“Always. Matter of principle.”

  “That could get you into trouble.”

  She contemplated him obliquely as the soda drained to vociferous dregs. “My middle name, Grandad.”

  “Don’t call me Grandad.”

  “Don’t tell me what to call you—” she screamed, not stinting on the volume. It was amazing how far a soprano voice carried. People stopped in the street outside to look up and Fisk fought to keep the flush off his face. Then, sweetly: “—grandad.”

  Fisk decided to ignore it. “We have an appointment, Yola.”

  “Right, Centers,” she agreed with continued insolence. But he was determined not to let her have the satisfaction of his reaction.

  MIKE ORMAND was pleased.

  “Very nice,” he said, studying Yola with more critical intensity than Fisk thought appropriate for such an interview. He half hoped the child would pull an instant tantrum and void the placement, but for the moment she was every inch the demure pre-teen. “Here’s your check, sir. Five grand, certified.”

  “Just a minute,” Fisk protested. “You can’t just—”

  “Why not, Mr. Centers?” Yola asked innocently. She turned to Ormand. “May I call you Dad?”

  “Sure, Kid. Go punch yourself a soda,” he said amiably. “No hard stuff, now.” Then, to Fisk: “Don’t worry. I didn’t forget yours. I know how it goes. I made it out separately. So your office wouldn’t know. Five hundred.” He handed over the second check, winking.

  “I’m not talking about that.” Fisk’s moral anguish was becoming tempered by the greed of desperation. Five hundred would fuel his finances for a couple of weeks. “You—you two—you don’t even know each other.”

  “What’s to know, Mr. Centers?” Yola inquired prettily over her soda. This one didn’t slurp—she sipped it with delicacy. “Dad’s got a nice layout here, a real home. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Yeah,” Ormand agreed. “I’ve got what she wants—she’s what I want and you’ve got your money. So it’s done. We’re all happy and thank you. Now toddle off, Centers. You’re interfering in family business.”

  “Yeah,” Yola echoed almost inaudibly.

  They were both reasonably satisfied, neither being quite the bargain the other supposed—and Fisk did have the money. Why should he object? He had performed his function. He had a thousand-dollar commission coming for this transaction. Yet he balked, feeling like a pimp.

  He said, “We have to complete the contract and make arrangements for the formal adoption. There’ll have to be a court hearing and—”

  “A what?” Ormand demanded incredulously. Then he caught himself. “Oh, sure. I’ll take care of that. You don’t need to bother.”

  “I do need to bother,” Fisk said, his stubborn streak coming into play. “Somebody could take her away from you at any time, no matter how long—”

  “Oh, that’s it,” Ormand said, seeming relieved. “That’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen inside of ten days, is it?”

  “Not that I know of. But there is no expiration on a counterclaim of this nature. If a natural parent showed up in five years—”

  Ormand laughed. “Fat chance. They’d never follow where we’re going!”

  “Where are we going, Dad?” Yola inquired.

  “To Venus, of course. Got my one-way passes for the next liftoff, just ten days away.”

  Yola spat out a mouthful of soda. “Venus!”

  “Sure, kid. To farm mugwump. It only grows on Venus, you know.”

  “But there aren’t any shows on Venus!” Yola shrieked as though mortally wounded. “No foamers, no fooders, no autobeds. It’s just a perpetual sandstorm!”

  “Right. Real challenge. Ideal for mugwumps and no neighbors to butt in, except for the shuttle every four months. Great life.”

  “In a spacesuit!” she wailed, her anguish intensifying. “All day! And the trip there takes six months cooped up in an old tin can with nothing but nasty ol’ vacuum trying to get in—”

  “The vacuum doesn’t come in,” Ormand said. “The air goes out if there’s a leak. And the trip takes longer right now because of the phase. And it’s getting worse. That’s why I have to make a tight schedule. The free fall gets to you if you stay in space too long, specially if you’re not used to it.”

  “Free fall?” she repeated faintly. “I get sick just in the downshaft—”

  “I don’t understand,” Fisk said. “If you’re settling on Venus—why are you adopting a girl?”

