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Their clothes marked them down as colonists, machine-made synthetic fabric; locals were dressed in loom-woven cloth, shirts and shorts hand sewn, solid boots that came up to the top of their calves, caked in mud. But nobody shouted a challenge as they walked up the steps. Qui
The bar was a single plank of wood ru
Qui
The girl barely glanced at it. “Yeah.”
“Great, two beers.”
She started pulling them from the cask.
“It’s my last night here before I sail upriver. Do you know where I can maybe get a bit of sport? Don’t want to waste it.”
“In the back.” She didn’t look up.
“Gee, thanks. Have one yourself.”
“A brightlime, thanks.” She put his half-litre tankards down in the puddles on the bar. “Six fuseodollars.”
Which Qui
The vicious black catlike animals were called sayce, the local dog-analogue, with a degree more intelligence than Earth’s canines. Qui
Qui
They found a bench and squirmed on. Qui
It turned out the bookie was called Baxter, a thin oriental with a nasty scar leading from the corner of his left eye down below his grubby red T-shirt neck.
“Pay out only in Lalonde francs,” he said gruffly.
A man mountain with a black beard stood at Baxter’s side, and gave Qui
“Fine by me,” Qui
The fights were impressive, fast, violent, gory, and short. The owners would stand on opposite sides of the pit, holding back their animals, shouting orders into the flat triangular ears. When the sayce had reached a fever pitch of anger they were shoved into the pit. Streamlined black bodies clashed in a snarl of six-clawed paws and snapping jaws, muscle bands like steel pistons bunching and stretching the shiny skin. Losing a leg didn’t even slow them down. Qui
Qui
After seven fights he was eight hundred fuseodollars down, with two and a half thousand Lalonde francs in his pocket.
“I know her,” Jackson said as the next two sayce were being goaded on the side of the pit by their owners. One of them was an old bull, his skin a cross web of scars. That was the one Qui
“Who?”
“Girl over there. She’s from Group Seven.”
Qui
“Are you sure?” With the glare of the lights it was difficult for him to tell.
“I’m sure. I couldn’t forget those tits. I think she’s called Mary, Mandy, something like that.”
The sayce were shoved into the pit, and the crowd roared. The two powerful vulpine bodies locked together, spi
“I suppose she’s entitled to be here,” Qui
Jackson gave him a thumbs up and took another gulp from his tankard.
Baxter was standing on the ramp leading from the pit to the cages, head flicking from side to side as he followed the battling beasts. He acknowledged Qui
A spume of blood flew out of the pit, splattering the people on the lowest benches. One of the sayce was screeching. Qui
“You done all right tonight,” Baxter said. “Break even, begi
“No, I need the money. I’m going upriver soon.”
“You build nice home for family, good luck.”
“I need more than luck up there. Suppose I bump into one of those?” He flicked a finger at the pit. The old bull had its jaws around the younger sayce’s throat, it was slamming its head against the side of the pit, oblivious to the deep gouges the other’s claws were raking down its flanks.
“Sayce not like living near river,” Baxter said. “Air too wet. You be all right.”
“A sayce or one of its cousins. I could do with something with a bit of punch, something that’ll stop it dead.”
“You bring plenty gear from Earth.”
“Can’t bring everything we need, the company doesn’t let us. And I want some recreational items as well. I thought maybe I could pick it all up in town. I thought maybe you might know who I needed to see.”
“You think too much.”
“I also pay a lot.”
Down in the pit a sayce’s head virtually exploded as it was slammed against the wall for the last time. Pulpy gobs of brain sleeted down.
Qui
“You owe me another thousand francs,” he told Baxter. “You can keep half of it as a finder’s fee.”
Baxter’s voice dropped an octave. “Come back here, ten minutes; I show you man who can help.”
“Gotcha.”
The old bull sayce was sniffling round the floor of the pit when Qui