est friend--the noble dog of Barbarian Terra."

"Yes ... but--"

"Oh," said Peter airily, "we're looking for a friend."

"Friend? Who is he?"

"It's a she and her name is Vanessa Lewis."

"She ain't here."

"The dame's a liar-ess, Peter. I scent her strong."

"We'll just take a look around," said Peter to the check girl.

"You'll have to check your weapons."

"I'd rather go in naked. Sorry. Not today. Weapons happen to be my
business today. Come on, Buregarde."

* * * * *

Man and dog started along the hallway warily. Buregarde said, "Any
touch?"

"Got a faint impression of alarm, danger, call out the guards."

"I scent violence," said the dog. "And--"

The door at the end of the hallway opened and a big man stepped out.
"What's going on here?" he demanded flatly.

The check girl said, "He wouldn't check ..."

The big man reached for his hip pocket.

Peter said, "Take him high!" and they plunged.

Peter dove for the man's knees, Buregarde went in a three-stride lope
like an accordion folding and unfolding and then arched in a long leap
with his snarling fangs aimed at the man's throat. Man and dog hit him
low and high before he could open his mouth, before he could free the
snub pencil-ray. There was a short scrabble that ended when Buregarde
lifted the man's head and whammed it down hard against the floor.

Weakly, the check girl finished her statement, "...His weapons!" and
keeled over in a dead faint.

Buregarde shook himself violently and worked his jaws, licking blood
from his chops. Peter looked in through the open wall-door opposite the
check counter; the racket had not been noticed by the roomful of
spacemen and riffraff. The babble of a hundred tongues still went on
amid the clink of glasses and the disturbing strains of Xanabian music.
Smoke from a hundred semi-noxious weeds lay in strata across the room,
and at a table in the far corner two men faced one another, their
expressions a mixed pair. One held heavily begrudged admiration as he
paid off five hundredweight of crystal-cut in the legal tender of
Xanabar to the other, whose expression was greedy self-confidence. One
of His Excellency's Peacekeepers presided over the exchange. Coldly he
extracted a fiftyweight from the pile and folded it into the signed and
completed wager-contract. For his own coffer he extracted a fiveweight
and slipped it into his boot top.

Peter Hawley and Buregarde passed on