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that stained the ferroconcrete to one side. Mal noticed the small man’s glance.
    “I didn’t mean to be so messy with your friend. Nor fatal. But there were two of you and I like odds in my favor. Don’t worry, I’ll be much neater with you.” He placed the muzzle of the pistol behind the man’s right ear.
    “Now, you’ve got just thirty seconds to come up with a real good reason why I shouldn’t send you hustling after your partner . . . spiritually speaking, of course.”
    The man moaned again, his voice tight from the pain in his arm. “Go ahead! You’re going to kill me anyway!”
    “Nonsense! Don’t be any dumber than you are. If I wanted you dead I’d have killed you, oh, minutes ago. I’d just as soon see you alive. I didn’t mean to pass your friend on to the supervision of the Church, either, but I’m not fond of thieves. See, I was stolen myself once. No . . . tell you what. You cheerfully tell me what you were hunting for—and don’t tell me this was a general expedition; you pulled that crate out of a hundred tons of similar ones—that, and who sent you for it, and maybe I’ll let you depart rare instead of well-done.” He pressed the pistol a little harder into the man’s neck. “I suspect you’ll have enough trouble avoiding the attentions of your employer, who will doubtless send you greetings when he finds out how sadly you’ve bungled.”
    The thief said nothing.
    “Or,” Mal continued conversationally, increasing his pressure on the spindly arm, “we could make this even more interesting and do it by pieces. I think this arm would be a good place to start. Then, if I lower the power on this toy and turn it in a little instead of down (he did so), I can start on one side of your head and fry you slowly to the other, maybe spiraling around. Sort of artistic like, you know?”
    “All right!” the man screamed. “All right!” Mal let up slightly on the arm. “Rose.”
    “What? Stop whimpering, man, and speak up.”
    “Rose. He’s the one sent me and Wladislaw.”
    “Dominic Rose? The drugger?”
    The man nodded, slightly.
    “How very interesting. You’re working for an especially disgusting employer, did you know that? What did the dyspeptic slug want with my cargo?”
    The man was gasping painfully. Mal let the arm drop and the thief immediately clutched it protectively.
    “There was something about a mixup in ship transfer. That’s all I know, God’s truth!”
    “Your piety rings as truthful as your kind intentions. This supposedly misshipped shipment originated on Largess?”
    “Yes. No. Maybe, I don’t know. Believe me, I don’t!”
    “Stop whining. I’m not going to hit you. Yes. No. Maybe. I believe you. You don’t strike me as a policy maker.”
    “Let me go,” the man begged. “Rose’ll have me killed if I’m caught in the capitol.”
    “Patience. I’m here and he’s not. And if you don’t stop stalling and tell me what you were sent for, I
will
kill you!”
    “We were supposed to find a small blue container, uncrested and umarked. That’s all the information I was given, I swear!”
    Mal got off the thief’s back. He moved back slowly, keeping the gun trained on the back of the man’s neck.
    “Okay, you’ve got thirty minutes to get wherever it is you’d best like to get to. After that I give your description and my charges to Port Authority. I’m finished with you. You’d better start thinking about Rose and his delightful associates. But Repler’s a pretty empty planet. With luck you might . . .”
    But the man was already running full speed for the main entrance, apparently uncaring of being seen by Port guards. His right arm swayed limply at his side. Damn, Hammurabi, when will you learn to watch yourself! If you’d broken the arm any worse the man might have fainted on you. Then you’d be stuck trying to revive him before a patrol arrived.
    He turned back to the vandalized crate. Except for the unpleasant problem of