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one-piece skinsuit, one of the quilted kind that were intended to go under a pressure rig. His eyes were narrow and wary, their color impossible to tell in this light, except that they were pale. The man was at least two meters tall, so that Joss had to look up at him a bit.
    "Evening," he said, and oifered the man the bowl of tails and crackling. "Have some?"
    The man took the bowl, but shook his head and grinned at Joss. Joss wasn't entirely sure he liked the grin, but he reserved judgment. "Seems a bit like canibalin' to me," the man said, in a slow, grating voice.
    Joss glanced down at the pig tails, then up at the man again. He smiled—very slightly.
    "Don't see many of you people around here as a rule," the man said. There was a movement in the shadows behind him. Joss didn't stir. Evan was with him; for the moment, that would do.
    "Business," Joss said. "But that's not till tomorrow morning."
    ' 'What kind of business? "
    "Some people working in this area have been disappearing," Evan said. "A few too many. We want to find out why. But as my partner says.^it can wait till tomorrow. Mr.-"
    SPACE COPS 31
    "Smith," said the man. There was soft laughter from further down the bar at this witticism.
    "Smith," Evan said, the soul of courtesy. Without missing a beat, he made it perfectly plain how likely it seemed to him that "Smith" was die man's real name. "Glyndower. My partner, O'Bannion." Joss nodded amiably at the man. "What are you having, sir?"
    "Not that piss," said Smith, turning away from them both with an expression that looked mostly like a sudden wrinkle in his beard. "Bash, gimme a Stoly."
    Joss leaned forward over the bar, took another pig tail, and chewed on it slowly, glancing at Evan. Evan's expression was resigned; he drank his beer and said, between drinks, "I still think you bet wrong."
    "How did you know I bet?" Joss said, slightly scandalized.
    "Oh, come on! You may have been programming and so forth sometimes on the way out here, but I knew you would be getting your bets in before we left."
    "Someone's been ratting on me," Joss muttered.
    Evan grinned. "Telya's in your betting pool."
    "Why, that little—!"
    Smith's drink arrived. No matter what he had called it, the vodka in the glass had never been any closer to Moskva than this asteroid's perihelion, while it was still a potato. He tipped his head back and drank about half of it without stopping, then put the glass down and belched emphatically. Joss chewed on his pig tail and refrained from comment.
    "You bet on horses?" said "Smith" suddenly to Joss.
    "No," Joss said, rather surprised. "Never got the feel for it. Baseball, mostly."
    "Smith" smiled again, the same not-very-nice smile. He began to chuckle. "That's a slit's bet," he said, to himself at first, then to the bar in general. "A slit's bet. We got a right one here, people. Mister sop here bets like a slit!"
    33 SPACE COPS
    Joss held his expression as it had been. "What do you bet on then?" he said.
    "Horses," "Smith" said. "Fights. Who comes back."
    Joss nodded. He knew, as the miners did, that there was always a certain percentage per year of people who didn't return. He knew that there was betting on those whom people at a given station thought the more likely suspects. But at the moment, it seemed like poor taste to mention it. However, nothing ventured—"Any luck?" he said softly.
    The man's eyes narrowed. "Now, that's a nasty question," "Smith" said. "A man might have lost friends. A man might be sensitive."
    "He might," Joss said, in a tone of utter unconcern. "He might hate losing a bet."
    From the other side, Evan nudged Joss gently. Joss nudged back, acknowledgement that he knew perfectly well what he was up to ... he hoped.
    "Smith" laughed in his beard. "Might. Won a few times. It's not hard."
    "No, it wouldn't be," Joss said. "Dumb people tend not to make it in space."
    "Smith" looked over to his left at someone else who had come up to the bar, a tall skinny man with a face so