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The signal was weak and the static was terrible, but I could have sworn the image in my comscreen changed as I picked up the distress call. Well, roaming the depths of space in a tin can that's held together with chewing gum and baling wire will do that to you.

Oh, I see! You think I'm kidding about the chewing gum and baling wire! Well, I'll have you know there's not much that's better for those pinhole meteorite leaks than chewing gum. It fills the hole then freeze-dries, but you gotta remember to chew all the sugar out of it first! And that spool of baling wire I got from those farmers on Fletcher's World, about ten stops ago, fixes everything from lost screws to broken shelf brackets to loose drive cover plates. Hey, when you don't get to civilization more than once or twice a decade, you learn to improvise.

Anyway, here I was about three jumps out from the Clouseau sector, staring at the static-raddled image of my dream girl! Hell, didn't take no Commonwealth space law to make me lock onto that signal! Looking that good, she had to be some rich guy's daughter, or maybe his concubine. If he didn't get blown up with his ship or something, he'd probably be grateful enough to offer a nice reward to her savior. If he did get blown up, well, there was always the slave market at New Hope, or better yet, Madam Grenville's place back on Three Point. She's always looking for something fresh to offer those miners.

Took me a day and a half to catch up to the pod, and the whole way, I kept wondering what in the nine hells a rich groper had been doing way the hell out here. We weren't anywhere near Commonwealth territory, and it was unlikely an escape pod had traveled more than a few hundred thousand miles - not if the occupant was still alive.

When I finally caught up to it, the pod didn't look like any that were made in the Commonwealth, which meant it wasn't of human design. I went through my ship's database but couldn't find an alien match either. That had me puzzled. See, there's two things we 'frontier explorer's' can't afford to skimp on - drives and computers. We run across things most folks never even dream about, and if somebody else has come across it before, it could mean the difference between life and death, or between huge profits and wasted trips. I had downloaded the latest data from the Commonwealth Explorer's Repository at my last stop, and uploaded my logs, so I was pretty current. The Repository is a privately owned datastore paid for by the Explorer's League membership dues, and is not subject to government interference. We all depend on it, and only hold back information long enough to make sure that we get our profit before anyone else can horn in on our discoveries.

So now I was getting really excited, and even more perplexed. On the one hand, if this pod was of unknown alien origin, and I could figure out where it came from, I'd be set for life! On the other hand, what the hell was a beautiful human girl doing in an unknown alien lifeform's pod?

Docking was impossible because of the weird triangular shape of the hatch, so I snaked across the boarding tube and when its flexible rim sealed against the pod's hull, quick as a wink, the triangular hatch split into three smaller triangles and withdrew into the edges of the frame. I was suited - standard procedure when boarding unknown spacecraft - and the noxious crap that billowed out into the tube didn't bother me. A quick check of my suit's sensors showed methane and a bunch of other weird gases. Rather than foul my ships filters with the shit, I left my hatches closed. I could afford to replace the ox and En-too that filled the tube and airlock, but just barely. Didn't have any spare scrubbers, though.

A long, skinny, tentacle thing wormed its way out the alien hatch and waved around the interior of the boarding tube as if looking for something. I stood back and let it wave, not knowing whether it was dangerous or not.

A soft, feminine voice wafted out of the hatch, "Please wait while I adjust my body chemistry to your Oxygen/Nitrogen atmosphere..."

Adjust... ? I kinda expected to see the bunny from the comscreen come slinking out in a designer pressure suit. What was all this body chemistry adjustment crap?

These thoughts were driven from my head as a vision of loveliness did slink out the hatch, only she wore nothing but - well, nothing!

No more than five feet tall even in zero gee, she was stunningly blonde with small, perfectly mounded breasts topped by tiny, delicious pink nipples centered on tightly crinkled aureolae. Her face was like a composite of every supermodel in the Commonwealth, and her slender waist flared out to wide hips which cradled a flat, softly rounded belly. No pubic hair or stubble spoiled the perfection of her nether lips where they nestled between soft thighs atop shapely legs.

This was like every wet-dream I had ever had, coming true right before my eyes!

"I will make final adjustments once aboard your ship, away from the mingled gases of our separate atmospheres." the vision cooed as she floated toward my airlock.

I followed, unable to take my eyes off the gentle curve of her buttocks, as she glided into the open outer door. Finally, remembering, I rasped "Uhh, is there anyone else on your pod?"

She just smiled at me and I smiled stupidly back, until I remembered to tongue the switch for the suit's external speaker. With face as red as the iron ore on Weeblock, I repeated the question.

