KIRK ENTERED THE TRANSPORTER ROOM.
"Is everything ready?" he asked.
"Aye, sir," said Martinez. "We have located an appropriate site. And the transporter has been thoroughly examined so as to minimize the possibility of malfunction."
"Good," said Kirk. "And the item I asked you for?"
Jason stepped forward, extended his hand. There was a box in it.
Kirk took it, stepped up onto the transporter platform.
"Remember," he told Martinez. "You are to leave this vicinity at once. Proceed to a position near the Romulan border and follow Admiral Straus's instructions—until you hear from me." He chuckled. "And you'll hear from me soon enough."
"Understood," said Martinez.
Kirk turned to Stuart, who stood at the transporter console.
"All right," he said. "Energize."
Stuart did as he was told.
He materialized a couple of miles from town, where an old-fashioned asphalt road cut through forest lands almost thick enough to be called jungles. The foliage was luminescent in the light of a full moon and the air was full of mist.
He began to walk.
For a while, the only sound was the clicking of his heels on the hard, dark surface of the road. Then the sound of a motor came to him, gradually growing louder.
When he thought it was loud enough, he stepped off the road onto a patch of ground cover—and stuck his hand out.
The driver almost didn't see him. In fact, he'd gone fifty yards or so before he managed to slam on the brakes. A moment later, a door swung open on the passenger's side.
Kirk trotted down the road to catch up. When he did, he saw that the driver was a gangly, baby-faced man, who wore his thinning hair long and loose. On one side, it was tucked behind his ear. He was chewing something with great intensity.
"Headed for town?" he asked him.
The driver turned abruptly and spat out the window, spraying droplets of dark juice. "Is there anyplace else?" he answered.
Kirk pulled himself up into the cab and closed the door. The truck lurched forward as the driver threw it into gear.
"I'm glad you came by," said the android. "I could've been walking for hours." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "My car dropped dead a few miles back."
The man guffawed. "You must be new around here."
Kirk watched him for signs of hostile intent—but he couldn't find any. "How do you know that?" he asked finally.
"First," said the driver, "I was a few miles back, and I didn't see no rig off to the side. Second, I don't give a damn where you came from—or what you were doin'. And if you were a local, you would've known that."
Kirk smiled. "But you picked me up anyway."
The man shrugged his angular shoulders. "Just 'cause I mind my own business don't mean I can't do for my fellowman." He worked up another mouthful of juice, spat again. "Besides, it's dangerous out on the road at night. Malachi's Boots all over the place." He chuckled. "Don't want any of those suckers latchin' onto you. Turn you to deadwood before you know what happened."
Up ahead, over a rise in the road, there was a faint glow that seemed independent of the headlights.
"Is that so?" said the android, not hungry in the least for more information on the subject. What did he care about the local flora and fauna? "In that case, I really do appreciate the ride."
The driver nodded. "You need a place to stay?" he asked.
"I guess I do."
"My friend's got an inn near the center of town. It's a good deal if you don't mind the noise too much."
"I don't," said Kirk.
"Good. I'll drop you off right in front."
"There's only one problem," said the android. "I'm a little low on credits."
The man grunted. "That is a problem."
"But I have ways of putting some money together in a hurry—if I can hook up with the right people."
They topped the rise. Suddenly the faint glow became a sprawl of lights below them, made starry by the mist.
Tranktown. It matched the images the human Kirk had accumulated.
"What kind of people?" asked the driver.
The android shrugged. "Oh, say dealers in rare commodities."
"You want to fence something? Or are you looking for some continuity?"
"Either," said Kirk. "Maybe both."
He watched the man's eyes. They stayed fixed on the road ahead.
"Try Bruzavpek's," he said finally. "Ask for the Rythrian."
The android nodded. "The Rythrian."
Despite the mist, the lights below them began to collect into individual shapes. After a while, they could even hear the music.
