“What? Playing house with a wench?”
He nodded.
“What was it like?”
“I don’t know.”
“You woke up calling her Fran.”
“I did?”
“Yah. Before you start feeling that way, you better ask Beasley what they did together on the rug while you were asleep, Romeo.”
“What?”
“She really knows some tricks. Mme. d’Annecy really educates her girls. You been kissing and cooing with her, Relke?”
“I’m sick, Joe. Don’t.”
“By the way, you better not go back. The Madame’s pretty sore at you.”
“Why?”
“For keeping the wench gone so long. There was going to be a show. You know, a circus. Giselle was supposed to be in it. You might say she had the lead role.”
“Who?”
“Giselle. Still feel like calling her Fran?—Hey! if you’re going to vomit, get out of bed.”
Relke staggered into the latrine. He was gone a long time.
“Better hurry up,” Novotny called. “Our shift goes on in half an hour.”
“I can’t go on, Joe.”
“The hell you can’t. Unless you want to be sent up N.L.D. You know what they do to N.L.D. cases.”
“You wouldn’t report me N.L.D.”
“The hell I wouldn’t, but I don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Parkeson’s coming, with a team of inspectors. They’re probably already here, and plenty sore.”
“About the ship? The women?”
“I don’t know. If the Commission hear about those bats, there’ll be hell to pay. But who’ll pay it is something else.”
Relke buried his face in his hands and tried to think. “Joe, listen. I only half remember, but… there was a cell meeting here.”
“When?”
“After Larkin and Kunz worked me over. Some guys came in, and…”
“Well?”
“It’s foggy. Something about Parkeson taking the women back to Crater City.”
“Hell, that’s a screwy idea. Who thinks that?”
Relke shook his head and tried to think. He came out of the latrine mopping his face on a towel. “I’m trying to remember.”
Joe got up. “All right. Better get your suit. Let’s go pull cable.”
The lineman breathed deeply a few times and winced at the effect. He went to get his suit out of the hangar, started the routine safety check, and stopped halfway through. “Joe, my suit’s been cut.”
Novotny came to look. He pinched the thick corded plastic until the incision opened like a mouth. “Knife,” he grunted.
“Those sons of—”
“Yah.” He fingered the cut. “They meant for you to find it, though. It’s too conspicuous. It’s a threat.”
“Well, I’m fed up with their threats. I’m going to—”
“You’re not going to do anything, Relke.
“What have you got in mind, Joe?”
“Henderson and I will handle it. We’ll go over and have a little conference with them, that’s all.”
“Why Henderson? Look, Joe, if you’re going to stomp them, it’s my grudge, not Lije’s.”
“That’s just it. If I take you, it’s a grudge. If Lije and I do it, it’s just politics. I’ve told you guys before—leave the politics to me. Come on, we’ll get you a suit from the emergency locker.”
They went out into the transformer vault. Two men wearing blue armbands were bending over Brodanovitch’s corpse. One of them was fluently cursing unknown parties who had brought the body to a warm place and allowed it to thaw.
“Investigating team,” Novotny muttered. “Means Parkeson is already here.” He hiked off toward the emergency lockers.
“Hey, are you the guy that left this stiff near a stove?” one of the investigators called out to Relke.
“No, but I’ll be glad to rat on the guys that did, if it’ll get them in trouble,” the lineman told him.
“Never mind. You can’t hang them for being stupid.”
“What are you going to do with
“Promote him to supervisory engineer and give him a raise.”
“Christ but they hire smart boys for the snooper team, don’t they? What’s your I.Q., friend? I bet they had to breed you to get smart.”
The checker grinned. “You looking for an argument, Slim?”
Relke shook his head. “No, I just asked a question.”
“We’re going to take him back to Copernicus and bury him, friend. It takes a lot of imagination to figure that out, doesn’t it?”
“If he was a class three laborer, you wouldn’t take him back to Copernicus. You wouldn’t even bury him. You’d just chuck him in a fissure and dynamite the lip.”
The man smiled. Patient cynicism was in his tone. “But he’s
“Sure. Is Parkeson around?”
The checker glanced up and snickered. “You’re a chum of his, I guess? Hear that, Clyde? We’re talking to a wheel.”
Relke reddened. “Shove it, chum. I just wondered if he’s here.”
“Sure, he’s out here. He went over to see that flying bordello you guys have been hiding out here.”
“What’s he going to do about it?”
“Couldn’t say, friend.”
Novotny came back with an extra suit.
“Joe, I just remembered something.”
“Tell me about it on the way back.”
They suited up and went out to the runabout. Relke told what he could remember about the cell meeting.
“It sounds crazy in a way,” Novotny said thoughtfully. “Or maybe it doesn’t. It
“But Parkeson’d get fired in a flash if—”
“If Parliament got wind of it, sure. Unless he raised the squawk later himself. UCOJE doesn’t mention prostitution. Parkeson could point out that some national codes on Earth tolerate it. Nations with delegates in the Parliament, and with work teams on the moon. Take the African team at Tycho. And the Japanese team. Parkeson himself is an Aussie. Whose law is he supposed to enforce?”
“You mean maybe they can’t keep ships like that from visiting us?”
“Don’t kid yourself. It won’t last long. But maybe long enough. If it goes on long enough, and builds up, the general public will find out. You think that wouldn’t cause some screaming back home?”
“Yeah. That’ll be the end.”
“I’m wondering. If there turns out to be a profit in it for whoever’s backing d’Annecy, well—anything that
