serious drinking at the bar before we eat.”
And at the bar, Jules laid a fifty-dollar bill on the oak and said, “A liter of vodnak, please. Estvan’s, if you have it. In
the original bottle-sealed.”
“We have it, Mister.” The bar-tender set out two glasses, a bowl of ice and the heavy, crudely molded, green-glass
bottle of the one-hundred-and-twenty-proof beverage that was the favored tipple of the rim-world, Delf. “We’ve got
everything. And don’t worry about it not being the clear quill. We don’t cheat. With our prices we don’t have to”and
he put down on the bar a dollar and fifteen cents in change, which Jules waved away.
Before Jules opened the bottle-he was looking into the mirror, and so was Yvette-the man at Yvette’s left finished
his drink and moved away, and a tall, slim Earthman came up to take his place. Holding up one finger to the
bartender” the newcomer said” “I’ll take a jigger of the. . . .”
That was as far as he got. “Rube!” Yvette snapped throughout the years, half of the old-time circus battle-cry of
“Hey Rube!” had survived. She grabbed the heavy bottle by its neck, and hurling it even as she dropped-dropped
safely under the vicious blaster-beam that, having incinerated the slender Earthman, swept through the space her
chest bad occupied an instant before. Still in air” falling almost flat, she braced one foot against the bar, dived head-
long under the nearest table, bent her back and heaved.
The blaster-beam, however, had already expired. The heavy bottle” still full and still sealed, hurled with a Des.
Plainian’s strength and with an aerialist’s sure control, had struck bottom-on squarely in the middle of the gunner’s
face-and that gunner now had no face at all and scarcely enough head to be recognizable as human.
Jules, too, was busy. He too had dropped at his sister’s warning word, scanning the room as he fell. He too made a
dive; but his was high and far, toward a table for six at which only two couples sat. One of the men at that table, half
hidden behind a tall and statuesque blonde, had started to rise to his feet and was reaching for his left armpit.
Jules lit flat on the table and slid angle-wise across its length, in a welter of breaking and flying dishes” glassware”
silverware, food and drink, directly at the man trying so frantically to draw his weapon. En route” Jules brushed the
blonde aside. He didn’t push her hard at all-just a one handed gentle shove; just enough to get her out of the way.
Nevertheless, she went over backward, chair and all” and performed an involuntary back somersault-thus revealing
to all interested observers that she wore only a lacy trifle of nylon in the way of underwear.
Continuing his slide, Jules made a point of his left elbow and rammed it into the man’s gut. Then, as the man dou-
bled up and “w-h-o-o-s-h-e-d” in agony, Jules whirled to his feet off of the table and chopped the hard edge of his
right hand down onto the back of his victim’s neck-which broke with a snap audible for dozens of feet above the
uproar then going on. Then, seizing the man’s half-drawn weapon-it was a stun-gun, not a blaster-he glanced at its
dial. Ten. Wide open. Instantly lethal. Clicking it back to three-a half-hour stun-he played its beam briefly over the
other man at the table (the guy had been too quiet and too unconcerned by far during all this action) and whirled
around to see how his sister was making out.
Yvette was doing all right. The table under which she had disappeared had leaped into the air, turned over shedding
dishes and so forth far and wide and crashed down onto the table at which the first blasterman and three other
goons had been sitting. She had picked the blaster up and had tried to bend it around the side of Number Two’s head;
but it broke up almost as thoroughly as the head did. Ducking as only such a performer as she was could duck, she
grabbed Number Three by the ankles, up-ended him” kicked the flaming blaster out of his hand before it could kill
more than three innocent bystanders and was going to use him as a flail on Number Four when that unlucky (or
lucky) wight slumped bonelessly to the floor in the beam of her brother’s stunner.
She had the motion all made-why waste it?-So, continuing her swing, she hammer-threw Number Three over a few
rows of tables and out into fifty feet of air through the middle of one of the three immense windows already
mentioned.
