Part Forty-Four, Chapter Two - Another Reason to Ban This Book

Unabridged version here.  This one's pretty disgusting, so think twice before clicking the link.

Let's see, we started out with allusions to bestiality back in book one, then moved on to underaged sex, outright pedophilia, and a whole bunch of rape, with some extreme sadism thrown in for flavor.  But the author apparently felt that despite all that, there still wasn't enough sexual degeneracy in what the Cincinnati Post called "a wild compound of science fiction action, political satire and sexual comedy."  We needed more perversion.  So see if you can guess what Hubbard is going to add to the mix in this chapter!

Gris goes to his meeting with Razza Louseini and shells out his two thousand bucks, settling accounts with them.  The mobster gives Gris a contact card for his hit man, a card with an image of a hand on it - a hand with an extended middle finger, "Italian symbolism for 'up the (bleep)' or 'you been (bleeped)!'"  The Apparatus agent complains that the mob isn't keeping its side of the bargain, but Louseini explains that after the deaths of the snipers Gris ordered several books ago, he'll have to take what he can get.  And what he can get in this case is a budget hitman, who's such "a dirty, rotten (bleepard), no one will hire him anymore unless they are so God (bleeped) mad at the victim they want something awful done.  Lawyers won't hire him anymore.  He's got a twist.  Filthy."

So there's the Mystery of the 80% Off Hitman solved - Louseini saddled Gris with the worst one on the list.

Even the grizzled mobster doesn't want to talk about what's wrong with this guy, leaving Gris to track down the address and find out for himself.  He ends up in a neighborhood apparently built in a state of "total decay" when it was new, and after ringing a broken doorbell is greeted by a huge, glaring woman with "a mustache like a cavalry sergeant."  Angry mustache woman immediately realizes that Gris is here to see her "no-good, worthless son" who is lurking down in the basement "with the rest of the rats."  She's not happy with her "rotten filth" of a child, who is no doubt polluted by the "blood of his rotten, putrid, no-good father!" because he's hiding not from the cops, but bill collectors out to collect the sum owed for a hospital visit.  A hospital visit resulting from a car crash.

Sure enough, when Gris goes down in the basement he finds "TORPEDO FIACCOLA!"

Remember?  He was hired by Bury to kill Heller back in Book Two?  Heller was practicing driving with that cabbie and knocked Torpedo off an elevated highway?  I think another guy got turned into hamburger meat.

Gris introduces himself and uses Torpedo's name without being told, freaking out the hit man, who is worried that Bury is sending someone after him.  But Gris announces that he has a job for him.  This leads to an absolutely riveting page of dialogue as Gris tries to haggle about how much he'll pay for the job, expenses, and Torpedo's bills.  Oh, and Torpedo's mom won't let him leave the house without insurance.  What a strange demand to make.

During a pause in the negotiations - "I don't like uncomfortable silences" - Gris makes the terrible, terrible mistake of asking Torpedo to talk about himself.  The result is three of the most unpleasant pages in Mission Earth.

The short version: six years ago while serving time, the prison psychologist noticed that Torpedo wasn't participating in the scheduled shower gang rapes, and took an interest in Torpedo's condition.  After trying and failing to interest the hit man in homosexual relations, they discovered that Torpedo's problem was erectile dysfunction, which was not something I anticipated discussing when I started this blog thanks Hubbard.

After being shocked to learn that Torpedo didn't even have an Oedipus Complex towards his mother, thanks to all the beatings she gave him as part of bringing him up right, that kindly psychologist was stumped until he suggested something new - why not try some necrophilia?  So after being released and getting in a shoot-out in New Mexico, Torpedo got his big chance when a girl caught some stray rounds and found a way to be a proper pervert thanks to the miracle of psychology.

But when his comrades caught him after the act, he became an instant pariah for some reason, and not even the mob would hire him.  Luckily Mr. Bury is an understanding sort and found work for poor Torpedo, but since his failed attempt on Heller's life the hit man has been in a rut.

So Gris offers him a bargain: $5,000, bills paid, expenses, and oh did he mention that the target is a beautiful woman who Torpedo can do whatever he wants with once she's dead?  The only stipulation is that Torpedo can't move against Heller, who as Gris fails to remind us is still protected by the virtue of his coded mission reports.  The hit man is happy to accept, Gris works through his mother to pay the hospital bills, and the agent leaves in a good mood, in marked contrast to how I feel after enduring this chapter.

