“We can offer basic torso protection to your security personnel at competitive prices.” After all, the profit on what you’re getting for yourself covers our cost of stocking it went unsaid. Merchant to merchant, Ky looked at him. He smiled. She smiled back. Well, if someone took a shot at her people while she was getting from here to Hub 4, she would feel guilty for leaving them unprotected.

“Economy is a factor,” she said.

“Of course, madam. I shall be glad to call up the current price points from the other onstation dealers…”

“Quite all right,” Ky said. No need to say she had already. He would assume she had.

Somewhat to her surprise, just one of Aunt Gracie’s diamonds covered the entire cost with credit left over.

Fitting Martin with a conventional vest took only a few minutes, but when Ky went to call Jim and Beeah inside, they were no longer near the door. Instead, Jim was crouched near the display window of the china shop with Beeah standing over him.

“What’s wrong?” Ky asked. “Are you all right?”

“I am, but look at this…” He turned and stood, cradling in his arms a small black-and-white animal with stiff, spiky fur. “Someone’s been messing it about—I found it in the rubbish bin, trying to get out.”

“What is that?” Ky asked. Bright black eyes, little black nose, and the moist pink tongue that suggested Old Earth origin. Hairy, so a mammal of some kind. She glanced around and saw that Jim had indeed dismantled a rubbish bin to get it out, leaving trash strewn about. “And you’d better clean up the mess you made before someone fines us for littering.”

Jim stared at her as if she’d said she didn’t know what two plus two was. “It’s a puppy, “he said. “A terrier puppy. Here—you can hold him while I pick this up.” He shoved the wriggling little animal into her arms and turned; the puppy promptly fastened onto Ky’s hand with sharp little teeth.

“Ow!” she said. Beeah came up beside her. “Here—I expect we’re now in trouble for harboring an unlicensed animal onstation, but at least we can contain it. And it bites,” Ky added, as the puppy fastened its teeth on Beeah’s thumb.

“I noticed,” Beeah said, but he was grinning, prying open the puppy’s jaws to retrieve his thumb. He offered the puppy the cuff of his suit, and the puppy worried it, growling.

“I hope it doesn’t piddle on you,” Ky said. Jim stuffed the last of the trash back into the container and set the lid on. “Come on,” she said to him. “Let’s get you fitted.”

“Some guard you are,” Martin muttered to Beeah, as Ky led Jim back to the shop. He had retrieved his weapon and followed her out. “What did you think you were doing?”

When she came back, trailed by Jim, Beeah had the puppy cradled along one arm, upside down, and was stroking its belly. He handed it to Jim, reluctantly it seemed, while Martin rolled his eyes. Fitting Beeah also took only a short time; Ky accepted her change in local currency, and excused herself. She arrived outside just in time to see an obvious station guard staring at the sight with disgust. The guard moved across the passage toward them.

“You there!” he said. “Do you have a license for that animal?”

Chapter Seven

This had not been part of her plan. “It’s not our—” Ky said, but Jim blurted, “Not yet.” She glared at him.

“You’ll have to come along now,” the guard said, flicking open what Ky was sure was a combination comunit and data entry. “Exposing the station to an unlicensed animal… where are you people from, anyway?” His gaze roved over Jim’s unattractive rumpled Belinta tunic, which, Ky noticed, failed to completely conceal his brand-new armor. The guard’s gaze sharpened. “Wearing armor, eh? And you, you’re carrying a weapon…” Now he was glaring at Ky.

She tilted her head back to the doorway of Blade, Bullet, and Bow. “We’ve just come out—”

“And put the animal in the waste can while you were in there? Do you have any idea—?”

“I didn’t put it there,” Jim said. “It was in there, whimpering and scratching, poor thing, and I couldn’t leave it—”

“Is that true?” the guard asked Ky.

“I was inside,” Ky said. “I didn’t hear it. When I came out, he was holding it…”

“Uh-huh. Well, it’s in your possession now, and if this is your employee, you’re responsible for it, and for not having a proper license and health papers for it… and how about a license for that weapon?”

Ky fished her new license out of her pocket. “Here.”

He glanced at it. “All right then. Come along to the office and take care of this…” He glared at the puppy.

Never argue with law enforcement in the street, her father had told her. Go pleasantly along to the office, cooperate, and you’ll be done much faster. So probably it was only seeming to take an hour, Ky thought, to follow the guard along the passage, past stores that changed gradually from the upper margin of the upper crust to the solid commercial filling of any major space station that saw a lot of traffic. And there was the guard office for this arm of Hub Three, with its hull-quality door standing wide open.

“What’s this, Mally?” asked the man behind the desk.

“Unlicensed animal. Claim they found it in a trash bin, but it seems to know him.” The guard jerked a thumb at Jim, who still cradled the puppy along his forearm; it looked asleep.

“Fine’s two hundred credits a day, crate license fifty credits, out-of-crate license one hundred credits, both require health certificate available from any onstation veterinarian and you can look them up in the business directory using a public-access com line or if it’s not your animal or you wish it destroyed that will be two hundred credits fine, ten credits disposal fee, payable immediately by cash or approved credit line only…” The desk clerk rattled this off in a rapid monotone, then looked up. “Name, ship name, names of all persons who have contacted this… whatever it is…?”

“Jim Hakusar, from Gary Tobai—I’m the one who found it in the trash container. He was crying and trying to get out—”

“And you are…?” The clerk looked at Beeah.

“Beeah Chok, same ship.”

“Gordon Martin, same ship.”

“Captain Vatta, Gary Tobai, “Ky said.

“Ah—you’re armed, Mally says. Your permit number?” Ky handed the permit over. “Um. Not in the database—what’s the date on this? Oh, today. I guess you won’t have any trouble paying the fines for your pet, then, will you, shopping at Blades? Though if it’s really not yours, you’d be smart to let us get rid of it.”

“No,” Jim said. Ky looked at him. “You can’t let them kill a puppy, “he said.

“What do we need with a puppy?” Ky asked. Jim gave her a stricken look.

“Dogs can be useful,” Martin said. “Dockside, I mean. This one’s very small—”

“He’s a puppy,” Jim said. “He’ll grow. I’ll bet he’ll be fierce.”

“He won’t be much trouble,” Beeah murmured. Ky looked at him in surprise. She hadn’t known Beeah had any interest in animals.

“Up to you,” the clerk said. “There’s also the mandatory decontamination and observation period for personnel in contact with an unlicensed animal lacking health papers. You can locate the nearest clinic in the business directory using any public-access comlink…”

The puppy opened one limpid eye, squirmed, and piddled down Jim’s front.

An astonishing amount of money later, Ky looked at her protectors with less than favor. “You two made enough commotion that any enemy we might have now knows where we are, what we’re wearing, and that I’m armed. Next time just smash a window and start screaming obscenities, why don’t you?”

“All right…,” Jim said, looking worried. “But how do I know when?”

Ky appealed to deities she’d heard of and didn’t believe in. The puppy, now listed as “Puddles” in the vet’s database, was being inspected, disinfected, and would be delivered the next day. The vet had informed her that it was almost certainly a purebred, a Jack Russell terrier. She privately thought of it as another kind of jack-something-terrier, but didn’t mention that. She and the others had been through a standard decontamination procedure, which had turned the damp patch on Jim’s tunic bright blue, though the technician insisted it would return to normal color later.