If, as Shane had said, Clenoka was a million dollar guy, he certainly didn't want to show it by the office space he'd rented.
I climbed the three dingy little steps and poked the antiquated buzzer summons. Nothing happened. No one answered.
Trying to see in through the curtained glassicade windows was futile. They were too dirty for that.
Indecisively, I punched the buzzer again. There wasn't a sound from inside. Then a voice sounded. From behind me.
"Okay, Marine. They've gone, and you'll come along with us."
I turned around, looking straight into the barrel of an atomic pistol!
Two grim looking gentlemen stood there. The one who was holding the atomic pistol was the one who'd spoken.
"What is this?" I demanded. "High pressure real estate salesmanship?"
The one with the gun flashed open his tunic coat briefly. A very authoritative badge, one I recognized instantly, flashed momentarily.
"Federation Secret Service Agents, Corporal," the fellow with the gun said quietly. "Come along with us. We want to find out what you know about this place. We want to find it out in a hurry."
I opened my mouth to protest. Then I closed it sharply, while icy fingers of fear played my spinal cords like a harp. What, in the name of the Space Marines and all that was holy, had Sergeant Shane blundered us into this time?
There was nothing to do but look docile and willing. I strove for that expression, and the chap with the gun, slipping it into his pocket but still keeping his hand on it, stepped down a step to let me walk along in between them.
As we moved along the crooked little street, one of them on either side of me, I tried several explanations by way of rehearsal.
"I was just looking for a friend," I said, and only then realized how stupid it sounded.
My guards didn't say a word.
"I don't know what this is all about," I tried a little later.
They moved on beside me in frosty silence. The very chilliness in their attitude suggesting that, whatever my dear buddy, Sergeant Shane, had embroiled us in this time, the affair was something more than a trivial matter.
And pretty soon I began to get the idea. We were taking a series of streets leading inevitably to the Federation Police Headquarters on Saturn.
I gulped, breathed a prayer, and tagged on a curse for dear old Shane . . .
THERE was a very stern looking old duck sitting in the office of the Federation Police Headquarters to which the Secret Service agents had taken me.
"You understand, Corporal," he said when I'd been led in before him, "that this is not a matter of mere Federation Police business. You are in the office recently taken over by the Secret Service. We are engaged in very serious matters here on Saturn. Matters which have not a thing to do with Police work. Matters, in short, concerned with a clever undercover Martian espionage ring rumored to be in action here."
I stood there gulping. My eyes must have been bugging from my head.
"We believe," said the stern old duck behind the desk, "that the Federation's Space Base here on Saturn is gravely imperiled by this recent flurry of espionage."
"Look, sir," I broke in hastily. "I swear I don't know a damned thing about—"
The stern old duck held up his hand, cutting me off.
