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  “Never mind,” Jake said evenly. “We’ll handle it all from here.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll go out and catch the damned assassins before they get together and kill anyone,” he said.

  CHAPTER 20

  STERANKO CAME THROUGH THE doorway, trailing loose wires and waving a long length of printout paper. “I’ve got something good,” he announced.

  Closing the suite door, Jake asked, “Such as?”

  “The location of the gang, for one thing.” He shook threads of yellow and blue wire off his foot. “Stepped in one of my makeshift databoxes in my haste to rush up here.”

  Hildy, wearing a two-piece slaxsuit and sitting in a slingchair, inquired, “Is that why we brought him along, Jake?”

  Jake nodded. “He’s set up a temporary siphoning station down in his suite.”

  “You call that a suite? Why, you have to step out into the hall to change—”

  “What have you got?” Jake led the bald young man across the room, placed him in a spunglaz chair. “Give us details.”

  “Christina Parkerhouse, alias Trina Twain and Woodrow, no longer resides at the Sheraton-Luna.”

  “That we already knew,” reminded Jake. “I figured they’d go underground once they knew we were heading here.”

  “Use your ears for a moment and not your bazoo,” advised Steranko the Siphoner. “By using the ingenious portable tapping equipment I lugged up here, plus some brilliantly improvised dohickies, I have traced the whole kaboodle to their lair.”

  “Terrific.” Jake grinned.

  Steranko glanced over at Hildy. “Do I hear similar terms of approbation from the distaff, Skinny?”

  “Terrific,” she said.

  “Screwball Smith,” proceeded the information bootlegger, “rented a chalet in a fashionable suburb of Moonport, acquiring same via a labyrinthine system of cover names and circumlocutions. The address is 919 Armstrong Lane, a very posh locale.”

  Hildy stood. “They’re all there?”

  “From checking out shuttle arrivals, baggage transportation and transfer, I can now state that Screwball Smith, Honey Chen, Christina-Trina and Derrick ‘Black Sheep’ Thrasher are all snug within the chalet.”

  “What about Lafcadio Latterly?” asked Jake.

  Steranko flipped a festival program from out of a pocket of his cocoa suit. “There has been a last-minute change in the agenda of tonight’s perf,” he said. “Scratch Zootz Zankowitz and add Lafcadio L.”

  Jake rubbed his chin. “Then they won’t try anything tonight,” he said.

  “Unless they can whip up an explosion without LL,” said the siphoner.

  “But even if they could do that, they won’t blow him up along with their targets.”

  Hildy said, “There’s another possibility, Jake.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well, we know they can control the limits of the area they want to explode,” she said. “They could be joining Lafcadio at the festival, planning to do their trick there. You know, they gather at a given spot and blow up everything a couple hundred yards off and beyond.”

  “That’s a possibility, since we don’t know how close to a target they usually get.”

  Rattling his collection of printout paper, Steranko said, “I don’t think tonight’s the night, folks. Mainly because the gang is having a party this eve, commencing any minute.”

  Hildy asked him, “How do you know that?”

  “A catering service, entirely robot-staffed, has been hired to deliver booze and fancy chow no later than six tonight to the chalet,” he said. “My guess is, the class of ’99 plans to do a bit of celebrating prior to their next killing.”

  “Maybe,” said Jake thoughtfully. “Latterly’s being put on at a new and unexpected time could’ve caused a postponement.”

  “That gives me time to try again on the targets,” said Hildy.

  “Tilda Host won’t—”

  “I was thinking of working on Bonny Prince Freddy,” his wife said. “Any man who thinks Wee Bettsi Bierstadt is attractive ought to find me overwhelming.”

  Jake’s left eye narrowed as he looked at her. “This sounds like the fabled Pace vanity starting to manifest itself in—”

  “Hooey,” countered Hildy. “It’s a simple, and modest, assessment of the situation. If we can persuade one of the targets to leave the moon, we’ll save at least—”

  “Okay, give it a try, but be—”

  “Careful. I know.”

  “Meantime, Steranko and I,” said Jake, “will crash a party.”

  It wasn’t much of a party.

