these tight-fitting creations reminded Amalfi of a period which considerably antedated the Night of Hadjjii—or any other event in the history of space flight.
And the thugs carried meson pistols. These heavy, cumbersome weapons could be held in one hand, but two hands were needed to fire them. They were very modern side arms to find in a border star cluster. They were only about a century out of date. This made them thoroughly up-to-date as far as the city’s own armament was concerned.
The pistols told Amalfi several other things that he needed to know. Their existence here could mean only one thing: that the Acolytes had had a recent contact with one of those pollinating bees of the galaxy, an Okie city. Furthermore, the probability was not high that it had been the sole Okie contact the Acolytes had had for a long time, as Amalfi might otherwise have assumed.
It took years to build up the technology to mass produce meson pistols so that ordinary cops could pack them. It took more years still, years spent in fairly frequent contact with other technologies, to make adoption of the pistol possible at all. The pistol, then, confirmed unusually frequent contact with other Okies, which, in turn, meant that there was a garage planet here, as Amalfi had hoped.
The pistol also told Amalfi something else, which he did not much like. The meson pistol was not a good antipersonnel weapon.
It was much more suitable for demolition work.
The cops could still swagger in Amalfi’s office, but they could not stomp effectively. The floor was too thickly carpeted. Amalfi never used the ancient, plushy office, with its big black mahogany desk and other antiques, except for official occasions. The control tower was his normal on-duty habitat, but that was closed to non-citizens.
“What’s your business?” the police lieutenant barked at Hazleton. Hazleton, standing beside the desk, said nothing, but merely jerked his head toward where Amalfi was seated, and resumed looking at the big screen back of the desk.
“Are you the mayor of this burg?” the lieutenant demanded.
“I am,” Amalfi said, removing a cigar from his mouth and looking the lieutenant over with lidless eyes. He decided that he did not like the lieutenant. His rump was too big. If a man is going to be barrel-shaped, he ought to do a good job of it, as Amalfi had. Amalfi had no use for top-shaped men.
“All right, answer the question, Fatty. What’s your business?”
“Petroleum geology.”
“You’re lying. You’re not dealing with some isolated, type Four-Q podunk now, Okie. These are the Acolyte stars.”
Hazleton looked with pointedly vague puzzlement at the lieutenant, and then back to the screen, which showed no stars at all within any reasonable distance.
The by-play was lost on the cop. “Petroleum geology isn’t a business with Okies,” he said. “You’d all starve if you didn’t know how to mine and crack oil for food. Now give me a straight answer before I decide you’re a vagrant and get tough.”
Amalfi said evenly, “Our business is petroleum geology. Naturally we’ve developed some side lines since we’ve been aloft, but they’re mostly natural outgrowths of petroleum geology—on which subject we happen to be experts. We trace and develop petroleum sources for planets which need the material.” He eyed the cigar judiciously and thrust it back between his teeth. “Incidentally, Lieutenant, you’re wasting your breath threatening us with a vagrancy charge. You know as well as we do that vagrancy laws are specifically forbidden by article one of the Constitution.”
“Constitution?” the cop laughed. “If you mean the Earth Constitution, we don’t have much contact with Earth out here. These are the Acolyte stars, see? Next question: have you any money?”
“Enough.”
“How much is enough?”
“If you want to know whether or not we have operating capital, our City Fathers will give you the statutory
“Now look,” the lieutenant said. “You don’t need to play the space lawyer with me. All I want to do is get off this town. If you’ve got dough, I can clear you—that is, if you got it through legal channels.”
“We got it on a planet called He, some distance from here. We were hired by the Hevians to rub out a jungle which was bothering them. We did it by regularizing their axis.”
“Yeah?” the cop said. “Regularized their axis, eh? I guess that must have been some job.”
“It was,” Amalfi said gravely. “We had to setacetus on He’s left-hand frannistan.”
“Gee. Will your City Fathers show me the contract? Okay, then. Where are you going?”
“To garage; we’ve a bum spindizzy. After that, out again. You people look like you’re well past the stage where you’ve much use for oil.”
“Yeah, we’re pretty modernized here, not like some of these border areas you hear about. These are the Acolyte stars.” Suddenly it seemed to occur to him that he had somehow lost ground; his voice turned brusque again. “So maybe you’re all right, Okie. I’ll give you a pass through. Just be sure you go where you say you’re going, and don’t make stopovers, understand? If you watch your step, maybe I can lend you a hand here and there.”
Amalfi said, “That’s very good of you, Lieutenant. We’ll try not to have to bother you, but just in case we do have to call on you, who shall we ask for?”
“Lieutenant Lerner, Forty-fifth Border Security Group.”
“Good. Oh, before you go, I collect medal ribbons—every man to his hobby, you know. And that royal violet one of yours is quite unusual—I speak as a connoisseur. Would you consent to sell it? It wouldn’t be like giving up the medal itself—I’m sure your corps would issue you another ribbon.”
“I don’t know,” Lieutenant Lerner said doubtfully. “It’s against regs—”
“I realize that, and naturally I’d expect to cover any possible fine you might incur. (Mark, would you call down for a check for five hundred Oc dollars?) No sum I could offer you would really be sufficient to pay for a medal for which you risked your life, but five hundred Oc is all our City Fathers will allow me for hobbies this month. Could you do me the favor of accepting it?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” the lieutenant said. He detached the bar of faded, dismal purple from over his pocket with clumsy eagerness and put it on the desk. A second later, Hazleton silently handed him the check, which he pocketed without seeming to notice it at all. “Well, be sure you keep a straight course, Okie. C’mon, you guys, let’s get back to the boat.”
The three thugs eased themselves tentatively into the lift shaft and slithered down out of sight through the friction-field wearing expressions of sternly repressed alarm. Amalfi grinned. Quite obviously the principle of molar valence, and frictionators and other gadgets using the principle, were still generally unknown.
Hazleton walked over to the shaft and peered down. Then he said, “Boss, that damn thing is a good-conduct ribbon. The Earth cops issued them by the tens of thousands about three centuries ago to any rookie who could get up out of bed when the whistle blew three days running. Since when is it worth five hundred Oc?”
“Never, until now,” Amalfi said tranquilly. “But the lieutenant wanted to be bribed, and it’s always wise to appear to be buying something when you’re bribing someone. I put the price so high because he’ll have to split it with his men. If I hadn’t offered the bribe, I’m sure he’d have wanted to look at our Violations docket.”
“I figured that; and ours is none too clean, as I’ve been pointing out. But I think you wasted the money, Amalfi. The Violations docket should have been the first thing he asked to see, not the last. Since he didn’t ask for it at the beginning, he wasn’t interested in it.”
“That’s probably exactly so,” Amalfi admitted. He put the cigar back and pulled on it thoughtfully. “All right, Mark, what’s the pitch? Suppose you tell me.”
“I don’t know yet. I can’t square the maintenance of an alert guard, so many parsecs out from the actual Acolyte area, with that slob’s obvious indifference to whether or not we might be on the shady side of the law—or even be bindlestiff. Hell, he didn’t even ask
“That rules out the possibility that the Acolytes have been alerted against some one bindlestiff city.”
“It does,” Hazleton agreed. “Lerner was far too easily bribed, for that matter. Patrols that are really looking for something specific don’t bribe, even in a fairly corrupt culture. It doesn’t figure.”
“And somehow,” Amalfi said, pushing a toggle to
