Staging the rendezvous with his seven underworld accomplices for the pay-off, he had arranged that they arrive separately. Each in his individual hideout, had thought it would be a general get-together at the same place, same hour. Each arrived promptly at a different time at a different rented flat, but all collected the same lethal payment something less than an ounce of soft lead.
Ten men had died to bring the fortune into Pauker's hands, three guards and seven, hoodlums. And each had been marked from the beginning. Now there were no witnesses, no loose-ends, no chances of meeting an avenging gangster on Mars, no waiting for a slug in the dark. Neat! Clean! Perfection as he'd planned.
The entry panel to booth seven clicked behind him, he slipped the I.D. plate into its slot and felt the sting pluck at his neck as the serum, drug or whatever needled into his tissues. As he started to step from the painted foot-marks a voice came hollowly over the partitions, then louder as the exit door of the booth slid back.
Standing down the hall some ten paces were two men profiled to him. One was the young, blond baggage man. He was saying, "—with a red scar under his left eye. You sure you haven't seen him? It's quite import—"
Pauker, shrinking back in the booth, couldn't get entirely out of view. He jammed his I.D. plate in the slot again, and the exit panel closed. He exhaled a stale breath with trembling relief and leaned against the wall. The voices continued, muffled by the partition, but he could only catch a few words.
"—sorry—blast-off in six minutes—thing about it—not your responsibility."
Then it was quiet. Pauker waited a full minute before he began tugging at the exit door. It refused to open. A siren screamed faintly outside, and a voice boomed a warning down the corridor, "Clear the prep chamber. Blast-off in four minutes."
Pauker fought back his panic. When the smooth, featureless panel failed to open he stepped back to the hypo machine, winced slightly as the second shot hit him in the same spot, precisely, and then he moved swiftly through the panel which fell away, down the corridor, over the covered ramp into the men's gallery of the spaceship.
A white-uniformed, male attendant hurried him down an aisle of sponge-padded double-decker bunks, after a quick glance at his I.D. "You almost missed the boat, mister," he said as he strapped Pauker down. He slid the needle into an arm vein with an apology. "Sorry, no time for a local."