“Definitely not. I can do it myself and still stay very much in character. … No, I don’t know her. Not surprising, of course, since the policy here is never to let the right hand know what the left is doing. How about you, Mase? Have you got a little girlfriend, too?”
“Yea, verily, brother; but not little. More my size.” Northrop pointed out a tall, trim brunette, strolling along with the effortless, consciously unconscious poise of the professional model.
“Hm … m … m. I don’t know her, either,” Costigan reported, “but both of them are wearing four-inch spy-ray blocks and are probably wired up like Christmas trees. By inference, P-gun proof. I can’t penetrate, of course, but maybe I can get a viewpoint. … You’re right, Jack. Nostrils plugged. Anti-thionite, anti-Vee-Two, anti-everything. In fact, antisocial. I’ll spread their pictures around and see if anybody knows either of them.”
He did so, and over a hundred of the Patrol’s shrewdest operatives—upon this occasion North America had invaded Eridan in force—studied and thought. No one knew the tall brunette, but—
“I know the blonde.” This was Parker of Washington, a Service ace for twenty five years. “ ‘Hellcat Hazel’ DeForce, the hardest-boiled babe unhung. Watch your step around her; she’s just as handy with a knife and knockout drops as she is with a gun.”
“Thanks, Parker. I’ve heard of her.” Costigan was thinking fast. “Freelance. No way of telling who she’s working for at the moment.” This was a statement, not a question.
“Only that it would have to be somebody with a lot of money. Her price is high. That all?”
“That’s all, fellows.” Then, to Jack and Northrop: “My thought is that you two guys are completely out-classed—out-weighed, out-numbered, out-manned, and out-gunned. Undressed, you’re sitting ducks; and if you put out any screens it’ll crystallize their suspicions and they’ll grab you right then—or maybe even knock you off. You’d better get out of here at full blast; you can’t do any more good here, the way things are.”
“Sure we can!” Kinnison protested. “You wanted a diversion, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but you already. …”
“What we’ve done already isn’t a patch to what we can do next. We can set up such a diversion that the boys can walk right on the thionite-carrier’s heels without anybody paying any attention. By the way, you don’t know yet who is going to carry it, do you?”
“No. No penetration at all.”
“You soon will, bucko. Watch our smoke!”
“What do you think you’re going to do?” Costigan demanded, sharply.
“This.” Jack explained. “And don’t try to say no. We’re on our own, you know.”
“We … l … l … it sounds good, and if you can pull it off it will help no end. Go ahead.”
The demurely luscious blonde stared disconsolately at the bulletin board, upon which another thirty minutes was being added to the time of arrival of a ship already three hours late. She picked up a book, glanced at its cover, put it down. Her hand moved toward a magazine, drew back, dropped idly into her lap. She sighed, stifled a yawn prettily, leaned backward in her seat—in such a position, Jack noticed, that he could not see into her nostrils—and closed her eyes. And Jack Kinnison, coming visibly to a decision, sat down beside her.
“Pardon me, miss, but I feel just like you look. Can you tell me why convention decrees that two people, stuck in this concourse by arrivals that nobody knows when will arrive, have got to suffer alone when they could have so much more fun suffering together?”
The girl’s eyes opened slowly; she was neither startled, nor afraid, nor—it seemed—even interested. In fact, she gazed at him with so much disinterest and for so long a time that he began to wonder—was she going to play sweet and innocent to the end?
“Yes, conventions are stupid, sometimes,” she admitted finally, her lovely lips curving into the beginnings of a smile. Her voice, low and sweet, matched perfectly the rest of her charming self. “After all, perfectly nice people do meet informally on shipboard; why not in concourses?”
“Why not, indeed? And I’m perfectly nice people, I assure you. Willi Borden is the name. My friends call me Bill. And you?”
“Beatrice Bailey; Bee for short. Tell me what you like, and we’ll talk about it.”
“Why talk, when we could be eating? I’m with a guy. He’s out on the field somewhere—a big bruiser with a pencil-stripe black mustache. Maybe you saw him talking to me a while back?”
“I think so, now that you mention him. Too big—much too big.” The girl spoke carelessly, but managed to make it very clear that Jack Kinnison was just exactly the right size. “Why?”
“I told him I’d have supper with him. Shall we hunt him up and eat together?”
“Why not? Is he alone?”
“He was, when I saw him last.” Although Jack knew exactly where Northrop was, and who was with him, he had to play safe; he did not know how much this “Bee Bailey” really knew. “He knows a lot more people around here than I do, though, so maybe he isn’t now. Let me carry some of that plunder?”
“You might carry those books—thanks. But the field is so big—how do you expect to find him? Or do you know where he is?”
“Uh-uh!” he denied, vigorously. This was the critical moment. She certainly wasn’t suspicious—yet—but she was showing signs of not wanting to go out there, and if she refused to go. … “To be honest, I don’t care whether I find him or not—the idea of ditching him appeals to me more and more. So how about this? We’ll dash out to the third dock—just so I won’t have to actually lie about looking for him—and dash right back here. Or wouldn’t you rather have it a twosome?”
“I refuse to answer, by advice of counsel.” The girl laughed gaily, but her answer was plain enough.
Their rate of progress was by no means a dash, and Kinnison did not
