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  The silver plastic of an especially bright casing caught his eye. He saw himself reflected in the moulding and smiled, running the revised balance for the ship over again in his mind.

  Reflected in the plastic, Mal Hammurabi was a big man. Not particularly tall, he was structured much like a number twelve symbo-speech printed dictionary—unabridged. Or a collection of children’s blocks, tossed together in a haphazard rectangular shape and dipped in half-wet glue. Sandy-brown hair was cut square in back and receded slightly from the high forehead, which overshadowed deep-set amber eyes. The remainder of that face was an insane collection of rough angles, juts and points. The only honest curve in the whole assemblage was the thick walrus mustache which drooped from beneath the nose. Combined with a rather remarkable build, the ship-master looked like a surreal cross between a land-tank and a basset hound.

  Equally incongruous was the group of peppermint sticks which protruded from the left pocket of his leather jacket. Hammurabi neither smoked nor flashed. His vices were confined to milder liquors such as ale, fine ones like brandy, and sweets . . . not all of them peppermint, nor in stick form.

  There was a lot of cargo; the lanes of crates and casings were long, high, and shadowed. So he didn’t notice the thieves until he was right on top of them.

  There were two, totally absorbed in rifling the contents of a yellow-orange plastic case bound with metal strips. The container was the size and shape of a coffin, which it wasn’t. Mal would remember loading a stiff. Melted plastic showed at one end where the seal had been burnt away.

  Mal could have done several things. He might have taken another two steps forward and inquired in his most sepulchral ship-master’s tones as to the object of the gentlemen’s intrusion. He could have walked over and offered casual, even flippant commentary. He could have slipped quietly away and buzzed for the port police.

  However, men who spend their lives riding the saddle of an artificial field with the mass of a sun (a) know when men will and when they will not react favorably to orders, (b) are aware that the derring-do of tri-dee heroes, when attempted in real life, seduces suicide, and (c) do not run for help.

  So what Hammurabi did was put his hundred and twenty-five kilos under a crate not quite as big as himself and heave it in the direction of the two preoccupied paracreds. This by way of getting them off-balance.

  Unfortunately, the ship-master once again misjudged his own strength. The crate was intercepted by the skull of the nearest man, who had chosen that moment to sense Hammurabi’s presence and whirl, gun in hand. It was an unequal contest, which the man lost. Both crashed to the floor.

  The other intruder made a dive for the dropped laser and reached it just as Mal landed on his back. The thief gained the weapon and lost his breath simultaneously. He squirmed.

  Mal got the arm with the vicious-looking little gun in a modified arm-bar, one knee planted firmly at the shoulder joint. He raised the arm a little, up and back. The man screamed shrilly and dropped the pistol.

  Leaning carefully forward, Mal reached down and gathered in the gun. The stock was still warm. Obviously it had been used recently. He hoped it had only been used on the crate.

  The thief was fifteen cms shorter and a good sixty kilos lighter than the ship-master. He looked around wildly, as much as his awkward position permitted, and moaned. Apparently he’d caught sight of his companion. Mercifully, the box hid most of the other, but it didn’t hide the large pool of red that stained the ferroconcrete to one side. Mal noticed the small man’s glance.

  “I didn’t mean to be so messy with your friend. Nor fatal. But there were two of you and I like odds in my favor. Don’t worry, I’ll be much neater with you.” He placed the muzzle of the pistol behind the man’s right ear.

  “Now, you’ve got just thirty seconds to come up with a real good reason why I shouldn’t send you hustling after your partner . . . spiritually speaking, of course.”

  The man moaned again, his voice tight from the pain in his arm. “Go ahead! You’re going to kill me anyway!”

