Ostentatiously, Ramsey reached into his cloak-pocket for a single credit bill and tossed it on the table.
“The denomination is not sufficient, sir,” the albino Sirian croupier said indifferently. Ramsey had known it was not.
Garr Symm’s face turned a darker green. The Vegan girl retreated from Ramsey’s side in fright. Symm raised his hand and an Irwadian waiter brought over a drink in a purple stem glass with a filigree pattern of titanium, bowing obsequiously. Symm lurched with the glass toward Ramsey. “I’m telling you to go,” he said in a loud voice.
Ramsey picked up his credit note but stood there. With a little sigh of drunken contentment, Garr Symm sloshed the contents of his stem glass in Ramsey’s face.
The liquor stung Ramsey’s eyes. Many of the other outworlders, neither Irwadian nor Earthmen, laughed nervously.
Ramsey wiped his eyes but otherwise did not move. He was in a rough spot and he knew it. The fact that their new Security Chief went out drunk at night with a chip on his shoulder was the Irwadian government’s affair, not Ramsey’s. He’d been insulted before. An Earthman in the outworlds, particularly an Earthman fugitive who knew he dared not get into the kind of trouble that could bring the Earth consul to investigate, was used to insults. For Earth was the leading economic and military power of the galaxy, and the fact that Earth really tried to deal fairly with its galactic neighbors meant nothing. Earth, being top dog, was resented.
The thing which got Ramsey, though, was this Garr Symm. He had never heard of Garr Symm, and he thought he knew most of the big shots in the Irwadian Security Police by name. But there must have been a reason for his appointment. A government throwing off outworld influence had a reason for everything. So, why Garr Symm?
“You, Mith Vegan!” Garr Symm called suddenly. “You whithpered to the Earthman. What did you tell him?”
“Not to look for trouble,” the Vegan girl said in a frightened voice.
“But what elth?”