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Had Fanshaw been just another guy invading a region that was too big and terrible for humans? With something like dread, Nelsen looked for Tiflin, too. But, of course, that worthy wasn't around. Nelsen picked up some space-fitness cards. Quite a few nations were represented. Joe would have to turn in the cards to the respective authorities.
But later, riding in to Post Three, just in an Archer Six, with a couple of guards for company, he picked up a long-lost voice, falsely sweet, then savage at the end: "I'm a Jinx, aren't I, Frankie? A vulture. Nice and cavalier, you are. I bet you hoped I was dead. Okay Sucker...!" Tiflin didn't even answer when Nelsen tried to beam him. Nelsen was able to save Post Three.
"I know something else," said Joe Kuzak he and his tough twin had returned to Jarviston by then, as had all the others who had visited their homes. "There's a desperate individual around, again. Tiflin. He appealed his test and lost. Kind of a good guy someways..."
They watched Tiflin spin and focus the antenna. "Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak..." he said into his phone. "Missing boys alive and coming to you. Mex and old Guess Which... Kicking and independent, but very hungry, I think... Put on the coffee pot, you storekeepers... Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak... Talk up, Frank and Miguel. Your voices will relay through my phone..."
This had begun to annoy big Art Kuzak. For one thing, Tiflin was doing his trick too close to the mass of crinkly, cellophane-like stuff draped over a horizontal wooden pole suspended by iron straps from the ceiling. The crinkly mass was one of the Bunch's major projects their first space bubble, or bubb which they had been cutting and shaping with more care and devotion than skill.
Can you go in there, be polite, say you're a Bunch member, make a promise, and above all avoid blowing your top? Boy if you queer this...!" Tiflin's mouth was open. "You kidding?" "No!" Tiflin gulped, and actually looked subdued. "Okay, Frank. Be cavalier. Hell, I'd croak before I'd mess this up...!" By evening, everybody had visited J. John Reynolds, including Charlie Reynolds and Jig Hollins.
"Hi, Art and Joe it's us," Ramos almost apologized. "Yeah we don't quite know yet what Tiflin is pulling. But here we are if it's you we're talking to..." There was the usual long wait as impulses bridged the light-minutes. Then Art Kuzak's voice snarled guardedly. "I hear you, Ram and Nel. Come in, if you can...! Tif, you garbage! Someday...! This is all. This is all..." The message broke off.
But let's not dawdle too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking like part of it, or like a good cop. The first might still be right." Tiflin sneered genially. "Some cops can't carry badges.
Tiflin smirked. "Third quadrant of the Belt," he said, giving a position in space almost like latitude and longitude on Earth. "About twenty minutes of the thirty-first degree. Three degrees above median orbital plane. Approximately two hundred hours from here. Can Igor and I leave you, now, or do you want us to escort you in?" "We'll escort you," Ramos said.
"Honest, Mex do you expect us to do that? Be cavalier I haven't even got a pistol, right now. Neither has Igor, here. Come look-see... Hi, Frankie!" "Just stay there," Nelsen gruffed. Tiflin cocked his head inside the helmet of a brand-new Archer Six, in a burlesqued pose for inspection. He looked bad. His face had turned hard and lean. There were scars on it.
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