Problem Planet

At first I thought she was smiling, and then I saw that her lips were grim and tense. What made her look more formidable than anything was what she held in her hand. A large-size, old fashioned thirty-eight on a forty-five frame.

She wasn't the ghost of a vanished race. She was real, from the top of her wavy, black hair, to the crude hand-made sandals on her feet. Her eyes were soft and brown, but they glinted like the flash of polished steel. Her figure was well proportioned and graceful in its curves, but there was no mistaking hardened muscles. Her clothing, which included shorts and a sack-like blouse, seemed to have been woven from grass fibers, and animal skins.