Free The Terminators by Donald Hamilton Page B

decided to go through a windshield headfirst just to show them, and here you are?"
    Diana laughed. "Something like that. What I really decided was that I was. fed up with being so damned concerned, so damned idealistic, yes, and so damned safe. I didn't really know what I was going to do about it; but then one afternoon at a Washington cocktail party I got into an argument with a well-heeled society female with whom I'd served on some worthy committees. She tried to tell me how we should look at the bright side of the crisis. What she considered bright was that all the people who'd loved fast cars, or snowmobiles, or dune buggies, or speed boats, or travel trailers, would all be grounded, and wasn't it wonderful, my dear? I mean, think of all those broken-hearted folks with their beautiful, expensive, useless toys—well, like the Skipper and his fancy fishing boat—and this bitch was  gloating  about it, damn her! If that was high-minded idealism, I thought, to hell with it!"
    Diana paused to look out at the mountainous coastline sliding by. I asked, "What happened?"
    She grinned. "Well, I practically shocked that buxom biddy out of her expensive foundation garment by saying that I thought the internal combustion engine had been a good and faithful servant to mankind and if we did have to bury it, the least we could do was show some grief and appreciation, instead of spitting on the grave. She isn't a lady with a great sense of humor, so the argument got pretty hot. I mean, she actually accused me of being a Traitor to the cause. I noticed this rather striking, weathered, gray-haired character standing by, looking kind of amused. The next morning he called me up and said he was Captain Henry Priest, USN, Retired, and would I care to have lunch with him? His intentions were strictly honorable, he said; he was forming a certain organization with government blessing, and he had employment he thought might suit me, judging by the way I'd talked the night before. .. ." She paused and shrugged. "Well, that's about it. Matt. It was just the kind of crazy, crummy, dangerous, antisocial thing I'd been looking for to get the taste of all those goddamned crusades out of my mouth. The blackfooted ferret was just going to have to do without me for a while, I was going out and steal a lot of smelly oil and I wasn't going to buckle a single seatbelt while I was doing it!"
    I said, " The Liberation of Diana Lawrence , we'll call it when we put it on the screen."
    She looked at me for a moment; then she reached out and put a hand on top of mine, a small gesture of protest. "Don't," she said quietly. "Don't make fun of me, darling. Don't make fun of us. Don't spoil it."
    "Sorry," I said.
    "It's really a terrible thing," she said. "None of those people were real; and the world they lived in wasn't real. They'll never find, or make, that dreamland of theirs where the streams run nothing but distilled water, and the breezes blow nothing but pure oxygen and nitrogen mixed one to five, and no animals or people ever die. This is real. You're real."
    "Thanks," I said dryly. "If that's a compliment."
    "Death is real," she said. "I learned that last night, waiting in that cabin for somebody to come in and murder me like they'd murdered Evelyn—if I didn't shoot them first. It was wonderful. Why didn't anybody ever tell me that the only way to be alive, truly alive, is to risk being dead? It had never happened to me before. I'd always been protected before. It was horrible and marvelous and I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
    "You're a screwball," I said.
    She gave me a sudden, boyish grin and squeezed my hand lightly before taking hers away. "Well, as they say, it takes one to know one," she said.
    Of course, she was perfectly right.
    VII.
    AROUND noon, we pulled into a picturesque little harbor called Alesund and I stood on deck watching the docking procedure with interest. It looked very easy. The ship just made its approach well out,