Myers - The Pyrophylic Saurian

The stolen port-service ship Glumers Jo stood two thousand kilometers out from Dothlit Three, its closrem drivers idling.

On the control deck Omar Olivine peered calculatingly at the screen as the viewsweep scanned the planet's single continental land mass.

From the chair where she was lounging, Icy Lingrad asked sourly, "What's the attraction of that stinky swampworld?"

"I'll brief everybody at once, after we land," Olivine replied. He was looking for a spot from which the ship's small tenders could explore a wide variety of life zones and geological structures without going too far afield. Perhaps a narrow coastal plain backed by one of the higher mountain ranges...

"I got a feeling you're a phony," Icy told him, making a flat statement out of it.

"I got a feeling you're psychotic," he replied with the impatience of a man too busy to talk nonsense. He was well and regretfully aware of Icy's low opinion of the human male. That was the source of her nickname Icy. Under the circumstances, he didn't expect her views of a particular male named Omar Olivine to be either favorable or informative.

"Whoever heard of a precious proxad of the Space Patrol turning outlaw?" she sneered. "For my money, Proxad Omar Olivine, you're a put-up job. Once a crummy starfuzz, always a crummy starfuzz." Olivine's thin lips tightened, and he came within a hair of returning insult for insult. But at that moment Charlo's voice called from a speaker: "Hey, boss!"

"Yeah?"

"You better pick a landing we can stay on a while, because the minute you turn off the closrems the main bearings are gonna freeze."

"Are they running that hot?" Olivine asked.

"And dry as bones," Charlo said. "It'll take three days to let 'em cool and another day to true them out and"

"O.K., O.K.," Olivine snapped. "I get the message." Icy was pursuing her thought. "You're a put-up job, and this whole deal's a put-up job. Whoever heard of a break-out working as easy as ours did?" Olivine clenched his teeth, loathing the beautiful woman behind him and, at the same time, realizing that was exactly what she wanted him to do. It was her way of protecting herself, her defense mechanism for keeping men at a distance.

So what was the point in arguing with her sneering, repetitious insults? None at all. But her last remark nagged at him, because the ease with which he and his five companions had escaped did look a bit fishy. Of course it wasn't an unheard-of practice to transfer a group of prisoners from one ship to another at a public rather than a Patrol spaceport, but it wasn't a frequent occurrence, either. Aside from that factor... Olivine frowned. Well, aside from that, nothing else looked really suspicious. The thing was that a public spaceport offered possibilities, such as crowds of citizens whose presence made the Patrol guards hesitate to use their guns. And Olivine, with his Patrol background, knew how to use opportunities.

Which was something Icy Lingrad hardly could be expected to understand. She was not used to criminals who weren't nervous, slow on their feet, or slow in the head, or in some other way too handicapped to think and act with lightning efficiency when the need arose. So the escape Olivine had led would puzzle her, and probably some of the others.

But after thinking it over again, Olivine was now confident that it was his own ability, not Patrol trickery of some sort, that had enabled them to get away. It was a comforting conclusion, because he knew the Patrol's heavy computer, the CIP, knew what went on in his head almost as well as he did himself. That was what came, he thought sourly, of being an eager Proxad for seven years, and submitting willingly to hours of psychoanalytic questioning.

In more instances than one, since the day he had wised up and decided there was more to life than the low pay and right to feel self-righteous which the Patrol offered, that damned CIP had anticipated his actions. Both his arrests had been made possible by computer predictions of where he would be, and what he'd be doing.

So he had reason to feel a little spooky about the CIP. The Patrol would be working it overtime right now to get him back in custody, he figured. But it was silly to think the Patrol and its CIP had engineered the escape!

"O.K., don't speak!" flared Icy. "I wouldn't believe your lying denials, anyway!"

"What you believe doesn't concern me, Miss Lingrad," he said in a soft, cold voice, turning to give her a steely glance, "but I do suggest there's one fatal flaw in your idea that this is a put-up job. Do you think for one second, Miss Lingrad, that if I had plotted this, you would be the one woman aboard this ship?"

"Humpf!" she grunted, obviously stung by the grating lash of his voice.

"Ship," he said.

"Yes, sir," replied the Glumers Jo in the flat voice of a medium-capacity compucortex.

"Freeze the viewsweep. I'm ready to mark." The picture on the screen stopped panning, and Olivine marked a small X over what looked like a suitable landing site.

"You got that, Ship?"

"Yes, sir."

"O.K., descend. I'll fine down the site as we approach."

Ravi Holbein came on the control deck just as the ship was touching down. He looked at the landscape revealed by the screen and nodded knowingly.

"A Jurassic-period world," he remarked brightly. "The age of reptiles, conifers and cycads... or," he chuckled, "reasonable facsimiles thereof. Except, of course, that this world is still in the mono-continent stage, and I believe continental drift is usually well under way in a typical Jurassic." Olivine grinned at the distinguished-looking middleaged man. "Right. Another hundred million years and this planet will evolve such higher life forms as con artists."

Holbein accepted the tribute with a slight bow and a quickly suppressed fraternal smile. "Such a world as this has its obvious hazards to life and limb, but can be a haven to a man in sufficient need," he replied.

"Let's hope so," said Olivine noncommittally. It was not Holbein's way to ask questions. Instead, he talked, thus inviting others to talk back. And he had an impressive line of chatter which, coupled with his appearance, had helped him into the friendship and trust of countless lonely businessmen and businesswomen on the long hauls between the stars. And he was an expert at using such friendship and trust profitably. In Olivine's private classification system, Holbein was a con man third-classa high rating inasmuch as Olivine could distinguish at least fifteen grades of con men. Icy Lingrad came lower on the same gradient, about ninth-class. Her success was due to her looks and her ability for staying out of beds, not to cleverness. She made an excellent assistant to an accomplished con artist, however, and that was how she usually worked.

"Closrems off," ordered Olivine as the ship's quadrupads settled into reasonably firm ground in an expanse of fernlike grass. "Ship, run an air test. All hands, please assemble on the control deck." The three other members of the group wandered in. Smiggly Crown, the scarred and grimly silent veteran of the Dusty Roost gang wars. Autman Noreast, a blankeyed torp of twenty-two years. And lastly, grimy from working around the closrems down in the drive room, Hall Charlo, one-time expert mechanic and current passion-crimer.

Olivine perched on the edge of a console and looked them over dubiously.

"I've had this planet in the back of my mind for a number of years," he began. "There's something worth grabbing here, and I meant to come grab it.

"But not with this particular crew," he sneered, "and not in this ship! A job like this ought to be done by carefully picked experts, not by a rag-tag lot that happened to be thrown together in a prisoner transfer. And it ought to be done in a ship that