"Only fourteen, but already one of the best in the business," Uncle Virge boasted. "I trained him myself."

"And you are the best, I suppose?" Gazen said sarcastically.

"Of course."

For a moment the line was silent. Jack kept walking, staring out into the crisscross of muted streetlights marking his way. Gazen was hovering over the bait, eyeing it and wondering if it was worth a taste. If he decided it was, they were in.

If he decided it wasn't, Jack was going to be toast. Jelly side down.

"And I'm supposed to take your word for all this," Gazen said at last.

"Not at all," Uncle Virge assured him. "I've arranged a demonstration."

"Really. What sort?"

"Your chief gatekeeper has a house across from the Chookoock estate," Uncle Virge explained. "I've sent Jack to burgle it."

"And what exactly did he steal?"

"Nothing, yet," Uncle Virge said. "I assumed you'd want to watch him in action before we discussed price."

"If he's as good as you say, why are you dumping him?"

"Because he's getting too old for what I need," Uncle Virge said. "I like to work against people's assumptions. You see a ten-year-old kid walk into a millionaire's mansion, you don't expect him to be casing the place. By the time he hits fifteen, though, people start paying attention."

"So you've decided to sell him?"

"Like you, I'm a businessman," Uncle Virge said. "I spent a lot of time and effort training this kid. Why not get all I can out of my investment?"

"Why not indeed," Gazen said dryly. "All right, I'll play along. I presume I don't have to tell you what happens if I find out you're running a scam here?"

"Not at all," Uncle Virge said. "In fact, I believe your enforcers are already gathering outside my landing bay."

"Excellent," Gazen said with satisfaction. "Brummgas are as dumb as dirt soup, but they're efficient enough with the things that matter. Where's the boy now?"

"Approaching the gatekeeper's house from the direction of the spaceport,"

Uncle Virge said. "But he's still at least half an hour away. Plenty of time for you to set up observers."

"His instructions?"

"To find the access codes for getting into the Chookoock estate."

There was a long, stiff silence. "Really," Gazen said at last, his voice suddenly silky smooth. "What for?"

"As I told you: a demonstration," Uncle Virge said.

"You sure you didn't have anything else in mind?" Gazen asked. His voice was still smooth, only now it was the smoothness of a bed of quicksand. "Like maybe selling any codes he happens to find?"

"If I wanted to do that, would I have called you up in advance?"

"Not unless you were stupid," Gazen conceded. But the darkness was still in his voice. "What do you want for the boy?"

"Let's make it sporting," Uncle Virge suggested. "Fifty thousand auzes, plus another ten for every minute less than half an hour that it takes him to get through the house alarms, find the gatekeeper's safe, and crack it. What do you say?" "Fine," Gazen said. "Let's see how he does."

"Excellent," Uncle Virge said. "I'll be in touch."

There was a double click, and the connection went dead. "It appears to be working," Draycos commented.

"So far, anyway," Jack said, grimacing into the darkness. "Let's try not to disappoint him."

CHAPTER 3

The windows on the street side of the gatekeeper's house were dark when Jack arrived. It looked like everyone had already gone to bed, but he took the time to walk around the entire block first just to make sure.

All the windows were dark, all right. And at nine o'clock. "They sure roll up the walkways early around here," he muttered to Draycos as he stopped in the shadow of a bushy tree.

"Pardon?"

"They close down shop and go to bed," Jack explained, eying the gatekeeper's house. So far he hadn't seen or heard anyone, not even on his walk around the block.

But they were there. He could feel it in the prickling of his skin. Gazen and his people were watching to see just how good a thief this kid was.

And if they decided he was good enough, they would buy him.

Not hire him, like he and Uncle Virgil had sometimes been hired to break into safes. Not even indenture him, like the Whinyard's Edge mercenaries had.

They would buy him.

He shivered. On the human-controlled Internos planets, slavery had been banned long ago. But on Brum-a-dum, as well as on many other worlds in the Orion Arm, it was perfectly legal. In some places, it was even common.

He hated this, he decided suddenly. It was one thing to sit in the cozy comfort of the Essenay's dayroom concocting grand and complicated schemes. It was something else entirely to be standing here a few minutes away from becoming a

slave.

Or, if he failed the test, those same few minutes away from being dead.

But he had no choice. That brief look from space had shown there was no other way into the Chookoock estate, at least not without a couple of divisions of StarForce Marines. The only way in was to be invited.

For a fourteen-year-old thief, this was the only way to get that invitation.

"What is a consular adjunct?" Draycos asked.

Jack frowned. "A what?"

"There," Draycos said, and Jack felt the dragon's tongue slide across his collarbone toward the house he was standing in front of.

He turned to look. Like the rest of the houses in the area, it had the darkened windows of a place that had shut down for the night. But on a decorative post by the front walkway was a small glowing sign: INTERNOS CONSULAR ADJUNCT

DAUGHTERS OF HARRIET TUBMAN

"You got me," Jack said, frowning at the sign. "Some kind of official Internos office, I guess. But I don't know what an adjunct is. Or what a Harriet Tubman is, either."

"Why would an Internos office be placed so close to a slave dealer's territory?"

Draycos asked. It wasn't easy for a whisper to sound suspicious, but the dragon managed it without any trouble. "You told me the Internos does not condone slavery."

"It doesn't," Jack said. "Keep your voice down, will you?"

"I am sorry." The dragon didn't sound sorry, but he did lower his voice.

"Could the Daughters of Harriet Tubman be a pro-slavery faction?"

"I've never heard of any pro-slavery factions in the Internos," Jack told him.

"Look, can we skip this until we get back to the ship? We've got a job to do."

"Of course," Draycos said, sounding subdued. "My apologies."

"Okay." Jack turned back to the gatekeeper's house, slipping his backpack onto one shoulder and pulling out what looked like a portable music player. "Let's do it."

The house was surrounded by a modest lawn consisting of tall, cactus-like plants rising up out of a tightly meshed, clover-like ground cover. A quick scan with the sensors in the music player showed that there were no field-effect or laser-grid alarm systems guarding the surface of the lawn. It took a more cautious, step-by-step check to make sure there were no hidden tripwires or pop plates lurking underneath the clover itself.

But the lawn was clean, and he made it across without trouble. "I presume we are not going to try the front door?" Draycos murmured as Jack slunk along the side of the house toward one of the rear corners.

"Not the front door, the back door, or the side door," Jack agreed, still watching for tripwires as he edged his way along. "See that second-floor bay window up there?"

"The window that sticks out from the wall?"

"Right," Jack said. "The species profiles say that Brummgas like to soak in their bathtubs for hours at a time, staring out a window and thinking whatever deep thoughts Brummgas have at a time like that. Probably, they mostly wonder where the soap has gotten to."