Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped. But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes, unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun, stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried, rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular interest.