Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell by Harry Harrison Read Free Book Online

the system also had a love for the ethnic music of long-vanished Earth. He must have tapped a digitized databank from one of the ancient spacers and had dumped it into the RAM in Bill's ear. He had undoubtedly listened to it while working away the weary hours of programming. Fine. But he wrote such crappy software that bits of the music leaked through into the rest of the programs. Something Latin, scratching away at the edge of Bill's hearing, sounded like Mula Chula.
    “Come on,” Bill said, raising his voice to drown out the guitars. “Diving — how do I dive?”
    Bill, who'd been expecting trajectory extrapolations and weight/air-resistance/gravity equations, was naturally disappointed.
    “Don't,” he said out loud. “What the bowb do you mean, don't! I'm going to get this right if it kills me!”
    “Leesten, cabron. You got the grace and reflexes of a grande flamenco dancer — a dead grande flamenco dancer!”
    “You know, for once I wish you'd be a machine like you're supposed to be and do what I ask,” shouted Bill, tugging his ear with exasperation. “And would you stop playing that stupid music and answer the question?”
    Elliot Methadrine looked up from the lounge chair. “Gee — talking to your ear again, huh? I wonder why they didn't give that device to me!”
    “I certainly wish they had!” Bill twisted the ear hard to shut the stupid thing of. “Now I'm going to dive, and dive right this time, or —”
    Bill never got the chance to explain what he would do if he didn't dive right — or belly flop for that matter, although he did end up in the water.
    Because that was when the assassin popped out of the service hatch in the deck.
    The guy was about five foot nine. He had long shaggy hair and a rainbow-colored headband to keep that hair out of his eyes. He had a goatee and granny glasses. He wore a dirty dyed T-shirt, bell-bottoms, and leather moccasins. From around his neck dangled a large medallion: the peace symbol. In his arms he cradled a Mauser laser cannon: a definite war symbol.
    It was the deadliest hand armament Bill had ever seen.
    “Die, Imbeerialist Pig!” the guy screeched and pointed the sights and bore of the cannon directly at Bill.
    Battle being the line of work he'd chosen (well, not exactly chosen, maybe), Bill had had many a gun trained on him. However, since he was now weaponless and in the open, making a fine target, he didn't have many options.
    He dove headfirst into the water.
    An energy beam fried the air where he'd just been.
    Bill hit the water feetfirst and went as deep as he could. He could feel the water boiling above him as the assassin tried to get him through the water. But Bill knew that a sinking target was hard to hit, and there was nothing Bill did in aquatic sports better than sink. Fortunately, he was at the forty-foot-deep end of the pool, so he had a long way to sink. Unfortunately, his lung capacity was not terrific; he had not breathed in deeply before diving, so just as soon as he hit bottom, he had to start thinking about coming up for some air.
    Bill was intelligent enough to know that he'd better not come up where he went down. So he swam as far as he could until he banged his head on the side of the pool and then began thrashing back to the surface up the side of the pool, hoping against hope that by the time he'd surface the guy would have been killed by Elliot — and that he wouldn't get the bends.
    When he peeped up out of the top of the water, taking a Trooper-sized breath immediately, he saw that the poolside was a total mess. The lounge chair was blown apart, burned towels were everywhere and Elliot's plastic raft and rubber duck lay deflated upon the water. There was the smell of singed flesh in the air.
    Bill vaulted out of the pool and ran for cover.
    He peeped out from the door marked LADIES.
    Someone had been burned, that was for sure ... but there was no sign of bodies now, charred or otherwise. Bill was about to make a run for the