Loo came erect. "It occurs to me that I'm evidently doing the same
thing you are."
But the dull metal gun in his hand was negligently at the ready and
his eyes were cold, cold. It came to Hank that banjos on the levee
were very far away.
This lithe fighting man said tightly, "You know where we are? Exactly
where we are? I'm not sure."
Hank said, "In the hall outside the _Sobstvennaya Plovina_ of the
_Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets_. The czar's private apartments. And how
did you get here?"
"The hard way," Loo said softly. His eyes darted up and down the
corridor. "I can't figure out why there aren't more guards. I don't
like this. You're armed?"
"No," Hank said.
Loo grinned down at his own weapon. "One of us is probably making a
mistake but we both seem to have gotten this far. By the way, I'm
Inter-Commonwealth Security. You're C.I.A., aren't you? Talk fast,
Hank, we're either a team from now on, or I've got to do something
about you."
"Special mission for the President," Hank said. "Why didn't we spot
each other sooner?"
Loo grinned again in deprecation. "Evidently because we're both good
operatives. If I've got this right, the extraterrestrials are
somewhere in here."
Hank started down the corridor. There was no time to go into the whys
and wherefores of Loo's mission. It must be approximately the same as
his own. "There are some private apartments in this direction," he
said over his shoulder. "They must be quartered--"
A door off the corridor opened and a tall, thin, ludicrously garbed
man--
Hank pulled himself up quickly, both mentally and physically. It was
no man. It was almost a man--but no.
Loo's weapon was already at the alert.
The newcomer unhurriedly looked from one of them to the other. Then
down at the Russian guard sprawled on the floor behind them.
He said in Russian, "Always violence. The sadness of violence. When
faced with crisis, threaten violence if outpointed. Your race has much
to learn." He switched to English. "But this is probably your
language, isn't it?"
Loo gaped at him. The man from space was almost as dark complected as
the Negro.
The extraterrestrial stepped to one side and indicated the room behind
him "Please enter, I assume you've come looking for us."
They entered the ornate bedroom.