"Captain Jonas," it said, speaking in a different accent this time. "There's a war going on and we can't take any chances on how the aliens will feel about it. We have a fix on you and I'm sending a flight of homing missiles. Nuclear warheads."
She stiffened as she heard the sentence, her red lips drawn back from tightly clenched teeth. In a faint voice, she said, "I—I guess there isn't much I can do about it, is there?"
"Can you keep him there and busy so that he won't notice the missiles coming?"
She gave a short, brittle laugh. "Yes sir. I feel fairly sure I can keep him interested for—" she glanced speculatively at Tensor "—a half hour at least. Probably much longer."
"It'll only be fifteen minutes," the panel rasped. "We'll deal with the others as we find them. You will be decorated for this service, even though you are only a civilian. Posthumously, of course."
The panel was silent.
"Oh sure," she said in a deadly quiet voice. "I'm glad to be appreciated."
Tensor was puzzled. The conversation did not appear to make a great deal of sense to him. He hovered over the panel and gazed at it curiously.
"Just another superior," she told him. "It seems that practically everybody is my superior or was." She sighed and looked down at herself, wistfully thinking that it was a shame to have to waste all the carefully nurtured loveliness that she knew she was.
She looked up at Tensor, who had lost interest in the panel and was busily examining the outside in a viewscope.