Black, thought Blackadder, was a lovely color. It delineated infinity. It defined the essence of the universe. It was *his* color. He stared into the endless, lightless void of space between the contaminating stars outside the forward port of the Imperial Navy's High Admiral's flagship. *His* space. *His* color. *His* navy. Well, Queen Asphyxia's navy in theory, but it answered to *him*, Blackadder.

He was a contented man.

Somewhere, an annoying high-pitched alarm bell began to ring. He ignored it. lord high admirals of imperial navies do not answer their own beepers, even when the message might be a summons to war from the Potentate of the Fribelian Space Islands. It might also be, for instance, some piffle about the Navy's laundry bill, more suitable for Baldrick's lowly ears than for the hearing of what Queen Asphyxia's first consort insisted on referring to as the Loddle-doddle High Admiriddle Blackie.

As if summoned by the very thought, Baldrick stumped into unprepossessing view from around a bulkhead. "Phone call for you, Skipper," he said, with all the cheerful insouciance appropriate to a character who embodied the functions of general dogsbody and comic relief.

"Who is it?" demanded Blackadder.

"'E says it's a fibbelow who wants a spottle of rikkescuttle," offered Baldrick, straight-faced.

"Don't talk posh, slave. It doesn't suit you."

"Sorry, sir." Baldrick shrugged in the smudgy, rather tattered gray smock which was his only uniform, his cheerful insouciance perfectly intact. "'At's wot 'e said."

"Oh, put him on," sighed Blackadder, regretting the end of his pleasant reverie on the charms of Stygian vacuum. One of the Queen's playthings wanted rescuing. Again. He yawned as he pulled the matte-black communicator pod from the mirror-black belt-pouch adorning his somberly natty black undress uniform. "I'd better see what's up."

"Aye aye, sir," said Baldrick, and retreated.

The communicator bleeped once and began speaking in tones that were all too familiar to Blackadder. "I say," it burbled, "do say you can hiddle-ear me, old chappie."

"I hiddle-ear you, Lord Pigmot," said the Lord High Admiral, to one of his few social superiors in the universe. "Did you call up to pass the time of day or may I render your lordship some trifling service?"

"Well, this and that, my Adiddle-miraddle. I'd be ever so grateful for a spottle of a pick-up just now."

"What sort of a pick-up?" inquired Blackadder warily. The last time Pigmot had called, he'd wanted a troupe of dancing girls transported from a place he described as Pyramiddle to another place he described as Thissibeedle, for purposes Blackadder considered frankly frivolous, especially as he had not been invited to the party.

"I'd like a lift in that simply spiffiddle flagshippie you've got," clarified Lord Pigmot. Blackadder thought he could hear a faint, angry rumble in the background noise over the ultraspace link. "Perhaps in an hour or so. Or a halfie." Lord Pigmot's voice was just slightly anxious. "Or *now* would be nice." The angry grumble in the background rose a bit in both pitch and volume.

"What is your lordship's present location?" asked Blackadder.

"It's a nowhere little place, you wouldn't have heard of it," fluttered Pigmot.

"Do tell. I can't rescue you from whatever muck you've got yourself into if I don't know where to rescue you from."

"Oh, Admiribble, don't yibble your tibbles at me, you know I don't like it!"

"Just give me the name of the planet you're stuck on, Lord Pigmot." Blackadder drew on his meager reserves of patience.

"Oh, all right. I'm on Nepil."

"Ah," said Blackadder to cover the horrible fact that he had, indeed, never heard of it. "I'll be along presently. No problem. My greetings to your ever-lasting follibility. Over and out!"

"Outadiddl..." whimpered the communicator, dying as Blackadder switched it off in mid-syllable. Where the hell was Nepil, and, more importantly, why didn't he know already?

Baldrick was again at his elbow, as if by magic. "Where to, Skipper?"

Blackadder glared at him. "Some backwater called Nepil. Find it in the ultraspace magnetocharts if you don't know it."

"Oiy, it's over past the big nebula and around that little squidgy grid-cluster." Baldrick seemed very confident of his information.

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yeh. I mean, aye sir, skipper. Nepil's where you get your trills."

"Trills?" asked Blackadder, wondering how he had become trapped in the role of straight man.

"Oh, well, trills ain't for the nobs," explained Baldrick. "They make you feel good when they purr, that's all. Y'know -- they trill?"

"They trill," repeated Blackadder flatly. "Is this some new opiate for the masses, by any chance?"

"I guess so," said Baldrick, insouciant as ever. "Everybody wants one. In the masses, that is. We likes our fun easy."

