The Second Murray Leinster Megapack by Murray Leinster Page B

of going on board a yacht. Preparations will be made to stop every pleasure boat and search it for me. So…tell your chauffeur to swing about and make for the flying field. And tell him to drive carefully, by the way. I’ve still got these guns on a very fine adjustment of the trigger-pressure.”
    Ribiera croaked the order. Bell was exactly savage enough to kill him if he did not escape.
    For twenty minutes the car sped through the residential districts of Rio. The sun was high in the air, but clouds were banking up above the Pao d’Assucar—the Sugarloaf—and it looked as if there might be one of the sudden summer thunderstorms that sometimes sweep Rio.
    Then the clear road to the flying field. Rio has the largest metropolitan district in the world, but a great deal of it is piled on end, and Rio itself built on most of the rest. The flying field is necessarily some miles from even the residential districts, for the sake of a level plain of sufficient area.
    The car shot ahead through practically untouched jungle, interspersed with tiny clearings in which were patchwork houses that might have been a thousand miles in the interior instead of so near the center of all civilization in Brazil. Up smooth gradients. Around beautifully engineered curves.
    Bell put aside one revolver long enough to search Ribiera carefully. He found a pearl-handled automatic, and handed it to Paula.
    “Worth having,” he said cheerfully. “I wonder if you’d mind searching the chauffeur: with that gun at his head I think he’d be peaceful. You needn’t have him stop.”
    Paula stood up, smiling a little.
    “I did not think I lacked courage, Senhor,” she observed, “but you have taught me more.”
    “ Nil desperandum ,” said Bell lightly. He relaxed deliberately. Matters would be tense at the flying field, and he would need to be wholly calm. There was little danger of an attempt at rescue here, and the necessity of being ready to shoot Ribiera at any instant was no longer a matter of split seconds.
    He watched, while, bent over the back of the front seat, she extracted two squat weapons from the chauffeur’s pockets.
    “Quite an arsenal,” said Bell as he pocketed them. He turned pleasantly to Ribiera. “Now, Ribiera, you understand just what I want. That big amphibian plane of yours is fairly fast, and once when I was merely your guest you assured me that it was always kept fueled and even provisioned for a long flight. When we reach the flying field I want it rolled out and warmed up, over at the other end of the field from the flying line. We’ll go over to it in the car.
    “And I’ve thought of something. It worried me, before, because sometimes if a man’s shot he merely relaxes all over. So while we’re at the flying field I’m going to be holding back the triggers of these guns with my thumbs. I don’t have to pull the trigger at all—just let go and they’ll go off. It isn’t so fine an adjustment as I had just now, but it’s safer for you as long as you behave. And you might urge your chauffeur to be cautious. I do hope, Ribiera, that you won’t look as if you were frightened. If there’s any hitch, and delay for letting some fuel out of the tanks or messing up the motors, I’ll be very sorry for you.”
    The car swooped out into bright sunshine. The flying field lay below, already in the shadow of the banking clouds above. Hangars lay stretched out across the level space.
    Through the gates. Ribiera licked his lips. Bell jammed the revolver muzzles closer against his sides. The chauffeur halted the car. Paula spoke softly to him. He stiffened. Bell found it possible to smile faintly.
    Ribiera gave orders. There was a moment’s pause—the revolver muzzles went deeper into his side—and he snarled a repetition. The official cringed and moved swiftly.
    “You have chosen your slaves well, Ribiera,” said Bell coolly. “They seem to occupy all strategic positions. We’ll ride across.”
    The gears