to either Guy or Rex Ravelle. When a bag a trunk was empty, they slowly went over it with their gadgets, seeking out, the two men supposed, secret compartments, hidden devices, or whatever.
While the two Amazonians searched, Rex looked at Guy questioningly. “About this stage of the game, I’d call it quits,” he said. “What’re you so keen to go to Amazonia for? After they’d given me this amount of gruff, I’d stick right on this old kettle and return to Earth.”
Guy closed his eyes in anguish, as Clete shuffled through his once neatly packed shirts.
“I can’t go back,” he said plaintively. “I’ve got to pull this assignment off. It’s the first time I’ve been able to swing an interplanetary job. You think you spacemen are the only ones with the dream? The rest of us, back on Earth, are just as keen as you are to participate in the big explosion out to the stars. Nine men out of ten would give their right arms for an interspace job.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rex nodded, his voice gruff. Although he was talking to Guy, he was eyeing the Amazon Lysippe with appreciation. These girls improved in appearance considerably as you grew used to them. This Lysippe, for example, had a figure beneath her uniform that any mopsie back on Earth would have been proud to display in one of those new bottomless bathing suits, out on the beach.
Guy was saying, “This is my chance. If I pull this off, I’ll get other over-space assignments. I’ve just got to make good.”
Clete looked up from her search and growled to Guy, “What’s this?”
Guy said, “My tool kit.”
“Jetsam! You think I’m a flat?”
“What’s the matter?” Guy said plaintively. He and Rex approached.
The girl warrior had opened the kit. She gestured. “That’s a shooter. What does a mining engineer, or whatever you’re supposed to be, need with a shooter?”
“What’s a shooter?” Guy complained. “That?” He pulled it from the case. “Just because it’s got a pistol grip? That’s a combination drill and cutter.”
He flicked a stud and took an edge off the corner of one of the messhall tables. The invisible beam cut through the metal like cheese.
“Hey!” Rex protested. “Next you’ll be drilling a hole through the hull.”
“All right, all right,” Clete growled. “Put it back. What’s this?”
Guy said plaintively, “Would you know if I told you? Are you up on the tools we use in assaying and…”
“Don’t be so stute,” she snapped at him. “These look like explosive charges.”
He groaned. “I keep telling you. I’m here to check the possibilities of exchanging ores or ingots of titanium for columbium. I have to assay. How do you extract ores on this planet, with eyebrow tweezers?”
She looked at him coldly.
He went on. “These are mini-chargers, for sample blasting, yes. I doubt if I’ll have need of them. Confiscate them if you want. How about my pocket knife? You want that too?”
“You looking for trouble, Sweetie?” Her eyes were level on his.
“Oh, leave him alone,” Lysippe grumbled. “The poor boy’s got to have tools, doesn’t he? Imagine using a man for a mining engineer.” She looked at Guy in honest inquiry. “Doesn’t it upset you to get your nice soft hands all dirty?”
Rex chuckled.
“No,” Guy said. “Besides, I’m not a mining engineer. I’m an expediter. I…oh, Zen. Forget about it. I’ll explain when I meet your people down on Amazonia.”
Lysippe said interestedly, “You really figure on landing, do you?”
“Of course.”
Clete chuckled, as she continued the minute search of his effects. “You better look out for Minythia,” she grinned.
“What’s Minythyia?” Guy said.
“Not what, who,” the girl who had demonstrated her knife throwing prowess laughed. “Our buddy who went back to the pilot boat to report and ask for instructions on you and that Pat O’Gara kid. She hasn’t any husband.”
Lysippe took Guy in again. “I might take you on myself, Honeybun.”
“You’ve got a couple of men,” Clete said.
“Ummm. But I kind of like these effeminate types.”
“Effeminate!” Guy bleated.
Rex had still been eyeing Lysippe. It came to him that he’d been in space a long time.
He put out a hand experimentally, and ran it along the girl’s arm which was bare from shortly below her shoulder where her leather-like jerkin terminated in a short sleeve, to a trio of heavy golden bracelets on her wrist.
“Just how effeminate do you have to be to…” he began.
But her response had been instantaneous. Those heavy bracelets were not mere decoration. In fact, they turned out to be a rare combination of brass knuckles and blackjack when competently used.
She backhanded him, sending him asprawl. She stepped closer, as he tried to stagger to his feet and cut loose with her right hand, the fingers gathered and pointed so as to be spearlike, toward his solar plexus.
“Artimis!” Clete yelled at her. “Easy! You’ll hurt the poor boy.”
Lysippe pulled her punch, albeit growling.
“Listen,” she snapped. “If there’s any pawing done around here, I’ll do it, understand?”
Rex Ravelle shook his head, for clarity, and slumped into a chair. “Holy Jumping Zen,” he complained. “What hit me?”
“What in the name of the Goddess is going on here?” the major said from the entry. Behind her was Captain Buchwald.
“Aw, nothing,” Lysippe grumbled. “Sweetie, here, got a little unmanly and I had to tap him.”
The major said, “Effeminate cloddy.”
Guy cleared his throat. “Uh, Major, I think I’ve got a solution. This problem of my landing on Amazonia and being subjected to Amazonian law.”
“That you would be, Sonny, and you’re of marriageable age, too.”
“Don’t you ever make exceptions to these laws of yours?”
“No,” the major said flatly. “Laws you make exceptions to, don’t remain laws very long. We don’t have many laws, but those we have are not only laws but also religious beliefs, unchanging custom, never to be broken except to be punishable with greatest severity. In that manner our laws are observed.”
“But look. Why can’t I simply base myself at the UP Embassy? Traditionally, an embassy is the soil of the planet being represented. So if I was there, I would be subject to United Planets law, rather than Amazonian.”
The major looked at him sourly. “Just one short coming to that, Sonny. There is no UP Embassy on Amazonia.”
Guy said, “But there has to be. You’re a member of United Planets. You have an embassy on Earth. UP must have one here.”
“I didn’t say we didn’t have a UP Embassy, I said there wasn’t one on our planet. We make no exceptions to our laws. If UP personnel landed on Amazonia, the men would be subject to our marriage laws. The women, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, would be subject to our military draft. Consequently, it was necessary that the UP Embassy be placed on an artificial satellite orbiting our planet. The personnel seldom, if ever, comes down to the surface. We conduct all business by our representatives ferrying up to them.”
She looked at Guy thoughtfully. “Could you handle your business from a satellite orbiting Amazonia?”
“I don’t think so,” he said weakly. “I’m afraid I might have to be seeing your mines, your smelting facilities, that sort of ting.”
Minythyia entered, scowling.
The major said, “Well?”
“Could I speak to you alone, Madam?”
“Come out here into the companionway.”
As they left, Minythyia tipped Guy Thomas a wink. The trade expediter groaned softly.
The Captain looked at him. “How’d you get yourself into this mess?”
