“I’ll use it, all right,” Dettwyler said, “if I find out you’re behind this.”
“Then you’d better be fast enough to kill me, too,” Hardcoe said. “Because I’ll kill you right after you pull that trigger if you fuck around anymore.”
Dettwyler grinned nervously. “Thought you and Connrad were enemies, Hardcoe.”
“Hasn’t changed a bit. If I had the chance out away from here and I thought I could take him, mebbe I’d find out if I could.” He paused. “But not here. Not now. The truce between us will be honored in this place. It’s the only thing that keeps the peace between us. I won’t see it broken. By anyone.”
Giskard calmly stretched out his hand. A small derringer popped into his palm. His fingers closed around the blaster as he shoved the blunt muzzle behind Dettwyler’s ear. “I’m more of a gambling man,” the young baron said cockily. “I think I can pull the trigger on this little pocket cannon before you manage to squeeze through that one. Want to see?”
“Get the blaster away from him,” one of Dettwyler’s sec men ordered, pulling his own weapon and pointing it at Giskard.
LeMarck took a step toward Hardcoe, intending to use himself as a shield to protect the baron if it proved necessary.
Giskard laughed. “And isn’t this a fine how-do-you-do, Dettwyler?” He shook his head, moving the derringer slightly but keeping it in contact with the fat man’s jawline. “As soon as you pull the triggeror mebbe even only look like you’re going to, why, mebbe all the people in this room are dead men.”
Dettwyler didn’t say anything.
“What I suggest,” Giskard said, “is a moment of reason. You pulled the first blaster. By rights I think it should be you who first puts his away. Don’t you agree?”
Face contorted with anger, Dettwyler complied.
With a sigh of relief, Giskard lowered the derringer’s hammer. The barons ordered their men to follow suit.
LeMarck let out a long breath as quietly as he could, trying to appear indifferent to the whole situation. But his heart pounded inside him.
“Vinge,” Hardcoe said, “I’ll not see you make an attempt on Dettwyler, either, not while we’re here.”
“No man pulls a blaster on me and lives,” Connrad said. The feathered earrings shivered with the fury moving the man.
“What you do away from here,” Hardcoe said, “is none of my business. Here, I’ve had my say on.”
“What we should all be doing,” Giskard said, “is taking care of those interlopers, before they further interrupt the Big Game and we have to declare it a null effort. Then we’ll be faced with leaving things as they are until next year and playing again.”
Connrad eyed Hardcoe. “If that happens, it seems like things could turn out in your favor.”
“I didn’t put those people in there,” Hardcoe stated.
“Mebbe we should go find out.” Connrad turned to his nearest sec boss. “Pass the word along to those wall guards to get some people into the pit, track those two people down, kill them and identify them. I want their bodies brought out of there. And get some guards off the wall near the Mirage and into the building. Get some men in there with flame throwers. I don’t want any of our people hurt by those monkeys before they have a chance to put down the interlopers.”
“Yes, sir.” The man left at once.
Hardcoe pushed himself out of his seat, his movements followed at once by Connrad. “I’m not going to stay in here and watch this. I want to be out there where I can see things for myself.”
“Then so do I,” Connrad said.
LeMarck took up his position and went with them. Never before during a Big Game had the barons left the security of the safe room. He didn’t like the way the night was shaping up.
And if he was right about the identity of the two people out there in the pit, he was near to liking it even less.
“I DON’T KNOW what you’re doing with these people,” Bernsen said to Doc. “You’re a man of science, hardly their ilk at all.”