The Invaders Plan

As I flew away, Bolz was still standing there, shaking his head.

Chapter 3

We flew up to ten thousand feet. My driver was pretending he had strained his back and scratched his hands. I had headed him for Joy City. I was trying to put makeup on and he kept taking his hands off the wheel-stick and trying to suck the blood out of the cuts the sharp-edged boxes had made. I got some powder in my eye and cursed him.

"Hover!" I demanded. And added a couple violent adjectives.

So he hovered. I was able to complete my face. With a bit of yellow liquid, dulled by pale yellow powder, I was able to duplicate the skin tone of a Flisten race's upper class. With a skin stricture on each temple, I down-slanted my eye corners. With black-looking color shifters, the eyes became quite sinister. I was very pleased. I snapped a close-cut, black wig on and blackened the hair on either side of my face. Wonderful!

I scrambled and grunted myself out of my General Service uniform and into the custard of Army Intelligence. I dropped the high-rank chain over my head, put on the spike-heeled yellow boots and the flat cap. I put my own wallet and the identoplate of Timp Snahp in my pocket.

I admired myself in the mirror. What a snappy, handsome aristocrat! Timp Snahp, Grade XIII, Demon ace of Flisten's Army Intelligence! How the girls must go for him! How the Army criminal element must tremble, the enemy shake under that sinister gaze!

"You going someplace to get shot?" said my driver hopefully.

"Joy City," I said. "The very best bars. North end."

"The Army officers hang out at the Dirt Club this time of day," said my driver. "That's in the south end." I ignored him. He was too willful to be associated with. I was busy packing the civilian suit in a little kit bag and arming myself. Besides, he was right.

We landed a block away from the Dirt Club. "You," I said, "can now go someplace and spend your wealth; I won't need you until dawn tomorrow."

"Wealth!" he sneered. "I really owe that ten credits to Officer Heller!" It didn't work. I sternly ordered him to buzz away. It was a relief to be free of his company.

I checked my weapons. I had a bladegun in my holster. Although it looks like a military issue, it isn't. It shoots flat, metal triangles that practically carve a body to bits. It was a souvenir of my early days in the Apparatus, recovered from a corpse. I had two 800-kilovolt blasticks but I didn't want to use those: they sound like a war going off. I had my Knife Section knife back of my collar. Silence was the watchword today!

Cheerfully, I wended my way through the clutter of yesteryear's parties and down the block. In the distance loomed the Dirt Club. Actually that is not its name. It is The Ground Forces Play Club.It isn't run by the Army at all because the Army Division high ranks could never condone what goes on there: they themselves do it, but they could never officially admit it.

It is about fifteen stories high and covers about twenty acres, all under roof. Across the front of it two blast-ca

I went in, hoping I looked furtive enough for the part of an Army Intelligence officer. I never knew why they put this branch of service in custard, the rest of the Army wears chocolate.

The outer lobby is respectable enough. The first two rooms are just dining bars. It's when you get to the third bar that you know you should never bring your sister here. Halfway to the ceiling there are glass runways and girls parade on them. They don't dance. They even wear a trifle here and there. But they are females who have no appointment in the beds upstairs for the moment and they just stroll along waiting for some customer to pick up a beam-marker light and pot one of them. Then they go upstairs with the marksman and he does some more marksmanship.

The fifth room is like the girl's parade except it is animals doing the parading. They get potted and taken upstairs the same way. The Army, being so much in the field and away from home, can develop peculiar tastes.

Wandering along, looking carefully careless, I had my eye open for a certain badge and, hopefully, a rank that was the same as I was wearing or less. So far I wasn't having any luck. It was early afternoon and the place was by no means crowded. The scattering of badges and ranks were mostly chatting and casually drinking.

I got through the gambling section and into the hypergambling section. It was too early in the day for the girls to be on the wheels. They put them vertically and spread-eagled on these turning discs and around they go while a gambler throws simulated hand grenades at them – made of fabric. If one gets a grenade to contact with one of her breasts, it "explodes," the girl lights up at all points and center and a shower of tokens seems to fly out of her (bleep). At least, that's what they say will happen. The girl can always control the wheel and move her breasts and I've played one for hours without ever a single payoff.* I was begi

I got clear back to the Bunker Room. It is where they dump crocked officers really. It is decorated to simulate a steel field bunker. It even has a field communication dummy layout that really serves tup. The tables in the booths all around are made to look like field desks. It is dim as Hells. I was almost ready to walk through to the Field Hospital Room – where they serve blood cocktails and the waitresses are dressed like half-naked field nurses – and had even put my foot through the arch when a sixth sense told me to look in the far corner of the Bunker Room.

I did! And there was the badge! The grasping fist of Supply!

He was sort of slopped over the "desk" and a drink was spilled and he seemed to be asleep.

I did a stealthy approach so as not to wake him up. The chocolate tunic was twisted about and I couldn't see the rank locket. I had to touch him to get a look. Aha, a Grade Twelve! The equivalent of a commander of ten thousand. But, of course, Supply commands no troops.

I needn't have been so stealthy! He was snoring drunk! I was about to go through his pockets when one of the waitresses – in the Bunker Room they dress like male dispatch riders without the pants – came over to find out what I wanted. I ordered plain sparklewater for myself. "And bring an oversize canister of double-strength jolt for my friend here," I said.

"It's time a friend showed up," said the girl. "He's been there since early this morning. You people don't look after your friends very well." She went off, a little huffish.

I completed my frisking. His identoplate said that he was Colonel Rajabah Stinkins of the Voltar Raiders, Section of Supply. Excellent. He would know nothing of Flisten. His complexion was white as mountain snow.

He was a very beefy man, much given to lard. He seemed to just snore on and on. So I really frisked him. I found some just issued divorce papers and the photos of five children. So that's what the binge was all about. One can figure these things out, particularly with my skill at Earth psychology. He was drowning his sorrows.

The girl brought the order and I stamped the check with his identoplate. She frowned slightly until I tossed one of his five-credit notes on her tray. "It's his binge," I said, "so he can pay for the sober-up. We were in school together. He always was a drunk."

"Who wash alwash a drunk?" he said. He had awakened. "Thash libelous! I wash ne'er drunk in my life!" The girl thought it was a good joke. And she swished pantslessly away.