Got her!

She was going through shelves.

I watched intently.

The warehouse! She was going through the contents of the warehouse!

She would put down a collapsible, Zanco medical case she was carrying and then go over the rows and rows of labels and choose one. She would take an item out of the rows of them in the carton and put it in the carrying case.

Then I understood what she was doing. She was building herself a first-aid kit. She wasn't taking much of any one item and she was being very selective. Things like instant-heal seals for cuts and burns, rapid blood builders, heart-restart disposable syringes, that sort of thing. I began to realize that she must have the idea Jettero Heller might get hurt as she muttered, from time to time, things like, "He could put his hand on something hot," and "That would heal a blastgun sear." In some goofy way, she must have the idea either that he was shot up or could get shot up. Or maybe that Earth was a battlefield!

Now she was into little machines, each in their neat packages. "I'll bet his spinbrush is all worn out.... Maybe his nerve ends have gotten dull.... Maybe he has grown a mustache and wants it speeded up...."

She found cartons of powders and little vials of liquid and cooed. Little as I knew about the subject, they seemed to be the building blocks of makeups and cosmetics.

She was making no disarray. She was putting everything back in its place after she had taken a few of what she wanted.

The next section she found made me flinch. Surgical electric knives and probes. She seemed to think several would come in handy. Was she going to repair a battlefield or make one?

My attention, which had wandered due to speculation, came back to her with a snap. She had said "Ooooo" in a way I had learned to distrust.

I couldn't make it out at once due to the dim light in the warehouse. And then I flinched as if a cobra had struck at me!

She had found the "Eyes and Ears of Voltar" section! I knew it must be in there somewhere, for I had emptied the whole vault of that now-defunct company and carried it away. But due to the cargo jumble on arrival on Earth, I had never seen it. Some neat soul had stacked it all in order on the shelves, a dozen of this and fifty of that. And the Countess Krak was really reading labels!

A gadget that detected eye-pupillary shift when someone was lying; a mate to the telescope I had ashcanned in New York that looked through walls; a device that detected the kind of weapon someone would use, seconds before he employed it; a tiny radio speaker device that could be planted on someone to make him seem to speak, complete with waterproof transmitter; an ear-relay device to furnish a person with answers, recommended for lawyers whose clients are undergoing torture: two-way radio connections, accessory extra; a dart that causes people to grow warm and itchy so they will disrobe and you can get divorce evidence; a device that puts picture, sound and emotion delusions in the brain so that the person believes he is crazy; a perfume that makes a person say yes to anything: preantidote capsule for user, accessory extra; a dart that can be fired into walls up to one mile away, thus planting an audio-visio bug: purse-size gun, accessory extra; a search device which up to one mile reads through clothes and makes the person appear naked: photographic attachment for lewd photographs, accessory extra; a headlight fitting which installed in one's own headlights causes other drivers to act like they are drunk and can then be arrested for drunken driving; a field coil that stimulates the desire to pick up money and the person can be arrested for stealing.

On and on! Dozens of different types of items!

My hair stood on end! The Countess Krak had another collapsible Zanco case out and was interestedly putting one and two of each in it!

She came to a case of miniature electronic illusion projectors: moving dancing girls, accessory extra-useful for divorce photographs. She took a dozen. She found a case of emotional perfume bombs that cause people to react with emotions that make them say the required things: packs of eight assorted emotions-Caution: point away from self when breaking tip. She took half a dozen packs!

I was losing my mind! These things in the hands of the Countess Krak! Earth might not be a battlefield yet but it sure would be when she got through with it!

With savage intention, I rose up, ready to rush out and halt this certainty of future massacres of whole populations.

Then, with horror, I remembered the "hypnotic implant" she thought she had given me. It was "You will let me go wherever I want around this hospital and nearby buildings or base. You will let me pick up anything I want." And to it she had added "You'll let me have whatever I take, no matter what it is. You will let me leave with it."

If I stopped her she would know the hypnohelmet she had used hadn't worked on me because of the breaker switch I secretly carried. It could bring about my death! For if she ever suspected what I was actually doing, that yellow-man she destroyed in Spiteos would have had an easy demise compared to the one she would give me.

I couldn't lift a finger!

How had she known of this warehouse? And then I recalled stating the hypnohelmets were in it. She had jumped to the correct conclusion that it held all sorts of things.

(Bleep) Spurk! I should have killed him years before!

And the hypnohelmets! I realized with horror that she was going to take those, too! And they were perfectly functional as long as I wasn't within two miles of them!

I only had a stungun, a couple of 800-kilovolt blasticks and a Knife Section knife on me. Suicide to go up against the Countess Krak with only those. Maybe if I rushed down to the base I could persuade an assassin pilot to bring his Space Battle Mobile Flying Cannon up here and blow the hospital to bits. And then I shook my head: that might take care of a space battleship but would it faze the Countess Krak?

There was only one thing I could do and I did it. I sat there and suffered. She had tricked me.

My watch got into my view as I wrung my hands.

It was only two hours to plane time!

If I worked fast and accurately, I could at least get her out of Turkey. To Hells with what happened to New York!

I got out her tickets and expense money. Then I paused. They usually issued five hundred dollars to the traveller here at the base in case there were emergencies and he had to come back. I opened the envelope intended for her. A taxicab could cost up to fifty dollars from John F. Kennedy Airport to New York. I would leave her fifty. I put the other four hundred and fifty in my own wallet. I was broke, oh so very broke. It was quite welcome. And she deserved to get a trick for a trick.

Raht. I had to get him off on the same plane. I took the activator-receiver and the 831 Relayer and put them in their cases. I picked up his ticket and money. As an afterthought, I took four hundred and fifty dollars of his money and put it in my own pocket.

I raced down to his room. He was just getting up but he flinched back into bed when he saw me.

"Vacation is over, you loafing bum," I told him. "You're outward bound for New York on this morning's plane. There will be a woman on it, in a hood, cape and veil; passport, U. S.; name, Heavenly Joy Krackle; height, five feet nine and a half inches; blond hair; blue or gray eyes depending on whether she is trying to get something out of you or about to kill you. Keep this unit within two hundred miles of her at all times and after you leave Istanbul, turn on the switch on this one. Mark this unit K so you don't get them mixed up if the two people separate."