“Yes. Thanks. Very thoughtful of you,” he said pointedly, with one eye on Breuer’s reaction. There was none; he seemed to have struck the right note.
“Pilot Breuer,” said Helena blandly, “thinks I’d enjoy an evening doing the town with her and a few friends.”
“But the Cavallo people——”
“Ross,” she said gently, “don’t nag.”
He shut up. And thought: wait until I get her out into space. // I get her out into space. She’d be a damned fool to leave this wacked-up culture. . . .
Breuer was saying, with an altogether too-innocent air, “I’d better get you two settled in a hotel for the night; then I’ll pick up Helena and a few friends and we’ll show her what old Novj Grad has to offer in the way of night life. Can’t have her batting around the universe saying Azor’s sidewalks are rolled up at 2100, can we? And then she can
do^her trading or whatever it is with Cavallo bright and early tomorrow, eh?”
Ross realized that he was being jollied out of an attack of the sulks. He didn’t like it.
The hotel was small and comfortable, with a bar crowded by roistering pilots and their dates. The glimpses Ross got of social life on Azor added up to a damnably unfair picture. It was the man who paid. Breuer roguishly tested the mattress in their room, nudging Helena, and then announced, “Get settled, kids, while I visit the bar.”
When the door rolled shut behind her Ross said furiously: “Look, you! Protective mimicry’s fine up to a point, but let’s not forget what this mission is all about. We seem to be suckered into spending the night, but by hell tomorrow morning bright and early we find those Cavallo people—”
“There,” Helena said soothingly. “Don’t be angry, Ross. I promise I won’t be out late, and she really did insist.”
“I suppose so,” he grumbled. “Just remember it’s no pleasure trip.”
“Not for you, perhaps,” she smiled sweetly.
He let it drop there, afraid to push the matter.
Breuer returned hi about ten minutes with a slight glow on. “It’s all fixed,” she told Helena. “Got a swell crowd lined up. Table at Virgin Willie’s—oops!” She glanced at Ross. “No harm to it, of course,” she said. “Anything you want, Ross, just dial service. It’s on my account. I fixed it with the desk.”
“Thanks.”
They left, and Ross went grumpily to bed.
A secretive rustle in the room awoke him. “Helena?” he asked drowsily.
Pilot Breuer’s voice giggled drunkenly, “Nope. Helena’s passed out at Virgin Willie’s, kind of the way I figured she would be on triple antigravs. Had my eye on you since Azor City, baby. You gonna be nice to me?”
“Get out of here!” Ross hissed furiously. “Out of here or I’ll yell like hell.”
“So yell,” she giggled. “I got the house dick fixed. They know me here, baby——”
He fumbled for the bedside light and snapped it on. “I’ll pitch you right through the door,” he announced. “And if you give me any more lip I won’t bother to open it before I do.”
She hiccupped and said, “A spirited lad. That’s the way I like ’em.” With one hand she drew a nasty-looking little pistol. With the other she pulled a long zipper and stepped out of her pilot’s coveralls.
Ross gulped. There were three ways to play this, the smart way, the stupid way, and the way that all of a sudden began to look attractive. He tried the stupid way.
He got the pistol barrel alongside his ear for his pains. “Don’t jump me,” Pilot Breuer giggled. “The boys that’ve tried to take this gun away from me are stretched end to end from here to Azor City. By me, baby.”
Ross blinked through a red-spotted haze. He took a deep breath and got smart. “You’re pretty tough,” he said admiringly.
“Oh, sure.” She kicked the coveralls across the room and moved hi on him. “Baby,” she said caressingly, “if I seem to sort of forget myself in the next couple of minutes, don’t get any ideas. I never let go of my gun. Move over.”