"Dumb slob?" Arena barked. "You think a dumb slob could have built the organization I did, put this town in his hip pocket? I started stock-piling metal five years ago-a year before the ban. No hole deep enough, huh? It don"t need to be so deep when it"s got two feet of lead shielding over it."

"So you smuggled a few tons of lead into the Public Library and filed it under Little Bo Peep."

"The two feet was there ahead of me, wisenheimer. Remember the Polaris sub that used to be drydocked at Norfolk for the tourists to rubberneck?"

"Decommissioned and sold for sc.r.a.p," I said. "Years ago."

"But not sc.r.a.pped. Rusted in a sc.r.a.pyard for five years. Then I bought her-beefed up her shielding-loaded her and sank her in ten fathoms of water in Cartwright Bay."

"That," Stenn said, "is the information we need."

Arena whirled. Stenn was still sitting on the floor. He had a palm gun in his hand, and it was pointed at the monogram on Arena"s silk shirt.

"A cross," Arena said. "A lousy cross . . ."

"Move back, Arena." Stenn got to his feet, eyes on Arena.

"Where"d you have the stinger stashed?"

"In my hand. Stop there."

Stenn moved over to me. Eyes on Arena, he reached for the twisted ends of wire, started loosening them.

"I don"t want to be nosey," I said. "But just where the h.e.l.l do you fit into this, Stenn?"

"Naval Intelligence," Stenn said.

Arena cursed. "I knew that name should have rung a bell. Vice Admiral Stenn. The papers said you got yours when the Navy was purged."

"A few of us eluded the net."

Arena heaved a sigh.

"Well, fellows," he said-and jumped.

Stenn"s shot went wild, and Arena left-hooked him down behind the chair. As he followed, Stenn came up fast, landed a hard left, followed up, drove Arena back. I yanked at my wires. Almost- Then Arena, a foot taller, hammered a brutal left-right and Stenn sagged. Carefully Arena aimed a right cross to the jaw. Stenn dropped.

Arena wiped an arm across his face.

"The little man tried, Mister. Let"s give him that."

He walked past my chair, stooped for Stenn"s gun. I heaved, slammed against him, and the light chair collapsed as we went over. Arena landed a kick, then I was on my feet, shaking a slat loose from the dangling wire. Arena stepped in, threw a whistling right. I ducked it, landed a hard punch to the midriff, another on the jaw. Arena backed, bent over but still strong. I couldn"t let him rest. I was after him, took two in the face, ducked a haymaker that left him wide open just long enough for me to put everything I had in an uppercut that sent him back across his fancy desk. He sprawled, then slid onto the floor.

I went to him, kicked him lightly in the ribs.

"Where"s Williams," I said. I kept kicking and asking. After five tries, Arena shook his head and tried to sit up. I put a foot in his face and he relaxed. I asked him again.

"You didn"t learn this kind of tactics at the Academy," Arena whined.

"It"s the times," I said. "They have a coa.r.s.ening effect."

"Williams was a fancy-pants," Arena said. "No guts. He pulled the stopper."

"Talk plainer," I said, and kicked him again, hard-but I knew what he meant.

"Blew his lousy head off," Arena yelled. "I ga.s.sed him and tried scop on him. He blew. He was out cold, and he blew."

"Yeah," I said. "Hypnotics will trigger it."

"Fancy G.o.ddam wiring job," Arena muttered, wiping blood from his face,

I got the wire and trussed Arena up. I had to clip him twice before I finished. I went through his pockets, looked at things, recovered my souvenirs. I went over to Stenn. He was breathing.

Arena was watching. "He"s okay, for crissake," he said. "What kind of punch you think I got?"

I hoisted Stenn onto my shoulder.

"So long, Arena," I said. "I don"t know why I don"t blow your brains out. Maybe it"s that Navy Cross citation in your wallet."

"Listen," Arena said. "Take me with you."

"A swell idea," I said. "I"ll pick up a couple of tarantulas, too."

"You"re trying for the hack, right?"

"Sure. What else?"

"The roof," he said. "I got six, eight rotos on the roof. One highspeed job. You"ll never make the hack."

"Why tell me?"

"I got eight hundred gun boys in this building alone. They know you"re here. The hack is watched, the whole route. You can"t get through."

"What do you care?"

"If the boys bust in here after a while and find me like this . . . They"ll bury me with the wires still on, Maclamore."

"How do I get to the roof?"

He told me. I went to the right corner, pushed the right spot, and a panel slid aside. I looked back at Arena.

"I"ll make a good sailor, Maclamore," he said.

"Don"t crawl, Arena," I said. I went up the short stair, came out onto a block-square pad.

Arena was right about the rotos. Eight of them. I picked the four-place Cad, and got Stenn tied in. He was coming to, muttering. He was still fighting Arena, he thought.

" . . . I"ll hold . . . you . . . get out . . ."

"Take it easy, Stenn," I said. "Nothing can touch this bus. Where"s the boat?" I shook him. "Where"s the boat, Stenn?"

