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3.

Tundra was everything Hernandez had said, and more. Almost as large as Earth, it was completely shrouded in snow and ice. Mountains, valleys, plateaus, buttes, all shone such a brilliant white in the midday sun that a man without polarized lenses would go snow-blind in a matter of minutes.

The planet had once provided the Oligarchy with a bounty of gold and diamonds and fissionable materials. For almost two centuries it had been ripped open and plundered until, at long last, its vast riches were only a memory. Ghost towns littered the face of the planet. Smelting and refining plants stood empty, encrusted in ice or buried under hundred-foot snow drifts. Here and there small communities of Men still existed, extracting the last bits of treasure from centuries-old mines, but most of the miners had long since moved on to younger, riper worlds.

There were still goods to be assayed and shipped, miners to be fed and medicated and entertained, remnants of businesses to be tended, and most of the people remaining on Tundra gathered in Klondike, a once-prosperous city.

Nighthawk set his ship down at the Klondike spaceport, checked the outside temperature, found that it was 46 degrees below zero Celsius, and decided to travel the half mile to the city in his spacesuit, rather than the protective outer garments with which Hernandez had supplied him.

As he passed among the spaceships which stood like frozen needles in the sun, he noted that two of them were transport vessels from Solio II, delivering foodstuffs and liquor to the isolated dome-dwellers. Almost all of the others, some four hundred in total, were private ships and bore insignia from all across the Inner Frontier.

He had cleared the spaceport and was riding a rented powersled toward the city when he saw a sudden movement off to his left. He stopped, turned and tried to pinpoint it against the glare of the snow. Then he saw it again—a brief, feeble, jerking motion. Curious, he altered course and a moment later came to a small, underweight man twitching in the snow, his thick coat and fur gloves and boots obviously not adequate against the cold.

Nighthawk crouched down and helped the man to a sitting position. His eyes focused briefly, and he said something, but Nighthawk, wearing his space helmet, could not hear, nor did he have any intention of removing the face plate in this temperature.

By gestures he tried to ask if the man could stand. The man shook his head, and Nighthawk set him onto his feet, pointed toward the city, and prepared to load him onto the powersled. The man resisted weakly, then passed out, and a moment later the sled was taking them both toward Klondike.

When he reached the city, Nighthawk tried to figure out what to do with his burden. The deserted streets and sidewalks were being plowed continuously by robotic machines, though he couldn't spot any people. There were some imposing buildings—an opera house, a theater, a museum—but all were deserted and coated with ice, as if they belonged to some more prosperous era in the planet's history.

Nighthawk slowly surveyed the city, left to right. Offices, stores, bars, a sports arena, a small coliseum—all frozen, all deserted. Finally he felt a hand poke him weakly. It was the small man he had rescued, and he pointed to a building off to the right.

Nighthawk immediately directed the sled toward it, and as he got closer he saw the glow of artificial light coming from a small window. When he reached the front door it dilated long enough for him to enter with the small man slung over his shoulder, then quickly contracted back into place.

He passed through an airlock and found himself in a small tavern. Two orange-skinned aliens in the corner glanced briefly at him, then went back to conversing in low hisses. A man standing at the bar stared at him in open curiosity, but made no motion to join or help him. The bartender—tall, broad-shouldered, pot-bellied, and golden-eyed—nodded to him, smiled briefly, and then went back to whatever he had been doing.

Nighthawk carried the small man to a table, lowered him gently into a chair, then quickly clambered out of his spacesuit and walked over to the bar.

"Dust Whore for me, something hot for my friend," he said. "Bring them over when they're ready."

He returned and sat down next to the small man, who seemed to be recovering his senses. Now, in the light, Nighthawk could see that the man's skin was leathery, giving the impression of row upon row of hard scales.

"How do you feel?" asked Nighthawk.

"Awful." Pause. "Where are we?"

"We're in Klondike."

