Abruptly Jeremy came to his senses with an inarticulate, animal noise and raced to the door. The lithe man with white hair at his temples stepped in front of him.

"Want something, chum?" he asked softly.

Jeremy raised a hand to sweep the man aside but his eye fell on what the man was holding in his hand. It was a rectangular leatherette needle case. Jeremy had seen them before. A touch of the case, a little pressure on a stud, and you were needled. And the variety of hypos used was peculiarly horrible.

They stood there, frozen, for a long instant. Then someone passed.

A spaceport guard.

"Guard!" Jeremy rapped, leaping backward. "This man's threatening me. Needle!"

The guard bobbled a remarkable Adam's apple at them and then strode toward the white-templed man.

"Give it here, bud."

The man smiled, raised the case, snapped it open and extracted a cigarette. "A joke, guard. Perfectly harmless."

"Ha-ha!" said the guard with his mouth only. He clicked his lips shut and looked at Jeremy with one eyebrow raised. "You sure are jumpy, Blondy," he remarked, and strode off.

Jeremy controlled himself with a prodigious effort and swung on the older man. "Listen, you—"

The man blew smoke at Jeremy. "Better cool down, son," he said kindly. "We joke often, but not always. Hold it!" he snapped, watching Jeremy's darkening face. "You can butter me up and down these walls, but I'm only one of a couple of thousand that you'd have to whip afterward. Better go on back now and have another drink." And before Jeremy could move so much as a lip, the man was striding up the corridor in that way which did not seem to be swift.

Balked, frustrated, furious, Jeremy stood for a while and then turned back into the restaurant. He slouched back to his table, kicked the chair out and dropped into it. He could use that plastic-memory stunt to stow pipe. Sure. And when he thought of the low bid that Genex would put up against him, his stomach turned over.

 Prev. P 17/22 next