And if there is any female that epitomizes the vicious evil of that species, it is the Countess Krak, Jet-tero Heller's girlfriend. My task was simpler until her arrival on Earth. All I had to do was sabotage Heller's mission. True, he had given me some trouble but it was nothing compared to the problems she caused. She was urging him on, urging him on, sabotaging my sabotaging at every turn. Not through any skill, mind you. She was just lucky. All women are. They just don't have the brains. They just cause trouble for men. Especially me.

That's when I realized my problem. Although J. Walter Madison, that master of PR, was generating phony front-page stories about Heller (known on Earth as Jerome Terrance "The Whiz Kid" Wister), they weren't affecting him. It was all because of Krak. She was holding him up. I realized that to stop Heller I had to first remove the Countess Krak.

The opportunity was perfect. Heller was caught up in his crazy project to release spores into the atmosphere

to clean up the air, not in protecting the Countess Krak. Besides, Heller didn't have any reason to think she was open to an attack. And thanks to the visio and audio bugs they unknowingly carried, I could not only monitor everything they saw or heard but could pinpoint their locations at any given time. I could choose exactly when and where and how to strike.

The decision was simple. __

I had found the solution to my problem.

I would kill the Countess Krak!.

My plan was very simple.

I would buy a hit!

A long-range sniper rifle, expertly zeroed in, fired by a trained man, was a thing against which the Countess Krak would have no defense.

All the clever tricks she knew were close-up things, face to face. An expert marksman, shooting from two to five hundred yards away, would not have to cope with darts or hypnohelmets or stage sleight of hand. He would simply pull the trigger and she'd be dead.

How much did a hit cost? Ten thousand dollars seemed to be the going price.

Where could I get a hit man? They were available from the Faustino Narcotici mob, right downtown.

When could I get it done? As soon as I had ten thousand bucks.

I counted up my money. I had less than four thou­sand.

It was Sunday night. The apartment was in an up­roar. Candy and Miss Pinch were trying to get things squared around. Sometime this coming week, I had not made out when, they were going to have a housewarming and because they both worked, they could only get the place into some kind of order by working late into the night. Almost all the major things were done but there remained curtain hanging and getting things just right.

I had sort of been staying out of the way, afraid

of getting pinned to a curtain rod or swept out into the dustbin. But my need for ten thousand dollars made me brave.

They were both buzzing around in the back room. And I ran into a hornets nest-or, more exactly, a fleas nest.

Miss Pinch, stripped to the waist and wearing a bandanna on her head like some kind of a pirate, was tearing into something.

"Miss Pinch," I said, "I am in grievous straits. I need ten thousand dollars to speed up a business deal."

She whirled on me. "THERE you are!" All it would have taken was a knife between her teeth to complete the picture of a boarding party taking a ship by storm upon the Spanish Main. "FLEAS! God (bleep)* it, Inkswitch, FLEAS!"

Candy pointed a broom handle at me like a cannon­eer. "We've been wondering and wondering why we itched. We've been looking everyplace!"

* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Peunwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves." – Translator

"And there they are!" thundered Miss Pinch like a broadside.

They were tearing my suitcase apart! They found the clothes I had stolen from that old man on Limnos island. And there in plain view was a nest of fleas!

"It's an invasion of privacy!" I squeaked.

"Exactly!" said Candy with unaccustomed grim-ness. "They're invading the hell out of our privates!"

"Candy," said Miss Pinch, standing on the quarterdeck in full command, "run down to the corner store and buy all the DDT on the shelf!"

She sped like an arrow.

"What about my ten thousand dollars?" I said.

I didn't get any answer.

Miss Pinch began to tear my grip apart. In desperation, I began to rescue vital hardware and papers. She made me pile them in the middle of the floor.

Then she made me take the whole grip and every stitch of my clothes and carry them into the back yard. She marched behind me as though she carried a prodding cutlass and made me stuff everything into the garden in­cinerator. With a grim glare, she poured charcoal igniter fluid in and touched it off with a match.

They burned like a sacked town.

"I think this is a little extreme," I said for the tenth or twelfth time. "They're only a few fleas."

But that was not all they had in store for me. Candy came back, staggering under a load of insecticide. They put me to work. They made me spray and dust the whole apartment while they stood back with cloths over their faces saying things like "Brand-new decorator job and he..." and "Work our (bleeps) to the bone to make the place nice and he..." It was not a very hopeful atmosphere in which to get ten thousand dollars.

I finally was even made to spray my hardware, papers and boots, and just when I thought I was fin­ished, more horror awaited. I was dizzy from breathing in DOT and said I was feeling faint when both of them leaped on me, grabbed a Flit can and began to spray ME! They even rubbed DDT into my hair and answered my protests with "If you weren't infested, then why are you leaping about?"

They dumped me in the shower and then sprayed themselves. They locked me in the back room with only the floor to sleep on.

The following morning, before they went to work, they let me out. Standing there with nothing on, I said, "Could I have ten thousand dollars?"

Miss Pinch, coated and hatted and holding her purse, stood in the door and glared.

I said, "At least let me have my daily thousand dollars."

The answer was a slammed door. They were gone.

Forlornly, I checked my viewers and radio and other things. They were pretty fogged up with insecticide powder and I had to clean them off.

The Countess Krak was drinking a cup of some­thing, probably Bavarian Mocha Mint, and watching Heller busily putting things in glass jars.

"What are those things, dear?" she said from her stool at the bar.

"Spore cultures," he said. "I'm just checking Crobe's formula. In a few days I'll know if they're all right."

"Can't you do it sooner, dear? I don't think this planet is very good for us."

"Well, honey, some things take as long as they take. These people pretty well let this planet go down the drain. And this mission has got to be a success."

"Yes," she said. "It has to be a success." She looked into her coffee for a bit. Then she looked up and said, "Is there anything I can do to push it along?"