He came around long enough to tell me. It wasn"t far-less than an hour"s run.

"Stand by, Admiral," I said. "I"ll be right back."

"Where . . . you . . ."

"We need every good man we can get," I said. "And I think I know a guy that wants to join the Navy."

EPILOGUE.

Admiral Stenn turned away from the communicator screen. "I think we"d be justified in announcing victory now, Commodore." As usual, he sounded like a professor of diction, but he was wearing a big grin.

"Whatever you say, Chief," I said, with an even sappier smile.

I made the official announcement that a provisional Congress had accepted the resignations of all claims by former office holders, and that new elections would be underway in a week.

I switched over to Power Section. The NCO in charge threw me a snappy highball. d.a.m.ned if he wasn"t grinning too.

"I guess we showed "em who"s got the muscle, Commodore," he said.

"Your firepower demonstration was potent, Max," I said. "You must have stayed up nights studying the tapes."

"We"ve hardly scratched the surface yet," he said.

"I"ll be crossing back to Alaska now, Mac," Stenn said.

I watched him move across the half-mile void to the flagship. Five minutes later the patrol detail broke away to take up surveillance orbits. They would be getting all the sh.o.r.e leave for the next few years, but I was glad my squadron had been detailed to go with the flagship on the Deep s.p.a.ce patrol. I wanted to be there when we followed those star surveys back to where their makers came from. Stenn wasn"t the man to waste time, either. He"d be getting under way any minute. It was time to give my orders. I flipped the communicator key to the squadron link-up.

"Escort Commander to Escort," I said. "Now hear this . . ."

ONCE THERE WAS.

A GIANT.

1.

It was one of those self-consciously raunchy dives off Cargo Street that you can find in any port town in the Arm, serving the few genuine dockwallopers and decayed s.p.a.cemen that liked being stared at by tourists, plus the tourists, but mostly the sharpies or would-be sharpies that preyed on both brands of sucker. I came in with just enough swagger to confuse the issue: which kind was I? There was that subtle rearrangement of conversational groups as the company present sorted themselves out into active partic.i.p.ants and spectators, relatively few of the latter. I saw my mark right away, holed up in a corner booth with a couple of what he probably thought were tough guys. All three swiveled their heads in a leisurely way long enough to show me matched insolent snickers. Then one of the side-boys rapped on the table and rose; he said something to the mark, an ex-soldier named Keeler, and pushed off for the bar, which put him behind me. The mark made a production of not looking at me as I worked my way over to his corner, while appearing to be a little bewildered by it all. I fetched up at his table just in time to get jostled by hard boy number two, just getting up. I gave him an uncertain grin for his trouble, and took his still-warm seat, opposite Keeler. The hard case drifted away, muttering. That left me and Keeler, face to face.

"-if you don"t mind," I was saying when he poked a finger at my chest and said, "Beat it, b.u.m." in a voice as friendly as a slammed door.

I sat tight and took a good look at him. I knew a little more about this mark, more personal detail, that is, because twenty years before he had been the paid-off lieutenant who had let a Mob ship through his section of the Cordon to raid the mining camp on Ceres where I had been spending my time growing up to the age of twelve. I remember wondering "twelve what?" and not quite understanding why it had something to do with the number of times one of the brighter nearby stars-the double one, really a planet-went from left of the sun to right and back again, which seemed pretty screwy to me. Bombeck and his raiders hadn"t left much of Extraction Station Five, but a few of us kids hid in an old cutting and came out after the shooting was over. Time does strange things, and now I was Baird Ulrik, licensed a.s.sa.s.sin, and Keeler was my current contract. Well, it"s a living.

2.

It"s not often a fellow gets paid well to do what he"d like to do for free, and it made a lot of difference. No contract man can afford to be picky, but I had always made it a point to accept contracts only on marks that I agreed needed killing: Dope-runners, con-men, rabble-rousers-for-money, and the like, of which there was an adequate supply to keep our small but elite cadre of licensed operators busy. When Keeler came along, I tried not to look too eager, to keep the price up. It wasn"t any life-long dream of mine, to get the man responsible for the slaughter of what pa.s.sed for my family, including burning the old homestead with them in it, alive or dead, n.o.body knew-but I thought there was a certain elegance, as the math boys say, to my being the one to end his career for him. After he was cashiered, he"d signed on with the Mob, and worked his way up to top son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h for this part of the Ring. Maybe you"re surprised that it made any difference to a hardened killer, but I"d never really gotten much satisfaction out of my work, because it came too easy to me. Sure, I"m a contract killer-and if not proud of it, at least not ashamed of it. Like they say, it"s a tough, lonely, dirty job-but someone has to do it. It"s really a lot more civilized to give the condemned man a gun, if he wants one, and let him run as far as he likes, to exercise his instinct for self-preservation, rather than locking him up on Death Row to wait for an impersonal death by machine, like I understand they used to do in more barbaric times. Keeler knew he had it coming to him, but not when, or how, or by whom. He"d find out soon enough; I didn"t keep him in suspense.

