straps of his antigas suit and say, “Well?”
“Well,” Oberholzer said, “now hear this.”
There was a sort of composite jingle and clank as the
men lowered their gear to the deck or put it aside on their
bunks.
“We’re investing a planet called Calle in the Canes
Venatici cluster,” Oberholzer said, sitting down on an olive-
drab canvas pack stuffed with lysurgic acid grenades. “A
cruiser called the Assam Dragonyou were with her on her
shakedown, weren’t you, Himber?touched down here ten
years ago with a flock of tenders and got swallowed up.
They got two or three quick yells for help out and that was
thatnothing anybody could make much sense of, no wea-
pons named or description of the enemy. So here we are,
loaded for the kill.”
“Wasn’t any Galley in command of the Assam Dragon
when I was aboard,” Himber said doubtfully.
“Nah. Place was named for the astronomer who spotted
her, from the rim of the cluster, a hundred years ago,”
Oberholzer said. “Nobody names planets for ship captains.
Anybody got any sensible questions?”
“Just what kind of trouble are we looking for?” Cassirir
said.
“That’s just it we don’t know. This is closer to the
center of the Galaxy than we’ve ever gotten before. It
may be a population center too; could be that Calle is just
one piece of a federation, at least inside its own cluster.
That’s why we’ve got the boys from Momma on board; this
one could be damn important.”
Somebody sniffed. “If this cluster is full of people, how
come we never picked up signals from it?”
“How do you know we never did?” Oberholzer retorted.