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empty beer bulbs in your cycle."
    Quantrill knew the rules well enough. And, as a lovely assassin had taught him long before, you don't touch alcohol while under heavy stress. He hadn't so much as risked a cold Pearl until after the Rawson encounter. "Picked 'em up for the deposit," he lied. "They'll buy breakfast, if I ever get out of here. Sir."
    "I'd have you out of here permanently, if it weren't for your connections," Stearns said. "Where the hell, and why, did you steal that old android?"
    A sigh. "Call Mr. Marrow at Wild Country Safari; he'll tell you it was a junker he used for practical jokes. Rawson used it for target practice thinking it was me. And why is maintenance going over my cycle when I haven't turned it in yet?"
    "I'll ask the questions," Stearns said, tapping with a forefinger on his desk placard. "Let me make it perfectly clear that I am chief deputy, and I don't like the way you operate. I think you drink on duty. I think you probably goaded Michael Rawson into drawing on you. The first time I catch you in a slip-up, you may end up on a rock-hockey gang at the county farm, or worse. And you're never in uniform, Quantrill. Never!" Stearns fondled the tan silk tie of his own spotless, sleek uniform. "Ties will be worn, mister. No deerskin shirts."
    "Regulations permit a certain latitude in the dress code during hazardous duty," Quantrill said, quoting exactly from the book. "That's all you use me for, you know it and I know it. Sir. I could ask why, but you're asking the questions."
    Steams bit back a furious reply, took a sip of coffee, and chose to let the harassment lapse for the time being. Most men, knowing they were under constant scrutiny for the slightest infraction, began to make more mistakes from sheer nervousness. Chief Deputy Marvin Stearns liked his world orderly, neat, and predictable. Wild cards like Quantrill were burrs in his personal blanket; he would rather remove them neatly than be surprised by their unconventional ways. Neatness, for Stearns, was a powerful measure of success.
    In a trivial bureaucratic way, Stearns was right. But Quantrill had been harassed by experts. No one could have convinced Stearns that he was less than an expert judge of men. Pleased with his strategy. Steams continued the debriefing. He even agreed when, at the end, Quantrill asked to study some files before writing out his final report.
    "Go ahead, if it'll make your report sound less like a goddam telegram and more like a professional job." He dismissed Quantrill with a wave.
    The little deputy walked out without argument, knowing it was argument that Steams craved. Obvious insubordination or admission of drinking on duty—anything that might give Stearns an excuse for disciplinary action; perhaps even a suspension. Alone, Quantrill studied holo sequences from official files, imprinting the faces and mannerisms of Harley Slaughter and Clyde Longo. He was on his own time now, but those two were free on bail and they might know who had iced Mike Rawson. For some time now, Quantrill had suspected a leak in the Justice Department. If Slaughter and Longo had access to that leak, they might just come calling under false names.
    An hour before noon, he cashed his hazardous pay chit and checked the schedules of freighters heading from Junction toward SanTone, then hotfooted it to the pickup point near Interstate 10. With the LOS—line-of-sight—power tower nearby, the huge-wheeled freight rigs often stopped to soak up energy through their antennae. Since the war, a lot of the big rigs were equipped with seats for several paying passengers. It wasn't first-class travel, but if you couldn't afford a hovercycle and couldn't borrow one from the motor pool, a freight rig was the best way to travel through the rough margins of Wild Country.
    He found a black double-tandem Peterbilt with a full load revving its flywheels for pullout onto the freeway and waved a five-dollar piece. Headshake. A second coin with the