Fritz Leiber: The Silver Eggheads

"Where did you hide it on her?"

There was a considerable pause before the robot's reply. Gaspard used it to search the flat yellow landscape ahead. He spotted a dull green fleck below the dot of Zane's copter.

"I trust, Gaspard, that the information I am about to give you will not make you think the less of me, or of any other person, Saint Willi forbid! The mini-sender is buried in the center of one of Nurse Bishop's falsies."

Another brief pause, then the robot's voice, which had been a bit rapid and hushed, came through loud and hearty.

"And now good luck! I'm banking on you, Old Bone!"

"Whir-hey, Old Bolt! Down the fiend!" Gaspard responded bravely.

But he was not feeling at all brave as he fell away toward the green ranch house with the bulging walls and roof. Miss Jackson's sketchy description and the insolently conspicuous zoomer both indicated that he had to deal with the trouble-blaster Gil Hart, of whom he had heard various ominous anecdotes from Cullingham, such as the one about the time Hart had single-handedly hospitalized two steelworkers and a robot with weak batteries.

There was no place of concealment within a half mile of the ranch house. So there seemed to be no possible tactic except speed and surprise, setting down as close as possible to the front-door airlock, which looked-yes, was! — open, and dashing inside, gun in hand. This plan had the further advantage of leaving him a minimum of time in which to get scared.

It had yet one more advantage, it turned out. As he bumped to a landing, jumped out, and ran through the sand-cloud he'd raised toward the dark rectangle of the door, which stood open outward, a nickle-plated automaton watchdog sprang from the back seat of the checked zoomer and with a hideous siren-howling rushed toward him, steel jaws snapping. Gaspard dove into the airlock, catching the door and jerking it to behind him just before the savage mechanism hit the latter, momentarily indenting the rubberoid for about a meter, but not gashing it.

While the auto-dog continued to howl outside, the inner door of the airlock puffed open-evidently the shutting of the outer door unlocked it. Gaspard went through, waving his bullet gun quite as wildly as Joe the Guard was wont to wave his skunk pistol.

He found himself in a room furnished with couches and low tables and hung with a positive harem of stereo-pinups.

To his left crouched Gil Hart, stripped to the waist and armed with a strangely quasi-primitive weapon he'd apparently just snatched up-a thick nickle or nickle-plated thigh-bone about a foot long.

To his right stood Nurse Bishop in a white silk slip, brazenly posed with her left hand on her hip and a big brown highball held aloft in her right, the very picture of a good girl going to hell.

"Hi, Gaspard," Nurse Bishop said. "Gil, don't get in a sweat."

"I've come to rescue you," Gaspard said, a bit sullenly. Nurse Bishop laughed trillingly. "I don't think I want to be rescued. This Gil tells me he's quite a guy, one male in a million, well worth any girl's supreme sacrifice. Maybe he's got something. Look at those muscles, Gaspard. Look-and I quote-at that hairy chest."

Gil Hart haw-hawed. "Get going, punk," he said. "You heard the lady."

Gaspard took a deep breath. Somehow it made him take another deep breath and yet another-growling ones. His temples throbbed, his heart began to pound. "You little bitch," he grated. "I'm going to rescue you whether you want to be rescued or not. I'm going to rescue you within an inch of your life!"

With some idea that it was the sporting thing to do, the sort of thing Zane Gort would have done (and after all it was Nurse Bishop he was really furious with, not this rugchested ape) he fired a warning shot high above the private hand's head.

The consequences startled Gaspard, who had never fired anything but a raygun in his entire life. There was a thundering boom , recoil painfully jerked the gun out of his hand, stinking smoke spread, a hole appeared in the roof and air started to whiffle out through it. And the autodog's howling rose in volume.

Gil Hart laughed, dropped his odd weapon on the floor, and came at Gaspard.

Gaspard punched him in the jaw-a convulsive blow without much weight behind it.

Gil rode the punch and came back with one in Gaspard's midriff that blew the air out of him with an "Ugh!" and sat him down abruptly on his rear. Stooping, Gil grabbed his collar.

"Out, punk, I said," he jeered.

There was a resonant musical bong . A beatific look appeared on Gil's blue-chinned face and he did a neat little somersault over Gaspard, stretched out with a slam and lay still.

Nurse Bishop stood behind him, hefting the gleaming metal thighbone and smiling happily.

"I've always wondered," she said, "if I could tap someone on the head and knock them out without splashing their brains all over the place. Haven't you, Gaspard? I'll bet it's everybody's secret dream." She dropped to her knees and felt for the pulse in the private hand's wrist, her eyes going professional as she found it.

Gaspard hugged his stomach and looked around at her dubiously. Overhead the ceiling had lost its concavity and seemed an inch or two lower. The next moment it began to descend visibly and the siren-howling that had kept up in the background suddenly burst out loud, unmuffled, and accompanied by a horrid clashing. The auto-dog had bitten its way through the wall as the latter grew flaccid. A blur of flashing nickle, it made for Gaspard.

Nurse Bishop lunged across him, thrusting out the metal bone. The auto-dog's jaws clamped on it and the metal beast stopped dead and cut off its siren so suddenly that the silence seemed to resound.

"It works sort of like the keeper of a magnet," Nurse Bishop explained to Gaspard as the ceiling settled lightly on them. "Gil had to show it to me three times, he got such a charge out of telling the dog to grab me and then stopping it with the bone."

Gaspard managed at last to take a painful breath. There was a moment of being almost sick, then he began to feel interested in things again, in a coolly woozy way.

Nurse Bishop set a coffee table on end to take the slight weight of the collapsed ceiling. The space they occupied, lit by lights half submerged in the collapsed walls, was as pleasantly intimate as a children's tent. They were sitting on the floor facing each other, Gaspard cross-legged, she with her knees to one side. She was still in her slip, though her sweater and skirt lay under her hand. Gil Hart snored on his back with great authenticity. His auto-dog, jaws clamping keeper-bone, crouched beside him, quiet as death.

Nurse Bishop smiled fondly at Gaspard-and rather smugly too, he fancied. "Feeling better?" she asked. He nodded feebly.

"The last time I talked to you," she said with a chuckle, "I was bawling you out for not bringing the brats' rolls. I was also a bit more dressed." She looked down at herself-very complacently, it seemed to him.

"How ever did you get on my track so fast?" she asked. Then she threw her shoulders back and took a rather deep breath, to reward him with a little thrill, he guessed.

He looked straight in her eyes. Relishing every word of it, he said, "Zane Gort planted a mini-sender in one of your falsies. He wants you to switch it off right away so he can locate Half Pint."

It's fun to watch a girl blush and get furious at the same time, Gaspard decided.

"That indecent tin sneak !" she grated. "That electronic boudoir stowaway! That relay-brained fetishist!" She glared at Gaspard. "I don't give a danm what you think," she informed him. Crossing her arms, she grasped her shoulder straps and whipped her slip and the brassiere beneath it down to her waist. "As you can plainly see," she told him defiantly while looking down in her lap as she felt for the sender, "upstairs I'm built exactly like a boy."