"Oh."
As they descended among the jovial transport workers, the Officer blinked. Most were ordinary men and women, but the results of cosmetic surgery were numerous enough to keep his eyes leaping. "I've never been in a place like this before!" he whispered. Amphibians or reptilian creatures argued and laughed with griffins and metallic-skinned sphinxes.
"Leave your clothing here?" smiled the check girl. Her naked skin was candy green, her immense coil piled like pink cotton. Her breasts, navel, and lips flashed.
“I don't believe so," the Customs Officer said quickly.
"At least take your shoes and shirt off," Rydra said, slipping off her blouse. "People will think you're strange." She bent, rose and handed her sandals over the counter. She had begun to unbuckle her waist cinch when she caught his desperate look, smiled, and fastened the buckle again.
Carefully he removed jacket, vest, shirt, and undershirt. He was about to untie his shoes when someone grabbed his arm. "Hey, Customs!"
He stood up before a huge, naked man with a frown on his pocked face like a burst in rotten rind. His only ornaments were mechanical beetle lights that swarmed in patterns over his chest, shoulders, legs and arms.
"Eh, pardon me?"
"What you doing here. Customs?"
"Sir, I am not bothering you."
"And I'm not bothering you. Have a drink, Customs. I'm being friendly."
"Thank you very much, but I'd rather—"
"I'm being friendly. You're not. If you're not gonna be friendly. Customs, I'm not gonna be friendly either."
"Well, I'm with some—" He looked helplessly at Rydra.
“Come on. Then you both have a drink. On me. Real friendly, damn it." His other hand fell toward Rydra's shoulder, but she caught his wrist. The fingers opened from the many-scaled stellarimeter grafted onto his palm. "Navigator?"
He nodded, and she let the hand go, which landed.
"Why are you so 'friendly' tonight?"
The intoxicated man shook his head. His hair was knotted in a stubby black braid over his left ear. "I'm just friendly with Customs here. I like you."
"Thanks. Buy us that drink and I'll buy you one back."
As he nodded heavily, his green eyes narrowed. He reached between her breasts and fingered up the gold disk that hung from the chain around her neck. "Captain Wong?"
She nodded.
"Better not mess with you, then." He laughed. "Come on. Captain, and I'll buy you and Customs here something to make you happy." They pushed their way to the bar.
What was green and came in small glasses at the more respectable establishments here was served in mugs.
"Who you betting on in the Dragon-Brass skirmish, and if you say the Dragon, I'll throw this in your face. Joking, of course. Captain."
"I'm not betting," Rydra said. "I'm hiring. You know Brass?"
"Was a navigator on his last trip. Got in a week ago."
"You're friendly for the same reason he's wrestling?"
"You might say that."
The Customs Officer scratched his collarbone and looked puzzled.
"Last trip Brass made went bust," Rydra explained to him. "The crew is out of work. Brass is on exhibit tonight." She turned again to the Navigator. "Will there be many captains bidding for him?"
He put his tongue just under his upper lip, squinted one eye and dropped his head. He shrugged.
"I'm the only one you've run into?"
A nod, a large swallow of liquor.
"What's your name?"
"Calli, Navigator-Two."
"Where are your One and Three?"
"Three's over there somewhere getting drunk. One was a sweet girl named Cathy O'Higgins— She's dead." He finished the drink and reached over for another one.
"My treat," Rydra said. "Why's she dead?"
"Ran into Invaders. Only people who ain't dead, Brass, me and Three, and our Eye. Lost the whole platoon, our Slug. Damn good Slug too. Captain, that was a bad trip. The Eye, he cracked up without the Ear and Nose. They'd been discorporate for ten years together. Ron, Cathy and me, we'd only been tripled for a couple of months. But even so . . ."He shook his head. "It's bad."
"Call your Three over," Rydra said.
"Why?"
"I'm looking for a full crew."
Calli wrinkled his forehead. "We don't got no One anymore."
"You're going to mope around here forever? Go to the Morgue."
Calli humphed. "You gonna see my Three, you come on."
Rydra shrugged in acquiescence, and the Customs Officer followed behind them.
"Hey, stupid, swing around."
The kid who turned on the bar stool was maybe nineteen. The Customs Officer thought of a snarl of metal bands. Calli was a large, comfortable man—
"Captain Wong, this is Ron, best Three to come out of the Solar System."
—But Ron was small, thin, with uncannily sharp muscular definition: pectorals like scored metal plates beneath drawn wax skin; stomach like ridged hosing, arms like braided cables. Even the facial muscles stood at the back of the jaw and jammed against the separate columns of his neck. He was unkempt and towheaded and sapphire eyed, but the only cosmetic surgery evident was the bright rose growing on his shoulder. He flung out a quick smile and touched his forehead with a forefinger in salute. His nails were nub-gnawed on fingers like knotted lengths of white rope.
"Captain Wong is looking for a crew."
Ron shifted on the stool, raising his head a little; every other muscle in his body moved too like snakes under milk.
The Customs Officer saw Rydra's eyes widen. Not understanding her reaction, he ignored it.
"Don't got no One," Ron said. His smile was quick and sad again.
"Suppose I found a One for you?"
The Navigators looked at each other.
Calli turned to Rydra and rubbed the side of his nose with his thumb. "You know the thing about a triple like us—"
Rydra's left hand caught her right. "Like this, you have to be. My choice is subject to your approval, of course."
"Well, it's pretty difficult for someone else—"
"It's impossible. But it's your choice. I just make suggestions. But my suggestions are damn good ones. What do you say?"
Calli's thumb moved from his nose to his earlobe. He shrugged. "You can't make an offer much better than that."
Rydra looked at Ron.
The kid put one foot up on the stool, hugged his knee, and peered across his patella. "I say, let's see who you suggest."
She nodded. "Fair."
"You know, jobs for broken triples aren't all that common." Calli put his hand on Ron's shoulder.
"Yeah, but—"
Rydra looked up. "Let's watch the wrestling."
Along the counter people raised their heads. At the tables, patrons released the catch in their chair arms so that the backs swung to half recline.
Calli's mug clinked on the counter, and Ron raised both feet to the stool and leaned back against the bar.
"What are they looking at?" the Customs Officer asked. "Where's everybody—" Rydra put her hand on the back of his neck and did something so that he laughed and swung his head up. Then he sucked a great breath and let it out slowly.
The smoky globe, hung in the vault, was shot with colored light. The room had gone dim. Thousands of watts of floodlights struck the plastic surface and gleamed on the faces below as smoke in the bright sphere faded.
"What's going to happen?" the Customs Officer asked. "Is that where they wrestle . . . ?"
Rydra brushed her hand over his mouth and he nearly swallowed his tongue: but was quiet.
And the Silver Dragon came, wings working in the smoke, silver feathers like clashed blades, scales on the grand haunches shaking; she rippled her ten-foot body and squirmed in the antigravity field, green lips leering, silver lids batting over green orbs,. "It's a woman!" breathed the Customs Officer.