"Hey!" I yelped, but she was already turning to Ted.
He was unbuttoning his pocket. He handed her our orders. She didn't even bother to look, just snapped, "I said, `Forget it.' " Ted and I exchanged a glance
Duke called up, "What's the matter? What's going on?" and I shouted back, "No problem. We're just going to have to find some other transportation, that's all. Come on, Ted-I'll get the eggs, you unstrap the cages."
"Hold it, Charlie!" she barked.
"Just hold it yourself!" I barked right back. "We have a job to do too!" It worked. She stopped-but only for a moment. "You'd better read our orders," I said, very calmly.
She took them from Ted and scanned them quickly. "Pinks!" she snorted, handing them to me. "Doesn't mean a thing. Those are just advisories."
"Right," I said. I kept my voice innocent as I carefully refolded and pocketed our papers. "We're advised to deliver these specimens. And you're advised to take us."
"Uh uh." She shook her head. "Nobody told me about it. I'm only taking those." She pointed at the cages.
"No way." I cleared my throat and prayed that my voice wouldn't crack. "If we don't go, they don't go. Duke, hand me that duffel?"
She looked at me, then really looked. I glared right back. She had very bright blue eyes-and a very dark expression. She flicked her glance briefly over Ted, then back to me again. I was already stowing my bag. She said a word, a not-very-ladylike word, then, "The hell with it-I don't care! Fight it out with Denver. How much do you turkeys weigh?"
"Seventy-three kilos," grunted Ted. He didn't look happy. "Sixty-four," I said.
"Right." She jerked her thumb at me. "You sit on the left." To Ted: "Secure that box on the other side. Both of them. Then belt up." She didn't even wait to see; she pulled the door shut behind us with a slam, secured it and climbed forward again. She checked to see that Duke was clear-I just had time to wave; he nodded back-and punched us up into the air.
The mountain dropped quickly, then angled off and slid sideways as we described a sharp sweeping turn. The acceleration pressed me against the wall of the cabin. We had hardly leveled off-I had to trust my eyes for that; my stomach was no longer speaking to me-when the jets cut in and a second press of acceleration forced me deep into my seat. The cabin tilted steeply and my ears popped as we climbed for height.
There was nothing to see out the window except clouds; the stubby wing of the copter blocked my view of the ground and the bulge of the jet engine was not enough to hold my interest. The scenery in the distance, what little of it I could see, was too far away to be impressive.
I realized the pilot was speaking to us: "-be in the air a couple hours. If you're hungry, there's a ration box plugged into the wall. Don't eat all the chocolate ice cream."
Ted was already rooting around in it. He came up with a couple of sandwiches and a container of milk. Grinning hungrily, he went forward and plopped into the copilot's seat.
The redhead eyed him. "You got a certificate?"
"Well, no-but I am licensed." He gave her what he probably hoped was a friendly smile; it came out as a leer.
"Jeezus! What is it with you guys? Go sit in the back with the rest of the passengers."
"Hey, I'm only trying to be friendly."
"That's what stewardesses are for. Next time, take a commercial flight."
"And, uh-I wanted to see how this thing flew," he added lamely.
She did something to the control panel, set a switch and locked it in place. "Okay," she shrugged. "Look all you want. Just don't touch." Then she unstrapped herself and came aft. The tag on her jumpsuit said L. TIRELLI.
"What's in the boxes?" she asked. She nudged the insulated one with her foot.
"Eggs," I grunted. "And in here?"
"Bugs," I said. "Big ones."
She looked disgusted. "Right. Bugs and eggs. For that they cancel my leave. Oh, yeah. I always get the good ones." Still muttering, she turned her attention to the ration box. "Damn! Clot-head took all the chicken." She pawed through the remaining sandwiches sourly.
"Uh-I'm sorry," I offered.
"Forget it. Everybody's an asshole. Here, have a sandwich." She picked one at random and tossed it at me before I could say no. She took another one for herself and dropped into the seat opposite. "What's so special about your bugs and eggs?"
"Uh-I don't know if I'm allowed to-" I looked to Ted. "Are we top secret?"
"What've you got-more Chtorrans?" To my startled look she said, "Don't worry about it. It's no secret. I carried a live one into Denver a month ago."
"A live Chtorran?"
"Uh huh. Just a small one. They found it in Nevada, dehydrated and weak. I don't know how they caught it. I guess it was too sick to fight back. Poor little thing, I felt sorry for it. They didn't expect it to live, but I haven't heard if it died."
Ted and I looked at each other. "Some scientists we are," I said. "They don't tell us anything."
"Well, there goes our big claim to fame," he added. "We thought we had the only live specimens around."
"That's a pity," she said, around a mouthful of sandwich. "But don't worry about it. They wouldn't have let you take the credit anyway."
"Thanks for the encouragement."
She wiped at her mouth with a napkin. "Don't thank me. It was free. Worth exactly what you paid for it. I'd have done the same for anyone."
She started to go forward again, but I stopped her. "What's the L for?"
"Huh?"
I pointed at her name tag. "Oh-it's Liz. Short for Lizard."
"Lizard?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I come by it honestly. You'll find out."
"I think I already have."
"Just eat your sandwich," she said. "You're getting skinny." And then she climbed forward and back into her pilot's seat. Ted smiled hopefully, but she just jerked her thumb rearward and paid him no further attention.
He sighed and came back, and strapped himself into the chair where she had been sitting. "Whew!" he whispered. "I remember her. She bumped into the Titanic once and sank it."
"Oh, I don't know. I think she's terrific!" I didn't think she had heard me, but the tips of her ears turned pink. At least, I think they did.
Ted merely grunted, curled up sideways in his seat and went to sleep.
I finished my sandwich and spent the rest of the trip thinking about a tall spiky anomaly at fifty-nine hundred angstroms. I wished I had a terminal so I could study the data first hand instead of in my memory. Something about the millipedes' behaviorsomething so obvious I couldn't see it-was staring me right in the face. It was frustrating as hell-because I couldn't not think about it! It was a bright red vision, a blood-colored room with a table in the middle, and sitting on the table, a cage full of skittering active millipedes. Why? I leaned my head against the window and studied the clouds and thought about rose-colored glasses.
The chopper banked then and the sun flashed in my eyes, leaving a brilliant afterimage. I put my hand over my eyes, closed them and watched the pulsating blob of chemical activity on my retinas. It was white and yellow for a while, then it was crimson and it looked like a star-I decided it was Chtorr, and wanted to blow it up. After a while, it started turning blue and faded away, leaving me with only its memory and another dozen questions about the possible origin of the Chtorran invasion. I also had a niggling suspicion about something. More than ever, I wanted to get back to a terminal.
The chopper banked again and I realized we were coming in toward Denver. And Major Tirelli was about to demonstrate a "stop and drop."
She'd brought us straight over the Rockies without bothering with a descending glide path-and now that we were over the city there wasn't room for one, at least not without a long swing over eastern Colorado to shake off ten kilometers of altitude. So instead, she cut in the rotors, baffled the jets down and let us fall. The technique had been developed eight years earlier, but never used; the army had wanted a way to boost men and supplies quickly over enemy territory, never coming low enough to be in range of their portable ground-to-air missiles. It was one more thing to be grateful to the Pakistan war for. Even if your nerves forgave you for such a landing, your stomach never would.