"Set a course for Nepil and alert my personal scoutship. We've a little job to do, if the trills don't get in the way. Top speed. I wouldn't want anyone else to rescue Lord Pigmot before I can claim the credit... That is, render assistance to his lordship."

"Aye, aye," bleated Baldrick. "We'll be there in a trice."

"A what?"

"About 'alf an 'our?" suggested the comic relief slavey, and disappeared back into the bowels of the ship where less important people worked at keeping space black for Blackadder.

# # #

Lord Pigmot's ultraspace beacon homed them in on a tall white tower on a broad white plain in the middle of an elegantly understated continent. The tower itself, however, occupied a conceptual space midway between a very advanced dream-artist's nightmare and a large albino stalk of asparagus.

"Looks like one o' them expanding ivory pagodas you 'ear about sometimes," volunteered Baldrick cheerfully.

"It does have rather the aspect of something Puff the Magic Dragon would display with pride," agreed Blackadder, eyeing a pillared balcony on the 34th story and a spiral waterfall on the 37th, as their two-man scoutship circled in a dazed preliminary reconnaissance.

"There 'e is, sir!" crowed Baldrick at last, pointing to the topmost cupola, from which Lord Pigmot waved frantically amid windblown white draperies.

"Set the boat to hover and moor it to something," directed Blackadder. "Something vulgar, by preference. You're spoiled for choice." He leaped heroically across the gap to confront whatever Pigmot's newest flyspeck of trouble might be.

"Well met, Blackadder," tootled that worthy, with visible relief. "Tiddle my winkies, I'm glad to see you! The noise was about to send me spare!"

Blackadder, away now from the scoutship's cabin, could hear a growling roar that echoed thunderously from below. It sounded hungry and despairing and, most of all, angry.

"Are those the Nepils?" he asked. "They sound like a herd of giant bees with a hangover."

"I can't fozzle out what's rankled the Nibble-pibblies," moaned Pigmot, holding his head. "They were all mimsy-whimsy at first, but they've terrible tempers now!"

"Why are you here, my lord?"

Pigmot stopped moaning and emerged from his gauze cowl. "My dear Admiribble, this place is a gold mine! The tribbles are worth anything one cares to ask!"

"Ah," said Blackadder, his ears tingling with anticipation. "They purr, right?"

"They purrble-burble until one's core of being resonates with glad sillirenity," agreed Pigmot, ecstatically. "Just have a nuzzle and you'll fizzle it yourself." He displayed a pale-blond ball of fur, which proceed to trill in a soothing alto that might, in the cosmic scheme of things, compensate for Lord Pigmot's existence. If you didn't know him very well. After several years. Pigmot groaned happily in accord and stroked the silvery fur. The creature purred louder. Pigmot groaned louder.

"I'm sure it's disgusting until you've tried it," said Blackadder politely. He had plans that did not include succumbing to any parasitic fur-oid whose blandishments might interfere with his ability to stomp mercilessly over the bodies of his enemies. He'd always found stomping a very soothing exercise in any case.

"And the Nibble-pibblies give them away!" exclaimed Pigmot, when he'd finished purring off-key with his trilling beast.

"Ah," said Blackadder again, greed awakening in his breast like a sun-warmed snake. "But why are they rioting now?"

"That's the probble-obble," confided Pigmot. "They miss 'em, y'see. They want 'em back."

"Understandable," muttered Blackadder, casting a glance out the window at the stressed-out hordes of trill-less Nepils. "I take it you've appropriated the lot, instead of leaving the natives a share. I suppose you wanted to corner the market."

"It's only good bizzle-nizzle, dear boy."

Blackadder ruminated. The situation had possibilities, clearly, but first... "Will you be presenting Her Majesty with a matched pair of them, or anything of that sort?" he inquired. Asphyxia hated anything lovable or intelligent enough to upstage her Imperial presence, which (Blackadder had long ago concluded) was why idiots like Pigmot and Frobo were her consorts, and not Blackadder himself.

Pigmot directed his wavering gaze toward his eggshell leggings and pristine ivory toe-slippers. "Oh, well, Admiri-fribble, I hadn't reallytally planned on it. She'd want 'em all."

"You have them all," pointed out Blackadder.

"Eh," fussed Pigmot, "but they multibble-pibble like nightmares. In pubble-ublic! It's not a sight for a lady, especially not her Imperibble Highness herself." The trill now resting on Pigmot's shoulder produced a significantly deep, slow purr.

"Ah," said Blackadder in illumination. "You've been selling them, and you haven't paid the Imperial tithe on the proceeds. Right, my lord?" His gimlet-black eyes bored into Pigmot's squashy pale soul. The trill went on purring, and the sound ratcheted upward until it drowned out the continuing disaffected mutter from below.

