A Planet for Rent Read Online Free PDF Page A

weren’t perfect, however. You could only use them to get around on the same planet, and even so, they made small and regrettable mistakes on rare occasions. Very rare occasions, truth be told. For example, the grodos’ private network had never had one of the accidents that periodically filled the news holovideos.
    The Planetary Tourism Agency always paid compensation to the family members of the unlucky victims of dematerialization, giving the evergreen excuse that on Earth they didn’t have enough experience managing such advanced equipment... because extraterrestrial technicians were reluctant to train human crews to run teleport booths. Maybe there was a bit of truth in that. Surely newly trained human teletransport specialists would pull every string and try every trick to get off the planet as fast as they could. Like any sensible person who had any skill that xenoids might value. Artists, scientists, athletes—they all ran from their birth world as soon as the dazzling glare of extraterrestrial credits made them understand where true happiness could be found.
    Of course, they never stopped shooting their mouths off about Liberating the Earth, Fighting for the Rights of the Human Race, and other such hot-air slogans. Buca despised them. It was so easy to talk about ideals from the outside, on a full stomach. And so hypocritical. She’d never make fun of the people who stayed behind on Earth, and she’d never “show solidarity with their just struggle”....
    Blam... Blam... Blam ...
    Three isolated bangs.
    Then the too-familiar rattle of small-caliber automatic arms.
    Buca was stretched out on the ground before she understood what was happening. Her reflexes had betrayed her; you’d never survive in the suburbs if you insisted on standing after you heard shots fired. A little annoyed over her broken dignity, she watched.
    The Planetary Security men were cornering a lone terrorist. He was jumping from column to column with incredible agility, evading them and firing a prehistoric repeating rifle. Doubtless he had taken an enormous dose of feline analogue, a non-addictive military drug that endowed any human with the tremendous agility and fast reflexes of cats.
    The Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation guys often used it during their commando operations. The side effects were devastating exhaustion and depression, which left you totally defenseless. But a new dose would eliminate those effects. You could keep up the cycle indefinitely, or until you perished, all your physical and mental reserves drained, but active to the last second.
    Beaten by numerical superiority and better arms, the man who thought he was a cat fell, hit point-blank by the Security agents’ bursts of fire. They kept on firing until unrecognizable remains were all that was left of the body. The feline analogue also made you incredibly resistant to wounds. More than one agent had discovered in the flesh that a terrorist with a dozen shots to the chest could still open his belly with one blow.
    When the astroport clean-up people picked up what was left of the body and traffic returned to normal, Buca got up and glanced around, looking for Selshaliman. She suspected a last-minute betrayal. That would have been the height of irony, to leave her stranded there in the middle of the astroport...
    “Your identification, please,” the Planetary Security agent’s voice resounded behind her with a mix of courtesy and authority. The barrel of a gun, still hot, poked insistently at her shoulder.
    Buca turned around, infuriated: if he had ruined her dress, that idiot would see...
    “I thought freelancers weren’t allowed in here.” There was disdain in the voice that emerged from beneath the helmet covering the agent’s features. Any courtesy had disappeared. “Pretty dress... Too bad a monkey’s still a monkey, even in a silk dress. Come along with me, sweetheart. You and me are going to go clear up a few things in private... And you’d