“You know, those kooks might not have seen anything!” snarled Deuce. “You didn’t see a shuttlecraft, did you? Me neither!”
That thought hadn’t occurred to her before, and Talia turned to look at the gangster. “Do you think they just wanted us out of there, so they made it up?”
“Sure, maybe they turn us in and say we stole their Hovercraft. I doubt if we’re going to live to argue about it.”
Talia banged on his shoulder and shouted, “Stop this thing! Park it somewhere!”
Deuce let up gradually on the accelerator, and the Hovercraft came to a stop and thudded into the sand. He wiped the sand off his face and demanded, “What’s the matter with you?”
Talia jumped out of the craft and stretched her legs. “Stop and think about it,” she said. “They got us out of the village because they know, one way or another, somebody is coming after us. Whether they sent for them, or they spotted us, or they intercepted a message, it doesn’t matter. They know, and somebody’s coming. There’s no way to get across this desert by daylight without being spotted, so let’s camouflage this thing and wait it out until nightfall.”
Deuce stared at her for a moment, then stared into the unforgiving sun to the west of them. He grinned foolishly and scratched his stubbly chin. “Maybe we’re doing this all wrong,” he drawled. “Why should we run in a piddly Hovercraft, when they’ve got shuttles? Why should we run at all? Let’s set a trap for them. How many of them can there be?”
“Well,” said Talia, adjusting her wig, “assuming they’re Psi Cops and they’re after me, they won’t alert any other authorities. They like to bring down a rogue themselves, without anybody interfering. They probably have several two-man shuttles spread out over this area.”
Deuce grabbed the bumper of the Hovercraft and began to rock the vehicle. “Come on! Help me turn this thing over!”
“Why?” asked Talia, leaning down to grab the bumper.
“To make it looked like it wrecked.”
Chapter 17
Talia Winters watched a scorpion scuttle across the sand about a meter away from her face. The tan arachnid blended in perfectly with the sand, and she hadn’t noticed it when she picked this place to lie down. Now its deadly tail was curving up and down, and its little pincers were looking for something to pinch. She was in horrendous fear that her nose would look delectable to the scorpion, but she couldn’t possibly move or cry out. She would just have to let the scorpion sting her and take her chances with the venom.
Because a sleek, black shuttlecraft was about a kilometer away and swooping in for a landing.
Talia closed her eyes as the shuttlecraft landed and its thrusters blew sand all over her. After this sojourn in the desert, she wondered if she would ever feel clean again. She held her breath, waiting for the scorpion to get blown directly into the center of her face, stinger first. When that didn’t happen, she held perfectly still, trying to look dead, or at least close to it.
She could imagine what the scene looked like from the air: an overturned Hovercraft which had skirted too close to the ridge, and the body of a woman lying a few meters away, broiling in what was left of the late-afternoon sun. It didn’t look very threatening, she hoped.
Talia heard the door of the shuttlecraft open, and she heard their boots crunching across the sand. As she had guessed, there were only two of them, and she felt them probing her with their minds. Even though they were P12s and she was a mere P5, she had the advantage of all that contact with alien species; she was able to disrupt a casual mind-scan with bizarre images. Talia thought again about Ambassador Kosh and Invisible Isabel, knowing they wouldn’t be able to make much sense out of that.
“She’s alive,” said one of them, “but she’s delirious.”
“Is that the rogue?” asked the other. “They said she had blond hair?”
“Hair color doesn’t mean anything,” said the first. “Besides, if we leave her here, she’ll just die. Better take her in.”
With her eyes closed, Talia wasn’t able to see if they had returned their PPG weapons to their holsters. But they couldn’t very well lift her, if they didn’t. She heard their footsteps coming very close now, and it was time for her to give the prearranged signal.
She moaned loudly.
That drew their attention, and neither one of them heard Deuce as he rose up, covered with sand, and drilled the nearest Psi Cop in the arm with his PPG. The cop collapsed to his knees in shock, and the other one started to draw his weapon.
“Go ahead.” Deuce grinned. “I promised the lady I wouldn’t kill you, but I’m not great at keeping my promises.”
Talia scrambled to her feet and grabbed the PPG out of the wounded Psi Cop’s holster. Then she very carefully took the PPG from the other cop.
“You won’t get away,” said the black-suited telepath. “We’ll bring you down.”
Talia said nothing. She was busy gathering up the water bag and Deuce’s briefcase and duffel bag from the fallen Hovercraft. As an afterthought, she left them the water bag.
“Oh, please let me kill them,” begged Deuce. “Who would miss them? Even their mommas probably don’t like them anymore.”
Talia shot him a glare, and Deuce frowned disgruntledly and began to back toward the shuttlecraft. “Well,” he said, “we are offering you gentlemen a great deal today—that perfectly good Hovercraft for this beat-up old shuttlecraft of yours. Now you just go northeast, and you’ll get to civilization. I wouldn’t go the other way, because we stole that Hovercraft from some folks, and they might shoot first and ask questions later.”
Talia jumped into the shuttlecraft and kept her hand on the button to shut the hatch after Deuce.
“You got my briefcase?” asked the gangster.
“Yeah.”
He nodded and jumped aboard. Talia quickly closed the hatch, and they scrambled into seats in the cockpit.
“Do you know how to fly one of these?” asked Talia.
Deuce laughed. “You think I never stole a shuttlecraft before? This is a hobby of mine.”
Before she even had a chance to fasten her seat belt, he jammed the thrusters, and the little craft started to buck and shake. It wasn’t a smooth takeoff, but they were soon in the air, with the dusty desert fading away beneath them.
Talia sighed and slumped back in her seat.
“Don’t panic,” said Deuce, “but you, uh, got a scorpion in your hair.”
Talia panicked anyway—she screamed, yanked the wig off, and threw it on the floor. The startled scorpion tried to hide, but it was out of its element on the cold metal deck of the shuttlecraft. She took her shoe oft’ to throw it at the arachnid.
“Don’t kill him,” said Deuce. “I’ll take him with me to Guadalajara.”
“Guadalajara,” echoed Talia. “I need to go to Boston.”
“Then I guess this is where you and I part company.” To emphasize his determination, Deuce drew his PPG and aimed it at her.
“Can you let me off somewhere? A town, I mean.”
“I’d have to let you off on the outskirts. You might have quite a walk.”
Talia shrugged, too worn out to question whatever fate had in store for her next. “I haven’t got any money,” she added.
“Damnation,” muttered Deuce, “what do I look like, a credit machine? This whole trip was only supposed to cost me one diamond, and now it’s already cost me—“
“Four diamonds,” she completed his sentence. “But you got a shuttlecraft out of it, and you wouldn’t have gotten that without me.”
“Yeah,” Deuce conceded, putting his weapon away. “I guess you paid your debt. Hand me my case.”
She handed him his briefcase, and he put the craft on autopilot as he rummaged through it.
“Here’s a one-carat diamond,” he said. “That should get you wherever you want to go. You know, you really should’ve let me kill those Psi Cops. As soon as they get to a link, everybody on Earth will know you’re here.”