Catseye Read Free

trying to bait him. Everyone knew that Norden had been handed over to the Confederation, that none of her former inhabitants could hope to return to her plains.
    â€œAll right. If the assigner sent you, you’re the best it could find.” Kyger arose from the enveloping embrace of his eazirest. The yellow man slipped to his side. “Zul will give you your orders. We are expecting a shipment in on the Chasgar. You’ll go to the dock with Zul and do just as he tells you—no more, certainly no less. Understand?” There was a flick of razor-sharp whip in that. Troy nodded.
    Zul was certainly not a talkative companion. He merely beckoned Troy out through another door into a courtyard. This, too, was sided with pens and cages, but Troy was given no time to inspect their inhabitants. Zul waved him to a waiting flitter. As Troy took his place in the foreseat, the small man reached for the controls and they lifted with practiced ease to the air lanes. Zul circled, then headed them toward the west and the spaceport.
    There was more traffic aloft now, personal flitters, heavier vans, and small flyers such as their own. Zul slipped through the lanes with a maximum of speed and a minimum of effort, bringing them down without a jar on the landing strip behind the receiver station. Again a jerk of thumb served to bring Troy, trailing his guide, into one of the many entrances of the clearance section. His small companion was well known here, for he bypassed two barriers without explanation, their guardians waving him on.
    â€œKyger’s.” Zul spoke at last, putting a claim disk down before the man in charge of the third grill.
    â€œRight section, third block—”
    Now they were in a corridor with a wall on one side, a series of bins, room size, on the other, each well filled with shipping crates, bales, and containers. There were men hauling these in and out, which testified that the contents of the packages in this particular section were too precious to be left to the mechanical transportation of the port robots.
    Zul located the proper bin room and dropped his disk into the release frame at the door. The protecting mesh rolled up, and a light flashed on above two crates and a large, well-padded travel cage. All three packages were bulky, and Zul, fists on hips, eyed them closely before he said over his shoulder, “Get a truck.”
    Troy went back up the corridor to claim one of the motored platforms. He was wriggling that out of a line of its fellows when he caught a half glimpse of a face, a familiar face. As he jumped on the platform, dug his boot toe into the activating button, and headed the vehicle down the line, he wondered just what would happen if he shouted out that a newly accepted member of the Thieves’ Guild was working here, in the very center of the supposedly best-protected treasure-transhipping center on Korwar. Every man who entered this building had been scanned by the psychocheck at the door, and everyone not on legitimate business would have been unmasked by that latest weapon in the armory of the patrollers. Yet Troy was certain he had seen Julnuk Varms shifting a crate, and he knew for a fact that Varms had crossed the line into the apprenticeship ranks of the Guild.
    The platform rolled to a stop before Zul, and they went to work shifting their cargo to its surface. Each piece was heavy enough to require the combined efforts of the mismatched workers, and Troy wiped his hand across his face as the second settled into place. He eyed the curtains covering the sides of the cage, wondering just what kind of exotic creature cowered within.
    Cowered? That was the wrong word. The inmate of that cage was curious, interested, alertly eager—not in any way cowed. Inmate? Inmates—two of them—
    Troy stood very still, staring at the closely curtained transport cage. How did he know that?
    Interest—now increasing—Something touched him, not physically, but