Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
"Smart girl." He thought for minutes, then shook his head. "No possible
way out that I can see. The sneak-boat isn't due for a week, and from
what you've said it probably won't get here. But you might make it, at
that. I'll drop you somewhere...."
"You will not," she interrupted, quietly but definitely. "Which would
_you_ rather--go out in a blast like that one will be, beside a good
Atlantean, or, after deserting him, be psychoed, skinned, salted,
and--still alive--drawn and quartered?"
"Together, then, all the way," he assented. "Man and wife.
Tourists--newlyweds--from some town not too far away. Pretty well fixed,
to match what we're riding in. Can do?"
"Very simple." She opened a compartment and selected one of a stack of
documents. "I can fix this one up in ten minutes. We'll have to dispose
of the rest of these, and a lot of other stuff, too. And you had better
get out of that leather and into a suit that matches this passport
photo."
"Right. Straight road for miles, and nothing in sight either way. Give
me the suit and I'll change now. Keep on going or stop?"
"Better stop, I think," the girl decided. "Quicker, and we'll have to
find a place to hide or bury this evidence."
While the man changed clothes, Kinnexa collected the contraband,
wrapping it up in the discarded jacket. She looked up just as Phryges
was adjusting his coat. She glanced at his armpits, then stared.
"Where are your blasters?" she demanded. "They ought to show, at least a
little, and even I can't see a sign of them."
He showed her.
"But they're so tiny! I never saw blasters like that!"
"I've got a blaster, but it's in the tail pocket. These aren't. They're
air-guns. Poisoned needles. Not worth a damn beyond a hundred feet, but
deadly close up. One touch anywhere and the guy dies right then. Two
seconds max."
"Nice!" She was no shrinking violet this young Atlantean spy. "You have
spares, of course, and I can hide two of them easily enough in
leg-holsters. Gimme, and show me how they work."
"Standard controls, pretty much like blasters. Like so." He
demonstrated, and as he drove sedately down the highway the girl sewed
industriously.
The day wore on, nor was it uneventful. One incident, in fact--the
detailing of which would serve no useful purpose here--was of such a
nature that at its end:
"Better pin-point me, don't you think, on that ramp?" Phryges asked,
quietly. "Just in case you get scragged in one of these brawls and I
don't?"
"Oh! Of course! Forgive me, Fry--it slipped my mind completely that you
didn't know where it was. Area six; pin-point four seven three dash six
oh five.
"Got it." He repeated the figures.
But neither of the Atlanteans was "scragged", and at six P.M. an
allegedly honeymooning couple parked their big roadster in the garage at
Norgrad Field and went through the gates. Their papers, tickets
included, were in perfect order; they were as inconspicuous and as
undemonstrative as newlyweds are wont to be. No more so, and no less.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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