Chapter 1

The Visitor floated in the wind, a tangle of microscopic filaments enveloped in a force field.

Invisible. Alien. Searching for a life form more complex than the airborne pollens, spores and insects it had so far encountered on this blue and watery planet. Even these forms weren't much in evidence at the moment, since a cloudburst a few minutes earlier had cleared the air.

But luck was approaching in the form of a red-tail hawk, heading into the wind that carried the Visitor. When the hawk was a few feet below it, the Visitor detected it and struck. The capture was so quick the hawk felt nothing but an unfamiliar disturbance in the air. Then its wings went limp, and it began tumbling out of the sky. Inside its body, the Visitor examined its nervous system with swift efficiency. All of the hawk's brain functions were scanned. Its autonomic systems were restarted. Memories and skills the hawk had acquired over the three years since it had hatched became accessible in seconds to the new being that controlled its body.

Two hundred feet from the hard surface of the highway it had been flying over, the hawk reopened its wings, caught the up-rushing air and turned its vertical fall into a sharp curve that brought its course parallel to the ground.

The Visitor was pleased. The hawk was not an especially intelligent life form, but it was superbly built for navigating the thick, moist atmosphere of this planet. The Visitor had passed through thousands of hosts on hundreds of planets, but none had been quite so quick and responsive in a gaseous environment. An excellent choice, it thought to itself, as it regained altitude and used the hawk's highly efficient long-distance vision to scan the landscape below.

It didn't take the Visitor long to recognize that the shiny metallic creatures that sped along the ribbons of smooth, hard material were mechanical vehicles, and that the clumsy, two-legged animals that occasionally entered or emerged from them were the masters — much as the Visitor was master of the hawk. Clearly, if it was to get the full flavor of this planet, and live up to its obligations to the Supreme Dispatcher, the Visitor would have to occupy at least a few of these Two-Legs. The experience, however, could hardly be any more exhilarating than flight aboard this magnificent winged creature.

Through the hawk's eyes, the Visitor spotted a vehicle on the edge of the hard-surfaced ribbon. It was smaller than the others the Visitor had seen, and a white gas poured from it. Its Two-Leg was moving back and forth in obvious agitation, not at all like a master.

This was too good an opportunity to pass up. The Visitor guided the hawk into a steep dive.

Elsie was as steaming hot as the engine of her restored 1962 MGB. The goddamn car had been nothing but trouble since she bought it. From a friend. Some fucking friend. And some fucking British engineering. No wonder they lost a fucking empire.

She looked both ways on the highway. A car approached from the east but turned onto a side road a hundred yards before reaching her. To the west she could see something coming. A pickup truck? Yes, an orange pickup.

The hawk hit her full force on the side of her head. She hadn't seen it coming, and the impact stunned her. She felt a sharp pain in her left temple, then everything went blank and she slumped to the rain-slicked ground beside her overheated car.

Irv saw the whole thing. He was behind the wheel of the orange pickup, and he jabbed his sleeping buddy, hit the brakes, and yelled, "Get a load of this!"

As the truck skidded to a stop, his companion, a big man named Loopy, awakened to see a dark-haired young woman lying on the roadside, directly in front of them, next to a steaming sports car. A large bird was running awkwardly away from her, trying to get airborne. Finally it did, and the clumsiness disappeared as it rose on powerful strokes.

Irv cut the engine and jumped out. Loopy joined him, bending over the young woman. Two more men, Joe Joe and Carlos, leaped out from the truck bed, cursing.

"Man, first we get drenched, then you fucking nearly kill us," Joe Joe yelled at Irv. Then he fell silent as he saw the woman on the ground.

"Jesus," he said, "nice pair of tits."

Now all four of them stood over the fallen woman. She did, indeed, have very nice breasts, which filled her wet tank top. Nice legs, too, tanned and slender. The tan made a sexy contrast with her pale blue shorts.

"What happened to her?" Joe Joe asked.

