"It said the males have their brains in their dicks."
This was really too much for Zhargh.
"Dix? WHAT THE TZAKKI ARE 'DIX'?"
"Not 'dix'—'dicks'. It's their word for the pathetically inadequate appendage the males use for congress on this planet."
"Appendage? I thought you told me the females don't have one?"
"They don't. It's the males who have the appendage."
"What —you mean 'Khaxa'?"
"Yep—only they have just the one Khaxa."
"Tzakki help me! Only ONE Khaxa? No wonder the females were so grateful!"

Zargh started to laugh and then thought better of it. What emerged was a cross between a high-pitched whistle and a very loud fart that rose to deafening roar only to be cut short by a piercing shriek. "Ah, that's better, my bottoms were killing me."
"Yeah, it's a bummer isn't it? The whole crew are affected. It's the humidity on this watery, Tzakki-forsaken planet.
"Well?" continued Zhargh. "And do they?"
"Do they what?"
"Do the male sausages have a brain in this—this 'dick'?"
"Nope. The dicks we probed were all made out of sausage. Just like the rest of them. When we probed the females all we came up with was an even smaller dick that had no brain either. So we looked elsewhere."
"And?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's in the top of their single heads. But the brain is made entirely of sausage!"
Zargh was totally perplexed. So... what does the thinking?" he asked.
"You're not getting this, are you? The brain does the thinking. The sausage THINKS!"

"THINKING SAUSAGE!! You're asking me to believe in thinking sausages?!"
"Yes, thinking sausage! Conscious sausage! Feeling sausage; dreaming sausage, shagging sausage. The sausage is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture NOW?"
"O my Tzakki! You're serious then. You're deadly serious They really are made out of nothing but water and, and—Tzakki help me they really are—sausages?!?"
"You've finally got it, Zargh. Yes. They're sausages. And these ugly, watery, tasteless, friggin' sausages been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

Zhargh sat bolt upright in his recline and leant forward:
"So what do the sausages want?"
"Apart from the sex, you mean?"
"I' won't warn you again Tzix!"
"OK, Ok, keep your bottoms dry. First they want to talk to us. Then I imagine they want to explore the universe, contact other intelligent sausages, swap ideas and... have great sex. The usual stuff."
"Can we stop with the sex now, d' you think?"
"Well it's what half the known galaxy is after. It's refreshing to discover these sausages are no different. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that with a little genetic engineering these third-rate entities could be turned into first-rate secondary sex toys."
Zhargh shook his heads in despair and with lightning swiftness cuffed his companion across his twenty-nine flailing Khaxa. "Stop it!" he snarled.
"Ouch, that hurt."
"I won't warn you again. Just remember who's in charge here!"
"Ok, Commander."

"Let's try again" began Zhargh. "We've come all this way to talk to sausages— or in your case, to probe their female khaxa—I mean 'dicks'. Is that right?"
"Yep".
"So how do the sausages communicate with each other?"
"By blowing gas out of their superior frontal orifice."
"You mean they communicate by farting?"
"Yep".
"You're pulling my tentacles aren't you?"
"No, it's the Tzakki's honest truth. Cross my Khaxa and hope to escape the Void."
"So the sounds we thought were farts are actually some form of language?"
"You've got it."
"Astounding! And they actually communicate like that, do they?"
"The females did during probing. At first we thought they were in pain but when we probed them further we discovered that the sounds they were making were definitely a form of primitive communication."
"That's not what I meant at all. Do they use words, ideas, concepts?
"Oh, yes. Once we'd worked out the farting was some form of communication we soon translated it."
"So what did you learn?"
'Oh Don't!' means 'I desire stronger congress.' Once we took the deminimaliser core offline and upped the gain on the matrix we got even more sophisticated responses."
"Such as?"
"Don't ever stop"
"Amazing" grunted Zargh. "So they have a rudimentary grasp of time. What about space?"
"Oh, they understand that very well." smirked Tzixs.
"How do you mean, exactly?"
"Because one of the females shouted 'There's room for all of you in here' every time one of the lads stopped for a breather."
Zargh signed deeply "Tell me, Tzixs, were your 'experiments' confined entirely to exploring the procreative functions of these primitive sausages or did you find out if they are actually sentient beings with a language?"
"Oh, yes. It's a language all right. Only it's pretty primitive."
"Primitive?"
"Well—you know, sausage talk. Same as the stuff we picked up from their broadcasts. Sausage sounds. You know how when you slap a sausage down on the replicator it makes a noise? They talk by expelling air through a hole in one end of the sausage. We also discovered that they can expel air through another hole at the opposite end but it mainly seems to be used to repel unwanted visitors. They can even sing by squirting air through it in a particular way."

"OmiTzakki! Singing sausage. This is altogether too much. You're the Science Officer. What do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and, if possible, exchange information with all sentient races or multi-dimensional beings in the fourth quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favour. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the plasma log and forget we ever set tentacle on this Tzakki forsaken, watery rock."
"Despite the 'great sex' you've had here"?
"It wasn't that great. I've had better shags with a pan-breasted Zeezixlian lizard. At least they have more than three holes to plug—or is that four? I forget..."

"I was hoping you would say that." grunted Zhargh. "So we just pretend there's no one at home in this quadrant?"
"Yep"
"What about the ones we abducted? Don't we still have some females undergoing examination?"
"There's about 300 of them on this ship alone." replied Txzis.
"300?! That seems a bit excessive."
"Well...they wear out rather quickly..."
"I'm sure they do. Tell me Txzis, are you quite certain they won't remember what's happened to them?"
"We scrambled the sausage around in their heads so that it will all be just a wet dream to them."
"A dream to sausages! How appropriate that we should be a sausage's wet dream. Then we can mark this quadrant unoccupied?"
"Suits me," said Txzis.
Zharg heaved his 500 lb body out of his recline and reached for a small crystal switch on a glowing panel before him.
"Quite sure Tzixs?"
"Quite sure, Commander."

Zhargh flicked the switch and 2,407 very confused women woke up in places as diverse as a motel bedroom in Beaver Creek, South Dakota, a camel auction in Marrakesh, a bus shelter in South London, the baby changing room of a Swedish DIY store, and, in one case, on top of a New York policeman with her thighs wrapped around his riot stick. They all had three things in common; they'd lost their underwear, they were sweating profusely and they were very, very happy for no accountable reason.

Zargh turned to Tzixs and asked:
"Any others? Anyone interesting on the other side of this galaxy?"
"Yes, a shy but very hot female lithium based semi-organic intelligence on a class eight planet orbiting a star in the Delta Z quadrant. They were in contact two galactic rotations ago and said they wanted to get to know us a lot better when we were in the neighbourhood again."
"I should have thought the sausages on this Tzakki-forsaken rock had put you off sex forever?"
"Nope", said Tzixs, rubbing his tentacles together "I'm hot to trot."
Zhargh sighed heavily.
"Shall I set the co-ordinates then?" asked Tzixis.
"If you must."

log ends..