Two laborers got out and took down a long, heavy box. Heller showed them where to put it in the ship.

I sat there waiting. I knew it would come and it would not be boxes.

Finally it was there. I felt it. Sort of like an infusion of black poison gas into the scene.

A voice from behind a pile of crates: a horrible whisper.

"Officer Gris."

Chapter 7

Lombar Hisst, disguised as a workman, lurked half-hidden behind the dirty cases.

His awful face was intent upon what he was doing. He had a notebook in his hands. From his secret place, he had a view of the tug and the swarms of contractor teams that clambered all around and over it. In their company-colored cover suits, each one bore plainly the different contractor names. Lombar Hisst was listing them, each and every company.

I came up and stood trembling near him. With an abrupt motion he swept a copy of the newssheet out of his workman jacket and whacked it into my face. I caught it. I didn't have to read it. It was another newssheet, a different one but it had the same glaring picture of Heller holding his sister over his head above the crowd.

Lombar had gone back to his furious notebook writing. Eventually he was done. He yanked me back into the cover of the crates.

"You loathsome (bleep)!" he said. "I should shoot you out of hand right now!" He slapped his hand back against the notebook. "All these contractors working, working at vast expense and here you are, keeping it secret so that you can rake off all their kickbacks for yourself!" I hadn't expected that. It was so unjust. If I had tried to put the squeeze on any of these contractors they would have gone running to Heller and he, with his weird Royal officer ideas of honesty, would have beaten me up! But I didn't dare open my mouth.

"Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" demanded Lombar, amber eyes flaming crazily. He didn't expect any answer or wait for one. "It was (bleeped) lucky this was a Grand Council meeting day!

"The position you put us in! Right at the start, the Crown threw it at us! Oh, Endow is a fortunate fellow to have me. When the Crown demanded why Heller had not left, I was able to counter it, no thanks to you!

"I had Endow point out that the Grand Council allocation was so low that it was delaying the mission to Blito-P3. I used it to raise the allocation to thirty million credits instead of three. We can pretend there were other companies here that we own and you'll (bleep) well stamp the fake bills with your identoplate! Do you understand?" All I understood was that I was not lying, that instant, a dead body at his feet. I was grateful.

"In return, you loathsome piece of trash, you are going to get this mission out of here by my deadline! We had to promise that! So be grateful!" I was very grateful.

"What are those boxes I saw being hauled in?" he demanded. "He's got things there I am sure he's going to use to try to make this mission a success. You know very well it must fail. I have told you time and again we cannot possibly let it succeed." He did not want any answer. He considered for a moment. Then he said, "Very well. In two days I will bring a special crew in here. You will distract Heller to some other place and we will inspect what he is taking." Through a crack in the crates we could see the tug.

Heller slid down a rope and dropped lightly to the pavement. He beckoned and five Apparatus hangar people came over to him swiftly. They listened to him interestedly and laughed a couple of times and then sped off, quite unlike Apparatus personnel, to do what Heller had asked.

I glanced at Lombar. He had his upper lip raised in an expression of the purest hate. His eyes began to smolder. Under his breath he was muttering about "athletes" and "Royal officers" and "snobs," a stream of profanity mixed in. There was no doubt that he hated Heller and all his kind.

Lombar suddenly turned to me. "You are going to have crew trouble. That (bleepard) will get around them. He'll breed loyalty. He'll undermine your control of any crew unless I handle it." He thought for a moment. "Yes, yes, that will do it. I'llput the captain and crew aboard that tug the day she leaves." For the first time, I found courage to speak. I squeaked, "She has Will-be Was main drives. She is very quick and sudden. She is a dangerous ship!"

"All the better," said Lombar. He had heard me! "Will-be Was main drives. That will be a little harder but I will find and fix up a crew!" I was still gripping the newssheet. He snatched it back from me and put it in his pocket. "That's another thing. Have you heard any clues as to who leaked that original story about Heller and the mission? I thought not. I'm looking. I'm looking. I have to do everything myself but I'll find whoever it was!" Heller was guiding down a piece of plating. Lombar looked through the crack at him. He swore again. It made him savage.

Lombar turned and seized my tunic lapels. He snapped me very close to him. From nowhere the stinger had appeared and he cut painfully at my leg to punctuate his speech.

"You are going to get this mission out of here by my deadline! If you don't we really could have Crown inspectors all over this hangar and there would be Hells for everyone! The whole Blito-P3 project is threatened by this mission! Twenty-four hours before departure, you and I will have another meeting! So you get this moving. You get Heller going! You get him off this planet! And if you don't make it by deadline, I will kill you very slowly with my bare hands!" The stinger struck again. "And one more last thing: As a punishment for attempting to privately short-circuit this rake-off to yourself, you are not going to get a single credit of the additional allocation! You are a thief!" He dropped me and I staggered. I stood there for a little while, numb and hurting. Finally I realized Lom-bar had left: an old disguised airtruck was flying away.

Once more I started breathing. I got my legs working and made it over to the pile of rusty plates. I sank down. I was surprised to still be alive, to still have four paychecks. I had almost begun to cheer up when a horrible realization hit me.

He had said "deadline." That we had to be gone by his deadline. But he had not said when that deadline was!

I tried to make some estimate. Twenty-seven million had been added to the allocation. That meant it would take a couple days for him and Endow to dream up some fake companies and register them, maybe a couple days more, for appearances' sake, to date their billings and get them stamped. I knew they would not be careless about these details. Only the chance for a rake-off, personally, of twenty-seven million credits had saved my life: I had no illusions about that. But when was this deadline?

Then another horrible thought hit me. I doubted very, very much that I could prevail upon Heller to wind up his refit, finish the tug and get going. That was the main problem! That is what I had to work on.

And the very thought of pushing him made me feel ill!