"Don"t kid me, Keeler." I told him. "Do you want it right here in front of all your friends, or shall we take a little walk?"

"You wouldn"t dare," he hoped aloud. "Buck is right behind you, and Barney"s watching, don"t ever doubt it."

"Sure, you have to speak your lines, Keeler," I conceded, "but you know better." Then he fooled me: he had more gall than I"d figured. He got up and walked away, and Barney and Buck closed in, front and back, and off they went, with everybody looking from them to me. Just as they reached the door I called after them: "Buck and Barney, better hit the deck fast," and I fired from under the table close enough to Buck"s ear to lend substance to my suggestion. Keeler looked as alone as the last tree in the woods when the timber harvesters finish, but he did his snappy hip-draw and I let him put two hard slugs into the paneling behind me before I got up and went over and took it away from him. He gibbered a little and tried to wrestle, but after I broke his arm the fight went out of him. Then he tried to deal, and that disgusted me and I got a little angry and broke his neck, almost accidentally.

3.

Barney and Buck seemed a little uncertain about what to do next, after they"d gotten up and dusted themselves off, so I told them to get rid of Keeler in a discreet way, because even though my license has the endors.e.m.e.nt that allows me to clam up in self-defense, I"d still have to stand trial and prove necessity. I always avoid that kind of publicity, so I shoved them out of my way and went out into the rutted street and along to the cracked and peeling plastic facade of the formerly (a very long time ago) tourist-elegant hostelry, done in the Early Delapidated Miami Beach style, and holed up in my quarters to think about my next move. I was just getting adjusted to the lumps in the sawdust mattress when the boys in blue arrived. They pointed some guns at me and told me they were Special Treasury cops, and showed me little gold badges to prove it. After they finished the room they told me not to leave town, that they"d have a fishy eye on me and, oh yes, to watch myself. While I was working on a snappy answer to that one, they left. They seemed to be in a hurry. The visit bothered me a little because I couldn"t figure what it was for, so I gave it up and got a few hours" sleep.

Before dawn, about two hours later, I was at the broken-down ops shed, clearing my sh.o.r.e-boat, which went fast because I"d taken the time to put on the old uniform I kept in my foot-locker for such occasions. It was all "Yes, sir, Cap"n, sir" and "anything more I can do for you, sir?" A line captain still impresses the yokels in all those border towns. I made it to my bucket, which that year happened to be a converted ex-Navy hundred-ton light destroyer, and by the time I had unpacked, and downed a number-three-ration lunch, I was on track for home, with the job done, my hard-earned quarter-mil waiting, and not a care in the world. Just after I cleaned the disposal unit and reset it, feeling about as good as anybody in my profession ever gets to feel, they hit me.

It was only a mild jolt of EMS, that didn"t even heat the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on my fancy suit, but it put my tub into a tumble and blew every soft circuit aboard. I made it to the special manual-hydraulic-combustion panel I"d had installed very quietly at one of the best hot-drops on Callisto, and prepared my little surprise. The primitive optic fibre periscope showed me a stubby black fifty-tonner with the gold-and-blue blazon of the Special Treasury cops holding station parallel to my axis of spin and about a hundred yards away. Two men were on the way across, using the very latest in fail-safe EVA units, and towing a heavy-duty can opener, so I opened up before they could use the cutter, and was looking at the same pair who"d frisked my room back on Little C.

They were almost polite about it; it seemed they took my blue suit seriously, called me "Captain" ten times in five minutes. They didn"t waste a lot of time on preliminaries, just went directly to the cargo access hatch and broke the lock on it before I could key it, and after a good ten seconds inside, came out and told me my rights. It seems they"d found a load of the pink stuff that would have half the population of the System yodelling Pagliacci from the top of the nearest flagpole if it were evenly distributed. Now I knew what they"d been in a hurry to do after their informal call at my flop.

I explained that it was all just one of those snafus, that I must have gotten somebody else"s baggage by mistake, but they weren"t listening. Instead, two more glum-looking fellows arrived, and after a very brief conference, they went to my quarters and straight to the sh.o.r.e-pack I"d had with me on Ceres, and came up with an envelope full of doc.u.ments that proved that I had bought and paid for the dope in the open market on Charon, about three weeks before I had been released from the hospital at Pluto Station. I told them about my alibi, and they checked a little and the boss cop, a skinny, big-nosed little bantam they called Mr. Illini, took me aside.

"Why a man in your position would think you could sneak a load in past us, is beyond me," he confided. "You know as well as I do, Captain, that we"ve got the Inner Line sealed with the best equipment there is. No way can a tub like this get by us. Get your stuff, we"re going in to Mars Four to book you. And by the way, are you really Navy? If so, it seems you blew your retirement, pal."

It seemed the boys had something in mind, so I didn"t spring my little surprise, but let them take me in tow.

4.