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Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires


HARRY HARRISON & JACK C. HALDEMAN II

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires

A Byron Preiss Book


VGSF


ISBN 0-575-05320-8


For Lori,
a true fan of aliens everywhere, especially those slimy ones.


In space, no one can hear you dream


CHAPTER 1
Bill kicked the bucket. Then he kicked a chair, reducing it to splinters. It wasn't that he was angry тАФ
though he had good reason to be teed-off and touchy. Stuck here on this puny supply station in the middle
of nowhere. He, a Galactic Hero, now reduced to the most menial of menial labor. He sniveled self-
pityingly at the faded memories of past glories, for he had been reduced to driving a forklift, loading giant
boxes of multipurpose paper onto outgoing spacers. It was sandpaper on one side, toilet paper on the
other, and woe befall he who did not read the instructions on the box. No, crappy as this job was, his real
concern was a physical problem of a most personal nature. His right foot was turning to stone, and he was
losing control over it. He sniveled again, stamped with sudden, bitter anger, then pulled his foot out of the
hole in the floor.
It had started out as a real nice foot. Bill even got used to all the extra toes, but this turning-to-stone
business was getting out of hand. Or rather out of foot. It currently weighed in at thirty-five pounds and
was gaining weight fast. Bill felt like he was dragging a cinder block around with him, and once he got it
moving it was hard to stop, short of crashing it into something. The crew aboard the supply station gave
him plenty of room, and repair robots followed him around like mechanical puppy dogs.
Bill realized that he had a bad habit of losing body parts. The thought depressed him greatly, and he
flicked a tear from one moist eye. He had lost what used to be his left arm through no fault of his own
while becoming a Galactic Hero. That's what war is all about. That it had been replaced with a right arm,
a nice black one that had belonged to a friend of his тАФ it gave Bill something to remember him by тАФ was
something he had grown quite used to, even fond of. He was attached to his new arm, and was always
inventing new fun things to do with it.
The foot, however, was another matter. Bill had blown his original foot away himself in a flash of self-

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preservation designed to keep all of his body parts from being even more disastrously blown away in a