"Small as you'd ever want," he agreed, grinning with a mouthful of uneven teeth.

Rumor had it they'd started out perfectly straight, but that every time one was knocked out during a brawl he'd had it put back crooked just to make himself look meaner. "Waiting to make a call, huh?"

"Yes," I said, bowing to the inevitable. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Oh, I think you can do better than one measly drink," he said. "How much cash you got on you?"

I stared at him, warning bells belatedly going off in the back of my mind.

Fulbright was still smiling, but I could now see the hard edge beneath the grin.

He was definitely not here just to cadge drinks. "What are you talking about?"

I.

demanded quietly.

"I'm talking about a shakedown," he said, lowering his voice to match mine.

"What'd you think? All for your own good, of course. So. You got ten grand on you? That's what it's gonna take, you know. At least ten grand."

For a good three seconds I just stared at him, wondering what in h.e.l.l was going on. There he sat, alone, both hands on the table, his right casually holding afolded piece of paper, his left open and empty. His sleeves were too tight to be concealing a quick-throw gun or knife, and there was no way he could beat me to a standard draw with his jacket zipped and mine half-open. It was possible he had a backup somewhere in the room already targeting me; but even drawing a weapon in here would be begging for trouble, and starting a firefight would be even worse. And why pick on me in the first place? "Maybe you don't know I'm not running independent anymore," I said at last. "I'm connected with a pretty big organization. They wouldn't think much of this."

His smile went a bit more brittle. "Yeah, well, whoever they are, I can guarantee they won't lift a finger to help you on this one," he said. "Believe it or not, Jordie, I'm your only friend in this room right now." With a smooth motion, he flipped open the paper in his hand and swiveled it around to face me.

I glanced down. And found myself looking at my own Mercantile Authority file photo.

I looked up at Fulbright, startled. "Go ahead," he said encouragingly. "Read it."

I looked back down at the flyer. It was an urgent request for information about the current location of one Jordan McKell, pilot/captain of the Orion-cla.s.s freighter Icarus, registry and configuration unknown. It didn't say why McKell was being sought, but included two contact numbers, a local Dorscind's World phone number and a StarrComm vid connect-the latter, like Brother John's number, one of the anonymous types that gave no indication of which world it was connected to.

It also promised a reward to the one who fingered me. A straight five thousand commarks.

"I don't know what you've done now, Jordie," Fulbright said softly, "but you're in one h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble. Everyone in this place probably has one of these things by now-the guy was pa.s.sing them out like free fruit sticks. The only reason you're still walking around is that that's such a lousy picture."

He grinned. "That, plus no one figured you'd come to a sleazepit like this.

I'd guess that's what's tying up the StarrComm lines-everyone's calling their buddies to pa.s.s the word."

"Probably," I murmured. But someone thought I might come to a sleazepit like this; whoever was at the other end of that phone number, at the very least.

Someone was very intent here about covering all the bases, and from all indications he was covering them very well. And unlike the Lumpy Brothers, that same someone knew the name of the ship I was flying. "Tell me, was this walking fruit-stick tray a bipedal alien with long arms and lumpy skin?"

Fulbright's forehead creased slightly. "Naw, he was a human. Short and kind of wimpish-your basic accountant type."

"Doesn't sound like he really belongs in a place like this," I suggested. "You sure it's not a scam of some sort?"

"At a hundred commarks a crack?" Fulbright scoffed. "Who cares?"

I frowned. "A hundred? The flyer says five thousand."

"That's the finder's fee," Fulbright said. "The guy's been handing out a hundred with each flyer. Just to make sure it gets read, I guess."I felt cold all over. Five thousand commarks to find me-that could be anything, from anywhere. But for the hunter to be pa.s.sing out additional thousands of commarks in cash just to generate interest meant something very big indeed was going on.

And the only thing that had saved me so far was that abominably poor photo in my Mercantile file. That, and the fact that the one person here who did recognize me was angling for a higher bounty. "Okay," I said to Fulbright. "Ten thousand it is. But I don't have it on me. We'll have to go back to the ship."

His eyes narrowed, and in the twitching of his eyebrows and lips I could practically read his line of reasoning: that if he was able to get a good look at the Icarus, he might be able to peddle the description for another few thousand from the unidentified accountant type. "Okay," he said, unzipping his jacket and stuffing the flyer into an inside pocket. He stood up, giving me a glimpse of a gray handgun holstered at the left side of his belt, and nodded toward the door. "Sure. Let's go."

