Dyann got up, knocked him to the floor, and rubbed his nose in the carpet before Ormun. "You vill please to grovel," she said urbanely. "It is good manners." She laid herself prone again, keeping one hand on the sergeant's head, and repeated several magic formulas. Then she rose to her knees, fished three Centaurian dice from her pocketed kilt, and tossed them.
"Ah-hah," she said. "The omen says—hm, let me see now, I am not a marya. I think they say go to Urushkidan." She bowed deeply before Ormun. "Thank you, my lady. Now come, we go find Urushkidan."
"You can't!" gibbered Hamand. "He's doing important work. He's at the Academy—"
Dyann strolled out and he trailed futilely in her wake, still protesting. She inquired her way along the many tunnels and corridors and ramps to the Academy of Science. There were no slideways. Everyone walked. The Jovian leaders, with their concern over physical fitness, insisted that there be as much assorted exercises as possible to compensate for Ganymede's low gravity. To Dyann, weight was feathery. She bounded twenty or thirty feet at a time when the crowd thinned enough.
The Academy, a combined college and technical research institute, had a good-sized sector to itself. There was a broad open space covered with turf and the uniformed students and professors went from one to another of the doors which opened on the grass. Dyann loomed over an undersized academician who gibbered in answer to her that Dr. Urushkidan was in that sector and then scuttled away.
There was an armed sentry in front of the door. Seeing none elsewhere, Dyann concluded shrewdly that he was posted because of the potential military applications of Urushkidan's work. He slanted his rifle across her path. "Halt!"
"I must see the Martian," said Dyann mildly. "Please to let me by."
"No one sees him without a pass," said the guard.
Dyann shoved him aside and opened the door. He yelled and grabbed her arm. That was his big mistake.
"A man," said the Varannian reprovingly, "should have respect for women." She yanked the rifle from him and hit him in the stomach with the butt. He flew across the plaza, retching, rolled to one elbow, and snatched at his sidearm. Dyann leaped, landing on his face with a crunch of bone and a small explosion of blood and teeth.