"I know," I finished for him. "Some day your patrolies will sweep me out of there in small, unidentifiable fragments. A dirty job."
I left him there with his bright new smile wearing strange creases in his hard hatchet face and walked down from the landing apron to the street. That was when I learned that I wasn't as safe as Joey.
The instant I set foot in the street a couple of professional uglies closed in on me, a sharp-faced Earth homo and a cat-whiskered yellow Martie in bright Terran clothing. The two of them were armed with bell-mouthed freeze guns, and they were bent on business.
I never had a chance. They ushered me into a waiting sand-car and took away the Quantrell blaster I wore buckled over my coveralls.
"We hear you got a smiley for sale, chunk-hopper," the sharp homo said while the Martie started the sand-car. "Well, we got you a buyer for it."
They didn't really need the car except for privacy. Our trip took us only half a block down the street where we stepped out at the last place I'd have expected to market a smiley--at the palatial office building of Solar Shipping, a billion-credit corporation headed by one Hume Shanig, space-line tycoon and crooked financier extraordinary.
I had heard plenty about Shanig, though I'd never done business with him. He had a finger in every financial pie on Mars from import houses to the Argonaut Club, which was directly across the street and which he owned outright. Dealing with Shanig, rumor said, was like stepping into a Venusian boghole--easier to get into than out of.
Shanig's uglies chivvied me into a reception room that was all skylights and soft rugs and shining saffa-wood furniture. A big desk stood in the center. Behind the desk sat Shanig's secretary.
It was almost worth being kidnapped to be able to stand and look at her. She was a beauty, a tall clean-lined redhead with all the curves a prodigal heredity ever promised a female of the species homo. And she had a warm red mouth and clear green eyes that matched her hair.
"Buzz the boss that we got his homo, Cheryl," the Earthie said. "And snap it up, baby. The Chief is but eager about this smiley deal."
The girl gave him a curt green glare. "Miss Trayne, to you," she snapped. But she pushed the buzzer on her desk, and a rasping voice from her audiphone said that we should come in.