It was a humiliating but true fact that she had out-maneuvered me all
the way down the line. She had stolen the battleship from under my
nose, torn a wide swath through galactic shipping, then escaped neatly
right under my gun. What made the situation most embarrassing was that
she had set a trap for me--when I thought I was hunting her. Hindsight
is a great revealer of obviousities and this one was painfully clear
now. While escaping from the captured battleship she had not been
hysterical in the slightest. That role had been feigned. She had been
studying me, every bit of my face that could be seen, every intonation
of my voice. Hatred had seared my picture in her memory, and while
escaping she must have considered constantly how I would be thinking
when I followed her. At the safest and least obvious spot in her flight
she had stopped--and waited. Knowing I would come and knowing that she
would be more prepared for the encounter than I was. This was all past
history. Now it was my turn to deal the cards.
All kinds of schemes and plans trotted through my head to be weighed
and sampled. Top priority--before anything else was attempted--would be
a complete physical change for me. This would be necessary if I wanted
to catch up with Angelina. It was also required if I were to stay out
of the long reach of the Corps. The fact had not been mentioned during
my training, but I was fairly sure the only way one left the Special
Corps was feet first. Though I was physically down and out there was
nothing wrong with the old think box and I put it to use. Facts were
needed, and I gave a small endowment to the city library in the form
of rental fees. Fortunately there were filmcopies of all the local
newspapers available, going back for years. I made the acquaintance of
an extremely yellowish journal endearingly called "HOT NEWS!!" _Hot
News!!_ aimed at a popular readership--with a vocabulary I estimated
at approximately three hundred words--who relished violence in its
multiform aspects. Most of the time these were just copter accidents
and such, with full color photos of course. But very often there were
juicy muggings, sluggings and such which proved the quieting hand of
galactic civilization still hadn't throttled Freibur completely. In
among these exaggerated tales of violence lay the murky crime I was
searching for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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