"She was running around next to her car," said Irv. "Then this hawk or buzzard or something dive-bombed her. Just came out of the blue and ran into her head. Look, you can see the cut there. It's bleeding."

Loopy knelt on one knee and put his big, meaty hand on her left breast. "Nice," he said, "nice and soft." He gave it a squeeze.

"What are we going to do with her?" Joe Joe asked.

"Well, I guess if we were gentlemen, we'd rescue her," said Loopy. "But we're not gentlemen, so I guess we'll take her someplace quiet and secluded and fuck her brains out."

"Or something rougher," said Carlos with a crooked grin.

"What could be rougher than having your brains fucked out?" Loopy asked in exasperation. He was getting sick of having Carlos around.

"We've got company," Irv said, with a nod at the woman.

Her eyes were open and she looked up at them with a puzzled expression. They were big brown eyes. For the first time, they noticed that her face was very pretty.

She sat up, rubbed her head, then looked at the blood on her fingertips. She tasted it, tentatively.

"You okay?" Irv asked.

She answered his question with a question: "Have you a thermometer?"

The men looked at one another.

"A thermometer?" said Loopy. "What do you want a thermometer for?"

She frowned. Inside, the Visitor was racing to master her vocabulary. Language was always a tricky business. For all their similarities, intelligent beings were maddeningly idiosyncratic when it came to language — even if they lived on the same planet.

"Thermostat," Elsie said. "Do you have a thermostat?"

"No, honey," said Loopy. "We don't carry thermostats with us, especially for funny little foreign sports cars. But I've got something even better than a thermostat, and I'd be happy to show it to you. Let's get you into the truck."

She reached up, and Loopy took her hand and lifted her effortlessly.

Joe Joe whistled softly. She had a spectacular body.

"Here, let me wipe off the blood," he said. He pulled out a dirty handkerchief and softly brushed the side of her head.

"Thank you," she said. "I feel like..." She paused, searching for the right words. "Like Blanche Dubois. You know, 'the kindness of strangers.'"

"I don't get it," Joe Joe said, turning to Loopy and Irv for help.

"Search me," Loopy said. "She talks funny. Must be because of the bump on the head."

He opened the passenger side door of the truck and gestured for her to get in. An alarm bell went off in what remained of Elsie's consciousness, but the Visitor ignored it. These Two-Legs were no threat, at least not to the Visitor. As for Elsie, well, what happened to her body was not the Visitor's concern. Hosts were easy to find.

Elsie was wedged between Irv, who drove, and Loopy, who put his big arm around her shoulders and talked about how good looking she was and how lucky it was for all concerned that they happened by when she needed a lift. Then he straightened out his body as best he could in the cramped cab of the truck and zipped open the fly of his jeans. He pulled out a very large penis, one that, had Elsie been conscious and in control of her own body, would have impressed her as worthy of an exclamation of amazement and admiration. But the Visitor merely noted that, as it had already suspected, this species reproduced sexually and this male's exposure was part of some mating ritual. The use of language would be especially tricky here. It always was when sexual reproduction among intelligent life forms was involved.

"Honey, Big Tom here needs some strokin'," Loopy said softly. "Needs some lickin' and suckin' too."

The Visitor ran through Elsie's sexual memories and acquired behaviors and decided that cooperation with this male was appropriate.

"A blow job?" asked Elsie. "Yes, I can do that."

And she did, with consummate skill and a concentration that Loopy and Irv had never seen before in such circumstances. It was as if she were conducting some sort of study in which she herself, along with Loopy, was the subject.

But Loopy's puzzlement soon dissolved in a shudder and a fountain of cum. She swallowed it, licked her lips and said, without a hint of a smile, "Well, that was certainly fun."

"Ya think so?" asked Irv. "Well, how about you do me while Loopy drives?"

"No, don't stop yet," said Loopy. "Let's find a side road and see if we can get somewhere secluded, then we can all have lots of fun."

