The girl had halted before a squat, long, dirty building on the edge of one of the innumerable reeking canals. It looked a great deal like any of the countless parbulium-pavement mills that pock marked the Venusian scenery—except that this was grim and deserted, as if it hadn't seen service in at least ten years.
Now Varda looked cautiously up and down the canal edge. Then she stepped into the shadows of the building, and in another instant had opened a door. She stood there in the light that streamed from the open door.
"Quick, please come inside," she ordered.
"What in the name of all that's interplanetary is this?" I blurted. "It certainly doesn't look like a working girl's home."
But chum Shane had already stepped over the threshold, and from the inside he said,
"Come on, Corporal Cork. Do you want to stand out there all night?"
I shrugged. There was no reasoning with Sergeant Shane when women were present. I stepped into the building, and Varda slammed and bolted the door after me. For a moment I blinked in the bright lights of the huge room. Shane was doing the same.
"All right, you two, don't move!"
The voice, utterly alien, rang out like a shot, and I found something hard and round—the business end of an atomic pistol—pressed hard against my spine. Turning my head slightly, I saw that a dapper, mustached little fellow in a gray tunic had taken chum Shane in hand, and was keeping the nose of another atomic weapon firm against that worthy's back!
"All right, now. Move ahead, slowly, and don't get ideas," the same voice that issued the first command—belonging to the invisible gent prodding me from behind—spoke up again.
"What in the hell is this all about?" I demanded. And now Varda, smiling sweetly, had stepped in front of Shane and me.
"Do as you are told," Varda ordered. "You are both such sweet boys that I'd hate to see you killed. Besides, when we're done with you, the Marine Corps might want you again."
THIS was the last straw to a perfect hayride—to mix a few expressions. We'd walked, no, run, head on into the slickest sort of a trap. But what was it all about? These people, including Varda, were certainly not operating a stick-up racket. If they were, they'd picked pretty poor clients in Shane and myself. Both of us were almost broke by now, and Varda knew it.
Shane was fuming furiously.
"You shing shang, jib jang lot of jeck jicks," he stormed. He was always careful to watch his language in front of ladies. Though by now I scarcely thought it necessary. "What's the meaning of this?"
The mustached captor behind him—he had the dark skin of a Saturnite—pushed the nose of his atomic pistol none too gently into Shane's back.
"Shut up," he ordered. "And keep going."
A possible meaning for all this suddenly hit me. And it didn't cool my rancor against my love-sick Sergeant any. I said what I thought.
"Well, Sarge. It looks as if your conversation of this afternoon has made us both pretty popular." I was sure that he'd spilled some diplomatic beans to Varda in his afternoon's blowing, and that—for want of further information—we'd been tricked into this spot by the girl and her henchmen.
Shane spluttered in my direction.
