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The runner shifted his course slightly; he was now mostly eclipsed by Lakshmi and Reiko. I could have changed my own position or craned my neck, but Lakshmi would doubtless notice that; I now regretted having depolarized my helmet.

Of course, there was no reason to assume that whoever was barreling in was coming to rescue Ernie and me. Just as likely, he was coming to help Lakshmi, who perhaps had somehow managed to get a signal out that she’d been kidnapped, or to help Reiko—or maybe it was a free agent and would do us all in and seize the riches for himself. If any of us had been transfers, that might have been difficult without a broadband disruptor, but if the runner had a pump-action shotgun or a machine gun—not that I’d ever seen one of those on Mars—he could easily take all four of us out.

Ernie decided to weigh in. “Young lady, Mr. Lomax is right. I have connections that could make any difficulties disappear, and—”

And Ernie must have felt the ground shaking slightly beneath his feet; a guy like me doesn’t have much that jiggles, but he was a walking distant-early-warning system, and Lakshmi had clearly seen something in his face. She suddenly turned around, swinging Reiko around with her. My view of the incoming transfer was restored—and my jaw dropped in astonishment.

Rushing toward us was a stunningly beautiful woman—a gorgeous transfer with a supermodel’s face and long blonde hair bouncing behind her. I didn’t recognize her, but she was wearing a turquoise tracksuit that hugged her curves. Her large breasts were bouncing delightfully as she ran, but there was no sign that her chest was heaving. She wasn’t breathing hard; she wasn’t breathing at all.

And perhaps in a few seconds, none of the rest of us would be, either.

FORTY-ONE

It was hard to tell while looking at Lakshmi from behind, but I think she’d pulled her gun out of Reiko’s side and was now aiming it at the gorgeous apparition, who was sailing ten meters closer with each stride. I was all set to jump Lakshmi from the rear when the blonde transfer leapt, flying through the almost nonexistent air. She slammed into the writer, knocking her on her back. Reiko danced out of the way just in time to avoid being bowled over, too.

Lakshmi swore; it doubtless hurt to be knocked over, especially when wearing a backpack with oxygen tanks. She was flat on her back but still had her little gun. I kicked the hand that held it. The weapon went up, up, and up some more. Lakshmi was trying her best to throw the blonde bombshell off her, but the transfer had grabbed her wrists.

Blondie looked at Ernie even as she was struggling with Lakshmi, and she made some beckoning motions with her lovely head. Gargalian seemed baffled for a second, but then got it. It took some doing, but Blondie managed to get up, and Ernie managed to get down without Lakshmi escaping. He took the simple expedient of sitting on her chest. Lakshmi beat at him with gloved fists, but her suit didn’t allow her arms to move fast enough for the blows to really hurt, I imagined.

Blondie smiled at me, but then her perfect mouth dropped open in surprise, showing the porcelain pearly whites within. It took me a second to realize she was now looking past me. I turned, and—

Damn. I really did need to do something about my eyes. Once again, there was something off in the distance. I squinted, and—yes: it was someone else running this way, this time coming in from the north.

Blondie’s baby blues were wide. She probably had that bionic-vision thing going on; I wondered if there was a reticle over her retina. Reading a transfer’s expression was hard, but I don’t think she recognized whoever it was.

I didn’t know if this interloper was friend or foe, but it pays to prepare for the worst. Since Blondie, at least, seemed to be an ally, I grabbed her hand—my glove in her naked plastiflesh—and led her perpendicular to the newcomer’s travel, running west toward the Alpha, meaning he’d have to choose whether to come toward me and Blondie, or toward Lakshmi and Ernie. It was soon apparent that the newcomer had altered his trajectory to come after the two of us.

Blondie fell in next to me, matching my stride, and we continued on for a few hundred meters. Although the dust covering Isidis Planitia shifts over time, I could still make out two divots in the surface, and I maneuvered us between them. Then I scanned around for the automobile-shaped rock I’d dubbed Plymouth and the more jagged one I’d nicknamed Hudson. And so I figured stopping here was just right, with Plymouth at about ten o’clock and Hudson standing guard at 3:30.

The intruder was now just a hundred meters away. He was either wearing a beige surface suit, or was a transfer in beige clothes, or—less likely—a naked transfer with beige skin.

I was suddenly distracted by Ernie shouting into his helmet microphone. “Alex! Alex!”

I turned. Somehow, Lakshmi had managed to push Ernie off, or—no, no, that wasn’t it. Reiko had a gun pointed at Ernie. Damn it! While I’d been busy maneuvering Blondie and me to just the right spot, and Ernie had been busy trying to flatten out all the appealing bumps on Lakshmi, Reiko must have gone off to retrieve the piece I’d sent flying earlier. Back on Earth, when people get surges of adrenaline, they sometimes manage to lift cars off trapped pedestrians; the sight of Reiko again packing heat must have been enough to give Lakshmi the jolt she needed to heave Ernie off herself, and she now had hold of his rifle.

Blondie flexed her fingers, disengaging her hand from mine, and in a blur of motion she scooped up a rock about the size of a softball, hauled back, and let loose a pitch worthy of the major leagues. The rock tore through the thin air and made it a good fraction of the distance, but it fell short, and I couldn’t tell which of the three people she’d been aiming at. Ernie was on his feet, and the two women were facing off against each other, perhaps a dozen meters between them, Reiko aiming her pistol at Lakshmi, and Lakshmi pointing Ernie’s rifle at Reiko.

If this had been the Old West, I would have heard the shot ring out, but the air was too thin for that, and instead all I heard was a feminine “Oomph!” over the radio as one of the women was hit, and I waited breathlessly to see which of them would crumple to the ground.

And, after about three seconds, one of them did, with graceful Martian indolence: the shorter of the two, the lady in dark green, the heiress who seemed to have inherited nothing but her grandfather’s obsession with wealth.

Blondie suddenly sprang into action, running toward them. She’d yet to say a word, and I had no reason to think she was listening to the same frequency I was using, but I shouted anyway: “No! Stop! Go back the way we came!”

And either she was tuned into that channel, or else she had bionic ears in addition to bionic eyes, because she skidded to a halt, changed direction, and followed the precise path out that we’d taken in.

Meanwhile, the beige intruder was still coming straight for me. If I moved, he’d alter his course—and so I stood my ground.

Blondie was damn near flying, yellow hair a cloud around her head as she hurried toward Reiko and Lakshmi. Lakshmi aimed the rifle at Blondie, and I guess Blondie and I were thinking the same thing—that perhaps a gun that big would do real damage to a transfer; the blonde goddess started bobbing and weaving as she continued to race in. Lakshmi’s first shot was a clean miss. The second got Blondie somewhere in the torso—hard to tell exactly where when watching from the rear—but it didn’t slow her down.

I turned back to the intruder. It was a male transfer in khaki slacks and a khaki long-sleeved shirt, and he was still coming straight at me. As his shoulders worked up and down, I glimpsed that he had on a backpack—surely not air tanks, but rather a rucksack with equipment. Ah, and at last he was close enough that I could make out his face, and—