I was so engrossed, Miss Pinch had to call me twice to tell me the first lesbian couple was ready.

With great aplomb and confidence, I went into the living room. I gave them the treat of watching me take off my clothes.

The husband was named Ralph: short-haired and thin of face. She was lying under a sheet, eyes on me, bright and alive.

With the air of a professional connoisseur, Miss Pinch watched me get into bed.

The other lesbian flinched as her husband let out a scream.

Candy grinned, eagerly nodding in rhythm.

Ralph's mouth opened in a convulsive yell. Then she stiffened and her eyes, wide open, rolled back into her head. She lay there very still. I was staring into blank eyes!

A wave of horror hit me.

I thought that she was dead!

I off-loaded quick and went into the back room.

Feeling very strange, I stood there staring into the back garden.

Was something wrong with me? I felt sort of ill. I couldn't understand it.

Fifteen minutes or more I stood there. Finally Miss Pinch came in. She said, "The other girl is waiting, Ink-switch. What the hell is going on?"

"I don't feel like it," I said.

"Jesus Christ, Inkswitch, you can't be rude to company."

"I don't know what is wrong with me," I said. "I don't think I can make it."

Miss Pinch went out and shortly came back in. She was carrying a water tumbler full of bubbles. "It's some of the party champagne," she said. "Drink it down. A great aphrodisiac."

I was thirsty. I gulped it all down. It made me feel warm. Not much more alcoholic content than Turkish sira.

DEATH QUEST 69

I peeked into the other room. Ralph was sitting up, fanning herself with her palm. She smiled at me. "Oh, you kid," she said. "To think I got to wait three weeks for another one of those is pure torture."

I went over to her. I felt her arm. The pulse was strong. She was alive!

"You got the wrong girl, Inkswitch," said Miss Pinch. "Over here. This is Butter."

I walked around to the other side of the bed. The lesbian wife, Butter, was lying there sort of panting and eyeing me.

The girl said, "I'm no virgin. I let a goat do it to me once up on a farm. It wasn't much good but he got my maidenhead. So shove away but I don't think I'll (bleep) like Ralph did."

Miss Pinch laughed.

Candy grinned.

Ralph, watching, began to bob her head knowingly.

Butter screamed and convulsed. Then her eyes rolled straight up into her head and she stiffened out like a poker.

I was staring at blank, sightless eyes in a perfectly still face on a rigid body.

My stomach turned over.

I pulled off and raced away.

I got to the bathroom. I began to throw up in the toilet bowl. I threw up everything I'd eaten for days and still tried.

I collapsed in front of it, still trying from time to time.

Dead eyes!

What was wrong with me?

It must have been the champagne! But no, I'd begun to feel this way when Ralph did that.

Was I going crazy?

Worse-was I, an Apparatus veteran, developing a conscience? Gods forbid.

I examined my immediate past. Due to Prahd's operation, I had had a sexual surge. That should have made a difference in my mind. Freud would think it would, for his whole theory was that everything was based on sex.

With care I reviewed myself to see if there was any real change in my personality. Bit by bit, I went over past experience with myself.

My motivations didn't seem to have changed. Money, kill songbirds, put the riffraff in its place.

Mysterious. Comparing past years to present, I had to conclude that my personality had not shifted so much as an id.

I got to thinking about Torpedo Fiaccola. His psychologist had recommended becoming a necrophile. So obviously, from this evidence and much other psychology reading I had done, it was quite a normal thing to have coitus with a corpse. So that could not be the basis of this strange reaction.

I just couldn't get to the bottom of it at all.

Hours later, it seemed, Miss Pinch came looking for me. I heard myself babble, "Is Butter alive?"

She laughed at me. "You're not good enough to kill them dead, Inkswitch. They both went home long ago."

"You're not fooling me? You didn't dispose of her corpse somewhere, did you?"

She saw I was serious. And she couldn't get me out of the bathroom. She phoned the couple and put Butter on the phone.

"Are you a live girl?" I said.

"What's your opinion, Inkswitch? But man, I'm here to tell you, you were better than the goat."

"You're alive, then. You weren't dead."

"Hell, you want me to come back, Inkswitch?"

"Give me that phone," said Pinch, who had had her ear pressed near.

"No, no," I said. "Put Ralph on."

She did and I said, "Are you alive, Ralph?"

"Half dead," said Ralph.

It was the wrong answer. I shoved the phone at Miss Pinch. She said something into the mouthpiece and hung up. Then she said, "Take a shower, Inkswitch. The goat rubbed off on you. We're waiting."

I took a shower. I washed and washed and washed, which is very unusual for me.

Miss Pinch finally came into the bathroom again. "For Christ's sake, Inkswitch, come on!"

She got me out and towelled me and got me into the other room.

"No," I said. "Wait a moment." I found my hands were very shaky.

"Look," I begged, "promise me you'll keep moving."

In the chilly light of dawn, after a bad night of introspection, I decided it was all nonsense. There was nothing wrong with me at all.

I got into the closet with my viewers. And one sight

of the Countess Krak through Heller's viewer returned to me my full resolve.

They were taking him to the airport in the old, orange cab. She and Heller were seated in the back. Izzy was hunched up on the front seat looking studiously ahead. Bang-Bang was driving as he always did-like a madman.

Heller and Krak had their arms around each other. She was sort of sniffling. But she said, "I know it's rough to be apart even for a few days. I've just got to steel up to it, that's all. We've got to get this mission fin­ished and get off this planet. I feel it like an ache."

So there she was, using all her woman's wiles to rush Heller along and get something done. And she didn't care a single (bleep) that I'd be killed if Heller succeeded in straightening out the place, for he could only do so by ruining every control point on which Lombar depended.

I was right. She was the one I had to get rid of first. And quick. It was my firm duty to have her shot and I must not waver for a moment.

That put my mind at rest. But something else at once unstabilized it. Heller's 831 Relayer! (Bleep) Raht! I'd be out of communication like a shot, with Heller in Florida.

I got on the radio. Raht answered in a sleepy voice. "Listen, you lazy (bleep)!" I screamed. "Pay attention to your duties for a change! I've had enough of being cut off from seeing what he does. He's dangerous! Get over to the Empire State Building and get all those gadgets off of that antenna. You're just leaving them there to spite me! Since you know where it is, smart (bleep), deliver Krak's and Crobe's to me here in this apartment right away. Then draw money and a ticket at the office and fly today down to Ochokeechokee, Florida, keep your eye on

that man and stay within two hundred miles of him. Repeat this all back quick so I'll know you're awake and I'm not talking to a snore."

He did. I clicked off.

I looked back at the viewers. They were unloading Heller's bags in the parking lot. Heller tried to help them but Izzy and Bang-Bang pushed him aside and struggled manfully with the big cases.

I got disoriented. I was so used to going in and out of JFK that I didn't know where they were until I spotted a sign, La Guardia. Ah, domestic flights, of course.