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get there, don't we? So we need a ship. I've chartered ships from Starslip before, and they're perfectly comfortable. The crews are polite and the cuisine is more than adequate."

Nevis gave her a withering look. He had a face made for it - sharp and angular, with hair swept back hard and a great scimitar of a nose, his small dark eyes half-hidden by heavy black eyebrows. "For what purpose did you charter these ships?"

"Why, for field trips, of course," Celise Waan replied. She plucked another cream ball from the plate in front of her, lifting it delicately between thumb and forefinger and popping it into her mouth. "I've supervised many important researches. The Center provided the funding."

"Let me point out the nose on your damn face," Nevis said. "This is not a field trip. We are not poking into the mating habits of primitives. We are not digging around for obscure knowledge that no sane person could possibly give a damn about, as you're accustomed to doing. This little conspiracy of ours is about to go after a treasure of almost unimaginable value. If we find it, we don't intend to turn it over to the proper authorities, either. You need me to see to its disposition through less-than-licit channels. And you trust me so little that you won't tell where the damn thing is until we're underway, and Lion here has hired a bodyguard. Fine, I don't give a damn. But understand this - I am not the only untrustworthy man on ShanDellor. Vast profit is involved here, and vast power. If you're going to continue to yammer at me about cuisine, then I'm leaving. I have better things to do than sit here counting your chins."

Celise Waan snorted disdainfully. She was a big, round, red-faced woman, with a loud, wet snort. "Starslip is a reputable firm," she said. "Besides, the salvage laws - "

" - are meaningless," said Nevis. "We have one set of laws here on ShanDellor, another on Kleronomas, a third on Maya, and none of them mean a damn thing. And if ShanDi law did apply, we'd get only one-quarter the value of the find - if we got anything at all. Assuming this plague star of yours is really what Lion thinks it is, and assuming that it's still in working order, whoever controls it will enjoy an overwhelming military superiority in this sector. Starslip and the other big transcorps are as greedy and ruthless as I am, I promise you. Furthermore, they are big enough and powerful enough so that the planetary governments watch them closely. In case it has escaped your notice, let me point out that there are only four of us. Five, if you count the hireling," he said, nodding toward Rica Dawnstar, who favored him with an icy grin. "A big liner has more than five pastry chefs. Even on a small courier, we'd be outnumbered by the crew. Once they saw what we had, do you imagine for even a second that we'd be allowed to keep it?"

"If they cheat us, we'll sue them," the fat anthropologist said, with a hint of petulance in her voice. She plucked up the last cream ball.

Kaj Nevis laughed at her. "In what courts? On what world? That's assuming we're allowed to live, which is unlikely on the face of it. You are a remarkably stupid and ugly woman."

Jefri Lion had been listening to the squabble with an uncomfortable expression on his face. "Here, here," he interrupted at last. "Let's have no name-calling, Nevis. No call for it. We're all in this together, after all." A short, square block of a man, Lion wore a chameleon cloth jacket of military cut, decorated with rows of ribbons from some forgotten campaign. The fabric had turned a dusty gray in the dimness of the small restaurant, a gray that matched the color of Lion's bristling spade-shaped beard. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his broad, balding forehead. Kaj Nevis made him nervous; the man had a reputation, after all. Lion looked around to the others for support.

Celise Waan pouted and stared at the empty plate in front of her, as if her gaze could fill it with cream balls again. Rica Dawnstar - "the hireling," as Nevis called her - leaned back in her seat with a look of sardonic amusement in her bright green eyes. Beneath her drab jumpsuit and silvery mesh-steel vest, the long, hard body looked relaxed, almost