Hansen laughed, a trifle uneasily it seemed to Marten. “Oh, what does it matter? We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
Kang breathed heavily through his nose, let go of Hansen’s wrist and poured more vodka. After a stiff belt, he said, “Omi used to be a gunman for Eastman.”
“Really?” said Hansen. “Eastman always broke people too soon—in my professional opinion. But then that must have given you a lot of work,” he said to Omi.
Omi shrugged.
Hansen laughed more freely now. “Oh, the old days. I don’t miss them, I’ll tell you. The gang leader and the gunman, two toughs that nobody wants to meet in a back alley or in his home. Good old Sydney! But now you’re shock troopers, hired guns fighting for the Highborn.”
“So speaks the part-time drug runner and full-time informer,” Kang said.
Hansen slapped the table in outrage. “Now see here, Kang. Maybe I smuggled a tot or two of black sand—I won’t deny that among friends. We all lived in the slums, after all, and had to make ends meet. But this charge of, of…” He angrily shook his long head.
“Informer,” Kang said. “Job training, in your case.” He snorted. It was his way of laughing.
Hansen’s foxy eyes narrowed and his veneer of joviality vanished, leaving him sinister seeming.
“Bet I can guess you how you got this far,” Kang said. “You must have fast-talked the HBs when they were looking for people to trust. Yeah, sure, I bet that’s how you did it. You’d learned enough about undercover work to fool them into letting you be a monitor.”
“You used to hold your liquor better,” grumbled Hansen.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Kang said. “We’re all friends here, like you’ve been saying. A gang leader, a gunman, a drug runner and a—Marten, you didn’t live in the slums.”
Marten shrugged.
“Where are you from?” asked Hansen, a bit too eagerly, no doubt to stop talking about old times with Kang.
“He’s from here,” Kang said.
“You’re from the Sun Works Factory?” asked Hansen. “That’s very rare for someone here to have made it into the shock troops.”
“He emigrated to Earth first,” Kang said. “Didn’t you, Marten?”
Hansen lifted his eyebrows, giving Marten a more careful examination. It heightened Hansen’s narrow features, the weakness to his chin and the crafty way his pupils darted. He seemed like a weaker animal, one that constantly judged danger and how close it was to him. “How did it happen that you emigrated to Earth?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” Marten said. He slid his chair and stood. “Nature calls.”
“He’s a quiet one,” Marten heard Hansen saying as he limped away. “They’re always the most dangerous. Remember the time…” Then Marten went to the restroom, relieved himself and as he returned, he noticed a woman in the main doorway glancing about the tavern. He might not have noticed her but she seemed so out of place and frazzled, worried, at wits end.
She wore an engineer’s gray jumpsuit with heavy magnetic boots and a tool belt still hooked around her waist. An engineer’s cap with a sun logo showed that she serviced the habitat’s outer sun shield. Marten idly wondered what she was doing in Smade’s, what she was doing in the Pleasure Palace all together. She had a heart-shaped face, was pretty and of medium height and regular build. Despite the jumpsuit, it was clear she was well endowed. Alert eyes, small nose and a mobile mouth, a kissing mouth, Marten thought to himself.
Their eyes met. He nodded. She looked away, then back at him as he sat down. Her gaze slid onto his tablemates. Recognition leaped onto her face as resolve settled upon her. She strode toward them.
Hansen and Kang argued about something, so neither of them noticed her. Marten saw the two monitors by the bar glance at her, each other and then jump to their feet.
She beat them to the table. “There’s a problem,” the engineer said without preamble.
Hansen looked up. “Nadia Pravda, what are you doing here?”
The two big monitors slid up behind her.
“The sump exploded and we lost an entire batch of product,” Nadia said. “Tell Bock that it wasn’t my fault.”
Hansen’s eyes boggled. He glanced at Kang, then at Nadia Pravda. “Get her out of here,” he said. “Teach her to be more careful about. To, ah—”
The big monitors each grabbed an arm.
Hansen glanced at Kang again, then at his men. “—Just get her out of here,” he said.
“It’s not my fault!” Nadia said, as they started dragging her out. “Tell Bock—”
“Silence!” said Hansen, with a sharp, authoritative bark as he stood and slapped the tabletop.
People looked up. One of the monitors holding onto Nadia peered meaningfully at Hansen, who jerked his head to one side. The big monitor nodded and the two of them hustled her out.
“Product?” Kang asked, as Hansen sat down. “Does that mean you’re still in the drug trade?”
Hansen shot Kang an angry stare.
“It couldn’t be black sand,” Kang said. “The HBs sell it openly to whoever wants it. Ah. Sure. You’re making dream dust, aren’t you?”
Hansen tried to stare Kang down and when it didn’t work, he slumped in his chair.
“She said Bock,” Kang mused. “Could that be the same Chief Monitor Bock you told us that you report to?”
Marten hid his excitement. Hansen made illegal drugs under the noses of the Highborn. He even had an engineer involved. Even better, this Nadia Pravda, this engineer, sounded as if she was in trouble with Hansen. Marten needed a way to move under security if he was ever going to steal a vacc suit in order to spacewalk to the broken-down pod. Here was his chance to find out how Hansen did it.
“Listen, Kang,” Hansen was saying, with a greasy smile on his face. Then he peered at his slender hands and ordered an eye-bender from the bar.
Marten stood. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave. This reunion, it’s none of my affair.” He motioned to Omi.
“Nor mine,” Omi said, standing.
Hansen peered at them, his features calculating. “No,” he said a moment later. “This is between Kang and me. You may go.”
“Hey, maggot,” Kang said. “My buddies and I do whatever we feel like. We’re shock troopers, which is top of the heap around here. You’re the one who’s going to need permission to leave, not them.”
Marten didn’t hear Hansen’s reply. He pushed Omi toward the door, and whispered, “Do you think Kang will be all right?”
“Hansen is too scared to try anything stupid. Kang could probably clear the bar if felt like it.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
Coming out of Smade’s they blinked at the glittering lights. Marten looked around and pointed at the two monitors frog-marching the engineer. They weren’t far ahead. She seemed resigned to her fate and wasn’t resisting.
“We’d better act natural,” Marten said, thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets. He sauntered along as if looking at the sights.
“You want to follow her?” Omi asked.
“This is our chance,” Marten said. “But we have to hurry.”
Omi blinked once and then laughed, immediately launching into a tourist-type gawker. He pointed at a tall spire in the distance before grabbing Marten’s arm and dragging him faster.
The two monitors frog-marched Nadia Pravda around a corner. Marten and Omi hurried. Marten made it around the corner in time to see them march her behind two plastic trees near the wall. The monitors had taken her down a small alleyway. A hidden door behind the two fake trees swished open. Marten and Omi broke into a run. The woman finally started talking, her voice wheedling, pleading. Marten plunged between the two plastic props, through the door and into a lift, with Omi almost on top of him.