Equation of Doom Part 2

Garr Symm ignored him. The blue-skinned girl cried.

Ramsey grimaced and hit Garr Symm in the belly as hard as he could.

Symm thudded back against the table. It overturned with a crash and the Security Chief crashed down on top of it. There wasn't a sound in the gambling hall except Ramsey's sudden hard breathing, the Vegan girl's sniffling, and Garr Symm's noisy attempts to get air into his lungs.

Then Garr Symm gagged and was sick. He writhed in pain, still unable to breathe. His hands fluttered near his weapons belt.

"Come on," Ramsey told the Vegan girl. "We'd better get out of here." He took her arm. Dumbly she went with him. None of the outworlders there tried to stop them. Ramsey looked back at Garr Symm. The Irwadian was shaking his fist. He had finally managed to draw his m.g. gun, but the crowd of outworlders closed between them and there was no chance he could hit Ramsey or the girl. Retching, he had dirtied the glossy green scales of his chest.

"I'll get you," he vowed. "I'll get you."

Ramsey took the girl outside. It was very cold. "I'm so afraid," she said. "What will I do? What can I do?" She shook with fear.

"You got a place to sleep?"

"Y-yes, but I'm the only Vegan girl in Irwadi City. He'll find me. He'll find me when he's ready."

"O.K. Then come home with me."

"I--"

"For crying out loud, I don't look that lecherous, do I? We can't just stand here."

"I--I'm sorry. I'll go with you of course."

Ramsey took her hand again and they ran. The cold black Irwadian night swallowed them.

"So you live in the Old Quarter too," the Vegan girl said.

"Heck yeah. Did you expect a palace?"

Ramsey had a room, rent one Irwadi month in arrears, in a cold-water tenement near the river which demarked the Old and the New Quarters. The facade of the old building was dark now. His landlady was probably asleep, although you never could tell with that old witch. Ramsey knew it wouldn't be the first time she stayed up through half the night to await a delinquent tenant.

"I--I never went to a man's room before," the blue-skinned Vegan girl said. She was rather pretty in a slender, muscleless, big-eyed, female-helpless mode.

"You're a dance-hall girl, aren't you?"

"Still, I never spent the night in a man's--"

"What's the matter with you? You think we're going to spend the night here? Somebody over at those gaming tables will be able to identify me.

Garr Symm'll be on his way before long."

"Then what are we going to do?" The girl was s.h.i.+vering with cold.

"Hide," Jason Ramsey said. "Somewhere. I just came back to get my things. There isn't much, but there's an old m.g. gun which we might need."

"But they'll find us, and--"

"You coming upstairs or will you wait out here and freeze to death in the cold?"

"I'm coming."

They went upstairs together, on tip-toe. Ramsey's room was on the third floor, with a besooted view of the industrial complex on the river by day. The narrow hall was dark and silent. Behind one of the closed doors an outworlder cried out in his sleep. Ramsey had to cup a hand over the Vegan girl's mouth so she wouldn't scream in empathic fear. He opened the door of his room, surprised that it was not locked. He thought he had left it locked.

At once he was wary. It was dark in the hall, just as dark in the room.

He could see nothing. The door hinges squeaked.

"Come in, Captain Ramsey," a voice said. "I thought you would never get here."

He stood on the threshold, uncertain. The voice had spoken not Interstellar _Coine_, but English. It had spoken English, without a foreign accent.

And it was a girl's voice.

Still, it could have been an elaborate trick. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that Garr Symm had learned Ramsey's ident.i.ty already and had sent an operative here to await him. Ramsey and the Vegan girl had come on foot. It was a long walk.

"I'm armed," Ramsey lied. "Come over here. Slowly. Don't put any lights on." He could feel the Vegan girl trembling next to him. Not able to understand English, she didn't know what was going on.

"You're armed," the unseen girl's voice said in crisp, amused English, "like I'm a six-legged Antarean spider-man. You have an m.g. gun, Ramsey. It's in this room. I have it. That's all you have. No, don't try to lie to me. I'm a telepath. I can read you. Come in and put the light on and shut the door. You may bring the girl with you if you want.

Brother, is she ever radiating fear! It's practically drowning your own mind out."

The unseen girl wasn't kidding, Ramsey knew. She could read minds. She had proved it to him. Which left him this choice: he could grab the Vegan girl's arm again and get the heck out of there, or do what the unseen Earth girl told him to do. He wanted that m.g. gun. He took the Vegan girl's hand and advanced over the threshold and closed the door and switched on the light.

The girl was sitting on the bed. She was an Earthgirl, all right. She had come in a toggle-cloak of green Irwadian fur, which was folded neatly at her side on the bed. Under it she wore a daring net halter of the type then fas.h.i.+onable on Earth but which had not yet taken over the outworlds. It left her shoulders bare and exposed a great deal of smooth, tawny skin through the net. Her firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s were cupped in two solid cones of black growing out of the net. Her midriff was bare to an inch or two below the navel. Her loins were covered by an abrevitog which formed a triangle in front and, Ramsey knew, would form one in back. Her long, well-formed legs were bare down to the mid-calf boots she wore. She had a beautiful body and had dressed so Ramsey couldn't miss it. Her face was so provocatively beautiful that Ramsey just stood there staring at it--after he had taken in the rest of her. She wore her hair quite long. She seemed perfectly composed. In her right hand she held Ramsey's m.g. gun, but she wasn't pointing it at them.

She looked at the timid Vegan girl and smiled. "Oh, I am sorry, Captain Ramsey," she said. "I couldn't know, of course, you'd be coming home with--company."

"It isn't what you think it is," Ramsey said, surprised to find himself on the defensive. "The girl's in trouble. So'm I."

The Earthgirl laughed. "Already? You looked the type, but I thought it would take a little time."

"What do you want?" Ramsey said. They were speaking in English. The Vegan girl tugged at Ramsey's arm. She wanted to get out of there and hoped Ramsey would go with her. Abruptly the Earthgirl burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" Ramsey demanded.

"Your little Vegan friend. I read her mind, Ramsey. She thinks I'm your wife. She thinks I'm mad at you for bringing her home."

"Then why don't you talk in _Coine_," Ramsey said in the interstellar language, "and make her feel better? She might as well know I never saw you before in my life." He was annoyed.

The Vegan girl smiled timidly, taking hope.

"But you did," the beautiful Earthgirl said. "I was on the _Polaris_ today, Captain. You were to be the pilot, until Interstellar Transfer here on Irwadi was planetarized."