Part 2

The long man nodded. "I might be," he said, "if you're somebody that's got a right to know. So what?" He hadn't moved but his posture seemed subtly altered, caution in every line of his frame. From the position of his hands, Mac more than suspected he was armed.

Easing his hands behind his back, he twisted the stem of his wristwatch. Kittrell jumped. "Hey!" he exclaimed. Sparks were fairly snapping from the blazing dial of his own heavy, old-fashioned timepiece--the recognition signal of TPL operatives. "I guess I am Kittrell," the man acknowledged. "They told me they were sending someone from the Narcotics division to take over on that narcophene business. You him?"

"Yeah. Right now I'm having trouble of my own, though. This Kiddie rolled me last night. Every cent I had; I can't even get back to my hotel."

"Rolled you?" Kittrell's eyes widened. "I know this fella. He cleans up around the office. Wait a minute." His thin, pale hands flashed in intricate motions, meaningless to Mac. They were significant to the Kiddie, though, for he replied as rapidly. Kittrell nodded. "I wouldn't have thought it of him. Always thought he was too stupid to rob anybody over ten."

That was a pretty dubious remark, Mac thought, but he ignored it. "Do you suppose you can make him cough up?"

"Sure!" The other smiled cheerfully. "Like this!"

* * * * *

Mac was unprepared for the next move. Kittrell pulled his punch, of course, because he didn't want to kill the frail Palladian, but his heavy fist bounced the Kiddie off the floor and flung him to the base of the wall. He lay there, his glow-glands jetting crimson beams of fear and rage.

"Hey!" cried MacCauley. "Don't murder the poor son! That's no way to get my dough back!"

Kittrell stared. Then a shadow passed over his face and he seemed to lose interest. He shrugged. "Have it your way. What do you want me to do--adopt him?"

"Ask him what he did with the money. Tell him he can have the metal stuff; all I want back is the bills."

Kittrell, looking disgusted, semaphored the message. Kiddie faces don't react as a human's does, but MacCauley was pretty sure there was gratitude glowing on this one's knobby features. After a couple of seconds' gesticulation, Kittrell looked around. "He says he's sorry he took it. If you come with him he'll give you the money. He's got it stashed away in the sty he lives in, a little farther along this corridor."

"Will he do it?"

Kittrell shrugged again. "Guess so. Anyway, you're bigger than him--or don't you like rough stuff?"

That, MacCauley thought, was hardly a friendly remark. He resolved to take it up later; after all, it wasn't his fault that he was superseding Kittrell. There really was no cause for jealousy in the long man. "Coming?" Mac asked.

Kittrell shook his head. "Got to go back to the office for a minute. I'll drop around in about ten minutes, though."

"Okay," said Mac, satisfied, and went out behind the Kiddie.

The Kiddie's dwelling was ugly and cluttered, but moderately clean.

The little asterite, with somewhat the attitude of a man who expects a poke in the face, gestured to Mac to be seated on a hassock-like affair. MacCauley rumbled: "Sure I'll sit down. I'll stay right here until I get my dough back."

The Kiddie seemed to shrug resignedly; probably he just gave that impression from his general demeanor. He slipped away into another room. Mac just had time to think of the possibility that the Kiddie had made a getaway when he was back again, holding MacCauley's billfold.

Mac counted it swiftly. "Where's the rest of it?" he grunted. The bills were there, but there had been about two dollars in change--gone now.

The Kiddie looked scared but shook his head. "Won't tell me, huh?" Mac blustered. "How would you like to be put away for robbery? I swore out a complaint against you today; if I turn you over, it'll be a long time before you get out."

The Kiddie looked more frightened than ever; he was practically trembling. Mac was encouraged, but surprised by the reaction to his threat--it shouldn't have been so great. He lived to regret the fact that he didn't find out just why the Kiddie was so affected by the threat of imprisonment.

"All right," he went on. "Suppose I let you keep the metal. Suppose I pay you well, get you lots more. Gold and silver dollars. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

From the Palladian's sudden attitude of dog-like devotion, it was more than clear that he would.

