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at First Stellar.”
    “Nice and simple,” said Daddy. He raised his head and bored into her with hard little eyes like glass chips. “Let’s keep it that way.”
    Sarah nodded.
    “We’ve got friends with ways of fixin’ people who screw us,” said Mudface, his eyes were big and serious. He nodded to the thugs who wandered around the place. “I like you, Sarah. Wouldn’t want to see you get messed up.”
    “That’s right,” added Daddy. He finished loading his hand-cannon and the breech snicked shut automatically. “I don’t like comin’ into town to do business. It’d be a shame to have that kind of business with you.”
    “I assure you, gentlemen,” Sarah told them with her hands raised and open. She spoke with deep sincerity. “I have absolutely no intention of screwing up this deal.”
    They both nodded, and the tension eased. Later, after they all had a cool glass of reed-whiskey, a surprisingly clean glass, Sarah made ready for lift-off.
    “Awe now, look at that. That damned swamper got mud all over your flitter with that last case,” complained Mudface. “I’ll have ‘im beat for you, girly. Beat real good!”
    Sarah’s mouth opened and she found herself about to say thanks automatically. Her tongue caught in her teeth and she said nothing.
    Mudface just waved at her, grinning his idiot grin. Sarah pressed the automatic return button on the flitter’s control panel and soon his face was lost in the glade around the stockade. Then the glade was lost on the mold-green carpet of Sharkstooth and finally even the triangular island slipped away beneath the fluffy white clouds of Gopus. The flitter slid up into orbit and docked with her ship.
    As she made her way through the airlock and climbed into the rotating shower to wash the sweat from her body, she thought about Mudface’s words beat real good , and shuddered in the warm water.
    “Hello mom,” Bili Engstrom shouted into intercom. The sound startled her.
    “Hello Bili,” she replied, “how’s your arm, any change?”
    “Nope, the heal-bag’s still brown and just a little cloudy. How’s old Mudface? Still a pervert?”
    “Bili, let’s not talk like that.”
    The connection was cutoff for a minute or so while she removed her pressure suit and made her way in Zero-G up to the passenger section of the boat. Bili, who sat in the tiny galley section working on a model of Garm’s star system and getting glue everywhere in the process, took the time to examine his injured arm. He poked and prodded at the limb through the tough clear plastic bag that encased it in liquids until he could feel the pressure with his new, tingling nerves. His right arm had been crushed just above the elbow in the same accident that had killed his father out in the asteroid belt six months ago. His mother had gotten him to a clinic in time and they had amputated the mutilated arm. Without full medical, they couldn’t afford a really professional regrow, just one of those kits you could buy at the survival supplies department, alongside the jungle ape venom kits and the do-it-yourself amputation packages. It just wasn’t coming out right, though. The bag was supposed to remain clear and colorless, but had turned a nasty, hazy brown over the last two weeks. Bili gave it another hard poke and winced.
    “Mom, we don’t have to do this job, you know,” Bili said as his mother emerged from an opening in the ceiling and did a summersault to a standing position. She wordlessly examined his arm in the healing bag. “It’s worse,” she announced tonelessly.
    “We don’t need this job,” repeated Bili. “This regrow will work okay, and even if it doesn’t, I can get along with one arm. I’m left-handed, anyway.”
    “Don’t worry about it, kid, we’re going to get you on full medical,” she said with false bravado. “It’s a done deal.” She ruffled his hair and used the handrails to pull herself forward to check the screens.
    “Not much out there,”