Split Infinity

She breathed a humanlike sigh of relief. “I let him through, knowing you could handle him, so I could verify how many others there were, and of what type they were.” She gestured down the hall. Three bodies lay there. “If I had taken him out, the others might not have come, and the trap would have remained un-sprung.  But when I met the others, I comprehended the trap. They’re all coated with stun-powder. Can’t hurt me, can’t hurt them—they’re neutralized android stock. But you—“

Stile nodded. He had assumed he was being set up for an assault charge if he won, so had played it safe by never laying a finger on the man. Lucky for him!

Sheen gestured toward the Lady’s room, her hands closed. Stile knew why; she had the powder on her hands, and could not touch him until she washed it off.

Stile poked his arm through the iris to open it for her—and someone on the other side grabbed his wrist.  Oh-oh! He put his head down and dove through, primed to fight.

But it was only a crude matron robot. “No males allowed here,” she said primly. She had recognized the male arm and acted immediately, as she was supposed to.

Sheen came through, touched the robot, and it went dead. “I have shorted her out, temporarily.” She went to a sink and ran water over her hands. Then she stepped into an open shower and washed her whole body, with particular attention to any portion that might have come into contact with the powdered androids.

Stile heard something. “Company,” he said. How was he going to get out of this one? The only exit was the iris through which the next woman would be entering.

Sheen beckoned him into the shower. He stepped in with her as the door irised. Sheen turned the spray on to FOG. Thick mist blasted out of the nozzle, concealing them both in its evanescent substance. It was faintly scented with rose: to make the lady smell nice.

In this concealment. Sheen’s arms went about him, and her hungry lips found his. She evidently needed frequent proof of her desirability as a woman, just as he needed proof of his status as a man. Because each was constantly subject, in its fashion, to question. What an embrace!

When the room was clear again. Sheen turned the shower to rinse, then to dry. They had to separate for these stages, to Stile’s regret. He had swung again from one extreme to another in his attitude toward her. Right now he wanted to make love—and knew this was not the occasion for it. But some other time, when they were safe, he would get her in a shower, turn on the fog, and—

Sheen stepped out and ran her fingers along the wall beside the shower stall. In a moment she found what she wanted, and slid open a panel. Another access for servicing machinery. She gestured him inside.

They wedged between pipes and came out in a narrow passage between the walls of the Man’s and Lady’s rooms. This passage wound around square comers, then dropped to a lower deck where it opened out into a service-machine storage chamber. Most of the machines were out, since night was their prime operating time, but several specialized ones remained in their niches. These were being serviced by a maintenance machine. At the moment it was cleaning a pipefitting unit, using static electricity to magnetize the grime and draw it into a collector scoop. The maintenance ma-chine was in the aisle, so they had to skirt it to traverse this room.

Suddenly the machine lurched. Sheen slapped her hand on the machine’s surface. A spark flashed, and there was the odor of ozone. The machine died, short-circuited.

“Why did you do that?” Stile asked her, alarmed. “If we start shorting out maintenance machines, it will call attention—“

Sheen did not respond. Then he saw the scorch mark along her body. She had taken a phenomenal charge of current. That charge would have passed through him, had he brushed the machine—as he had been about to, since it had lurched into the aisle as he approached.  Another assassination attempt, narrowly averted!

But at what cost? Sheen still stood, unmoving. “Are you all right?” Stile asked, knowing she was not.

She neither answered nor moved. She, too, had been shorted by the charge. She was, in her fashion, dead.

“I hope it’s just the power pack, not the brain,” he said. Her power supply had, she had thought, been weakened by her disassembly during the bomb scare.  “We can replace the power pack.” And if that did not work? He chose not to ponder that.

He went to a sweeping machine, opened its motive unit, and removed the standard protonite power pack.  A little protonite went a long way; such a pack lasted a year with ordinary use. There was nothing to match it in the galaxy. In fact, the huge protonite lode was responsible for the inordinate wealth of Planet Proton.  All the universe needed power, and this was the most convenient power available.