"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 13 - Jonuta Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

bodyguard kept her distance while keeping her watch. They sped to the
spaceport area, three of them in snowy crested turbans now, and resumed their
watch the instant they stepped from the car. Watching, moving alertly with
gold stopper-butts glinting. Scanning like hungry eagles while their regal
charge flowed along within her robe with all the serenity of a personage far
too regal to consider the possibility of danger to her untouchable self. She
moved among them through all the noise and bustle of the busy depot as if she
were alone and invisible. A scheduled shuttle was just about to depart, but
they did not try to gain passage on it. They did not deign to. Instead they
had actually gone so far as to lease a private shuttle and keep it on standby.
A pretentious luxury at staggering cost. Presumably no one noticed that the
unobtrusive fourth bodyguard had brushed past them and boarded the standard
shuttle. Presumably no one connected that girlish, untur-banned woman-wearing
a loose yet clingy pyjama-like garment in the drab almost-black of winterpine
green, and spacefarer's boots-with the stare worthy group. The quartet took
the private launch up to the geosynchro-nously orbiting docking station.
Where, presumably, a richly-appointed spaceship Hindilark awaited while
steadily receiving packages from the best onplanet shops. Up went the shuttle;
up went the private launch. A pleasant day's shopping on Lanatia had come to a
presumably pleasant end. Even then the bodyguards remained alert, even though
they were alone on a private craft with its pilot-whom they had
re-checked. Their charge, doubtless weary from the shopspree on which she had
spent so many, many stellar monetary units, plugged her ears with the sounds
of the instrumental group Kaleidolon, and napped. The regular shuttle reached
the great wheel in space first, by several minutes. The girlish,
distance-maintaining bodyguard checked schedules, checked the chron on her
left glove, and hurried into the restroom. She entered a 6 stall, swiftly and
efficiently readying herself for a quick answering of nature's call. She
locked the door. She was still seated when someone entered the adjacent
cubicle on her left. The cubicles were private only to a height of about two
meters, and to within fifteen centimeters of the floor. From beneath the
partition of the leftwardly adjacent stall came a hand bearing a very small
cylinder. The powerfully charged minisyringe was loaded with the tiniest of
needles. It released its charge on impact with warmth or on being triggered.
The hand merely extended the short tube, blindly, until it touched the boot of
the un-obvious bodyguard. Snik, and the needle ejected and injected, through
boot and liner into foot. The little sting brought a muffled grunt of response
and a downward glance. That discovered the hastily withdrawing hand. The
gloved hand of the unobtrusive bodyguard closed on the butt of her stopper,
began clamping, relaxed. The woman in the adjacent stall flushed and left. She
heard only faintly the thump of the girlish-looking bodyguard's seated body
collapsing against the wall of her stall. Already she was paralyzed and aware
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only of numbness and a deep red that claimed her vision; in a few seconds she
would be dead. The killer hurried in the direction of the Customs Office. She
was a dowdy looking woman of no particular age and unfortunate coloration,
with hair so dead and drab it should have been buried. She wore a floppy black