HISTORY REPEATS-7
422 Words
PETER STARTED TRYING doors and peering in; the dog raced on ahead of the man, sniffing deep at the bottom of each. It was the dog that found the room. He called, “Here!” and Peter raced forward just as the fellow on the stairs yelled something in his native tongue.
Peter hit the door with the heel of his foot and slammed it open by splintering the doorframe. The dog crouched low and poised; Peter slipped in and around feeling for a light-switch. From inside there was a voiceless whimper of fright and from outside and below there came the pounding of several sets of heavy feet. Peter found the switch and flooded the room with light. The girl—whether she was Miss Vanessa Lewis or someone else, and kidnap-wise it was still a Terrestrial girl—lay trussed on the bed, a patch of surgical tape over her mouth.
“Sorry,” said Peter in a voice that he hoped was soothing. He reached, freed a corner of the tape and ripped it off in a single swipe. The girl howled. Peter slapped her lightly. “Stop it!” he commanded sharply. “Vanessa Lewis?”
“Yes, but—”
“Call out the marines, Peter,” snarled the dog.
“No! Bo! Back!”
Reluctantly the dog backed into the room. He crouched low, poised to spring, with his nose just beyond the doorframe.
“Four of ‘em,” he whimpered pleadingly. “I can get two—”
“Well, I can’t get the other two unless I’m lucky,” snapped Peter. “Don’t be so eager to die for nothing, Buregarde.”
“All this calculation,” grumbled the dog sourly. “I don’t call it a loss if I get two for one.”
“I call it a loss if I don’t get four for nothing—or the whole damned Empire of Xanabar for nothing, for that matter. We’ve a job to do and it ain’t dying—until Miss Lewis is out of this glorious citadel.”
The girl looked from one to the other. They did not need any identification; they were their own bona fides. Only man—Terrestrial Man—had intelligent dogs to work beside him. Period, question closed. Buregarde snarled at the door warningly while Peter stripped surgical tape from wrists and ankles.
Outside, someone called, “Come out or we blast!”
Buregarde snarled, “Come in and we’ll cut you to bits!”
The quick flash of a pencil-ray flicked in a lance above the dog’s nose: Buregarde snapped back as the lancet of light cut downward, then snapped forward for a quick look outside as the little pencil of danger flickered dark.
“Careful, Bo!”
“You call the boys,” snapped the dog. “I’ll—”
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- Writer
