r NINE

Brad and Hodak pushed into the Charnel Pit,
Coldfield's popular tavern.

The bar-room was noisy, grimy and crowded.
Incense streamers slid and coiled along the
soil-fused floor, their dissipating pungency
unable to disguise the acrid stench of sweaty
bodies and unwashed garments.

The long bar was hidden by leaners. Narrow aisles
snaked among benches and clustered tables around
which boisterous, elbowing humanity teemed.

A coarsely seamed face along the bar turned,
observed Brad and Hodak as they glanced around
from inside the doorway. Whispers went down the
line, jumped to the tables and around the room.

The tumult ground down as necks craned. A hum
rose and fell as Brad and Hodak were inspected,
commented upon, and judged. It didn't take long
for the noise to return to its former level: the
amenities of bar-rooms everywhere.

From where he stood, Hodak failed to see a
table with a couple of empty chairs. They waited.
Shortly, nudging Brad's arm, he nodded toward
a table newly vacated against a wall.

They shoved and twisted through the narrow spaces
to the table in time for Hodak to slam his hand,
palm down, flat on the tabletop, glaring off a trio
of competitors.

They sat, and Hodak pressed the glow-disk in the
center of the table to summon the robo-dispenser.
Meanwhile, they surveyed the throng.

Some types were recognizable; others would
need to be guessed at. Mostly, they were familiar:
spacefarers and space tug cowboys in tight-fitting
foundation suits, construction stiffs in fitted
helmets and spacer harnesses, clerks and tradesmen
in business tunics, and street people in coarsely
woven, grimy open-necked shirts and shorts.
Slingshot technicians' jumpsuits were marked
by distinctive shoulder patches.

Scattered in knots, or leaning against walls and
supports, men and women, bare to the waist
and sporting sheer breechcloths or none at all,
flaunted their wares.

Brad recognized spoilsmen plying their trades.
They were the dandies attired in colorful, skin-tight
sports suits: thieves, pickpockets, high-tech gear
rustlers, black marketeers, professional gamblers,
and experts in all the scams that are or ever were.

Hand and shoulder weapons were everywhere: lashed
to thighs or slung across backs, flat on tables or
stacked along the bar. Churning and jostling, the
swarm shifted constantly: singly, in couples and
groups; from fledglings newly on the wing to old
timers diminis