  “Why do you think he wants a girl. Grandad?” Yola asked.

  “Well, it’s a long trip out and a rough, lonely life,” Ormand said reasonably. “What grown woman would sign up for it?”

  “A desperate one,” Fisk said. “No other.”

  “Just count me out, Ormand,” Yola cried. “I’m no Lolita!”

  Fisk couldn’t resist needling her, though he was privately relieved about her change of heart. “You didn’t object before, Yola.”

  “He wasn’t going to Venus before!”

  “I was,” Ormand said. “That’s why I—”

  “You stay out of this, childbuyer!” she screamed at him.

  “Watch who you’re sassing, kid,” he snapped back. His temper was about as quick as hers.

  She threw the soda cup at him. “I’ll sass anybody I please, you—oh!”

  ORMAND had grabbed her and was hauling her over his knee.

  He flipped her short skirt up over her back. “No daughter of mine is going to sass her elders,” he said as his hand came down resoundingly on her little posterior.

  Yola screeched incoherently. Fisk had some sympathy with each party and did not interfere. Yola certainly had no reason to like Venus, but Ormand was taking the kind of firm disciplinary action Fisk envied. They were working it out.

  Then Yola jackknifed and bit the man on the ankle. It was Ormand’s turn to exclaim with pain and rage. By the time he recovered his bearings Yola had scooted across the room.

  Fisk had been pleasantly bemused by the suddenness and violence of these proceedings, but now he stepped between the fighters. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to work. Here are your checks back, Mr. Ormand. I’ll return this girl to the—”

  “Uh-uh!” Yola said.

  “No, you don’t, Centers,” Ormand rapped simultaneously, slapping the checks to the floor.

  “I don’t have time to get another girl. This one’ll be fine once I get her broken in.”

  “Go break in your fat head!” Yola cried., casting about for something else to throw.

  Fisk caught her by the wrist and hustled her out of the apartment and this time she didn’t object to being directed. Ormand charged after them, but Yola ducked back and tripped him with professional dispatch. He sprawled ignominiously. Fisk wondered just what sort of education children obtained in state orphanages, for spacers were normally sure on their feet.

  He and Yola ran to the exit chute and jumped in. She did look a little queasy in that brief free fall, though several factors could account for that.

  The house alarm was already sounding as they boarded the transport for the office. Ormand must have called the police. Fisk and Yola were on their way and by the time the police net tightened . . .

  “Let him rant,” Fisk said angrily as the capsule popped into its vacuum tunnel and accelerated. “The adoption was never consummated. He has no call on you.”

  “Good,” she said. “Where are we headed now?”

  “To the office. Then Johns will return you to the orphanage—or wherever you came from.”

  “Not me,” she said. “I hate that place.”

  “But you agreed to go back. I heard you—in the apartment.”

  “I said uh-uh, not uh-huh, Grandad.”

  “You don’t want to go to Venus, do you?”

  “No. But I’m not going back in local solitary either,” she said.

  “I don’t see what choice you have—unless another client happens to be looking for a girl your age. And frankly, your spot tantrums don’t make you very—”

  “What do you want to do with these?” she asked, interrupting him. “They’re made out to you, you know.”

  “I’ll just explain the situation at the office—” He stopped, seeing what she held. “What are you doing with—”

  “Ormand’s checks?” she said innocently. “I figured we might need the money so I scooped them up while—”

  “His checks? Yola, that represents either stealing or acceptance of payment. It gives him a theoretical basis to—”

  “To sue?” she inquired with mock astonishment. “Gee, you could get in bad trouble, Centers—”

  All vehicles halt in place, the capsule loudspeaker said. Stand by for inspection . . .

  “No wonder he’s mad,” Fisk said as he punched the halt button. “I didn’t realize we’d taken his money.”

  “Mistake, huh?” she said, looking at the checks.

  III

  SOMETIMES she was unbearable, but this time she seemed genuinely contrite.

  “Bad mistake,” he told her.

  Open vent. The police had connected a pressurized tube—the capsule could not be opened in the tunnel vacuum.

