“Goodnight,” Guy said.
When the other was gone, he stood for a long moment in the center of the living room, in thought. He let his eyes go around the apartment. After a time he went to the door and threw the lock. It looked adequate.
He went to the window then, opened it and looked out. It faced on the garden, which completely surrounded the building. He could see down the boulevard, toward the center of town. There was a statue in a plaza not two blocks away. They hadn’t passed it in the hovercar on the way in from the spaceport. A woman, what seemed to be a quiver of arrows on her back, her hand resting on some sort of animal. A dog? No, it looked more like a deer. It came to him. A colossal statue of Diana the Huntress. He sought through his memory and nodded. He knew where he was in the city of Themiscyra.
He closed the window. There was a knob to polarize the window glass. He turned it.
He stood in the center of the room again, looking about. Finally he pulled the ring from his finger, took it in his left hand and with the nail of his little finger, activated it by flicking an all but microscopic stud.
He started at the orderbox and the vizo-phone on the table near the bed, passing the ring over and about, slowly, carefully. There was no reaction. Slowly then, he went about the rest of the room, over each piece of furniture, over each decorative device, up and down the walls. And then into the refresher room.
It took him a full half hour. Finally he nodded. The room was either not bugged, or if it was, the device was so sophisticated that his equipment couldn’t detect it. He deactivated his sweeper ring, put it back on his finger, and took up the tool kit which Clete had examined so thoroughly on the Schirra. He opened it on the center table of the small living room.
He pulled out the cutter drill and twisted it expertly. It fell apart into three separate pieces. He laid the pistol grip to one side and picked up another of the tools. This twisted apart as well, this time into two units. He took one of them and attached it to the pistol grip. Still a third tool divided under his fingers. He added a part of it to the pistol grip which was metamorphosing into an entirely different device from that which it had started out.
He looked at it thoughtfully, reached down into the kit and came up with a medium sized capsule. He slugged it home into the butt, threw the charge lever and then the safety. He stuck the gun into his tunic and under the belt which held his flowing garment together.
He looked around the room again, as though checking, shook his head and returned the various tools which he had strewn about the table to the tool kit and put it into a closet. He turned the lights out and stepped to the windows and threw them open.
The nearest light of any brilliance at all was over on the boulevard. Occasionally a hovercar passed, but there were no pedestrians in sight for the moment. It was getting late.
He swung a leg over the window ledge, lowered himself carefully. His toes, mountain-climber educated, sought proturberances and found them. He had noted earlier that the decorative motif of the building allowed ample scope for the educated climber. He slowly worked his way down the wall to the garden.
He stood there for a long moment, listening. There was nothing.
He made his way over to the boulevard and openly strode along it. He walked the better part of a kilometer, stopped for awhile, scowling, at a crossroad, then decided and turned right. The street was narrower here. Narrower and darker. Evidently, the Amazonians had no particular reason to over-illuminate their capital city during the night hours.
He walked somewhat more rapidly now. He had not wanted to attract what little traffic there had been on the boulevard by a hurried pace. This was different.
Twenty minutes later, he paused again, then turned to his left, down a way that could have been described more as an alley than a street. It was darker still, but his eyes were used to the dim now.
It came as an utter surprise when bright light flashed from ahead and to one side of him, and a beam reached out, searchingly, missing him by but a fraction. He could hear brick chipping away on the wall behind him.
He flung himself to the side and down, the gun instantly in his hand.
Guy Thomas had been partially blinded, for a moment, by the flash from the other’s weapon, a type of arm he had never come up against before.
He heard a shuffling in the dark before him. His opponent was evidently shifting position before resuming the attack, obviously avoiding a return of fire in the direction from whence the destructive beam had come.
“Holy Jumping Zen,” the Earthman muttered under his breath. “This wasn’t in the script!” He thumbed off the safety stud on his gun.
V
Happily, Guy Thomas was in a shadowy area, even darker than the balance of the alley-street. It had been pure luck, when he rolled away from the other’s line of fire, that had put him there. He doubted, unless his attacker was using infrared, that the other could make out his position. Guy took his time, studying the layout.
He decided that a stone doorway, possibly thirty feet up the passage, must be the other’s ambush. The light which had accompanied the beam, must have come from approximately there. Guy brought his left hand up and made his grip on the gun a double one, for greater stability. He tightened the trigger slowly, not quite squeezing off.
As he stared at the doorway his eyes slowly became more accustomed to the shadows. And, yes, unless vision played him false, he could see the barest suggestion of a figure there. Not enough of a target to expect a hit. He continued to hold his fire.
His opponent moved slightly. It came to Guy that his foe couldn’t be sure if he had hit his victim or not. The beam had lashed out, Guy had fallen to the street; since then, he had made no motion. Certainly the other was playing it cautious.
He saw the figure move again, revealing a bit more of itself. Unless he was mistaken, that was a head, half exposed, trying to seek out Guy’s position.
There was no doubt in Guy’s mind whatsoever. The attack had been an attempt at murder. Not just mugging, not just an attempt at robbery. Was it a case of mistaken identity? There would seem to be no other alternative that made sense. But mistaken identity or not, the assassin was interested in murder and nothing short of that. Guy Thomas’ lips were already dry, now they thinned back over his teeth inadvertently.
The figure moved again. A full half of a human form was revealed. Guy tightened on the trigger, ever so slightly. The silenced, recoiless handweapon coughed.
There was a scream from up the alley, high pitched at first then trailing off in an attempt at repression. A figure staggered from the doorway, brought itself up sharp, then scurried away in the direction of greater dark. Something clattered to the pavement.
For a brief moment, Guy, now on one knee, leveled the gun again. But then he shook his head and held fire. The other was winged. His death would avail the Earthling nothing, and might possibly lead to complications.
Guy stood erect and walked toward the recess in which the assassin had stood in hiding. There on the ground was the gun the unknown had utilized. Guy picked it up and scowled at it, thrusting his own weapon into his belt again. He had never seen this type of gun but he supposed there was no particular reason why he should have been expected to be acquainted with weapons that had evolved on this world. With three thousand planets in UP, even a full-time expert could hardly be knowledgeable about all the means evolved of dealing out death throughout the worlds.
He stuck the second weapon in his belt as well, and continued on his way.