The thought of not only killing but degrading the corpse of the Countess Krak pleased me immensely.

It was just exactly what she deserved.  And I knew that it was the only way anyone but Heller could touch that pure and noble body.  Touch her that way alive and you'd be dead!

There were some things to do and to arrange.  I'd have to get her pattern of moving around so I could set up when she was alone.  I had to get a rifle, preferably with explosive bullets.

He's going to get Krak's schedule down, get a murder weapon, note opportunities to make the hit... and then hire a guy to pull the trigger for him.  That's like mixing a cake and hiring a chef to stick it in the oven.

I had my hit man.  And what a hit man!  A necrophiliac!

Not traditionally a quality associated with successful, professional killers.

COUNTESS KRAK, YOU'LL BE NOT ONLY DEAD BUT THOROUGHLY DEFILED!

I'm sure that would make Heller's next mission report an interesting read.


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three

Part Forty-Four, Chapter One - Command Isolation Geometry and Short-Range Think

Two big chapters, back to back.  At least there's no rape in this one.

The next morning Gris schedules an appointment with Louseini for later that day, then gets back to what he does best - watching Krak and Heller on the viewscreen.  They're in a public library conference room with a bunch of books and charts, obviously up to no good, and the worst part is that they're in blue jogging outfits: "That they were in running suits, even though this was a current style, filled me with alarm.  It seemed to indicate too much eagerness for progress and that was something I strictly did not want."

Heller's doing something, and Krak offers to help him if he'll only tell her what he's up to, which indicates that they left to jog off to the library without Krak being told or asking about what they'd be doing there.  Heller explains that he's working on some math, military math, what he calls "Command Isolation Geometry."  These super-advanced space aliens have worked out equations and formulas that will give you the physical location of command posts in enemy cities and whatnot, so combat engineers like Heller can go and blow them up.  All you need to know is the number of troops in the area, what their highest-ranking commanding officer is, what kind of communications network they have, where their supply lines are and the routes they take...

So if you know all this, why is the "geometry" even necessary?

Anyway, Heller isn't trying to figure out who to blow up (yet), but who will try to oppose him when he attempts to clean up the atmosphere with his magical space spores.

"[...] I'm just making sure I isolate whoever's toes it will step on so I won't be too surprised. The way this planet is organized, apparently, is that if you try to do anything to help it, some special-interest group jumps all over you. They have some crazy idea that chaos is profit. Very short-range think [sic]. So I am just making sure that when I start putting spores into the stratosphere and get shot at, I know who's shooting."

Guess there's going to be some pro-pollution lobby who tries to kill Heller for wanting to clean the atmosphere.  Someone, somewhere, somehow, is profiting from acid rain and smog and stuff.

The problem is, Heller's formulas keep giving results with repeating answers... for equations that are supposed to produce geographic coordinates?  Like, Washington D.C.3333333?  Heller puts this down to having too narrow a question.  He was originally trying to figure out which local cytologists - that is to say, those who study cytology, "an Earth name for our cellology," which ought to be translated as "cytology" too if the subjects are the same, since we don't call Voltarian military science fightology or anything even though it's obviously so much more advanced than our puny Earth combat...

I'm getting distracted.  Heller broadens his search parameters to include the entire planet, not just local cytologists, even though he calls this absurd.

"Why is that absurd, Jettero?  I never saw you do anything absurd in all the time I've known you."  But she added in a lower mutter, "Except Miss Simmons, of course."

"It's absurd because this planet doesn't have an emperor.  I'll wind up with Buckingham Palace in England or something."

"And then you'll blow that up and we can leave," said the Countess Krak with an air of finality.

He laughed quietly.  "What a bloodthirsty wench.  I'm not trying to find out who to shoot.  I'm just trying to figure out who might shoot at me if I put spores in the stratosphere."

This is... cute?  Krak "joking" about assassinating the British royal family?  Heller laughing at his "bloodthirsty wench" of a girlfriend?  Krak still convinced that her lover is a liar and had an affair with Miss Simmons?

