‘Follow me, I’ll take you.’
Frey told the others to wait by the Ketty Jay, and then trailed after the man towards the dock master’s office. It was a grim, low-ceilinged affair, more like a large shed than an administrative building. Dirty windows were divided into small rectangular panes. The door stuck and had to be wrenched open: the frame had warped in the dank air.
Inside, the gloom was barely leavened by a single oil lantern. The dock master - a thin, old man with a pinched face - was hunched over a desk, writing with a pen. On the other side of the room was a lectern, where a huge book lay open. It was full of names and dates.
Frey waited to be noticed. The man with the lazy eye waited with him. The smell from the swamp lingered in the nostrils, faintly disgusting. Frey suspected that the locals didn’t notice it any more.
After a short time, the dock master looked up. ‘Well, sign in, then!’ he snapped, indicating the book on the lectern. ‘Olric, honestly! Why don’t you just tell him to sign in?’
Olric looked shamefaced. Frey went over to the book and picked up the pen that lay next to it. He scanned over the entries. Each line bore the name of a captain, the name of an aircraft, and the date and time of arrival and, in some cases, departure. At the bottom of each double page the dock master had signed his name and title in crabbed script.
He flicked back a few pages, idly searching for someone he knew. Maybe Trinica would be in here.
‘Busy recently, aren’t you?’ he commented. ‘You usually get this much traffic?’
‘Just sign,’ the dock master said impatiently, not looking up from his records.
Frey’s decision to confine most of the crew to the craft wasn’t popular with one man in particular.
‘You stinking bastard, Frey!’ Pinn cried. ‘You didn’t even believe Retribution Falls existed until now! I told you we should come here when we were back in Yortland, but oh, no! You thought: let’s all laugh at Pinn! Well I called it right, and I deserve to come.’
‘Shut your fat meat-hole, Pinn,’ Malvery said. ‘Cap’n’s given you an order.’
‘Oh really? Well he can stuff it up his arse with all the other orders he’s given me!’
Frey looked at Silo. ‘If he tries to leave, shoot him,’ he said, only half-joking.
‘Cap’n,’ Silo replied, priming his shotgun with a crunch.
Pinn looked around at the rest of the crew, finding no support, and then stamped back into the depths of the craft, muttering mutinously.
‘Jez, Malvery, come on,’ he said. ‘We keep a low profile, have a look around, keep our ears open. And don’t anybody call me anything but Cap’n, okay? I don’t want to hear my name spoken outside of the Ketty Jay.’
‘Right-o.’
‘Everyone got revolvers? Good. You never know.’
They headed across the landing pad towards the bridge to the town. Frey was rather pleased with himself for standing firm against Pinn’s outburst. Pinn was envisioning a night out in this pirate haven, but Frey needed to be able to effect a quick escape if necessary, without the need to go searching under bar tables for his drunken crew. Taking the whole group out would be like trying to herd cats.
He reviewed the tactics behind his choice of landing party. Separating Malvery and Pinn was the key. Pinn wouldn’t cause any trouble without the doctor’s back-up, and since Malvery was coming
