The Wrong Venus

Lawrence Colby by the age of thirty had been a Korean paratrooper, art student, PR man, script-writer, a dealer in art forgeries, and newspaperman, and had once ghost-written the autobiography of a homicidal maniac; he had been married twice, once to an Italian actress with kleptomania and once to a wealthy middle-aged woman who stoned embassies and slugged cops with protest signs at demonstrations; he had been beaten up in riots, shot through the leg in Houston, Texas, by a woman who was trying to kill her husband, and had been down the Cresta Run at St. Moritz three times; but afterward he was prone to look back on all this part of his life before he met Martine Randall as a time when nothing ever happened.

They met just a week after his thirtieth birthday, on a flight from Geneva to London. . . .

The flight had already been announced when he checked in at Cointrin, so he was the last passenger to board. There were two aisle seats left in the first-class section, one beside a bearded two-hundred-pound Sikh in travel-soiled khaki and the other next to a dream of a girl who was reading the European edition of
Time,
a luscious brunette with a striking figure and deep blue eyes. She glanced up briefly as he came to a decision and sat down.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, after he had fastened his seat belt and verified his first appraisal of the legs, “but aren’t you Pamela McCarthy?”

She smiled shyly. “Not really, I’m afraid. Pamela’s my roommate. I just borrowed her leg.” She went back to the
Time.

He sighed. “Well, I’ll tell her you’re taking good care of it. . . . Goodnight, David.” Lowering his seat back, he closed his eyes.

Normally, he would have probed the defenses at least once more, as the minimal tribute to so much girl, but he was tired: he’d been up most of the night before. In a minute or two he had dozed off, and was only vaguely aware when the plane taxied to the runway and made its take-off run. He was awakened briefly by a stewardess offering lunch, but waved it off, and went back to sleep again.

Then he was dreaming he was riding a roller coaster in an amusement park, a ride full of vertiginous swoops and sudden upswings that threatened to throw him out of the car. It seemed to go on forever. When he awoke at last he saw that the plane had run into turbulence. White wool streaked past outside the windows, and the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign was on.

They dropped a hundred feet in a sickening lunge that threw him up against his belt, then fishtailed, yawing wildly. He glanced at his watch and saw they should be down in London in less than an hour. Apparently the turbulence had been going on for some time. Most of the other passengers had dozed off, but up forward he could hear somebody being sick. A stewardess came down the aisle clinging to the seats with one hand and carrying one of the white bags in the other.

The plane shot upward and to port. The stewardess grabbed for the back of Colby’s seat, missed, and caught his shoulder. She smiled. “So soddy.” She was very British.

Colby grinned up at her and winked with the kinship of those immune to motion sickness. He turned to look at the girl beside him. She had put her seat back so it was level with his, and was apparently asleep, her face near his shoulder. She was probably in her late twenties, but there was an almost childlike innocence about her face in repose. It was a fine-boned face with a good chin and a beautiful clear complexion, the lashes dark smudges against her skin. Her lips were slightly parted, and he was conscious of the impulse to kiss her. That was just what he needed, he thought, to go through Customs at London with his face under his left ear. The plane bucketed up and down, and took a long skidding dive to starboard.

He had just turned away and was reaching for a cigarette when he thought he heard her say something. He hoped she wasn’t going to be sick. Colby genuinely liked women, and never felt any resentment at having been given the brush; if they didn’t knock down the proffered arm of fellowship a good part of the time, by now there wouldn’t be room left to stand.

He looked around at her. “I beg your pardon?”

Her eyes were still closed, but her lips moved. “You’re ticking.’’

He frowned. “I’m what?”

The lips moved again, the words just faintly audible. “You’re ticking.”

He felt the first intimation of horror. The plane bounced upward, yawed, and plummeted again.

The damned turbulence! And it hadn’t even occurred to him till now. . . . While he was still numb with this first chill of realization, she spoke again from beside his shoulder, the words inaudible to anyone else. “I hope you’re not carrying a bomb?”

Maybe he could convince her she’d only imagined the ticking. “Well, actually, it’s just an old prewar model. They don’t go off half the time.”