He found Bruzavpek's on the side of town nearest the spaceport. The sign outside called it a private club, but there were no sounds—or smells, for that matter—to indicate that it was actually what it claimed to be.
If not a club, then a front. And since so few pursuits were illegal on Tranquillity Seven, what could it have been a front for—other than a smuggling operation?
Kirk smiled inwardly. The truck driver, apparently, had known what he was talking about.
He knocked on the heavy, steelbound door. No answer. He rapped again, waited. Still nothing.
Kirk was about to knock a third time—pound on it, really—when he heard a bolt slide and saw the door open a crack.
The face that peered through the opening was human, though at first glance it didn't seem so. The features were vague, blunt—bludgeoned over the course of too many fights into amorphousness.
"What?" was all the man asked.
"I want to see someone," said the android. "I've heard he does business here."
"Yeah? Who's that?"
"He's called the Rythrian."
The man's eyes narrowed as he inspected Kirk. Then he looked over the android's shoulder, searching the night and the mist.
After a while, satisfied, he opened the door. As Kirk brushed past him, he found himself in a narrow vestibule.
Beyond it was a much larger room, well appointed though dimly lit. At one time, it may truly have served as the parlor of a private establishment—before the place had been converted to its current use.
The android took a single step toward the larger room and found a hammy paw on his shoulder. He glanced at it, then at its owner.
"Check you," said the near-shapeless mouth.
Kirk shrugged, raised his arms. Felt the man's hands searching him for firearms, though that—supposedly—was the one thing you couldn't buy on this world. Those who profited by the tourist trade—and that was nearly everyone, directly or indirectly—had no desire to kill the goose that laid their golden eggs.
The frisking process was nearly over before the man found the small container in the android's inside pocket. Reaching inside his jacket, Kirk himself pulled it out. Held it in his palm.
"It's not a weapon," he said. "It's what I've come to see the Rythrian about."
The animallike eyes regarded him. "Open it," said the man.
Kirk opened it.
The man's eyes blinked, his fleshy face illuminated by the glow. "All right," he said finally.
Kirk closed the container again.
"Come," said the man.
The android replaced the container in his pocket and followed him into the next room.
There were three other men inside. Two were strong-arm types. The third, it seemed, had come to do business as Kirk had—judging by the small sack he kept on the table beside him. But he neither looked very happy to be there nor very eager to be recognized.
Selling off a family heirloom to pay a gambling debt? the android wondered. Or a s'ris addict, fencing stolen goods to support his habit?
Kirk chose a sofa, sat. Looked around, noticed that the lighting was provided by hlinga worms in transparent cylinders. Of course—a touch of old Rythria in a foreign land.
The worm nearest the man with the sack threw off an azure glow, in accordance with his mood. The one near the android, however—like most of the other worms around the room—radiated a yellowish, almost white light.
Nor did it change as he sat there. Kirk was grateful that the worm could not distinguish between controlled emotion and no emotion at all. As it was, the strong-arm types would just label him a cool customer and let it go at that.
In time, the door at the back of the room opened and yet another human emerged. He looked neither at Kirk nor at any of the others as he headed for the vestibule. The dough-faced man followed him in. There was the sound again of the bolt sliding back, the opening and closing of the door, the replacement of the bolt.
"You're next," said one of the other hired hands. The android looked at him, but he was talking to the man with the sack.
Gathering up his burden—which was fairly heavy, if the way it hung in the sack was any indication—the man passed through the doorway in the back of the room. Kirk had a glimpse of someone big—very big—before the sack bearer disappeared inside.
He wasn't in there long. It couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes before he came out again—without the sack.
Since there was no one else waiting in the room, Kirk got up from his seat on the sofa. He looked inquiringly at the strong-arm types.
"That's right," said the one who had spoken before. "It's your turn now, eager beaver."
The android looked at him just long enough to make the man uncomfortable. Then he crossed the room to the door, opened it onto what had to be the Rythrian's office.
Except for the wan, yellow light of a hlinga worm, the room was dark.
