6 — Marjorie Smith

“Or as I like to call it, an equal­izer,” said the armed man. He admired the gleam­ing object in his hand. “Pretty, isn’t it? Gives me that cer­tain je ne sais quoi edge over those damned antique metal detec­tors at the airport.”

“I know,” said She­lia, in a calm, con­ver­sa­tional tone. “Isn’t it weird that they still use those old dinosaurs? In this day and age!”

“Sheesh!” growled Mar­vin, try­ing to dis­guise the ter­ror in his voice. “Trust you to schmooze a thug at a time like this!” He grabbed Shelia’s wrist. He knew it would annoy her, but a guy’s got to have some­thing to hang onto when he’s going to his doom.

At the last pos­si­ble moment, the diri­gi­ble pulled out of its dive and skimmed across the edge of the crater with its churn­ing, bub­bling broth of mys­te­ri­ous secre­tions. It hov­ered just a few miles north of the witch’s caul­dron that had once been the pretty moun­tain metrop­o­lis Boze­man. Relax­ing his death grip on Shelia’s wrist, Mar­vin tried to see past her through the port­hole. They appeared to be sus­pended above a high alpine meadow set between two impres­sive peaks.

She­lia rubbed her wrist and glared at Mar­vin for a moment. Then she focused on the view. “Wow!” she breathed. “It’s absolutely pris­tine! Could this be …”

“Frig­ging Flat­head Pass!” snarled a deep, stran­gled voice from behind them. “Very bad … Very bad juju in this place.” There was a clunk as his ceramic pis­tol fell to the floor. Mar­vin twisted into the aisle to get a good look at the thug. He appeared to be an ordi­nary mid-century ter­ror­ist but some­thing was hap­pen­ing even as Mar­vin watched – his skin was turn­ing a green­ish shade and seemed to be devel­op­ing rep­til­ian scales. He also appeared to be slip­ping into unconsciousness.

“Oh for good­ness sake! I thought we’d exter­mi­nated all those mutant Venu­sians.” To Marvin’s sur­prise it was his erst­while seat­mate and pos­si­bly (if he accepted one ver­sion of his per­sonal his­tory as true) his lover, Peace­andlove. She had some­how slipped out of her shack­les and was mak­ing her way down the aisle, hum­ming a song. She paused to stroke Mar­vin under the chin. “How’re you doing, skookums?” she said and con­tin­ued down the aisle toward the con­trol cabin. She opened the door and as she sidled in they heard her say­ing in a sug­ary voice, “This is the place, cap­tain sweetie. They’ll come right up as soon as you send down the board­ing ladder.”