Desire began to build up inside Nick. He moved to her quickly, gathering her into his arms, kissing her hard on the lips. They were firm and cold but the warmth of her struggling breasts shot through him like a current. The heat grew. He could feel a pulse beating in his thighs. He kissed her again, his mouth hard and brutal against hers. He heard a smothered "No!" She tore her lips away from his and pushed against him with her clenched fists. "Your face!"
For a second he didn't know what she meant. "Eglund," she said. "I'm kissing a mask." She shot him a shaky smile. "Do you realize that I've seen your body, but never the face that goes with it?"
"I'll go peel Eglund off." He headed toward the bathroom. It was time the astronaut was retired anyway. The interior of Poindexter's masterpiece had turned soggy in the heat. The silicone-emulsion had begun to itch intolerably. Besides, his cover value was at an end now, too. Events on the plane from Houston suggested that "Eglund's" presence was actually a danger to the other Moon Project astronauts. He took his shirt off, wrapped a towel around his neck, then carefully peeled away the pliable plastic hair mask. He fished the foam padding out from inside his cheeks, pulled the blond eyebrows off and rubbed his face vigorously, smudging and smearing the leftover makeup. Then he leaned over the sink and popped the hazel-pupiled contact lenses out of his eye sockets. He glanced up to see Joy Sun's reflection in the mirror, watching him from the doorway.
"A definite improvement," she smiled, and in the reflection of her face the eyes moved, traveling the length of his metal-smooth torso. All the muscular grace of a panther was packed into that magnificent frame and her eyes missed none of it.
He turned to face her, wiping the last of the silicone from his features. The steel-gray eyes that could smolder somberly or turn icy bright with cruelty were lit with laughter. "Do I pass the physical, Doc?"
"So many scars," she said in wonderment. "Knife. Bullet wound. Razor slash." She ticked the descriptions off as her ringer traced their jagged courses. His muscles contracted at her touch. He took a deep breath, feeling the tension knot below his stomach.
"Appendectomy, gall bladder operation," he said tightly. "Don't romanticize."
"I'm a doctor, remember? Don't try to kid me." She glanced up at him, eyes bright. "You never answered my question. Are you some kind of super-secret agent?"
He pulled her to him, propping her chin up with his hand. "You mean they didn't tell you?" he grinned. "I'm from the planet Krypton." He touched the wetness of her lips with his — softly at first, then harder. There was a nervous tautness in her body that resisted for a second, but then she softened and with a small whimper her eyes closed and her mouth became a hungry little animal searching for his, hot and wet, the tip of her tongue probing for satisfaction. He felt her fingers undoing his belt. The blood pumped within him. Desire grew like a tree. Her hands moved, trembling, over his body. She took her mouth away, buried her head against his neck a second, then drew back. "Wow!" she said shakily.
"Bedroom," he grunted, need exploding in him like a gun.
"Oh God, yes, I think you're the one I've been waiting for." Her breath came in heaving gulps. "After Simian… then that business at the Bali Hai… I was off men. I thought for good. But you could be different. I see that now. Oh lovely, dammit," she shuddered as he drew her to him, thigh to thigh, breast to breast, and in the same movement ripped open her blouse. She wore no bra — he'd known that from the way the ripe cones had moved beneath the material. Her nipples were firm points against his chest. She writhed against him, her hands exploring his body, her mouth glued to his, her tongue a darting, fleshy sword.
Without breaking contact, he half lifted, half carried her across the hall and over the palm leaf matting to the bed.
He laid her down on it and she nodded, beyond speech, as his hands moved about her body, unzipping her skirt, smoothing her thighs. He leaned over her, kissing her breasts, his lips crushing into their softness. She moaned softly and he felt her warmth spread open beneath him.
Then he wasn't thinking any more, just feeling, bursting out of the nightmare world of treachery and sudden death that was his natural habitat and into a bright, sensual flow of time that was like a great river, concentrating on the feel of the girl's perfect body, floating on the ever-quickening tempo until they hit the rapids and her hands caressed him with a growing urgency, and her fingers dug into him and her mouth melted against his in final supplication and their bodies tensed and arched and flowed together, thighs straining deliciously and mouths blending, and she sighed a long, shuddering, happy sigh and let her head fall back against the pillows as she felt the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed…
They lay for a while in silence, her hands moving rhythmically, hypnotically over his skin. Nick drifted toward the edge of sleep. Then, because he had stopped thinking about it for the last few minutes, it suddenly came to him. The sensation was almost physicaclass="underline" bright light flooded into his head. He had it! The missing key!
At the same instant, terrifyingly loud in the stillness, came a hammering sound. He threw himself away from her but she came up with him, entangling him in soft and caressing curves, unwilling to relinquish him. She wound her curves about him so that even in this sudden crisis he came close to forgetting his peril.
"Anybody in there?" a voice shouted.
Nick broke free and darted to a window. He drew the Venetian blinds aside a fraction of an inch. An unmarked patrol car with a whip antenna was parked out front. Two figures wearing white crash helmets and riding breeches were shining their flashlights through the living room window. Nick gestured to the girl, directing her to throw something on and to answer the door.
She did, and he stood with his ear against the bedroom door, listening. "Howdy, Ma'am, we didn't know you were home," a male voice said. "Just checking. The outside light was off. Last four nights it's been on." A second male voice said, "You're Dr. Sun, aren't you?" He heard Joy say that she was. "You just got in from Houston, is that right?" She said it was. "Everything okay? Nothing disturbed in the house while you were away?" She said everything was as it should be and the first male voice said, "Okay, we just wanted to make sure. After some of the things that have happened around here you can't be too careful. If you need us fast, just dial zero three times. We're on a direct hookup now."
"Thank you, officers. Good night." He heard the front door close. "More of those GKI police," she said as she came back into the bedroom. "They seem to be every place." She stopped in her tracks. "You're going," she said accusingly.
"Have to," he said, buttoning his shirt. "And what's worse, I'm going to add insult to injury by asking if I can borrow your car."
"That part I like," she smiled. "It means you'll have to bring it back. First thing in the morning, too, please. I mean that…" She suddenly stopped, a stricken look on her face. "My God, I don't even know your name!"
"Nick Carter."
She laughed. "Not very imaginative, but I suppose in your business one phony name is as good as another…"
All ten lines at the NASA Administration Center were busy and he began redialing the numbers without stopping so that the moment a call ended he'd get his chance.
A single image kept flashing through his mind — Major Sollitz, chasing his hat, his left hand reaching awkwardly across his body for it, his right arm held rigidly against his torso. Something had bothered him about that scene out at the Texas City plant yesterday afternoon, but what it was kept eluding him — until he'd stopped thinking about it for a moment. Then it had quietly surfaced into his consciousness.