Have you ever heard four hundred and thirty-two square feet of three-eighths-inch-thick plate glass shatter all at
once? It makes a noise.
Such a noise that all lesser noises stopped instantly. And in that strained, tense silence Jules spoke quietly to his
sister. Both were apparently perfectly calm. Neither breathed one count faster than normal. Only their eyes his a
glacially cold grey; hers a furiously hot blue-showed how angry and how disconcerted they both were. “Many more
of ’em, you think?” he asked.
“Not to spot.” Yvette shook her head. “And we’ve got no time to check.”
“Right. Take that one, I’ll bring the other. Flit.” Carrying two unconscious men, the two ran lightly, but at terrific
speed, down three flights of stairs and out into the parking lot. The attendant, upon seeing what burdens they
carried, tried simultaneously to run and to yell, but accomplished neither-a half-hour stun saw to that.
Tortured rubber shrieked and smoked as the heavy car spun out of the lot and into the highway. Fortunately” traffic
was so light-it was then half past two in the morning-that Jules did not have to drive far before a moment came
when no other car was in sight.
The d’Alembert vehicle, while it looked pretty much like an ordinary ground car, was a little too long and too wide
and too round and much too heavy to be any standard model. Thus, alone in the road for a moment, Jules punched
three buttons and three things happened: 1) the car’s lights went out; 2) from those too-round sides the two halves
of an air-tight, bulletproof, transparent canopy shot up, snapped together, and locked; and 3) the vehicle went
straight up, at an acceleration of four Earthly gravities-having two Earthers aboard they couldn’t hurry to an altitude
of a hundred and ninety thousand feet before it stopped.
Jules and Yvette removed what was left of their Delfian costumes-which wasn’t very much-and stared wordlessly
into each other’s eyes for a long half minute. Then Yvette spoke:
“That was our contact. Our only contact. And we don’t know anybody in SOTE on Earth . . . and there was a leak.
There had to be a leak, Julie.”
“That’s for sure, and it was no ordinary leak, either. It had to be right in the Head’s own office. . . :’ Jules voice died
away.
Yvette shivered. “I’m afraid so. And we haven’t an inkling, except for his retinal pattern, of who the Head is or where
he is. He may not be on Earth, even.”
“Well” there’ll be somebody in the Tampeta office here and they’ll be on the alert. That brawl put the stuff into the
fan but good. They’ll be monitoring the channel every second.”
“But our friends’ friends down there will he monitoring all channels every second-and they probably have the
codes.”
He thought for a moment, then grinned. “So I’ll go back to one that’s so old and so simple that they probably never
heard of it … unless it’d fool our monitor, too … uh-uh. Whoever they’ve got on monitor right now is no dumb
bunny; so here goes.”
He flipped a blue switch and raised his powerful-and not too unmusical-deep bass voice in song: “Sing of the
evening star, Oh Susan; sweetest old tune ever sung. Oh, Susan, sweet one, ’tis. . . .
“Susan here.” A lilting, smooth-as-cream contralto voice came from the speaker. There was a moment of silence”
then the voice said “Cut!” and Jules flipped his switch; whereupon the voice concluded, “We’ll beep in. Out.”
“I’ll say they’re alert!” Yvette exclaimed; then went on” half-giggling in relief. “And she’s fast on the trigger Susan
here’ my left eyeball. You made that whole thing up, didn’t you, on the spur of the moment.”
“Uh-huh. If I’d had a little time the verse would have been as good as the music.”
Yvette snorted. “Ha! Modesty, thy name is Jules! I expect them to tap you for the Met any minute now. But you
were right on one thing-no dumb bunny could make ‘S-O-T-E-S-O-S’ so fast out of that mess of yowling. But it
won’t really be a beeper, you think?”
“Anything else but. My guess is a laser. They’ve got us lined up and they’ll pour it right into our cup-so I’d better set