  Reluctantly, Fisk pressed the open stud.

  “You dope!” Yola cried, slapping the cancel button before the machinery functioned. “They’ll hang you!” She hit emergency ACCELERATION next.

  “What are you doing?” Fisk exclaimed as the vehicle shot forward with a force possible only in vacuum, ripping away the police tube.

  “Making your getaway, Grandad,” she said. “No sense having you in the hole for theft.”

  “But I was going to return the checks and explain—”

  “And let me hang?”

  “You have an unduly suspicious mind. Once the mistake is clarified, nobody will—”

  “Uh-uh. Get that uh this time, Centers. You aren’t going to return that money and void the sale. I told you I’m not going back to the pen. Not for anything.”

  “Do you mean you are willing to let me be charged with resisting the police—just so you stay out of a legitimate orphanage? I can’t believe that.”

  “You can’t, huh?” She considered for a moment. “Well, would you believe kidnaping?”

  “Yola! Of all the ridiculous—”

  “Or maybe child-molestation? My word against yours, Centers. Want to see my act?”

  Suspect running. Cut power in tunnel . . .

  Fisk knew how guilty that sudden flight made him seem. Why would he take Ormand’s money, then break out of a routine police net? With a streaming elevenyear-old girl? Yola really could hang him. And she was brat enough to do it.

  He had once hoped—no matter how weakly—that his job would benefit his fellow man and make people happy.

  “You’re pretty much of a sucker, aren’t you,” Yola said as the capsule drifted to a lifeless stop. “What are you doing in a racket like this?”

  “Just being a sucker,” Fisk admitted, demoralized. “A Marsland salesman took me and I’m broke.”

  She looked at him as she might have at a broken-winged bird. “Well, we’re caught anyway. It’s nothing personal, Centers. Maybe I’d better go back to Ormand. He’s the kind of bastard I don’t mind scr—”

  “Yola!”

  “Oh come off it, grandad—you have a dirty mind. I mean I can always run away before he goes to Venus. So he’ll get what he deserves—nothing.”

  Her spark of charity was as awkward as her ruthlessness. “But that’s dishonest. If you don’t intend to—”

  “All right, sucker. It was only a silly notion to get you off the hook—’cause you’re a decent sort under all that quaint naivete.” She began tearing up her recently machined hairdo. “By the time they get this kidnap/molestation rap untangled, Ormand’ll be on Venus, you’ll be in the clink for trial and I’ll be a ward of the court—where maybe I can finagle a better deal for number one. Will that make you feel better?”

  Fisk saw that to attempt to reason with this gutter child was futile. The police were already applying another pressure-exit to the capsule. He would simply have to present his case and hope the police considered all aspects of the situation before doing anything irrevocable. Certainly he was not going to capitulate to this attempted extortion.

  “You’re so cubical you’re a tesseract,” she exclaimed. “Look, Grandad, you’re a nonsurvival type. If you’ll just shut up and let me handle it I can—”

  The capsule opened. “Crawl out in a hurry—you’re blocking traffic,” a police voice called down the tube.

  Fisk’s mind was still on Yola’s offer to complicate things yet further. “Never—” he cried to her.

  NATURALLY the police misunderstood. A sleepdart buzzed along the tube like a vengeful fly and pinked Fisk on the sweaty forehead—and he found himself standing insecurely before a tall desk in the police station. Yola was beside him and Ormand had a chair nearby. The law could be devastatingly efficient when it snared the innocent.

  “—serious charge. Kidnaping a minor from a private apartment,” the lieutenant behind the desk said as the dart nullifier took effect. “Do you understand you have the right to consult counsel before making your statement?”

  “I’m sure I can explain everything without the necessity of counsel,” Fisk said hastily, knowing that the police preferred dispatch. “This girl—”

  “What he means is,” Yola interjected, “we were just going to the court to arrange for the adoption.”

  “You were?” Ormand asked, surprised and, oddly, not particularly pleased. “I thought—”

  “We were not!” Fisk said. “I was taking her back to—”

  Yola kicked him. “To fetch the adoption papers,” she said.

