Maxine's teeth clenched. "Laverna? Damn! Captain, can I call you right back? I need to check on something."
"I'll be waiting," said Phule, and gave her the comm code. "Don't take too long, though-I can promise you, you don't want me to send my people over to find out what's causing the delay."
"I don't need your promises to know that," Maxine snapped at the captain. "Cool your jets-I'll get right back to you." She slammed down the receiver and went looking for her assistant.
It didn't take long to determine that Laverna wasn't anywhere in the suite. A quick phone call established that she wasn't in the bar downstairs-her usual watering hole. The last person who'd seen her was the guard at the door. That had been in midafternoon-as she was leaving the building with a conservatively dressed middle-aged man. The butler!
"That bitch!" Maxine slammed down the phone. Then she began to figure out what she was going to tell the captain.
"You sure we got time for this?" said Do-Wop.
"All the time in the world," said Sushi, bending over an open panel behind which could be seen complex circuitry. "Quiet, now, I need to concentrate. And make sure nobody's watching."
"Yeah, right," said Do-Wop. He scratched himself and pretended to goof off, gazing back down the little alley next to the casino offices. Night never fell on Lorelei, but it was early evening by Galactic Standard Time, which was the system observed on the space station. There were a few people on the streets-those finishing an early dinner, or casino workers coming off shift-but nobody seemed to pay much attention to a couple of men in maintenance uniforms crouching by an open panel with tools spread around. Just act like we belong there, Sushi had told him, and it was apparently working.
"Nobody payin' attention," he reported. He peered back to see how Sushi was doing. The job involved removing a particular chip and replacing it with a slightly more complex one designed to fit in the same slot. That sounded easy, but sometimes the installation didn't resemble the pictures in the manuals. An easy job could become impossible if you only had limited time. There was a wire from some previous repair that was going to have to be disconnected, moved aside, and reconnected when the job was done. A few minutes longer. Well, that's why they always told you to allow more time than you thought you needed to pull off a job.
And now there was somebody looking at them. "Soosh!" he hissed, and tried to act as if he wasn't nervous. "Casino guard."
"Act calm," said Sushi, snapping the new chip into place, and pocketing the old one. "Now all I gotta do is reconnect the repair wire."
"So hurry up and do it. He's comin'!"
"Oh, in that case..." Sushi took his soldering laser and quickly played it over the base of the chip they'd removed. He stood up and said loudly, "Look at this piece of crap."
"What the hell?" said Do-Wop, and then the security guard was looking over his shoulder.
"They had the wrong value in. No wonder the bastard burned out so soon. Some guy was too lazy to go back to the shop for the right one." Sushi took up the obligatory repairman's critique of his predecessor's shoddy work.
"You guys workin' late," said the guard.
"Yeah, Liverakos told us finish up this last job," said Sushi. Of course he'd found out the casino maintenance chief's name. "They got a new kid on next shift, and he's late already."
"Yeah, I seen him around," said the guard. There were always new kids around. "Guess he won't be here long."
"Unless he's related to somebody," griped Do-Wop.
He and the guard went on about the ills of nepotism and favoritism on the job for a couple of minutes while Sushi quietly knelt down and finished reconnecting the wire.
"OK, we can close her up," he said. "And then I can find out if my wife's gonna kill me for getting home late."
"Lucky guy, you got a wife," said Do-Wop.
"You call that lucky?" said Sushi, and the guard laughed. They wrestled the panel back in place while the guard kibitzed, and Do-Wop tightened the fasteners. Sushi started packing the tools.
"OK, see you boys around," said the guard, wandering back down the alleyway.
"See you," said Sushi. It probably wouldn't be too soon, though. Unless something suddenly went very wrong, they'd be in deep space less than an hour from now. They finished packing up their tools, cleaned up the small amount of debris the "repair" had generated, and walked casually out of the alley.
Across the street, the security guard was standing, looking completely uninterested in them. They walked away quickly.
Maxine was still trying to decide on her story when the communicator buzzed again. She strode over and picked it up. "Yeah?"
It was the guard downstairs. "Boss, that Legion captain's here, with a bunch of soldiers, and they're loaded for bear. The customers are buggin'. How you want me to play it?"
Maxine's reply was instantaneous. "Stall 'em-and keep your own guns out of sight. I'll be straight down." She disconnected, and headed for the door. Halfway there, she stopped and checked her gun; it was ready and loaded. For a moment, she considered leaving it behind-it would be next to useless against the legionnaires' weaponry, and more likely to get her into trouble than to get her out of it-but long years of habit overrode the prudent impulse. She returned it to its concealed holster and stomped out the door.
Down in the lobby, Phule was there with half a dozen legionnaires. From behind the nearby row of quantum slot machines, tourists stared at Phule and his men (although they kept pumping in coins). A few nervous gamblers waited at the window, cashing their chips while they still had the chance. And several bulky gentlemen-plainclothes casino security-occupied seats in the lobby area, studiously ignoring the armed invasion.
Phule turned when he saw her and said, "About time, Mrs. Pruett. I have a confirmed report that my butler was in this building. Where are you keeping him?"
"Keeping him? Are you crazy?" Maxine said, taken aback. "What the hell do I want your butler for?"
"I don't know, but I want him back," said Phule. "And I'm not going to wait very long."
"Look, I don't know where he is and I don't care. Feel free to search the place," said Maxine. She was confident that anything she didn't want him to see was well hidden; the place had been built on the assumption that search parties might occasionally come through. A few had, over the years, though none had penetrated beyond the nominally secret areas where teams of casino employees conducted surveillance and security operations, all perfectly legal and innocuous. Maxine's real secrets were much better hidden.
"You don't care?" said Phule. "Not even if he's run off with your assistant?"
Maxine stared him down. "What if he has? She's of legal age, after all."
"If she knows half as much about your business as he knows about mine, we're both in trouble," the captain hissed. Then he looked around and said, "Is there someplace we can talk? Someplace secure? There are too many people here for my nerves."
"Too many for my nerves, too," she said, seizing the moment. "Most of 'em are your troops, if you want to know the truth. Get 'em the hell out of here, so my customers can go back to playing instead of gawking at all that hardware, and I'm sure we can find a place to talk."
"We can arrange that," said Phule. He turned to his troops. "I'll be talking to Mrs. Pruett. You take up positions outside-with your eyes open. I'll be half an hour-if I need more time, I'll call you." He tapped his wrist communicator. "If you don't hear from me by then, you call me. If I don't answer, you know what to do. Understood? Do whatever you need to do."