THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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    XVII

There were no bands or speeches when they came in this time. A lot of
contragravity vehicles circled widely around the spaceport, but except
for a few news-service cars, the police were keeping them back of a
two-mile radius around the landing-pits. A couple of gunboats were
making tight circles above, and on the dock were more vehicles and a
horde of police and guards.

When Rodney Maxwell came across the bridge from the dock after they
opened the airlocks, he was followed by a dozen Barton-Massarra private
police, as villainous-looking a collection of ruffians as Conn had ever
seen. He was wearing a new suit, with a waist-length jacket instead of
the long coat he usually wore, and there was a holstered automatic on
each hip. In Litchfield, he never carried more than one pistol, and
Storisende was supposed to be an[Pg 144] orderly place where nobody
needed to go armed. More than anything else, that told Conn