Which is when there came from behind me a chattering but pleasant
feminine voice saying, "C-c-cut the rec-c-criminations and g-g-get some
heat in here b-b-but fast, prof-f-fessor!"
I was startled but turned slowly none the less, rationalizing that the
place had been deserted when I'd entered and that no one else could be
physically present since I'd entered alone and the only door hadn't
been opened since.
I fully expected to find one of the headquarters stenos grinning at me
over the closed circuit stereo from the Ad Building and I wasn't about
to begin to feed her ego by showing startlement.
I faced instead a very much present, very much alive and very lovely
raven-haired young lady who was in that remarkably provocative state
of nearly absolute deshabille that only the new Parisian sunsuits can
provide. The young lady's excitingly rounded curves were, however, a
rather curious blue and it had fleetingly occurred to me that she was
an extra-terrestrial when my better sense came to the fore and I said
rather inanely,
"You should be wearing more in Wisconsin this time of year!"
* * * * *
Her dark eyes flashed and she wriggled her shapely shoulders angrily
with interesting shock waves.
"Since when is this Wisconsin?" she cried. "It's HOAGS' exploding that
caused this cold!" She paused. "Isn't it?"
"HOAGS!" I echoed. Things started to add then that by logic couldn't.
HOAGS is a new installation, an accelerator where two streams of
particles orbiting in opposite directions were caused to meet head-on.
Hence the HO.
HOAGS is at Cape Canaveral, Florida, whence American satellites have
lanced spaceward since IGY. Cape Canaveral in February boasts the
weather that permits if not cries for the abbreviated type of costume
this gorgeous young damsel was wearing.
While I was thinking I was also listening and she was spluttering that
her father was General Schoener of the Atomic Energy Commission and
that he would have me suitably punished if I had kidnapped her--
"Now wait a sec," I said, throwing her my parka after a natural period
of bug-eyed hesitation. "I wouldn't be about to kidnap anyone, least of
all a flighty teenager."
"I'm twenty-one," she said, her eyes flashing with indignation, and
proceeded to enfold the parka around everything save the tip of her
cold-pink nose and her long curved legs. The elusive tip of her nose
wasn't worth trying to follow as she buried her raven-haired head in
the fur collar; there was more of the curvaceous lower extremities in
view which merited and claimed my attention. Devoted attention.
"Well?" she said.
"Yes, thank you," I answered, glad the heat--the furnace's thermal
radiation, that is--was coming up.
"I mean, what'll we do?"
"I hadn't given that much mature thought," I answered, "but now that
you mention--"
"Stop the parrying!" she cut in sharply.
"Parrying was farthest from my mind," I said.
She spluttered; then asked, "Are you telling the truth?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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