  The lieutenant turned to Ormand. “What’s this about adoption? You told us your daughter had been kidnapped.”

  Ormand hesitated. “I—ah—maybe there was a misunderstanding. I’ll just take her home now.” He came up and grabbed Yola’s arm.

  “Get your filthy paw off me!” she screamed automatically. “You can’t tell me what to do, you child-beater!”

  The lieutenant made a note. “Child-beating.”

  Fisk had a certain grudging sympathy for Ormand, who still thought a simple spanking or two would bring Yola into line. He would learn.

  The desk phone lighted. “For you,” the lieutenant said to Fisk, turning the screen to face him.

  It was Johns. “What’s this about your being arrested?” Johns demanded. “We run a respectable outfit here. You’re fired, Centers.”

  “But I’ve still got the child. The adoption can’t—”

  Johns screwed up his face in perplexity. “Child? Adoption? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you been messing around with something on the side?”

  Fisk began to see what sort of a bag he was to be left holding. Naturally Johns wouldn’t admit in the hearing of the police to dealing in black-market babies.

  “But—”

  “Just get our eighty per cent to us pronto and we’ll forget the embezzlement charge,” Johns finished, clicking off.

  The policeman made another note. “Embezzlement.” He looked up. “Are you sure you don’t need an attorney?”

  “This is all a misunderstanding—” Fisk felt hopeless. If he returned the checks to Ormand, Johns would charge him with embezzlement of company funds. If he kept them, Ormand had him on kidnaping. Both men were ruthless enough to hang the intermediary. And Yola had not yet even started on her child-molestation act.

  “THERE’S funny business somewhere,” the lieutenant said thoughtfully. “Damn funny.” He turned to Ormand. “This is a nonwhite child and you’re a white spacer. She can’t be your natural issue.”

  “Sure I could,” Yola said, keeping her options open. “My mother’s black and I won’t say what business she’s in, but it’s near the spaceport. She—”

  “Yeah,” Ormand agreed, manifestly not pleased but riding with the inevitable. “You know how it is.”

  “How old are you, Ormand?” the lieutenant snapped.

  “Twenty-nine. That’s why I’m retiring. You have to call it quits after thirty.”

  “And you?” he said to Yola.

  “Eleven.”

  The lieutenant turned back to Ormand. “And how old is the minimum for a space license?”

  “Twenty-one.” Then Ormand saw the trap. “Well, maybe before I—”

  “Looks like a black-market operation to me,” the lieutenant said. “Five to two you’re an ineligible parent. Single, with no permanent home—and you know you can’t take an underage child offplanet—”

  “No, no!” Ormand cried, turning pale even for a spacer.

  “Sq you paid a fat check to a shyster outfit to sneak through a black baby I know damn well you weren’t going to any court for adoption, whatever you told the child.”

  Ormand fell back, whipped.

  Without seeming to take a breath the lieutenant pounced on Fisk, who had just started to relax. “And you, Centers. You represent that black-market racket, squeezing human blood out of both ends. You’re selling an innocent ward of the state to an ineligible childbeater, embezzling on the side and maybe kidnaping, too—”

  “Yeah,” Yola said, enjoying this. “Don’t forget child moles—”

  “And to top it off the brat’s a little bitch nobody can handle without a whip in one hand and a prayer book in the other.”

  “Yeah,” Fisk and Ormand agreed together. Yola glared.

  The lieutenant smiled knowledgeably. “In short, three fine fat fish on the line, suckers all, tugging the hooks into each other. As if I didn’t have important cases to handle in my off-days! Now are you three going to work out your own squabble or you want me to do it for you?”

  Yola and Ormand both quailed, but Fisk had an inspiration. “Lieutenant, if you will permit us a moment to confer privately—”

  “Sure, I’ll wait,” the officer said sardonically. “Thirty seconds.”

  “HERE—now!” Fisk snapped at the other two, pulling them into a huddle. He had never before attempted to manage people so boldly, but desperation gave him genius. “Ormand, if I get you off the hook and find you an age-of-consent girl who’s willing—”