The Invaders Plan (43 page)

The audience applauded! Not so good!

And then, exactly at a measure end, they each vaulted upward, did a half-right in the middle of the same flip and were right side up face to face!

Gymnastics adapted to a dance. The audience had never seen such a thing. They applauded even stronger. Up in the press balcony, the Homeview crew was really working hard! Awful!

How he did it, I don't know, as his teeth were clamped on the cloth, but Heller yelled a signal to the bandmaster.

And then began the most skilled thing I think I have ever seen in acts! There is an exercise in unarmed combat that consists of kicking in a circular sweep at the opponent's head. The opponent cartwheels to avoid. But this crazy pair, connected with a yard long cloth held in their teeth, began to do it alternately and repetitively!

Slowly at first, one kicking, the other cartwheeling, then the one who cartwheeled doing it, back and forth, they began to go faster and faster.

Suddenly I realized they were no longer touching the floor with their hands!

The music went faster and faster. The kicks and turns got faster and faster.

And then they were just two blurs! One orange and one blue, just two spinning discs connected with a cloth!

The audience went crazy! They jumped to their feet cheering! They had never seen gymnastics and unarmed combat turned into a dance!

The band couldn't play any faster.

Then smoothly and very gracefully, the two blurs stopped. The band played a long note. Heller and the Countess Krak were apart. The glittercloth was held in the Countess's left hand. Heller was bowing.

I thought that was all there was. So did the audience. They were applauding and shouting.

"Oh, she
has
had stage experience," said Hightee near my ear. For the Countess was doing the two steps to the right and two steps to the left with the bow between, the formal performer acceptance of audience acclaim. It is a little sort of dance they do, very pretty to look at. She was holding the glittercloth in her left hand and it was flicking and glittering.

Abruptly the Countess was GONE!

She didn't walk away. She didn't even shimmer. Where she had been bowing an instant before was just empty space! The audience gave a gasp of indrawn breath, startled. I was more than startled. A prisoner had escaped!

The square of glittercloth floated down to the floor.

I think Heller was actually surprised. He certainly looked it!

He stared at the glittercloth. He drew back and got down on all fours. He stealthily approached the cloth. He covertly lifted one corner and peeked under it. He drew back, shaking his head. Then he seemed to make up his mind.

He pounced on the cloth! He went into a scramble around it to be sure to contain whatever might be in it. Carefully, he rose to his feet holding it.

The dumbest audience member could not fail to see he was looking for his vanished partner in that cloth.

Standing now, he unfolded it with care. The audience was beginning to giggle. He didn't find anything and in perplexity shook the cloth out. He looked on the floor to see if anything had dropped. He stood dejected. The audience roared with laughter.

Heller threw the cloth away and with some determination advanced upon the nearest table. He looked under it with no result. He looked under a canister. He found nothing. He looked under a plate. He found nothing. Then, with obvious sudden inspiration, he picked a funny hat off the top of a customer's head and looked in it.

The audience screamed with laughter.

There was a thump beside me. Startled, I looked sideways. There in the dimness, grinning, sat the Countess Krak.

Heller, defeated, looked in his own sleeves. Then he looked over at our table and with a sweep of his arm directed the light handler to throw his spotlight toward the table.

The audience saw her. They were silent for an instant and then there were cries of incredulity followed by a storm of applause!

The Countess bobbed up and bowed. Heller came back to the table. The audience attention shifted reluctantly to another act.

"How'd you do it?" asked Hightee, her professionalism alert.

The Countess laughed. "See that hanging drape back of the stage? I just drew the attention of the audience to the waving cloth, then did what they call a fast side kick and went behind the drape. I crossed behind the stage, crawled on my hands and knees along that wall back of the tables and did a front flip into this seat. Easy." Heller wasn't even breathing hard and neither was the Countess. Heller ordered another round of bubble-brew. I'd lost count of the tab now. But dead men can't count. I looked up at the Homeview crew and they were all grinning.

The outside specter of Lombar had one foot in the nightclub.

I looked at these two idiots. They were sitting there now, sipping out of each other's canisters, laughing, keeping Hightee included in. They were very beautiful people. They did not know that Lombar could order both of them killed without a second thought if he had no further use for them. And certainly would if they threatened any kind of exposure to the Apparatus activities on Blito-P3. There was no way to tell them.

The music played, the acts went on.

Suddenly the beam was on our table again. "Oh, no," said Hightee. "I hoped they would miscalculate. I'm all that's left at this table." She stood up. "Never mind, Soltan. They won't double your bill. I'll go sing for my supper." She threaded her way between the tables to the stage. No one paid her very much attention, due to the number of acts that went on and off. She jumped up on the platform, her blue dress glittering. She said something to the bandmaster. He turned and said something to one of his musicians and the fellow reached back into a pile of instruments and handed one out.

It was the electronic half-globe they call "the chorder-beat." It is about eighteen inches in diameter. Hightee put the curved side of it against her stomach and then buckled it expertly behind her back. She took the "beater" in her right hand. By poising the spread fingers of the left hand over the chorder-beat in different positions and distances, one gets chords, usually enharmonic. By gesturing and sort of hitting in the air with the beater in the right hand, one makes the chords pound out a rhythm. They make a wild, sinuous, suggestive sort of music when they are properly played.

Hightee said something to the bandmaster. He looked a bit surprised. Then he looked at her more closely.

I thought, oh, my Gods, he has recognized her! Either through her voice or the song she'd asked for. I almost jumped up and screamed at her to come back to the table. I didn't. I glanced at that Homeview camera crew. They seemed to be at ease. So did the reporters.

