void some slobs, too.
We'll decelerate, and cut back in, near Pallas. There'll be a way to
find the Kuzak twins."

Ramos chuckled recklessly. "Let's not forget to pack these historical
objects in our nets. Especially that camera, or whatever it is. Money in
the bank at last, boy..."

But after they set out, it wasn't long before they knew that two people
were following them. There was no place to hide. And a mocking voice
came into their phones.

"Hey, Nelsen... Oh, Mex... Wait up... I've been looking for you for over
three months..."

They tried first to ignore the hail. They tried to speed up. But their
pursuers still had better propulsion. Nelsen gritted his teeth. He felt
the certainty of disaster closing in.

"There's just two of them--so far," Ramos hissed. "Maybe here's our
chance, Frank, to really smear that rat!" Ramos' eyes had a battlelight.
"All right, Tiflin--approach. These guns are lined up and loaded."

"Aw--is _that_ friendship, Mex?" the renegade seemed to wheedle. But
insolently, he and his larger companion came on.

"Toss us your pistols," Ramos commanded, as they drifted close, checking
speed.

Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were missing.
"Honest, Mex--do you expect us to do that? Be cavalier--I haven't even
got a pistol, right now. Neither has Igor, here. Come look-see... Hi,
Frankie!"

"Just stay there," Nelsen gruffed.

Tiflin cocked his head inside the helmet of a brand-new Archer Six, in a
burlesqued pose for inspection. He looked bad. His face had turned hard
and lean. There were scars on it. The nervous, explosive-tempered kid,
who couldn't have survived out here, had been burned out of him. For a
second, Nelsen almost thought that the change could be for the good. But
it was naive to hope that that could happen. Glen Tiflin had become
passive, yielding, mocking, with an air of secret knowledge withheld.
What did an attitude like that suggest? Treachery, or, perhaps worse, a
kind of poised--and poisonous--mental judo?

Nelsen looked at the other man, who wore a Tovie armor. Tall,
starvation-lean. Horse-faced, with a lugubrious, bumpkinish smile that
almost had a whimsical appeal.

"Honest--I just picked up Igor--which ain't his real name--in the course
of my travels," Tiflin offered lightly. "He used to be a comic back in
Eurasia. He got bored with life on Ceres, and sort of tumbled away."

With his body stiff as a stick, Igor toppled forward, his mou