Heller gets back to work, throwing everything into his equation from government control to fuel control to finance to media to law enforcement to food.  Everything.  When I did that in my multiple regression project, my equation crapped itself and spat out a bunch of exponential nonsense.  But when Heller does it, the magic of Command Isolation Geometry produces a spiral of symbols, and he traces lines from them to the center of his graph.  Earth does have an emperor with total control of the planet, an emperor with two command posts.

"Where are the command posts and WHO is the emperor?" said the Countess Krak.

"I know a nice place to have lunch," said Heller.

"No, no, Jettero.  Except for certain females, I have never seen you do an absurd thing ever.  You are always right on.  Tell me."

"You'll laugh.  The planet doesn't have an emperor and its royal palaces are actually just tourist attractions.  But I'll finish it anyway, if you like."

Underneath "command posts" he wrote in the center of the plot OCTOPUS OIL COMPANY BUILDING and POKANTICKLE ESTATE, HAIRYTOWN, NEW YORK.

In the center of the plot, in red, he printed, EMPEROR: DELBERT JOHN ROCKECENTER.

Duh-duhn-dah!  Six books in, the hero has finally figured out who the Big Bad is!  Even though Gris and the audience has known this since the first volume.  Which makes this... not dramatic at all.

Gris, predictably, freaks out.  Heller's learning things he shouldn't, and even though he dismissively gives Krak the graph to "teach the cat to run in circles," she carefully folds it up in a way that Gris knows means that she thinks it's legit and might act on this information.

And then Krak and Heller go grab lunch at the Museum of Modern Art... what?  Heller was serious about his lunch offer.  "Are we going to eat paintings?" asks Krak.

They load up on salads and ice cream rather than canvas and pigment, but the weird thing is that Hubbard doesn't take advantage of the setting to deride modern art, and he only mentions some odd-shaped sculptures in passing before Krak and Heller go from the cafeteria to a garden dining area.  They eat in silence until Heller laughs to himself about "Crown Prince Junior."  Krak demands an explanation and complains that even though he accuses her (correctly) of being secretive, he's the one being evasive now.  Heller responds that it's a former name of his, then tries to distract her by talking about the ice cream.

Krak gets angry, in a "deadly" voice demands a full explanation, and after I'm-not-even-going-to-check many days on the planet, Heller finally gives Krak the full story of Mission Earth, and how he initially landed under the name of Delbert John Rockecenter Jr.  Well, "full" except that he leaves out poor Mary Schmeck.  And even though couples shouldn't keep secrets from each other, you really can't blame him in this case.

Heller thinks it's all a whole lot of nonsense, but Krak is convinced that between Mr. Bury's attempts to get Heller killed and the responses of the clerk who gave Heller the Rockecenter Jr. birth certificate, there must be a real son of Rockecenter out there somewhere, being hidden by Bury for his own purposes, while Rockecenter Sr. is completely oblivious!  Krak knows this because she's an aristocrat, naturally, even though none of Heller's advanced alien geometry was able to pick up this shocking plot twist.

Speaking of Heller, he's completely dismissive of his girlfriend's theory and even doubts his own findings about a planetary "emperor."  Instead he reveals the real reason they're at the Museum of Modern Art, and why Hubbard isn't disparaging it - there's an exhibition on science fiction spaceship art, and some of it almost looks like a "real" spaceship!  So "stop worrying your pretty head about emperors who don't exist."  But Krak remains unconvinced.  Or rather, convinced that her own theory is correct.

They go through the exhibition, but Krak seems disinterested, as if she's planning how to blow up Octopus Oil and Pokantickle Estate.  Gris decides "I HAD TO GET THAT SNIPER ON THE JOB QUICK!"

Not "I must stop her immediately," but "I need to hire someone to stop her immediately."  He's noticing all these great opportunities to put a bullet in Krak's spine while they're at the museum, but Gris is totally dependent on someone else being able to do this job for him.  And hope that it turns out better than all those other times he decided not to play an active role in the mission.


Back to Part Forty-Three, Chapter Four

Forward to Part Forty-Four, Chapter Two

Part Forty-Three, Chapter Four - Thirty Pages In and I Already Want Out

Unabridged version here. 

In the last volume of Mission Earth it took 270 pages or so for the author to get to the rape scene.  But for Death Quest, Hubbard isn't wasting any time.

