"Go ahead—hurt me. You can. You're very strong."

"Who's taking pot shots at me?"

She jerked away from him violently.

"It's none of your darn business. You deserve to be shot. You're a tin horn sport, running away from a real job to get your wings covered with star dust."

She backed away from him, holding her wrist, her eyes blazing.

She reached the door and opened it quickly.

Freedman, completely bewildered by what had happened, started after her. The light-gun shot into her hand and its barrel pointed at his stomach.

"I came here to help you," she said coldly, "but I think I could shoot now, you bull-headed, star-chasing hero."

He stopped short. The girl was beautiful, and so angry that her eyes seemed to shoot flame.

"Who are you? Why did...?"

"I came because I thought I loved you," she clipped the words off with an utterly matter of fact voice. "Now I find that you're so much in love with yourself that there isn't room for anyone else."

She was gone, and the room was silent. A Parma housefly zoomed across the room and lit on the door knob. Freedman jerked the door open and the fly buzzed away. The hall was empty. He listened. Not a sound.

He went back in, shaking his head slowly.

"Well I'll—be...."

A girl who came from nowhere. A girl he had never seen before, and she had come to say that she loved him, and in the same breath, threatened to shoot him through the stomach.

Freedman sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt a little shaky....

Lieutenant Breecher made a wide, sweeping gesture with his free hand. "The Warrior Patrol of Parma." Blair Freedman sat in the cramped, efficient little fighter rocket, following Breecher's hand as the Warrior Patrol swept in toward the entrance to the Asteroid Tunnel.

"I'm proud to be in the force," Freedman said. "I've watched you men for years. 

 Prev. P 7/26 next