Only the personnel. Nothing else of a military nature ever found its way into the treaty. Strangely enough, it had somehow never even been mentioned.
"Take the weight off your feet. Rest, smoke, and hold onto your heads. Look at the safe; no, I didn't do it. Followed Procedure Eighteen dash whatever-the-hell-it-is, called Kolomar's headquarters; he came in person. Just blasted off. Now you know. I don't have to tell you what was in that top file."
Short, stocky, red-headed Loftus, the youngest of the three was the first to open up. Haliburton had his tall, starved-looking frame still half in and half out of his plasti-foam chair; Knight's beefy face was still kind of blank, as though he hadn't quite yet taken it all in. Well, they knew me. I was short and sweet, always answered questions, and tried never to bore people. Too lax, some people liked to say. But still here after ten years.
"The—microstats, Ken?" Loftus was half-asking, half-saying.
"Yeah. And this." I picked up the good luck piece, tossed it to him. He took one look, passed it to the others. "Kolomar gives me twenty-four hours to give him the man who owns it. It was dropped in front of the safe. The only clue, if you can call it a clue. But to Kolomar's traffic-ticket mind, it's automatic evidence of guilt. And he'd fly clear to Aldebaran to prove it. O.K., questions."
It was silent in the little cubicle for a second or so. I didn't hurry them; I wanted it to sink in, and they'd need some time. I audioed my orderly room, told the sergeant on duty to black the office out to the rest of the installation for the next ten minutes.
Then after a minute or so Knight looked up from the good luck piece, and a soft voice that didn't match his beefy build simply said, "McGinty's," in that half-statement, half-question way Loftus had used.
"Nuts," Haliburton said. And "nuts" from Haliburton was like "god-damn nonsense" from anybody else who wasn't quite the scholarly type Haliburton was. He didn't look like a Spaceman or have the breezy talk of one, but he sure knew his meteorology. The Comrades at least let us figure out weather reports.
"Doesn't make sense; I second the nuts," Loftus said. "What the hell would McGinty, McGinty of all people, do with stuff like—like that? Unless—"
"Eight years and still a maintenance-tech third. They don't get much beer money," Knight said half to the rest of us and half to the plastalloy deck. "He—"