The man moaned. "Now I feel even worse. I was trying to tell you to take me to your ship."

"I have business here," responded Klondike.

"Well, I have business anywhere else," said the small man, coughing feebly. "I was trying to get away from Klondike when you interfered."

"You'd have been dead in another ten minutes," replied Nighthawk.

"I might have made it to my ship."

"Not even if you had wings."

"Well, at least it would have been painless," muttered the little man. "Freezing to death's not a bad way to go."

"Compared to what?" asked Nighthawk.

"Compared to what's gonna happen to me here if I don't get off this iceball of a world right away."

"You're in no condition to go anywhere."

The small man sighed. "You've got a point," he admitted. "By the way," he added, extending his hand weakly, "I haven't thanked you for saving my life." Nighthawk stared at the scaled fingers without moving. "It's okay, friend. They wouldn't have let me on the planet if I had anything contagious." Nighthawk considered the statement, then reached out and shook his hand. "The name's Malloy—Lizard Malloy."

"Jefferson Nighthawk."

"I've heard that name—or something like it," said Malloy. "A long time ago. So it couldn't have been you, could it?"

"No," said Nighthawk. "And I've never met anyone called Lizard Malloy before."

"Used to be simple John Jacob Malloy," answered the little man. "Asteroid miner. Make a goldstrike over in the Prego system, just before the star went nova. They warned us it was going to blow, but I thought I had another day's time to get my stuff out of there. Turned out I was wrong. Sun exploded into a zillion glowing dustballs. Stuff went right through my spacesuit. When I got out of it, I found my skin looked like this." He held out his arm for inspection. "You should have seen what I did to Geiger counters for the next three years! Drove my doctors crazy. And of course, I had to dump my gold for a tenth of its value; it's got to sit in a vault somewhere for a couple of centuries before anyone can touch it."

"But you're not hot anymore?"

"Nope. I can walk through a spaceport today and not set off a single machine. One day I woke up and all the radiation was gone. Drove my doctors crazy a second time!" Malloy chuckled in amusement. "Whenever I need to raise a grubstake, I go back to the hospital and let them try to figure out what happened."

"I assume they haven't come up with an answer?"

Malloy shook his head. "Nope. I'm one of Nature's mysteries." He paused. "You'll find a lot of us on the Frontier, one way or another." He gestured to the approaching bartender. "Even Gold Eyes here is one of us. Only he was born that way."

The bartender set their drinks on the table and grinned down at Malloy. "Word is out that he's looking for you," he said.

"Now tell me something I don't know."

The bartender chuckled and walked back to the bar.

Malloy rose to his feet. "I gotta get out of here." He was overcome by dizziness, tried to steady himself, and collapsed back onto his chair.

"The only place you should be going is a hospital," said Nighthawk.

The small man shook his head vigorously. "I'll be okay in another minute."

"Sure you will," said Nighthawk sardonically.

"They don't call me Lizard just for the scales," said Malloy. "The damned nova gave me a lizard's metabolism, too. I get too cold, I go comatose. You warm me up, I'm fine." Suddenly he grinned a reptilian grin. "Put me in a sauna, I have so much energy I can't sit still." He paused. "Anyway, I'll be fine soon, and then I'm gone before he knows I was here."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Who else? The Marquis."

"The Marquis of Queensbury?" asked Nighthawk.

Malloy grimaced. "You know any other Marquises?"

"What does he have against you?"

"Well, that's kind of a long and involved story," said Malloy. "I'm sure it wouldn't interest someone like you."

"Everything about the Marquis interests me," said Nighthawk.

Malloy stared at him long and hard. "Look, Jefferson Nighthawk," he said, "you saved my life, so let me return the favor. You're a nice young man. If you want to live to be a nice old man, go home."

"Explain yourself."

"There are only two reasons for a man on Tundra to be interested in the Marquis. You either want to join him or kill him—and somehow you don't strike me as the joining type." He paused. "You're just a kid. He's the Marquis. You haven't got a chance."

