The Galactic Trade Confederation called an urgent Special Summit. I didn’t get to go, of course—none of us pozzies did—but I have a pretty good idea of how it went down: the Grodos waved those six ugly appendages of theirs around and threatened everybody in sight with their ovipositor stings, blaming it all on the Colossaurs. The giant reptiles of Colossa grated their teeth and shook their tails menacingly, insisting the perpetrator was just a renegade and there was no call for blaming their whole species. The Cetians expressed dismay over the outrages committed by the flawed and wayward Cetian while considering how best to screw over the two other races. All this under a very thin veil of politeness.
Realpolitik, in a word.
Somebody had to pay the piper, so it ended in the usual shakedown, just as you’d expect. Either all the criminals got caught, or all the aliens left the Solar System. That would mean the end of human intergalactic trade, sending Homo sapiens back to the technological Middle Ages. They gave this good news to us pozzies to pass along to the humans, seeing as how we were the middlemen, so to speak.
It was a huge mess, and it dawned on us that we might be facing a much more complicated business than a simple gunfight. We all felt sorry that Zorro and Achilles were no longer among us, of course: we may be artificial, but our esprit de corps is real.
Not like it would be any skin off our backs if the humans were deprived of alien trade goods and trash, sentimental considerations aside. But with the aliens gone, there’d be no more reason to keep the Burroughs in orbit. They’d decommission it and sell it for scrap—and us along with it, no doubt.
Some pozzies profess a faith in an electronic great beyond and positronic reincarnation, but I doubt they would want to test the hypothesis.
Not within a humanly measurable time frame, I mean.
Faced with this threat, the Positronic Police Force went to Code Red. We had to nab the perps, no matter what. That didn’t mean we should all leave the station, though. Business had to keep moving, the show must go on. All it meant was, for this one time and only as an exception, somebody had to leave the safety of the Burroughs and hoof it across the Solar System, hunting down the fugitives.
As the first officer to reach the scene of the crime, my pals elected me to do the job. The top Confederation brass all agreed.
I accepted. I wasn’t particularly keen to go, but somebody had to do their dirty work, right? And if the guys with the secondnames had decided that I was the one for the job, well, maybe this would be my chance to get me a secondname of my own, after it was all over.
Not that they gave me any choice.
They granted me full authority inside the Station—for all the good that would do me. Fortunately, the aliens aren’t dumb: seeing as the fugitives must have holed up in some rocky corner of the Solar System, they made a couple calls and got my carte blanche extended over almost all the space under human control. Except Earth, naturally.
Not because the Homo sapiens police didn’t want to suck up to our omnipotent employers, but because there’s a limit to everything. Too many resentful, xenophobic fundamentalist hotheads on the old planet would give their right arms (not much of a sacrifice, considering the current state of medicine and reconstructive grafts, but take it as a metaphor) to shred one of the hated pozzies, the aliens’ guard dogs. Even if I left my usual Humphrey Bogart fedora and trench coat behind, my golden epidermis would give me away. Not even the police could protect me from a determined attacker. Or protect the attacker from my counterattacks. No point stirring things up. I’d get to see Earth some other occasion. There’d be time.
But apart from the sacred cradle of humanity, I could go wherever I wanted. And request (that is, demand) the cooperation of any human authorities, federal or local.
When the Galactic Trade Confederation informed me of the wide authorization I’d been granted, I understood just how worried they were about what Makrow 34 and his friends might do—and that if I didn’t find them in time, I’d probably envy the fate of Zorro and Achilles.
First thing I did was rewatch the holotapes, over and over. I was intrigued by what happened to Achilles. He didn’t have time to understand what he had run up against, and the first few times I watched the recording, I didn’t get it either. It seemed like just a lot of bad luck, all coming at once and at the worst possible time. First he moved too slow and aimed badly. Then more slowness, topped off by a weapon malfunction. We checked, cleaned, and adjusted our weapons every day, so a misfire was unlikely, but it wasn’t out of the question.
I started by inspecting my buddy’s maser. It was in perfect condition: he hadn’t forgotten to oil it, the energy crystals were in top shape, no dust on the prisms. So what, then? Was it the buttered toast phenomenon—always falls butter-side down? Or Murphy’s law: whatever can go wrong will go wrong, especially when it does the most harm?
In principle, I don’t believe the universe has a statistical grudge against anybody. I kept looking. But it wasn’t until I was watching the scene for the third time that I noticed the detail. If I had involuntary muscle reactions like humans do, I would have trembled when I recognized the concentration on Makrow 34’s face as Achilles approached him and opened fire.
Especially with Zorro’s whip and black sombrero levitating as though the artificial gravity had gone out over that square yard of space. They were in the