We headed out of the taverno, crossed the lobby, and out the StarrComm- building door. Halfway across the lobby he surrept.i.tiously pulled his gun from its holster and stuffed it and his right hand into his side jacket pocket. Former drinking buddies or not, he obviously didn't trust me very far. "Which landing cradle are you in?" he asked as I headed toward the nearest slideway, which happened to be headed north.

"You can read the number for yourself when we get there," I grunted, looking surrept.i.tiously around for inspiration. This particular slideway didn't seem well populated, and it didn't take a genius to see why: instead of being taken to the main bulk of the docking squares, we were headed toward what appeared to be a maintenance area.

A fact which wasn't lost on Fulbright. "I hope you're not trying to pull something on your old pal, Jordie," he warned, stepping up close behind me and pressing the muzzle of his gun into my back. Even through the concealing jacket material I imagined it felt very cold. "Because I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like that at all."

"You don't think I'd put a hot ship down in one of the regular cradles, do you?"

I countered, looking down at my feet. The slideway was mainly solid, but just ahead on our right was one of a number of holes where small patches of the material had worn off or torn away at the edge of the moving belt. This particular tear was roughly triangular, leaving a gap about ten centimeters long and five wide through which I could see the grillwork of the underlying support and drive system zipping past. Every half second or so a bright blue light winked past, probably a glow that helped mark the edge of the slideway at night.

"So where is it?" Fulbright demanded.

"Patience, James, patience," I said, gazing down at the triangular tear and the grillwork underneath and doing a quick mental calculation. It would be tight, not to mention destructive, but it should work.

I half turned my head and gestured toward my jacket. "My phone's vibing," I told him. "Okay if I answer it?"Out of the corner of my eye I caught his frown. "Leave it," he ordered.

"Not recommended," I told him mildly. "My partner will come looking for me if I.

don't answer. You don't want to mess with him. Certainly not for a measly five thousand commarks."

Once again, I could almost watch the gears turning in his head. He'd never actually met Ixil-we'd always been careful to keep Ixil in a low-profile position when dealing with gangs and their antialien biases-but I'd planted enough hints with Fulbright that he had a pretty good idea of my partner's capabilities. I waited patiently, letting him work it out for himself, not in any particular hurry. We were starting to get into the maintenance and supply areas now, where the only people around were generally working inside the various buildings. Working, moreover, with the kind of heavy machinery that would effectively drown out the sounds of trouble, up to and including gunshots.

The deeper we got into this area, the better I liked it.

"All right," he said suddenly, stepping close behind me and getting a grip on my jacket collar as he again jammed his gun warningly into my kidney. "Take it out slow-two fingers, left hand."

Carefully, I eased my jacket open and just as carefully pulled out my phone.

"Okay?" I asked, holding it up for his approval. Without waiting for an answer, I shifted my grip on the phone and brought it to my ear.

Or rather, tried to do so. Somewhere along the way my fingers suddenly fumbled and the phone squirted out of my hand to clatter onto the slideway in front of me.

"d.a.m.n!" I muttered, taking a long step forward.

If I'd given Fulbright half a second to think, he probably wouldn't have fallen for it. But I didn't; and he did. Just as it was perfectly natural for me to try to retrieve my phone, so, too, was it perfectly natural for him to courteously let go of my jacket to enable me to do so. I dropped to one knee and snagged the phone just as it was about to skitter off the edge of the slideway; and with a quick jerk I jammed the lower end through the hole in the belt and into the gridwork beneath.

For a split second the slideway faltered, just a brief instant before the sheer inertia of the system overcame the slender piece of plastic and metal and tore the phone to shreds. But it was enough. Caught completely flatfooted, Fulbright lost his balance and stumbled forward, his knees coming up short against my side, the impact sending him tumbling helplessly over my back to sprawl on the slideway.

I was on him in an instant, locking his right wrist in place with one hand and trying to get a clear shot at his neck or stomach with the other. He struggled furiously, mouthing curses that would have frosted gla.s.s, but he didn't have a chance and he knew it. He was lying on his free left arm, and with me keeping his right hand trapped in his pocket he couldn't even bring his gun to bear on me. Besides all of which, I was bigger than he was.

I got an opening and slammed my fist into his neck just behind his ear. He twitched and gave a weak roar that was more than half whimper. I hit him again, and he collapsed and lay still.I took a few seconds to catch my breath and take a quick look around. No one was visible. Keeping a cautious hold on his gun hand, I worked the weapon out of his grip and pulled it out of the pocket. It was a Kochran-Uzi compact three-millimeter semiautomatic, a nasty enough weapon in a taverno fight but an extremely stupid thing to carry aboard a starship, where a bullet can go through machinery and hulls with all sorts of unpleasant consequences. Dropping the gun into my pocket, I hauled the unconscious man half to his feet and half leaped, half fell off the slideway.

