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battered Monojog was pushed to the curb.
     
                Dock shook his lumpy head. "Nix, chum. We
swap it off to duh Reprehensible bunch fer a portable john dey foun'
someplace."
     
                "So that's what happened to His Ex's
Johnny-on-the-Spot!" Magnan crowed. "It's an outrage! I demand you
return the facility to Embassy Stores at once!"
     
                "Well, make up yer min', pal," Dock
urged. "Dat's six items I'm s'pose to do at oncet! Ain't possible, Bub.
Gimme a break!"
     
                "There are moments, Jim," Magnan
addressed his junior, "when I doubt Bloor is sincerely desirable of an
amicable relationship with Terra."
     
                "Depen's," Dock supplied. "If
you'd stick to handing out free stuff to duh citizens and all, which I and my
boys can collect and sell back to you—at reasonable prices, too—dat's
cool—"
     
                "So that's it!" Magnan exclaimed.
"Just the other day Colonel Underknuckle and I were wondering why it is
that the shrapnel the rebels and the counter-rebels have been firing into the
Embassy compound had Terran foundry-marks."
     
                "Sure," Noun agreed. "We don't
waste nothin'. Now, fer ensample, giving perfally good booze and eats to
illiterate peasants that woik alla time, and can't even read none, and
tractors, too, that's wasteful! Keep 'em cold and hungry and you get the
hope-vote. Also, they're too miserable to brood and get together and plot
insurrection."
     
                "Yours, I see," Magnan said, "is
a pragmatic approach to the problems besetting Bloor."
     
            "Ya got it,
chum." Dock wagged his head in agreement. "Like now. I bet you boys
got a couple valuable watches and PCs an' duh like a fella could get a nice
price fer at Sparky's."
     
                "Are you suggesting," Magnan demanded
in tones of outrage, "that you intend to rob us?"
     
                "Naw, nuttin' like that," Noun
disavowed the charge. "Yer gonna han' it over, inna in'er'st o Bloor-Terry
relations and all, like His is always bloviatin' about."
     
                "Well, in that case ..." Magnan
muttered, unbuckling his brand-new thousand-guck personal communicator cum time-
and place-piece, with tape library, a gift from his Aunt Haicy on the occasion
of his last visit to Terra.
     
                He offered it hesitantly; it was grabbed by
Dock's mittlike hand. He bit it and said, "Ouch! Must be somma that new
eka-bronze." He looked intently at Magnan. "Oughta melt down fer a
hunnert guck, easy."
     
                " 'Melt'!" Magnan gasped. "My
dear Mr. Noun, or is it Dock? The circuitry is worth—"
     
                "Not to no chop-shop that don't care what
time it is," Noun sneered. "And Sparky already knows where he's at,
and he don't like Terry music, especially that new shake-and-howl dat's all the
go nowadays. Nor no telephone, neither. Sparky wants to talk to somebody, he
sends some boys out to fetch 'em." He pocketed the loot sullenly, and
looked at Retief. "You don' plan to contribute, pal?" he inquired.
     
                "How about a trifling rupture of the
spleen?" Retief suggested, planting a boot at the site of that organ. Dock
staggered back, thrust two fingers into his already bruised mouth, and uttered
a shrill whistle.
     
                "Oh, dear," Magnan gulped. "Jim,
look!" He pointed along the street, where mobs were approaching from both
left and right.
     
                "Thanks," Retief said to Noun.
"Saves the trouble of looking for them."
     
            "Hey," Noun wailed.
"You fergot the goods, pal!"
     
                Retief seized the eight-foot bruiser by his
scruffy dark-green hair and slammed his head against the adjacent wall hard
enough to raise dust from the mortar joints.
     
                "Jim." Magnan caught at his arm.
"Don't