"I'm certain that the pleasure is more mine than yours," Tang said, responding to the other's display of lightness.
"Won't you come in?" Lutscher asked. "Perhaps I can give you a drink? I have saved a bottle just for this momentous occasion."
Tang acknowledged the invitation with a nod of his head. They walked into the hut together. Lutscher had evidently brought most of the movable furniture from his space ship with him, Tang observed, for the room was quite well furnished.
"Be careful not to stumble over Bunzo," Lutscher said, nodding toward a side wall of the room. Tang followed his gaze and saw that Bunzo was one of the doughball pets that seemed so universal here. But Bunzo was as large as an average-sized dog.
Strangely, while the little pets had intrigued Tang, he found this one repulsive. It lay sprawled on the floor of the hut, its body gross and over-fed, looking up at Tang with little pig eyes, mean and quiet. On one side of its white skin was a dark patch shaped like a fist.
"He's a repulsive looking brute," Tang said.
"Isn't he though?" Lutscher agreed. "But he's company, and he has his uses." Lutscher laughed: He was a laughing man. "I wouldn't trade him for anything I can think of offhand," he said as he turned to a row of boxes piled against the far wall of the hut. "Now let's see. Which box is it in? Ah, here it is."
He turned and found himself staring at the pistol in Tang's hand. "I'm afraid we'll have to reverse the roles," Tang said. "I'll be the host—in my ship."
Lutscher seemed genuinely surprised. He staggered back a step and sank heavily into a chair next to his pet. He held the bottle of whiskey in his lap with one hand, while the other idly stroked the blubbery head of the drowsing Bunzo. "For a minute I'd forgotten," he said, recovering his composure. "You still think that you can take me away from here, don't you? But of course you can't understand yet that the cards are stacked against you."
"Is there anything you'd like to take with you when we leave?" Tang asked.