"Eight-point-five Mars-Consolidated pistol," Loughran said. "I'd
laid my shotgun down and walked away from it--"
"Twelve hundred foot-seconds," Ayesha said. "Bow-wave as well as
muzzle-blast."
"You think the report was what did it?" Fayon asked.
"You want to bet it didn't?" she countered.
Nobody did.
* * * * *
Mom was sulky. She didn't like what Dave Questell's men were doing
to the nice-noise-place. Ayesha and Lillian consoled her by taking
her into the soundproofed room and playing the recording of the
pump-noise for her. Sonny couldn't care less, one way or another;
he spent the afternoon teaching Mark Howell what the marks on paper
meant. It took a lot of signs and play-acting. He had learned about
thirty ideographs; by combining them and drawing little pictures,
he could express a number of simple ideas. There was, of course,
a limit to how many of those things anybody could learn and
remember--look how long it took an Old Terran Chinese scribe
to learn his profession--but it was the beginning of a method
of communication.
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