It's the next day, Pinch and Candy's long-awaited open house.  Gris gets dressed up for the occasion at Pinchy's request.  The former torture dungeon-apartment has been refitted into a charming salon, classical music is playing, and soon the guests arrive.

I thought I might be seeing people like the Security Chief or some fellow males from Octopus Oil. But the doorbell rang and rang and couple after couple came in, deluding me at first into believing I would see a fellow man by the slouch hats and men's topcoats. But nay, alas, they were all lesbian couples.

Gris is 100% straight, by the way.  He hates them disgusting homos.

Some of the "males" even wore tuxedos. They tried to greet me heartily with bass voices. They swatted me on the shoulder and called me "old man." But I certainly was not fooled. The bass voices broke into treble unexpectedly and the swats may very well have been intended to push me away from their "wives."

I really shouldn't have to explain this, because we live in the enlightened year of 2013, and if Hubbard is suggesting one thing it's usually safe to assume he's completely wrong, but just in case: this isn't how homosexuality works.  Being attracted to those of your own sex is not the same as wanting to dress up as the opposite sex.  Sexual orientation is not the same as gender.  Same-sex couples do not have to decide which of them is the "man" and the "woman."  Gays and lesbians can be otherwise "normal" people who just so happen to like other men/women.

Unless of course they do feel like crossdressing or assuming gender roles.  But it's not a rule all homosexuals have to follow, and it's not one exclusive to them either.

I guess we could give Hubbard the benefit of a doubt and put this down to Psychiatric Birth Control teaching its victims to behave this way.  On the other hand, Hubbard seems to enjoy writing scenes where the villain protagonist rapes lesbians straight, so (bleep) him.

Anyway.  The party lasts all of one brief paragraph before Pinchy sends Gris to the neighborhood drugstore to get some aspirin for her headache, explaining that the guests will all be sent home and she'll be in bed before he gets back.  He goes out for the aspirin, returns, and sure enough the house seems empty and the lights are out.  Candy and Pinch are apparently in bed asleep, so Gris crawls in between them.  Then someone touches him, Gris remembers that he needs money, and resolves to do his "duty."

There's some oddities, though - somehow Candy has become a virgin again, and her teeth are chattering, but Gris decides "this was no time to wonder about things like that."  After his first... client?  Has screamed and passed out, Gris rolls over the other way and is again surprised that Pinchy's virginity has been restored as well.  And again, he dismisses it as more "women's tricks.  They're full of them."

Once the screaming is over, the lights come on and Pinch and Candy lead a crowd of people in from the next room, as Gris finds himself in bed with a peroxide blonde and a "lesbian husband" with blueish hair.  See, the room was rigged with cameras and microphones, all a set-up so Candy can show her guests what "real" sex is like.  Pinch manages to wake Spike and Lover-girl, the two volunteers, who give a glowing endorsement of heterosexual sex in the missionary position. 

But the remaining lesbians are unconvinced and accuse the pair of being in on Pinchy's scam, so she challenges them to draw straws and throw the "winner" at Gris to prove that this isn't being staged.  Algernon, a "husband" in a top hat, gets the short straw, and is forcibly stripped, fed a birth control pill (which only provides effective protection after seven days of consistent use, so this is largely a pointless gesture), and thrown on the bed for Gris to "perform" with.  Poor Algernon is terrified, "trying to shrink," and held down by her "friends" for Gris to - well, this is pretty much rape.  Performance rape, to prove the dominance of male-female sex and specifically the dominance of the male over the female during sex.

Gris hesitates because Algernon is one of those stomach-turning homosexuals, but she's still a woman, so the healing (through rape) continues.  Afterward, the crowd declares that Psychiatric Birth Control is a load of crap - "After a bang like that I'll never go back to biting and scratching and calling it sex.  No SIR!"  The problem is that psychology has nonetheless turned all the men at Octopus Oil gay... except for the elevator boys, who Miss Peace has a "monopoly" on... and except for the married men, who are so "slugged up on drugs they're impotent."  But other than that, every man within the company is gay, and looking for men elsewhere would get them fired, because... uh, plot.

You can guess the solution - Miss Pinch offers to whore out Gris to the other girls during the daytime, so long as he still has energy to take care of her and Candy each night.  She of course threatens to emasculate Gris if he fails her, thereby bringing the payoff for the Aphrodite reference and Gris' concerns last chapter.