About ten meters to my right was a stack of empty forklift pallets piled up against the corner of one of the buildings. Getting a grip under Fulbright's arms, I dragged him over and laid him down on the ground facing them. His jacket, like mine, was leather, but his shirt was made of a thick but more pliable cloth. I pulled his right arm out of the jacket sleeve, carefully sliced off the exposed shirtsleeve with my pocketknife, put the jacket back on him, and cut the sleeve into thick strips. Two minutes later, his hands were tied securely behind him and he had a gag in his mouth. Another three minutes' work and I had manhandled one of the pallets down off the top of the stack and had the edge of it resting more or less comfortably across his legs, with most of the weight being supported by the stiff soles of his boots.

Fulbright wasn't going anywhere for a while, and for a long moment I was tempted to leave it at that and get out while I could. But that five-thousand-commark reward meant that someone out there had upped the ante on this game, and I still didn't have the foggiest idea what the stakes were or even what the game was.

But with a little luck, maybe I could at least find out who some of the other players were.

Fulbright's phone was in the same pocket as the flyer. I pulled out both, consulted the flyer, then punched in the local number it listed. A voice answered on the second vibe; a voice, I decided, that definitely fit with the wimpish accountant description. "Thompson," he said briskly.

"My name's James," I said, imitating Fulbright's voice as best I could. Odds were Thompson wouldn't even remember James Fulbright, let alone his voice, but I'd already taken more chances than I cared to for one day. "That guy you're looking for-Jordan McKell? You said five thousand for finding him. How much for delivering him all trussed up?"

He didn't hesitate. "Ten thousand," he said. "Do you have him there now?"

I felt my throat tighten, my somewhat snide preconception of the man vanishing in a puff of unpleasant smoke. No accountant I'd ever met was anywhere near that quick and free with the money they handled. Whoever Thompson was, he was no simple flunky. "Yeah, I got him," I said. "I'll be waiting for you off the north s.p.a.ceport slideway, next to the Number Twelve machine shop. Bring the money."

"We'll be there in fifteen minutes," he promised, and hung up.

I put the phone away, scowling to myself. We. That meant he was bringing friends, almost certainly friends with muscle. I would have liked to have told him to come alone, but that would have looked suspicious-a man who pa.s.ses out hundred-commark bills as a come-on would hardly try to stiff a customer,certainly not over ten grand. Once again, I considered that the better part of valor would be to run for it; once again, I made myself stay put. I set the stage as best I could, then settled down to wait.

HE WAS THERE well within his promised fifteen minutes, and he did indeed have muscle with him. Unpleasantly familiar muscle: two more members of the Lumpy Clan. Apparently these things liked to travel in pairs.

"Mr. James?" Thompson called toward me as he and the Lumpies hopped off the slideway.

"Right here," I called back, half turning to look vaguely over my shoulder at them as I waved a hand in invitation. I was squatting down facing the now conscious Fulbright with my back to them, a position I hoped would disguise any of the height-and-build cues that might give away my ident.i.ty. "Come on, hurry,"

I added. "I think he's coming to."

Lying on his left side with his back also to them, Fulbright had his head twisted around and was glaring daggers up at me. But with his gag still in place, and his hands and feet still immobilized, there wasn't a lot he could do about the situation. Even without the gag he probably wouldn't have had much to say, not with my plasmic half-concealed inside my jacket digging into his side.

If we both made it off Dorscind's World intact, I suspected, he wasn't going to be smiling cheerfully the next time we ran into each other.

But at the moment I couldn't be bothered about such vague and uncertain futures.

Right now my sole concern was whether or not I could survive the next ten seconds.

I needn't have worried. Thompson might be more than a flunky, and the Lumpies were professional enough in their own right, but it apparently never occurred to any of them that their quarry might pull something this insane. They hurried incautiously forward, the Lumpies pulling a pace or two ahead of Thompson; and then, as they got within three steps of me, I snapped my head left as if I'd suddenly seen something and jabbed a finger toward a gap between two of the maintenance buildings. "Watch out!" I barked.

The Lumpies were professionals, all right. Braking to an instant halt, they jumped backward in unison, putting themselves between Thompson and the unknown danger. I jumped back, too, landing upright beside Thompson; and as the Lumpies yanked their guns out of their back holsters, I slid around behind Thompson, got an arm around his neck, and pressed my plasmic into his right ear. "Don't turn around," I said conversationally. "But do set your weapons on the ground."