He stopped. The lips had begun to curve upward at the corners; the eyes opened, and for the first time he saw into them, saw the laughter, the blazing intelligence, and the devil. She knew damned well what he was carrying.

“They’re self-winding?” she asked.

He nodded dumbly, trying to think of something. He listened, but he still couldn’t hear them. Probably only a few had started now, but her ear was nearer them, or her hearing was better. Of course, it was impossible to hear the ticking of a watch more than a few inches away, especially over the rushing sound of the plane’s ventilating system, but fifty of them ticking together was something else. And when they all started—good God!

“How many?” she whispered.

“Three hundred.”

Then, just as he remembered with horror that a hundred of them were alarms, with either buzzers or chimes, there was a faint musical tinkle from inside his sweater. It repeated itself twice, very slowly, before it ran down.

He shuddered and looked around at the girl. Her hand was up to her mouth, and the eyes were overflowing with silent blue laughter. He wanted to strangle her.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I was just thinking of you going through Customs sounding like the “Bell Song” from Lakmi—”

The plane bounced, lurched from side to side, and swooped again. He closed his eyes and could see the three hundred little rotors swinging, storing energy. Damn the Swiss and their ingenuity.

“—and on a flight from Geneva,” the girl went on in that faint voice full of suppressed mirth. “But I’ll come visit you at Wormwood Scrubs. ... Or I’m sure Pamela will.”

“If I had your sense of humor,” Colby said, “I’d never fly. I’d just hang around airports waiting for somebody to crash.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. We’ll get you through Customs some way.”

“We?”

“Of course.” She gestured impatiently. “It was just that you sound so funny, ticking away like a big tweed bomb.”

There was another silvery tinkle from inside Colby’s sweater.
Ding . . . ding . . . ding . . . ding. . . .

“It must be four p.m. In New Delhi,” she said, mirth bubbling up in the eyes again.

“Look—” Colby snapped.

“Precisely.” The teasing devils disappeared from her eyes, and they narrowed with thought. “That’s the first thing.” She gestured significantly toward the seats in front and back of them.

Colby unsnapped his belt and stood up, pretending to search for something in the overhead rack. He had to grab the edge of the rack to remain upright as the plane dropped away from under him, hit an ascending column of air, and bounced upward again. He looked around.

The two passengers in front of him, obviously businessmen, were discussing something in German. They could probably understand English, but were busy with their own affairs. In the seats directly behind, a woman was being sick into a bag while the young boy beside her read one of the
Tintin
books, French, or French-Swiss. The boy wouldn’t know English yet, and if the woman did she was too sick to care if they blew up the plane.

Directly across from them, the Sikh was asleep, his beard a cresting hirsute wave poised above his chest.

Nobody was astir in the aisle except the two stewardesses going back and forth with Dramamine or carrying away the paper bags of those who hadn’t taken it soon enough. He sat down, strapped himself in, and turned, his face close to hers. He could feel time rushing by him like the shredded tufts of vapor flung backward past the windows. He had to think of something, and damned fast.

“Even if the turbulence stopped now,” he said, “they won’t run down before we land at London.”

She glanced at her watch. “It’s less than forty minutes. We’ve got to stop them some way.”

“If we had a magnet—” He stopped. Where would you find a magnet aboard a plane? And the damned things were probably anti-magnetic anyway. Trust the Swiss.

“How are you carrying them?” she asked.

Colby was dressed in a shapeless old tweed suit and lightweight green sweater. Under his shirt was a vestlike garment made up of three hundred individual pockets. He told her.

“They’re just movements?” she asked.

“Of course.” Nobody ever smuggled watches in cases.

“Then just go into the loo, take off the vest thing, and dunk it in the washbasin.”

“It’s not that simple. Each one’s sealed in a little plastic bag.”

“Oh.” She looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure water would do it, anyway. They might start again. . . . Something viscous— I’ve got it!” The blue eyes lighted up, and she pushed the button for the stewardess.

“What?” Colby asked.

“A liqueur of some kind. Cointreau—crème de menthe—”

“Hey, sure!”