"Okay," Mac said. "I'll pay you one hundred dollars in silver quarters, if--"

The Kiddie was ablaze with interest. Not taking his eyes off Mac, he scuttled crab-wise over to a tablette, snatched up a notebook and scrawled: "Il do anyhin wat do yu wan."

Mac grinned. "Fine. Listen carefully now. I'm looking for an Earthman. He's somewhere on this planet, but I wouldn't know him if I saw him. He is about two inches taller than me; weighs maybe two hundred pounds--a little fatter than I am. He's blind, practically, in one eye. That's all I can tell you, because those are the only things he can't disguise."

* * * * *

The Kiddie seemed suddenly reluctant, but was persuaded by a gesture of Mac's--a gesture that cost him dear, as it turned out.

"Here," he said, to seal the bargain. "Here's an advance for you." Dexterously he flipped his knife from some recess of his shirt and presented it to the Kiddie.

Ecstacy was clearly shown by that Kiddie. His glow-glands fairly spat large orange sparks of joy. The tempered bronze--it was made of that metal only to avoid magnetic spotters--wasn't much good for cutting, but it certainly was a conductor of electricity.

"Well?" MacCauley said, growing impatient. He tapped the engrossed Kiddie and repeated the question. The asterite bobbed his head and pressed a stud on his pad. The writing vanished, and he was scribbling again.

"Hello there!" boomed a new voice from the doorway. "What's going on?"

MacCauley whirled. Kittrell was standing there, beaming broadly. "Hi," Mac said. "We were wondering--Hey! What the hell!"

Kittrell's eyes had narrowed and a snarl flashed out on his face. With the fastest draw MacCauley had ever seen, he snapped out his gun and blasted--

Not MacCauley. There was a stomach-squeezing hiss of sizzling flesh behind Mac. He spun again, to see the Kiddie, his shoulder and half his neck gone, slumped to the floor.

Mac knelt swiftly beside him. Dead as a Ganymedan Secessionist. "Now what the hell did you do that for?" Mac demanded. "I was on the trail of something hot." He stared at the pad and stylus that had dropped from the dead asterite's limp hand.

"I kni the man yu wan he is th." That was all it said.

"_That's_ a big help," said MacCauley, confronting the other man, who was strangely tense. He thrust the tablet at him. "Now what do I do?"

Kittrell scanned it briefly, and relaxed a bit. "It looked bad to me," he explained. "There was that damned Kiddie with a knife in his hand. He had it up to throw at you--or me. Can't take chances."

Mac sighed, resigning himself to continued hard luck. "We all make mistakes, I guess," he said. Then, hardening: "But you've made your last boner on this case. From now on stay the hell away from me. I don't like you and I don't like the way you do things." He moved toward the door. Kittrell, lounging across it, obstructed his path--just enough to stop him.

"Where're you going?" the bigger man asked.

"To report this," Mac snapped. "You'll get out of it all right."

"Don't report it."

"Why not?"

Kittrell grimaced distastefully. "Too much red tape. What the devil, who'll know we were here?"

Mac snorted and filled his lungs preparatory to telling Kittrell just what he thought of him. There was a sweetish, balsam-like taste to the air, like the smell of a fir forest.

Or like the smell of narcophene.

He had picked up the knife; still had it in his hands. While he was still figuring things out, his hand swept up with the knife still in it, pressed against Kittrell's abdomen. Kittrell's draw had been fast. Maybe he was naturally gun-slick--fast enough, maybe, for a lightning draw like that to be natural to him. Maybe he was, but maybe he was just burning up the years of his life twice as fast as normal under the influence of the drug.

"If you don't want your gut slit, Kittrell, keep your hands where they are!" Mac grated, his voice suddenly gone flat and hard.

Kittrell's hand had fluttered toward his shoulder holster; it stopped as Mac spoke.

"I don't know whether you're really Kittrell or not--probably you are," Mac muttered. "But if you're in TPL now, you'll be out pretty soon. As soon as I tell them you're a hophead."

Kittrell's face had gone white. Other than that there was no change as his bleak eyes bored steadily into MacCauley's. "What are you talking about?" he said evenly. "Take that thing out of my stomach."

