plunged to the black-carpeted saloon floor.
“I think your drink was poisoned,” said Smith, wiping his hand on his trouser leg.
“I know damn well it was, Smith,” said the sourfaced little man. “And you’ve just advertised the fact to half the lamebrains who’re traveling on this tub.”
“Frosting,” muttered Smith as he waded along the corridor leading to his cabin.
The ribbed plaz floor was awash with nearly a foot of lukewarm sudsy water.
“Is that, you know, some Barnum curse word that the boys exchange around the locker room?” A slim, pretty blonde young woman had emerged from a sliding-paneled doorway just to his right. She wore a snug-fitting space steward unisuit of green and gold.
“Actually, no, Mercy Jane,” said Smith, halting in the tepid foamy water.
“I like to keep up on as much jargon as I can. So, you know, if people are exclaiming, ‘Oh, frosting!’ in moments of stress, why I want-”
“I was commenting to myself that the corridor being all futzed up was just so much frosting on the cake. The cake being a frumus that just took place up in the saloon.”
“I get it. Simile and metaphor,” she said, smiling brightly.
“More or less.”
“The laundrybots are having some problems,” explained the pretty spaceflight attendant. “Like, you know, they started falling down a lot. That oftentimes happens, but don’t tell anybody I told you. Usually right after we make our hyperspace jump, which we just did moments ago. Me, I get sort of woozy in the tummy, but the laundrybots fall over and lots of water gets spilled.”
“About how long do you think it’ll be before the water gets cleaned up?”
“Depends, you know, on how soon the vacuubots wake up.”
“This is their nap period?”
She laughed. “No, it’s simply that, you know, they pass out every darn time we make a hyperspace jump,” she said. “I hope all this isn’t giving you a bad impression of the
“Your kind attentions, Mercy Jane, have more than made up for any little inconvenience like soggy ankles.” Grinning at her, he resumed his walk along the damp corridor.
“Would it cheer you up any if we, you know, went to your bunk and fooled around?” she asked, sloshing along beside him. “I have the next twenty-two minutes free.”
“It usually takes me that long just to get undressed,” Smith told her. “Besides, I’m expecting a visitor. I appreciate the offer, though.”
“You don’t find me repulsive, do you?”
“Not at all.”
“With so many different types of life in the universe, you know, a girl can’t always tell who she appeals to and who she doesn’t. Or should that be whom?” Mercy Jane said. “We even have a passenger on this very flight who’s traveling with four lizardladies. Four. Urf, that makes my skin all crawly.”
Halting at his door, Smith pressed his hand to the printrec plate. The door stuttered open. “Thanks for the kind thoughts.”
“Think nothing of it.” She patted his backside and hurried away.
Smith entered his cabin, pleased to notice that the floor was dry.
“Thought for a moment you were going to drag that skinny lass in here,” said Whistler, as he materialized near the bunk.
“So did I.” Smith dropped into a floating plaz sling-chair.”
“Then I decided, duty first.”
“I’ve got some new info for you,” said the detective agency terminal.
“First,” suggested Smith, “let me give you some.”
CHAPTER 5
“So tell me what…oops!” Whistler’s screen turned all at once an intense crimson.
“You okay?”
“Hush.” The terminal swooped down near the floor.
From its underside came a thin line of green light. The pulsating beam cut a small oval swatch out of the thermocarpet.
A tiny flat spybug had been nesting under the rug. Whistler sucked it up into its interior.
Smith said, “Who the hell planted-”
“Silence.” The terminal floated up to the sewdometal ceiling.
From within one of the three floating light balls Whistler extracted a second bugging device, this one larger.
“Now?” asked Smith, settling back into his chair.
“That’s the lot.” Whistler drifted down to a spot some four feet above the floor. “All those months of booze must’ve addled your wits, Smitty. You should’ve spotted these eavesdropping gadgets.”
“My fault, sure,” admitted Smith. “Thing is, you guys assured me this assignment was simple and routine. That lulled me into-”
“Being lulled is one thing, being jackass stupid is another.”
“Speaking of stupidity, how come you guys didn’t mention that the Trinidad Law Bureau was interested in this case? If you did know and forgot to tell me, that was stupid, too.”
“What makes you think TLB’s involved?”
Smith grinned. “I just bumped into Deac Constiner up in the saloon.”
“Constiner? He’s just about their best man. Are you certain he-”
“He didn’t give me a signed deposition, no,” said Smith. “He claims he’s just going back home after attending a law conference on Barnum.”
“That might be true.”
“Might, but I think he got wind of us somehow and got himself down to Barnum so he could catch the
Whistler produced a faint buzzing sound. “Your hunch may just be right Smitty,” it said. “The under-the-rug snooping device tests out as standard Trinidad Law Bureau equipment.”
“Then they are interested in me,” Smith said. “That’s odd, if all that’s involved is a class reunion.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Whistler commenced humming again. “Tell you something else of interest, chum. The second spy gadget my keen senses detected is of maverick design.”
“Not TLB?”
“Nothing they’ve ever utilized before. I can’t even ID it right off,” replied the floating terminal. “It ain’t of Trinidad or Barnum System manufacture.”
Smith held out his hand, palm up. “Let me see.”
“Listen, inside me is equipment clever enough to identify, eventually, just about any-”
“A look.”
“Okay.” The bug dropped from beneath the terminal, went drifting over to Smith. “But if my highly-”
“Earth.” Smith tossed the little device up and caught it after examining it.
“The planet Earth in the Earth System?”
“That Earth, yep.”
“Heck of a ways from here. I can’t see why Earth agents’d be at all interested in-”
“The equipment comes from Earth,” said Smith. “But I’ve seen people out here use stuff like this.”
“This seems to indicate there’s more than one agent interested in you.”
