The Executrix slammed her plump but perfectly shaped body into the liftoff seat in the cross-orbit hopper with a bang,

"Jemil, get this toadhopping bag of radioactive ions to hell and gone out of here or I'll burn off your damned parturition nodes with a Tellurian spice ray! I need the cross-Galac terminal and I need it now!!"

The large round green gelatinous mass on the pilot's station chair unrolled itself and extended a receptor stalk in her general direction.

" Glaaa-sha—noop?"

"Never mind that, Nosy Parker!! Get the hell off this moonscape NOW!!"

The hopper duly lifted away from the dusty surface of Io and joined a merging orbit with a tiny decay factor built into it that would land it on the Jovian surface in the center of the entry port for the TransGalac Terminal, the only site in the local systemn with big enough shields to withstand the warp of a stardrive intialization vector without disintegrating.

She tossed her Titian locks angrily to one side as she pulled on the mandatory slip-field suit and readied herself for the transition to the starship. She was preoccupied with her concerns, and failed to notice the slight, pigtailed form of a junior version of herself, similarly garbed, slipping from the small galley pod and behind the frame of the transition portal.