were wallowing in their anticipation as they swayed forward like a trio of ballet-dancing bulldozers. They were letting the tension build up to snapping point.
It snapped, and in they came.
I knew that it was no good trying to get away, and I made up my mind that I was going to hit one of them a blow he’d feel. But when the first boot went into my gut I knew that there wasn’t going to be any gesture of defiance. I tried one desperate kick that didn’t have any real chance of mashing anybody’s balls, and then I began to fold up. I hid my face with one arm and my nether regions with the other hand, and I let them knock me sideways toward the light-streaming window on my left.
I was brought up against the plate-glass so hard that when my ear came away again I thought for one ungodly moment I’d cracked it and they were going to send me crashing through it to slash myself to ribbons in the debris.
Somebody said “Get the bastards!” in a voice full of hatred and loathing, and for a crazy instant I wondered how they came to be hating me on top of it all. I just couldn’t understand why anyone should be so goddamn mean. Then I realized that it was the heavy mob who were getting got, and getting got in no uncertain terms. With some considerable shock I realized that it was the kid from the ship who had spoken the magic words—the kid whose name I didn’t even know. He wasn’t alone.
It was at least ten against three, and I have to confess that it was a pretty enough sight from where I was sitting. I’m by no means a violent man, but I can lie down beside the nastiest fight and not get a bit upset if those who are suffering have harbored nasty thoughts toward me.
Nasty thoughts they had certainly harbored, but thanks to providence they hadn’t done me any lasting damage.
Sam Parks helped me up from where I’d slid down the window.
“Cretins,” he said, mumbling slightly because someone had hit him hard on the side of his mouth. “I been on this road all my life. There isn’t a door on thirty-two worlds I can’t yell ‘help’ into and not get it.”
“Thanks, Sam,” I said.
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank the guys who answered. But they’ll be glad enough to help. Spacemen, handlers—even port officers—they all come in for a bit of hammer from the local delinquents from time to time. Look at them...you can see they’re enjoying themselves. A bit of their own back for most, I guess.”
The fight seemed to be growing. A lot of people seemed to want a bit of their own back.
“I think the locals got reinforcements,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be polite to leave,” he pointed out.
I saw his point, but I didn’t see much point in staggering back into the fray. I might end up just as badly mauled as the vicious threesome had initially intended. It was hard to decide how much time I could, in all decency, spend sagging back against the window looking pained, but I was saved the embarrassment of having to show my gratitude and camaraderie by further participation when the police turned up.
Within minutes the street was empty of all but honest spacemen and their friends. No arrests seemed likely to be made, and everyone seemed quite unworried about the whole affair. I thanked the kid, honestly and sincerely. He looked glad to have been of assistance, and pretty proud of himself. So far as I was concerned, he was welcome.
Sam and I continued on our weary way back to the Sandman.
“You’re hot,” he said.
“I know,” I told him.
“There’s going to be more trouble,” he predicted dolefully.
I knew that too, and I said so.
“If there’s anything I can do...,” he said, without any extraordinary enthusiasm.
“There’s no point in sticking your neck out along with mine,” I told him. “Don’t get involved with Caradoc. It hurts. There’s only one man can get me out of this and I’m not sure that he’d bother. Come to that, I’m not sure if the cure is much better than the disease. If I could reach him, which I can’t.”
“You want me to send a message?”
“It’d take weeks to get where it has to go. Things are a bit more imminent than that, I really feel. If we can lift off tomorrow, maybe I can gain the time to get things sorted out so Charlot will get them off my back. But if we can’t....”
I left it hanging, which was how I felt.
We got back to the ship without encountering any more trouble, and the officer who was watching it while the captain was hunting up contacts let us in. We went up to the cockpit and set the screen to give us a view of the distant port offices.
“You got a gun?” asked Sam.
“Never owned one in my life,” I told him.
“Draw one from the locker,” he advised. “I’ll make sure Haeckel okays it in the morning.”
I shook my head.
He sprawled in one of the couches, fiddling with the straps and eyeing me dourly.
“We could—” he said, and trailed off.
“Go on,” I prompted.
His lips formed the word “lift,” but there was barely any sound behind it.
“Oh sure,” I said, trying not to sound too derisory. “Just you and me. Off into the unknown. That’s a crime, you know. Mutiny, theft...there must be more. Never to set foot in any recognized port again. Alien worlds and the backsides of maverick colonies. It’s a great life for the congenitally lonely.”
“It’s been done,” he said quietly, shielding himself from the half-hearted sarcasm.
“It’s been done,” I agreed. “But not so often. It’s easy. Sometimes it’s downright attractive. But you know the score, Sam, even if you never kicked around on alien worlds and never made an illicit landing in your life. Sure, no port authority has a hope in hell of controlling all traffic in and out of its territory. But the system works...just how are we supposed to make a living in a tin can like this? How do we pay for the fuel? It isn’t the bounds of possibility that has us caged, Sam, it’s the money. Money is a medium of exchange...and it has to be exchanged. That’s where you can’t break the system...right there. The law couldn’t catch us, but that doesn’t mean we’d get away. Thanks for the offer.”
I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. I’m no lover of port authority and carrying papers and doing everything the right way, but I’d had experience. Years of it. Lapthorn was always trying to get beyond human reach, to cast himself—and me—adrift, to become a real citizen of the galaxy instead of just a human invader. It’s just not that simple. I understand the urge to be a highwayman, to abandon all responsibility and cast off all repression, and I sympathize. I really do. But it’s only a dream, and no matter where the rim is said to be, the sticky fingers of civilization can reach you, so long as you’re trying to operate with six thousand tons of very complicated, very expensive human technology wrapped around you. Space may offer unlimited freedom, but you can’t collect unless you can do without a spaceship. That’s the way it is.
Nevertheless, the wind chipped in, it has been done.
Don’t remind me, I said.
Meanwhile, the silence was hanging a little heavy on Sam’s hands. He felt that he was involved in this, somehow. I’d known him only a matter of days, and most of our business had been transacted through a call circuit, but already he was as close to me as Lapthorn had ever been. I was letting him stand that close, and I knew it. By not reacting to his presence I was slowly sucking him into my problem. A year ago, I couldn’t have let that happen.
After a while, he said, “What are you going to do?”
I didn’t know. I thought that was obvious. What was there to be done?
“There’s