Hieri and SIPAc.u.m moved the coordinate markers to pinpoint the second moon circling Jasbir, the nearer one. "That skungeball. No one lives on it! The ray-ray level's too high for anything short of s.p.a.cer-level shielding." Seeing Jesti's frown, he translated "ray-ray": "Radioactivity. You've heard of that on Eilong, haventcha?"

Jesti opted for lighthearted sarcasm: "Just the real big brains, bawss-captain-sah. That unpeopled moon's dangerous, then? With . . . ray-ray?"

"Firm. The ray-ray's so high the whole thing's as eroded as procheese. People call it The Sponge. More caves and holes in the 'ground' than stratistone. TGW couldn't even run a proper finder fix on it. I've snuck Siicer in there before, when I've come around on ... business."

Excitement brightened Jesti's eyes. Sure, this was a brand of piracy he could accept, with ease. All he had to do was think the TGO way: The End Justifies The Means (employed to achieve it). "So we just grab Fluve and ride her down!"

The sparkle in Hieri Jee's eyes was wicked. "You're jumping to conclusions, purple playmate."

Jesti forced a grin and pointedly held his bare arm near Hieri's purple-shirted one. "Nice shirt. How'm I wrong?"

"We grab Fluve, all right. Only you don't ride 'er down. I do."

"And leave me here? Negatory, Hieri."

"I am going, I said," the man from Outreach said coolly. "One thing you tend to forget, my purple pal, is that Siicer is my ship."

"Which you wouldn't even, have," Yahna reminded him, "if Jesti hadn't saved your skins back on Croz."

Hieri, looking relaxed and smug and comfy in first chair, the master's chair, only glanced her way. He nodded.

"True. He busted us out to help hisself, and we've helped him, too, Goldie. Plenty. For another thing, none of us's laid a hand on you, me proud beauty. Ner anything else-a hard slicer, f'rinstance. Here we are, real desperate out-laws, alone in s.p.a.ce with a real doll, and ain't a one of us so much as pawed yer t.i.ts, much less f.u.c.ked ya. That uz for Jesti's sake, cake, not yours." And 138.

without waiting for her to reply or prove that she would not, Hieri returned his attention to Jesti.

"Musla 'n' Twil V me stick to a pattern of self-interest, Eilonger. We're outlaws. We've taken certain goods from good ole CongCorp. Now we want to convert that stuff inta stells and cred. Since I'm the one who knows Jasbir and the Jazzes best, I'm the obvious one to go down to market. And finally . . . well-I remind you that Musla and Twil are my boys. That means that there are three of us to"-a less than cordial glance at Yahna- "two of you at most. So. If you want to live to see your beloved Eilong again, stand aside while I make arrangements for transport. With Fluve's captain."

He was smiling when he finished. That didn't stop Jesti from noting that Twil'im had moved forward just a jinkle, while Musla had his hand on his kris-hilt and was glowering even more ferociously than usual. It was a situation, Jesti decided quickly, in which discretion const.i.tuted the usual cliche. Besides, he was glad Hieri had said so much. It was plain and in the open, now, just how matters stood. They weren't allies, not really. Hieri was a sneering bigot- and an enemy.

With a smile every bit as broad as the Outie's, Jesti threw out his arms and bowed surrender.

"Of course, Captain Jee-sir. All that wasn't necessary-I just didn't understand. I ask only that you bear in mind that I too have a goal on Jasbir.''

"Your search for the fobber you call the Handsome Man?" Hieri's voice was brown with scorn. "You live in a galaxy of dreams if you think you can find any one individual who's hiding on a planet the size of Jasbir, no matter how handsome he is. He ain't Lance Sessakimey-or Akima Mars!"

Jesti shrugged and compressed his lips. "You may be right."

" 'May' meaning I also may not? Well, we'll leave that for time to decide. But I can't wait on it, Eilan. CongCorp and the superspooks are on our trail by now. I'd just as soon not meet their ruffos." And Hieri swung back to busy himself at his console.

