Most deserts are cold at night, but this one, decided the Mouse as she and the Forever Kid drove across the sand in an open vehicle, was merely less hot.
"You've been very quiet since dinner," remarked the Kid. "Is anything wrong?"
"You're kidding, right?"
"I gave up kidding more than a century ago."
"Well, to tell you the truth, I was wondering if I'd be able to find my way back to Ophir in the dark, after they kill you."
"You won't have to," replied the Kid. "I'm not going to lose."
"Are you saying that you can't be killed?"
"I've been cut up pretty bad on occasion," he replied. "I can be killed, all right—but not tonight, not by these men."
"There are eight of them waiting for you out there," she said, waving a hand in the general direction they were headed. "They'll probably have taken up defensive positions all around the area. Hell, for all you know, one of them might be just a couple of hundred yards ahead of us, waiting to take a shot at you as you drive by."
The Kid shook his head. "They'll all be in their camp, taking comfort from each other's presence."
"How do you know that?"
He turned to her. "I've been doing this for two hundred years. I know how hunted men act."
"Maybe these men are different."
"I hope so," he said earnestly.
"Why?" she asked, honestly curious.
"Because it's been a long time since I've seen anything new."
"That's a hell of an answer."
"You think it's easy to be the Forever Kid?" he asked. "To know that when everyone now living in the whole galaxy has been dust for millennia, I'll still look the same? To eat the same meals, and fly to the same worlds, and do the same thing day in and month out, year in and century out?" He paused. "Everyone wants to be immortal, but let me tell you, lady, it's not really a consummation devoutly to be wished. Why do you think I got into this line of work? Because sooner or later someone will put me out of my—"
"Your misery?" she suggested.
He shook his head. "My boredom."
"Maybe it'll be tonight," said the Mouse. "That's why I'm wondering if I can find my way back."
"It won't be tonight," he replied with conviction.
"What makes you so sure?"
"I know how good I am."
"Maybe you exaggerate how good you are. You told the bartender that you killed Three-Fisted Ollie, but I know he's alive."
"I never said that I killed him," answered the Kid. "I said that I could kill him."
"Not from what I hear."
The Forever Kid shrugged. "Believe what you want."
They drove another two miles in silence, and then they saw the lights of a small camp off in the distance.
"That's it," said the Kid, nodding toward the lights.
"Then shouldn't we stop the landcar?"
"Soon," he said, starting to decelerate. "They don't have any weapons that are accurate at more than three hundred yards."
"You hope."
"I know," he replied, finally coming to a stop.
"I thought I saw some movement behind that boulder, to the left of the last bubble," whispered the Mouse.
"You did."
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
The Kid got out of the vehicle and stretched lazily. "I'm going to go to work."
"What about me?"
"You stay here until it's over."
"A stationery target in a parked vehicle?" said the Mouse, getting out her side of the landcar. "No, thank you."
"You'd be safer in the car."
"You worry about your safety and I'll worry about mine," she shot back.
He shrugged. "As you wish."
He began walking off into the shadows.
"Let me follow you," said the Mouse, suddenly very uneasy about remaining behind.
"You'd just be in the way."
"There must be something I can do."
"There is."
"What?"
"Go into their camp under a white flag and tell them they've got five minutes to make their peace with whatever god they worship."
"Me?" repeated the Mouse incredulously.
The Forever Kid chuckled. "You see anyone else out here?"
"Not a chance," said the Mouse vehemently.
"It's up to you. I'll call to you when it's over."
"You know," said the Mouse, "there's a very fine line between confidence and madness."
There was no answer, and the Mouse realized that she was talking to herself. The Kid had gone.
She stood beside the vehicle, squinting into the darkness, trying to spot the other seven miners in the dim illumination three hundred yards ahead.
After a few minutes, she heard a single piercing scream, and then a number of rifle shots and the buzzing from laser pistols. She ducked down behind the vehicle, just in case the Kid had been wrong about the accuracy of the miners' weapons, but after a few moments of total silence she peeked around the side.
Three bodies, two of them grotesquely contorted, lay in the small pool of light beside the camp, and she could see the motionless bare foot of a fourth sticking out of the darkness.
Then came a high-pitched shriek, unmistakably feminine, and an instant later a woman staggered out of one of the survival bubbles, clutching her abdomen, and collapsed a few yards away from the men.
