out by—”
“When was this?” He was scribbling marginal notes with his electropen.
“Seven years back.”
“That long ago? Is Flo Haypenny old, too?”
“Thirty-five.”
Taliaferro shook his head. “Sad,” he observed. “Well, sir, you’re scheduled to board the Hollywood II when it docks at Spaceport/A down on Barnum tomorrow afternoon. You’ll stay onboard during the two-day jaunt out to Murdstone, hang around while they do location work. We’d like to get something good from you—it has to play at least six minutes—within a week or less.”
“May take longer.”
“Budget and Allocations gets on my tail if my people drag—”
“I’ll give it a valiant try, Fred.”
His editor pushed the collection of papers across the desk top. “You can browse through these, then return them to me.”
“You forgot a page.” Summer nodded at the purple sheet.
“Hum?”
“There.”
“Oh, this?” Gingerly he lifted it. “Jack, suppose…well, suppose I get you a raise of 75,000 trubux?”
“Who?”
“What?”
“Who do you want me to drag along on this damn assignment with me?”
“You’re making it sound like something unpleasant, whereas it might be as much fun as a barrel of—”
“All I need is a cambot to take my footage.” Summer stood up. “The way I operate, a partner isn’t—”
“The thing is…Well, sir, this directive isn’t from me.” He pointed a green finger upward. “Comes from higher.”
“Who are you burdening me with?”
“They tell me…reliable sources inform me, since I’ve never met the lady…that she’s very…hum…cute. Bright, too. She graduated with honors from the Barnum School of Visual Arts and Investigative Reporting last autumn.”
“Last fall?” Summer leaned, rested his palms on the desk and studied Taliaferro’s anxious face. “You’re sticking me with a child? Some girl fresh out of a convent? Fred, these Zombium traffickers are tough and dirty.”
“Would you care to look at her grades? She got an A—in Dirty Combat, a B+ in Wilderness Survival. So you have nothing to—”
Straightening, Summer took a step back from the lucite desk. “Nugent,” he realized. “It’s Nugent’s daughter, isn’t it? That blond tomboy who—”
“Jack, hush. Eli Nugent’s the Associate Chairman of the whole damn NewzNet operation,” he said in a low, cautious voice. “Sure, Vicky Nugent happens to be his only daughter, but she’s supposed to be a crackerjack journalist as well.”
“No, nope, not at all.” Summer headed for a door. “I’m not going to play nanny to some nitwit heiress who thinks she’s—”
“100,000 trubux,” called Taliaferro.
Halting, Summer turned to face the desk again. “Put that in writing.”
The editor nodded. “I’ll draw up an agreement in triplicate,” he pledged. “We’ll even shake hands on the deal.”
Summer narrowed his left eye. “Okay, I’ll work with Vicky Nugent.”
Taliaferro allowed himself a small relieved smile. “She’s supposed to be,” he said, “very personable.”
Chapter 3
The three tattooed gatormen who attacked Summer in the Central Foyer of Barnum Spaceport/A the next afternoon were carrying rolled-up parasols.
While the huskiest of the trio, who had an idealized portrait of his mother etched in glowhite on his leathery bicep, dived and attempted to tackle the vidjournalist, the other two started whacking at him with their polka-dot umbrellas.
“Thus to all deadbeats and alimony cheats!” cried the Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. agent who was whapping Summer on his back and shoulders.
“It pays to pay up on time,” suggested the third. He was profusely decorated with tattooed sporting scenes and was making swordsmanlike lunges with his furled parasol.
“Spare me the commercial messages.” Summer dodged the thrusts of the umbrella, moving out of the way of a line of scurrying wheeled baggagebots, and got in three good solid jabs to the collection agent’s protruding snout.
The gator’s massive jaws clacked twice, his eyes rolled back as he proceeded to fold up. He tumbled against a stationary candybot, clutched at it and then sank to the rippled glaz floor.
“Oops, oops!” The copper-plated candybot started making apologetic hooting noises. Plaz-wrapped carob-coated grasshoppers were starting to spout out of a nozzle in its chest.
“The tab is mounting,” said the gatorman, who’d succeeded in tackling Summer and was struggling to bring him down. “Four months back alimony to that poor forsaken lady who must toil as a tapdancer in a stage-door canteen orbiting Perennial War Planet Number 22 out in the boonies of the universe. Add to that the cost of massive repairs and mental anguish balm to our three personable pint-sized robots yesterday. And now you’ve rearranged Otto’s schnozzle and broken a servomech—”
“G’wan, your damn insurance covers all that.”
“Don’t step on those disgusting candied bugs, my children,” warned a Streamlined Bishop as he escorted a dozen and a half catkids toward an excursion rocket gate. “Don’t become entangled in this loathsome and brutal brawl.”
“Are these guys soused to the eyeballs?” inquired a little catgirl in pinafore and sudostraw hat.
“Alas, one fears so.” The furry cleric hurried them out of range.
“We’ll add that to your bill, too,” said the gator. “Tearing down our reputations by associating with you, Summer.”
“Hooey,” he observed, jumping free of the gator man’s armhold. As he rose in the air, Summer kicked him a good one on the chin.
“Unk.” His tattooed assailant went staggering back, crossing the path of a birdpeople honeymoon party before passing out at the foot of a decorative plaz palm tree.
The bride shrieked, yellow and green feathers standing on end. “Oh, I told you this junket was jinxed, Jerome,” she said. “We should’ve settled for that skyvan trip daddy offered to spring for.”
“Relax, Martha, relax,” soothed her duck-billed husband, urging her around another of the stately palms. “Nothing more than a few nitwits clowning around.”
“The
