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"Yeah. I see what you mean. Russell? How much for the shovel?"
"I'm scared, friend," said the policeman. "Clementine is a peaceful guy. But when he gets riled he doesn't have sense enough to keep his head down. He'll fight. If it's the Big Outfit... Well, let's just say I like our arrangement. We get along. We don't have any trouble. We all know where we stand. If they move in... "
Something buzzed. The officer removed a handcomm from his pocket. "Heller." He pressed the device to his ear. His face became grave.
He put the comm away, considered Cassius momentarily. "That's three more down, friend. Two of theirs and one of Clementine's. It's got to be the Big Outfit. One looked Sangaree."
Cassius frowned. Mouse lost all interest in sleep. Baffled, he asked, "Sangaree? Cassius? Did we walk into something?"
"Sure as hell starting to look like it. Karl, I don't know what the hell is coming down. This isn't what we expected. We came looking for one thing and found something else. I'll talk to Clementine. I'll try to calm him down."
"You do that. And keep in touch. I don't like this. I don't want those people in here." Heller downed his coffee in a single gulp, started away. "Look out for yourself, friend. I don't want to scrape you up, too."
Mouse and Cassius watched him go. "What do you think?" Mouse asked. The boredom was gone. Sleepiness was forgotten. He was extremely uneasy.
"I think we'd better get back to the hotel and lay low. This doesn't look good."
Cassius paused at the hotel desk. "Suite Twelve," he said, requesting the key. "Any messages?"
Mouse leaned against the desk, watching the clerk hopefully. There might be something from his father. There wasn't. Nothing but a brief instelgram from the Fortress of Iron. Cassius read it aloud.
Mouse watched a lean old man come off the street. He had seen the man outside, watching them come in. There had been something strange about his eyes... "Cassius! Down!"
He dove toward the nearest furniture, drawing a tiny, illegal weapon as he flew. Cassius tumbled the other way.
Calmly, the old man opened fire.
A hotel patron screamed, fell, writhed on the plush lobby carpeting. A bolt hit Mouse's protective couch. Smoke billowed.
Cassius hit their attacker with his second shot. The old man did not go down. Wearing a mildly surprised expression, he kept hosing the lobby with beam fire from a military-type weapon. People screamed. Furniture burned. Alarms wailed. Diffused beams skipping off the mirrored walls made it impossible to see.
Mouse gagged in the smoke, snapped a shot at the old man. His bolt singed the assassin's hair. He did not seem to notice.
Cassius hit him again. He turned and walked out the door as if unharmed...
"Mouse," Cassius shouted, "call Heller. I'm going after him."
Mouse placed the call and was outside in seconds.
The old man lay on the sidewalk, curled in a fetal position, his weapon clutched to his chest. Cassius stood over him. He wore a puzzled look. Heller arrived almost before the crowds started gathering.
"What the hell, hey?" the policeman demanded.
"This man tried to kill us," Mouse babbled. "Just walked in the hotel and started shooting."
Cassius was kneeling now, studying the man's eyes. "Karl. Look. I think it's one of them."
Someone in the crowd said, "Hey. That's Cassius. The merc."
"Crap," a companion replied.
The word spread.
Heller snarled at a uniformed officer, "Get this cleaned up before the news snoops show. Take the body down to the plant. Cassius, I've got to take you and your friend down. I can't take any more of this."
Ten minutes later they were inside the police fortress. The street outside had filled with news people. The name Cassius had that effect.
"Just plan on sitting tight till we get this straighened out," Heller said, responding to Cassius's request that he be allowed to visit the man named Clementine. "He can come here if you've got to talk."
The shooting was all the news that evening. The net-folk were trying to establish a co
Walters pulled out the stops. He used all his co
"Karl, you got that stuff ready to go out? I've got a co
Heller was impressed despite himself. "Push the red button. It'll squirt when you do."
Cassius punched. "On its way. If there's anything on record about the old guy, Beckhart has it. He runs their Sangaree section. Good man. Taught him myself, years ago."
"I've heard of him," Heller replied. The last few hours had dazed the policeman. He was in over his head. Cassius had turned a local affair into an interstellar incident. He did not like it and did not know how to stop it.
Mouse watched with mild amusement till he fell asleep.
The sun was up when Cassius wakened him. "Come on, Mouse. We're heading home."
"Where?"
"Home."
"But... "
‘We got what we came for. You do the flying. I need some sleep."
Heller escorted them to the port, which the police had closed till they got the crisis in hand. His okay was necessary before any vessel could lift off.
"Cassius?" Heller said as Walters was about to board. "Do me a favor, eh? Don't hurry back."
Cassius gri
"Okay. Okay. You didn't bring them here. Go on. Get out of here before I forget I forgot to charge you with carrying illegal weapons."
Mouse glanced over as Cassius settled into the acceleration couch beside him. Walters said, "Set a base curve for Helga's World."
Mouse began the programing. "Why there?" He was baffled. By everything. "Cassius? What happened last night?"
Cassius answered with a snore.
He slept nine hours. Mouse grew ever more impatient. Cassius seldom slept more than five, and resented that, as if it were time stolen from his alloted span.
Mouse took the ship offworld, aligned the Helga's World curve, put her into a power fly while getting up influence to go hyper.
"Keep putting on inherent," Cassius said by way of a
"Now will you tell me what happened while I was asleep?"
"We got an ID on that old shooter. From my friend Beckhart. Turned out nobody else could have filled us in. The guy was supposed to have been dead for two hundred years."
"What?"
"Beckhart's got a computer that remembers everything. When he fed it the guy's personals it dug all the way back to perso
Mouse examined the idea more closely than it seemed to deserve. Cassius's attitude implied that the information was especially significant. "What's the kicker?"
"Beckhart didn't just answer the question I asked. He went looking for the meaning. He instelled us an abstract of his printouts. This Rhafu wasn't the only survivor. The Family heir, a sort of crown prince, made it through too. They managed to get off Prefactlas and somehow reclaim their Family prerogatives. Very mysterious people. Their own kind don't know any more about them than we do, but they're mucho respected and feared. Sort of the Sangaree's Sangaree. They've turned the Norbon into one of the top Sangaree Families. Their economic base is an otherwise unknown First Expansion world."