Ross realized that he was being jollied out of an attack of the sulks. He didn’t like it.
The hotel was small and comfortable, with a bar crowded by roistering pilots and their dates. The glimpses Ross got of social life on Azor added up to a damnably unfair picture. It was the man who paid. Breuer roguishly tested the mattress in their room, nudging Helena, and then announced, “Get settled, kids, while I visit the bar.”
When the door rolled shut behind her Ross said furiously: “Look, you! Protective mimicry’s fine up to a point, but let’s not forget what this mission is all about. We seem to be suckered into spending the night, but by hell tomorrow morning bright and early we find those Cavallo people—”
“There,” Helena said soothingly. “Don’t be angry, Ross. I promise I won’t be out late, and she really did insist.”
“I suppose so,” he grumbled. “Just remember it’s no pleasure trip.”
“Not for you, perhaps,” she smiled sweetly.
He let it drop there, afraid to push the matter.
Breuer returned in about ten minutes with a slight glow on. “It’s all fixed,” she told Helena. “Got a swell crowd lined up. Table at Virgin Willie’s—oops!” She glanced at Ross. “No harm in it, of course,” she said. “Anything you want, Ross, just dial service. It’s on my account. I fixed it with the desk.”
“Thanks.”
They left, and Ross went grumpily to bed.
A secretive rustle in the room awoke him. “Helena?” he asked drowsily.
Pilot Breuer’s voice giggled drunkenly, “Nope. Helena’s passed out at Virgin Willie’s, kind of the way I figured she would be on triple antigravs. Had my eye on you since Azor City, baby. You gonna be nice to me?”
“Get out of here!” Ross hissed furiously. “Out of here or I’ll yell like hell.”
“So yell,” she giggled. “I got the house dick fixed. They know me here, baby—”
He fumbled for the bedside light and snapped it on. “I’ll pitch you right through the door,” he announced. “And if you give me any more lip I won’t bother to open it before I do.”
She hiccupped and said, “A spirited lad. That’s the way I like ’em.” With one hand she drew a nasty-looking little pistol. With the other she pulled a long zipper and stepped out of her pilot’s coveralls.
Ross gulped. There were three ways to play this, the smart way, the stupid way, and the way that all of a sudden began to look attractive. He tried the stupid way.
He got the pistol barrel alongside his ear for his pains. “Don’t jump me,” Pilot Breuer giggled. “The boys that’ve tried to take this gun away from me are stretched end to end from here to Azor City. By me, baby.”
Ross blinked through a red-spotted haze. He took a deep breath and got smart. “You’re pretty tough,” he said admiringly.
“Oh, sure.” She kicked the coveralls across the room and moved in on him. “Baby,” she said caressingly, “if I seem to sort of forget myself in the next couple of minutes, don’t get any ideas. I never let go of my gun. Move over.”
“Sure,” Ross said hollowly. This, he told himself disgustedly, was the damnedest, silliest, ridiculousest …
There was a furious hiccup from the door. “So!” Helena said venomously, pushing the door wide and almost falling to the floor. “So!”
Ross flailed out of the bed, kicking the pistol out of Pilot Breuer’s hand in the process. He cried enthusiastically, “Helena, dear!”
“Don’t you ‘Helena-dear’ me!” she said, moving in and kicking the door shut behind her. “I leave you alone for one little minute, and what happens? And you!”
“Sorry,” Pilot Breuer muttered, climbing into her coveralls. “Wrong room. Must’ve had one antigrav too many.” She licked her lips apprehensively, zipping her coveralls and sidling toward the door. With one hand on the knob, she said diffidently, “If I could have my gun back—? No, you’re right! I’ll get it tomorrow.” She got through the door just ahead of a lamp.
“Hussy!” spat Helena. “And you, Ross—”
It was the last straw. As Ross lurched toward her he regretted only one thing: that he didn’t have a hairbrush.
Pilot Breuer had been right. Nobody paid any attention to the noise.
“Yes, Ross.” Helena had hardly touched her breakfast; she sat with her eyes downcast.
“ ‘Yes, Ross,’ ” he mimicked bitterly. “It better be ‘Yes, Ross.’ This place may look all right to you, but it’s trouble. You don’t want to find yourself stuck here all your life, do you? Then do what I tell you.”
“Yes, Ross.”
He pushed the remains of his food away. “Oh, the hell with it,” he said dispiritedly. “I wish I’d never started out on this fool’s errand. And I double damn well wish I’d left you in the dye vats.”
“Yes, Ro—I mean, I’m glad you didn’t, Ross,” she said in a small voice.
He stood up and patted her shoulder absently. “Come on,” he said, “we’ve got to get over to the Cavallo place. I wish you had let me talk to them on the phone.”
She said reasonably, “But you said—”
“I know what I said. When we get there, remember that I do the talking.”
They walked through green-lit streets, filled with proud-looking women and sad-eyed men. The Cavallo Machine-Tool Corporation was only a few intersections away, by the map the desk clerk had drawn for Helena; they found it without trouble. It was a smallish sort of building for a factory, Ross thought, but perhaps that was how factories went on Azor. Besides, it was well constructed and beautifully landscaped with the purplish lawns these people seemed to prefer.
Helena
