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in a spot like this unarmed. To trust in the innate rightness of A-Class
humanity was all very well. But, mysterious superior mentalities or not, a
good, ordinary, old-fashioned blaster in her hand would have been
satisfactory just now!
so
"Oh, Suns and Planets!" Jasse muttered aloud, shocked into a half-forgotten
Traditionalist invocation acquired during her childhood. "They've got me
fighting mad!"
And at that moment, a clean-edged shadow, which was not the shadow of any
cloud, came sliding soundlessly over the flow-car and stayed there.
Jasse, heart pounding wildly, was still trying to twist around far enough to
look up without pitching herself out of the car or releasing its controls when
a voice, some twenty feet above her, remarked conversationally:
"Say I thought it was you!"
* * *
She stared up speechlessly.
The words had been Vegan and nothing like that dull-green, seamless,
thirty-foot sliver of space-alloy floating overhead had ever been dreamed up
on Ulphi! While the pert, huge-eyed face that peered down at her out of the
craft's open lock she remembered suddenly the last time she'd met that member
of a nonhuman race in a G.Z.
space-duty uniform and the polite effort she'd made to mask the antipathy and
suspicions which were bound to arise in a Traditionalist when confronted by
any such half-and-half creature.
But safe!
A shaking began in her knees. She sat down quietly.
And Zone Agent Pagadan, for whom any kind of thought-shield on which she
really directed her attention became as sheerest summer gossamer unless, of
course, it was backed by a mind that approximated her own degree of nerve-
energy control smiled amiably and chalked one up to her flair for dramatic
timing.
"Remember me, eh?" she nodded. "Pelial, of Galactic Zones, at your service! I
was scoping the area from ten miles above and spotted you drifting along by
yourself. What occurs, my tall colleague? Are you just going sightseeing in
that piece of primitive craftsmanship, or did your pilot fall out?"
"Ulp !" began Jasse, nodding and shaking her head at the same time. Pagadan's
contemplative eyes became a little bigger.
"Skip it!" she said apprehensively. "From close up, you look both chewed on
and distraught, my girl! What happ
Hey, hang on a moment and I'll slide in close and take you aboard. Maybe you
ought to be home in bed, or something."
The head withdrew; and Jasse took a deep, sighing breath, raked a snarled
strand of black hair out of her forehead and dabbed tentatively at a deep
scratch on the back of her hand.
She did look a mess, now that she noticed it the Greens were badly ripped and
streaked with the blue chalk of the pavement over which she had rolled; and
her jeweled cap was gone. A moment passed before she realized suddenly that
the clinging constrictions of the mental attack were gone, too!
She was still wondering about that as she swung over into the space-skiff,
steadied by Pagadan's gloved hand.
Then, as the skiff's lock slammed shut behind her, she made another discovery:
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Her shield-bracelet hung free, attached to her wrist now only by its safety
chain. The shield switch flickered, warningly red, on "Open"
"Your mind-shield?" The Lannai Agent, measuring a rose-colored liquid
carefully from a fat little jug into a cup, absently repeated Jasse's stunned
exclamation. "Probably snagged the bracelet while you were climbing in from
the car. It happens." She glanced around and her eyes caught the light with a
wicked crystalline glitter. "Why? Could it matter? Was someone pressuring
you?"
"They were before," Jasse whispered; and suddenly there wasn't any question
about her being frightened! Panic hammered into her brain and stayed; a dizzy
shimmering grew before her eyes. Mixed with that came a queer, growing feeling
as if something were surging and pulsing within her skull a wildly expectant
feeling of something about to happen.
She realized the Lannai was holding the filled cup to her lips.
"Drink that!" the cool voice ordered. "Whatever you've got it's good for. Then
just settle back, relax, and let's hear what you know!"
* * *
The liquid she had gulped, Jasse noticed, wasn't really rose-colored as she
had thought, but a deep, dim, ruby red, almost black an enormously quiet
color and with a highly curious slowing-down effect on things, too! For
instance, you might realize perfectly well that somewhere, out around the
edges of you, you were still horribly upset, with fear-thoughts racing about
everywhere at a dizzy speed. Every so often, one of them would turn inwards
and come shooting right at you, flashing like a freezing arrow into the
deep-red dusk where you were. But just as you started to shrink away from it,
you noticed it was getting slower and slower, the farther it came; until
finally it just stayed where it was, and then gradually melted away.
They never could get through to reach you. It was rather comical!
It appeared she had asked some question about it, because the big-eyed little
humanoid was saying:
"You like the effect, eh? That's just antishock, little chum! Thought you knew
the stuff . . . don't they teach you anything at Cultures?"
That was funny, too! Cultures, of course, taught you everything there was to
know! But wait hadn't there been . . .
what had there been that she ? Jasse decided to examine that point about
Cultures very carefully, some other time.
By and large there seemed to be a good deal of quiet conversation going on
around her. Perhaps she was doing some of it, but it was hard to tell; since,
frankly, she wasn't much interested in those outside events any more. And
then, for a while, the two tall shapes, the man and the woman, came up again
to the barrier in her past and tried to talk to her, as they always did when
she was feeling anxious and alone. A little puzzled, because she didn't feel
that way now, Jasse watched them from her side of the barrier, which was where
the explosions and shrieking lights were, that had brought terror and hurt and
the sudden forgetting which none of Culture's therapists had been able to
lift.
Dimly, she could sense the world behind them, to which they wanted her to
go the star-glittering cold and the great silent flows of snow, and the peace
and enchantment that were there. But she could make no real effort to reach it
now, and in the end the tall shapes seemed to realize that and went away.
Or else, they merely faded out of her sight as the color about her deepened
ever more from ruby redness into the ultimate, velvety, all-quieting,
all-slowing-down black
"Wonderful " Jasse murmured contentedly, asleep.
* * *
"Hallerock?"
"Linked in, Pag! I'm back on the Observation Ship again. Go ahead."
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