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shoot, he advanced slowly on the fallen bandits.
    None of them were moving. Johnny prodded the last two with his foot but they were as dead as the others.
    "Johnny," called Wulf.
    Johnny glanced up for a moment. He knelt beside one of the bodies.
    "What..." said Johnny quietly, "the sneck... was that ?"
    Wulf finally reached the road, letting the quivering Gronk fall to the asphalt.
    "Are you all right?" said Wulf.
    "Yeah, Wulf, I'm fine."
    The Gronk mumbled something to itself, a stammering litany of torment. Johnny and Wulf ignored it.
    "I had to use der bazooka," said Wulf.
    "Yeah," said Johnny. "I got that part."
    He turned to look at the shattered remnants of Black Rock, an irreplaceable geographic feature that had a seriously bad day.
    "Vulf sorry," said Wulf. He looked at the ruined monolith, sighing at the thought of another lost opportunity to treat an alien world to a little rune-carving.
    "It's okay," said Johnny. "You did what you had to do."
    "I crawled," protested Wulf. "I crawled for hours across the-"
    "I said it's okay ," lied Johnny.
    He couldn't resist a thin smile. That was it, the end of the line. These men were too dead to tell him where to find Tuka. And without Tuka, there was no Alnitak. No ultimate big boss. No Alnitak with the giant reward. No chance to take in the sector's biggest body-shark, pirate and kingpin, all rolled into one handy, expensive package, with a bounty that was a king's ransom. No more leads meant no chance of finding Alnitak, wherever he was. So much for early retirement.
    "Der reward is dead or alive," said Wulf. "We still have some of the bounty money, jah?"
    "I'll get the jeep," said Johnny, tramping off towards his rental car.
    "Thanks you, Mister Johnny," said the Gronk meekly, but Johnny didn't say anything.
    The gunmen had a jeep of their own, a rental model, just like Johnny's. It was even from the same dealer. If things had been a little different, the gunfight at Black Rock could have taken place at Bob's Autos when both sides arrived to pick up their cars. It would have saved a lot of time. The cars were snecky as hell; regular repulsor models, but with gravity magnets whose charges were long gone. Instead, the cars rolled along on their primitive emergency wheels like antiques. Johnny doubted the cars had floated in the air for a decade. But this was Vaara. The nearest repair shop was probably a long way off and beggars could not be choosers.
    There was no reward without a body. Johnny figured the gunmen were too dead to haggle over their deposit, so the their jeep was the nominated hearse. They dragged the five bodies over and piled them in a grisly jumble of stiffening limbs.
    The sun was barely half an hour past Vaara noon when the two jeeps left the scene of the gunfight. Realising that Johnny and Wulf would be driving separate vehicles, the Gronk's loyalties were torn. In the end, it voted to sit with Johnny since Wulf's had five dead men in the back seat. It was twenty minutes back into town and the Gronk couldn't think of much to say.
    "You can stop thanking me," said Johnny after it yelped for the fifth time. "Forget it."
    The jeep's vestigial wheels bumped and skidded across a road designed for slow-moving horses and carts. The rear left wheel was in serious need of oiling and screeched on a regular basis.
    The Gronk looked back at Wulf's vehicle, tailing at a respectful distance.
    "Are you angry?" said the Gronk, after a time.
    "No, Gronk."
    "You are not happy," observed the Gronk.
    Johnny didn't take his eyes off the road ahead. Without operational repulsor fields, a driver had to pay a lot more attention. Johnny could do with something to take his mind off things. Things like an interplanetary network of kidnappers, organ-leggers and pirates, and a trail he had been following for weeks.
    "Don't worry, Gronk," he said. "It's not you."
    "Is it Mister Wulf?"
    There was a pause. Johnny down-shifted the primitive gears and kept the car pointing in a straight