Ice Cream and Venom by Kevin Long Page A

Susan said.
    "I don't know," Steve said, obviously frightened, "Landing is a different disk than the one I was using. I'd have to physically take out the one floppy and put in another one to get it to do this."
    "Could this be some of Grapeape's lingering sabotage?" Susan asked? Like maybe changing the labels on the disk?"
    "No, Steve said," I'd loaded up the Rendezvous program, which is on one disk, and when I hit 'enter', there was a different one in there that started to run. Someone would have had to sneak in and change it while I was working."
    "Grapeape," Lee said, "We never saw the body, we didn't even look for it. Maybe he crawled into an air vent or a locker or something, let himself out after we left."
    "Are we going to crash?" Susan asked, frightened.
    "No, no, it's safe as your mom's lap," Steve said, "It's fully automated. We're landing in Alaska somewhere. That's pretty remote, the Feds may not be able to get to us in time. So we touch down, I reset the computer, we lift off and head for the space station. Lee, you've got to find Grapeape! There's no telling how much trouble he could cause! Check the engine room."
    "Just to confirm," Susan said, "So landing is entirely safe, and really we don't need you to land at all at this point, right?"
    "Well, yeah, but..."
    Susan pulled a gun out of her purse and shot him squarely in the back of the head. Lee was halfway down the ladder when she killed his uncle. She kicked him in the face, and he tumbled down into the lower deck. She quickly slid down the handrails, and kicked him again in the face and the groin.
    "I switched the disk," she said, "He was deaf as a post, never heard me sneaking up behind him."
    "But... Grapeape?"
    "Framed him, killed him, chucked him out the airlock."
    "But..."
    "Yeah, yeah, 'but, but, but, but.' Here's the short version: NORAD saw the Internal Bleeder take off back in July. We knew it took off from Nebraska. When you made your second flight in August, we were able to track it to the Mayfield area. We poured spies into the town as surreptitiously as we could—remember you said I only started working at the farm report a bit under a month ago?"
    "You guys didn't know who I was. You couldn't have known I'd be watching you and ask you out," he gasped through broken teeth.
    "Oh, no, I was there to investigate the station owner, actually. Just dumb luck that you called me. I had something coy in mind to say as the final thing you'll ever hear, but, meh, I'm just gonna shoot you instead. Good lay, though! Well done! Oh, and the mushrooms were nice. Remember those? "
    And then she killed him.
    * * *
    The government helicopters arrived to find the Internal Bleeder standing in the snow. It had been down so long the ground had stopped steaming. There was a light snowfall. A man in an expensive suit got out, and strode over to the spacecraft. Susan was huddled by a campfire.
    "'Bout time you showed up. I'm freezing out here," she said.
    "You contained the situation, I see. The President will be very pleased."
    "Yup. Score one for the good guys. Happily ever after."

The Man Who Would Not Be King
    Stony Hill, Florida, 1964
    The security chief stood in the dark and wondered how his life had come to this. Not that it was a bad life, mind you, but he'd aspired to much more once, and everything had seemed so plain and certain in front of him once, with the strange logic of dreams it had all made sense. Then things had changed—he was never quite sure how—and his grand design for a larger life got derailed. Now, here he was, an anonymous Joe working an anonymous job, standing all alone in the dark. And it wasn't even a permanent job at that, just a temp gig providing overflow security for the great big dedication cavalcade. He wondered—not for the first time—how his life might have gone differently if the breaks had gone slightly different for him.
    He sneered at nothing in particular to clear his thoughts, and focus on the job, as opposed to how