"Certainly not," Shanig said brightly, beaming back at him. "My only regret is that I must be separated from this adorable creature. I love smileys."
He went over to the desk where Cheryl had left Cora's cage and fondled the little brute through the wires. He played the very devil in doing it, too. Somehow or other the cage door had worked loose during the time it had been banged about, and Shanig's fumbling hands slid it open.
Cora was out of the cage and through the broken balcony windows in a smoky bluish flash, whizzing like a bullet toward the Argonaut Club and Joey.
VI
Everybody snapped back to normal with a roar. There was a frantic rush of Shanig's uglies trying to escape and of Giles' patrolies collaring them again. I took no chances with Shanig. I turned my Quantrell on him and held him fast.
Hell broke loose in the Argonaut then. Even before the confusion quieted in Shanig's office we could hear the din that went up across the street.
From our balcony windows we had a grandstand view of the Argonaut's more timid patrons exploding out of the place and tearing down the street, wobbling and lurching each in his own outlandish fashion from the assortment of Eetee drinks they had taken aboard under Joey's spell. The rougher souls left inside had begun a battle royal that raised a bedlam wilder than a robot rooting section at a rocket-games stadium.
"What is it!" Captain Giles yelled, goggling at a barrel-bellied Europan who shot out of the Argonaut with a pack of little baboon-faced Marties harrying its speeding cart from the rear. "What have you done now?"
"Shanig has just ruined a forty-thousand-credit investment for me," I told him, "by letting my pair of smileys get together. That peace-be-on-you feeling they've been broadcasting is a thing of the past. They feel just the opposite now, and so will anyone who goes near them."