139.

Jesti was both intrigued and disappointed. He had antic.i.p.ated that capture of even such a vessel as Effluvium would hold at least a few dramatic elements. Instead, it proved only a matter of a few words spoken over the short-range comm, after which Slicer snugged up to Fluve and linked airlocks by means of Slicer's S-tunnel.

Hieri blew Yahna a kiss and flipped Jesti the finger. "Enjoy yourselfs. I'm off. My boys will find a hole in The Sponge to bed Slicer down."

And he was gone, Twil and Musla with him.

Yahna said, "The word is betrayal, Jesti."

"Uh. As I told Hieri, you may be right." Jesti drummed his fingers. "And maybe not. Either way, there's still a road open."

Her dark eyes widened. "A way out? No dream?"

"Betrayal works two ways. I am going down onto Jasbir.''

"On Jas-" Yahna stared at him incredulously, ripe-sullen lips half parted. "Jesti, you're talking lunacy! You have no way to get there. Even if you manage it, Hieri would be onplanet ahead of you. He'd have policers waiting. And you actually hope to find one man, a man whose name you don't even know-let alone his ident.i.tag or puterlabel."

Jesti gave her his most cheerful grin. "Golden, when you've got a problem and no answer, there are two ways to attack it. One's to beat your own brains out. The other's to get help."

She shot him a sidewise glance that clearly questioned his sanity. "And who do you propose to have helping you? TGW? CongCorp, maybe?"

Jesti made it his business to keep his face sober. "Actually I had it in mind to ask help from the local policers. Jasbiri."

"The policers!" Yahna's expression said she couldn't believe her bedangled ears. "The only help you'll get from them is your neck in a noose. They'd sell out their own mothers if CongCorp made an offer.''

"Could be." Jesti finger-flipped. "Even on Eilong we've 140.

heard how things work on Jasbir. So-I thought I might go about it all from a little different angle."

"But you said-"

"And you jumped to conclusions." He let that easy grin break out again. "Just don't try to second-guess me, Yahna. Either what I've got in mind will work, in which case you'll have to listen to my bragging. Or it won't, and you can water my grave with your tears-that is, if there's enough of me left to bury. And if you have tears."

"Either is doubtful," she said angrily. Swiftly, stiff-backed, she crossed to the equipment cabinet. She selected three fingernail-sized units and held them out. "Here. At least take these with you."

He eyed them suspiciously. "What are they?"

"What they call a silent siren, Jes," she said, not realizing that she had just used an intimate name for him, a name all hers. "You wear it against your skin. Anyone wants to alert you, it gives you a mild shock."

"Ah. Cute. These others?"

"This is a minicomm. Fits behind your ear so I can talk to you. This other-this is a throat-speaker, see, so you can answer." And then, when his face showed incredulity: "They work. Hieri wears a set."

Jesti had his doubts. Rather than argue the point, though, he took the units, muttered a quick "Thanks, Yahna," almost touched her, aborted that, and redshifted the con-cabin. He shoved off down the ship's tunnel that led to the airlock. He was surprised to see that an Effluvium III crewman had come along the big metal worm connecting the two ships.

The loutish-looking jacko lounged there, radiating a stench that told where he worked more clearly than words. The garbage scow odor well-nigh choked Jesti. Fighting off queasiness, he squatted beside the ridiculously spotless pale green coveralls. Equipped with a field that kept them so, of course.

"Your boss's gonna make an account fulla cred from this little stopover," he said conversationally, and as if enviously.

"Gah! You'repurplel"

141.

Jesti looked. "You're right. Happens, on my planet- Eilong. Makes me an Eilan miner. Doesn't rub off on anybody."

The other man chuckled. "Eye-lawng, huh? Live 'n' learn! I'm from Luhra, m'self. Anyhow-much good my boss's fortune'll do me. That sunuvagrat won't cut any of the rest of us in fer so much's a ministell."

