The two guards greeted each other; Betty said, “Hi, Johnnie. Why aren’t you over at the heap big smoke?”
“They wouldn’t let me.”
“Me, too.” She glanced around. “Where’s the Duchess?”
“Cone shopping. I’m still getting the silent treatment. Seventeen hats she’s bought. What have you done to your face?”
Betty turned to a mirror. ‘Like it? It’s called ‘Cosmic Contouring’ and it’s the latest thing.”
“Makes you look like a zebra with the pip.”
“Why, you country oaf. Ed, you like it. Don’t you?”
Ed Cowen looked up from the checker board and said hastily, “I wouldn’t know. My wife says I have no taste.”
“Most men haven’t. Johnnie, Myra and I have come to invite you two to go out on the town. How about it?”
Cowen answered, “I don’t favor that, Myra.”
“It was her idea,” Miss Holz answered.
John Thomas said to Cowen, “Why not? I’m sick of checkers.”
“Well. . . I’m supposed to keep in touch with the office. They might want you any time now.”
“Pooh!” put in Betty. “You carry a bodyphone. Anyhow Myra does.”
Cowen shook his head. “Let’s play it safe.”
“Am I under arrest?” Betty persisted. “Is Johnnie?”
“Mmm. . . no. It’s more protective custody.”
‘Then you can protectively cuss him wherever be is. Or stay here and play checkers with yourself. Come on, Johnnie.”
Cowen looked at Miss Holtz; she answered slowly, “I suppose it’s all right, Ed. We’ll be with them.”
Cowen shrugged and stood up. Johnnie said to Betty, “I’m not going out in public with you looking like that. Wash your face.”
“But Johnnie! It took two hours to put it on.”
“The taxpayers paid for it, didn’t they?”
“Well, yes, but. . .”
“Wash your face. Or we go nowhere. Don’t you agree, Miss Holtz?”
Special Operative Holtz had only a flower pattern adorning her left cheek, aside from the usual tinting. She said thoughtfully, “Betty doesn’t need it. Not at her age.”
“Oh, you’re a couple of Puritans!” Betty said bitterly, stuck her tongue at Johnnie and slouched into the bath. She came out with her face glowing pink from scrubbing. “Now I’m stark naked. Let’s go.”
There was another tussle at the lift, which Ed Cowen won. They went to the roof to take an air taxi for sightseeing, instead of going down to the streets. “Both you kids have had your faces spread around the papers the past few days. And this town has more crackpots than a second-hand shop. I don’t want any incidents.”
“If you hadn’t let them bully me, my face wouldn’t be recognizable.”
“But his would.”
“We could paint him, too. Any male face would be improved with make-up.” But she entered the lift and they took an air taxi.
“Where to, Chief?”
“Oh,” said Cowen, “cruise around and show us sights. Put it on the hourly rate.”
“You’re the doctor. I can’t fly across the Boulevard of Suns. Some parade, or something.”
“I know.”
“Look,” put in Johnnie, “take us to the space port.”
“No,” Cowen corrected. “Not out there.”
“Why not, Ed? I haven’t seen Lummox yet. I want to look at him. He may not be well.”
“That’s one thing you can’t do,” Cowen told him. “The Hroshii ship is out of bounds.”
“Well, I can see him from the air, can’t I?”
“No!”
“But. . .”
“Never mind him,” Betty advised. “We’ll get another taxi. I’ve got money, Johnnie. So long, Ed.”
“Look,” complained the driver. “I’ll take you to Timbuctu. But I can’t hang around over a landing flat. The cops get rude about it.”
“Head for the space port,” Cowen said resignedly. There was a barricade around the many acres assigned to the Hroshii except where it had been broken to let their delegation enter the Boulevard of Suns, and even then the barricade joined others carrying on down the avenue toward the administrative group. Inside the enclosure the landing craft of the Hroshii sat squat and ugly, almost as large as a terrestrial star ship. Johnnie looked at it and wondered what it was going to be like to be on Hroshijud. He was uncomfortable at the thought, not because he was fearful but because he had not yet told Betty that he was going. He had started a couple of times but it had not worked out right.