"I'll remember this," Blackjack growled, leading the group away to the table.

"What was that all about?" Egor asked.

"That was some of the opposition," Whitey explained. "All of a sudden, I'm a lot more eager to see them through a set of gunsights."

"Speaking of that, did you find your contact?" Tambu interrupted.

"Sure did," Egor nodded. "He's waiting outside. I left him there when I saw the crowd at your table. He seems to be the nervous sort."

"Well, bring him in," Tambu ordered. "The quicker we get this done with, the better I'll like it."

"Do you think it'll be okay?" Egor asked, jerking his

ROBERT LYNN ASPR1N head toward the seated trio glaring at them from across the room.

"I think so," Tambu said judiciously as he hefted one of the guns from the table and glanced pointedly at Blackjack. "Go get him."

The man Egor escorted back to the table was a bespectacled, balding wisp of a man who clutched his attach‚ case to his chest like a drowning man clinging to a life jacket. His eyes kept darting nervously to the guns on the table as the introductions were made.

"There-there won't be any trouble, will there?"

"Relax, Mr. Hendricks," Tambu assured him. "Everything is under control."

"For an arms dealer, you seem awfully nervous around guns," Whitey observed.

"Just because I sell weapons doesn't mean I like to be around when they're used," Hendricks snapped defensively. "If I had my way, I'd deal only through the mail."

"Quite understandable," Tambu nodded. "Now then, Mr. Hendricks, if you could begin going over the weapons specs with Whitey here, I'd like to have a word with Egor."

The man nodded and began unsnapping his case as Tambu drew Egor aside.

"Egor, I have a couple of errands for you."

"I thought I would be here for the bargaining," the big man frowned.

"So did I, my friend, but this is more important. Get down to the spaceport and find out all you can about Blackjack's ship."

"Who?" Egor blinked.

"Mr. Personality at the table over there. Get a description of his ship if you can, and relay the information to Puck. Tell him to stand by the guns and open fire if that ship comes anywhere near ours."

"But our guns aren't good enough to fight off an armed ship!"

"I know, but until we close this deal, they're all we've got. If my guess, is right, Blackjack's crew won't be too eager to get into a fight if he isn't there calling the signals."

"You'll keep him here? Then why do I have to-"

"He might be wired for sound," Tambu broke in. "If anyone on his ship picked up our conversation, they might be getting very curious about us."

"They might be going after Puck right now!" Egor exclaimed.

"Right! So hurry. There's no time to argue."

"Okay, but watch that table. I don't trust them."

"Me neither, my friend," Tambu admitted, but the big man was already on his way.

With a sigh, Tambu joined Whitey and Hendricks, pulling his chair around to where he could watch Blackjack's table without moving his head.

"Sorry to be so long," he apologized. "How are we doing here?"

"Hendricks has what we want." Whitey leaned back from the table. "Compatible with our ship's systems. If they were any bigger, we wouldn't have the power to fire them."

"That big?" Tambu said. "Where'd they come from?"

Whitey answered, "As near as I can figure, they were salvaged from some of the old Planet Tamer ships. Nobody else used guns that big."

"Professional ethics require that I never reveal my sources-or customers," Hendricks commented.

"How would these weapons stack up against their armaments?" Tambu asked, indicating the trio glowering at. them.

"Blackjack?" Hendricks asked, peering over his glasses. "You'll have half again the range of anything on his ship."

"Fine," Tambu nodded. "And now the big question. How much?"

Hendricks produced a small notepad and scribbled briefly on it.

"I dislike haggling," he announced, pushing the pad across the table. "This is a firm price, including installation."

Tambu glanced at the figure on the pad and smiled.

"Let's be realistic, Mr. Hendricks. We want to buy the guns without a ship attached-used guns, at that."

"In mint condition," Hendricks countered. "Warehousing them has cost me dear."

"Which is all the more reason for you to be eager to sell them," Tambu pointed out. "And there can't be much demand for them if you've had to carry them in inventory this long."

Hendricks began to protest, but Tambu held up a restraining hand.

"Fortunately, I also dislike haggling. Here is my top offer, and we'll install them ourselves."

He crossed out Hendrick's figure and scribbled a number of his own on the pad.

"Ridiculous!" Hendricks scoffed, looking at the pad. "Just because I deal with pirates doesn't mean I'll stand still for being robbed myself. I'll let the guns rust away before..."

Tambu smiled to himself as he listened to the man's orations. Despite the volume and bitterness of his objections, Hendricks had not moved from his seat after examining their offer.

They would reach an agreement soon.

"It sounds like you were getting it from all sides in the beginning," Erickson commented. Sympathy was always a good ploy to loosen a subject's defenses.

"Yes, we were quite alone then. Still, that is not particularly surprising. We were setting a new pattern, and change is always resisted. The people we dealt with were constantly assuming that we fit in the order they already knew. Our only consolation was that if they had realized then what we were about, they probably would have treated us much more harshly."

"How do you figure that?" the reporter urged.

"Well, I've always felt Blackjack could have given us more trouble, but he didn't. Pirates are not the devil-may-care adventurers people think they are. Even though they risk their lives in combat, they're usually very careful about the reward they are gambling their lives against. Before we armed our ship, we would have been easy prey for a ship such as Blackjack's, but there was no reason for him to fight us then."

"How about vengeance? You embarrassed him in front of his crew there in the bar. Wouldn't he want to get even for that?"

"Vengeance is an expensive habit, Mr. Erickson. It's a luxury few businessmen can afford, and for all his flaws, Blackjack was a businessman. No, he believed us to be cargo haulers and decided it would be better to wait until sometime when he caught us with a full cargo hold. If he realized our actual plan of becoming pirate hunters, he probably would have attacked us at the earliest opportunity."

"You make it sound as if a confrontation between your ships was inevitable. I should think it would be a long shot at best."

"Not really," Tambu corrected. "While space itself is vast, there are a limited number of settled planets, and even fewer which have substantial space traffic in and out. Most ship-to-ship encounters occur in orbit over a planet rather than in space. If both our ship and Blackjack's were prowling the heavily trafficked lanes, it would only be a matter of time before we collided--especially if we were looking for each other."

"I see," the reporter nodded thoughtfully. "Getting back for a moment to your early difficulties, what would you say was the greatest obstacle you had to overcome?"

"Ignorance."

"Ignorance?" Erickson echoed, caught off guard by the abruptness and brevity of the answer. "Could you elaborate on that a bit?"

"Certainly. Our biggest problem was our own ignorance... na‹vet‚, if you will. We were out to beat the pirates at their own game, but we had no real idea of what that game was. Blackjack was the first pirate we had met face to face, and we wouldn't have known it if he hadn't told us."