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legitimate basis. At any rate, the stuff might ease his headache.
Ed opened a second beer and sat down in a rickety chair he dragged from the table. "Looey, you get
yourself a pop," he said. He half-turned to the man and waited until he shambled out the door before
speaking again.
Ed turned his face back and directed eyes like blood-streaked walnuts at him. "It's like this, Flont. I'm a
little king rat of the junkyard, here." He took a pull on his beer, and Jeff politely imitated the motion. He
discovered it to be pretty heady stuff cold and strong.
Bladderwart was working up to something. There must have been a loss on that gyro, the stolen one.
Did Ed expect payment now?
"Yeah," Ed said. "Shrewd. Like a rat. Until now the biggest thing I ever pulled off was stealing a few
bottles of beer. As Goontowners go, that makes me smart."
Jeff was becoming fascinated with the man, seeing an entirely different personality than the one he had
imagined before. It hadn't occurred to him that Gunnartowners had ambitions too. "And you know I'm
not a 'Goontowner,' is that it? You read through my papers and learned I was in the Space Service. That
I started from "
"Alpha IV, yeah. You were there and I figure you must've been a kid and then you were in the navy and
now you're here. I got to thinkin' why. Why does a man go from space to the ring, and then fix things to
get out ofthat? Because he's stupid? Uh-uh, I saw the way you drove tonight. I know you came to Earth
for a reason probably money. I know you got the training and the plans. And now you come to cut me
in on it, right?"
"You deduced all that, Mr. Bladderwart?" Jeff said with gentle irony. He drove well, ergo he was smart.
He was here, therefore he would share his plans. Simple.
Flathead returned, his pale lips applied to a pop-tube. "Come here and show Flont," Ed said to him.
Flathead came, skinned up his T-shirt and revealed the crude holster/sheath he carried below his armpit.
He did all this without removing his mouth from the refreshment. He took hold of the handle protruding
from the sheath and brought out nearly six inches of finely polished, tapering steel.
Jeff inspected the blade. "Very nice," he said, and Flathead gaped with pleasure, missing the tone.
"You see how it is then, Flont?" Ed said. "We're like all one family here. Rise or fall, space or sink, that's
about the way of it."
"I see the way of it," Jeff said. He was sure he could handle the moronic Flathead. They seemed to think
the ringer had dropped to the bottom of the totem, and was amenable to unsubtle threats.
Ed gestured with the bottle. "We're in this together, all four of us. Just the right number, wouldn't you
say?"
"For what?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"You, me, Annie, Flathead that's four, ain't it? Four for fortune."
"Four-four-four!" Flathead repeated happily.
"Fortune?"
"Come on now, Flont." Ed upended his bottle and worked his mouth at it. He set it down and
contemplated its arid state regretfully. "Even an offworlder like you knows the code of Goontowners.
Someone does you dirt, you get him. He does you a favor, you pay him. And nobody yells cop."
"And you assume that I owe you something? That I have the ability to 'pay'?"
Ed got up from the chair, slouched to the sink and dropped the empty bottle into an overflowing carton
of trash. He drew another quart, opened it, and came back sucking noisily on it. He emptied it in several
long pulls while Jeff tried to conceal his amazement, and flopped into the chair again.
Jeff was halfway through his first bottle and already his head felt light. He judged the stuff to contain a
good eight to ten percent alcohol: exceedingly strong, for commercial "beer." Yet Ed seemed unaffected.
"We Goontowners remember things that smell like money. Years ago, when I was just a punk hauling
trash, I used a four-wheeled truck, only thing I could afford. Then the classy one-wheelers got cheap
enough, and I really went for 'em. I studied up, everything I could find. That's how I got in the salvage
business ain't just anybody can take apart a live gyro and live. Not that I do it without getting
permission from the company, of course."
"Of course," Jeff agreed dryly. Such permission was never given to an individual.
"You got to know your way 'round all the booby-traps. That's how I remember back when the company
wasn't G&G, it was Flont & McKissic. Then Flont cheated on his partner and got booted to Alpha.
Thought I knew the name before; this time I checked it."
"He was framed," Jeff said.
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