Part 7 (2/2)

One of the Intourist guides who had brought them from the railroad station stood to one side of the stairs. ”Going for a walk, gentlemen?

I suggest you stroll up Gorky Street, it's the main shopping center.”

Paco said, ”How about going over into Red Square to see the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p?”

The guide shrugged. ”I don't believe the guards will allow you to get too near. It would be undesirable to bother the Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union.”

That was one way of wording it, Hank thought glumly. _The Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union._ Not to the Earth, but to the Soviet Union. He wondered what the neutrals in such countries as India were thinking.

But at least there were no restrictions on Paco and him.

They strolled up Gorky Street, jam packed with fellow pedestrians.

Shoppers, window-shoppers, men on the prowl for girls, girls on the prowl for men, Ivan and his wife taking the baby for a stroll, street cleaners at the endless job of keeping Moscow's streets the neatest in the world.

Paco pointed out this to Hank, Hank pointed out that to Paco. Somehow it seemed more than a visit to a western European nation. This was Moscow. This was the head of the Soviet snake.

And then Hank had to laugh inwardly at himself as two youngsters, running along playing tag in a grown-up world of long legs and stolid pace, all but tripped him up. Head of a snake it might be, but Moscow's people looked astonis.h.i.+ngly like those of Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon.

”How do you like those two, coming now?” Paco said.

Those two coming now consisted of two better than averagely dressed girls who would run somewhere in their early twenties. A little too much make-up by western standards, and clumsily applied.

”Blondes,” Paco said soulfully.

”They're all blondes here,” Hank said.

”Wonderful, isn't it?”

The girls smiled at them in pa.s.sing and Paco turned to look after, but they didn't stop. Hank and Paco went on.

It didn't take Hank long to get onto Paco's system. It was beautifully simple. He merely smiled widely at every girl that went by. If she smiled back, he stopped and tried to start a conversation with her.

He got quite a few rebuffs but--Hank remembered an old joke--on the other hand he got quite a bit of response.

Before they had completed a block and a half of strolling, they were standing on a corner, trying to talk with two of Moscow's younger set--female variety. Here again, Paco was a wonder. His languages were evidently Spanish, English and French but he was in there pitching with a language the full vocabulary of which consisted of _Da_ and _Neit_ so far as he was concerned.

Hank stood back a little, smiling, trying to stay in character, but in amused dismay at the other's aggressive abilities.

Paco said, ”Listen, I think I can get these two to come up to the room. Which one do you like?”

Hank said, ”If they'll come up to the room, then they're professionals.”

Paco grinned at him. ”I'm a professional, too. A lawyer by trade. It's just a matter of different professions.”

A middle-aged pedestrian, pa.s.sing by, said to the girls in Russian, ”Have you no shame before the foreign tourists?”

They didn't bother to answer. Paco went back to his attempt to make a deal with the taller of the two.

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