“No chance?”
“They don’t like me. Can you, in your heart of hearts, see the Caradoc Company lending a piece of string to someone they don’t like, let alone giving him money? It’s not the way the world works. They can afford to pay off their petty grudges.”
“Yes,” he said. “I guess they can.”
CHAPTER THREE
There were three of them, and they were big.
Sam was still with me. We’d had a few drinks and we’d had a stroll, and we talked. Mostly about space and spacefaring. Nothing exciting. Nothing important. Nothing about the sad and sorry mess. When it came time for Sam’s turn to mind the baby we set out for the ship. The softening squad was waiting by the gate to the field.
They were obviously local talent, hired to do a little of what they might well be doing anyhow, on their own account, to somebody else. They weren’t really there for the purpose of hurting me—though they would. Nor were they there in order to persuade me to listen to Caradoc’s brand of reason. They were just there to drop a hint, to let me know that what I already knew was not only true but inescapable.
They didn’t want to take us in the middle of the street, so they came shuffling out of the shadows with the intention of herding us down a convenient alley before working us over. I took a couple of quick steps back, and they moved like lightning to cut me off, but I maneuvered myself into the blaze of the lights, into the center-street pool of glare from the clip joints and the neon signs. I wasn’t going to let them have their party in private.
There were people on the street, flitting back and forth. But they moved swiftly, without any hint of a glance in my direction, and pretended to be shadows.
There was music—loud, fast, drum-beating—oozing out of the fun-parlors on either side. The street was only twelve feet wide, but the music seemed to be coming from a vast distance. Nevertheless, I found myself thinking in time to it as I stopped in my tracks, and the twanging of the guitars was oddly noticeable. I had half a dozen shadows sprawling across the smooth street-some pink, some green.
“Get out of it, Sam,” I said. “They might not bother with you.”
“Ha!” he muttered. “You they do for the drop. I’m thrown in as a bonus. Tonight’s special offer. Besides, there are only three of them.”
They stood still, mocking us with their coolness and their fake mafia stances. Sam knew as well as I did that we didn’t stand a chance. Not even if there were only two.
“Run,” I said.
“Don’t be a fool.”
They 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