Nighthawk downed his Dust Whore. "I haven't got a choice."

"He'll kill you."

"I doubt it," said Nighthawk seriously. "I'm pretty good."

"Every graveyard on the Frontier is filled with kids who were pretty good," said Malloy. "Go home."

"I can't. But there's something I can do. From this moment on, you're under my protection."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Malloy.

"Just what I said," replied Nighthawk. "Anyone wants you, they have to go through me to get to you."

"Fuck it!" said Malloy, jumping to his feet. "I've got better things to do than play bait for the Marquis. He'll kill us both." He turned toward the door. "I'm out of here!"

Nighthawk shoved the small man back onto his chair, and an instant later Malloy was looking down the barrel of a wicked-looking gun.

"You don't have any choice in the matter," said Nighthawk, his conversational tone belying the meaning of his words. "I saved you. Your life is mine. I'll spend it any way that I choose."

Malloy looked long and hard into Nighthawk's eyes before moving, or even breathing deeply.

"You'd really do it, wouldn't you?" he said at last. "You'd really kill me!"

"I'd prefer not to."

"Yeah, but you'd do it."

"Without hesitation," said Nighthawk, holstering his gun and sitting back down.

Malloy was silent for a moment. "I could make a break for it," he said at last. "The door's not that far away."

"You could," agreed Nighthawk.

"Just how good a shot are you?"

"Pretty good."

"Pretty good," repeated Malloy sardonically. "I'll bet you could hit a speck of dirt at four hundred feet."

"Maybe even five hundred," said Nighthawk easily. "Now have a drink and relax. I'm buying."

Malloy frowned. "I don't understand you at all. First you save me, then you threaten to kill me, and now you're buying my drinks."

"It's easy enough. As long as you are under my protection, I pay your way."

"And how long is that?" asked Malloy suspiciously.

"You'll know when it's over." Nighthawk signaled the bartender to bring two more drinks.

"No more for me," said Malloy. "I want to be sober enough to duck if I have to."

"Just relax. Nothing's going to happen to you."

"What makes you any better than every other kid who's gone after the Marquis? They were all good, and now they're all dead. Are your hands any faster? Are your eyes any better? Why should you succeed when so many have failed?"

"Because I'm the best there is."

"You're just a kid, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three years old," said Malloy derisively. "Who'd you ever kill? What makes you the best?"

"Take my word for it," said Nighthawk.

"If we were just two guys talking in a bar on some other world I would—but we're on this world and you're using me as bait, so no, I don't take your word for anything. Who have you killed?"

"Cherokee Mason," said Nighthawk. "Zanzibar Brooks. Billy the Knife."

"Wait a minute!" said Malloy. "What kind of idiot do you take me for? Those guys are all out of the history books!"

Nighthawk shrugged. "So am I."

Malloy stared at him and frowned. "Jefferson Nighthawk, Jefferson Nighthawk," he repeated. "It's familiar, but I don't place it. And you're not out of any book more than a year or two old."

"Maybe you know me by another name," said Nighthawk.

"Maybe I do," replied Malloy dubiously. "What is it?"

"The Widowmaker."

"Bullshit! He died a century ago!"

"No he didn't."

"Well, if he's alive, he's a hell of a lot older than you."

"He's in Deepsleep in a cryonics chamber on Deluros VIII," said Nighthawk.

"What are you trying to tell me?" demanded Malloy.

"I'm his clone."

"I don't believe it!"

The two orange-skinned aliens looked up briefly at Malloy's exclamation, then went back to conversing in their low, hissing voices.

Nighthawk shrugged again. "Believe what you want."

Malloy stared at him, puzzled. "Why would they clone him? You even think of cloning a human, you're looking at thirty to life on a prison planet." Suddenly his eyes narrow. "Are you telling me they cloned you just to kill the Marquis?"

