The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Her skin was white, though from her dark lips Coke suspected she would tan to an umber color. She wore neither make-up nor, apart from the combs and crucifix, any jewelry.

“I’m Pilar Ortega,” she said. “I’m the, well, I’m the passenger services officer, but for the past few months I’ve been sort of running Terminal Operations—to the extent they’re being run.”

“What sort of entry formalities are there?” Coke asked. “Cantilucca is part of the Marvelan Confederacy, isn’t it?”

The building was none too clean. From the sound of the static broom which the team’s entry had interrupted, Pilar was doing not only the terminal director’s work but also that of the janitor.

“Here, I’ll log you in as well,” Pilar said with a grimace. She turned to a console and brought it live. “Call your friends inside, will you please?”

Coke nodded to Vierziger, who moved to the door.

“The clerks in the Commission office next door have all gone home,” the woman explained as she sorted through electronic files. Her fingers were tapering. They moved a light pen with short, positive strokes to control the holographic data. “High Commissioner Merian is …isn’t as diligent as he might be. To tell the truth, so long as the port duties are paid, the Confederacy doesn’t bother much about Cantilucca.”

The team entered the terminal building in a smooth movement, forming a chain to slide all the luggage inside ahead of the personnel. Pilar looked up from her console to eye the cases. “It’ll be tight,” she murmured, “but we’ll fit.”

“Is the city far?” Johann Vierziger asked. His voice was calm and melodious, but his eyes never rested more than a second in one place. Watching him was like following a tiny, ravenous insectivore as it snuffled through the leaf mold.

“Two kilometers is all,” Pilar said. “The usual separation in case of a landing accident. But sometimes the road—”

She looked up again. “There are people here who inject tailings from the gage refineries. It can make them dangerous. It’s better not to be on foot when you’re out of town. Potosi isn’t anything more than a town.”

Without changing her inflection she added, “May I see your identity chips, please?”

“Gage tailings are poison,” Margulies said as she gave Pilar her ID chip left-handed. She and Vierziger were both nervous, though that wouldn’t have been obvious to many outsiders. “Why use them when the whole planet’s full of the pure stuff?”

“Poor people, of course,” Pilar said primly as she fed the chips into a slot on her console. “Gage on Cantilucca is controlled for export. If you expected”—she glanced up sidelong, then back to the console—“to find it running free for the taking in the gutters here, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”

“That won’t really affect us one way or the other, Mistress Ortega,” Coke said. “Ah—are there dangerous life forms on Cantilucca?”

“Only the human beings,” Pilar said. “Some of them. Many of them.”

The console popped the ID chips forth one at a time at half-second intervals. Pilar scooped them into her hand and distributed them to the members of the survey team. Though she scarcely glanced at the imprinted legends, she returned each to its owner on the first try.

“There,” she said as she closed down the console again. “In theory, you should come in tomorrow when the clerks are on duty and go through this again. But I can’t imagine anybody will mind. Half the time nobody shows up next door at all.”

She took a deep breath and shook herself. “Are you ready to go?” she added.

“You bet we are,” Margulies muttered, eyeing the translucent door behind her. A starship coughed plasma again, brightening the panels into feathery iridescence.

Pilar stepped into the office on the other side of the counter and returned a moment later with a dark wrap. She opened the gate in the counter and said, “This way, then, please. The van is right outside.”

Vierziger led again. He moved with serpentine grace, that one. He didn’t appear to have hastened to get from one end of the room to the other ahead of his companions, but there he was.

Coke was impressed with Vierziger. Lieutenant Margulies’ face was unreadable, but there was more to her expression than mere professional appreciation.

The night was as Coke remembered it, warm and muggy. He couldn’t understand why the woman had bothered with an overgarment, until he noticed that it turned her into a shapeless blob without sex or individuality. He wondered whether that was more of a comment on Potosi or on Pilar’s personality.

Beside the building was a four-wheeled van whose windows were broken out. Pilar got in while the team members wrestled their luggage into the back through the doors in both sides. The only seats were the pair of buckets in front.

Sten Moden opened the passenger door and swept his arm down in a courtly gesture toward Coke. “Rank hath its privileges,” he said in a booming baritone.

“Bob, give me a leg up on top,” Margulies called. “It’s crowded inside, and I like the view from up there.”