"Really? Huh!" Jesti raised a sympathetic eyebrow, then let his eyes narrow to a pretense of thoughtful speculation. "Huh! Y'know ... it wouldn't have to work that way."

"s.h.i.t."

"No, really. Suppose somebody else wanted to get onto Ruby-and Jasbir.''

"I still hear ya. Why?"

"There's a great daktari down on Jasbir. We know all about 'im on Eilong because he can make us look normal- you know, like your skin. You gotny idea how tough it is being purple? So-that someone might be willing to pay enough to take your mind off your captain."

Jesti looked straight ahead. The man beside him stared at the deck. His scowl deepened. His mouth worked. "Huh. You, ahh, got cred, Eye-Ian?"

"Got cred," Jesti said. "If somebody was to be able to figure a way to get a man onboard Fluve on the sneak. And off again at the Ruby wheel without the guards there throwin' him a party."

"Fluve!" the Luhran chuckled. "Pretty good." He sagged back against the airlock wall, lowering his squat so his rump b.u.mped the deck. His struggle to use his brain grew clearly and painfully obvious. Luhra was a planet high on poets and boasted several of renown. Jestikhan Churt was sure that he was not in the presence of one. (He also crossed his fingers.) Abruptly the strained lines vanished from the face of the s.p.a.cegoing garbageman. Big teeth bared in a leering grin.

"Got it! There's a c.r.a.p-hatch aft. You know-regs say we can't dump s.h.i.t in s.p.a.ce, and n.o.body spends cred on nice stuff like recyclers for conwaste carriers. So we got this big tank unner our sitter, you know? We drop it into 142.

our slot when we dock. Maintenance picks it up, sells it to farmers, and sticks in another'n. They're the only ones touches it. Oh-Ruby's got no wheel, by the way. Ruby's got essin' little of anything, includin' gravity."

Jesti met the Luhran's grin with a piteous look. He sighed.

"You're telling me I'm gonna get to Ruby on a garbage scow, disguised as so many kilos of human waste."

"Nicely put. You got it. Best I can do."

Jesti said, "s.h.i.t."

"You got it."

Jesti did not choose to smile. He shuddered. It had to be true: the universe held no justice. The word, like the concept, was a human invention: And . . . virtue and good intentions get paid off in fecal matter. Yukh!

Beside him, shoulder touching shoulder in manner comradely, the Luhran was growing more enthusiastic by the moment: "It'll be great, honest! There's air an' all. You won't get burned because ole Effy-Fluve, Fluve, haha-don't use no chems. There's a trap in the sitter, too. I can even drop you down some dinner ..."

Jesti sighed. "Used or otherwise?"

13.

Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes It worked. The mask contrived by Jesti and his benefactor even kept the cess out of his face and orifices during the unfortunate freefall interlude and in Ruby's low-G, and the suit the garbageman sneaked him (in return for the bonus of Jesti's clothing, such as it was/had been) emerged spotless. Jesti did feel that his sense of smell had overloaded and departed to hide somewhere under a rock.

Ruby lived up to its name. Some weird twist of cosmic chemistry, some winking trick of primordial physics, had produced a medium-sized planetoid whose surface glistened with great gla.s.sy patches that were fused gemstone-red. They were not ray-ray and they had nothing to do with iron ore.

Jesti thought the moon was pretty handsome. The hard part was coping with the .4G. With each step he had the feeling that he was going to float up and away, to become one more lifeless piece of debris between the stars that, from Ruby, were very, very bright indeed. Being able to see the curve of the horizon was weird, too.

He did like the fact that security at the station and shuttleport were so lax as to be the Saipese twin of 143.

144.

nonexistent. Red-tunicked guards were sloppy and casual. Not even Jesti's purple skin affected their complacency. His effluvium did. He was ordered into Medical for a quick sonishower and desepsis. He emerged antiseptic and odorless, and was on his way.

