Free The Chaos Weapon by Colin Kapp Page B

the crawler back into the vicinity of the antiquated and space-stained hull. Almost immediately a hatch opened and an outlandishly garbed and grinning figure wearing a huge tricorne hat climbed out and came swaggering across the sand to meet them.
    “Kes-kes Saltzeim,” Wildheit said to Roamer. “The biggest rogue of them all.”
    “Hola, Marshal Jym! What coincidence to meet you here!”
    “It would have been coincidence, if you hadn’t been illegally monitoring the Service FTL transmissions and picked up an all-service priority call.”
    Saltzeim grinned broadly. “Marshal, toyou everything’s illegal. Smuggling, breaking quarantine, piracy, theft, rape—everything that gives life some spice. Not, of course, that I indulge in such things. But I can read, you understand?”
    “I understand well enough,” said Wildheit.
    “Like the story I was reading telling of a space-marshal engaged in a kidnap that went wrong. I think to myself I have ship and he doesn’t and if this was true and not story I could perhaps arrange trade.”
    “You thought wrong, Kes-kes. I’m requisitioning your ship. Galactic Override Authority.”
    “I see your lips move, but I hear no sense. Then I suppose to myself what the marshal’s enemies would pay me to leave him here. Pure supposition, you understand?”
    “I understand. What’s your price, Kes-kes?”
    During the conversation about twenty more gypsies, an assortment of male and female, old and young, had descended from the spacecraft and were forming an interested circle around the negotiators. Saltzeim made a mock attempt to scan the skies.
    “There are rumors of some unprincipled characters wandering this sector. That always puts a premium on freight rates and virginity. Under the circumstances I couldn’t get you off-world for less than a Marshal’s Credit Note for six million stellars …”
    “Space-worms have eaten your mind!”
    “… and the crawler …”
    “Federation property, not for sale.”
    “… and the girl.”
    “That’s not even negotiable. You know, I’d be doing the galaxy a favor if I returned to my cannon and blasted this rat-hulk and all your family out of existence.”
    “But you won’t do that, Marshal Jym. My scanners tell me more than thousand riders approach across the desert. Do we have trade?”
    “I’ll offer you three million stellars. That’s about athousand times what your whole stinking outfit’s worth.”
    “And the crawler?”
    “I’ll abandon it on the desert. If you load it, you do so at your own risk. There’s a death penalty attached to its unlawful acquisition.”
    “And the girl?”
    “Completely out of the question. The first man who touches her is dead.”
    Saltzeim appeared to give the matter careful consideration.
    “You drive hard bargain, Marshal Jym. But we have trade. Please accept the hospitality of our ship. We’ll be space-borne as soon as we’ve swept our traces from the dust.”
    Wildheit shrugged. He knew that Saltzeim had no intention of leaving the crawler in the desert. He was comforted by the fact that all the ammunition and spares were deliberately non-standard and of such complexity that inept operation was as likely to be as dangerous to the operator as to those attacked. His own duty should have been to activate the crawler’s radio-linked self-destruct mechanism, but he was considering a balance of risks. During the progress of the bargaining one of the onlookers had used the phrase
amindumi.
Knowing something of the customs of space gypsies, Wildheit considered it wise to have extra armaments to hand. Unwittingly the Rhaqui were busily engaged loading the vehicle containing these armaments into their own hold.
    The interior of the Rhaqui ship was indescribably dirty and unsafe. The hull, largely by virtue of its extreme thickness, was mainly sound and unpatched; but the bulkheads, engines and life-support mechanisms were a frightening hodgepodge of old and adapted parts scrounged from