This time she answered softly, "No, I am-was the only being aboard that vessel."

A million questions filled my skull, but I figured she'd been through a lot, and didn't want to stress her with a lot of 'what's and 'why's right now.

She answered some of my questions and raised about a billion more when she looked over her lovely body and said, "Interesting. This is the first time I've taken a form like this! I've seen bi-peds before, of course, but always wondered why you didn't fall over in gravity!"

The scrubbers finally finished replacing the air in the lock with the real thing and I struggled out of my suit as the blonde floated curiously around the tiny cabin of my ship, examining this, touching that, with no expression on her face.

Funny, no sooner had I noticed the lack of facial expression, than her face came alive with curiosity, as if she had read my mind and corrected the deficiency.

Ordeal or not, I HAD to know how this gorgeous creature wound up in the middle of nowhere perfectly groomed but with nothing to wear!

"Um, miss?" I croaked, throat still dry from the suit's bottled air, "How the hell did you wind up way out here in the middle of nowhere in an alien spacecraft?"

She looked puzzled. "I don't know what you mean. That is the escape pod from my former owner's private space vehicle. I was in it because my owner insisted on saving my life instead of his own when the drive malfunctioned. I assume, from the force of the explosion and the amount of debris that passed the escape pod, that he was destroyed with his craft."

"Your owner?" I was adrift in the unknown in more ways than one.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she gave an awkward sort of bow or something and continued, "I am Sheer-nah. A Class I pleasure drone from the farms of Koo-trak on Prrreeeltik! By the rules governing ownership of pleasure drones, if my legal owner dies, I must sell or give myself to another being at the earliest opportunity. Since this is the first opportunity I have had, I hereby formally give myself to you, and beg your forbearance while I learn the uses of this form in giving you pleasure!"

"Pleasure drone?" I struggled, unsuccessfully, to catch up with events that were whirling wildly out of control.

"Yes, and one of the best, or so I'm told!" she chirped.

"Just what IS a pleasure drone?" I asked, finally finding something to grasp onto.

"We are artificially engineered beings of limited intelligence" she sing-songed, "who, though capable of autonomous action when required, are primarily guided by the pleasure related thoughts of our owners. My body has taken this form in response to your thoughts. It must be one that you find attractive."

"You can read my mind?" I asked, more than a little worried.

"No," she giggled, "but my organism responds to your thought patterns. My mind has no access to the patterns that your mind produces, but pleasure drones were specifically engineered to receive and respond to the thoughts of their owners. Thus, we no more control the form we take, nor the actions we take in giving pleasure, than you control what you call your heartbeat."

"Then this is not your natural shape?" Boy was I quick on the uptake! "What do you look like when you're not being something else?"

"A pleasure drone HAS no shape of its own!" she lectured, "to do so would create identity conflicts that would ultimately destroy our usefulness to our owners. We are most comfortable in whatever form our owner imposes on us."

"So if I thought of a little boy," I tested, "you would become one?"

"Not unless those thoughts carried patterns that indicated you would receive pleasure from a being with that form." She sounded like she was reading from a book, "There is also a certain time delay to avoid my changing too rapidly from one form to another. It has been found that some species' thoughts flit from form to form so rapidly that my organism would not be able to keep up, and would become 'scrambled' from the effort."

Unbidden, the image of a fair-haired lad who'd offered himself to me on Scarbella came into my head. All alone, deep in space, the old fantasies tire after awhile, and new ones must be found to keep hand-sex enjoyable. That young lad had shared my bed many a night, in my fantasies.

I shook the cobwebs out of my head when I felt warm lips engulf my rapidly rising member. The blonde girl had disappeared and in her stead, the spitting image of that pretty little boy knelt before me, gazing wide-eyed and innocent into my face as my shaft slipped easily down his throat.

"Oh SHIT!" I cried, as my long-pent lust welled up and flooded the lad's throat with thick white cream.

Licking a last strand of sticky fluid from my dick, he looked up and asked, in the same sweet voice I remembered, "Did I do it good, Mister?"

I stroked his hair with my hand and husked, "You were perfect!"

My lust abated, I tucked my limp member into my jumpsuit. As I was about to check my status board, the young boy metamorphosed back into a lithe young girl with long blonde hair. Watching the change, I realized why I had been so attracted to the boy - he wasn't all that different in appearance than my dream girl!

I finished my status check in a few seconds, then, my mind having no other escape, started chewing on the ramifications of what I had found. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got!