"Now," Hawkes said, "we go upstairs to the cubbyhole where they keep the Free Status people registered. We go through the same business there. I didn't really expect to find your brother here, but it was worth a look. It's next to impossible for a ship-jumping starman to buy his way into a guild and get a work card."
"Suppose he's not registered with the Free Status people?"
Hawkes smiled patiently. "Then, my dear friend, you go back to your ship with your mission incomplete. If he's not listed upstairs, there's no way on Earth you could possibly find him."
Chapter
Seven
The sign over the office door said REGISTRY OF FREE-STATUS LABOR FORCE, and under that ROOM 1104. Hawkes nudged the door open and they went in.
It was not an imposing room. A fat pasty-faced man sat behind a scarred neoplast desk, scribbling his signature on forms that he was taking from an immense stack. The room was lined with records of one sort or another, untidy, poorly assembled. There was dust everywhere.
The man at the desk looked up as they entered and nodded to Hawkes. "Hello, Max. Making an honest man of yourself at last?"
"Not on your life," Hawkes said. "I came up here to do some checking. Alan, this is Hines MacIntosh, Keeper of the Records. Hines, want you to meet a starman friend of mine. Alan Donnell."