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!"