'For Christ's sake, what now?'
'It's my aunt. I promised I'd come and see her tonight, and I didn't get a chance to call her before we left the headquarters. She's sick. If I could just have permission to use a phone for a minute-'
Hilda shrugged. It wasn't exactly giving permission, but it wasn't a flat rejection, either. As Tepp hurriedly left the little viewing room Hilda didn't even look after her. Merla Tepp was now a dead issue.
She turned to Patrice Adcock. 'Didn't Dopey say anything at all when you told him about all the bugs?'
'He was delighted to hear about it,' Patrice said sourly. 'He asked me half a dozen times if we were sure it was the same kind of bug I had. The Docs were doing their best to ask him what was going on. He mewed something at them, but then he paid no attention to them at all. Then he said to me, 'You'll see,' and went back to not talking. I took that as a threat. I think-'
'Wait a minute,' Makalanos said suddenly. He turned to the linguistics crew. 'Did you get that? See if you can check what he said to the Docs right then, the first thing after Dr. Adcock told him about the bug.'
'Hey,' said the linguist, coming alive. 'Good point! It might help.' And indeed it might have, but not right then. That was when the interrogation came to an abrupt halt, and it was Merla Tepp who halted it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Outside the zoo cage Merla Tepp took a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm. She wasn't surprised at what had happened. The brigadier had been on the point of firing her often enough before, but she couldn't help wishing it had happened just a little later. She was going to miss the job. She would even miss Hilda Morrisey herself, a wicked woman, certainly, but in some ways an admirable one-
There was no use thinking that way. She knew what she had to do.
She turned her back on the armed guard, who had been looking at her with some concern, and marched to the office of Lieutenant Colonel Makalanos. His assistant, transmitting copies of the Doc's latest drawings to headquarters, looked up in surprise. 'Out,' Merla ordered. 'I have to make a secure call.'
The man got up to leave, looking baffled but obedient, and Merla sat before his screen. When she had terminated the assistant's transmission she sat for a moment, moving her lips in silent prayer.
Then she dialed the number in Roanoke, Virginia, and spoke to the placid, gray-haired lady whose face appeared on the screen. 'Aunt Billie? I'm really upset. Brigadier Morrisey has fired me as her aide, and I don't know what to do.'
The woman looked concerned, though not particularly surprised. She tsk-tsked sympathetically. 'That's too bad, dear. I know how you must feel. Is there any chance that she'll change her mind?'
'I don't think so.'
'What a pity,' the woman said vaguely. She paused, shaking her head in regret. Then she came to a decision. She said, 'I'm sorry if I sound a little upset. It's one of my bad days, you see. The left knee and both elbows again- I'm afraid I'll have to have the surgery very soon now.'
Tepp caught her breath. 'The knee and the two elbows? When?'
'Oh, very soon. As soon as possible, in fact. I wish it weren't necessary, but there's no sense in putting it off any longer, is there?' She was silent for a moment, then, briskly, 'I'm afraid I must go now, dear. I'll pray for you.'
Tepp terminated the connection and sat for a moment, breathing deeply. Then she stood up and left the office. 'Thanks,' she said to the assistant, and headed back for the cage. The outside guard had gone back to his daydreaming but he woke up quickly when Tepp ordered: 'Give me your weapon.'
'Do what? But I can't-'
'It's Brigadier Morrisey's order,' she said, taking it from him and checking the safety. 'Here, you can ask her yourself.' And she pushed the door open.
Inside Hilda Morrisey turned to glare at her. 'Now what the hell do you want, Tepp?' she demanded, and then saw the gun.
The guard, suddenly alert, reached for the weapon. Merla Tepp was faster than he was. She stepped back and put a quick round into his right thigh; the man screeched like an owl and collapsed as she set the weapon to full automatic and, sobbing aloud at last, sprayed Hilda and those devil-inspired alien monsters from Hell. She got off half a hundred rounds before she realized that Lieutenant Colonel Makalanos had a gun of his own and he had drawn it.
Too late she turned toward him. When his first shot hit her right in the breastbone it was like being struck with a leaden baseball bat, and that was the last Merla Tepp knew of anything at all in this life.
CHAPTER FORTY
For Daisy Fennell it was the worst night of her long career with the Bureau, and it went on forever. Dr. ben Jayya dithered uselessly over the casualties, protesting that he was a research M.D., not a caregiver, but someone had already called the paramedics.
They were there in five minutes, three cars of them, screeching past the startled UN guards with their siren going. It took them a lot longer than that, though, to figure out what to do once they got there. The leg of the wounded guard was all in a day's work for them. So was the lobe of Dannerman's ear, which he had nearly lost to Tepp's spray of fire. For Hilda Morrisey the big problem was stopping the bleeding from her throat, and getting her into one of the ambulances on the very faint chance that she would still be alive when she got to the emergency room.
And there was nothing at all to be done for either Tepp herself or for the one of the Docs who now lay doubled-over on the floor and exuding great amounts of a pinkish fluid, beyond doubt well and truly dead.
It was the other two extraterrestrials that were the problem. Tepp's shot had caught Dopey in his great, colorful fantail. And, though he was complaining bitterly about the agony he was suffering, he had allowed Camp Smolley's medics to dress the wound as best they could. The surviving Doc was another matter. He had taken three of Tepp's rounds. Two were in his left major arm and, though whatever he had for a tibia had been shattered, those wounds didn't seem immediately life-threatening. It was the one that had struck his chest that worried the medics. The bullet was still in there, and he was mewing softly in pain as he lay flat on his back on the floor, with Pat Adcock-Pat One-comfortingly holding one of his lesser paws.
The head medic looked up from where he was bent over the golem's torso, his face grayish. 'That bullet has to come out,' he informed Daisy Fennell. 'Do you authorize us to do it?'
Fennell hesitated, wishing she could buck that question to somebody higher up, like the deputy director. She couldn't. She temporized. 'Do you know what you're doing?'
Pat Adcock spoke up. 'Of course they don't know what they're doing,' she said scornfully. 'Why don't you get that Walter Reed doctor out here? She's the only one who knows anything at all about Doc Anatomy.'
'Dr. Evergood? But all she did was take a bug out-'
'Do you have any better ideas?'
And, of course, she didn't. When they got Dr. Marsha Evergood she looked tousled and sleepy and pretty damn mad. 'Have you stopped the bleeding?' she demanded. 'Applied broad-spectrum antibiotics? All right, then get him over to Walter Reed right away; I'll meet you there.'
'We thought maybe you might want to come out here,' Daisy offered, aware she was sounding uncharacteristically humble.
'Think that one over again, lady. Bring the dead one along, too; I'll use the cadaver for a quick anatomy course. Now.'
No matter how much Daisy Fennell tried to hurry him along, Dr. ben Jayya was being a pain in the ass. No laboratory specimen, he was insisting firmly, should ever be transported anywhere until it was stabilized, preferably by soaking it in formaldehyde first, Fennell overfirmed him. 'Shut up,' she said, and turned her back on the biologist
