"What would you, alien, at this hour?" he snapped.
"You wished to speak to the Terran Mahasingh, did you not?"
"Aye."
"I just now saw him boarding the express at the terminal. If you hurry, you can catch him."
"Oh, that is different! Thank you, sir!"
Takao departed at the Kooks' jouncing run. A few minutes later Salazar, strolling toward the station, saw three figures approaching: Takao, Mahasingh, and a Kook whom Salazar took to be the constable.
Salazar found a recessed doorway to a shop and stepped into the niche, studying the merchandise through the windows. It was junky stuff made for Terran tourists, but Salazar focused his attention on it until, reflected in the glass, he saw the two Kooks and the tall Terran pass by. The constable's scaly, clawed hands firmly gripped Mahasingh's arm. The latter volubly protested:
"But why should you detain me if the honorable Takao has his animal back? I shall miss my train. I will in due course pay the excess over the deposit!"
Salazar waited until they were past and then hurried back to Choku. Together they marched to the station, where Choku piled Salazar's bag on the baggage flatcar. Salazar bought soft-fare tickets for both.
"Honorable boss," said Choku, "that is unnecessary extravagance. I am perfectly comfortable on the open car, though I understand that it is different for you delicate aliens."
"It is not your comfort but my own skin whereof I think," said Salazar. "I need you as a bodyguard."
"You aliens!" said Choku. "Ever quarreling and feuding like .infants! How you ever cooperated long enough to organize voyages between the stars I shall never understand. "
They entered the soft-fare car. Salazar pulled out his copy of Yorimoto's Pithecoidea of Kukulcan. Now and then he glanced nervously toward the end of the car, watching for Mahasingh in case the ex-foreman talked his way out of his predicament. Sounds implied another arrival. Salazar, bracing for another confrontation, choked back an exclamation. The person entering was Alexis Ritter.
X – Sungecho Harbor
Salazar quickly looked down at the pages of Yorimoto. After Alexis, a Kook climbed into the car bearing a bag like Salazar's record case. Alexis sat a few seats away from Salazar; her Kook attendant handed her the case, bowed, and departed. Mahasingh did not appear.
Salazar tried to return to his reading, but soon he realized that he was reading the same paragraph for the third time and had not taken in any of it. Then Alexis spoke:
"Hey, you're Kirk Salazar! The hat's different and the whiskers are shorter, but I still know you. Well?"
"Well, what?"
"What have you to say for yourself? What's the point of going around in that outfit when I know you anyway?"
"Why should I say anything? I needn't excuse myself to the murderer of a friend of mine."
"What do you mean? Dumfries? I never did!" Alexis rose and stepped toward Salazar.
"No, I mean Jean-Pierre Latour. I suppose he dove into the crater on his own?"
"Oh, you mean that Frenchman? I never heard of him! And where's my knife?"
"What knife?"
"The knife I—you know the one! It's mine, and I want it back!"
"It's like the Gnome King's magic belt, which Dorothy confiscated when he tried to use it on her."
"Dorothy? Gnome King? What the hell are you talking about?"
"If you don't know, your education's been neglected."
"Oh, you're impossible!" Her arm went up, swinging her loaded handbag. Salazar started to duck, but Choku shot out a scaly arm and caught Alexis's wrist in a steely grip. The handbag flew across the aisle and landed on a seat with a clank.
"Naughty, naughty!" said Salazar, retrieving the handbag. "I ought to keep this, too, on the same principle."
"It's not fair, two of you against one!"
"Life is unfair, as my father quotes some politician as saying." Salazar hitched his pistol holster around within easy reach. "I must say, you've added a lot to my education in the last month."
"If you don't give me back my money, I'll have you arrested for robbery! That'll sure add to your education!"
Salazar handed the coin-weighted bag to Choku. "Hold this, please. Alexis, if you're a good girl all the way to Sungecho and don't give me away, I'll return your money."
"How do I know you will? Why should I trust you?"
"You don't know. You'll have to trust me because I have the firepower."
She spit an expletive and returned to her seat. Conductor Zuiha put his head in the door. "Tickets, prease!"
"Conductor!" said Alexis in Sungao. "I demand that this Kook be removed. His smell makes me ill."
The conductor looked from passenger to passenger. To Salazar he said: "Have you any objection to this human being's presence, sir? This is, after all, our planet."
"On the contrary," said Salazar, "he works for me, and I brought him here. As you see, his ticket is in order."
Alexis fell silent. Zuiha took the tickets, returned the stubs, and left the car. Choku said:
"If I may say so, sir, I think you handled that rather well. But you aliens' minds are so complex and devious that one never knows."
"You are right about our minds, Choku. Perhaps in another century I shall get the hang of them myself."
The locomotive whistled, Zuiha whaled his gong, the conductor and his trainkooks shouted, and the Unriu Express pulled out with a clank and a clatter.
"Kirk," said Alexis, standing in the aisle, "I'm sorry I lost my temper. Let's be friends."
Salazar looked up. "Okay."
"Will you be stopping at Levontin's again?"
"Sure. It's the only choice for us effete Terrans."
"Well, perhaps we could get together." She touched a plump hip against his shoulder, and the lurching of the car made it rub back and forth. He felt the familiar hypogastric thrill, but he sternly told himself that it would be safer to take a venomous boshiya to bed. She continued:
"Perhaps I could add some more to your education. But I wouldn't make it a heavy date with all that spinach on your face. What's the point of it, since I know who you are anyway?"
"Good idea," said Salazar, thinking: This woman is unshakably convinced that if all else fails, she can infallibly get what she wants from any male by offering the hot notch in her crotch. "Might as well change back to myself. Choku, have you the solvent for taking off the beard?"
A quarter hour later he emerged from the toilet compartment with the beard in his hand and the greasepaint scrubbed from his face and hands.
"That's better," said Alexis, "though you could do with a shave."
"Thought I'd grow the real thing. Some people, including your luscious self, said I reminded them of a rabbit with my poor little chin. A beard might help." He sat down and took up his book.
She said: "We'll have a great time together. Now, how about giving me back my money?"
"Not till we get to Sungecho."
"I'll tell people you are also the swami Sen!"
"Then I'll tell how Val Dumfries met his timely end."
"What I did was no more illegal than your taking my money!"
"Maybe so, but Dumfries has fanatical followers, and at least some of them would come after you for revenge."
She cursed him with a verve that would have roused envy in a longshoreman and stamped back to her seat. Salazar resumed reading.
As they alighted at the Sungecho terminal, Salazar handed over the handbag. Alexis looked at it as if she could not believe her eyes. "Jesus, you really meant what you said, didn't you?" She turned and called: "Hey, Matt!"
The large, sandy-haired man down the platform turned. In the twilight, Salazar thought he had seen this man before.