The blinding spotlight turned on her full. Her blue evening dress threw sparks. Her sexy wood nymph mask sucked up attention. She raised her right hand. The bandmaster took it as his cue and watched it to get the beat.

Spraaaang!
went the chorder-beat.
Yow-yow!
went the band.

For the first full melody she played and did not sing. And it was sexy! Her body swayed and curved, her left hand seemed to be indicating something else than chords. Her right hand writhed to the beat. It was SEXY!

Audience attention was almost electric in the air. The way that chorder-beat was playing, the way that performer swayed, they knew they were looking at a polished professional. It seemed to stun them. There wasn't another sound in that nightclub except the band and Hightee's chorder-beat.

She started the melody again and this time, she sang. Her voice was a throaty, sexy lure. But it had comedy in it.

"Oh, my Gods!" a man cried out. "It's Hightee Heller!" A ruffle of music and chords from Hightee. A high-pitched scream from the audience. "Hightee! It's High-tee Heller!" Bedlam!

A ruffle of chords. Sexy sways. Even above this growing bedlam in the nightclub I heard a yell outside, "Hightee Heller is in there!"
It'd need, he claimed, a very soft bed, A place where he could lay my head, To teach me!

The Homeview crew was grinding it out! There were shouts outside the building. Had the word spread, were the other night clubs emptying? Yes! A mob was pouring in the door! And this club audience was on its feet surging forward!

"Hightee! Hightee Heller!" Bedlam of bedlams!

They had turned the loudspeakers up to get her voice above the ear-shattering racket of the surging crowd.

The place was a screaming jam, filling up, people at the front of the stage were trying to climb up on it, all of them yelling! "Hightee! Hightee! Hightee Heller!" Up went the loudspeaker volume again.

The music riff. Hands reaching for her, people getting on the stage! Heller on his feet, pushing his way forward to the stage to keep her from being mauled! The glaring spotlight, the busy Homeview crew!

Hija, hoopah, jiggety plow.
They had shoved her back against the band. Dozens of hands were trying to touch her. She was engulfed! Heller was through the mob and to her.

She was still playing and singing! Heller was to her. He lifted her high in the air above the mob and clutching hands.

It was at that exact moment that I pulled my handgun, flipped it to needle blast and with one expert twitch of the trigger, shot out the main spotlight.

I didn't do it to help Heller. I did it because, back of the mob and coming straight toward me was a yellow-man, holding in his hand what could only be the bill!

The explosion of filaments was deafening.

I spun. I had already spotted the main switchboard back of the dance platform. With unerring aim, I blasted it to bits! It was totally dark.

Above the deafening din of the crowd a new scream sounded, "Police! It's the police!" Dim emergency lights came on. Sure enough, I saw a flicker of blue. Police plowing through the crowd, baton charging the riot!

A firm hand grabbed my collar and I was yanked out of the booth so fast I flew horizontally. I was being dragged across the floor.

The emergency exit door banged open! I was being dragged up the alley! I could barely hold on to my gun.

We were at the airbus. The door opened and I was hurtled inside. And only then did I see who had dragged me. It was the Countess Krak!

I looked back anxiously toward the emergency exit. Sound and lights were bursting through it out into the alley.

There came Heller! He was still holding his sister high over his head.

Behind them came a solid wave of blue! Oh, my Gods, the police were right on their heels!

The Countess Krak sprang into the airbus and batted me to one side!

Heller arrived at the door. He launched his sister inside and the Countess Krak caught her expertly and put her on the settee.

Heller slid fast under the wheelstick.

A police helmet right at his door. A face.

"We'll be at the hangar ahead of you, Jet. We're all clear!" It was Snelz! Snelz in a cop uniform!

The airbus sprang into the air!

We had fought free!

Perhaps it was because Hightee Heller was laughing fit to burst – it takes steel nerves to be a celebrity in the Confederation. Perhaps it was because I was still a bit high on bubblebrew. But I felt a bit elated. By not paying the bill I had escaped being cashiered on the one hand for bankruptcy or executed on the other for passing counterfeit money. And nobody but Hightee had been recognized, I supposed, and Hightee wouldn't matter. What luck!

We stopped at Hightee's garden in the clouds. She unstrapped the chorder-beat and Heller said he'd get it returned to the club for her. She kissed each of them on the cheek and touched my hand.

She stood for a moment under the darkened trees and called back, "Thank you for a wonderful evening. Good luck, you two! And Jet! I really
approve!"
She was gone.

On the way back to the Apparatus hangar, we were given a routine challenge by night sky surveillance and I had to reach over and catch Heller's hand: he was automatically reaching for his own identoplate and I gave him mine. We mustn't leave a trace of identity on this night!

We landed at the hangar. The guardsmen's air-transport was parked there. Snelz and his men were sitting around in the dim hangar depths, chuckling and drinking a late snack. The Countess slipped out in her helmet and gas cape and sped to the tug.

Heller still sat under the wheelstick. My driver was coming toward us with some big boxes and Heller was waiting for him. The driver wasn't moving very fast so Heller turned to me in the back.

"I think I owe you a bit of an apology," he said. "I didn't realize this afternoon that I was forcing your promotion party on you at an inopportune moment.

"You don't have to go back there tomorrow to pay your check. When we arrived and the floorman held out his hand for payment to get us a good table, I couldn't help but see you flinch. I realized you must be broke and that pushing the party off on you came under the heading of a dirty trick.

"So I slipped into the manager's office and grabbed him and put my identoplate on a blank dinner check." I think my heart stopped beating.