Coming Attraction
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by Paul Calle
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Women will always go on trying to attract men ...
even when the future seems to have no future!
The coupe with the fishhooks welded to the fender shouldered up overthe curb like the nose of a nightmare. The girl in its path stoodfrozen, her face probably stiff with fright under her mask. For once myreflexes weren't shy. I took a fast step toward her, grabbed her elbow,yanked her back. Her black skirt swirled out.
The big coupe shot by, its turbine humming. I glimpsed three faces.Something ripped. I felt the hot exhaust on my ankles as the bigcoupe swerved back into the street. A thick cloud like a black flowerblossomed from its jouncing rear end, while from the fishhooks flew ablack shimmering rag.
"Did they get you?" I asked the girl.
She had twisted around to look where the side of her skirt was tornaway. She was wearing nylon tights.
"The hooks didn't touch me," she said shakily. "I guess I'm lucky."
I heard voices around us:
"Those kids! What'll they think up next?"
"They're a menace. They ought to be arrested."
Sirens screamed at a rising pitch as two motor-police, theirrocket-assist jets full on, came whizzing toward us after the coupe.But the black flower had become a thick fog obscuring the whole street.The motor-police switched from rocket assists to rocket brakes andswerved to a stop near the smoke cloud.
"Are you English?" the girl asked me. "You have an English accent."
Her voice came shudderingly from behind the sleek black satin mask.I fancied her teeth must be chattering. Eyes that were perhaps bluesearched my face from behind the black gauze covering the eyeholes ofthe mask. I told her she'd guessed right. She stood close to me. "Willyou come to my place tonight?" she asked rapidly. "I can't thank younow. And there's something you can help me about."
My arm, still lightly circling her waist, felt her body trembling. Iwas answering the plea in that as much as in her voice when I said,"Certainly." She gave me an address south of Inferno, an apartmentnumber and a time. She asked me my name and I told her.
"Hey, you!"
I turned obediently to the policeman's shout. He shooed away the smallclucking crowd of masked women and barefaced men. Coughing from thesmoke that the black coupe had thrown out, he asked for my papers. Ihanded him the essential ones.
He looked at them and then at me. "British Barter? How long will you bein New York?"
Suppressing the urge to say, "For as short a time as possible," I toldhim I'd be here for a week or so.
"May need you as a witness," he explained. "Those kids can't use smokeon us. When they do that, we pull them in."
He seemed to think the smoke was the bad thing. "They tried to kill thelady," I pointed out.
He shook his head wisely. "They always pretend they're going to, butactually they just want to snag skirts. I've picked up rippers withas many as fifty skirt-snags tacked up in their rooms. Of course,sometimes they come a little too close."
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