They were of standard design. She went back to look at the chandelier, saw it wasn’t following her more than haphazardly, and then walked over to the bed. No sheet, she noticed. But one wasn’t needed in the perfect climate control of the room. No way to hide doing something under a cover, though.
She sat on the edge of the bed, back to the camera, and slipped off her boots, then slid the belt-whip over her head and put it off to her right, away from the camera’s view. Then the earrings, on top the belt. She reached over to a night table, pulled some tissues, and picked up a small mirror. She started to remove some of her makeup.
As she was doing this, her feet turned one of the boots on its side, and then held it in place while the other foot released studs at four points. The sole fell open on tiny inner hinges, revealing a number of small gadgets. She gingerly got one she needed, clasping it between her toes of one foot, and then grasped another with the other foot.
Ready now, she slipped off the pullover, got up, and pulled down the body-stocking. As she leaned down to take it off, her left hand grabbed both of the devices.
Nude now, she stood up and actually turned around. The motion looked natural, but the watchers would draw the obvious conclusion: nothing hidden in the body cavities. Her fingers, the same ones that suckered rubes with cards and the shell game since she was small, held the two small devices invisibly. Assuming the lotus position on the bed, she turned the lights off with her right hand.
In the exact instant the lights went off, she dropped one of the devices on the bed and pointed the other at the chandelier. She was guided by a beam of light she could see only because of special contact lenses she wore.
Striking the camera, she snatched the other device, a tiny rectangle, and positioned it so it rested on the pillow, pointed toward the camera. Satisfied, she put the first gadget down and relaxed in the lotus, eyes closed.
All of this had taken less than ten seconds.
Satisfied by what she could see through her special lenses, that she’d gotten it right, she opened her eyes, relaxed, then carefully and silently slid off the side of the bed, trying not to jiggle the little rectangle.
Free of the bed, she checked and saw that the gismo was still in position. The device was incredibly complex; she’d discovered it only when it was used to trap her in a minor con, and she’d paid plenty for it. What it did, simply, was freeze the first image the camera saw and hold it there. There was an automatic adjustment of several seconds from the standard to the infrared mode, a little longer to refocus. She then had eleven seconds to shoot and position the feedback projector, as it was called.
Quietly, with the stealth and caution of an expert burglar, Mavra dressed herself. She started to put on the boots, then thought better of it, remembering the clattering echo of the halls. She removed the buckle from the whip-belt and used its pin to fix it under the whip, then turned the small whip handle so it could be easily drawn by releasing the nearly invisible binding studs.
She hadn’t been removing her makeup with the tissue; she’d been smearing it evenly all over her face and rubbing her hands with it as well. Now she took a small shrink-wrapped pack from her left boot and opened it, removing the tiny pad. Carefully, methodically, she smoothed it over all exposed areas of her skin. The mild chemical, reacting to another in the makeup, caused it to turn a deep black. Next she removed the special contact lenses, squeezed two drops in her eyes from a nearly minute dropper, then took another, different pair out of her pack and slipped them in. They were clear, but if she activated the tiny power supply in her buckle, they would turn into infrared lenses. More than one on New Pompeii had cat’s eyes.
Switching to that mode, she picked up the mirror carefully and looked at herself. She looked exceedingly monstrous, of course, but the chemical blackener was an effective shield against the heat radiation infrared viewers saw. She touched up a few spots until she could see nothing in the mirror. Her hands she checked visually.
Then came the nodules. They fit under her long, sharp nails, and the injector point actually merged with the points of her fingernails. She loaded each one of them, not all with the same stuff. More than once these nasty little devices had saved her neck—and cost others dearly.
Finally she touched the second power-pack module on the buckle. This energy source fed the material in the chemicals and in her clothing. Heat-sensitive devices would ignore her.
They were still trying to figure out that jewel robbery on Baldash.
She wanted this job over and done quickly, if possible. The girl, anyway. If it could be done tonight, fine. If not, she’d at least know the lay of the land.
The big door lock was no problem, but the four sensors in the door were. The door was nearly flush with the mounting; she could only slip in two matching strips. The third took some work with a blade. Though she had no knife, the specially treated organic material in her boot had served as one. The toenail of a large animal on some distant world, sharpened, treated like her own nails. A nice, thin, flat blade.
The other strips slipped in easily, and she carefully and slowly opened the door. No alarms, so she peered cautiously outside. The hallway was dark but apparently not guarded. For all his reliance on people, Trelig used a professional supersecurity system, one he’d bought and paid for. And that was his mistake. Successful criminals— the ones they hadn’t caught—had countered them long ago. They would be on infrared, and with mikes. If she didn’t make much noise and if the protective circuits were in, she should be invisible.
She stepped out into the hall and carefully closed the door behind her without a sound. There were no flags. She was safe.
This would have been harder if he’d kept the hall lit, she thought.
But nothing was impossible in this line to the Cat Goddess, as she was called on lots of wanted lists. They even suspected who she was, but they had never proved anything.
She met no one on her way back to the banquet hall, which, she discovered, was the only obvious entrance or exit. Only one camera there; she’d checked that at dinner.
She moved as close to the entrance as she could and peered out of the curtains. The camera, which was linked to a small paralyzer, rotated along a rail on the base of the dome. A single fixed camera in the dome itself wouldn’t have supplied adequate coverage; the moving one covered the entire area in thirty seconds. She timed the movements repeatedly to see that they hadn’t varied it. Only for twelve seconds was the entrance out of view. And the entrance was about ninety meters from her.
Experience and training paid in the calculations—the area of view and the like going through her mind. She took two deep breaths, then watched the little camera go around, hit the precisely calculated point. At that instant she sped for the entrance, making it outside in under eleven seconds, something considered impossible, she knew, for such a tiny woman.
But this was.7 G.
She didn’t take the steps, but climbed, catlike, over the side and down to the bushes below. It was not dark outside, but there was no one in view, and she was quick despite the vertical drop.
The trick was a tiny little bubble, several of which she carried in her belt. The bubble, no larger than the head of a pin, formed an incredibly thin secretion that created tremendous suction when rubbed between the palms of her hands. It had been her special secret of success in burglary; she had created the stuff herself.
She descended thirty meters in seconds. Taking refuge behind some bushes, she rubbed her hands, causing the substance to solidify and ball up, then fall away. The stuff didn’t last long, but it was excellent for thirty or forty seconds.
She would have preferred darkness, but there was no darkness beneath the reflective plasma dome. Daylight would have to do.
Creeping around the side of the central building, she heard voices and froze. When they continued in a sort of rhythmic chant, she ventured out, keeping close to the walls and cover, then looked in on one of the open plazas. Four women, dressed as the servants had been, were practicing some sort of dance to the tune of a lyrelike instrument played by another of them. They all seemed to move in that dreamy state, oblivious to the world. Something was odd in their appearance.
They were too beautiful, Mavra decided. Incredibly, almost deformed in their sexual characteristics, the type of dream girl lovesick prospectors bought pictures of. Their movements, too, seemed unusual; there was a sense of total femininity there, as if they might be some sort of mythological fertility goddesses. Such manners and moves were eerie, unnatural, even a little inhuman. They were more erotic caricatures of people than real human
