-And he was having fun with me. All three were saying phrases that might have pointed to a deep inner guilt ("sol to be saved," "little black sheepishion of wrong," "drug from underneath," and so on). Two were saying such things helplessly, randomly. The third was amusing himself.
So how did I find the third? I was in a feverish thrill of hatred against him and my fingers twitched. The rat was subverting the Galaxy. More than than, he had killed my colleague and friend. More than that, he was keeping me from Flora.
I could go up to each of them and start searching. The two who were really under Spaceoline would make no move to stop me. They could feel no
emotion, no fear, no anxiety, no hate, no passion, no desire for self-defense. And if one made the slightest gesture of resistance I would have my man.
But the innocent ones would remember afterward. They would remember a personal search while under Spaceoline.
I sighed. If I tried it, I would get the criminal all right but later I would be the nearest thing to chopped liver any man had ever been. There would be a shake-up in the Service, a big stink the width of the Galaxy, and in the excitement and disorganization, the secret of altered Spaceoline would get out anyway and so what the hell.
Of course, the one I wanted might be the first one I touched. One chance out of three. I'd have one out and only God can make a three.
Nuts, something had started them going while I was muttering to myself and Spaceoline is contagioust a gigolo my, oh-
I stared desperately at my watch and my line of sight focused on 9:15.
Where the devil was time going to?
Oh, my; oh, nuts; oh, Flora!
I had no choice. I made my way to the booth for another quick call to Flora. Just a quick one, you understand, to keep things alive; assuming they weren't dead already.
I kept saying to myself: She won't answer.
I tried to prepare myself for that. There were other girls, there were other-
What's the use, there were no other girls.
If Hilda had been in Marsport, I never would have had Flora on my mind in the first place and it wouldn't have mattered. But I was in Marsport without Hilda and I had made a date with Flora.
The signal was signaling and signaling and I didn't dare break off.
Answer! Answer!
She answered. She said, "It's you!"
"Of course, sweetheart, who else would it be?"
"Lots of people. Someone who would come."
"There's just this little detail of business, honey."
"What business? Plastons for who?"
I almost corrected her grammar but I was too busy wondering what this plastons kick was.
Then I remembered. I told her once I was a plaston salesman. That was the time I brought her a plaston nightgown that was a honey.
I said, "Look. Just give me another half hour-"
Her eyes grew moist. "I'm sitting here all by myself."
"I'll make it up to you." To show you how desperate I was getting, I was definitely beginning to think along paths that could lead only to jewelry even though a sizable dent in the bankbook would show up to Hilda's
piercing eye like the Horsehead Nebula interrupting the Milky Way. But then I was desperate.
She said, "I had a perfectly good date and I broke it off."
I protested, "You said it was a quibbling little arrangement."
That was a mistake. I knew it the minute I said it.
She shrieked, "Quibbling little arrangement!" (It was what she had said. It was what she had said. But having the truth on your side just makes it worse in arguing with a woman. Don't I know?) "You call a man who's promised me an estate on Earth-"
She went on and on about that estate on Earth. There wasn't a gal in Marsport who wasn't wangling for an estate on Earth, and you could count the number who got one on the sixth finger of either hand.
I tried to stop her. No use.
She finally said, "And here I am all alone, with nobody," and broke off contact.
Well, she was right. I felt like the lowest heel in the Galaxy.
I went back into the reception room. A flunky outside the door saluted me in.
I stared at the three industrialists and speculated on the order in which I would slowly choke each to death if I could but receive choking orders. Harponaster first, maybe. He had a thin, stringy neck that the fingers could go round neatly and a sharp Adam's apple against which the thumbs could find purchase.
It cheered me up infinitesimally, to the point where I mustered, "Boy!" just out of sheer longing, though it was no boy I was longing for.
It started them off at once. Ferrucci said, "Boyl the watern the spout you goateeming rain over us, God savior pennies-"
Harponaster of the scrawny neck added, "Nies and nephew don't like orporalley cat."
Lipsky said, "Cattle corral go down off a ductilitease drunk."
"Drunkle aunterior passagewayt a while."
"While beasts oh pray."
"Prayties grow."
"Grow way."
"Waiter."
"Terble."
"Ble."
Then nothing.
They stared at me. I stared at them. They were empty of emotion (or two were) and I was empty of ideas. And time passed.
I stared at them some more and thought about Flora. It occurred to me that I had nothing to lose that I had not already lost. I might as well talk about her.
I said, "Gentlemen, there is a girl in this town whose name I will not mention for fear of compromising her. Let me describe her to you, gentlemen."
And I did. If I say so myself, the last two hours had honed me to such a fine force-field edge that the description of Flora took on a kind of poetry that seemed to be coming from some wellspring of masculine force deep in the subbasement of my unconscious.