Halfway through Charlie's discourse, I had jerked my head around to stare a baffled question at Clatclit. Where, I was about to ask him, were you when the posse scuttled by?
But he'd already anticipated the question, and I watched as he pointed to himself, then made a serpentine forward-stab with his hand, then an up-down-and-around motion with his palms over his torso.
"You scooted up the tunnel for a brisk toweling?" I said.
A firm nod.
I couldn't blame him. After all, Snow and I were gone for a spell. No reason for him to stand there and melt with the water already beading his candy-coated hide. So that meant that Charlie and Foster were outside the wall while Snow and I were in council with the Martian. I found I was glad Clatclit hadn't been there to spot them. Because if he had been, and they had those water guns, I'd have found nothing but a sticky puddle where I'd left a friend. If, indeed, I'd been able to get back that far.
Baxter's voice interrupted my thoughts. "And so," he said, mockingly bitter, "you return once again, empty-handed!"
"Not quite, sir," said Foster, stepping forward and setting a trim plastic rectangle on end atop the desk. "We found this just outside that wall."
It was Snow's handbag. Probably she'd dropped it in her initial fright when that wall had gaped open before us. I hadn't noticed it then, because I'd been pretty shaken, too. And when I made my ungracious exit from the Martian's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't den, the handbag was already gone, on its way up to Baxter via Foster.
Apparently Clatclit had known a shorter route to the IS building than the IS men did.
Baxter had the bag in his hands, now, staring at it with the first faint flush of elation coming into his face. "But this must be that girl's bag! The one who stole that other Amnesty!"