The battle raged furiously for five or six minutes. The members of the Fat Ladies' Mafia proved vicious fighters. Surprisingly, the man-thing pirate chief and his gang joined in against the rats. It was clear the rats were out-classed, as well as out-numbered.
Minnie escaped into a corner, trying desperately hard to imagine it was all a bad dream caused perhaps by eating at the Captain's table.
But she was definitely at the centre of it, no matter where she tried to run. Rats of every shape and size and shade of blue came in a never-ceasing flow, and were hewn down one by one by the expert markswomen of the F.L.M. One rat came close enough to rake Minnie's arm with one blue claw, and before she had time to think, she had bashed the alien creature over the head with her dicta-typer. It collapsed - the rat, not the dicta-typer - in a mess not terribly pleasant to look at. The dicta-typer itself had crumpled into a useless lump of metal and plastic.
"My dicta-typer!" cried Minnie in anguish, and joined into the battle with a fury that astounded her.
The dicta-typer was mauled, but with the fortune in jewels she had been offered earlier today, surely they could replace a measly writing device.
I've been corrupted by wealth already, she thought, as a rat collapsed beneath her ruined machine.
"Surround and conquer!" cried Annette, possibly some sort of battle cry. The Mafia Ladies closed around the remaining rats, using their own bulk to force them into the centre of the dance floor. The pirates dispatched the few rats that managed to escape the Fat Ladies.
It was over quickly after that. The last few rats were bound and taken to a far corner of the room to be roughed up by a couple of Mafia Ladies that hadn't quite worked out all their frustrations in the preceding battle. Minnie used her a strip torn from a table cloth to stop the bleeding on her raked hand, but all in all, there were few injuries on the victorious side.
The man-thing with the bug-head dispatched a last rat, and came to where Minnie stood, still clutching her ruined dicta-typer. "My lady," he said, and bowed deeply.
Minnie choked back the dryness in her throat. "You are the chief of the pirate vessel?" she said.
"I am, my lady," he said.
"Why do you keep addressing me as your lady?"
The alien thing looked as pensive as something with a visage that horrible could. He answered slowly. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"
He paused, and shook his head, as if trying to wake from a dream. "When I saw you, for the first time in my life, I saw a woman I could love utterly. When I saw you, I realized that unless you are with me, my life is worthless."
Minnie thought, oh great, I'm attractive to it.
"No," she said. "I don't believe in love at first sight. It's just a device used by writers to preclude the need to develop a realistic relationship between two characters."
The man-thing lifted off its head. Beneath was a human face, very handsome and surprisingly gentle, a man after all, and prone to the same annoying scrawniness as herself. He smiled in a charmingly bashful manner.
Minnie felt instantly feverish. "I'm in love," she said in a strangled voice, and fainted.
The Captain said morosely, "She's in charge now, is she," and genuflected from his litter.
XI
Minnie woke back into consciousness in the arms of the pirate chief. His helmet lay by her leg, looking not quite as disgusting to her as before.
He noticed where her eyes had strayed, and remarked, so quietly she had to strain to hear, "I wear it on raids. It strikes fear into the hearts of our victims. Vacationners are a cowardly and superstitious lot. It also amplifies my voice."
"Ah," said Minnie, a sigh more than anything."Ah," said the man, barely moving his lips, and they stared into each others' eyes.
Around the room, the Fat Ladies were getting restless. Minnie felt Annette's eyes on her, and braced herself for whatever was about to happen. It wouldn't be good, she decided.
"Speech!" cried Annette suddenly, and the call was taken up by the other Fat Ladies. Minnie looked to see who would make the oration, and found a hundred little piggy eyes staring directly at her.
"Me?" she whispered in a choked voice.
"Yes, dear," said Annette. "Your first official address to your future children."
Minnie made a coughing noise in the back of her throat and looked as though she might faint.
"Go on, dearie," said Annette. "You'll do just fine. They love you. You could say `gobbleshnortz' and they'd cheer."
Minnie swallowed, and glanced at the wreckage of her dicta-typer which, in its pitifully short life, had never served the purpose for which it had been made.
Maybe that's just the way of the world, she thought sadly, and drew herself up, realizing that with this speech, she could basically say good-bye to her hopes of a writing career. She steeled herself, and began.
"My friends," she said, "Well, maybe you're not really all my friends, because after all I hardly know any of you and the ones I do I've just met so I really can't say I actually know any of you either -"
She paused.
The hundred piggy eyes just stared. This was probably not what they expected from a victory address.
You're a writer, Minnie, she thought. Say something that suits the occasion.
Minnie Finster took a deep breath, and placed her hands on her small hips. "A table!" she called, and one was brought. A fat woman offered a cradle of interlocked fingers, and Minnie stepped up in a single confident movement to the tabletop.
"Oh, what's your name?" said Minnie to the pirate chief.
"Francis," he replied quietly, then added, "But I usually go by `Gunter the Grotesque.'"
"I think I have a plan that will satisfy everyone," she told him, and faced the Fat Ladies.
"Friends!" she began, with a new rush of confidence, "I have seen the power of the Fat Ladies' Mafia, and it pleases me."
There were murmurs of `Oh, good' and `We knew you would, dearie' from the assembled crowd.
"I have decided," Minnie continued, "that I am unworthy of the honour my mother wishes to confer upon me, having for so many years deviated from the course she tried to set for me.
"However - " she raised her hand to silence the astonished whispers that were beginning to issue from the Fat Ladies, "I think that solving the problem of the space rats would be an admirable way to prove my worth to both my mother, and all of you. With your blessing, I will follow the beasts into space and hunt down every last one of them and wipe them from the face - uh - of the Universe!"
There were loud cheers from the Fat Ladies.
"Also, to accompany me on my exploits, I have chosen a husband to father my children and continue the Godmother line. Francis - Gunter, sorry, step forward. Everybody, say hello to Gunter the Grotesque."
Francis said, so quietly that the Fat Ladies all had to strain to hear, "I have a lot of respect for the Fat Ladies' Mafia. In fact, it was to join you against the space rats that we boarded the Gerrald. I wish you good health, and I'm happy to say I love this woman."
A cheer went up. Some of the Fat Ladies started crying. Everyone is a sucker for love, especially when it's irrational.
"Together," Minnie continued, "In our good ship - "
"Hergulator - " supplied Francis sotto voce.
"Hergulator," said Minnie firmly, "we will search for these rats, killing and pillaging and - whatever - wherever we go. And when I at last return to Earth to take my mother's place, I will finally feel worthy to lead you!"
Applause burst from the pudgy hands of the Mafia Ladies. Francis took Minnie's hand, and she stepped gracefully down from the table. Waving, they beat a hasty retreat to the door when -
The dreaded question flew from the lips of one of the Fat Ladies. "What about your WEIGHT?" she shrieked cutting the silence like a chainsaw through styrofoam.
Minnie halted, and quickly decided it would be better in this case to lie than explain she had no intention of gaining two hundred pounds. She had sacrificed enough today already.