"Er... I did mean to tittle the taxel, but the bookibble-epple-eeping... er, accountabillittles, were just a little compibblecated," faltered Pigmot.

The trill began to shake in time with its rising note. Blackadder watched it in fascination. Something odd was going on here... something downright biological.... With an octave leap the creature pulled itself apart, and twin soprano trilling sounds resonated like a schizophrenic clarinet from Pigmot's twitching shoulder.

"Gaddle zookies, it's done it again!" moaned Pigmot helplessly. He waved gingerly at the second ball of fur. "Shoo, deparbletarble, avauntarrible, begone!" It obediently scampered off his white-frilled shoulder and landed on Baldrick's grubby epaulet.

"You see, Admirabble, they're such a lot of troubibble that I just can't nabble 'em by number."

"I'll bet," said Blackadder, regarding the multiple trilling beasts with wary speculation. If the taxes doubled when the trills did, Pigmot would shortly be out of business. Come to think of it, if the trills doubled often, he'd shortly be out of business anyway. Any possible profit depended on precise cunning and rapid action.

Blackadder smiled. "My lord," he said formally to Pigmot, "I can solve your problems. First, throw half your stock of tribbles... er, trills, to the Nepil rioters. To, ah, demonstrate your noble generosity."

"Give them *back*?" gasped Pigmot, shocked into monosyllables.

"Just so, my lord. Then wait. As soon as they've, ah, bred and doubled their numbers, you'll be back where you started."

"What an idderiddle! Will it work?"

"Of course it will work, Lord Pigmot. It's simple arithmetic." Blackadder caught sight of Baldrick's puzzled stare. "In the Imperial Navy it's an advanced field of research. Trust me, it will work."

"Goodle-oh. I'll ordiddle the doddles as you say, Admiribble. It won't take a jiffle. Then I really *must* get away from the Nibble-pibblies until they calm down." The sound of less-than-calm Nepils wafted upwards, rising faster than the wind.

"I suppose you must, my lord," said Blackadder. Pigmot's presence on the flagship would be irritating but, if Blackadder had assessed the situation correctly, extremely lucrative. He gestured formally toward where the scoutship, was moored to a white marble Corinthianesque column that would have been shielded by a large figleaf in more restrained civilizations. "We await your lordship's presence on my, er, humbibble scuttleshippie. At your lordship's convenience."

The grumblings had redoubled as intrepid Nepil natives made their circuitous way up the white tower's florid staircases. Blackadder assessed the rising waves of sound. Pigmot, face as pasty as his pearl buttons, needed no urging to hurry.

Pigmot and Blackadder boarded the scoutship, followed by Baldrick and a variegated flock of resonating, quivering trills. Blackadder uncovered the luggage compartment and they tumbled in, Baldrick embracing the mounds of purring fur. "Skedaddle!" Pigmot shrieked, his wrist-scarves flapping in the updraft. Enraged Nepils could be seen climbing the outer reaches of double-ridged fluted stonework, brandishing broken-off jade pillars.

"Under weigh," acknowledged Blackadder, and put the vehicle into a hasty vector for the waiting space-black fleet above.

# # #

"How good of you, Admiraddibble," fluted Pigmot from the depths of Blackadder's most comfortable black-leather recliner massage-chair, in the Admiral's black-paneled private cabin. "Your timely rescubble will not go unrewarded."

"Your lordship is most gracious," said Blackadder. The ship was inhabited by a modest but rapidly-expanding population of trills as it sped away through vast, endless, lightless space from the obscure location that was Nepil. Officially uncharted Nepil. Nepil that was currently disinclined to trade with anything that looked Asphyxian. Nepil with its unique biological trade goods. On the black market, where one could avoid such piffle as environmental-pollution charges, animal liberationists and addictive-substance embargoes, everyone loved the trills. Until the market was saturated, *anyone* would buy trills. Blackadder smiled.

Lord Pigmot smiled as well, lost now in contemplation of a sample of the Admiral's black-current brandy. "A tiddle-up, Blackie. All's well that ends well, and all that."

"Er, yes, Piggie," said Blackadder. He lifted his own dark-tinted goblet in acknowledgement and joined the imperial consort in a genial titter.

Blackadder doubted that Pigmot would bother to count his complement of trills when he debarked; Blackadder doubted that Imperial Consort Lord Pigmot could count higher than twenty with his pants on. Even so, the number would be exactly that of his original boarding party. It did not pay to cheat the Queen's favorites.

Nevertheless, that would presently leave several thousand marketable trills in Blackadder's hands, tax-free and requiring no maintenance but basic rations. And they were infinitely replicable.

It was a pity none of them were black, thought Blackadder.