Skid's finger traced a pattern along the sleek side of his rocket.

"Look, Pete," he said. "In the first place, there's nothing really wrong with your face. Believe me, those scars give you the kind of tough charm most women go for. And in the second place, it wouldn't do you any good to have your face fixed, Pete, because you're just the sort of guy who would get it banged up all over again, if just from falling over the nearest baby carriage."

Maybe I would have gone for that kind of talk if it hadn't been for that little plate-eyed space kid. But now I had my mind made up.

"I'm serious about this, Skid," I insisted. "I'm going to have this pan fixed up, if it's the last thing I ever do. And it looks like the only way I can get the cash is to go out there and place in the Double Century this afternoon."

Skid's teeth made a little clicking sound.

"Now I know you are crazy, Pete," he said. "I'll admit you're one of the greatest trick riders who ever put a rocket around a tube. But the moment you set out to race, you go completely haywire. You know that too."

I did know it. It's a funny thing. Just riding around the tube to put on a show, the way I'm paid to do, I'm like a robot. Up in my head there's a little timing device that tells me just how fast, down to the last split second, a rocket can take a magnet bend.

I can work out to the last fraction of an ounce the carom I can afford to take off the force fence or another rocket without wrecking. But the moment I go out to win, the tube guards start hanging out the crash warning again.

Still, there was the look in that little space dancer's eyes.

"This time it's going to be different, Skid," I said. "That last crash at Xovia was a lesson to me."

Skid gave up. He knew, as well as I, that the only thing I learned from the Xovia smash-up was that the nurses on Venus are tough kids to work into a clinch. But he didn't try to argue any longer. All he did was give me a shove toward my heavy, scarlet-finned cylinder.

"If that's the way it is, Pete," he said, "I'm for you to the limit."

Up in the stands I caught the usual half-hysterical burst of applause that always signals the finish of Suvia's act. With a sigh of relief I eased myself down into the cockpit of my 

 Prev. P 6/16 next