  “Nonsense! Don’t be any dumber than you are. If I wanted you dead I’d have killed you, oh, minutes ago. I’d just as soon see you alive. I didn’t mean to pass your friend on to the supervision of the Church, either, but I’m not fond of thieves. See, I was stolen myself once. No . . . tell you what. You cheerfully tell me what you were hunting for—and don’t tell me this was a general expedition; you pulled that crate out of a hundred tons of similar ones—that, and who sent you for it, and maybe I’ll let you depart rare instead of well-done.” He pressed the pistol a little harder into the man’s neck. “I suspect you’ll have enough trouble avoiding the attentions of your employer, who will doubtless send you greetings when he finds out how sadly you’ve bungled.”

  The thief said nothing.

  “Or,” Mal continued conversationally, increasing his pressure on the spindly arm, “we could make this even more interesting and do it by pieces. I think this arm would be a good place to start. Then, if I lower the power on this toy and turn it in a little instead of down (he did so), I can start on one side of your head and fry you slowly to the other, maybe spiraling around. Sort of artistic like, you know?”

  “All right!” the man screamed. “All right!” Mal let up slightly on the arm. “Rose.”

  “What? Stop whimpering, man, and speak up.”

  “Rose. He’s the one sent me and Wladislaw.”

  “Dominic Rose? The drugger?”

  The man nodded, slightly.

  “How very interesting. You’re working for an especially disgusting employer, did you know that? What did the dyspeptic slug want with my cargo?”

  The man was gasping painfully. Mal let the arm drop and the thief immediately clutched it protectively.

  “There was something about a mixup in ship transfer. That’s all I know, God’s truth!”

  “Your piety rings as truthful as your kind intentions. This supposedly misshipped shipment originated on Largess?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe, I don’t know. Believe me, I don’t!”

  “Stop whining. I’m not going to hit you. Yes. No. Maybe. I believe you. You don’t strike me as a policy maker.”

  “Let me go,” the man begged. “Rose’ll have me killed if I’m caught in the capitol.”

  “Patience. I’m here and he’s not. And if you don’t stop stalling and tell me what you were sent for, I will kill you!”

  “We were supposed to find a small blue container, uncrested and umarked. That’s all the information I was given, I swear!”

  Mal got off the thief’s back. He moved back slowly, keeping the gun trained on the back of the man’s neck.

  “Okay, you’ve got thirty minutes to get wherever it is you’d best like to get to. After that I give your description and my charges to Port Authority. I’m finished with you. You’d better start thinking about Rose and his delightful associates. But Repler’s a pretty empty planet. With luck you might . . .”

  But the man was already running full speed for the main entrance, apparently uncaring of being seen by Port guards. His right arm swayed limply at his side. Damn, Hammurabi, when will you learn to watch yourself! If you’d broken the arm any worse the man might have fainted on you. Then you’d be stuck trying to revive him before a patrol arrived.

  He turned back to the vandalized crate. Except for the unpleasant problem of disposing of the remaining body, things had been pretty much cleared up. He was curious to know what a slimeworm like Rose might have transshipped from a place as dull and straitlaced as Largess. Dull enough, obviously, to cause him to send two men to break into a government-owned warehouse and crack a private shipment to find.

  He had an uncomfortable moment as he bent to look into the opened casing. Suppose the small paracred had pulled one on him and the crate was full of nothing but small blue boxes? He could have saved the worry. There was only one blue container in sight. As the man had described, it was unmarked and small. About 10 cms by 20 by
20, with a slightly concave top. It was packed solidly among other containers of myriad shapes, sizes, and colors. He vaguely remembered the crate as being full of class-C luxury goods. A diverse collection.

  The small case was half out of its assigned spot, indicating that the would-be thieves had discovered it just as he’d arrived. He entertained brief thoughts of leaving it untouched. Mal had had occasional dealings with Rose in the past. The old man had accrued a certain amount of power. Although on a major planet he would have to strive to be noticed, on Repler he could wield a definite amount of heft. He stayed just the right side of legal, meaning he paid taxes.

