Sea of Terror by Stephen Coonts Page A

Sky Line regrets the inconvenience, and hopes you have a wonderful cruise. thank you.
    "Just another security precaution," Myers told her. "Like it says. It's 'for your safety.'"
    "X-rays can be harmful," Caruthers told him. "My doctor told me so."
    "Ms. Caruthers, I'm very sure they wouldn't do it to people if there was any chance of harm."
    "It's just like in that movie, Elsie," Ms. Jordan said, placing a reassuring hand on Caruthers' arm. "The Terminator, I think it was. The one with Arnie Schwarzenegger, before he became governor of California? The security people could see him on a big screen as a moving skeleton, remember?"
    "That wasn't Terminator, Anne," Caruthers snapped back. "It was Total Recall And that's beside the point."
    "But they could see he was carrying a gun!"
    "Well, I'm not carrying a gun," Caruthers said with a defiant upward lift of her chin. "And I'll keep my skeleton to myself, thank you!"
    Myers sighed. He didn't like Ms. Caruthers, and she didn't like him. The woman had once had the effrontery to correct him in the middle of a lecture he'd been giving back at the Walters, part of a Western arts lecture series presented by the museum foundation. She'd actually interrupted to correct him on some fine point about Doric and Ionic columns in front of the rest of the class.
    The fact that, when he'd looked it up, he'd found she'd been correct only made it more irritating.
    "You have to go through, Ms. Caruthers," Myers told her. "Either that, or let the guards frisk you. It's for your safety."
    "Young man, I don't have to do anything! They want to frisk me like I was some kind of criminal? I won't stand for this!"
    "Well, if you wish to leave the group--," Myers began, but she cut him off.
    "As tour guide you can make special arrangements," Caruthers told him. "People like us shouldn't have to go through these machines like we were riffraff! And you should have known that, and made those arrangements in advance!"
    "What seems to be the problem here, folks?" a security guard asked, joining them. The tour group was piling up now in front of the X-ray machine as they came through the metal detector, bringing progress to a halt.
    "I'm sorry, Officer," Myers told the man. "Ms. Caruthers, here, has some concerns about the safety of this X-ray scan."
    "It's perfectly safe, ma'am," the guard said. "You'll get more X-ray radiation walking outdoors on a bright, sunny day."
    "My sunblock," Caruthers told him with an acid touch to her voice, "is over there, in my carry-on luggage, which you people seem to think is hiding bombs or drugs or something!"
    "Ma'am--"
    "On my flight from Baltimore, they confiscated my knitting and a plastic bottle of water, and then they made me take off my shoes so they could see if I had explosives hidden inside them!"
    "I'm sorry, ma'am, but--"
    "Young man, I am sixty-nine years old and I'm not a threat to anybody! Except, perhaps, to certain overzealous civil servants and incompetent tour guides!"
    "Please, Ms. Caruthers!" Myers said. "If you make a scene--"
    "So now I'm making a scene, am I? Good! I refuse to be frisked like a common criminal, and I refuse to be zapped by X-rays! What are you going to do about it?"
    "I'm going to ask you to step outside the line, ma'am," the guard said, "so we can allow the other passengers to continue boarding."
    "What's the matter, Elsie?" Nancy Haynes asked, grinning. "Don't want your picture took?"
    "I don't know about this," Mabel Polmar said, looking worried. "Elsie's right about X-rays. My doctor told me when I had my hip surgery last winter that I couldn't have too many X-rays, or else I'd--"
    "It's safe, Ms. Polmar," Myers said. He turned to the guard. "Look, is there anything else we can do?"
    "Company rules, sir. Everyone goes through the scanner, or they allow themselves to be searched."
    "I'd better discuss this with your supervisor, then."
    "Very well, sir. But can we get the rest of these people moving? They're holding up the