? I am Mistress Cassandra of Yonnite Six, the star of his Slimefullness’s latest hit vid, Forbidden One. He honored me at the private viewing tonight and told me I could go anywhere I wanted in the palace because he was so pleased with my work. And where I choose to go right now is here. And I want a tour!” she ended her rant.
“Yes, yes, of course, Mistress!” The insect man backed up, holding up his perfectly normal looking hands in a “don’t shoot” gesture. “Please forgive me, I had no idea you were a person of such importance.”
“Well, I am,” Cassie said, with a toss of her head. “So please begin the tour, Mr.…”
“Dr. Sslwx,” the insect man supplied helpfully.
Cassie frowned. “All right, er, Dr. Sisselwix,” (which was as close as she could come to pronouncing his weird alien name) “Please proceed with the tour.”
“Of course, Mistress Cassandra. Right this way. I’ll be happy to show you some of our more interesting plants and tell you their uses.” The insect doctor quickly and led her to the far side of the lab. “This, is the cattellis laxis,” he began, pointing to a patch of furry gray moss that was growing on a damp stone enclosed in a lighted terrarium.
“I see. And what does it do?” Cassie asked.
“In this form—nothing,” Dr. Sslwx said. “However, if you macerate it with sugar oils from the tempa tree of Tyronious Five, it creates a serum that, when applied to the engorged male shaft of most any species, causes insatiable pain and itching.”
“Pain and itching?” Cassie frowned. “That certainly doesn’t sound very sexy!”
“It is when you consider that only the saliva of a female can ease the symptoms,” the insect doctor remarked. “In fact, it is often used in concert with the extract of this plant—succubalis maxalis.” He pointed to a terrarium across from the one with the moss. This one contained what looked like multicolored grass.
“Really? What does that one do?” Cassie asked.
“It gives females an endless thirst for male seed,” Dr. Sslwx informed her. “I’m sure you can see that if you apply the serum from the cattellis laxis to a male’s shaft and then give a female a drink of liquid containing extract of the succubalis maxalis, erotic activities are almost guaranteed to be the result.”
“I get it,” Cassie said dryly. “Put those together and you’ve got the makings of endless blow-job porn.”
“Well, to put it crudely, yes.” The insect doctor nodded his grotesque head, his antennae twitching in agreement. “But these are very common species. If you’d like to come deeper into the lab, I can show you some truly interesting and exotic varieties I’ve been working with recently.”
Cassie followed him further into the lab, looking with genuine interest at all the different species of plants. Near the very back of the lab, they entered a kind of greenhouse with long rows of exotic looking flora, all of them drinking in the pink sunlight of Bachanalius’s red giant sun.
“Now, here we have some experimental plants that his Slimefullness has recently acquired for our lab,” Dr. Sslwx informed her. “This one is a species of folum floxis.” He pointed to a three-foot high toadstool-looking plant, coated in a layer of thick, gelatinous slime. “It comes from his Slimefullness’s home planet,” he added. “Its secretions are excellent ingredients in all kinds of lubrication jellies.”