"That's right."

"What happens to you after you're done? Do they send you back to the factory?"

"I don't think they've thought that far ahead," said Nighthawk. He paused. "But I have."

"And you're really the Widowmaker?"

"Yes."

Suddenly Malloy grinned. "I'll have that drink now." He turned to the bartender. "Hey, Gold Eyes! Another round here!" As the bartender prepared the drinks, he turned back to Nighthawk, speaking in low tones. "You know, there may be a way for everyone to profit from this."

"How?"

"Watch."

The bartender approached them and delivered their drinks.

"Hey, Gold Eyes, what's the odds on the kid here living til tomorrow?"

The bartender shrugged. "Beats me."

"What are the odds if he goes up against the Marquis tonight?"

Gold Eyes stopped and scrutinized Nighthawk for a long moment. "Three hundred to one, against."

"I'll take twenty credits' worth of that," said Malloy.

"Where's your money?"

"Hey, Jefferson," said the small man, "loan me twenty credits, will you?"

"I buy your drinks," said Nighthawk. "I don't pay for your bets."

Gold Eyes kept staring at Nighthawk. "Are you here to kill him?"

"I never said that," replied Nighthawk.

"Then you're not?"

"I didn't say that, either."

"Want a piece of advice?" said Gold Eyes.

"How much are you asking for it?"

"It's gratis."

"Then keep it," said Nighthawk. "It's probably worth about what you're charging for it."

Gold Eyes chuckled. "I like you, kid. Take my advice and get the hell out while the getting's good. He already knows you're here."

"Where is he?"

"Who knows?" said Gold Eyes. "But this is his world. Nothing goes on here that he doesn't know about." He picked up the empties and headed back to the bar.

"What happened to your money?" asked Nighthawk, turning to Malloy. "When you said the Marquis was after you, I figured you'd swindled him somehow."

"I did," said Malloy unhappily.

"How?"

"I had the most perfect set of cards you ever saw," said Malloy. "They were beautiful. I mean, nobody could spot them. Even if you knew they were marked, you couldn't read them until I showed you how." He paused. "I took the Marquis for 275,000 credits last night."

"And he spotted them?"

"No. I told you no one could spot them. Hell, if he had, I'd have been dead before morning."

"What happened, then?"

"Since I was planning to leave, I sold the deck to one of the locals for a couple of thousand credits." Malloy smiled ruefully. "Wouldn't you know we'd have the first blizzard in a month? No ships could take off, so I came back here for a little warmth and companionship—and found out that the son of a bitch I'd sold the deck to had cashed in by fingering me to the Marquis! I hid out until morning, and then tried to make it to the spaceport."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So where's the money?"

"Taped behind one of the chemical toilets in the men's room in his casino," answered Malloy.

"All right," said Nighthawk, slapping some money on the table. "Let's go get it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your money," said Nighthawk. "I assume you want it?"

Malloy blinked furiously, looking like a lizard suddenly exposed to the sun. "You don't propose to just walk into the Marquis' casino, take the money, and walk right back out with it?" he demanded.

"Oh, we might stop for a drink or two, just to make sure we're spotted."

Malloy studied him for a long moment. "You're sure you're the Widowmaker?"

Nighthawk didn't answer, but started putting on his spacesuit, and Malloy finally climbed into his coat and boots.

"How far?" asked Nighthawk.

"Halfway down the next block," answered Malloy.

"Can you make it?"

"I have 275,000 credits waiting for me there," said Malloy. "What do you think?"

The door dilated for them as they passed through to the frigid street.

"God, I hate this iceball!" said Malloy, already starting to shiver. Nighthawk, as before, refused to remove his faceplate, and so could not hear his companion. They walked rapidly to the casino and wasted no time entering it. Nighthawk left his spacesuit and helmet in an Anti-Thief Field just inside the airlock, and Malloy—who couldn't afford the protective device—simply hung his coat on a wall.

