Part 12 (2/2)

”You sure don't look it!”

”Heft me.”

He put his big hands under her elbows and lifted her easily. ”Maybe so,” he said. ”Sure no fat on you, though.”

”Agents are more solid than they look. Our bones are laced with metal -- literally. And the android flesh with which we are rebuilt is more dense than yours. But you're right: no fat in it.”

”I know you're tough,” he agreed, not altogether pleased. ”Still, might be safer if we both went in case there were bad trouble at the other end.”

She would be better off alone if there were real trouble. But that was not the point. ”Yes. But then there would be a long, uninterrupted wait -- and no one could reach us.” She breathed again.

Veg was not slow to appreciate the possibilities. Two, perhaps three completely private hours with this seductive woman! ”Safety first!” he said. ”Let's go take a look.”

He had taken the bait, lured by the thrill of exploration as well as her own enticements. And she really had not had to lie. It was safer with two, in a routine crossover, and the limitations of the generator were as she had described.

She really had taken more trouble than strictly necessary to bring him along. A knockout or a straight lie would have done the job in seconds. But either of these techniques would have led to complications later. This way, not only would he serve as an effective hostage -- he could be of genuine a.s.sistance in a variety of circ.u.mstances. All she had to do was prepare him.

She could do a lot with a man in three hours.

”All right,” she said. ”You're armed?” She knew he was; she was merely alerting him.

He nodded. ”I keep a knife on me. I lost my other hardware to that machine back in the desert.”

”If there's any long-distance threat, I'll cover it.”

He glanced once more at her half-exposed b.r.e.a.s.t.s. ”Yeah -- like Taler.”

She laughed honestly this time, knowing he knew there was no jealousy between agents. She set the return aperture timer for three hours, leaving a reasonable margin for recharging, then activated the projector.

As the sphere formed, she drew him through the aperture beside her.

There was no pa.s.sage of time, just the odd transfer wrench. They emerged in a world apart. Where there had been surrealistic buildings, now were trees.

Not the desert world. She had been afraid of this.

”Not Paleo, either -- or Earth,” Veg said, for once divining her thoughts before she read his.

Tamme looked about warily. ”How do you know? This is a forest -- and there are forests on both worlds.”

”This is the forest primeval,” he said, unconsciously borrowing from American literature.

”Evangeline,” Tamme said.

”Who?”

”Longfellow's poem from which you quoted. Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, vintage 1847.”

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