While checking the Space Hamzter's accounts, I ran into an unusual expenditure. I picked up the phone and called Chief Hamzter.

Twenty minutes later, Instead of the Chief, Fashionable Hamzter came into my office. "Pray, how can I be of service to your illustrious humanity?" he said, arranging himself into a guest chair.

    I tapped the sheet of paper with my pencil. "This. How do you explain one thousand underpants?"

    Fashionable Hamzter poured me a shot of absinthe from a silver pocket flask. "Made of the finest linen by lovely maidens deeply involved in understanding underpants. Suitable for wear during La Belle Epoche."

    "Is this another one of your fashion excesses?"

    Fashionable Hamzter, dressed as a Brazilian habitue of the Manaos Opera House in the 1800s, lit a charuto. "Talk to Komrade Amanda. She is a lady of good taste."

    I picked up the pink hotline to Paris phone and spoke softly through a megaphone into the receiver. "Amandaaaaa."

    "Are you going to bitch about the underpants bill?" The lady has a nasty habit of reading my mind.

    "These are Space Hamzters, not Space Pansies."

    Captain Hamzter entered the office, wielding a cutlass. "Yes, tell her. My crew refuses to wear underpants."

    Amanda said, "If kittens wear underpants, so will the Hamzters. Or you and your whole bloody Hamzter lot are fired."

    I told Captain Hamzter, "She's gonna fire us."

    Captain Hamzter mumbled, "Osama bin Hamzter will hire us without underpants."

    "Underpants are in fashion." Fashionable Hamzter blew smoke rings in my face. "Living in the Hindu Kush is declasse."

    "You hear me -- fired."

    I heard the click on the Paris side of the pink hotline. After counting to ten, I told Captain Hamzter, "Go rob a bank or something, we have to pay this underpants bill."

    Captain Hamzter seemed to relax. He smiled, showing buck teeth. "No problem robbing a bank. But we won't wear underpants." Waving his cutlass, he left the office.

    That afternoon, a Space Hamzter raiding party flew to Kabul. Wearing false beards and turbans they robbed a bank. The Afghans blamed the Taliban.

    The following day.

    "Taliban, Taliban, tally me bananas," several Space Hamzters in dirty space suits sang as they dumped sacks of money on top of my desk.

    I said. "If you guys wore underpants, your space suits will stay cleaner."

    Captain Hamzter switched his eye patch from left to right eye. "Rapacious, robbing Hamzters don't wear underpants." The Hamzters stomped out of the office.

    The pink hotline rang. "Did you get your filthy Hamzters into underpants yet?" Amanda demanded.

    "Hamma, hamma. We're working on it," I almost stuttered.

    "Bragster, I'm not hearing any more excuses. You get those rodents into underpants or else." The pink hotline went dead.

    I called Clerk Hamzter and dictated a memo. When I finished, Clerk Hamzter rolled on the floor laughing.

    "What are you laughing about, you imbecile?" I asked.

    Clerk Hamzter recovered from his laughing fit and scurried outside. Soon I heard a roar of Hamzter laughter as Clerk Hamzter read them the threatening memo. The laughter increased when two truckloads of underpants arrived.

    Despondency crept over me. This was defeat. Not only I was going to lose the millions of intergalactic credit chits Amanda paid me. But I had lost the respect of the Hamzters. Outside my window, a mob of murderita swilling Hamzters chanted, "Brag in underpants, Brag in underpants."

    I was finished.

    That night, in the solitude of my writing cell, came an idea. I telephoned Chief Hamzter.

* * *

    A bright sun hovered over the grounds of Exterminator Park. I stepped out together with Fashionable Hamzter to inspect the troops.

    A Hamzter formation stood at attention as a bugle played. All Hamzters wore long linen underpants with tie-ties at the bottom of the legs.

    They cheered as I faced the formation.

    Captain Hamzter bellowed, "Hamzters, who are we?"

    Tha Hamzters waved cutlasses. "We're killers in underpants."

KIU: Killers or kittens in underpants? Use yer Email to register protests, agreements and hate letters. You'll find my handy Email address in the Email section of Killer Kittens, I mean . . . well, never mind.