LITMIR.BIZ

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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 tab is mounting,” said the gatorman, who’d been attacking him from behind. “My Banx branch’s taking care of the alimony situation even as we speak,” he explained cordially. “Why don’t you just gather up your fallen comrades and slink quietly—”

      “In a snerg’s valise, buddy.” This one had intricate pastoral scenes emblazoned on his powerful arms and the large patch of broad chest showing through his low-cut tunic. “Notice the ferrule of this bumbershoot I happen to have aimed right smack at your goonies. Looks a lot like a stungun barrel, don’t it now?”

      “You try to use a stungun on me, chum, and I’ll shut down your whole and entire—”

      “Won’t use it if you trot along peaceable to our local STL office, which is conveniently located only minutes away from downtown—”

      Zzzzzzzummmmmm!

      Summer flinched and dived sideways at the sound of a stungun.

      When the third and final billcollector fell over, Summer realized the parasol hadn’t been fired at all.

      Glancing around, he noticed a slim blond young woman standing next to a pile of space luggage a few yards to his left. She was pretty, not more than twenty-two, clad in a short-skirted two-piece cazsuit. As she smiled tentatively across at him, she tucked a small silver-plated, jewel-handled stungun back into a thigh holster.

      The curious little catgirl had strayed from her group and was now perched on a floating plazbench watching the slender blond. “Is this one of those crimes of passion?” she inquired, her straw hat now clutched between her furry little paws.

      “Kathryn, come away from this scene of horrible depravity.” The Streamlined Bishop snatched her up off the bench, tucked her under one stout arm and went trotting away through the small curious crowd that was building a circle around-Summer, the fallen gatormen and the helpful blond.

      “I sure hope I haven’t offended you or anything, Mr. Summer,” she said, taking a few cautious steps in his direction. “What I mean is, you may have some darn masculine code that compels you, I don’t know, to handle any and all attackers singlehanded without the least little bit of—”

      “Nope, I accept whatever help I can get,” he assured her. “So, thanks.”

      “Hey, and listen. You aren’t, are you, chagrined or anything because I overheard all this guff about your darn marital problems and all? What I’m getting at is this: you probably weren’t planning to much like me anyway and this on top—”

      “You’re Vicky Nugent.”

      Her smile became somewhat less timid and she moved closer. “Matter of fact, I am, yes,” she answered, nodding. “See, I got myself here a little early so I could, I don’t know, take a look at you before I finally introduced myself. I’m not, as you probably’ve figured, exactly

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