Now she stood before him, unsmiling and impatient, and her slender arms reached out for his shoulders.
“Riva, this is serious!” He forced her hands down again. “I’m in trouble. I need help.”
“It’s to help you I’ve been trying all along.”
“I’ve got to get in touch with the authorities—your government.”
She looked blank.
He simplified it, “Your leaders.”
“Oh, it’s easy that is. There be Aline and Clio and Leah and—but that Leah! It’s the cake she takes! Thirty chasers she led on the best drag-out of all. Two whole days it lasted!”
“No, Riva! Not that kind of leader. I mean—well, someone who gets things done. The kind who gets behind things and—”
“That be Leanc. Behind those floating cars he’s getting all the time. And how he can throw so many rocks I’ll never know!”
He mussed his hair in frustration, then composed himself. “How do I get to the city?”
“That crowded place with all the big houses?” When he nodded, she went on, “It’s never been there I have.Now we play?”
He drew in a hopeless breath. “All right. Now we play. You go hide.”
She radiated a warm eagerness as she initiated the game all over again with a kiss and then went sprinting toward the front of the house. He watched her disappear through the next room, then went out the nearest door, heading for the fence and his ship beyond. It had required no small degree of restraint not to go racing off after her.
At the corner of the manor he was bowled over by a shouting Papa who was in full flight as he shot out around a hedge, heading for the guest house.
“All your fault it is!” he cried, recovering his balance and plunging on. “You it be who caused this! that I’ll remember!”
Cassidy sat up, arms resting on his updrawn knees, and stared after the old man.
“Ow! Riva! Ouch!” Papa clutched his rear as he neared the cottage. “Help! Oh, my aching back!”
*
Cassidy found Mason frozen in the shadow of the ship, fascinated by another girl chase that was in progress nearby.
The swirl of action swerved toward him and Mason tensed, shifting from one foot to the other. With the wind pressing her clothes in revealing tightness about her, the flaxen-haired sprite swept past and he lunged for her.
“Mason!” Cassidy shouted.
“Seemed like a good idea,” Mason explained, checking himself. “Wonder what it takes to get in on that chase.”
Cassidy forced a fetching thought of Riva out of his mind. “What we ought to be wondering is how soon we can blast off.”
“But if we get spaceborne before the stabilizer’s working, we’ll only be floundering around again.”
Cassidy started for the ladder. “There’s one thing we can do—patch up the hatches and jump over to another spot on this planet. Maybe we’ll find somebody who’s normal, at least.”
But Mason caught his arm and pointed toward Riva’s estate where a skimmer car was now parked on the side of the manor opposite the guest house.
“Anybody who can drive one of those things,” he suggested, “must know something about the city and how to get there. Maybe he’ll even give us a lift.”
*
Mason circled the skimmer craft. “It’s a fine piece of workmanship,” he said in admiration.
“I’ll say,” Cassidy agreed. “If we can find out where that was made, I’m sure we’ll—”
His vision was suddenly cut off by a pair of hands that came around his head from behind and clamped themselves over his eyes. If he had any doubt as to the identity of their owner, it was soon cleared up by a soft voice next to his ear:
“Not right this is. It’s chasing me you’re supposed to be.”
“Riva,” he said, facing her, “we’d like to meet the person who came here in that skimmer.”
“Excuses, excuses,” she complained. “Always something more important than a chase it is.”
“Take us to the driver of that thing,” Mason prompted. “We—”
But he tensed and stared up in alarm toward the field. Cassidy followed his gaze to the skimmer vehicle that had earlier reduced a pile of trash to nothing. The craft was just now floating up to their ship.
Its two beams of sizzling red light swept over the hull from stem to stern, again and again—until there was nothing left of their ship but incandescent molten metal.
Mason displayed a sickened, then resigned expression, thrust his hands in his pockets and shuffled off toward the field.
“Getting in on one of those chases I think I’ll be,” he said.
But he paused outside the fence, turned to say something, then lurched back. “Cassidy! Watch out! There’s one of those things!”
The spider-octopus came into view from around the rear of the manor and crawled leisurely toward the guest house. Its body, covered with a multitude of eyes and an unkempt mat of fuzz, was like a coal-black knob perched atop hairy stilts.
Evidently, Cassidy guessed as he dived behind a hedge and pulled the girl with him, the thing had gotten away from its master, for it was trailing its leash in the dust.
“It’s hurt you he won’t,” Riva assured, quite puzzled over his apprehension. “He belongs to—”
But Cassidy clamped a hand over her mouth.
The thing reached the guest house and made a queer noise in front of the door.
Papa came outside on the double.
The spider-octopus picked up the other end of the thong and clamped its braceletlike device around the old man’s wrist.
Grinning, Papa pulled toward the gate, straining at the leash.
Eventually, Cassidy was aware of Riva’s smiling, inquisitive face in front of his.
“Play?” she invited.
And, glancing back at the charred remains of his ship, he didn’t see why not.
Blueblood
By Jim Harmon
There were two varieties of aliens—blue and bluer—but not as blue as the Earthmen!
*
Even if I’m only a space pilot, I’m not dumb. I mean I’m not that dumb. I admit that Dr. Ellik and Dr. Chon outrank me, because that’s the way it’s got to be. A pilot is only an expendable part. But I had been the first one to see the natives on this planet, and I was the first one to point out that they came in two attractive shades of blue, light blue and dark blue.
Four Indigos were carrying an Azure. I called the others over to the screen.
“A sedan chair,” identified Lee Chon. “Think the light-skinned one is a kind of a priest?”
Mike Ellik shook his head. “I doubt it. The chair isn’t ornate enough. I think that’s probably the standard method of travel—at least for a certain social elite.”
“Do you notice anything unusual about those bully boys?”