  Mal was a little surprised when the small box opened with the merest touch of the laser. It might be a trick. One device many people used to protect valuables was not to protect them at all but to give the impression of their not being valuable. Once the initial cut was made, the plastic rolled back easily enough. A sturdy case of some silvery metal was revealed beneath. He lifted it out of its plastic casing and held it up to the dim warehouse lighting. It was attractively engraved, although clearly machine-cut. The decorative etchings cut into the metal were recognizably Largessian. A modest thing, certainly. Hardly worth the expensive and highly illegal efforts of two men to recover secretly.

  There was a simple combination lock and snaplatch on the box. He could have used the laser, but if it proved necessary to repair the box, a simple break would be easier to explain than a meltcut. The latch snapped on the third tug, just as he was beginning to fear that it was stronger than it looked and that he might have to use the pistol after all.

  The cover sprang back to reveal ten bottles of a slightly greenish cast. Each bottle of cut crystal was filled with a different colored powder. On the inside of the box cover was a printed key. It located the bottles below and gave their contents in thranx, terranglo, symbo-speech, and formal largo:

  These special spices have been carefully selected by the professional staff of Sirial Foods, Inc., to add exotic and tasteful seasoning to any organic vegetable dish with a cellulose content of at least 90%. Exceptions and/or maximum recommended servings for . . .

  There followed a comprehensive list of races and species, with specialized information for each spice printed inside a small booklet resting on top of the bottles. This went into detail on which being could consume what spice and in what quantity, with effects varying from unappetizing and mildly corrosive at worst to aphrodisiacal at best. The multi-lingual instructions indicated that the contents were marketed over a wide section of the Commonwealth and perhaps even outside it. If the machined box was any indication, the spices were a high-volume item. But that didn’t jibe with its being shipped as a luxury good. Still, maybe the old man was primates for Largessian spices and wanted to insure their arrival.

  He tasted the contents of the first jar, after first consulting the book to make sure it contained nothing likely to take his feet off. The dark-maroon granules had a sweet-sharp tang, an intriguing cross between ground black pepper and white mint.

  Mal considered what to do. Obviously he could sit and taste spice all night. That led nowhere. One thing he was still certain of: Neither of the two men he’d surprised was a mad gourmet chef out for condiments, which would be the case if the green bottles contained nothing but spices. While attractive, the metal case was clearly in no way valuable—although alloys could be deceiving. Still, it was likely that whatever Rose was so desperately concerned with was tied in with those spices. If there were drugs present, he’d do well to stop tasting.

  There was another possibility. The “key” might contain some sort of coded message. Well, Rose could cry for that. Mal tucked the box under his arm. He’d give the stuff to Japurovac and see what she could come up with.

  He took a step to his left and several square meters of floor nearby exploded in haze and superheated dust. He dove behind the nearest stack of containers, rolled, and came up running. He dodged down canyons of mining machinery, around monoliths of fresh fruit, ziggurats of preserved fish. He knew what had happened. Clearly, the two thieves hadn’t been alone. The sore-armed escapee had returned with friends. No wonder he’d been willing to talk! Now he was out to see that his garrulity was rectified. Mal didn’t think he’d find the little man especially forgiving.

  Pity you’re such a peaceable chap, old man, or you’d be carrying a decent gun of your own. Still, the laser he’d borrowed was nasty enough at close range. He paused abruptly behind a far corner and waited. A dim figure came tearing blindly around the bulky equipment, gun at the ready. Mal hastily remembered to readjust the pistol for a killing beam, took careful aim, and fired. The red light cut through the man at waist level as though he was a cartoon drawing and continued past to sear a black spot on the plastic cases behind him. The figure looked down at itself for several seconds, dumbfounded, and pitched forward onto the ferroconcrete floor. Mal looked at the tool in his hand with more respect. It was a good deal more powerful than its size hinted at.

  Two more figures poured around the corner. They spotted the body and reversed their direction with admirable rapidity. They would move after him much more cautiously now.