Two sat behind a table. One was the Rythrian himself, judging by his long flaps of earlobe and somewhat protuberant eyes. The other was human—a massive, swarthy man with a long scar from brow to jawline. It was the man he'd caught a glimpse of moments before.
Kirk closed the door behind him.
"Sit," said the big man. His voice was harsh, rasping. Somewhere along the line, Kirk judged, he'd damaged his vocal cords.
The android pulled out the only unoccupied chair and sat. The worm writhed in its plexiglass cylinder and the quality of the light changed subtly—seemed to grow paler by a shade.
The Rythrian noted it, looked back at Kirk.
"So? What have you got?" he asked. His voice was pleasant, almost melodious, in contrast to his companion's.
Kirk reached into his jacket—slowly enough so that there would be no misunderstandings—and produced the leadbound box. He placed it on the table, felt for the hidden latch. Touched it.
And the top sprang open revealing the dilithium crystal within.
For a moment, the Rythrian's eyes opened even wider—though the worm's light remained appreciably the same, a tribute to his self-control. Then he looked up again.
"It appears to be genuine," he said.
Kirk closed the box, replaced it in his inner pocket. "Do you think I'd be foolish enough to try to pass a fake off on you?"
The Rythrian shrugged. "People have tried more foolish things. You'd be surprised." He paused. "How much do you want for it?"
Kirk smiled.
"Actually," he said, "I didn't have it in mind to sell it."
The Rythrian's brow lowered perceptibly.
"No?" he asked. "Then why are you here?"
"To make you a proposition. One that involves a lot more profit—for all of us."
The Rythrian leaned forward.
"What kind of proposition?"
The worm turned in on itself, and the room grew sullen.
"You have a market for dilithium? In large quantities?"
The Rythrian stared at him. "We do," he said finally.
"I have a source who can supply large quantities."
That elicited a grunt. "What do you call a large quantity?"
"Thirty crystals," said the android. "Forty. Maybe more."
"And just where do you intend to get that kind of dilithium?" asked the Rythrian. "You'd have to own your own mine."
Kirk nodded. "Or know someone who has access to one."
"An insider? At a Federation mine?"
"Perhaps," said the android.
"Interesting," said the Rythrian. "And you need someone to fence it all for you."
"That," said Kirk, "and more than that. An operation like this one requires an investment. In transportation. In cooperation."
"So it does," said the Rythrian. "But I don't imagine you have those kinds of funds at your disposal."
"At the moment, no. But I'd be willing to offer a partnership in exchange for such funds."
"A share," said the Rythrian, "in the dilithium."
"Precisely."
"How much of a share?"
"Fifty percent."
The Rythrian laughed, briefly. It came out as a high-pitched piping. The worm danced, spewed pale green light on the walls.
"Eighty," he said.
Kirk chuckled. "Sixty."
The Rythrian shook his head, whipping his ears about. "Eighty. No one will give you a better deal than that."
"That is," added the big man, "if they do business with you at all."
Kirk looked from the human to the Rythrian. "Is this your partner?" he asked innocently. It was a necessary remark—it would lend him credibility.
Again, that high-pitched piping came out of the Rythrian. The big man turned a dark and dangerous red—and so did the worm. Seeing his emotions betrayed only seemed to make the human madder.
"No," said the Rythrian, as soon as he'd recovered. "He is not my partner—but he is correct. My competitors seldom deal with suppliers they do not know."
Kirk pretended to mull it over. "You drive a hard bargain."
The Rythrian shrugged. "Have we got a deal—or not?"
Kirk nodded. "Yes. We've got a deal."
"Good. We'll arrange to get you the money." He blinked—for the first time, Kirk noticed, since their interview had begun. "Where are you staying?"
The android told him.
Another grunt. "We will expect to see the dilithium within the month. Do not disappoint us."
The big man's eyes narrowed. "Yes," he agreed. "Don't even think about it."