The stewardess came. It was the tall dark one. Just as she leaned in over Colby, holding onto the seat in front, there was a faint
ding . . . ding . . .
from inside his sweater. He jerked his left arm in across his chest, shook the wrist, and looked at the watch with annoyance.

The stewardess held out an empty airsickness bag, automatically searching the floor for the other one. Colby waved off the bag. “Do you have any Cointreau?”

“Cointreau?” It was obvious she thought he was crazy.

“You do sell liquor on these flights, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. . . . But with this turbulence, naturally we couldn’t bring the cart through. And we don’t have any Cointreau, anyway.”

“Then crème de menthe?”

“Y-e-e-s, I think so. But I’m afraid only the white—”

He was conscious again of time hurtling past him, but managed a reassuring smile. “It’s all right. I only drink in the dark.”

She went away and came back in a minute with the bottle. He paid her. She departed, holding onto the seats.

“After you get stripped down to that vest,” the girl whispered, “unlock the door. I’ll come in and help you.”

“You might get caught.”

“I’ll pick a time when they’re not looking. Don’t argue, you’ll never get them done alone.”

“Right. And thanks a lot.”

“Hurry.”

He unsnapped his belt and stowed the bottle in a pocket of his jacket. Both stewardesses were busy forward. The washroom was three rows back, on the starboard side. He made it, having to stop and hang onto the seats only once.

It was the usual small compartment, not much more than four feet square, with the chemical toilet in one corner and a small washbasin and mirror on the forward wall. He bolted the door, set the bottle in the basin, and began hurriedly throwing off his upper clothing, hanging the tweed jacket, sweater, shirt, and tie on the hook on the back of the door. For a moment, miraculously, the plane was steady. Just as he was down to the vest at last, one of the buzzer alarms went off with a raucous vitality that sent a shiver up his back. They were putting on muscle by the minute.

He stabbed at one of the pockets at random, and saw it was going to be impossible to get the watches out while still wearing the vest; the fabric was too tight, and the tiny slits too narrow to put his fingers into. He unzipped it and set it beside the basin, nude to the waist now. Just as he picked up the bottle of crème de menthe to unscrew the cap, he remembered the door. He unbolted it. Almost at the same instant, it swung open, and the girl slipped inside. She closed and locked it. Colby tossed the bottle aside.

“Just pour it in the basin,” she said, “and we’ll dip them in it—oops—!”

The plane lurched sidewise. They wound up in the corner beside the door. She was behind him, one arm around his waist and her chin propped on his shoulder. Colby still held onto the bottle, outthrust and aloft but upright.

“Cozy, isn’t it?” she asked.

The plane lurched again, to the left this time, and they shot off the door toward the opposite wall. Colby put out a hand and stopped them before they slammed into it. They managed to untangle themselves. The plane steadied. He closed the washbasin drain and upended the bottle over it. It gurgled. She had already reached for the vest, and was sliding watch movements from the bottom row of pockets.

He stowed the empty bottle in the used-towel disposal. She had two of the watch movements out now and was trying to break open one of the little plastic bags in which they were sealed. It was tough, and she was making slow work of it. She solved this by taking a corner of it between her teeth and tearing it. He tore the other open. together they dipped the two of them into the crème de menthe. The malevolent pulsing of the mainsprings died with the first contact, like spiders in cyanide. They looked at each other and winked. Then the plane dropped from under them.

They were against the door in a frozen and exaggerated tango step, the girl leaning backward under him with her face against his chest, looking upward. His clothing, which had flown off the hook, began to settle. The shirt fell across his head like a white burnoose. She grinned, and began to hum “The Sheik of Araby.”

The plane was shooting upward now and he couldn’t straighten against the pull of gravity. Something was digging into his shoulder, and he realized that it was the watch movement she still had in her hand. He looked around on the floor for the other.

“It’s in my bra,” she said.

“Oh . . . which side?”

“Don’t be so technical.”

The plane’s upward lunge ceased abruptly and it lurched to port. Colby swung up off the door like an inverted pendulum and staggered back in another tango step with the girl still in his arms. He sat down on the chemical toilet, which fortunately was closed, and she came over onto him, clutching his head with his face pressed into her breast.