_Pellet!_ Do you call a four-seventy-five slug a pellet?"

"Not much of that, really ... it shoots eight times--shoot all eight of
them at her. None of them will touch her."

"_What?_ I _will_ not! One of those slugs will go through three women
like her, front to back in line."

"I will, then." The pistol leaped into Garlock's hand. "Hold up one
hand, Brownie, and catch 'em. Don't let 'em splash--no deformation, so
he can recognize his own pellets."

Holding the unfamiliar weapon in a clumsy, highly unorthodox
grip--something like a schoolgirl's first attempt--Garlock glanced once
at Lola's upraised palm and eight shots roared out as fast as the gases
of explosion could operate the mechanism. The pistol's barrel remained
rigidly motionless under all the stress of ultra-rapid fire. Lola's
slim, deeply-tanned arm did not even quiver under the impact of that
storm of heavy bullets against her apparently unsupported hand. No one
saw those bullets strike that gently-curved right palm, but everyone saw
them drop into her cupped left hand, like drops of water dripping
rapidly from the end of an icicle into a bowl.

"Here are your pellets, General Cardeen." Lola handed them to him with a
smile.

"Holy--Jumping--Snakes!" the general said, and:

"Wotta torpedo!" came the gangster's envious thought.

"You see, I am perfectly safe from being 'shot,' as you call it," Lola
said. "So I'll come down and work with you. You might have your news
services put out a bulletin, though. I never have killed anyone, and am
not going to here, but anyone who tries to shoot me or bomb me or
anything will lose both hands at the wrists just before he fires. That
would keep them from killing anyone standing near me, don't you think?"

"I should _think_ it would," General Cordeen thought, and a pall of awe
covered the linked minds. The implications of the naively frank remark
just uttered by this apparently inoffensive and defenseless young woman
were simply too overwhelming to be discussed.

"Anything else on the agenda, Clee?" Lola asked.

There was not, and the starship's guests were returned, each to his own
home place.

And not one of them, it may be said, was exactly the same as he had
been.

[Illustration:

The deepest Gunther block was at last penetrated and
Belle became conscious of a heretofore unknown mental
alignment with the ship.]

CHAPTER 4

"I think I'll come along with you and bodyguard you,