"Meantime, I'll dig up what I can, but if they start fishing again, I start tendering."

He eyed her, considering. "You want me to put you or temporary staff? There's a per diem."

"God, no!" she said, genuinely horrified.

He spread his hands. "I offered."

"And I turned you down flat. Just get your sweet ass back here as soon as you can."

The grin flashed again. "Why, thank you, Kate. I didn't think you'd noticed."

Back in town, Kate narrowly avoided a squirrel darting across the road and pulled the truck up in front of the harbormaster's office. Through the window, she could see Gull sitting at his desk. He looked up and waved her inside.

"Thanks for the use of the truck, Gull," she said, handing over the keys.

He looked at them, thought about it for a moment and then, as if inspiration had struck, stuffed them into a pocket. Not a man who maintained a strict guard over the material things in his life, but then the truck was the property of the city, and there weren't many places to drive a stolen vehicle in Cordova.

"So, Chopper Jim get off with the stiff all right?" he said, sitting back and putting his feet on the desk.

She mimicked his actions, linking her hands and stretching so that her bones popped. "Yeah."

Gull scratched the back of his head. "Hell of a thing." It was an offhand observation; he didn't look shocked or horrified or disgusted, but then he could quote chapter and verse of a century's worth of atrocities committed against the noble red man by the base white man from the Mexican to the Canadian border. He wasn't one to get overly excited at a single murder, no matter how redundant in method. "What do you think happened?"

"I don't have a clue," Kate said. "Or rather, I've got too many of them. Did you see Meany when he came in yesterday afternoon?"

Gull snorted, and folded his gigantic paws over his chest. "Hell, I saw him yesterday evening. I had to run him out of transient parking. Son of a bitch. You know, Kate, it's not the fact that guys like him try to steal from the city that upsets me so much, it's the discourtesy."

"Discourtesy?"

"Discourtesy," he said firmly. "I mean, the Fomalhauters weren't having enough problems with the repairs to their exhaust ducttheir Star Grazer'd taken a hit from a rogue microplanetoidthen this earthbound yo-yo tries to put a goddam drift netter up their tailpipe."

Kate wondered if Gull knew anything more about astronomy and the potential for extraterrestrial life than he did about the Native American. Probably not, but who was she to spoil his fun.'

Then it hit her. "What time was that?"

"What, when the Fomalhauters landed?"

"No," Kate said gravely, "when Meany tried to drive up their tailpipe."