The steel door of the food-processing plant was not only unlocked but ajar. "Hello the house!" Slade called as he swung the door fully open. He waited outside for a further moment. The air car had already disappeared into the eastern sky. The sea sounded a dense background, loud without being obtrusive. The gasp of the pumps within the long, concrete building was by contrast relatively mild.
"Hello there," Slade called again as he stepped inside. He closed the door behind him.
There was a door to the right which would lead to living quarters for the crew during their month-long tours. Beside it was a bright alcove glassed off from the rest of the pump room, the foreman's office. The multiple vision blocks within flashed their images to one another with no human to watch them. Tubing and crates moving beneath the tubing on conveyors covered the long, left-hand wall. There was a slideway leading from the office to the bright splotch which was the open, seaward end of the building.
As Slade watched, a blur grew against the brightness. It accelerated toward him. When the blur slowed to a brutally-sudden stop, it took on shape: a slide bucket holding a hard-looking man in faded Slade coveralls. The rocket gun he rested on his right thigh happened to be aimed squarely at the intruder's chest.
"And just what might your business be, buddy?" the man asked Slade. He was not young, but his voice quivered as little as did the gun he held.
"My name's, Don Holt," Slade said with only a moment's hesitation to remember it. "I was hoping you might have some work for me." The fact that the foreman was leaving the office empty to check the lines implied the crew was short, but Slade would have said the same thing in any case.
The man in Slade livery snorted. "I'm the foreman, my name's Pretorius," he said. "And I guess that means you're looking for a meal. Well, I guess we can find you that, sure." He swung his legs out of the bucket and stepped toward Slade. His weapon was now aimed at the roof.
The tanker frowned. "Guess I could use some food, sure," he said. "But I haven't forgot how to catch that for myself, either. I said, I'm looking for work."
"Are you?" said Pretorius without inflexion. "You'd be from around here, then?"
"Been a while, though," said Slade in elliptical agreement. "When I was a kid, I thought all mercenaries got rich. I spent the past twenty years proving I was wrong and a curst fool." He smiled in near humor, then touched his left earlobe. It was a half centimeter shorter than the right one which had not been fried by a powergun.
Pretorius dipped his gun momentarily, like the neck of a bird bending to drink. He arrested the motion before it was an actual threat, but there was no particular warmth in his voice as he said, "Is that a fact? Then I'd think you'd have found work at the Port, boyo. And just maybe you did, hey? And they sent you here to see what you could learn."
"Could be I got an offer," Slade said. "Could be I didn't like the color of suit they were going to have me wear, too. Look, if I'm unwelcome here, I'll just walk on out. My daddy ran a catcher boat from South Three until a knife-jaw got him. I guess I can find some kin down that way if a strong back don't interest you." He turned away from Pretorius and the gun.
"Blazes, man," the foreman called. "Don't leave me short-handed as I am."
Slade looked back at the foreman. Pretorius was holding out his weapon by the balance. "Here," the older man went on. "You know how to use one of these?"
Slade frowned. "Guess I can learn," he said.
Powerguns would have been useless against the sub-surface life forms that were the bane of processing plants. Instead the crews used short-barreled rocket guns like this one. They fired low-velocity missiles which were unaffected by the media through which they lanced toward their targets. The bursting charge was much bulkier than a powergun wafer liberating comparable energy; but the charges went off in their targets, not on the surface of the sea.
"Come on, then," the foreman said. He pointed to the second slide-bucket. "We've got a ten-meter wriggler giving fits on section two. Isn't big enough to take a nip out of the line, but it keeps tripping the alarm. Come on—you want to learn, I'll teach you."
And what have we got here?" asked the leader of the men who strolled toward Danny Pritchard as the air car took off again.
Pritchard looked them up and down with a lack of expression which was itself significant. All but one of the four men wore belt knives. The leader instead toyed with a nunchaku, a pair of short flails chained together at the slim ends. None of them wore guns, which had been for decades proscribed on the Council Islands of Tethys save for certain jobs and locations. That scarcely made Danny safe at this moment.