  In fact, it wasn’t a party at all.

  The chalet, its exterior rich with realwood gingerbread and colored tiles, nestled in a crater a quarter mile from its nearest neighbor and was not linked with the artificial day-night system that served most of the domed sectors of the moon. This sort of privacy was costly.

  The place was dark.

  “Where’s all the gaiety?” asked Jake as he and Steranko approached the dark chalet from the rear.

  “Maybe they’ve turned the lights down low to facilitate smooching.”

  “No noise either.” They entered the flagstone courtyard behind the sprawling lodge.

  “Sexual foolery doesn’t make much noise, unless you draw a partner who is given to screams of glee and—”

  “C’mon.” Jake went trotting across the flagstones.

  He hesitated a few seconds at the bottom of the realwood steps leading to the rear door, then he went bounding quietly up.

  The siphoner followed.

  Jake slipped out a pocket scanning tool and ran it over the lock-alarm system. “This one isn’t even as complex as the yard system we just fritzed,” he said.

  “I’m starting to agree with the proposition that nobody’s home.”

  Crouching, Jake applied a tiny piklok to the lockbox. “I want to see what’s inside anyway.”

  The door made a faint protesting moan before swinging open.

  Jake waited on the threshold, listening. He put his entry tools into a pocket, drew out a short litestik and flicked it alive.

  After sweeping the cone of illumination across the chalet’s immense white kitchen, he stepped inside.

  Steranko came after him, closing the door. Sniffing, he turned his own litestik on. “I was right about the caterers. See?” He played the beam over a butcher-block table piled high with real and sinfoods. A case of Chateau Discount Peppermint Champagne rested on the tile floor beneath the table.

  Jake moved swiftly through the kitchen.

  At the end of a long hall was a blind living room, showing nothing of the bleak moonscape outside.

  He turned on a floating globelamp and doused his litestik. “Latterly plays the trombone,” he said.

  “Barely.”

  Jake kicked at the empty saxophone case that lay gaping on the yellow thermorug. “Must’ve had some of the group over.”

  “The atmosphere of this joint doesn’t exactly soothe my … listen!”

  Jake listened.

  He heard a very faint moaning.

  “Down that corridor yonder,” he said, making his way to a half-open doorway.

  At the end of a short, shadowy hallway another partially open door glowed pale orange.

  Drawing his stungun, Jake started for it.

  A very weak groan came drifting to him.

  He saw the dark-haired girl first, lying on her back on the floor of the windowless bedroom.

  She was the one who was moaning, in a feeble faraway way.

  Jake’s nose wrinkled and he hesitated in the opening. “Sleepgaz,” he said. “And something else … some kind of mindwipe. Yeah, the same brand of stuff they used on me.”

  When he went in to kneel beside the unconscious girl, he spotted the other bodies on the far side of the wide floating hydrobed.

  Three more of them, a plump red-haired young woman, a lean black man and a blond youth in his low twenties. Al
l unconscious on the fuzzy rug.

  “Geez, is it a mass murder?” asked Steranko as he joined him.

  “Nope, they’re merely out cold, some kind of sleepgaz.” Jake stood, went over to the other three. “None of them are members of the Big Bang gang.”

  The siphoner was rubbing his forehead. “I know this bimbo,” he said, squatting beside the brunette. “Sure, she’s the saxophone player in Latterly’s group. Didn’t recognize her right off without all the wacky makeup and goofy attire they all—”

  “Tonight.” Jake spun to face him. “They’re going to do it tonight. Disguised as this bunch, with Latterly to help them. We’ve got to get over to—”

  Slam! Bang!

  The door to the room snapped shut, a heavy metal panel whizzed down over it.

  In a dim corner of the room Woodrow the dummy suddenly sat up in a slingchair. “Guess again, sappo,” he said.

  CHAPTER 21

  BONNY PRINCE FREDDY SAID, “Usually, Mrs. Pace, I do not become … how you say ardente …”

  “Ardent?”

  “No, more … how you say vigoroso … than that.”

  “Enflamed?”