Again in unison, and flagrantly ignoring my orders, they started to swivel around. I shifted my aim and sent a plasma blast directly between them to spatter off the ground ahead. "I said not to turn around," I reminded them, returning my plasmic to its previous resting place against Thompson's sideburn.

He flinched away from the residual muzzle heat, but I pressed it hard against the skin. It wouldn't damage him, and I'd always found that a little mild pain did wonders for cooperation. Especially with people who weren't used to it.

Thompson was apparently very unused to pain. "Don't move," he secondedhastily, his voice breaking slightly at the top. "Do what he says-he means it."

"I do indeed," I agreed. "Anyway, heroics would be wasted. I'm not going to hurt anyone unless I have to-don't forget I could have shot both of you in the back just now. So be smart and put your guns on the ground in front of you-slowly, of course-and then take two steps past them."

They obeyed quickly and without argument, raising my estimation of Thompson's status another couple of notches. He might look like an accountant with no stomach for even potential conflict; but when he talked, even in a squeaky voice, people listened.

More importantly, they obeyed. The Lumpies became models of cooperation, dutifully stepping past their weapons and lying facedown as I ordered with their hands visible. I retrieved their guns-between them and Fulbright and the first set of Lumpies, I was starting to make a nice little weapons collection here- and had Thompson relieve them of the restraints I knew they would have brought with them.

He came up with two sets, which seemed to be one set too many unless they either had planned to stiff Fulbright or else intended to shackle me hand and foot and carry me away draped over someone's shoulder like a bag of cement. But whatever the reason, it was certainly a convenient number for my purposes. A minute later I had the Lumpies cuffed together through one of the slots in the bottom pallet with Thompson cuffed on the other side of the stack. With the weight of the rest of the stack on top, and the utter lack of leverage any of them had to work with, I was pretty sure they would stay put until someone happened by, which from the evidence would probably not be until the next shift change at the maintenance buildings. Hopefully, that wouldn't be for at least another couple of hours.

"You won't get away with this," Thompson warned as I went quickly through his pockets. "Not a chance in the universe. If you release me now, I promise nothing will happen to you because of this incident."

"Nothing over and above what you planned to do to me anyway?" I suggested.

"Thanks, but I'll take my chances."

"Your chances don't exist, McKell," he said flatly. "And we don't want you, anyway. All we want is the Icarus. All of you are free to go." He c.o.c.ked his head to the side as he looked up at me, a gesture that somehow made him look even more like an accountant. "I'll do better, in fact. I can promise you that if you'll turn the Icarus over to me, you'll profit quite handsomely on the deal."

"Thanks, but this will do," I said, withdrawing a neat stack of hundred- commark bills from one of his inside pockets. "I know it's not nice to steal," I added, slipping the stack into my pocket, "but we're likely to have some unexpected expenses along the way. If you'll give me your name and address, I'll make sureyou're properly reimbursed."

"Fifty thousand, McKell," he said, staring unblinkingly into my eyes. "Fifty thousand commarks to take me to the Icarus and walk away."

I gazed down at him, a hard lump forming in my throat. What in h.e.l.l's name were we carrying, anyway? "I appreciate the offer," I said, checking the other inside pocket. This one yielded a phone and a slim doc.u.ments folder. "But I'm already under contract."

"A hundred thousand," he said. "Five hundred thousand. Name your price."

I patted his shoulder and stood up. "You might be surprised sometime to find out what money can't buy," I said, tossing his phone onto the stack of pallets where none of them could reach it and pocketing the doc.u.ments folder. "See you around."

"You're making a big mistake, McKell," he said. His voice was quiet, but it held an absolute conviction that sent a chill up my back. "You have no idea who you're dealing with."

"Maybe this will tell me," I countered, tapping the pocket where I'd put his folder.

I pa.s.sed around to the other side of the pallets, where Fulbright was still lying trussed up glaring at me. "Sorry about this, James," I apologized. "I'll make it up to you next time, all right?"

The look in his eyes made it abundantly clear what his plans were for the next time. But again, that was a future too distant to worry about right now.

I hopped on the southbound slideway and headed back toward the s.p.a.ceport center, keeping an eye on the Lumpies and Thompson as long as they were in sight. The minute they were lost to view I got off the slideway and headed east toward the Icarus's landing cradle, walking quickly along until I reached a properly directed slideway and getting on it.

And there, with finally a moment of breathing s.p.a.ce, I opened Thompson's folder and started going through his papers. I was only halfway through when I put them back into my pocket and pulled out Fulbright's phone.

"Yes?" Ixil's melodic voice answered.

"It's me," I said. "How's the fueling going?"

"Probably no more than a quarter finished," he said. "They only got here

fifteen.

minutes ago."