The Zap Gun Read Online Free PDF Page A

they? They look like designs to me." Pete twisted his head, extended his neck, piston-wise, to peer.
    Lars said, "From Peep-East. Miss Topchev's." Pete's opposite number in Bulganingrad or New Moscow—the Soviets had two design-engineering firms available, the typical overlapping duplication of a monolithic society—had the task of rendering these to their next step.
    "Can I see them?"
    Lars passed them to Pete, who put his nose almost against the flat, glossy surfaces, as if suddenly nearsighted. He said nothing for a time as he turned from one to the next, and then he snarled, sat back, hurled the stack of pics onto the desk. Or nearly onto it. The stack fell to the floor.
    Pete, stretching, picked them up, respectfully straightened them until they were precisely even, one with the next, and set them down on the desk, demonstrating that he had meant no incivility. "They're terrible," he said.
    "No," Lars said. No more so than his own, actually. Pete's loyalty to him, as a person, made a puppet out of Pete's jaws; friendship wagged the big man's tongue, and although Lars appreciated this he preferred to see the record set straight. "They can go into plowshare. She's doing her job." But of course these sketches might not be representative. The Soviets had a notorious reputation for managing to traduce KACH. The planet-wide police agency was fair game for the Soviets' own secret police, the KVB. It had not been discussed at the time Don Packard had produced the sketches, but the fact was just this: the Soviets, onto the presence of a KACH agent at their weapons fashion designs level, probably showed only what they cared to show, and held the rest back. That always had to be assumed.
    Or at least he assumed that. What UN-W Natsec did with their KACH-obtained material was something else: he had no knowledge of that. The Board's policy could range from total credulity (although that was hardly likely) to utter cynicism. He, himself, tried to seek out a moderate middle-ground.
    Pete said, "And that fuzzy print, that's her. Right?"
    "Yes." Lars showed him the blurred glossy.
    Again Pete put his nose to the subject of his scrutiny. "You can't tell anything," he decided finally. "And for this, KACH gets money! I could do better just by walking into the Bulganingrad Institute for Defensive Implementation Research Division with a polaroid Land-camera."
    "There's no such place," Lars said."
    Pete glanced up. "You mean they abolished their bureau? But she's still at her desk."
    "It's now under someone else, not Victor Kamow. He disappeared. A lung condition. It's now called—" Lars turned up the memo he had taken from the KACH-man's report. In Peep-East this happened continually: he attached no importance to it—"Minor Protocides, Subdivision Crop-production, Archives. Of Bulganingrad. A branch of Middle Auton-tool Safety Standards Ministry, which is their cover for their non-bacteriological warfare research agencies of every kind. As you know." He bumped heads with Pete, inspecting the fuzzy glossy-print of Lilo Topchev, as if time alone might have brought from the blur a more accessible image.
    "What is it," Pete said, "that obsesses you?"
    Lars shrugged, "Nothing. Divine discontent maybe." He felt evasive; the engineer from Lanferman Associates was too keen an observer, too capable.
    "No, I mean—but first—"
    Pete expertly ran his sensitive, long, stained-dark fingers along the underside of Lars' desk, seeking a monitoring device. Finding none immediately at hand he continued. "You're a scared man. Do you still take pills?"
    "No."
    "You're lying."
    Lars nodded. "I'm lying."
    "Sleeping bad?"
    "Medium."
    "If that horse's ass Nitz has got your goat—"
    "It's not Nitz. To reshuffle your picturesque language that goat's horse. Nitz has not got my ass. So are you satisfied? Sir?"
    Pete said, "They can groom replacements for you for fifty years and not come up with anyone like you. I knew Wade. He was okay but he wasn't in the same