Warrants? I punched.

Not yet, said the machine. Pay status?

I punched in. The machine promptly pulsated red flashes.

Alert, alert, alert! Through clerical error, this officer was advanced one credit in excess of a year's advance pay. All further pay uncollectible until refund occurs. I had thought I would now have three weeks pay I could draw on. But not so! But what luck! I did have one credit and I could send it in. But as I was reaching for it, the machine went on talking.

Warning, warning, warning. If said officer loses any one of his four paychecks for any reason or suffers demotion or fine, communicate at once to the Finance Department Courts-martial Unit. I went cold. What if I did lose Mission Earth?

The mountains had their game wardens, Government City had its Finance Department. There was no place to hide!

It was not unknown to me, but the threat of becoming a gutter bum in some slum city, living on garbage, if that, so unnerved me that the five-second warning flash had begun before I realized I had not remedied being broke right now. I hastily tapped, Item en route and scribbled my name and designations on a scrap of paper and wadded it and the one-credit note into a capsule. I slammed it hastily into the slot and punched, Finance Adjustments and off it went with a whoosh. Shortly, the screen flashed, Adjustment received. I hastily punched, Pay status? and the machine said, I am sorry but it takes two months to adjust pay errors. And before I could even protest, the machine again said, Warning, warning, warning. If said officer loses any one of his four paychecks . . .

I slammed the keys and shut it off. (Bleep) them! I should have paid it with a counterfeit note! That would show them.

I was so angry and so upset that I forgot I had two fainted bodies behind me and I stumbled on them as I left.

Outside I took a deep breath to steady myself. The sour smell of the Apparatus sector and the stink of the River Wiel did not compare with the Blike Mountains.

"Officer Gris," said Ske, startling me in the shadows of the building. "Don't you think we better go down to the Apparatus hangars while we got some day left?" While I had some paychecks left, I thought. I climbed hastily into the airbus. I had to get this mission going even if it killed me, which it probably would.

Chapter 7

We hovered in the sky above the Apparatus hangars, waiting for the landing circle to clear. Such was my urgency and determination that I became impatient. It was all very well to hang there in the soft afternoon sunlight, sitting on the gaudy seat of the new airbus, but that didn't keep me out of gutter hollow! Way, way over to the west I could see Ardaucus, the fancy name they give Slum City. It even looked smudgy and dirty at this distance. Lombar was right: it ought to be annihilated! But not with me in it!

"What is holding us?" I at length demanded.

Ske shrugged. "It's that Fleet freight skyhauler." Alarm shot through me. I had been careful about keeping Heller away from Fleet anything! And sure enough, down there on the landing circle below, a Fleet skyhauler was hovering, bobbing up and down, giving the final adjustments to something huge and brass colored – a sort of cylinder. It was getting it finally onto a trundle dolly.

Even as I looked, the Fleet pilot tripped his let-go and the cables began to reel up. Without waiting for this to be completed, the blue freight carrier zipped up into the sky.

The trundle dolly was moving into the hangar now and my driver plummeted the airbus down to the target area.

I was actually quite alarmed to see Fleet touching even the fringes of the mission. The thought of the Fleet patrol crew, probably long dead now in Spiteos, and the words of Soams were almost enough to make me withdraw from the area.

But the computer threat was fresh in my mind. I jumped out and ran up alongside the trundle dolly. It was inside the hangar now. The crane hook was coming down to engage the rings on the cylinder.

And there was Heller, riding the crane hook over. I drew back a bit.

Tug Onehad had some upper hullplates removed. Right in the middle of her back.

Heller was giving hand motions to the crane master way above. He dropped off onto the top of the brass-colored cylinder and then guided the hook to engage a huge ring. Heller locked the hook blades in place with a gloved hand and, with him signalling, was hauled high in the air, riding the cylinder as it rose.

I caught a sign on the cylinder. It said: HIGHLY DANGEROUS HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE DO NOT OPEN My Gods, I mourned to myself. She isn't enough of a bomb already?

The trundle dolly operator was clambering down. His job finished, he was lighting a puffstick.

"Have any other Fleet units been around here lately?" I asked him.

"What's the matter? Haven't you seen them?" He hadn't noticed I'd been missing for three weeks.

"Well, have they?" I insisted.

"Naw, this is the first in a couple days. There ain't been anything else, yesterday or today."

"What's been coming?" I persisted.

"That's a funny (bleeped) thing," he said, looking up at the swaying cylinder. "They can't change a time-converter in flight. Taking an extra one means they must be going to some well-equipped repair base. I was a drive operator once, you know. Before space started giving me the creeps." Heller had guided the huge brass cylinder down through the place that had been opened in the top of the hull.

"He wouldn't let anybody else guide it in," said the trundle dolly operator. "Or maybe they refused to. Those (bleeping) Will-be Was engines! They're dangerous even in a battleship. That's what they were designed for, you know, not for no (bleeped) tug. But I wonder what he's doing with a spare time-converter." Heller was directing the final lowering. He looked like a speck from where I was standing. The huge cylinder was spinning back and forth with him standing on it.

"I'll give you some advice," said the trundle dolly operator. "Don't never open one of them time-converters up. Believe what it says on the labels. You could lose your hand! I could even give you some better advice. Don't never go no place in that (bleeped) tug!" He was uncomfortable to be around. I walked deeper into the hangar. The day half-platoon was lounging about. They didn't even glance at me. I approached the subofficer.

"Have a bunch of things been coming in from Fleet?" I asked him.

He glanced around. "Most of the contractor crews seem to have gone home." That certainly answered no question. "What do the things look like?" I insisted.

"How does any long box look?" he said irritably.

"Where are they putting them?" I demanded.

"In the lower hold, of course. Say," and he focused on me very sharply, "can't you see, or something?" It was obvious he had not noticed I had been missing.

The hook was now rising out of the open gap in the hull, the cylinder seemingly having been gotten into its storage space.

Heller was riding the hook. It came down like a bomb. He jumped off and it hit the pavement with a crash.

"Oh, say, Soltan," he said, for all the world like he was rebeginning a conversation interrupted a half hour earlier, "like I was telling you, all the cultural notes and observations are missing from all those earlier Blito-P3 surveys. See if you can get hold of them, will you?" And he yelled back up to the high cab, "Very well done and thank you, crane master!" and with a friendly hand wave to him, he trotted over to the tug and went in through the airlock.

The day's work was over. People were drifting off. The sun was gone.

And then here it came, "Hup, yo, hup, yo, hup, yo!" The cadence counting of the Fleet marines, totally foreign to Apparatus areas. The slamming bootbeats of the marching squad. In they came and gave the day subofficer a salute. Then, "Pohstings! Guardsman Ip, yuoah post is in the ship!" And the Countess Krak, in perfect evolution, boot-slammed in through the airlock.