But, for his good work (raping a woman to prove a point) that night, between Pinchy and the crowd's tips, Gris raked in twelve thousand dollars, presented by Pinchy in a wastebasket.

I went into the shower singing.

TWELVE G's!

I could pay my bill to Razza.

I could buy a hit man.

COUNTESS KRAK, YOU'RE DEAD!

I'm beginning to suspect that a worrying amount of Mission Earth exists so the author can write scenes where his villainous viewpoint character deflowers lesbians and cures them of their condition through rape. 


Back to Part Forty-Three, Chapter Three

Forward to Part Forty-Four, Chapter One

Part Forty-Three, Chapter Three - Some Sort of Castration Ritual

Gris opens the chapter by assuring us that he found an "omen of success" regarding his mission to kill the Countess Krak, then gets distracted for two and a half pages.

He still needs to raise two thousand dollars, but Pinch and Candy haven't made use of his, ahem, "services" lately because they're still upset about those fleas.  And no, Gris can't go to Octopus Oil and talk to Bury or anything.  Nor can he hit the Apparatus office for some petty cash.  The plot requires him to have sex with former lesbians.  To make money.  Yeah.

Gris attempts to get back into his victims' good graces by showing an interest in their redecorating efforts - they're preparing for an "open house" - and so asks about a poster that he takes for a shaving cream ad.  It's actually an image of the goddess Aphrodite, which Pinchy praises for its composition ("The sea, the undulant waves repeating in sensuous curves, the phallic symbols stabbing nobly upward, the foam.") while Candy relates how the Greek patron of love and sensuality was born from divine castration.  Pinchy likes the story, Gris slinks away.  

[...] I withdrew to a corner to think this over.  I knew the Greeks, aside from producing fleas, engaged in sacrifice.  Now, I could not quite remember if they were animal sacrifices or human sacrifices.  Then the horrible thought struck me that here on Earth it wouldn't matter.  They believed that men were animals so they probably practiced both without much compunction.

Even though Gris spent months and months living right next door to Greece, and just passed through Greece on his way to America, he isn't sure whether or not they still practice human sacrifice.

Also, Hubbard remains incensed that modern science classifies humans as animals rather than some sort of demigod.  The problem is that none of his characters do anything to make a case for mankind's inherent nobility.  You could argue that the Earthlings are all living down to the standards suggested by those godless psychologists, except the aliens who have not had this indoctrination are just as bad, if not worse.  In short, Hubbard has filled his story with murderers and rapists while complaining that mankind doesn't get the credit it deserves.

As for why Gris the unrepentant rapist and murderer actually gives a damn about human sacrifice:

What the Hells was this "open house" they were going to hold?  Some kind of mystical sacrifice in which they cut off my testicles?  It worried me, especially since there wasn't a Voltarian cellologist handy to grow me any new ones.

So he stays well away from Candy and Pinch until they fall asleep, fearing for his mighty, scientifically-enhanced testicles.  Instead of just asking them what the Hells an open house was.

He finally gets around to catching that omen by turning on the viewscreen, where in an amazing coincidence the Countess Krak has just awoken from an "AWFUL" nightmare where she was paralyzed under an "awful-looking" monster, and a voice told her that Heller had died.  Heller comforts her after hearing this, pointing out that there are no monsters about and he isn't dead.

She threw her arms around his neck convulsively.  She said, "Oh, Jettero, this planet makes me afraid.  If anything happened to you, I think I would just die.  I couldn't stand it.  If I can't live with you, I don't want to live and that's all there is to it."

Krak was rejected from Twilight tryouts for having too much personality.

"There, there," he said.  "You know that I love you.  We'll succeed."

"Jettero," she said, crying again, "please, let's hurry up and finish and go home.  I have an awful feeling something dreadful is going to happen to me and to you."

Even though it happened the other way around in her dream.

But Gris is satisfied.  He's had his portent, he knows that dreams are omens.

There was not the slightest doubt left in my mind.

THE COUNTESS KRAK WAS GOING TO DIE!

