MOE, bartender at Saturn Inn, leaned his elbow on the bar and braced his chin in an outspread palm. His face wore a melancholy, hang-dog look. Moe liked things fairly peaceable, but now he saw trouble coming in big batches.
“Lady,” he declared mournfully, “you sure picked yourself a job. The boys around here don’t take to being uplifted and improved. They ain’t worth it, either. Just ring-rats, that’s all they are.”
Henrietta Perkins, representative for the public health and welfare department of the Solar government, shuddered at his suggestion of anything so low it didn’t yearn for betterment.
“But those terrible feuds,” she protested. “Fighting just because they live in different parts of the Ring. It’s natural they might feel some rivalry, but all this killing! Surely they don’t enjoy getting killed.”
“Sure they enjoy it,” declared Moe. “Not being killed, maybe… although they’re willing to take a chance on that. Not many of them get killed, in fact. Just a few that get sort of careless. But even if some of them are killed, you can’t go messing around with that feud of theirs. If them boys out in sectors Twenty-Three and Thirty-Seven didn’t have their feud they’d plain die of boredom. They just got to have somebody to fight with. They been fighting, off and on, for years.”
“But they could fight with something besides guns,” said the welfare lady, a-smirk with righteousness. “That’s why I’m here. To try to get them to turn their natural feelings of rivalry into less deadly and disturbing channels. Direct their energies into other activities.”
“Like what?” asked Moe, fearing the worst.
“Athletic events,” said Miss Perkins.
“Tin shinny, maybe,” suggested Moe, trying to be sarcastic.
She missed the sarcasm. “Or spelling contests,” she said.
“Them fellow can’t spell,” insisted Moe.
“Games of some sort, then. Competitive games.”
“Now you’re talking,” Moe enthused. “They take to games. Seven-toed Pete with the deuces wild.”
The inner door of the entrance lock grated open and a spacesuited figure limped into the room. The spacesuit visor snapped up and a brush of grey whiskers spouted into view.
It was Gus Hamilton.
He glared at Moe. “What in tarnation is all this foolishness?” he demanded. “Got your message, I did, and here I am. But it better be important.”
He hobbled to the bar. Moe reached for a bottle and shoved it toward him, keeping out of reach.
“Have some trouble?” he asked, trying to be casual.
“Trouble! Hell, yes!” blustered Gus. “But I ain’t the only one that’s going to have trouble. Somebody sneaked over and stole the injector out of my space crate. Had to borrow Hank’s to get over here. But I know who it was. There ain’t but one other ring-rat got a rocket my injector will fit.”
“Bud Craney,” said Moe. It was no secret. Every man in the two sectors of the Ring knew just exactly what kind of spacecraft the other had.
“That’s right,” said Gus, “and I’m fixing to go over into Thirty-seven and yank Bud up by the roots.”
He took a jolt of liquor. “Yes, sir, I sure aim to crucify him.”
His eyes lighted on Miss Henrietta Perkins.
“Visitor?” he asked.
“She’s from the government,” said Moe.
“Revenuer?”
“Nope. From the welfare outfit. Aims to help you fellows out. Says there ain’t no sense in you boys in Twenty-three all the time fighting with the gang from Thirty-seven.”
Gus stared in disbelief.
Moe tried to be helpful. “She wants you to play games.”
Gus strangled on his drink, clawed for air, wiped his eyes.
“So that’s why you asked me over here. Another of your danged peace parleys. Come and talk things over, you said. So I came.”
“There’s something in what she says,” defended Moe. “You ring-rats been ripping up space for a long time now. Time you growed up and settled down. You’re aiming on going over right now and pulverizing Bud. It won’t do you any good.”
“I’ll get a heap of satisfaction out of it,” insisted Gus. “And, besides, I’ll get my injector back. Might even take a few things off Bud’s ship. Some of the parts on mine are wearing kind of thin.”
Gus took another drink, glowering at Miss Perkins.
“So the government sent you out to make us respectable,” he said.
“Merely to help you, Mr. Hamilton,” she declared. “To turn your hatreds into healthy competition.”
