ft hand drift a little closer to my Banker's Special in
its open holster--Ray Baker's great psychological weapon, though (who
knows?) the two .38 cartridges it contained might actually fire. The one
I'd put to the test at Nowhere had, and very lucky for me.

She seemed to be hiding her right arm from me. Then I spotted the weapon
it held, one you don't often see, a stevedore's hook. She _was_ hiding
her right hand, all right, she had the long sleeve pulled down over it
so just the hook stuck out. I asked myself if the hand were perhaps
covered with radiation scars or sores or otherwise disfigured. We
Deathlanders have our vanities. I'm sensitive about my baldness.

Then she let her right arm swing more freely and I saw how short it was.
She had no right hand. The hook was attached to the wrist stump.

I judged she was about ten years younger than me. I'm pushing forty, I
think, though some people have judged I'm younger. No way of my knowing
for sure. In this life you forget trifles like chronology.

Anyway, the age difference meant she would have quicker reflexes. I'd
have to keep that in mind.

* * * * *

The greenishly glinting dust drift that I'd judged she was avoiding
swung closer ahead. The girl's left elbow gave a little kick to the
satchel on her hip and there was a sudden burst of irregular ticks that
almost made me start. I steadied myself and concentrated on thinking
whether I should attach any special significance to her carrying a
Geiger counter. Naturally it wasn't the sort of thinking that interfered
in any way with my watchfulness--you quickly lose the habit of that kind
of thinking in the Deathlands or you lose something else.

It could mean she was some sort of greenhorn. Most of us old-timers can
visually judge the heat of a dust drift or crater or rayed area more
reliably than any instrument. Some buggers claim they just feel it,
though I've never known any of the latter too eager to navigate in
unfamiliar country at night--which you'd think they'd be willing to do
if they could feel heat blind.

But she didn't look one bit like a tenderfoot--like for instance some
citizeness newly banished from Manteno. Or like some Porter burgher's
unfaithful wife or troublesome girlfriend whom he'd personally carted
out beyond the ridges of cleaned-out hot dust that help guard such
places, and then abandoned in revenge or from boredom--and they call
themselves civilized, tho