”Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I guess it wouldn’t be much of a bet if I didn’t have an incentive to win?”
He smiled. “True enough. Do we have a deal?”
She shook his hand. “Deal. And now I really do have to go. I don’t want to keep a teacher waiting.”
”Mind if I watch? Or would I make you nervous?”
Margo thought about it and decided she really didn’t mind. “No, I think maybe I’d feel a little less nervous if I had a friendly face around.”
”Scared of guns?” he asked sympathetically.
”Well, wouldn’t you be?”
Malcolm chuckled. “You’ve been watching the evening news too much. Get showered. I’ll tell Ann it’s my fault you’re late.”
”Thanks.”
”Don’t mention it.”
Irrationally, Margo felt better as she headed for the showers. Maybe-just maybe she’d found her first real friend.
Hearing protectors and range glasses were mandatory on TT-86’s firing line. The range was indoors, of necessity. One lane was a hundred yards long, designed for high-power rifles as well as rimfire rifles, shotguns, and pistols, but most of the lanes were ten yards long, about the right distance for most personal defense training. La-La Land’s weapons trainers dreamed of a three-hundred-yard lane, but the cost for that much space was just too high. There were no clay pigeons to shoot at, no cute little metal animals or numbered bull’s-eyes. All targets were either blank sheets of paper, human silhouettes, or plain, circular steel plates. Other time terminals which boasted safari tours included animal-shaped targets marked with kill zones.