The Mayonnaise Murders Part 1

            "Whoever killed Johnny Beardy ruined a perfectly good sandwich in the process. I was hungry when I found him, so that's the first thing came to my mind.

            "For the record, my name is Vid. It's short for a name you don't wanna bother trying to pronounce if you're from Earth. Anyway, I solve problems. It's not what I always did, but things change and here I am. Stuck up to my gills in other critters' problems on good ole Planet 10.

             "Once again, if you're an Earthling reading this, I meant that literally. You folks have a habit of making up cute little sayings and whatnot. Working your tail off. Sweatin’ like a pig. Up to your neck in.

             "This ain't one of those. I have gills. Deal with it."

            On Planet 10, pork is fine but mayonnaise is illegal. Used as an essential ingredient in the highly addictive drug MayoMadd, mayonnaise has long been banned for the safety of the colonies which has been free of the MayoMadd craze for years. So then where did the mayonnaise come from? And who has enough pull to get it delivered to Planet 10? Or is somebody manufacturing it, and if so where are they getting the ingredients? Is sandwich spread really that important to a critter, and where does a dead rock star fit into all this?

            That’s what Vid, a detective, has to find out, with more than a little help from Vee, a shapely news reporter with no shortage of attitude and an arsenal of quick comebacks wrapped in as much barbed wire as humor. What they eventually uncover is the biggest story of Vee’s career, but it could also pose one of the biggest threats to Earth’s teenagers – especially those with a taste for chemical thrills. The whole twisted affair could turn both Vid and Vee into wanted criminals just for playing too close to the fire.

            What begins as a rather simple puzzle to solve leads Vid and Vee on a long and convoluted trail that takes them all the way from Planet 10 to a small Colorado town on Earth where they become involved with a particularly odd drug dealer and his nephew at the behest of the considerably more odd Deep Cluck and his posse of human/chicken half breeds. Deep Cluck and friends have been hiding out in a particularly remote, desert-like section of Planet 10 for years, just waiting for the chance to extract revenge for how they were mistreated and abused in their youth. In their minds, it was all the fault of Earthlings, and the Earthlings must pay. Introducing them to MayoMadd is the way to do it.

            Vid and Vee don’t support the plot, but tagging along with those doing the plotting turns out to be the only way for Vid to get close enough to try and figure out a way to stop it and for Vee to get her story. But there has always been tension between the critters – the name for the residents of Planet 10 – and the humans on Earth who designed Planet 10 especially to keep the critters at a distance. For Vid and for Vee, even though they want to do the right thing, it sometimes isn’t so easy to want to protect those whom they know look down their noses at them as if they were some sort of inferior species.

            There comes a time when one has to ask if doing the right thing is worth it.