“How about having a look?” Dane surprised himself with the question. The whole pleasure district repulsed him, more strongly the longer he remained in it, but he was curious, too. Damn it, he wanted to see the inside of that place or of some other like it.
The Engineer-apprentice hesitated. They were at liberty, but he had a feeling that did not include permission to patronize anything in Happy City beyond a straight restaurant. “If we go in, we’ll be expected to buy . . .”
“Not all of us,” Rael cut in sharply.
Kamil’s brows raised. “Give me time. Doctor. I was about to say that only two of us should order. The others won’t. Does that meet your approval?”
She nodded curtly. “Aye. It’s probably unnecessary, but . . .”
“Precisely, Doctor. Where Trade blacklists part of an operation, let the wise space hound beware the rest. — Now that we’ve settled on our strategy, we need only choose our two drinkers. I’ll pass. Thorson’s one since this excursion is his idea. What about you to keep him company, Cofort?”
“No thank you,” the Medic responded coolly.
“You don’t drink. Doctor?” he asked smoothly.
“Not in dives like this!”
“Shannon, then, since you don’t feel adventurous.”
Ali smiled to himself, pleased to have been able to penetrate Cofort’s armor sufficiently to get a rise out of her. No one appreciated a person’s right to create defenses more than he did, or the right to keep quiet about the reasons for doing so, but Rael Cofort’s were so good that finding a few chinks in them was a sort of a relief, as if it confirmed her basic humanity.
Dane felt sorry he had suggested coming inside as soon as he stepped through the door. The Red Garnet was just another bar where people came to do serious drinking. It was not particularly attractive, and it presented no features of special interest. Even the bustle of life and talk that would enliven the single big room later were absent now.
The set-up process was well under way, and tables were being maneuvered back into place on the freshly scrubbed floor by a half-dozen burly men. The chairs were still stacked along the walls one atop the other in groups of six.
At that point, the bartender looked up from arranging his glasses and spotted the Free Traders. “We’re open, space hounds. What’ll it be?”
“A couple of beers for the children, here,” Ali responded lightly, seeing the man’s close-set eyes begin to narrow at their apparent hesitation, “then we’ll really have to stop playing and get back to the ship, or we’ll be spending the rest of our time on-world scrubbing tubes.”
That last had been addressed to his two male comrades.
Rip recognized his move to ease potential tension and answered him appropriately, then he and Thorson stepped up to the bar to confirm the order.
They were served quickly. Shannon sipped the golden liquid. “This is good,” he averred.
The Canuchean made a sarcastic bow to acknowledge the surprised compliment. “A local brew,” he informed them. “We export a lot of it. You might mention the fact to some of your pals around the spaceport. We’d all like to see a few more off-world faces in Happy City.”
He collected their credits and went back to his previous occupation with the glasses, but the spacers could see that he did not take his small, sharp eyes off them.
Neither did any of the roustabouts, or whatever their real occupation might be. “If this were an adventure tape,” Rip whispered to the Cargo-apprentice, “we’d all be shanghaied before this scene was played out.”
“I know,” Dane responded glumly. “This wasn’t one of my better ideas.”
Shanghaied. The term had come with Terrans into space and was recognized throughout the starlanes although it was so old that its origin had long since been forgotten, Except possibly by Van Rycke. The Cargo-Master was a storehouse of odd lore.
That might not be so far from their hosts’ minds, either, he thought darkly, even if they did not quite dare to act on it. Both Cofort and Kamil were coming in for more of the same kind of study they had received on the street but far more openly and more intently. No legitimate erotic house would touch such captives with a long-range tractor, but doubtless there were a number of less scrupulous operations in the district. Maybe the wide staircase to his right led not only to the gambling rooms but to an unlicensed facility of that nature as well.
If so, and the on-worlders moved successfully, he and Rip would wind up on the bottom of the bay . . .
He glanced at Kamil. If the black-haired apprentice was worried, he gave no sign of it. Thorson did his best to imitate the engineer’s air of ease. He knew he was probably just building trouble out of nothing but his nerves, but it would be best not to reveal any unease or weakness. That in itself could provoke an incident. They were outnumbered, and it might not be easy to fight their way out of here.
Rael Cofort remained standing close beside Ali. She had quickly lost interest in the scene at the bar. She did not like the Red Garnet and wanted nothing better in that moment than to get out of the big room as quickly as possible. — Would those two never swallow their beers?
Her hand closed convulsively around her throat. She felt as if she were choking.
Her medical training kicked in when she felt the race of her pulse through the arteries. Spirit of Space, what was wrong? Her body, driven by some subconscious warning, was terrified. What was triggering this panic?
She fought to master herself but could not drive off the horrible eagerness filling her, a hunger, as if the room itself were a great maw seeking to devour them all.
Her left hand gripped her companion’s arm. “Ali, let’s get out of here. Now. Please!”
Cofort’s nerve broke with that, and she bolted for the door.
Her flight galvanized the Canucheans. They straightened and began to move in on the off-worlders.
Thorson instinctively drew closer to his remaining comrades and braced himself. Two to one. Bad odds in themselves, and a couple of their opponents had drawn knives, long, thin assassin’s blades that could readily slip between a victim’s ribs or thrust into his back to sever the spinal cord. All three Traders were unarmed . . .
Not quite, he saw suddenly. Kamil had unhooked a length of chain from his belt. Attached to one end of it was a broad double ring padded to provide a secure grip and act as a shield for the wielder’s own hand. The other ended in three wickedly curved claws.
Ali smiled coldly as he swung the chain before him with practiced ease. The on-worlders gave ground. That devilish weapon was as readily recognized in the back alleys of the ultrasystem as were their own knives, and it was a light year more feared.
Dane swallowed hard. The Engineer-apprentice had survived the Crater War and its aftermath. He never discussed those dark years, but he had just shown them one of the means by which he had managed to do it.
With Kamil acting as rear guard, the off-worlders quickly made their retreat to the street and fell back in the direction from which they had come until they reached the alley once more. Rael Cofort was waiting for them there, and the three glared furiously at her.
“Hold up,” Ali ordered. “They won’t follow us now that we’re on the street.”
“What’s to stop them?” Shannon inquired in a tight whisper.
“They’ll stay put,” he assured him. “As it stands, it’s our word against theirs. They never verbally threatened us, and both sides pulled equally illegal weapons. To cap it off, there’s a Canuchean police station halfway up the block. We raise a ruckus, and the law will swarm all over the lot of us.”
“They could call ahead, arrange to have us back-alleyed someplace.”
“Precisely why we don’t want them to see which way we went. They’ll never imagine we’d be so stupid as to linger around then- own back door.” He believed and fervently hoped.
As he spoke, Kamil casually, or seemingly casually, rehooked the deadly chain to his belt. Dane shivered in his heart. The older apprentice had worn the thing so naturally that neither of his shipmates had even noticed it, though he supposed any of the senior officers probably would have done so and confiscated it. Traders, Free or Company, went armed only in situations of open peril and only at the command of their officers, and Canuche of Halio was supposed to be a highly respectable planet.
He turned his attention to other matters, to one specific matter. His eyes fixed on the Medic.
Ali beat his comrades to challenging her. “What in all the hells did you think you were doing?” he demanded.