The men were among those who had been lounging against the shading wall of the courtyard when Pritchard arrived. There were a score of others in various liveries present, but no one seemed to pay any attention to what was going on. The leader of the men moving in on the visitor wore Slade Blue defaced with a crimson stripe down either leg. The other three were Dyson retainers in full scarlet.
"Friend of the family," Danny Pritchard called cheerfully. He sidled away from his luggage so that it did not block him if he had to jump back suddenly. Hidden at the small of the ex-soldier's back was a glass-barreled powergun. He would use it if he had to—but the illegal weapon's single charge would still leave three opponents. "I'm here to visit the Widow Slade, at her request. You're of the House?"
The man with the nunchaku flipped his weapon out toward Pritchard's trunk. The lid clacked as the further baton touched it. "Can't have any contraband coming in here," the man said. "Think we'll check it right here."
"What the hell's going on here?" demanded a voice shrill with tension.
Men who had been covertly watching as the visitor was baited now glanced up in open surprise. The four men who had approached Pritchard now fanned away as if Hammer's man could be safely ignored if they were willing to leave him alone. Not the smartest possible assumption; but they were not pros, only bullies, and not the cleverest bullies Danny Pritchard had met in his career either.
The man who had shouted from the House doorway was young and thin. Pritchard had seen a cube of Marilee—as she was—Dorcas. The youth's features were a near double for those of the woman twenty years before.
It was an open question how Teddy had expected to stop the trouble if his righteous indignation were not enough. The fat old man a step behind him and to the right had a notion of his own, however. The old man's gun-hand was hidden within his loose-fitting jacket.
"Checking for contraband, Master Teddy," said the man with the nunchaku. The weapon twitched in his hand like the tail of a cat which lay otherwise motionless.
"Durotige," said the old man behind Edward Slade, "get your butt out of here. Out of the yard. Now."
"You don't scare me, Blegan!" snarled Durotige.
"Good," said the old man, oblivious to his presumptive master. "Because you'll try something if I don't scare you, Durotige."
"Time'll come, old man," said Durotige. His words were bluster, however—as Blegan's had not been. The man in crimson over blue spun on his heel and marched toward the gate. Its hinges were rusty but they squealed open when Durotige tugged with the fear of death behind him. The trio who had supported him drifted away as well, though they pointedly did not walk toward the gate.
Edward Slade joined the visitor. The young man glanced angrily about the yard at the liverymen who had not intervened in the trouble. They were now insouciantly directed on their own affairs again. "Sir, I apologize for the boors you've met in my House," Teddy said. Someone chuckled from behind a car at the words. "Leave the trunk. I'll have Housemen bring it in."
"No problem," said Danny Pritchard as he swung the gear handle from one corner of the trunk. He began spinning the handle with an ease that belied the trunk's weight. Coon Blegan had grimaced when his master spoke of leaving the trunk. The old servant knew as Pritchard did himself that if left unguarded, the luggage would surely be ransacked.
Wheels lowered from the four corners, jacking the trunk up by smooth degrees. Powered units were simpler while they worked; but they stopped working when your traps were off-loaded into a swamp, or somebody turned a valve that flooded the cargo bay with nascent chlorine. Most mercs got along, as Pritchard did, with muscle-powered come-alongs for their hold baggage.
This time the trunk held clothing along with a submachine gun, three spare barrels, a thousand rounds of ammunition, and a suit of body armor. Pritchard had not been going to leave it in the courtyard if the only alternative had been to lift the full hundred and eighty kilos on his back.
The one-time officer extended the lever into a T-handled tow bar. "Shall we?" he suggested to the others.
But as Danny followed Blegan and young Slade, he swept his eyes around the courtyard. It was filled with men and equipment and arrogance. Pritchard had been a staff officer for a decade and Hammer's heir apparent for over a year. It was still easy to recall the days when he had been only a blower captain himself. The days in which Danny Pritchard's decisions involved no more than how to kill the most men in the shortest time.