Read Kill Station for Free Online

to take the brunt of first looks and assessments. As his eyes started to accustom themselves to the dimness, Joss found himself wishing they hadn't. The place began to get quiet, like bars in old western vids when the sheriff walks into the Dry Gulch Saloon. Every eye in the place was turned on them and their black and silver uniforms. People stopped moving, except very slightly—toward weapons, Joss suspected.
    He and Evan made their way to the bar in silence. The barkeeper was a young woman with long dark hair and a long somber face, pretty but serious-looking. Joss found himself wondering what she was doing in a place like this, then began to take himself to task for thinking in cliches.
    "Beer, please," he said softly. Evan echoed the order, handing over his credit chit to be run through the bar's accounting system. The barkeeper nodded and went off to the other side of the bar, where the taps were, to see about it. The men stood there in the middle of the thick silence, until Joss said conversationally, "So how about those Mets, then?"
    Evan looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
    Around them, conversation began to start again, though at nothing like its original volume. "You know,"
    Evan said, "they don't have a chance this year. Tokyo will win."
    "No way. Not after those last three trades."
    Their beer arrived, and Evan's chit with it. "The annoying thing is," Joss said, when he thought the noise level had increased enough, "we don't have hats to take off."
    SPACE COPS 39
    Evan smiled at that. In his part of the world, it had been traditional for an off-duty cop to remove his hat or helmet when entering a bar to have a pint on his lunch hour. A cop who came into a bar with his hat on was on business, probably to ask someone uncomfortable questions, and the sign of unremoved hats tended to ruin the patrons' enjoyment of their drinks. "Perhaps if we had lighted signs for our shields,"
    Evan said, "that said 'HERE TO GET DRUNK'. . . ."
    They drank, and Joss looked around him with increasing misgiving. Forms hunched over tables stared at them; eyes glittered in the dimness, though there were no sudden movements. "When we have to start asking questions," he said softly, "these people aren't going to be a lot of help to us."
    "Ah now, don't be so pessimistic," Evan said. "We've only just got here, and they haven't a clue what we're about. Surely no one's going to object to us trying to find their missing mates."
    "Not unless some of them engineered their being missing."
    Evan drank again, put his pint down and reached down the bar for a bowl of what in this light looked like some kind of salted crisps. He pulled it over, then stared at it. "Cam dhu," he said, picking up one of the things and looking at it, "what are these?"
    Joss pulled the bowl over, gazed into it, broke into a smile of recognition, and reached into it. "Now will you look at that," he said, and bit into what he was holding. "Pigtails."
    Evan looked at him bemusedly. "Pigtails? Is that some kind of cracker?"
    "Pig tails. Tails of pigs, broiled. Look, here's an ear."
    Evan was incredulous. "Pigs' ears? And you're eating them?"
    "Watch me. You're from pork country, way back when— haven't you ever had pig tails? Poor man. Last time I had these was in Provence, a few years ago. Must be someone
    3O SPACE COPS
    French here. Watch out, though, they're salty. It's a good way to get people to drink.''
    Evan smiled, apparently understanding that quite well. "You can't be serious about the Mets, anyway," he said.
    Joss glanced up from his crunching to note Evan's look over his shoulder. He turned slowly, making it look casual.
    Most of what he saw at first was beard. To judge by what skin he could make out, the man was no older than his forties: but the big ginger-colored beard covered almost everything from his chest to his eyebrows, except for a bit to either side of the nose, which was small and pug. He wore a loose, soft shirt, white but stained, over a dark