Chapter 5.624

Jerry’s eyes flut­tered open. The first thing he saw was the mir­ror ball. The sec­ond thing he saw was a thing with three heads doing some­thing he could only define as 1970s disco. If it wasn’t for the skin tight open to the navel black silk shirt and a myr­iad of heavy gold chains he might not have real­ized he was in a time vor­tex. Not only was he in a vor­tex but the war­ring sec­tors of Silge-Grabuuk had some­how got­ten caught in the space-time con­tin­uum with him.

This was not a good thing.

Not at all.

At least Jerry, aka Pro­fes­sor Boofen­hauf aka Dean of the Col­lege of Inter­galac­tic Rela­tions, knew a thing or two about the Silge and the Grabuuk. For one thing they loved the Bee Gees.

So, Jerry thought to him­self, it must have been the Frankie Valli crap that sent out a sig­nal through­out the galax­ies, like a siren call. Quickly, Jerry checked his pocket for the dark space dust he always kept with him, in a small vial. Good, it was still safe. Jerry non­cha­lantly tucked it deeper into his pocket. There was a very good chance he might need it later.

He let the music wash over him (even though the Bee Gees were worse than nails scrap­ing down on a freshly painted wall) and got into the groove. One hand up to the ceil­ing, the other point­ing down to the ground. He man­aged a twirl and a split, land­ing him­self near the exit door. If he was lucky the three-headed being wouldn’t notice him as he made his way out of where ever it was he’d landed.

But luck was not on his side tonight (made obvi­ous by his failed attempt to pick up the barista).

“Boogulli­nee!” screamed one of the heads.

Jerry put one ear bud from his multi-world iPod in and imme­di­ately under­stood the native Silge language.

“Hey, we’re cool, dude. I’m just going to get refill.” Jerry pointed to an empty latte cup that had mirac­u­lously come with him from the Bud and Bean.

“You must stay in your chair, dude per­son. Until the Cap­tain illu­mi­nates the fas­ten seat sign. Good tunes, eh?”

“Where are we headed?” Jerry asked, tak­ing the clos­est thing to chair he could find in the place and buck­ling a con­trap­tion that seemed to pass for a seat belt.

“The Black Hole of Bor­neo. To seek the Sacred Pinky Ring.”

Then as all three heads bobbed to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive,” the ship warped into over­drive and they van­ished into a wormhole.

“This is your cap­tain speaking.…”