  “Bom.” He was a fat young man, packed into a two-piece gilt-trimmed soldiersuit. His hair was dark and curly, his moustache turned up at each end.

  “Let me get to the reason for my dropping in on you in your private box here at—”

  “You are … how you say bonita …”

  “Pretty?”

  “Sim. You are very pretty, even though you are a bit … how you say delgada …”

  “Thin?”

  The prince made another lunge at her. “Not quite. More … how you say descarnada …”

  “Slender?” suggested Hildy, dodging him.

  “Skinny.” He leaped, with some grunting, over the padded seat she’d taken refuge behind. “But even though you are skinnier than the accepted standard in my native Portugal Annex, yet my eager … how you say coração …”

  “Heart?” She straight-armed him, moved to the edge of the box, which was along the right hand wall of Jazz Pavilion 2.

  “Sim, my heart he beats with … how you say luxuria …” He made a charge at her, both arms outstretched.

  “Lust?” She suggested, side-stepping and elbowing the prince in his plump side.

  “Exactly, fair lady. I would like to go to … how you say cama …”

  “Bed?”

  “Sim, bed with you. It—”

  “Pay attention, Prince Freddy.” Hildy avoided him again, caught his arm and flipped him neatly into one of the box’s four comfortable seats. “I came here not for romance—”

  “But, fair lady, I sent away my bodyguards and my toadies, just so we could be … how you say—”

  “Someone is going to kill you,” she said. “Odd Jobs, Inc., that’s my husband Jake and I, have reason to believe the Big Bang killers will make an attempt on you.”

  “Quando? Tonight you think?”

  “Probably not tonight, yet sometime while you’re on the moon.”

  He made a deflated sound, patted the seat beside him. “Tell me all you know.”

  Watchful, Hildy started to lower herself into the chair. “My husband already explained most of this to you this afternoon.”

  “Oh, sim, but I never pay much attention to men. A rapariga such as you, that is different. If I might rest my weary carbeça on your exciting lap while you recount in full the—”

  “Nope.” She dealt the wrist of the fat hand groping toward her a sharp chop. “You just sit there, behaving like the nobleman you’re supposed to be, Prince Freddy, and listen to me. I want you to pack up and depart from. …” Something on the stage attracted her attention and she didn’t finish the sentence.

  “If you were to help me pack, I might consider it. I have an impressive collection of pajamas I can model for you so that—”

  “Hush for a minute.” She punched his knee and leaned forward.

  “Let’s hear it for ’em,” the silver-plated MC robot was telling the audience of nearly one thousand jazz enthusiasts below. “The group that finished third in the Noise Magazine jazz poll again this year. Here they come … Lafcadio Latterly and His Latter Day Saints!”

  The five member band came marching toward the floating globe footlights. They gleamed and glistened and flashed, each wearing a sequin-splashed white robe and widespread golden wings. Their faces were painted gold and they wore standup wigs of fluttering silver hair.

  “That saxophone player,” said Hildy, frowning.

  “He is Yardbird Kaminsky,” said the prince. “When he was with Buddha and His Green Lamas his solo on Jive At Five was a … Ah, hello over there, dear old lady!” He’d noticed that Tilda Host was being installed in a box across the pavilion by Wranger and he raised up to wave and smile. “She’s an old … how you say cadella …”

  Hildy reached under the prince’s wide rump. “That’s not Yardbird Kaminsky under all that glitter.”

  “Ah, rapariga, you decide to play a little grabass, as you Americans say, after all—”

  “You’re sitting on the opera glasses.”

  Down on the wide stage Latterly was saying, “Greetings, gates, let’s percolate. We got some cool sounds to lay on all you hepcats this yere evenin’. So don’t be no ickies, chillun …”

  Hildy fiddled with the focus button until she got herself a sharp closeup of the saxman. “Jesus H. Christ, it’s Screwball Smith,” she realized. “Yep, the lady next to him is Honey Chen.”

  “No, no, you know little of your native music, fair lady. That is Helen ‘Fatlip’ Lennon, the Queen of the Swing Cornet.”