Except back in Book One, Gris is able to dissect one of his dreams based on his subconscious desires, as taught by psychology.  He doesn't view it as an omen that he's going to encounter a Manco Devil.  So he shouldn't have any reason to believe that someone else's dream is an actual omen of the future.

But he dearly wants something to happen, so he's going to take another person's unconscious brain activity as proof that the thing will happen.

Gris isn't consistently a psychologist, but he is consistently stupid.


Back to Chapter Two

Forward to Chapter Four

Part Forty-Three, Chapter Two - It's Not Often You Get Freebies for Paying Overdue Bills

There's not much to say about this chapter beyond "Why?"

Gris' flea-infested wardrobe has been purged by fire, so he has no clothes.  This leads him to put on an old raincoat and go out to a department store run by "a very well-informed Jew" and his wife, who proceed to have Gris try on many different outfits.  Gris is absolutely passive during this process and ends up spending every last cent he has on the resulting pile of clothing.

So rather than having to raise just over six thousand dollars to buy a hit on the Countess Krak, Gris now has to scrape together the full ten grand - or does he?

See, Gris isn't concerned about the ever-increasing amount of money he needs, because he's confident that "Something would turn up."  And whaddya know, something does!  When he walks into the Narcotici mob's office, planning "to hire a hit man on credit..."

Okay, I'll admit that the Mission Earth books are starting to blur together like a slurry of sewage, but I thought I remembered Gris spending a lot of Book Four in serious poodoo with some credit agencies, a harrowing experience that you'd think would lead someone to be reluctant to buy things on credit in the future.  Guess I'm imagining things.

Anyway, when Gris walks into the mob office he finds that sure enough, he's listed as months overdue for an appointment with consigliere Razza Louseini, whose characterization is as follows: Italian mobster, knife scar from mouth to left ear, "reptilian eyes."  Louseini complains that he has an outstanding bill for those snipers Gris hired waaaaaay back in Book Three, who were subsequently counter-sniped by Bang-Bang.  None of the Rockecenter-affiliated organizations - Swindle & Crouch, Octopus Oil, the federal government - are willing to pay for it, and the missing payment is playing merry hell with the mob's computer records.  Geez, with as much money as the mob makes, Gris is probably going to owe them thousands and thous-

The bill is two thousand bucks.  That's all his snipers cost.

The mobster is so desperate to get that outstanding fee paid, in fact, that he gives in when Gris promises to pay the due amount if they give him another hit man.  He doesn't add anything to the bill or anything.  In a few days Gris will have his hired killer for one fifth of what he was expecting to pay.

I walked out, practically treading on air.  I wasn't ten thousand in the red, I was only two thousand.

Two thousand to go and one dead Countess Krak!

Which brings me back to the beginning of the chapter and "why?" 

Gris starts the book with four thousand dollars.  He is immediately "forced" to spend it all on new clothes, because his old wardrobe was infested with parasites, because he stole it from a man in Turkey he subsequently murdered, because he was forced to flee the country due to potential adultery charges, because he wasted a fortune on what he thought were whores, because he let himself be talked into buying a limousine and female companionship, because his angry demand for his fair share of a kickback from back in Book One was finally repaid in a shipment of gold bars.

Had the author not arbitrarily put fleas in Gris' stolen clothes, or allowed Gris to fight back against the enthusiastic Jewish tailor, Gris would have been able to pay the mobster out of pocket and hire a hitman immediately - after all, if two snipers only cost two thousand dollars, one gunmen should surely cost half of that at most, right?  So why did the author not want that to happen?  Why take Gris' money away from him in an, again, arbitrary and random fashion?

The answer arrives in two chapters.  See, Gris now has to "earn" two thousand dollars.  And remember how Gris is making money these days...

Yes, all of this was an excuse for the author to write about the further sexual adventure of Soltan Gris.


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three

Part Forty-Three, Chapter One - Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, Now Approved for Home Use

It's a good thing the book had a recap chapter before this, because Chapter One starts with Gris getting right to business.

My plan was very simple.

I would buy a hit!  

What, you didn't think Gris would move against Krak in person, did you?  Actually, this counts as a big step up for him; Gris' earlier plan for defeating Heller was to bring his girlfriend to Earth with the expectation that Krak would kill him out of jealousy.  This plan is not only grounded in reality instead of what Gris dearly wants to happen, but will presumably involve a professional killer. 