Kirk met his stare, smiled again.
The worm jerked, spilling waves of bright blood-red light. It would continue to do so, the android guessed, for some time after his departure.
The next day, three of the Rythrian's henchmen came to drop off a package at Kirk's hotel room.
The first thing he did after they left was count the money. Sure enough, it was all there—and a tidy sum it was. Certainly not a sum one would want to be careless with.
Next, he checked out of the hotel, paying his bill with the smallest portion of his newfound wealth. Aware now that Kirk was somehow linked to the Rythrian, the man at the desk didn't comment on the crisp new bills he handed him. He didn't even look up.
According to the agreement by which he'd obtained the money, Kirk should then have booked space on a passenger ship—one bound for whichever system his dilithium contact was located in. But since he had neither a contact nor any intention of finding one, he didn't make any attempt to get to the spaceport.
Rather, he headed for the center of town.
Markey swabbed the bar with a wet rag for the umpteenth time that night. Not that it needed it. There just wasn't a whole hell of a lot else to do.
It hadn't been a real good week. No big ships in the spaceport, no rubes to keep the old-fashioned cash register ringing. Only a few regulars—and they weren't spending much more than time, 'cause they made their money off the rubes same as he did.
In fact, he was tempted to close up early—until the guy in the expensive suit walked in out of the mist.
"What'll it be?" he asked as the rube swaggered up to the bar. It was quite a swagger too. The king of swaggers.
"A bottle of your finest brandy," he said as he pulled over a stool. "And I mean your finest."
Then he dragged out a wad of money and dropped it square on the polished-wood surface. Suddenly, he was the undisputed center of attention.
"Money," he said, "is no object." He smiled, as if he'd made a joke.
Markey glanced at the wad. It made him nervous to see it just sitting out there, naked and inviting.
"Mister," he said, "I'll be only too happy to help you get sloshed. But if I were you, I'd put that stuff away for now. This ain't exactly Starbase Three, y'know. People have been known to get rolled around here."
But the rube just shrugged, his smile widening. "So what? There's plenty more where that came from. In fact," he said, indicating the tables behind him with a sweep of his arm, "I want everybody to have a bottle! On me! What's the sense of having it if you can't spend it?"
The regulars rooted him on, recognizing a free ride when they saw one. A couple of them even stood and applauded.
Markey looked into the rube's eyes, saw no sign of drunkenness there. Yet. So what was his story? Did he have a death wish or something?
"Well," asked the newcomer. "Are you going to serve me and my friends, or do I have to take my business elsewhere?"
That brought another kind of response from the regulars. An ugly one.
Markey knew better than to mess with them. Loyalty was an ephemeral thing on Trank Seven. Especially when there was booze involved.
"No," he said. "You can get everything you want right here."
He'd warned the guy, hadn't he? And besides, what was he behind this bar for, if not to take money from rubes?
Grabbing a couple of bottles from the mirrored wall behind him, he plunked them down on the bar. Then a couple more, and again, until there was one for everyone. Finally, he opened a bottle and set it before Fancy Dan with a glass next to it.
"Okay," said the rube. "Come and get it!"
The regulars didn't have to be told twice. There was a screeching of chair legs and a shuffle of feet, and suddenly the bar was alive with grasping hands.
The newcomer counted out a number of credits, letting them waft down one by one around his bottle. He seemed to get a kick out of it.
"There," he said expansively. "That ought to cover it."
Markey grunted, gathered up the money. "More than cover it. You've got some change coming."
"Forget it," said the rube, pouring some brandy into his glass. "Buy yourself a new sign out front."
Just as Markey turned to open the cash register, he saw Bokeek come sauntering up to the stranger. He held his bottle close to his chest, and it obviously wasn't the first one he'd had that night.
"Say," said Bokeek, a Tetracite who made his living picking pockets, "I couldn't help but notice that pile o' bills you got there. You one o' those fancy fur traders?" He peered at the rube with deep-set, bloodshot eyes that seemed to want to pop out of his angular head.