  “… get into a real groove this yere evenin’, cats,” Latterly was continuing. “We’uns is really gonna get cookin’ for ya. Our first little ditty’s a real gasseroo known as ‘Hold That Tiger.’ One-two-button-my-shoe. Three-four-let’s-roar!”

  The group began to play upon their vastly amplified instruments.

  For a gang of assassins they weren’t bad.

  Hildy pulled Bonny Prince Freddy up on his booted feet. “C’mon, you’re going to get over and warn Tilda Host. Then both of you are going to depart this concert,” she told him. “I’m going to try to break up that bunch before—”

  “But, sweet lady, I wish to hear the Latter Day Saints as they lay down some cool—”

  “All you’ll hear is a loud bang.” She tugged him to the box exit and out with her into a down-slanting corridor.

  A royal bodyguard was stationed there. “Did you not score, your excellency?”

  “This … how you say … ah, never mind. Mrs. Pace seems to think Mrs. Host and I are going to be killed unless we get out of here at once, José. I am coming around to her way of thinking. Therefore, let us make our way across to the box occupied by—”

  “But, your highness, in this crush of jazz buffs it will take us many long minutes to wend our way—”

  “Get going, quick.” Hildy gave them both propelling shoves and went running on ahead down the ramp. “I’m going to have to halt these kids without benefit of Jake.”

  Too many people filled the corridor that led to the outside exit.

  Hildy, elbowing and kneeing her way, wasn’t moving fast enough. She pushed around wild-eyed youths in one-piece fansuits with We Love Lafcadio glolettered on the tunics, shoved through gaggles of media people and newsbots, finally reached the outside.

  The easiest way to get backstage was to go around the pavilion, cutting through the grounds, and then into the stage entrance. Inside, the spurious group was still playing its rendition of “Tiger Rag.”

  Even more people out here in the artificial night. Multitudes of fans whose gloletter slogans declared their undying affection for Lafcadio Latterly, Zootz Zankowitz and a host of others.

  “Dumb bitch!” observed a fat woman.

  Hildy had collided with the fat vendor, causing her to lose her grip on five of the seven life-size Jazz Greats balloons she’d been hawk
ing. The figures of two Lafcadio Latterlys, one Zootz Zankowitz and two Switchit McBernies, one for each sex stage, went swirling and flapping up into the air.

  The vendor tried to grab Hildy. “You got to reimburse me, lady!”

  “A bit later,” promised Hildy as she side-armed the woman from her path.

  She zigzagged through the throngs cluttering the path to the stage door. Up in the narrow opening two Pops with stunrods were urging the crowd back.

  “But I have my Official Camp Followers Pass,” a frail young blonde in a seethru parka was protesting.

  “It’s expired, honey,” said a Pop scornfully.

  Hildy kept up her push forward.

  “No admittance, lady,” a Pop told her when she was pressing against him at the head of the crowd.

  She smiled sweetly, kneed him deftly in the groin and went dodging in around his doubling up body.

  “Stop or I’ll stun!” warned the other doorman.

  Hildy skirted a wardrobe trunk, threw herself flat on the plazplanks of the backstage area.

  Zizzzzzzummmmmmmm!

  “You oaf!” cried a green-haired young man who was passing with an armload of glocloth capes. “You’ve missed your target and stunned Chullunder Ghose, the head sitar player with Babu Billiken and his Himalayan Hillbillies.”

  “Glory be, sir, I swear I was aiming at that redheaded wench.”

  “Well, you better unstun him quickly or your toke will be in a sling for …”

  Hildy, meantime, had gone skulking away between trunks and clothes racks and tumbles of electronic musical equipment, getting ever closer to the glare of the large half-oval stage.

  She eased out her stungun.

  It was going to require all five of them, far as she knew, to produce a Big Bang. By taking out at least a couple of them, she—”

  “Gotcha, you slattern!”

  It was one of the Pops and he’d come rushing out of the shadows to tackle her.

  Hildy’s stungun went spinning from her grasp.

  It hit a backstage electric piano, bounced onto a wardrobe trunk and skidded under a beerpouch dispensing machine.

  “Damn it, there’s going to be an assassination.” Hildy jabbed an elbow into the doorman’s midsection.