A long-range sniper rifle, expertly zeroed in, fired by a trained man, was a thing against which the Countess Krak would have no defense.

All the clever tricks she knew were close-up things, face to face.  An expert marksman, shooting from two to five hundred yards away, would not have to cope with darts or hypnohelmets or stage sleight of hand.  He would simply pull the trigger and she'd be dead.

Good points.  On the other hand, she also probably wouldn't be able to defend herself from a drive-by shooting, a hit-and-run "car accident," a random short-range shooting on a crowded street... hmm.  I just realized that Mission Earth encourages the readers to plot evil acts, to prove that they're less stupid than Gris.

Gris knows that he can hire a sniper for ten thousand dollars from the Narcotici mob... somehow.  Waaaay back in Book Three, Gris got some snipers from Narcotici, but he didn't pay for them, instead using his connection with Bury to browbeat the mobster into loaning him free goons for an afternoon.  Guess he's been browsing Craigslist's "hired guns" section or something to keep up-to-date on prices.

The point is, Gris only has four thousand dollars, so once again the main plot gets to sit in the driveway while characters try to scrape together enough funding to get it moving again.  Gris tries to ask Miss Pinch for the money, but the rape victim is a bit distracted - she's tracked the house's flea infestation to Gris' luggage, and proceeds to gather up and burn his clothes, then hose him, herself, Candy, and the whole house down with DDT.

I guess Hubbard must have missed word of the '72 ban while he was abroad and in hiding.

Gris spends the night on the floor in a back room, naked and still dizzy from all the pesticide coating every surface in the apartment, and the next morning Candy again gives him the cold shoulder when he casually asks for ten thousand dollars.  When they leave for work, Gris checks on his would-be victim with the viewscreens, to find Krak and Heller having a lovey-dovey breakfast and idly chatting about the mission.  Heller has already grown some spore cultures with Crobe's formula, which could be good to go in a few days.

"Can't you do it sooner, dear? I don't think this planet is very good for us."

"Well, honey, some things take as long as they take. These people pretty well let this planet go down the drain.

Which is why we ban stuff like DDT.

And this mission has got to be a success."

"Yes," she said.  "It has to be a success."  She looked up and said, "Is there anything I can do to push it along?"

He went over to her, put his arm around her and said, "You just go on being pretty and smile in the right places and it will all come off just fine."  He kissed her and she clung to him for a moment.

Yes, sweetcakes, you don't need to try and think, or run errands, or do anything to help beyond looking pretty for me. 

Romance!

She smiled suddenly and gave him a playful push.  "Honey, you just better get back to work.  In fact, I'm going to go out shopping to remove temptation."

They both laughed.

'cause what else is a woman going to do all day?  When she isn't cooking, cleaning, or meeting her man's physical needs, I mean.

The chapter ends with Gris furious that Krak is supporting Heller by smiling and going out shopping, and he redoubles his resolve to get her killed so that Heller will be thwarted once and for all.  Much like how he was thwarted once and for all several books ago before the Countess arrived on Earth.  And then got thwarted once and for all again when Krak arrived to slow him down.

Y'know what might be easier, Gris?  Break into his apartment and pour bleach in those spore cultures.  And try and steal Crobe's schematics or whatever for the stuff, they have no idea where he is so it'd be a while before they could get back on track.  Or hell, set fire to that part of the building, see how much of their stuff you can destroy, regardless of-

Dammit, I'm thinking like a villain again.


Back to the Introduction

Forward to Chapter Two

Death Wears Horrible Slacks

 The start of a new year brings with it a sense of optimism, of possibilities.  Then I flip through the copy of Death Quest that recently came in the mail, and that optimism is much diminished.

The good news is that it looks like things are going to happen in this book, things that will actually advance the plot.  The bad news is the Depravity-o-Meter is going to go up some more notches.  Or did you think Hubbard was going to stop at rape and pedophilia?

The cover art is just amazing.

We have someone who I feel confident in assuming isn't Soltan Gris, because he looks moderately dangerous.   He strikes an intimidating pose atop a downed police motorcycle, his blood-red T-shirt adorned with a Grim Reaper pointing menacingly at you, the reader.  He's got a skull and crossed dagger tattoo on his muscly bicep, reinforcing his role as a dealer of death.  And his... brown/orange patterned slacks really... uh...