The newcomer grinned. "No. Why? Do I look like one?"
Bokeek shrugged. "Maybe a little bit." He lowered his voice a notch and leaned closer—as if to hint that he, at least, could be trusted. "But if you ain't a trader, then where the hell didja get that stash?"
"You're being nosy, Bokeek," said Markey, intervening on the stranger's behalf. "A man puts some money together, it's his business where he got it."
"That's all right," said the rube. He turned to Bokeek. "You want to know where I got this money?"
The pickpocket nodded.
"I just asked for it. And somebody gave it to me."
Bokeek chuckled. "No, really."
"Really."
Bokeek looked at Markey and then at the rube again. "Yeah? How?"
"Simple," said Fancy Dan. "I conned him."
The pickpocket screwed up his face in disbelief.
"You?"
"Me."
And there was no pursuing the matter any further, because that's when the stranger decided to get up.
"Nice talking with you gentlemen," he said, "but I've got an appointment to keep with some very lovely ladies." He straightened the lapels on his suit. "Ladies like men with money, you know."
And with a military sort of salute, he turned and made his way toward the door.
Markey watched him vanish back into the night. So did Bokeek.
"Strangest guy I've seen in a long time," he said. "A long time."
"You don't know the half of it," said the pickpocket, suddenly a lot more sober.
Markey looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"I been followin' this oddball all night long. Everywhere he goes, he buys drinks for the house. Then he drops that line about havin' to meet some women and leaves." He laughed. "If I was still a young man, I'd have gone with him to the next joint. But for now, I think this here bottle will do me just fine."
The bartender grunted. "I'll bet," he said, and went to clean up where the rube had sat.
"Hey," said Bokeek, "look at that."
"What?" asked Markey.
"He didn't even touch his drink." Markey inspected the glass of brandy. Sure enough, it was as full as when the stranger had poured it.
He shrugged. "Maybe the guy wasn't thirsty."
No sooner had Kirk left the bar than he ducked into an alleyway. And waited.
This time, he saw, no one was going to follow him to his next destination. Apparently, his hanger-on had been nothing more than he seemed—a scavenger following the lure of free booze.
Too bad. That meant that the Rythrian's street network hadn't located him yet.
Kirk was surprised. Hadn't he made himself obvious enough? It was difficult to believe that with all the money he'd squandered in the last twenty hours or so, word of his prodigality hadn't reached his "partner."
Or had he miscalculated somehow?
No. It wasn't possible. He had all the human Kirk's memories, his capacity for judgment—for cunning.
He would wait a little longer to see if his plan had borne fruit.
An hour passed, another. The fog gradually twisted into new shapes, writhed again into still newer ones. Every now and then, the wind stirred the silence with the sounds of distant revelry.
He watched men come out of the bar, other men go inside. But always one at a time. If the Rythrian meant to catch him, he'd have sent his hirelings out in pairs—at the very least.
Nor did these men have a look of purposefulness about them. They were no different than the glassy-eyed specimens he'd seen inside.
Yet another hour. Dawn was not that far off. And he needed to find another place to stay before daylight revealed him.
After all, it was only his trail he wanted the Rythrian to find. Not Kirk himself.
Suddenly, footfalls—an echoing clatter on the paving stones. Keeping as much of himself hidden as possible, the android peered into the fog.
There were four men emerging from it. Three were nondescript, though he might have recognized one or more of them if he'd tried.
But it wasn't necessary. The sheer size of the fourth man, about whom the others seemed to cluster, told Kirk all he needed to know.
The man with the scar looked angry. As if he'd rather have been doing something else at this time of night.
Excellent, the android told himself. The Rythrian didn't disappoint me after all.
He waited a few more minutes, until the group of four had entered the bar. Then he crossed the street and headed for the part of town where a man could lose himself forever—or so they said.
Of course, in his case, a single day would be more than sufficient.