If Gold Eyes' tavern had been empty, the Marquis' casino was overcrowded. The walls changed color to match the mood of the live music, and the place was brilliantly illuminated although no light source was visible. Built to comfortably accommodate perhaps one hundred and fifty Men, it currently held upwards of two hundred, plus another forty aliens. Floating three feet above the floor were tables for roulette, and baccarat, and ten variations of craps (with six-sided, eight-sided and twelve-sided dice), and even two tables of jabob, an alien game that had become incredibly popular all across the Inner Frontier. A sleek chrome bar, stocked with intoxicants from a hundred worlds, lined one wall, and hovering a few feet above it was a tiny stage that featured a sultry half-clad girl whose undulations passed for dancing. Holographs of beautiful females, both human and alien, mostly nude, lined the walls, glowing gently as they spun slowly around in the air.

"He does pretty well for himself," remarked Nighthawk.

"Ninety percent of these guys work for him," answered Malloy, his features becoming more animated as he became warmer. "They're just playing with money he gives 'em." He looked around nervously. "I don't want to ask any embarrassing questions or anything—but have you thought of how you're gonna get out of here if you do kill him? There's a couple of hundred guns in here. Even the Widowmaker wasn't that good."

Nighthawk made no answer, but scanned the crowd, checked all the exits, and measured the distances involved while his brain computed the odds.

"You know, if I could figure out what you're here for, it ain't gonna be too long before someone else does, too," whispered Malloy. "Let's get the hell out of here. I can get my money some other time."

He started walking toward the door, but Nighthawk reached out and grabbed his arm. "We're staying."

Malloy seemed about to jerk his arm free, then thought better of it. "Well?" he insisted as they turned back into the casino. "Are you taking on them all on?"

"Not unless I have to," said Nighthawk.

"Then what are you gonna do?"

"I'm working on it."

"What if one of them works faster?"

"He'll wish he hadn't."

"Look," said Malloy in low tones, "maybe you Frontier legends don't feel any fear, but us real people, we get scared shitless at the thought of facing a couple of gunmen, let alone a couple of hundred. Tell me something comforting about why I shouldn't worry."

"Shut up and think about your money."

"Right now all I can think is that it'll pay for a hell of a fancy funeral," complained Malloy. "I mean, you seem sane, but you don't look even a little bit afraid, and that makes you stupid or crazy. He paused. "Are you crazy? Did you maybe just imagine all this about the Widowmaker and everything?"

Nighthawk turned away from Malloy, an expression of distaste on his face. As he did so, his gaze fell upon a new dancer atop the floating platform. Her appearance was striking: her hair was auburn, her eyes almost colorless, her figure lean and lithe. But it was her skin that captured Nighthawk's attention: it was light blue.

The music began again, an alien melody with an insistent rhythm, and the blue-skinned girl started dancing atop the platform. Tiny chimes attached to her fingers and ankles augmented the primal rhythm as she spun and whirled in the confined quarters with an almost inhuman grace.

"Who is she?" asked Nighthawk.

"Her?" replied Malloy. "I don't know her real name. They call her the Pearl of Maracaibo. Comes from somewhere in the Quinellus Cluster."

"A mutant?"

Malloy grinned a reptilian grin. "Unless you know anyone else with blue skin."

Nighthawk continued staring at her. "Just that mutant bartender." Pause. "She's very beautiful, isn't she?"

"A lot of people think so. The smart ones keep it to themselves."

"Oh?"

"She belongs to the Marquis."

"You mean she works for him?" said Nighthawk.

"I meant what I said."

"Didn't they fight eight or nine wars to abolish slave labor?"

"For all the good it did."

Nighthawk smiled. "I stand corrected." He paused. "Interesting man, the Marquis."

"Does that matter?"

"Maybe so, maybe not," said Nighthawk without taking his eyes off the Pearl of Maracaibo. "You never know."

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