"Oh, no!" Mac shook his head decisively. "You killed one of my witnesses; you'll take his place. You're going to tell me how to find the guy that sells you the narcophene."

"Sorry," said Kittrell, tautening still more, "but I can't." At the last possible second his eyes flicked behind and over Mac's shoulder.

The thing that hit MacCauley on the back of the neck first didn't quite knock him out. He was stunned, but in the half-second before the next blow jolted him into complete darkness, he heard Kittrell conclude, most casually: "You see, I _am_ the guy who sells the narcophene."

* * * * *

A shiver rippled along Mac's spine, and another one. That was his first waking impression. He was cold, frozen stiff, he decided next, when his limbs failed to react to the stimuli of his neural commands. As the fog cleared away from his aching head he discovered that his hands were tightly bound behind him, hobbles on his feet to keep him from walking far or fast.

Not that he could have gone anywhere much. He was in a bare little metal room, lying on the grating that supplanted decks in most modern spacers. Not much point in getting up, he realized, and merely hitched himself into a more comfortable position in a corner, moving as well as he could under the unaccustomed drag of full Earth gravity.

He was in the lock-room, the chamber before an airlock. He felt vaguely unhappy. Whatever was coming, he was sure he wouldn't like it.

Behind him a heavy door eased open. Boots thumped hollowly on the grids and a familiar voice sounded, echoing from the bare metal walls. "Hello, MacCauley. How's the head?"

"Go to hell," Mac suggested. He craned his neck and stared full into Kittrell's face. There was a curious mixture of emotions there; faint sorrow, an unpleasant sort of crooked leer, and an air of boredom--each was visible. Kittrell shrugged.

"I guess you know what you're up against?"

"Sure." MacCauley tried to shrug, too, but succeeded only in tearing a patch of skin from his wrists where the wire bonds were tightest. "You're going to shove me out."

"I'm afraid so. Believe me, I'd rather not. I think you're a good chap; once I wanted to be like you--loyal to the service. They stuck me out here and made a desk clerk of me, when I would have given my arm to do some real work. I got a good salary; there was prestige enough whenever I could get back to Boston and show off. It was a good job, in a way. But there was nothing to do. Then I intercepted a load of narcophene. Like everybody else, I thought I could beat it. I didn't. I tried it and couldn't stop."

He stopped abruptly and scanned MacCauley's face through narrowed eyes. "You see how it is?" he questioned.

MacCauley tried to stall for time. Tensing his chest muscles against the bruises, he said, "Give me a cigarette, Kittrell? That's the usual privilege of the condemned man." The lunatic obligingly popped a brown-paper cylinder between his lips, squeezed the tip to light it. Mac suddenly heard more footsteps, lighter ones but many of them. "What's that?"

"Just my Kiddies," the dope peddler explained, as a dozen of them trotted into the room and ranged themselves, immobile, along the walls. "They've never seen an air-breather--that's you--in empty space, and they don't believe it will be fatal. You don't mind if they watch, do you?"

Mac could hold it in no longer. "Kittrell," he blurted, "you're crazy as a coot!"

Kittrell, wading through Kiddies whose faces shone an excited red, turned a surprised stare. "I've been afraid of that," he said worriedly over his shoulder. His long fingers pressed a stud by the 'lock, and the inner valve whined open. "You see, that's the trouble with narcophene. You know what's happening to you, but you just don't give a damn. God, it's cold in this 'lock!"

He stood there, one foot on the coaming of the 'lock, peering around the dark, icy chamber. The lawman braced his back to the wall, shoved up. "It's a hell of a death, Kittrell," he said, his voice strained.

Kittrell replied dreamily. "Is it? I don't know. It isn't bad. It's clean, at least, and the worms don't get you." Absently he fended off the crew of impatient, crowding Kiddies. He stared silently into nothingness, for a long minute.

* * * * *

MacCauley found he could reach his pocket, and his heart tried to impale itself on his palate. Eagerly he tore more flesh from his raw wrists, strained his fingers to plumb the depths of the pocket. A weapon--anything.

And his fingers found nothing. He remembered; that this was the pocket the dead asterite had picked; nothing there but a slit.

