The Zap Gun

23

On the subsurface level of Lanferman Associates, more or less directly beneath the mid-California town of San Jose, Pete Freid sat at his extensive work-bench, his machines and tools inert, silent, off.

Before him lay the October 2003 copy of the uncivilized comic book, The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan. At the moment, his lips moving, he examined the entertainment adventure, The Blue Cephalopod Man Meets the Fiendish Dirt-Thing That Bored to the Surface of Io After Two Billion Years Asleep in the Depths! He had reached the frame where the Blue Cephalopod Man, roused to consciousness by his sidekick's frantic telepathic efforts, had managed to convert the radiation-detecting portable G-system into a Cathode-Magnetic Ionizing Bi-polar Emanator.

With this Emanator, the Blue Cephalopod Man threatened the Fiendish Dirt-Thing as it attempted to carry off Miss Whitecotton, the mammate girlfriend of the Blue Man. It had succeeded in unfastening Miss Whitecotton's blouse so that one breast—and only one; that was International Law, the ruling applying severely to children's reading material—was exposed to the flickering light of Io's sky. It pulsed warmly, wiggled as Pete squeezed the wiggling-trigger. And the nipple dilated like a tiny pink lightbulb, upraised in 3-D and winking on and off, on and off... and would continue to do so until the five-year battery-plate contained within the back cover of the mag at last gave out.

Tinnily, in sequence, as Pete stroked the aud tab, the adversaries of the adventure spoke. He sighed. He had by now noted sixteen "weapons" from the pages so far inspected. And meanwhile, New Orleans, then Provo, and now, according to what had just come over the TV, Boise, Idaho was missing. Had disappeared behind the gray curtain, as the 'casters and 'papes were calling it.

The gray curtain of death.

The vidphone on his desk pinged. He reached up, snapped it on. Lars' careworn face appeared on the screen.

"You're back?" Peter asked.

"Yes. In my New York office."

"Good," said Pete. "Say, what line of work are you going to go into now that Mr. Lars, Incorporated, of New York and Paris is kaput?"

"Does it matter?" Lars asked. "In an hour I'm supposed to meet with the Board down below in the kremlin. They're staying perpetually subsurface, in case the aliens turn their whatever-it-is on the capital. I'd advise you to stay underground, too; I hear the aliens' machinery doesn't penetrate subsurface."

Pete nodded glumly. Like Lars, he felt somatically sick. "How's Maren taking it?"

Lars, hesitating, said, "I—haven't talked to Maren. The fact is, I brought Lilo Topchev back with me. She's here now."

"Put her on."

"Why?"

"So I can get a look at her, that's why."

The sunny, uncomplicated face of a young girl, light-complexioned, with oddly astringent, watchful eyes and a tautly pursed mouth, appeared on the vid-screen. The girl looked scared and—tough. Wow, Pete thought. And you deliberately brought this lad back? Can you handle her? I doubt if I could, he decided. She looks difficult.

But that's right, Pete remembered. You like difficult women. It's part of your perverse make-up.

When Lars' features reappeared Pete said, "Maren will disembowel you, you realize. No cover story is going to fool Maren, with or without that telepathic gadget she wears illegally."

Lars said woodenly, "I don't expect to fool Maren. But I frankly don't care. I really think, Pete, that these creatures, whatever they are and wherever they came from, these satellite-builders, have us."

Pete was silent. He did not see fit to argue; he agreed.

Lars said. "On the vidphone when I talked to Nitz he said something strange. Something about an old war veteran: I couldn't make it out. It had to do with a weapon, though; he asked me if I had ever heard of a device called a T.W.G. I said no. Have you?"

"No," Pete said. "There's absolutely no such thing, weaponwise. KACH would have said."

"Maybe not," Lars said. "So long." He broke the connection at his end; the screen splintered out.