An interstellar hunting trip with Major Daphne could teach a man a number of lessons. Like being kind to fellow human beings, or—

Never Gut-shoot A Wampus

By Winston Marks

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1955 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I'm not exactly broke, but this Major Daphne owned more planets than I do golf balls. Whereas my mining interests were mostly on earth, the Major got in early on the Centaurus grab. A whole generation later, all I could stake out was one hot little hunk of tropical mud that no one else would fool with.

Daphne liked to kid me about my "galactic empire" every time we collided at the club. I was a bachelor and Daphne was married, but he spent more time there than I.

He was a bear of a man with a bull-moose voice, the chest and shoulders of an ape, the appetite of a goat and the morals of a rabbit. There were few wealthier men in the system and none half so noisy about it. His favorite approach to bragging was to tell of his interstellar hunting expeditions.

It costs money to push even a private boat around out there, and nobody but a fatheaded, ostentatious trillionaire would consider blowing half a billion to shoot a brace of pink-eyed grouse, or travel a parsec to blast a two-ton Lartizian lizard.

He nailed me one morning in the slime-bath at the club. I was soaking out a hang-over and a few wrinkles in the filthy anti-biotic goo up in health service, when Major Daphne charged in with a towel around his fat middle and plunked down in the next vat. He splashed a gob of the vile smelling green stuff in my face, and I cursed him out.

He bristled at me as he settled his bulk on the sunken stool, "Young man," he growled, "profanity is the luxury of uneducated lackies and foul-mouthed jackals. Which are you?"

"Splash me again and I'll come over and drown you in this snot," I told him.

He squinted under his gray eyebrows and roared, "Oho! It's my empire-builder friend! Say, when are we going hunting on that free-floating pimple of yours?"

When are we going hunting! He had never so much as bought me a drink, and all 

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