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dragged her eyes back. “I know I shouldn’t have done that, but—”
    I waved it away.
    “We’ll sort it out later,” I said.
    “I don’t know what went wrong from there. Shorthanded, I guess. Plus, we were all on edge. When we faced them down a fight got going. Kate’s down and out. Some big bastard got past—”
    “Never mind. Toss her out with the goats.”
    There was no way to tell for sure what started the brawl. I’d been on snatches where the goats got out of hand. It’s a surreal experience, pointing a weapon at a twentieth-century native and telling him what you’re going to make him do. Some 20ths have no more sense of survival than a stalk of broccoli. They’ll walkright into a gun. They don’t believe death can happen to them, especially the young ones.
    Then there are their odd political ideas. They are often obsessed with the explanation they “deserve,” the things they have a “right” to, the decent treatment we “owe” them.
    Very weird stuff. Me, I’ll do anything somebody with a gun tells me to do, and say please and thank you. And kill him instantly if he gives me a chance.
    “How many are still awake back there?” I asked.
    “When I left, maybe twenty.”
    “Get ’em to work, quick. Where’s Pinky?”
    “Tearing up the seats in tourist.”
    I followed her back. Things had quieted a little. There were maybe a dozen passengers still awake, forty or fifty snoozing in uncomfortable positions. Lilly Rangoon and another woman whose name I couldn’t recall were facing the conscious ones, who huddled in the back of the plane. I could smell their fear. The two snatchers were facing them, one on each side of the aisle, stunners held in two hands and steadied on seat backs.
    “Okay, folks,” Lilly bawled in a voice like a drill sergeant. “I want you to shut the fuck up. Calm down and
listen! You
, shit-head, pipe down before I cram my foot up your ass sideways. Is that your wife, mister? You got two seconds to shut her fucking mouth before I blow you both away. One…that’s better.
    “
Now.
These people are not injured. They’re alive. Look at ’em and you’ll see they’re breathing. They can even hear us. But I can
kill
with this weapon, and I promise you I’ll snuff the first son of a bitch that gets out of line.
    “You are in
great danger.
    “You will all
die
if you do not do
exactly as I say.
    “Each of you grab the nearest unconscious person and drag him toward the front of the plane. When you get there, the stewardess will tell you what to do. You have no time to waste. If you move too slowly, I’ll show you what else I can do with this weapon.”
    She got them moving, with a few more shouts and obscenities.That’s one of the main things we study when we bone up on a culture: what words will shock the hell out of ’em. In the twentieth century, it was mostly intercourse and excrement.
    The other ability of the stunner that Lilly hinted at is to function rather like a cattle prod, but at a distance. It hurts but does not incapacitate. It works best when aimed at the soft, sensitive flesh between the legs—even better when delivered from behind. Lilly prodded a couple of them and they got the idea real fast, for 20ths.
    I heard all this going on in the background. What I was doing was ripping up the seats in the front rows of tourist section. Pinky was across the aisle from me, doing the same thing. I don’t think she was aware she was crying. She worked steadily, monomaniacally.
    She was rational. She was doing her job.
    She was also scared spitless.
    “You’re sure it’s on the plane?” I called across the aisle.
    “I’m sure. I saw it in my purse after I got on.”
    She had to think that, since there was nothing to be done if it was on the ground in whatever city this flight had come from. But she was probably right. My people seldom fall apart during an operation, not even if things have become hopeless. If she said she saw it after she got on the