This Shoal of Space:

Preface   Chapter 1   Intralog  Part I-Chapter 2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   Part II-Chapter 66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   Outlog

Chapter 5.

Gilbert Burtongale stood inside the near-dark Pagoda and watched a blue glow reaching from the hidden places, under the oil tanks and engines, from the underground water tanks.

"Thank you," he whispered out loud to the unseeable demon-force growing under the ground and in his brain. He had always had something lurking in the back of his mind; every first-born male Burtongale did. The glow strengthened in the undefined darkness among tanks and equipment. Gilbert unlocked the Pagoda and pushed the door open a crack. He held his hand up and squinted at the sunlight. His breath caught. His heart missed a beat. She!

He peered out from his hiding place. Zoë sat on a bench facing the Pagoda, not twenty feet away. Had she seen him? Was that why she had that pale, shocked look? Then some old blackie came along and talked with her. Now it was old darkies where years ago it had been Frank MacLemore. He longed to take her curls in his fingers and smell them deeply. She was a bad girl, wild, to run with Frank as she had. Why? when Gilbert had wealth, good family, everything. Once Frank had seen him looking at her, and one look told him what Frank told other men: Touch her, you die. Frank had been nobody to fool around with. Reluctantly, Gilbert had put her out of his mind. After the burglary and the murders in Chicago, Gilbert and Frank had parted ways; Frank had died; and Zoë had gone to prison.

Oh, look at her now. She was not like other women. She was a thing of rare beauty. Look how her face lit up like a little sun as she laughed. Look how saucy that precious mouth was, how quick and bright those eyes. How her beautiful face caught the sun. How her knees tantalized from under the jeans skirt. How her firm thighs flattened slightly on the bench. He saw a flash of the blue mound of her panties... Another man came; another one of them! and Gilbert wanted to kill him. Gilbert, a card-carrying, weapon-bearing member of the master race, hated the scum who had taken over the country. It would not be long now. Once the ship had rebuilt itself, once the something was back in its Pilot seat! Either that or it would destroy the world. Either way, Gilbert would get what he wanted, and most importantly that was Her.

She rose, and Gilbert longed to touch the firmness of her naked legs, the exquisite perfection of her rear end, the gentle and feminine curve of her back. Hungrily, Gilbert watched the cocky gracefulness of her movements. I deserve her, he told himself. His gaze followed her naked calves past hanging boughs. And soon she would be his.