He reached out and grabbed me, and then he staggered back-like you've seen actors do in those old, old movies.
He kept pounding his forehead with his fist. and then he yelled, "Cheated! Cheated again!" I almost slapped him.
Instead I snapped on my perma-tight and let him took me over good.
"Well, Buster," I said very coldly, "what do you mean, cheated?"
He grinned at me and shaded his eyes from the light.
"Darling," he said, "you look luscious, indeed, but what the hell are you doing here?"
"I'm sightseeing," I said. "Are you one of the sights?"
"Listen, baby, I am the sight. Meet the Minotaur." He stuck out his huge paw, and 1 shook it.
"Who did you think I was?" I asked him.
"Not who, but what," he said. "Baby, you ain't no virgin."
Well, Prue, really. How can you argue a thing like that?
He was completely wrong, of course, but I simply refused to discuss it.
"I only gobble virgins," he said.
Then he led me down into his rooms, which were really quite comfortable. I couldn't forgive the Agency for that cot, so when I spied his lovely, soft couch draped in pale blue satin, I said, "I'll borrow that if you don't mind."
"It's all yours, kid," the Minotaur said. He meant it, too.
You remember how pale blue is one of my best colors? There 1 was lolling on the couch, looking like the Queen of the Nile, flapping my eyelashes, and what does this churl want to do?
"I'm simply starved for talk," he says. And about what?
Prue, when a working girl spends her hard-earned savings on time travel, she has a right to expect something besides politics. I've heard there are men, a few shy ones, who will talk very fast to you about science and all that highbrow stuff, hoping maybe you won't notice some of the things they're doing in the meantime. But not the Minotaur. Who cares about the government a room's length apart? Lying there, twiddling my fingers and yawning, I tried to remember if Daddy had ever mentioned anything about the Minotaur's being so persnickety. That's the trouble with books. They leave out all the important details.
For instance, did you know that at midnight every night the Minotaur makes a grand tour of the Labyrinth? He wouldn't let me go along. That's another thing. He just says "no" and grins and means it. Now isn't that a typical male trait? I thought so, and when he locked me in his rooms the evening looked like turning into fun. I waited for him to come back with bated breath. But you can't bate your breath forever, and he was gone hours. When he did come back I'd fallen asleep and he woke me up belching.
"Please," I said. "Do you have to do that?"
"Sony, kid," he said. "It's these gaunt old maids. Awful souring to the stomach." It seems this windy diet was one of the things wrong with the government. He was very bitter about it all. Tender virgins, he said, had always been in short supply and now he was out of favor with the new regime. I rummaged around in my wrist bag and found an antacid pill.
He was delighted. Can you imagine going into a transport over pills?"
"Any cute males ever find their way into this place?" I asked him. I got up and walked around. You can loll on a couch just so long, you know.
"No boys!" The Minotaur jumped up and shook his fist at me. I cowered behind some hangings, but I needn't have bothered. He didn't even jerk me out from behind them.
Instead he paced up and down and raved about the lies told on him. He swore he'd never eaten boys-hadn't cared for them at all. That creep, Theseus, was trying to ruin him politically.
"I've worn myself thin," he yelled, "in all these years of service-" At that point I walked over and poked him in his big, fat stomach. Then I gathered my things together and walked out.
He puffed along behind me wanting to know what was the matter. "Gee, kid," he kept saying, "don't go home mad." 1 didn't say goodbye to him at all. A spider fell on him and it threw him into a hissy. The last I saw of him he was cursing the government because they hadn't sent him an exterminator.
Well, Prue, so much for the bogey man. Time travel in the …i raw'
Dear Mom:
Ancient Crete was nothing but politics,
You didn't have a single cause to worry.
Just as particular about girls as you are.
Love,
Laura
Monday not a bit exciting.
These people are
Love,
Laura
Dear Mr. Detbert Barnes:
Stop calling me or 1 will complain to your boss. You cad- I see it all now. You and your fine talk about how your Agency "fully protects its clients." That's a very high-sounding name for it. Tell me, how many girls do you talk into going to ancient Crete? And do you provide all of them with the same kind of insurance? Mr. Barnes, I don*t want any more insurance from you. But I'm going to send you a client for that trip-the baggiest old maid I know. She has buck teeth and whiskers. Insure her.
Laura
P.S. Just in case you're feeling smug about me, put this in your pipe and smoke it. The Minotaur knew, I can't imagine how, but you, Mr. Barnes, are no Minotaur.
Pegascis
One of the most enduring dreams of human beings is to fly. Ail sorts of spirits and monsters were pictured with wings, since flying seemed an obvious attribute of supernatural beings. In addition, there were various ways of enabling human beings toffy-flying carpets, for instance, are common in the stories included in The Arabian Nights."
The ancient Greeks came up with the most attractive of all flying creatures-Pegasus, the divine and immortal winged horse. The thought of a flying horse may well have arisen from the wonder of horseless human beings at the speed with which a horseman could cover the ground. To a man going no faster than an oxcart will carry him, the racing horse might as well have been flying.
Pegasus was supposed to have been born of the blood of the severed head of Medusa, the gorgon killed by the Greek hero Perseus. Another Greek hero, Bellerophon, rode Pegasus during the task of killing the chimera, and later in wars against the Amazons. Still later, Bellerophon tried to use Pegasus to scale Olympus, the home of the gods, but was thrown and badly hurt as punishment for this blasphemous attempt.
In later myths, Pegasus was associated with poetic inspiration. After all, the poet's fancy lifts him to the skies (so to speak) as though he were riding a flying horse. Pegasus was supposed to have landed on Mount Helicon near Thebes, and his hoof dug out a hollow from which emerged a spring called the Hippocrene (''fountain of the horse"). which was a legendary source of poetic inspiration.
It's almost a shame to have to point out that musclepowered wings could not support the weight of a man, let alone that of a horse. The following story, however, tackles that impossibility.
The Triumph Of Pegascis
by F.A. Javor
It was working out beautifully, just beautifully, and if Colin Hall had been a less dedicated young man he would have been rubbing his capable hands together and perhaps even pounding his equally young but no-so-sedate partner, Ed West, on his ample back.
Their entry in the jumper division of the horse show, Ato's Pride, so named from the initial letters of their fledgling company's name. Animals to Order, a gleaming black stallion with four perfectly matched white stockings and a diamondshaped blaze on his forehead, was just being led to the edge of the obstacle-planted ring and the roar of the crowd's approval was hackle-raising.
Instinctively Colin's eyes flew to the six-inch screen he*d jerry-rigged to monitor a select few bits of the information being sent by the dozens of micro-transmitters implanted under the skin, adjoining the organs, the nerves, even sampling the bloodstream of the animal waiting to go through its paces below them.
Information being transmitted and recorded on me slowly turning tapes to be fed later into the University's computer if they, he and Ed, wanted a more complete analysis and, more to the point, if they could scrape together the necessary service fee.