Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,17

of Gainsborough's Blue Boy. There seemed no way she could get out of this one. Shouting an oath in street Arabic, Sfat launched his attack.

Julie had had long preparation for moments like this. Shen Hui's instructions in self defense had covered all the basics of unarmed combat. He had hot been satisfied with that, however, since he accounted himself no expert in the finer points of self defense. So he had apprenticed her to Olla Khan, a fat faced master fighter from Isfahan in central Asia. Khan, beguiled by her beauty, had said, "My arrangement with your master is that you will stay with me and serve me in all particulars until you can beat me at unarmed combat. That might take more than a lifetime, my pet." In fact it took just five months, and Olla Khan ended up in a hospital for his presumption.

And so, now, with Sfat launching his impetuous and ill considered attack, Julie's problem was not how to cope with it, but which of several different methods to choose. She also had to decide to what extent she wished to incapacitate him, and this in turn depended on her estimation of his value to her alive. In the split of a second she decided that this gross hairy faced man with the bad breath was of no value to her, and indeed could serve her better dead as a message to his master, Khalil, to stop resisting and start cooperating.

She didn't think all that through consciously. Instead, she opposed his charge with a sword hand, fingers stiffened. Sfat crashed into her hand and was stopped abruptly as the fingers took him high between the eyes, shutting down his pineal gland and. then going on to break his neck. His eyes rolled up, showing the white, and he crashed to the floor like two hundred pounds of dead mutton.

She turned from him to Khalil. "Ready to go another round?" she asked.

Khalil, his teeth scattered over the floor, had had enough. He mumbled through a bloodstained hand. "Don't hurt me anymore. I'm a dilettante, not a fighter. I'll give you whatever you want."

"That's what I like to hear," Julie said. She took a pillow from a nearby bed and stripped off the pillowcase.

"Fill it with good stuff for me," she said. "Don't put in any worthless crap or I'll have something to say about it."

Khalil, totally unnerved, couldn't even dream of resistance.

His collapse was absolute. He opened a compartment concealed in the wall behind the bed and picked several precious bracelets, two handfuls of magnificent unmounted gems in a white chamois bag, and a string of glorious baroque pearls, each the size of a pigeon's egg and no two alike. Soon the pillowcase was bulging. Khalil had other objects he wanted to give her, but she stopped him.

"One bagful is enough. I'm not greedy. Besides, I'd need an extra pair of hands to carry it all."

Khalil recovered sufficiently to say, "If you're finished, then get out!"

"Okay," Julie said. "This is good bye, then." She moved close to him.

He stared at her. The whites of his eyes went a dirty yellow as she advanced on him. He stumbled away, found himself with his back to a bureau. "What are you going to do?" he asked in a shaking voice.

"Just give you a couple hours' sleep. So I can walk out of here like a lady." She touched a nerve in his neck. He slumped to the floor unconscious.

"Be sure to have a dentist look at those stumps," she said. He couldn't hear her, of course, but she was sure he'd remember anyway.

Julie went to the dressing room mirror and checked her clothing and makeup. She repaired her lipstick, which had been smeared in the combat, and found an ugly red stain on the shoulder of her red dress.

Luckily, Khalil had a really smart ermine jacket in his closet. It covered the stain nicely. She left by the penthouse elevator. No one stopped her as she walked out, passed through the lobby, and exited the revolving front door onto Central Park South, where she called a taxi.
Chapter 11-12
11

"How did it go tonight?" Stan asked when she got back to the brownstone.

"Not bad," she said, dumping her loot into the bed. "A dream night for a thief. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near enough to buy a spaceship with."

"We don't need to buy one," Stan said. "I've got a plan that ought to work now that we have some money to play