Short Fiction · Lone Star Planet (4/11) (2/2)

“Thank you! I have met the Ambassador.” The lovely voice was shaking with restrained anger.

“Gail!” I exclaimed.

“Your father coming to the barbecue, Gail?” President Hutchinson was asking.

“He ought to be here any minute. He sent me on ahead from the hotel. He wants to meet the Ambassador. That’s why I joined the line.”

“Well, suppose I leave Mr. Silk in your hands for a while,” Hutchinson said. “I ought to circulate around a little.”

“Yes. Just leave him in my hands!” she said vindictively.

“What’s wrong, Gail?” I wanted to know. “I know, I was supposed to meet you at the spaceport, but⁠—”

“You made a beautiful fool of me at the spaceport!”

“Look, I can explain everything. My Embassy staff insisted on hurrying me off⁠—”

Somebody gave a high-pitched whoop directly behind me and emptied the clip of a pistol. I couldn’t even hear what else I said. I couldn’t hear what she said, either, but it was something angry.

“You have to listen to me!” I roared in her ear. “I can explain everything!”

“Any diplomat can explain anything!” she shouted back.

“Look, Gail, you’re hanging an innocent man!” I yelled back at her. “I’m entitled to a fair trial!”

Somebody on the platform began firing his pistol within inches of the loudspeakers and it sounded like an H-bomb going off. She grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward a door under the platform.

“Down here!” she yelled. “And this better be good, Mr. Silk!”

We went down a spiral ramp, lighted by widely-scattered overhead lights.

“Space-attack shelter,” she explained. “And look: what goes on in spaceships is one thing, but it’s as much as a girl’s reputation is worth to come down here during a barbecue.”

There seemed to be quite few girls at that barbecue who didn’t care what happened to their reputations. We discovered that after looking into a couple of passageways that branched off the entrance.

“Over this way,” Gail said, “Confederate Courts Building. There won’t be anything going on over here, now.”

I told her, with as much humorous detail as possible, about how Thrombley had shanghaied me to the Embassy, and about the chase by the Rangers. Before I was half through, she was laughing heartily, all traces of her anger gone. Finally, we came to a stairway, and at the head of it to a small door.

“It’s been four years that I’ve been away from here,” she said. “I think there’s a reading room of the Law Library up here. Let’s go in and enjoy the quiet for a while.”

But when we opened the door, there was a Ranger standing inside.

“Come to see a trial, Mr. Silk? Oh, hello, Gail. Just in time; they’re going to prepare for the next trial.”

As he spoke, something clicked at the door. Gail looked at me in consternation.

“Now we’re locked in,” she said. “We can’t get out till the trial’s over.”