Irv eagerly searched the highway ahead of them, looking for a place to turn off. Without noticing it, he was driving more and more slowly.

Too slowly for a car that had come up behind them. Joe Joe knocked on the back window to get Irv's attention just as the siren on the car behind them made a short blast. It was a sheriff's deputy.

Irv pulled over on the shoulder and cursed under his breath. Loopy said, "Okay, stay cool. We're just helping this young lady get to a garage where they can send out a tow truck for her car."

The deputy, a trim, freckled man of 45, exchanged a few words with Joe Joe and Carlos before reaching the driver's side window.

"Where you boys headed?" he asked. Then he saw Elsie and added, "Oh, I guess it's not all boys here, is it?"

"We picked her up back down the road a ways," said Irv. "Her sports car overheated. We're bringing her to a garage to get a thermostat."

"Yeah, I saw her car. You're okay with all this?" the deputy asked, looking at Elsie.

"Yes," she said. "My small, vintage sports car broke down and these men offered to hump me."

The deputy did a double take. Loopy gulped hard.

Elsie frowned and said, "I mean 'help me.' They offered to help me."

"This some kind of joke?" the deputy asked.

"No, sir," said Irv. "She just talks that way. We only met her a few minutes ago, don't even know her name. But I don't think she grew up speaking English."

"Okay," the deputy said. "Miss, you sure you're okay? You're in that truck voluntarily?"

"Oh, yes," said Elsie. "I have volunteered for this adventure. I am quite curious to see how it will turn out."

The deputy shook his head. "Goddamndest thing I've ever heard out of a good-looking woman in a wet tank top. I hope you boys have a lot of fun and give her an adventure worth remembering."

"If we don't, we'll die trying," said Irv.

Loopy breathed a big sigh of relief as the deputy walked back to his car. Then he planted a big wet kiss on the top of Elsie's head.

"Honey, I don't understand you," he said. "But you're just what the doctor ordered."

A few minutes later, they spotted a blacktop road that angled off the highway to the right. It crossed a culvert, then ran a hundred yards or so through low, swampy land covered with tall grass. The blacktop turned into clamshell gravel, and the road made a slight curve along a stand of pine trees. Finally, it came to a stop beside a fishing camp on a bayou. The camp was just an unpainted cabin with a side porch and a wooden dock. It looked abandoned.

"What'dya think?" Irv asked.

"Looks okay," Loopy said. "Let's check it out."

Loopy climbed out and reached back to help Elsie. She looked at his hand in puzzlement, then gripped it and stepped down. Loopy left her and headed for the cabin, and she found herself staring into the ravenous eyes of Carlos. Joe Joe stood next to him, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet. They stood so close that she had to slide along the truck to get past them.

There was the sound of wood breaking, and when they looked up they saw Loopy standing in the doorway, holding the shattered remains of the door.

"It was locked," he said with a shrug.

He and Irv entered, and Elsie ran up the steps and joined them. Inside, the air smelled of mildew and fish. In a big room were three metal cots with thin, worn-looking mattresses. A small bathroom was at the far side of the bedroom. To the right was a doorway that led into the kitchen, which consisted of a faucet and sink, a small gas stove with two burners, and a wooden table with three cheap plastic chairs.

From the porch, Joe Joe stuck his head into the bedroom and said, "It stinks in here."

"Yeah," said Loopy. "But it's nice and private, and we need a little privacy. Don't we, honey?" The last comment was directed to Elsie, who nodded thoughtfully.

"What's your name?" Irv asked.

"Elsie. My name is Elsie."

"Why don't you take those wet clothes off, Elsie?"

Elsie pulled her tank top over her head and tossed it on the floor. She wore no bra. Her breasts were large and firm, with purplish nipples. The four men watched her with a mixture of awe and lust.

"The shorts, too," Irv said.

She unbuttoned her shorts and wiggled as she pushed them down to her ankles. She now wore only white bikini panties, sandals and a thin gold necklace with an amethyst pendant.

