I've always wanted to buy a policeman. Now you can afford to do your job. I'm seeing Ferax first, but with or without his help, I'm going after Roper.
Terse instructions followed. Torry did not expect too much of Grannar, but the man represented law and authority as far as either existed on Mars, and dealing with Roper, Ferax, and the Martians all at once was scarcely a one-man job.
Trans-U Miners Union housed itself in a citadel remarkable even on Mars. It occupied the center of a large area, cleared, floodlighted and surrounded by a charged wire fence. Inside the defense circle were booby traps triggered for the first careless step off marked pathways patrolled by robot guards. Torry's metal ident card got him through the gateway by tripping electronic relays, and each incorruptible robot guard passed him after being shown the card.
At the building doorway he had to satisfy a series of dubious and hard bitten human questioners, but his pass and the magic name of Ferax got him inside.
Doors opened. Robot voices directed him across echoing lobbies to a bank of elevators. In a locked cage he descended five floors below surface level. In the corridor another bodiless voice spoke:
"End of the hall. Door on the right."
Torry followed directions. The ritual was getting on his nerves. His footsteps echoed hollowly. The place smelled damp and moldy as a tomb. Opening the door on the right with a wave of his keyed pass, he realized that it was, in a sense, a tomb. There was a body in it. A dead body.
Ferax sprawled across an ornate desk of Venusian chibar wood and kru-leather.
Luminous particles from a blaster discharge still danced in the air. A lingering bite of charred, exploding flesh stung the nostrils. There was little left of the torso, but a lolling globular head identified the corpse. A discarded gun clanked as Torry's foot kicked it. He hesitated, then picked it up and renewed the charge. It was an automatic reflex of defense, and fingerprint evidence was not likely to matter now. If found on the spot he would have little chance for explanations.