Mustache flipped his communicator closed and put it away. The hatch behind him opened with a grinding scrape. “Mr. Ganz will see you now.”

“Thank ye, lad,” Scott said. He walked inside, and the hatch closed quietly behind him. For a moment, he thought he was alone in the darkened but immaculate corridor of the Orion ship.

Then a hand slapped down on his shoulder. He turned to face a slim man in an exquisitely tailored ash-gray suit and polished, matching shoes. The man’s skin was an unnerving shade of pure coal black, a hue unlike any found in humans; it was glossy, like oil, and it reflected light so well that Scott could almost see his reflection in the man’s high, broad forehead. His head was shaved, and a tightly twisted braid of pale violet hair jutted from his narrow chin. “Commander Scott,” he said, flashing a smile composed of gleaming black teeth. His flat-black, almond-shaped eyes betrayed no hint of his thoughts. “I’m Zett Nilric. Welcome.” Polite as this man was, Scott’s intuition warned him that his host was undoubtedly a killer.

“Mr. Nilric, I was—”

“Mr. Zett.”

“Sorry,” Scott said. “No offense meant.”

“None taken,” Zett said. “Forgive my interruption. Please continue.”

“The bruiser outside said I was to see a Mr. Ganz.”

“Yes. He’s on the recreation deck. Please follow me.”

Zett led Scott a dozen meters or so down the corridor, to a small, exceptionally quiet turbolift. They rode together in silence for several seconds. When the turbolift doors hissed open, a strong, sweet-cherry aroma wafted in from the dim space beyond. No sooner had Scott followed Zett out of the turbolift than he was met by an impenetrable wall of sound, heavy with driving bass and raging with a drone of synthetic chords.

Gauzy, translucent curtains of multicolored fabric were draped in long overlapping swoops, creating a clearly marked path into the heart of this compartment. From the reverberating acoustics and the multiple layers of music, Scott deduced that the space was enormous. Emerging from the maze of curtains, he saw that he was right. Intense shafts of roaming light sliced through the low, smoky haze of narcotic smoke that polluted the air. As his eyes adjusted to the subdued illumination, he observed that the sprawling split-level space occupied most of two upper decks aboard the Orion vessel. Movement from above caught his eye. Looking up, he saw that several sections of the deck overhead had been removed, adding to the impression of an airy, luxuriously open environment.

In every direction something new captured his interest: table after table of different games of chance; exotic women of various humanoid species, either mingling with patrons or dancing around metal poles on raised platforms beneath strobing lights; aliens whose species he had never encountered before; the scent of something tantalizing or something revolting; drinks that bubbled, drinks that frothed, drinks that changed color when they made contact with one’s lips. Cloyingly sweet vapors, like honeyed cloves, mingled with the bite of acrid smoke, all of it originating in the countless ornate water pipes—or hookahs, as Scott had learned they were called—that were scattered throughout the room.

Scott felt like a child on Christmas morning.

Zett moved in smooth strides through the maze of gaming tables, which were crowded with loud, staggering, inebriated miners and prospectors. Scott assumed the laborers had come here to squander their earnings and bolster their spirits for another six months of lonely digging on another unnamed rock. Though he hoped he’d be smarter than that with his money, he couldn’t really say that he blamed them. Life on the frontier was hard and it was lonely—more for some than for others.

Zett led him aft, to one of two broadly curving staircases that ascended through a crescent-shaped cut to the deck above. The staircase was narrowest at its bottom, and it widened quickly as they climbed. As they passed the middle stair, a lithe, green-skinned Orion woman draped with several carefully overlapped strips of diaphanous Tholian silk stepped between them as she descended. Her very proximity charged the air with erotic energy. Scott’s pulse quickened at the scent of her; his eyes were drawn to her dark, voluminous cascade of unkempt curls, her pouting lips and come-hither glance….

Looking at Scott with tired cynicism, Zett said simply, “You couldn’t afford her.”

“I was just—”

“Not for an hour. Not for half an hour.”

“But I wasn’t—”

“When you’re an admiral, maybe we’ll talk.”

As the duo reached the top of the stairs, Scott noticed that the music from the lower level faded quickly into ambient background noise. Acoustic dampeners, he figured.

Unlike the lower deck of this sprawling private oasis, there were no gaming tables upstairs. In the two rear corners were doors, likely to private offices or residential quarters. The denizens of this deck, Scott noticed, were easily divided into two categories: men and women who exuded the cruel bravado and cold lethality of career criminals and gangsters, and scores of impossibly beautiful, scantily clad men and women whose sole occupation in this environment was painfully obvious.

Zett placed a firm but gentle palm on Scott’s back and guided him to stand between a pair of black carved-marble obelisks, in front of a broad dais piled high with cushions and pillows. The dais, Scott noted, was bordered on either side by the two wide gaps for the curving staircases, which nearly met at their apexes, leaving only a narrow strip of floor as an ingress. Like a moat, Scott surmised. Around it were more curving draperies. Behind it was an enormous wraparound window framing a broad panorama of the Taurus Reach starscape.

Seated in the center of all this opulence, puffing from a hookah by means of a long ribbed tube with a metallic nozzle, was Ganz, an enormous, thickly muscled, bald green Orion man in a midnight blue caftan. He regarded Scott with caution as he exhaled a plume of earthy-smelling, pale-orange smoke through his broad nose. “Lieutenant Commander Scott,” he said, his voice low in both register and volume.

“Scotty, to my friends.”

A small crease above the bridge of Ganz’s nose wrinkled into a tight knot of suppressed annoyance. “What can I do for you, Commander?”

“I was hoping you could help me procure some special spirits for my private stash on the Enterprise.”

Ganz thrust his chin forward as his eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry—did you just say you came here to buy liquor?”

“Aye,” Scott said, the minor vibrato in his voice betraying the apprehension he suddenly felt. “But no—”

“You are aware that several establishments on the station serve alcohol?”

“Aye, but not what I’m after. I—”

“If you say you’ve come looking for mandisa, my associate Zett is going to push you out an airlock.”

Words logjammed one after another in Scott’s throat as he shifted gears in midsentence. He had come here hoping to acquire a bottle—or a case—of the rare Orion aphrodisiac, on the assumption that, because they were outside the official borders of the Federation, a loophole might have made it accessible at last. Unfortunately, the stony gaze of the gangster in front of him made it apparent to Scott that he was not the first one to have entertained this notion—nor the first to have dared to bother Ganz with it.

“Of course not,” Scott lied, his prevarication as obvious as it was desperate. “In fact, I was going to ask you or your”—he looked around at the coterie of thugs, who were inching closer—“your esteemed colleagues to recommend something exotic.”

“Something exotic,” Ganz repeated, an evil grin broadening his face. “I think we can accommodate you after all, Commander Scott.” He turned and bellowed across the room, “Reke! Come here!” One of Ganz’s shabbier-looking henchmen staggered away from his table on the far side of the room. Ganz pointed him back the way he’d come. “Bring the bottle.” The bedraggled hoodlum turned, snagged the bottle with a broad sweeping grab, and resumed plodding toward the dais. When he reached Scott’s side, Ganz held up his hand, and Reke stopped. Pointing at Scott, Ganz said, “Give him the bottle.”