"Does my appearance please and arouse you?" she asked.

"Fuckin-A, honey," said Loopy. "Amen," said Irv and Joe Joe. Carlos said nothing.

"Well, here is something even better," she said. "My pussy is very wet." She pulled down her panties, and indeed the crotch was stained.

"I can't stand it," Joe Joe shouted. He rushed forward and pushed Elsie backward to the floor. He landed on top of her, reached down, unzipped his fly, and wiggled as he inserted his prick.

Elsie wrapped her arms and legs around him and said, "Yes, push it in. Push harder. Push. Push. Push." The message was encouraging but her voice was strangely flat.

Joe Joe came quickly, then rolled off her and onto his back, breathing heavily.

"Thank you," Elsie said. "That was fun. Who would like to be next?"

Irv stepped forward, pulled her up from the floor and dragged her over to one of the cots.

"Face down," he commanded, and shoved her onto the cot. "Spread your legs," he said.

He fucked her from behind, slowly and with great self-discipline. When she started to say something, he slapped her hard on the side of the head and said, "Shut up, bitch."

Then he came with a groan like that of a dying man and withdrew.

Loopy, who had already removed his pants, stepped forward and lifted Elsie into his arms. He went to another cot and sat down.

"You're going to be on top, understand?" he said.

"Oh, yes, that should be fun, too," she answered.

Loopy lay back on the mattress and Elsie seemed to know just what to do. She straddled him, with her hands on his chest, then lowered herself on his big prick.

"Oh my god," Loopy cried. "This is fuckin' heaven!"

She moved her pussy up and down on his prick, and leaned forward to lick his chest.

"Is this what you wanted?" she asked.

"Honey, this is all I've ever wanted in my entire fuckin' life."

Then he grabbed her waist and bounced her up and down, faster and faster until he let go with an enormous orgasm.

For over a minute, she lay on top of him, breathing heavily and as exhausted as he was. He embraced her with one arm.

"That was really great," Loopy said at last. "Really, really great."

"Yeah, really great, but we gotta get back to town," said Irv.

"Wait a minute," said Carlos. "I haven't had my turn."

"That's right," Joe Joe said. "We gotta be fair about this."

"Okay," said Irv. "Go ahead and fuck her."

Carlos shook his head. "Not here. I'll take her outside, in the woods."

Loopy sat up. "In the woods? What are you going to do in the woods that you can't do right here, Carlos?"

"What the fuck difference does it make to you?" Carlos said angrily.

"Let him go, Loopy," said Joe Joe. "He just doesn't like doing it in front of the rest of us. I can understand that."

"No," said Loopy. "I think he wants to do something that we won't want him to do. Am I right, Carlos? I'll bet you're carrying a knife. Right, Carlos? You don't just want to fuck her, you want to cut her up, too."

"And what kind of knight errant are you, Loopy?" Carlos snarled. "Did you save that Vietnamese slut we raped and fed to the gators yesterday?"

Loopy stood up and started to move toward Carlos.

"Wait a minute," said Joe Joe. "We all know too much about one another to start fighting. Let Carlos go in the woods with the girl, then we'll go back to New Orleans."

"He's right," said Irv. "We gotta stick together."

Loopy grumbled an unintelligible reply and put on his pants.

Carlos grabbed Elsie's arm and said, "Come with me, bitch."

"This will be different, I assume," Elsie said. She looked back at Loopy.

"Yeah, honey," he said glumly. "It probably will be quite a bit different."

Loopy, Irv and Joe Joe went out onto the porch and watched Carlos and Elsie disappear into the woods. It was getting hot again. The rain had only made the air steamy.

Joe Joe walked out to the end of the short dock. A fish jumped a few yards away. In the distance a pelican swooped low. The scene was comforting and familiar. Joe Joe wished he had a boat and some fishing tackle.

They heard a cry from the woods. It must have been Elsie, but it didn't sound like her. Loopy shook his head and swore. "That bastard's going to pay for this."