Chapter IV

We came in low to avoid any radar net the port patrol might have up, and entered the sleeping city above the shadowy warrens of the native district.

"You'll have to be careful," Cheryl warned. "And quick. Shanig's men will be watching the Argonaut, and the police won't have forgotten you so soon."

"I'll be careful," I said, knowing better than she the sort of odds Shanig would favor. "The next question is where do I find you after I drag that case of arrested development out of there?"

She gave me an address. "I took a room there as soon as I realized that Shanig was after me. I doubt that he's been able to trace me so soon."

We dipped into an apartment house section and Cheryl set the helicar down in a night-quiet street. "Apartment Six-A," she said. And then, unexpectedly: "Take care of yourself, Bill, please. Don't do anything rash!"

I patted her shoulder reassuringly. "You may have to rescue _me_ before the night is over," I told her. "Stand by your phonovision and be ready to bring Cora in a hurry if I call you. I can't risk taking her into the Argonaut because of Joey, but I may need her if I run afoul of Shanig. Got it?"

She nodded and gave me her phonovision code. I got out of there and headed down the street while she took the helicar up to her apartment house roof landing.

It wasn't far. Fifteen minutes of fast walking through the back streets brought me up a dark alley to the Argonaut's side entrance. The service door was locked, of course, and as a consequence none of Shanig's uglies were guarding it.

I kicked it in and went through a dusty corridor into the smoky, skohl-pungent bar-room.

The instant I was inside I knew that Cheryl had been right. Joey was there, and he was radiating for all he was worth. There was the spellbound crowd for proof of that.

The Argonaut Club was known the breadth of the System as the toughest dive that ever sold a drunken rockethand a pitcher of drugged skohl. I wound up there every time I touched Mars, and I knew the dump down to the latest ray-burn on its dingy plastoid walls. You hit some pretty rowdy shot-slots in the other spaceports, but the Argonaut topped them all. The Argonaut was rough.

Ordinarily. Tonight it looked like a missionary's picnic.

At the bar, Earthies sporting two-week passage beards and Quantrell blasters bucked over grimy rocketroom coveralls, rubbed elbows with cat-whiskered yellow city Martians and their vicious little baboon-faced cousins from the deserts. Woolly blue tree men from Titan drank with squishy Venusians and tentacled Ionians. I saw a couple of Callistans in a corner, braced saw-horse-fashion on their jointless legs and sticklike tails, grinning happily while they fraternized with a pair of ponderous Europans. The Europans, coy as two honeymooning hippos under Joey's spell, blubbered amiably back and rolled in small polite circles on their little three-wheeled carts.

Even the bouncer was happy.

This last was an Earthie, a big, battered homo named Husky Harrigan who tipped the scales at two-fifty Earthweight and looked like a tuskless Mercurian sandhog, bristles and all. I had run into difficulties with him before. He had the disposition of a thwarted ape, wore brass knuckles the way other men wore finger rings, and was the prime reason for the Argonaut's tough reputation.

But tonight Harrigan was as gentle as a dove, circulating through the crowd and shaking hands with anything that had a hand to shake.

I spotted Perry Acree at once. He was sitting at a table with two Earthies and a spiny pink Ganymedan, drinking skohl straight from the pitcher and staring soulfully at nothing in particular. I made a bee-line for his table but brought up short when I heard Husky Harrigan roaring my name.

Force of habit made me set myself for trouble, but under Joey's spell, Harrigan was everybody's friend, even mine. He put out a hairy paw and grinned like a crocodile, whinnying with joy and showing a set of second-rate bridgework where somebody had kicked out a handful of teeth.

"Hey, kids, it's Blaster Bill Bailey!" he bellowed. "C'mon and have fun, Willie. First drink on the house!"

I nearly clipped him for that "Willie" crack before I thought. Not that I had scruples about clouting an oaf like Harrigan when he was in no position to strike back. I just couldn't afford the delay. Captain Giles' patrolies might be along any minute. And there was always Shanig.

* * * * *

So I pushed past Harrigan and yanked Perry to his feet.

"Cheryl's waiting for you, Stupid," I said. "Snap to it, before I write you off and keep the date myself."

He grinned vacuously and came along like a lamb.

The two patrolies looked in through the swinging doors up front when Perry and I were halfway to the service corridor. Their sunburned faces lighted up when they saw me, and they shoved the doors wider to command the room with their bell-mouthed freeze guns. Behind them on the street stood their tandem air-scooter, lights on and motor purring.

"You're under arrest, Bailey," one of them called. He was a corporal, and it was written all over him that he saw a sergeant's rating coming for this night's work. "Come out of that!"

I got a firmer grip on Perry's collar.

"Come and get me," I called back, knowing what would happen if they did.

They came in on the double with their freeze guns ready--and halted, looking sheepish, when the smiley's aura got to them.

"Aw, forget it," the corporal said. "You're a good guy, Bailey. Go ahead. Go anywhere you like."

"Sure," the other seconded. "Take our air-scooter if you want. Need any extra credits where you're going?"

I headed for the service with Perry again but we had waited too long. One of Shanig's uglies was standing in the doorway with a foolish grin on his face, and I knew there would be others waiting in the alley outside. And those others wouldn't be under Joey's influence.

So I cut for the front entrance instead, dragging Perry like a bag of old laundry. The patrolies' air-scooter stood purring at the curb. I draped Perry across it and jumped for the operator's seat, expecting to be beamed down any second. I'd have made it, too, but for Perry.

Perry had taken on a monumental load of skohl during the day, and the instant he was out of Joey's influence the inflated little ego of him demanded to be heard. He scrambled off the air-scooter, swelled out his size thirty-two chest and launched into an old rocketroom ballad--a smutty saga listing the personal iniquities of the Captain Crow who led the first Mars flight just before the turn of the century.

In nineteen hundred and ninety-two
A _homo_ from Milwaukee
Warmed up his jets and--

I quieted him with a rabbit punch and tossed him back on the air-scooter, but the damage was done. I hit the control seat again just as Shanig's crew swarmed out of the alley and surrounded us.

The air-scooter took off like a rocket when I gave it the gun, plowing straight through them. I hung on somehow, but Perry wasn't so lucky. He bounced once and pitched off, square into the enemy's hands.

When I looked back at the first street intersection they had scooped him up and were headed toward Solar Shipping in a hurry. The sight reassured me a little. They hadn't blasted Perry on the spot, which meant that they would probably hold him as hostage until they got Cheryl as well. One witness at large was as dangerous to Shanig as two, and the chances were he wouldn't risk beaming out one unless he could be sure of both.

I took the only course left, doubling the air-scooter back and skimming toward Shanig's offices.