They emerged from the garage to find the street and the air above it alive with Colonial Police vehicles, drones and crawlers. “That was fast,” Ishikawa said.

“This isn’t about the body in the garage,” Pitcher corrected him. “It’s about two or three bodies ago.”

“Oh.” A spotlight flared around the car and moved on. “Were they all Hamsa agents, and we’ll thank you for them later?”

“Something like that.”

“Won’t the cops stop us?”

“This is a Hamsa car. The Authority contracted police services out, and Hamsa was the low bidder; so, no.”

Pitcher stopped at the gate to a darkened lot on the edge of the spaceport. Ishikawa opened it with the dead man’s keys. Inside, ships of every sort jutted toward the stars.

“Which one is it?”

A Port Police copter descended. “Look out,” Shwartz warned. “Honest cops!”

He closed the gate behind them. Ishikawa ran toward a shack that might have records. Pitcher followed, cradling his jaw in one hand. It was aching with a new transmission:

RPT ISHKW SRCH STTS