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He let her go. She was watching him with arch interest. “Should I sniff you back or clap my hands on your nose or what? You’re a really strange one, Zlarb.”

That explained a few things anyway, if she meant it. “My name’s not Zlarb. Zlarb’s dead, and whoever he worked for owes me ten thousand.”

She stared at him. “That tallies, provided you’re telling the truth. But you were where Zlarb was supposed to be, doing more or less what he was supposed to be doing.”

Han angled a thumb at the vibroblader’s body. “Who was that?”

“Oh, him. That’s who Zlarb was supposed to meet at the lounge. I was playing off both sides, Zlarb and his boss. Or, I thought I was.”

Han began warming up to an interrogation session when she interrupted. “I’d love to chat this over at length but shouldn’t we get out of here before they arrive?”

He looked up and saw what she meant. Bearing down on them was a flight of four more swoops. “Scooters are too slow. Come on.” He snagged his macrobinoculars from his repulsorlift scooter and ran for the swoop belonging to the late vibroblader. Climbing on, he brought the engine pod back to life. The woman was bent over the vibroblader’s body.

Working the handlebar accelerator, he tugged the swoop through a tight turn, helping with his foot. A quick surge of power took him to her side in a moment.

He braked hard. “Are you coming or staying?” he asked as he fit his knees into the control auxiliaries. She set her boot on a rear footpeg and swung up into the saddle behind him, showing him the vibroblade she had stopped to collect.

“Very good,” he conceded. “Now belt in and hold on.” He did the same, securing the safety belt tightly at his waist, and each donned a pair of the flying goggles that hung from clips at the swoop’s side. He gave the accelerator a hard twist and they tore away into the air, the wind screaming at them over the swoop’s low fairing. She clasped her arms around his middle and they both bent low to avoid the fairing’s slipstream.

The oncoming swoops were approaching from the direction of the city, so Han turned deeper into open country. At the edge of the table of land he threw his craft into a sudden dive over the brink, straight down into a chasm beyond. The ground rushed at them.

He threw his weight against the handlebars and leaned hard against the steering auxiliaries. The swoop came up so sharply that he was nearly torn from the handlebars by centrifugal force and the woman’s grip on him. The rearmost edge of the engine pod brushed the ground, making it skip and fishtail. Han just avoided a crash, slewed in midair and headed off down the sharply zigzagged chasm.

He calculated that, due to the steep, twisty nature of the gulches and canyons in the area, his pursuers couldn’t simply stand off at high altitude and search for him, for he might escape through a side canyon or simply hide under an overhanging ledge and out-wait them. If, on the other hand, they came in direct pursuit; they would have to hang on his tail through these obstacle course gullies and draws.

Han hadn’t been on a swoop in years but had once been very good on them, a racer and a course rider. He was willing to match himself against the four who rode after him. The one thing that worried him was the chance that they might split their bet, one or two of them going high and the others clinging to his afterblast.

“What’re you worried about anyway?” his passenger yelled over the engine’s howl and the quarrelsome wind. “They won’t have guns or that first man would’ve had one, right?”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t jump us,” he called back over his shoulder, trying not to let it distract him from negotiating the crazy turns and switchbacks of the maze. He decided that she must have little experience with swoops. She made some remark he didn’t catch, sounding as if she understood, but he was too busy conning the aircraft to answer.

Then he found out what she’d been worried about. Coming out of an especially sharp turn he almost lost control and had to touch his braking thrusters,