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make off the Largess expedition, ought to provide enough to refinish the entire screen. Plus getting an ultrawave booster for Ben, the
Umbra’s
comm operator. Ben would give his left arm and part of his soul for even a pre-war booster. For a new one from, say, GC, his shouts of pleasure would be heard all the way to Alpha C.
    The silver plastic of an especially bright casing caught his eye. He saw himself reflected in the moulding and smiled, running the revised balance for the ship over again in his mind.
    Reflected in the plastic, Mal Hammurabi was a big man. Not particularly tall, he was structured much like a number twelve symbo-speech printed dictionary—unabridged. Or a collection of children’s blocks, tossed together in a haphazard rectangular shape and dipped in half-wet glue. Sandy-brown hair was cut square in back and receded slightly from the high forehead, which overshadowed deep-set amber eyes. The remainder of that face was an insane collection of rough angles, juts and points. The only honest curve in the whole assemblage was the thick walrus mustache which drooped from beneath the nose. Combined with a rather remarkable build, the ship-master looked like a surreal cross between a land-tank and a basset hound.
    Equally incongruous was the group of peppermint sticks which protruded from the left pocket of his leather jacket. Hammurabi neither smoked nor flashed. His vices were confined to milder liquors such as ale, fine ones like brandy, and sweets . . . not all of them peppermint, nor in stick form.
    There was a lot of cargo; the lanes of crates and casings were long, high, and shadowed. So he didn’t notice the thieves until he was right on top of them.
    There were two, totally absorbed in rifling the contents of a yellow-orange plastic case bound with metal strips. The container was the size and shape of a coffin, which it wasn’t. Mal would remember loading a stiff. Melted plastic showed at one end where the seal had been burnt away.
    Mal could have done several things. He might have taken another two steps forward and inquired in his most sepulchral ship-master’s tones as to the object of the gentlemen’s intrusion. He could have walked over and offered casual, even flippant commentary. He could have slipped quietly away and buzzed for the port police.
    However, men who spend their lives riding the saddle of an artificial field with the mass of a sun (a) know when men will and when they will not react favorably to orders, (b) are aware that the derring-do of tri-dee heroes, when attempted in real life, seduces suicide, and (c) do not run for help.
    So what Hammurabi did was put his hundred and twenty-five kilos under a crate not quite as big as himself and heave it in the direction of the two preoccupied paracreds. This by way of getting them off-balance.
    Unfortunately, the ship-master once again misjudged his own strength. The crate was intercepted by the skull of the nearest man, who had chosen that moment to sense Hammurabi’s presence and whirl, gun in hand. It was an unequal contest, which the man lost. Both crashed to the floor.
    The other intruder made a dive for the dropped laser and reached it just as Mal landed on his back. The thief gained the weapon and lost his breath simultaneously. He squirmed.
    Mal got the arm with the vicious-looking little gun in a modified arm-bar, one knee planted firmly at the shoulder joint. He raised the arm a little, up and back. The man screamed shrilly and dropped the pistol.
    Leaning carefully forward, Mal reached down and gathered in the gun. The stock was still warm. Obviously it had been used recently. He hoped it had only been used on the crate.
    The thief was fifteen cms shorter and a good sixty kilos lighter than the ship-master. He looked around wildly, as much as his awkward position permitted, and moaned. Apparently he’d caught sight of his companion. Mercifully, the box hid most of the other, but it didn’t hide the large pool of red