"Enough!" cried a man. "I give up."
"This isn't a child's game," replied the Kid from some distance. "You're not allowed to quit just because you're going to lose."
Three rifles—two projectile and one laser—tore into the spot where the Kid's voice had come from, and then all was silent again. After a tense moment, two women and a men emerged from their bubbles and cautiously approached the spot when the gunfire had converged. Suddenly one of the women screamed and fell to the ground, and the two remaining miners turned and began firing wildly into the darkness.
"Come out and face us, damn you!" hollered the man.
The Forever Kid stepped out of the shadows.
"Whoever paid you for this, I'll pay you more to go away," said the woman.
"I'm afraid that's not a viable option," said the Kid. There was a sudden movement of his right hand, and both miners keeled over.
The Kid spent the next few moments inspecting each of his victims, making sure they were dead. Then, satisfied, he turned toward the vehicle.
"You can come out now!" he shouted into the darkness.
The Mouse, still stunned by the ease with which he had dispatched his opponents, approached the camp gingerly.
"What the hell did you use on them?" she asked as she reached the first of the corpses.
"Something very small and very sharp," replied the Kid. "Eight somethings, actually."
"Amazing!" muttered the Mouse, stepping around two more bodies.
"Go gather your plunder and let's be going," said the Kid.
"You're not even breathing hard," noted the Mouse.
"Should I be?"
"Most people would work up a sweat after killing eight innocent miners," she replied caustically.
He stared curiously at her. "Innocent of what?"
"Whatever they did, they didn't deserve to die like this."
"Who knows?" said the Forever Kid with a shrug.
"You mean you don't even know why you killed them?" she demanded.
"Of course I do," answered the Kid. "I killed them because I was paid to kill them."
"But you don't know what they had done?"
He shrugged again. "That's none of my business."
"Don't you even care?"
"Not really," he answered. "Most people deserve killing for one reason or another."
"Have you always felt this way?"
Suddenly the Kid grinned. "Puberty must have made me cynical." He nodded toward the self-contained protective bubbles. "My business here is done. It's time you went about yours." He headed off toward the vehicle. "I'll get the landcar," he said, "while you pick up the spoils of conquest."
"You wouldn't be planning on leaving me behind, would you?" she said suspiciously.
He chuckled. "Not while you're here with all the money."
She began going through the bubbles, collecting uncut diamonds and rolls of credits, and a few minutes later she emerged from the last of the bubbles.
He was waiting there for her with the landcar, and fifteen minutes later she was shaking Penelope awake.
"Come on," she whispered. "It's time to go."
"Go where?" asked Penelope sleepily.
"I don't know," admitted the Mouse. "But away from here, anyway."
"Did you buy a ship?"
"Even better," said the Mouse. "I bought a man who owns a ship."
"What did you pay him with?" asked Penelope, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
"Diamonds," said the Mouse, holding out a small bag filled with dull, uncut stones.
Penelope peeked into the bag.
"There's a gun there," she noted.
"I picked it up the same place where I got the diamonds," answered the Mouse.
"Why?"
"Just in case you decide that the Forever Kid wants to hurt us."
"How long will he stay with us?"
"Until we put down on a safe planet," said the Mouse. "Or until we run out of money. Whichever comes first."
"Are there any safe planets for us?"
"There's one," said the Mouse reluctantly. "I hadn't wanted to go there, but I don't think we have much of a choice. Word of our being here has got to leak out: this place is going to be crawling with killers by tomorrow night, or the next morning at the latest."
Penelope began getting dressed.
"What is the name of this world?" she asked.
"Last Chance."
"Have you ever been there before?"
The Mouse shook her head. "No, I haven't."
"Then why are you so sure that you don't want to go there?" persisted Penelope. "It might be very pleasant, with lakes and streams and green things."
"Because I don't like the man who runs it," replied the Mouse.
Penelope considered the Mouse's answer for a moment. "If you don't like him, why do you think we'll be safe there?"
"He owes me an awfully big favor."
"Has he agreed to pay you this favor?"
The Mouse grimaced. "I don't think he even knows I'm alive."
"How long has it been since you've seen him?" asked Penelope, picking up Jennifer and walking to the door.
"A very long time."
"He might not even remember you," suggested Penelope.
"He'll remember," said the Mouse grimly.