Touched by an Alien

change enough to transfer via air.”
    “Wait a second. For all you know?” I managed not to ask them what, if anything, they did know.
    “Every in-control superbeing’s been killed using heavy artillery,” Christopher explained. “There’s nothing left for us to examine. Killing them’s been more important.”
    “But Mephistopheles is immune to the big guns, right?”
    “Right. Which is why you were going to unveil some great idea that involved your hairspray.” I couldn’t tell if Martini was making fun of me or not, but he was right—I hadn’t actually told them what my plan was.
    Possibly because I didn’t think they were going to like it.

CHAPTER 32
    “WE KNOW WHERE THE PARASITE IS . It’s going to be close to impossible to hit unless someone’s right up there in his maw.” I wondered for a moment why I was doing this, but then the whole saving the world thing knocked on the door. “My hairspray worked—he dropped me screaming.”
    “I can’t believe the properties in regular hairspray would cause the parasite to die,” Lorraine said.
    “It was extra-hold.”
    “Oh, that makes all the difference,” Christopher said, as he rolled his eyes. Well, it wasn’t a patented glare.
    Claudia looked thoughtful. “It might …” She was lost in thought for a few moments. “Kitty, do you have the bottle?”
    “In my purse. Which is in my room. Not that I think I can find my room from here.”
    “I’ll get it,” Martini said. He stood up and disappeared. Ten seconds later he was back, bottle in hand.
    “What kept you?”
    “That purse gets worse every time I look inside it.” He handed the bottle to Claudia and then sat back down.
    She examined it. “Lorraine, can you find some regular hairspray?”
    “Sure.” Lorraine disappeared, to come back about fifteen seconds later carrying several different bottles of hairspray. So the Dazzlers had to spray and tease to look perfect? I felt a little better.
    They examined the ingredients while the rest of us sat there. I hoped my contribution as Impromptu Team Leader would mean I didn’t have to come up with a brilliant scientific idea about what to do next.
    “Well,” Claudia said finally, “there’s a lot of ingredients the same, but I think we can isolate one or two that might have been what affected him.”
    “The biggest difference between regular and extra-hold is alcohol—the extra-hold has a lot more in it,” I offered helpfully. You can learn a lot in a beauty salon.
    Reader stiffened. “Yates is a teetotaler.”
    “Is that a religious thing for you guys?” I asked Christopher.
    “Not in the way you might mean. We didn’t have drinking alcohol on our home world. We’re not supposed to take impurities into our bodies, though—for a variety of health and religious reasons. So no one’s ever had any alcohol here.” He looked at Martini. “Other than you.”
    Martini rolled his eyes. “I tried it once, okay? Once. Made me sick as a dog, never touched it again.”
    “How did it make you sick? Did you throw up, pass out, have a headache the next day?” Not that I was asking from personal experience or anything.
    “I wish,” Martini said with a grimace. “I was in the hospital. They thought I was going to die.”
    “How much did you drink?” Good lord, had he imbibed an entire brewery?
    “I had one shot of vodka. We’d taken out a superbeing in Russia, the nice people offered me a drink to thank me for saving them from the bear I’d made them think had attacked them, I took the drink.”
    “If I hadn’t been there with him, he’d be dead,” Christopher said flatly.
    “Yeah, yeah, I owe you my life. We were twenty years old, cut me a damn break. You want me to start listing all the times I’ve saved your life, or can we get back to the situation at hand?”
    Reader and I stared at each other. He spoke first. “Amazing, really.”
    “What?” Martini sounded exasperated. “No one on Earth’s ever had a bad experience with vodka?”
    “Not like that.” I looked at him. “You’re sure there wasn’t anything in it? No poison, nothing like that?”
    “No. For God’s sake, they were grateful. They all drank it, too, poured from the same bottle. None of them got sick, so, no, not poisoned. One stinking drink, and some people will never let me live it down.” He gave Christopher a disgusted look and slouched down in his chair.
    “Some people never follow the rules,” Christopher snapped.
    I looked at