"Professional killers, to dispose of you," Rockford finished. "I know all about it, and I know that Narf took time last night to spend an hour with his favorite girl friend and brag even to her that he was going to marry Lyla today before your dead body had time to get cool.
"But you just take Lyla for another walk and you will cause the beginning of the end for the Verdam Peoples Worlds. You will go down in history, my boy, as the man who saved the Terran Republic."
Hunter went out the door, again feeling a feverish sense of unreality. He was to go forth and get blasted into hamburger and by some mysterious process known only to Rockford, the Verdam empire would contritely start collapsing....
He did not knock on her door. He did not think of it as a violation of her privacy. She would be feeling too alone and unwanted to care.
She was not crying as he had thought she would be. She was standing by the window, staring down at the gray, distant desert, her eyes as bleakly empty as it.
"Hello, Lyla," he said.
"Hello, Dale. I was just thinking; this is the day that I, as a woman, should always have dreamed about"—she tried to smile, and failed, and the brass came into her voice—"my wedding day!"
"Alonzo told me about it."
It seemed to him he should add something, such as to wish her happiness—but such words would be meaningless and farcical and they would both know it.
But there was no reason why he should endanger her by obeying Rockford's insane order. He would not do it—