On the automatic return trip, his fingers, numbed by disheartenment, sent a message to his brain; a message of cold. He disregarded it for a split second.

Then, just as Kittrell was opening his mouth to speak, the correct interpretation of that coolness penetrated Mac's consciousness. Desperately he fumbled at the thing that was woven to his broad belt: wrenched at it with every atom of strength at his command. It came free; he twisted suddenly and something metallic jingled musically in the far corner of the 'lock, sending vibrations through the grid flooring to be picked up by the Palladians. The jingle of metal--and the Kiddies loved metal insanely!

"Money!" roared MacCauley. And, "Money! In the 'lock! Copper--metal! Go get it!"

Kittrell vanished, washed into the airlock by an overflowing wave of Palladians. Hands fumbling desperately behind him for the control switch--where was it!--Mac cursed his stiff, ineffectual fingers and his inability to see behind his back. He touched a switch--no, not that one!--and another, jabbed at it. Motors hummed softly, the scrambling noise died away as the inner door swung shut--so slowly!--and then for a second the only sound in the chamber was the harsh sobbing of Mac's breath as he slumped weakly against the chill metal wall.

Until that semi-silence was broken by the descending siren-scream of the outer door's opening, abruptly terminating in a _whooosh_ as the last molecules of air tore into the vacuum without, dragging with irresistible force at the chunks of matter, living and dead, that tried to obstruct its passage....

* * * * *

"And that's the story." MacCauley turned away from the recorder. "Here's the notebook I found among Kittrell's things." He flipped a thin, black pad at the major. "I think you'll be able to break the code easily enough, as there are enough names known for you to work on. It seems to include his whole organization."

Major Copeland glanced at the cabalistic signs incuriously, then ticketed the book and slipped it into a pneumatic tube.

"What bothers me," he complained, "is why Kittrell didn't claw his way out of the 'lock. Sounds to me as though he had plenty of time."

Mac gestured inquiringly at his superior, received a nod, and with a sigh unclipped his Sam Browne. "Kittrell? Probably stumbled and slammed his head against a rivet." He stood up suddenly, savagely snubbed out a freshly lit cigarette. "Oh, hell! I'll tell you what I really think, Major--I don't believe Kittrell tried to get out of there. I don't think he cared, and I haven't forgotten what he said about dying that way."

"Could be," Copeland agreed. "And what did you say that stuff was that saved your life?"

Mac smiled. "Money, of a sort. You know where I was stationed last year?"

"Some place on Earth, wasn't it?"

MacCauley nodded. "China. Got to know some of the people there. Got kind of chummy with one of them; she gave me a present when I left, as a keepsake. A string of what they call "cash." It's a kind of money they used to use; square pieces of copper with holes in the middle. Had 'em strung together and sewn onto a belt. Well, you know how Palladians feel about copper." His eyes crinkled again. "That was a pretty good keepsake--not worth much, but it bought my life."

Both men were silent for a while. Then, "What are your plans now, MacCauley? I've recommended you for promotion, to fill Kittrell's job on Pallas. You'll get a higher rating, more pay--and all the time in the world to yourself."

MacCauley shook his head. "Sorry, Major," he said, "But that's not what I want. My plans are extra-special. Say," he went on, sitting down and staring earnestly at Copeland, "have you ever heard the story of how Manhattan Island--that's part of New York City--was bought from the ancient Indians? Twenty-four dollars' worth of junk beads--that's what they paid the Indians for it. Now the land is worth billions of dollars--a square foot of it brings the best part of a million."

"So?" The major was interested but lacked comprehension. "What's that got to do with your resignation?"

MacCauley smiled. "A lot," he answered. "Did it ever occur to you that intelligent salesmanship can do wonders? And did you ever think of the possibilities that you could realize on Pallas with--say--a couple of dozen thousand dollars' worth of copper and other metal junk?"

The major looked startled. "No--not till now," he added, understanding dawning. "And what you're going to do is--?"

"What I'm going to do," MacCauley beamed, "is convert reward money into junk. And then, Major, I'll begin to convert the junk--into a kingdom. I'm going to buy up a world--a wide-open world--with a boatload of scrap metal!"