"That we're lunching together at Hasmin's today."
Halder paused, watching the color drain quickly from Kilby's cheeks.
"Of course!" she whispered. "I did forget. Got tied up in ... and ...
I'll leave right now! All right?"
Halder smiled. She was past the first moment of shock and would be able
to handle herself. After all, they had made very precise preparations
against the day when they might discover that the Federation's
suspicions had turned, however tentatively, in their direction.
"That'll be fine," he said. "I'm calling from the lab and will leave at
once"--he paused almost imperceptibly--"if I'm not held up. Meet you at
Hasmin's, in any case, in around twenty minutes."
Kilby's eyes flickered for an instant. If Halder didn't make it away,
she was to carry out her own escape, as planned. That was the
understanding. She gave him a tremulous smile. "And I'm forgiven?"
"Of course." Halder smiled back.
* * * * *
The guards at the check-out point were not men he knew, but Halder
walked through the ID-scanning band without incident, apparently without
arousing interest. Beyond, to the left, was a wide one-way portal to a
tube station. His aircar was in the executive parking area on the
building's roof, but the escape plan called for both of them to abandon
their private cars, which were more than likely to be traps, and use the
public transportation systems in starting out.
Halder entered the tube station, went to a rented locker, opened it and
took out two packages, one containing a complete change of clothing and
a mirror, the other half a dozen canned cultures of as many varieties
of microlife--highly specialized strains of life, of which the
pharmaceutical concern that employed Dr. Halder Leorm knew no more
than it did of the methods by which they had been developed.
Halder carried the packages into a ComWeb booth which he locked and
shielded for privacy. Then he opened both packages and quickly removed
his clothing. Opening the first of the cultures, he dipped one of the
needles into it and, watching himself in the mirror, made a carefully
measured injection in each side of his face. He laid the needle down and
opened the next container, aware of the enzyme reaction that had begun
to race through him.
Three minutes later, the mirror showed him a dark-skinned stranger with
high cheek bones, heavy jaw, thick nose, slightly slanted eyes, graying
hair. Halder disposed of the mirror, the clothes he had been wearing and
the remaining contents of the second package. Unchecked, the alien
organisms swarming in his blood stream now would have gone on to destroy
him in a variety of unpleasant ways. But with their work of disguise
completed, they were being checked.
He emerged presently from a tube exit in uptown Draise, on the terrace
of a hotel forty stories above the street level. He didn't look about
for Kilby, or rather the woman Kilby would turn into on her way here.
The plan called for him to arrive first, to make sure he hadn't been
traced, and then to see whether she was being followed.
She appeared five minutes later, a slightly stocky lady now, perhaps ten
years under Halder's present apparent age, dark-skinned as he was,
showing similar racial characteristics. She flashed her teeth at him as
she came up, sloe eyes flirting.
"Didn't keep you waiting, did I?" she asked.
Halder growled amiably, "What do you think? Let's grab a cab and get
going." Nobody had come out of the tube exit behind her.
Kilby nodded understandingly; she had remembered not to look back. She
was talking volubly about some imaginary adventure as they started down
the terrace stairs towards a line of aircabs, playing her part,
high-piled golden hairdo bobbing about. A greater contrast to the
slender, quiet, gray-eyed girl, brown hair falling softly to her
shoulders, with whom Halder had talked not more than twenty minutes ago
would have been difficult to devise. The disguises might have been good
enough, he thought, to permit them to remain undetected in Draise
itself.
But the plan didn't call for that. There were too many things at stake.
Kilby slipped into the cab ahead of him without a break in her chatter.
Her voice stopped abruptly as Halder closed the cab door behind him,
activating the vehicle's one-way vision shield. Kilby was leaning across
the front seat beside the driver, turning off the comm box. She
straightened, dropped down into the back seat beside Halder, biting her
lip. The driver's head sagged sideways as if he had fallen asleep; then
he slid slowly down on the seat and vanished from Halder's sight.
"Got him instantly, eh?" Halder asked, switching on the passenger
controls.
"Hm-m-m!" Kilby opened her purse, slipped the little gun which had been
in the palm of her left hand into it, reached out and gripped Halder's
hand for an instant. "You drive, Halder," she said. "I'm so nervous I
could scream! I'm scared cold! What happened?"
* * * * *
Halder lifted the cab out from the terrace, swung it skywards. "We were
right in wondering about Dr. Atteo," he said. "Half an hour ago, he
attempted to go through our home in our absence. We'll have to assume
he's a Federation agent. The entry trap knocked him out, but the fat's
probably in the fire now. The Federation may not have been ready to make
an arrest yet, but after this there'll be no hesitation. We'll have to
move fast if we intend to keep ahead of Atteo's colleagues."