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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 timid, but when I get a chance to work with a galactically renowned reporter like you, I tend to get—”

“Half a moment, you two. What say we knock off this old home week crapola and get down to cases?” A burly spacesailor whose tanned face and arms were rich with tattoos of a patriotic nature stepped free of the onlookers to scowl, hands on hips, at Summer and the young woman. “Now, in my book gatormen are the scum of the universe. To me they’re only one step above lizardmen, who are known far and wide as the sludge in the booptube of humanity and—”

“Hold it, schmucko,” growled a lizard commando in full regalia. “I’m passing through on me way to the 19th Annual Purebred Aryan Lizard Conclave out on the planet Barafunda. Your ethnic slurs don’t sit well with me nor—”

“Whyn’t you let me speak my entire piece, blockhead,” said the spacesailor. “I was about to explain that, while I wouldn’t wipe a grout’s toke with your average gatorman, I have an affinity for anyone who’s had the wisdom to have him or herself tattooed at some juncture in life. Tattooing, if I may wax eloquent about my hobbyhorse for a bit, is a much maligned art-form in this benighted corner of the universe. Therefore, anybody what belts not one—” He held up his tattooed fingers as he ticked them off. “Not two—but three handsome walking examples of the tattooists’ art, I am—”

“Scram,” suggested Vicky quietly.

“Whoa now, sister,” said the sailor with a scowl. “No beanpole of a bimbo can tell Mr. Spaceshipman Easy to fire his rockets and—”

“Gents,” said Summer to the spacesailor and the commando, “unless you want to join this unconscious trio of art specimens, I suggest you cease blabbing and get the hell out of our way.”

The lizard man said, “We space commandos, kiddo, don’t take orders from middle-sized ginks who—”

“We really don’t have any more time to stall around,” said Vicky near Summer’s left ear. “I’ve spotted a couple of those darn Port Security cops starting to push their way over here. Let’s make a dash for our ship.”

“Okay, you start and I’ll settle with these two louts.”

“No need for that, Mr. Summer. Scoop can handle them.”

“Scoop?”

“Scoop/ 104P- I K. He’s my camera robot—well, our camera robot actually,” she explained. “Except he’s sort of special, customized and all. My father gave me Scoop when I graduated from—”

“All we need is a regular everyday cambot on this—”

“What’d I tell you, angelcake, about teaming up with this superannuated yawp?” A large mechanical man emerged from behind the pyramid of baggage. “He can’t even dodder across the port without—”

“Scoop, dear, would you take care of these annoying

gentlemen?”

“A snap.” The robot was chrome-plated, trimmed with glittering semiprecious stones. His head, based vaguely on that of a handsome humanoid, had a camera lens mounted above his two gleaming ruby eyes.

“What’s the flaming big idea?” demanded the irate sailor. “Our squabble is with you two, not this tool of—”

“Couple of snurfheads,” observed Scoop as he raised his right hand and pointed a metallic forefinger at the spaceshipman.

Zzzzzittttzzzzzz!

A thin beam of intensely green light jumped from the tip of the robot’s extended finger and hit the illustrated forehead of the spacesailor.

He flapped his muscular arms twice, rose up on his toes, made a low yowling noise and then fell over backward into a faxpaper newsie.

“Wuxtry! Wuxtry!” yelped the kid-sized newsbot.

The lizard commando swallowed, tipped his helmet and said, “Nice meeting you, one and all.” He pushed away through the bystanders.

Scoop rubbed at his gleaming chest with the fingers of his right hand. “What say, sugarbunch, we leave this antiquated newzhound here and catch the—”

“Now you can escort us to the Hollywood II docking area,” requested Vicky, “before yonder cops reach us.”

The robot’s disappointed sigh rattled various components within him. “Here you’ve got one of the journalistic lights of the whole snurfheaded universe working for you and you prefer Summer, who’s been obsolete since—”

“Scoop. Now.”

After letting a smaller sigh escape, Scoop stretched out both arms. He slipped one around the young woman’s waist, the other, gingerly, around Summer. “Hold on to your rug, granpappy.”

The mechanical man rose right up off the floor, leveled off at an altitude of twenty-five feet and flew them swiftly away from the scene of the altercation—just in time to miss the arrival of the green-clad security officers.

Leaning across Scoop’s wide, highly polished chest, Vicky said, “Gee, Mr. Summer, I hope you don’t mind this. What I mean is, you don’t think I’m showing off, do you?”

“Not at all,” he assured her.