  He ran again. Another pile of crates went up in crackling smoke far to his left. He had them shooting at shadows now. Sooner or later, however, someone would slip behind him and fire at a shadow that wouldn’t be so insubstantial. It was up to him to put that meeting off permanently, if possible.

  His knowledge of the floor plan of the great building was superficial at best. Ship-masters didn’t stoop to supervising storing procedure first hand. He knew that there should be several small personnel entrances spotted around the enormous expanse of metal and plastic, however. Warehousing permitted little flexibility in construction; they rarely varied except in size from port to port. The same lack of variance also told him that none of the personnel entrances would be left unlocked at night unless operations were proceeding. It happened that tonight the nearest new cargo was light-minutes off. He doubted that his pursuers would be so stupid as to permit him to slip unnoticed out the main entrance.

  Zig-zagging constantly, laser at the ready, he made his way unevenly to the closest section of wall. There was a door there, all right. It was locked, all right.

  He turned the laser to pencil thinness and began cutting around the circular automatic lock. If nothing else, that ought to alert the port police to the presence of intruders. Obviously the watchman had been taken care of. There was the chance that this alarm was tied in to the one at the main entrance, in which case it would have been rendered useless when the thieves cut the main one. Not that the police would arrive in time to save his own skin, whatever the case.

  It was slow work, damnably slow! The high-intensity pistol was built to cut packing plastic and maybe people, both of which were considerably softer than bomb-proof plating. The metal glowed, began to drip lazily down the side of the door. Much too slow. Tridee stars smashed in such doors with the same ease that they dispatched assassins via clever verbiage. Hammurabi was considerably stronger than any tridee star and valued the bones in his shoulder. Doors were usually as unyielding as certain women.

  He wasn’t going to cut through in time.

  As a last resort, he would put the pistol to the open case and threaten to melt its inexplicably valuable contents to an aromatic puddle.

  They continued to fire wildly and often, behind him. Maybe he’d gotten them so confused that they thought he’d slipped behind them and had started shooting at each other. That thought gave him enough respite to relax slightly.

  Three men appeared in the shadow of a towering processing tank, newly arrived from Wolophon III. The lock was barely a quarter burnt through. He pressed his back to the door and shoved the muzzle of the warm pistol into the case, thumbing the beam to wide fan. The gun was hot from continuous use.

  The men came closer, stopped. One detached himself from the group and walked up to Hammurabi.

  “The locals won’t like it if
you go around burning holes in their government-issue buildings, Cap’n, you shouldn’t mind my saying so.”

  Hammurabi flicked the pistol to Safety, stuck it in his pants pocket.

  “You’re a fine First Mate, Maijib Takaharu, but how the Devil did you happen to come looking for me?”

  Takaharu made a gesture to his two companions. They moved off silently among the stacked crates, presumably to insure that if any of the intruders remained, they would not be in shape to offer argument.

  The First Mate looked up from his full meter and two thirds. He carried a slim Hornet-VI needle thrower.

  “Why, don’t you remember, Cap’n? Since that night four months ago on Foran III, when you put six of the local finest into the native version of a hospital with assorted contusions, broken limbs and other souvenirs, defamed the statue of a local hero, and otherwise did not endear yourself to the local populace, you gave me a standard order to follow. The local magistrate fined you—”

  “Don’t remind me.” Hammurabi winced. His rare drunks were difficult times for him. He couldn’t understand why the crew persisted in bragging about them at every planetfall. It was getting so he couldn’t walk into a bar before the owner or tender called frantically for the cops. Doc Japurovac, with fine insect logic (also, she was a little romantic), labeled them heroic. Mal thought they were merely embarrassing.

  “You told me that if you didn’t check in with Ben or myself by midnight local time, I was to grab a few of the boys and come hunting for you. Knowing your habits, it wasn’t hard to trace you, sir. Also, strangers find you easy to remember. A number of them recalled seeing you enter the port grounds.”