"That red herring they told us to drag across the trail was too damned red. They must be touchier than fulminate to spy-work on their armed forces—neither Mase nor I can do a lick of work. Anybody else covered?"
"No. All clear."
"Good. Tell them the zwilnik blockers took us out."
"I'll do that. Distance only, or is somebody on your tail?"
"Somebody; and I mean some body. A slick chick with a classy chassis; a blonde, with great, big come-hither eyes. Too good to be true; especially the falsies. Wiring, my friend—and I haven't been able to get a close look, but I wouldn't wonder if her nostrils had a skillionth of a whillimeter too much expansion. I want a spy-ray op—is it safe to use Fred?" Kinnison referred to the grizzled engineer now puttering about in a certain space-ship; not the one in which he and Northrop had come to Eridan.
"Definitely not. I can do it myself and still stay very much in character.... No, I don't know her. Not surprising, of course, since the policy here is never to let the right hand know what the left is doing. How about you, Mase? Have you got a little girl-friend, too?"
"Yea, verily, brother; but not little. More my size." Northrop pointed out a tall, trim brunette, strolling along with the effortless, consciously unconscious poise of the professional model.
"Hm ... m ... m. I don't know her, either," Costigan reported, "but both of them are wearing four-inch spy-ray blocks and are probably wired up like Christmas trees. By inference, P-gun proof. I can't penetrate, of course, but maybe I can get a viewpoint.... You're right, Jack. Nostrils plugged. Anti-thionite, anti-Vee-Two, anti-everything. In fact, anti-social. I'll spread their pictures around and see if anybody knows either of them."
He did so, and over a hundred of the Patrol's shrewdest operatives—upon this occasion North America had invaded Eridan in force—studied and thought. No one knew the tall brunette, but—
"I know the blonde." This was Parker of Washington, a Service ace for twenty five years. "'Hell-cat Hazel' DeForce, the hardest-boiled babe unhung. Watch your step around her; she's just as handy with a knife and knock-out drops as she is with a gun."