A matched set of Kalixiri ferrets with cold feet began running up and down myback. "Really," I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. "How come it's worththat much? And who to?"

"I don't know why they want it," she said, half turning and snagging a foldedpiece of paper from the next table over that had apparently been left behindduring the earlier mass exodus. "But it's all right here," she said, handingit to me.

I unfolded it. To my complete lack of surprise, it was the same flyer JamesFulbright had waved in my face back on Dorscind's World.

With two unpleasant differences. First, as Jennifer had said, the reward hadbeen jumped from the original five thousand to a hundred thousand. And second, instead of my old Mercantile Authority photo, there was a much more up-to-datesketch. An extremely good sketch.

"Sounds like a con to me," I commented offhandedly as I folded the paper againand dropped it on the table in front of me, my skin crawling beneath the fakescars on my cheek. So that was why the Patth agent on Dorscind's World hadsurrendered without even token resistance. Letting me get off the planet hadbeen less important in his eyes than making sure he stayed alive to take backa proper description to his masters. Suddenly my disguise didn't seem quite socomforting and impenetrable anymore. "So why show it to us?" I asked.

She waved a hand around. "You can see how it is," she said, her eyes and voicestarting to drift toward the seductive. "I'm stuck down here. But you're not.

You might run into this Icarus out there."

Chort made a strange sound in the back of his throat. "What ship did you say?

The Icarus?"

"I guess no one knows what it looks like," she said, ignoring him, her eyesstill on me and growing ever more seductive. "But they say that guy on theflyeris aboard it. You might spot the ship; you might spot him."

"And then?" I prompted.

She leaned close to me. "Then you could call me here," she said, breathing thewords straight into my face now. The perfume mixed with the alcohol on herbreath was definitely from the lower end of the price spectrum. "I know who toget the word to, and who to collect the bounty from."

"You say they just want the ship?" Tera spoke up. She had picked up the flyernow and was looking at it, and in the admittedly inadequate light I thoughther face had gone a little pale.

"They want the ship and crew both," Jennifer said, still gazing at me. "What, can't you read?"

"What for?" Tera persisted, handing the flyer off to Nicabar. "What do theywant them for?"

Reluctantly, Jennifer leaned back again and looked at Tera over her shoulder.

"I don't know," she growled, clearly annoyed at the interruption in her salespitch. "And I don't care, either. The point is that there's money to be made, and we could be the ones who make it."

"And how would you propose we split it?" I asked.

She smiled at me again. The seductress role was apparently all she knew how toplay. "All I want is passage back to Earth and a couple thousand to help megetset up there," she breathed, leaning toward me again. "That's all—you'd getall the rest. Just for one little StarrComm call. I'd even pay you back for thecall."

"Why do we need you at all?" Nicabar put in, looking up from the flyer. "Whycan't we just call this number ourselves?"

"Because I know how to get you an extra fifty thousand," the woman said, breathing her words into my face again. "Private money. Revenge money. Seethose three in the back?"

I turned my head. The three robed figures were still hunched over their table; but as we all looked that direction, as if on cue, one of them stirred, rollinghis shoulders to the sides as if adjusting them in his sleep, then fallingsilent and still again. But the movement had been enough to drop his hoodpartially back, revealing his face.

It was another of the Lumpy Clan.

From my left, from Nicabar's direction, came a faint but sharp intake of air.

I turned to look at him, but by the time I got there he had his usual stolidexpression back in place.

But the stifled gasp alone was very enlightening. Clearly, somewhere along theline, Nicabar had run into these lads before.

"They passed the word that they were putting another fifty thousand into thepot," Jennifer continued. Like Chort's reaction earlier to the name of thehunted ship, she'd apparently also missed Nicabar's reaction to the Lumpies.

Either she was drunker than I'd thought, or else she was putting so mucheffort into her attempted seduction of me that she didn't have any attention to sparefor anyone else. "I hear the guy on the flyer smoked a couple of their pals."

"Not a very friendly thing to do," I said, peering with some difficulty intoher face, not because she was unpleasant to look at but because she'd once againmoved to a position bare centimeters away from me. Maybe she was counting onher perfume to seal this deal for her.

Inside my jacket, my phone vibrated. "Excuse me," I said, half turning awayfrom her and digging into my pocket, glad for an excuse to break away from thatgaze, even temporarily.

It was, as I'd expected, Ixil. "Everything all right?" he asked.

"Just fine," I told him as Nurptric returned to our table with our drinks. "Wefound out why everyone else is gone."

"Good," he said. "Whatever the reason, they're coming back."

"It seems—" I broke off. "What?"

"I'm reading fifteen ships on landing-approach vectors," he said. "At leastfive of them are heading for our spaceport."

I looked up at the Ulkomaal. "Nurptric, do the Balthee ever actually land topick up prisoners?"

He seemed shocked. "Of course not. They wouldn't dare—this is Ulko sovereignterritory."

"Then you're right, they're coming back," I confirmed to Ixil, trying to keepthe sudden tension out of my voice. A whole crowd of returning pirates, smugglers, and cutthroats; and probably every one of them with a Patth sketchof me folded neatly in his pocket. Just what we needed. "What's the fuelingstatus?"

"About half-done," he said. "We should be topped off by the time the firstwave arrives. I presume we'd like to be buttoned down and ready to fly by then?"

"If not sooner," I told him. Whatever Uncle Arthur had cooked up for us, he'dbetter hit the road with it, and fast. "We're on our way."

I clicked off and returned the phone to my pocket. "Trouble?" Jennifer asked.

"Just the opposite," I assured her, lifting my glass to my lips but notdrinkingany of it. The barkeep might have recognized me and slipped in somethingspecial, and I didn't want to find out about it the hard way. If I hadn't beena raving paranoid before, I reflected, this trip would very likely do the trick.

"Our ship's almost fueled up, and it looks like we can be out of here beforethe rest of your clientele start tying up all the perimeter grav beams."

Her face fell, just a bit. All that effort, and now we were about to leavewithout letting her finish her presentation. "Think about my offer, okay?" shesaid, a note of pleading in her voice. "There could be extra benefits, too, not just the money."

"Oh?" I said, resisting the temptation to look suggestively up and down hertight-fitting outfit. It would have been a cheap shot, and I imagined she gotenough of that from the Baker's Dozen's usual denizens. "Such as?"

Cheap shots, apparently, were Jennifer's stock-in-trade. Putting her righthand behind my head, the corners of her ring catching momentarily on my hair, shepulled me the last thirty centimeters still separating us and kissed me.

There was nothing tentative or perfunctory about it, either. It was afull-mouth, full-pressure lip dock, with all the desperate strength of someonefacing her absolute last chance. I thought about how she'd spoken of beingstuck here, of how she'd asked for passage to Earth for putting us onto the Patthhunt, and for the first time since we'd met I actually felt a little sorry forher. Of all of us at that table, I could empathize most strongly with thefeeling of being caught inside an ever-shrinking box.