bad idea. We can get something to line our stomachs,anyway. Steak?"
She beamed up at me. "Steak. Sounds wonderful after all those mushyconcentrates. Let's go."
* * * * *
The restaurant off the lobby was just like the lobby and the corridorsoutside--a big room hollowed out of the metal of the asteroid. Thewalls had been painted to prevent rusting, but they still bore theroughness left by the sun beam that had burnt them out.
We sat down at a table, and a waiter brought over a menu. The placewouldn't be classed higher than a third-rate cafe on Earth, but onCeres it's considered one of the better places. The prices certainlycompare well with those of the best New York or Moscow restaurants,and the price of meat, which has to be shipped from Earth, is--youshould pardon the gag--astronomical.
That didn't bother me. Steaks for two would go right on the expenseaccount. I mentally thanked Mr. Ravenhurst for the fine slab of beefwhen the waiter finally brought it.
While we were waiting, though, I lit a cigarette and said: "You'reawfully quiet, Jack."
"Am I? Men are funny."
"Is that meant as a conversational gambit, or an honest observation?"
"Observation. I mean, men are always complaining that girls talk toomuch, but if a girl keeps her mouth shut, they think there's somethingwrong with her."
"Uh-huh. And you think that's a paradox or something?"
She looked puzzled. "Isn't it?"
"Not at all. The noise a jackhammer makes isn't pleasant at all, butif it doesn't make that noise, you figure it isn't functioningproperly. So you wonder why."
Out of the corner of my eye, I had noticed a man wearing theblack-and-gold union suit of Ravenhurst's Security Guard coming towardus from the door, using the gliding shuffle that works best under lowgee. I ignored him to listen to Jack Ravenhurst.
"That has all the earmarks of a dirty crack," she said. The tone ofher voice indicated that she wasn't sure whether to be angry or tolaugh.
"Hello, Miss Ravenhurst; Hi, Oak." Colonel Brock had reached thetable. He stood there, smiling his rather flat smile, while his eyeslooked us both over carefully.
He was five feet ten, an inch shorter than I am, and lean almost tothe point of emaciation. His scarred, hard-bitten face looked asthough it had gotten that way when he tried to kiss a crocodile.
"Hello, Brock," I said. "What's new?"
Jack gave him a meaningless smile and said: "Hello, colonel." She wasobviously not very impressed with either of us.
"Mind if I sit?" Brock asked.
We didn't, so he sat.
"I'm sorry I missed you at the spaceport," Brock said seriously, "butI had several of my boys there with their eyes open." He was quiteobviously addressing Jack, not me.
"It's all right," Jack said. "I'm not going anywhere this time." Shelooked at me and gave me an odd grin. "I'm going to stay home and be agood girl this time around."
Colonel Brock's good-natured chuckle sounded about as genuine as thering of a lead nickel. "Oh, you're no trouble, Miss Ravenhurst."
"Thank you, kind sir; you're a poor liar." She stood up and smiledsweetly. "Will you gentlemen excuse me a moment?"
We would and did. Colonel Brock and I watched her cross the room anddisappear through a door. Then he turned to look at me, giving me awry grin and shaking his head a little sadly. "So you got saddled withJack the Ripper, eh, Oak?"
"Is she that bad?"
His chuckle was harsher this time, and had the ring of truth. "You'llfind out. Oh, I don't mean she's got the morals of a cat or anythinglike that. So far as I know, she's still waiting for Mister Right tocome along."
"Drugs?" I asked. "Liquor?"
"A few drinks now and then--nothing else," Brock said. "No, it's noneof the usual things. It isn't what _she_ does that counts; it's whatshe talks other people into doing. She's a convincer."
"That sounds impressive," I said. "What does it mean?"
His hard face looked wolfish, "I ought to let you find out foryourself. But, no; that wouldn't be professional courtesy, and itwouldn't be ethical."