Well, he's got a rifle.  He isn't using the scope, or even looking in the direction he's pointing it, but that's not stopping him from pulling the trigger.  I assume he'd be screaming a wordless cry of rage if he weren't holding a combat knife in his teeth.

I don't get the spiked collar, though.  It's a leash, it would seem, since there's some guy in a trenchcoat trying to get Ugly Pants under control, but Ugly Pants doesn't seem worried about it.  If Ugly Pants were an out-of-control berserker type, surely he'd be shooting Mr. Trenchcoat?  But if Ugly Pants were well-behaved enough to not try to kill the guy bringing him to heel, would he even need the leash to begin with?  It's a mystery.

Another mystery is why the policeman tucked away to the left is still holding his fire while Ugly Pants is blazing away with his rifle.  If there's a tense stand-off going down between officers of the law and a snarling, armed man in horrible slacks, you'd think any gunfire started by that individual is going to be answered in kind from the officers.

The back cover contains the usual blurbs about Mission Earth's "breakneck pace," but two entries stand out.  First, the Baltimore Evening Sun says that "there is plenty of murder, conspiracy and sex to keep us occupied."  I'll point out that "occupied" isn't necessarily the same thing as "entertained."  Root canals occupy your time, as do funerals and car accidents.

The other notable quote insists that "Mission Earth never pauses, only accelerates" as standard, but was written by former astronaut Edward Gibson.  Alas, our space program's budget cuts mean that, at least for the foreseeable future, there will be no study of how prolonged space flights affect attitudes towards L. Ron Hubbard novels - this is very important issue that could endanger any future attempts at interstellar travel.

I wish I'd hunted down a hardcover copy of Death Quest, because after Fortune of Fear I'm wondering what one-chapter, meaningless events are hyped on Death Quest's book jacket.

Past the front cover there's three more pages of rave reviews (i.e. lies), and again two quotes stand out.  Orson Scott Card is here, calling Mission Earth "ironic, exciting, romantic and hilarious."  Meanwhile Anne McCaffrey dubs this "Marvelous satire by a master of adventure."  Now, both McCaffrey and Card made statements that were a little, ah, inflammatory.  Specifically, McCaffrey's "Tent Peg Statement" and Card's essay on "The Hypocrites of Homosexuality."  And both apparently enjoyed Mission Earth.  Could there be a connection between gay-unfriendly viewpoints and attitudes towards L. Ron Hubbard?  Again, this is a case where further research is urgently needed.

There's a map of New Jersey, a map of the waters around Atlantic City with "Heller's Route" drawn out for us, and dammit a map of Turkey.  I thought we were done with Turkey.  I desperately want to be done with Turkey.  Nothing good or meaningful happens in Turkey.  If some poor bastard were trying to adapt this to the screen, the Turkey sections would be the first to go. 

Both the Voltarian Censor's Disclaimer and the Voltarian Translator's Preface spend some time scoffing at the non-existent Earth's judicial system, specifically the notion of suing for damages.  So if you were wondering how the author could possibly make Mission Earth even more slow and plodding, here's your answer - legal drama.

Part Forty-Three begins with Gris' traditional latter to Lord Turn, where he "confesses" by recapping the previous volume.  The Fortune of Fear is not mentioned.  The trip to Switzerland is not mentioned.  Gris' booty call limo is not mentioned.  Gris bombing Istanbul is not mentioned.  Instead, Gris sticks to the theme of "Females are vicious, treacherous, lying beasts who spend every waking minute conniving amongst themselves, plotting and scheming how to destroy every single male.  They should all be destroyed."  He criticizes Miss Pinch and Candy's infidelity to the field of psychology for switching teams after Gris raped them, and then repeats his revelation that killing the Countess Krak would hamper Heller.

So, to summarize the important bits of Fortune of Fear:

1. Gris raped the heterosexuality back into two women
2. The Countess Krak is a threat and should be killed

In other words, the last ninety pages of the 365-page book.

Mission Earth, ladies and gentlemen, where the question is which acts of rape and murder will be relevant to the plot.


Back to an Intermission: Treasure of Terror
Back to Part Forty-Two, Chapters Ten and Eleven

Forward to Part Forty-Three, Chapter One