“Games, eh?” said Gus. “Maybe you got something, after all. Maybe we could fix up some kind of game…”
“Forget it, Gus,” warned Moe. “If you’re thinking of energy guns at fifty paces, it’s out. Miss Perkins won’t stand for anything like that.”
GUS wiped his whiskers and looked hurt. “Nothing of the sort,” he denied. “Dang it, you must think I ain’t got no sportsmanship at all. I was thinking of a real sport. A game they play back on Earth and Mars. Read about it in my papers. Follow the teams, I do. Always wanted to see a game, but never did.”
Miss Perkins beamed. “What game is it, Mr. Hamilton?” “Space polo,” said Gus.
“Why, how wonderful,” simpered Miss Perkins. “And you boys have the spaceships to play it with.”
Moe looked alarmed. “Miss Perkins,” he warned, “don’t let him talk you into it.”
“You shut your trap,” snapped Gus. “She wants us to play games, don’t she. Well, polo is a game. A nice, respectable game. Played in the best society.”
“It wouldn’t be no nice, respectable game the way you fellows would play it,” predicted Moe. “It would turn into mass murder. Wouldn’t be one of you who wouldn’t be planning on getting even with someone else, once you got him in the open.”
Miss Perkins gasped. “Why, I’m sure they wouldn’t!”
“Of course we wouldn’t,” declared Gus, solemn as an owl.
“And that ain’t all,” said Moe, warming to the subject. “Those crates you guys got wouldn’t last out the first chukker. Most of them would just naturally fall apart the first sharp turn they made. You can’t play polo in ships tied up with haywire. Those broomsticks you ring-rats ride around on are so used to second rate fuel they’d split wide open first squirt of high test stuff you gave them.”
The inner locks grated open and a man stepped through into the room.
“You’re prejudiced,” Gus told Moe. “You just don’t like space polo, that is all. You ain’t got no blueblood in you. We’ll leave it up to this man here. We’ll ask his opinion of it.”
The man flipped back his helmet, revealing a head thatched by white hair and dominated by a pair of outsize spectables.
“My opinion, sir,” said Oliver Meek, “seldom amounts to much.”
“All we want to know,” Gus told him, “is what you think of space polo.”
“Space polo,” declared Meek, “is a noble game. It requires expert piloting, a fine sense of timing and…”
“There, you see!” whooped Gus, triumphantly.
“I saw a game once,” Meek volunteered.
“Swell,” bellowed Gus. “We’ll have you coach our team.”
“But,” protested Meek, “but… but.”
“Oh, Mr. Hamilton,” exulted Miss Perkins, “you are so wonderful. You think of everything.”
“Hamilton!” squeaked Meek.
“Sure,” said Gus. “Old Gus Hamilton. Grow the finest dog-gone radiation moss you ever clapped your eyes on.”
“Then you’re the gentleman who has bugs,” said Meek.
“Now, look here,” warned Gus, “you watch what you say or I’ll hang one on you.”
“He means your rock bugs,” Moe explained, hastily.
“Oh, them,” said Gus.
“Yes,” said Meek, “I’m interested in them. I’d like to see them.”
“See them,” said Gus. “Mister, you can have them if you want them. Drove me out of house and home, they did. They’re dippy over metal. Any kind of metal, but alloys especially. Eat the stuff. They’ll tromp you to death heading for a spaceship. Got so I had to move over to another rock to live. Tried to fight it out with them, but they whipped me pure and simple. Moved out and let them have the place after they started to eat my shack right out from underneath my feet.”
Meek looked crestfallen.
“Can’t get near them, then,” he said.
“Sure you can,” said Gus. “Why not?”
“Well, a spacesuit’s metal and…”
“Got that all fixed up,” said Gus. “You come back with me and I’ll let you have a pair of stilts.”
“Stilts?”
“Yeah. Wooden stilts. Them danged fool bugs don’t know what wood is. Seem to be scared of it, sort of. You can walk right among them if you want to, long as you’re walking on the stilts.”
Meek gulped. He could imagine what stilt walking would be like in a place where gravity was no more than the faintest whisper.