"Brock," I said tiredly, "I have been given more runarounds in thepast week than Mercury has had in the past millennium. I expectclients to be cagey, to hold back information, and to lie. But Ididn't expect it of you. Give."
He nodded brusquely. "As I said, she's a convincer. A talker. She cantalk people into doing almost anything she wants them to."
"For instance?"
"Like, for instance, getting all the patrons at the _Bali_ to do asnake dance around the corridors in the altogether. The Ceres policebroke it up, but she was nowhere to be found."
He said it so innocently that I knew he'd been the one to get her outof the mess.
"And the time," he continued, "that she almost succeeded in getting awelder named Plotkin elected Hereditary Czar of Ceres. She'd havesucceeded, too, if she hadn't made the mistake of getting Plotkinhimself up to speak in front of his loyal supporters. After that,everybody felt so silly that the movement fell apart."
He went on, reciting half a dozen more instances of the girl's abilityto influence people without winning friends. None of them were new tome; they were all on file in the Political Survey Division of theUnited Nations Government on Earth, plus several more which ColonelBrock either neglected to tell me or wasn't aware of himself.
But I listened with interest; after all, I wasn't supposed to know anyof these things. I am just a plain, ordinary, "confidentialexpediter". That's what it says on the door of my office in New York,and that's what it says on my license. All very legal and verydishonest.
The Political Survey Division is very legal and very dishonest, too.Theoretically, it is supposed to be nothing but a branch of the SystemCensus Bureau; it is supposed to do nothing but observe and tabulatepolitical trends. The actual fact that it is the Secret Service branchof the United Nations Government is known only to relatively fewpeople.
I know it because I work for the Political Survey Division.
The PSD already had men investigating both Ravenhurst and Thurston,but when they found out that Ravenhurst was looking for a confidentialexpediter, for a special job, they'd shoved me in fast.
It isn't easy to fool sharp operators like Colonel Brock, but, so far, I'dbeen lucky enough to get away with it by playing ignorant-but-not-stupid.
The steaks were brought, and I mentally saluted Ravenhurst, as I hadpromised myself I would. Then I rather belatedly asked the colonel ifhe'd eat with us.
"No," he said, with a shake of his head. "No, thanks. I've got to getthings ready for her visit to the Viking plant tomorrow."
"Oh? Hiding something?" I asked blandly.
He didn't even bother to look insulted. "No. Just have to make sureshe doesn't get hurt by any of the machinery, that's all. Most of thestuff is automatic, and she has a habit of getting too close. I guessshe thinks she can talk a machine out of hurting her as easily as shecan talk a man into standing on his head."
Jack Ravenhurst was coming back to the table. I noticed that she'dfixed her hair nicely and put on make-up. It made her look a lot morefeminine than she had while she was on the flitterboat.
"Well," she said as she sat down, "have you two decided what to dowith me?"
Colonel Brock just smiled and said: "I guess we'll have to leave thatup to you, Miss Ravenhurst." Then he stood up. "Now, if you'll excuseme, I'll be about my business."
Jack nodded, gave him a quick smile, and fell to on her steak with thevoraciousness of an unfed chicken in a wheat bin.
Miss Jaqueline Ravenhurst evidently had no desire to talk to me at themoment.
* * * * *
On Ceres, as on most of the major planetoids, a man's home is hiscastle, even if it's only a hotel room. Raw nickel-iron, the basicbuilding material, is so cheap that walls and doors are seldom made ofanything else, so a hotel room is more like a vault than anything elseon Earth. Every time I go into one of the hotels on Ceres or Eros,
Iget the feeling that I'm either a bundle of gold certificates or aparticularly obstreperous prisoner being led to a medieval solitaryconfinement cell. They're not pretty, but they're _solid_.
Jack Ravenhurst went into her own room after flashing me a rather hurtsmile that was supposed to indicate her disappointment in not beingallowed to go nightclubbing. I gave her a big-brotherly pat on theshoulder and told her to get plenty of sleep, since we had to be upbright and early in the morning.
Once