Once out of the shuttleport and into Jasbir's planetary capital, Marmot, he faced a world more complex than he had seen or envisioned. Just a countryboy miner within a great tinted safetyplas dome that controlled atmosphere pressure and temp. Tinted off-amber to reduce the glare and heat of Jasbir's sun, Huygens, it also filtered out the bulk of the cosmic radiation that had been such a plague during the planet's early period of development. Huge cone-shaped catalytic converters, each topped with a gigantic crystal globe, reared in two neat rows, through the center of the metroplex. A network of multi-leveled transitways-tubeways in three colors-zigged and zagged about and among them in all directions. The tube-transport system radiated out from the city's heart past com'merical and industrial districts through estates and parklands, clear to the mammoth bionarium on the farthest edge.

Water, Jesti had heard, cauld be a problem on Jasbir. Marmot's answer was a central reclamation/recycling/ pumping/purification plant. That seemed a promising place to begin is program-his quest. The man he queried told him he liked Jesti's dye-job, and directed him to a kiosk called a s.p.a.cefarers' friend. The cybernetic directions-giver there pointed him to the rec-rec plant.

On the way someone else told Jesti she liked his dye-job and asked the name of the hue he'd chosen, and whether he'd done it himself or gone to a cytological chromatician. Jesti had no idea what that was. Without stopping he muttered that his color was a special skindye blend and was very big on Sekhar right now. He made his way to the vast water plant.

Apparently the reclamation/recycling facility was something of a showplace. Fountains and cascades--Marmot's watery bragging-and fantastic dioramas were drawing a mult.i.tude of visitors. Jesti wandered among them, relaxed and casual in his spotless pale green coverall, until he 145.

reached a corridor marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. It ended in a bright-red door an outsize KEEP OUT! sign. Authorities had emphasized that by locking the door.

Jesti pounded on it with his fist. Hard. Persistently.

At last the door was opened. An irritated-looking tech in a blue dress and yellow sandals--and a Rahmani fez, red-looked out. "What?"

"Sorry to bother you. The bra.s.s ought to install a buzzer or something, huh."

"Slice off," the man in the dress said, and started closing the door.

Jesti grabbed his arm and helped him close the door. On the man's wrist. He yelled and jumped back, pulling free and grabbing his wrist with his other hand. Jesti followed, kicking the door shut behind him as he moved in, and hit the bug a hard hand-blow just below the jaw. The man's eyes rolled up and he fell down. Since he didn't move, Jesti checked the lock on the door and inspected the chamber.

Valves were its predominant feature. Valves on panels, on pipes; valves linked to dials and pressure gauges in several colors. Off to one side, set into a wall socket, he spotted a control wheel as big around as his body. A metal bar locked it in place. A sign beside it identified it as SYSTEM EMERGENCY FLUSH.

Jesti looked about some more, smiling, purposeful now.

On the opposite side of the room from the big wheel, he smiled even more at a pla.s.s-fronted tool case, mounted on the wall. Its contents included a sledge hammer, handle neatly arced and angled so that even a child could handle it-presumably. Jesti borrowed the sledge hammer and attacked the locking bar of the wheel.

It took three blows before the bar broke. Jesti dropped the sledge and spun the wheel to full ON position. He crossed to the door and opened it. Far off, he heard the roar: gushing water. He also heard wild screams of panic.

Grinning, Jesti returned to the wheel and used the sledge on it.

The wheel made a sick and sickening noise and twisted- 146.

bent. Another blow snapped most of it off at the hub. It was going to be a long repair job.

From down the corridor, clamorous voices rose. Jesti tossed aside the sledge and sprinted from the control room. He was thoughtful enough to slam the door after him. The man in the blue dress snoozed on.

Three service personnel were racing toward Jesti. At a dead run, he raced toward them. He also gestured wildly. "Did you see him? Which way'd the sisterslicer go?"

"Who? What? Who?"

"Handsome man-Very handsome man! He's sabotaged the pumping system!"

"Holy s.h.i.t!"