Then I remembered. I told her once I was a plaston salesman. That was the time I brought her a plaston nightgown that was a honey.
I said, “Look. Just give me another half hour—”
Her eyes grew moist. “I’m sitting here all by myself.”
“I’ll make it up to you.” To show you how desperate I was getting, I was definitely beginning to think along paths that could lead only to jewelry even though a sizable dent in the bankbook would show up to Hilda’s piercing eye like the Horsehead Nebula interrupting the Milky Way. But then I was desperate.
She said, “I had a perfectly good date and I broke it off.”
I protested, “You said it was a quibbling little arrangement.”
That was a mistake. I knew it the minute I said it.
She shrieked, “Quibbling little arrangement!” (It was what she had said. It was what she had said. But having the truth on your side just makes it worse in arguing with a woman. Don’t I know?) “You call a man who’s promised me an estate on Earth—”
She went on and on about that estate on Earth. There wasn’t a gal in Marsport who wasn’t wangling for an estate on Earth, and you could count the number who got one on the sixth finger of either hand.
I tried to stop her. No use.
She finally said, “And here I am all alone, with nobody,” and broke off contact.
Well, she was right. I felt like the lowest heel in the Galaxy.
I went back into the reception room. A flunky outside the door saluted me in.
I stared at the three industrialists and speculated on the order in which I would slowly choke each to death if I could but receive choking orders. Harponaster first, maybe. He had a thin, stringy neck that the fingers could go round neatly and a sharp Adam’s apple against which the thumbs could find purchase.
It cheered me up infinitesimally, to the point where I mustered, “Boy!” just out of sheer longing, though it was no boy I was longing for.
It started them off at once. Ferrucci said, “Boyl the watern the spout you goateeming rain over us, God savior pennies—”
Harponaster of the scrawny neck added, “Nies and nephew don’t like orporalley cat.”
Lipsky said, “Cattle corral go down off a ductilitease drunk.”
“Drunkle aunterior passageway! a while.”
“While beasts oh pray.”
“Prayties grow.”
“Grow way.”
“Waiter.”
“Terble.”
“Ble.”
Then nothing.
They stared at me. I stared at them. They were empty of emotion (or two were) and I was empty of ideas. And time passed.
I stared at them some more and thought about Flora. It occurred to me that I had nothing to lose that I had not already lost. I might as well talk about her.
I said, “Gentlemen, there is a girl in this town whose name I will not mention for fear of compromising her. Let me describe her to you, gentlemen.”
And I did. If I say so myself, the last two hours had honed me to such a fine force-field edge that the description of Flora took on a kind of poetry that seemed to be coming from some wellspring of masculine force deep in the subbasement of my unconscious.
And they sat frozen, almost as though they were listening, and hardly ever interrupting. People under Spaceoline have a kind of politeness about them. They won’t speak when someone else is speaking. That’s why they take turns.
I kept it up with a kind of heartfelt sadness in my voice until the loud-speaker announced in stirring tones the arrival of the Space Eater.
That was that. I said in a loud voice, “Rise, gentlemen.”
“Not you, you murderer,” and my magnetic coil was on Ferrucci’s wrist before he could breathe twice.
Ferrucci fought like a demon. He was under no Spaceoline influence. They found the altered Spaceoline in thin flesh-colored plastic pads hugging the inner surface of his thighs. You couldn’t see it at all; you could only feel it, and even then it took a knife to make sure.
Afterward, Rog Crinton, grinning and half insane with relief, held me by the lapel with a death grip. “How did you do it? What gave it away?”
I said, trying to pull loose, “One of them was faking a Spaceoline jag. I was sure of it. So I told them,” (I grew cautious—none of his business as to the details, you know) “… uh, about a girl, see, and two of them never reacted, so they were Spaceolined. But Ferrucci’s breathing speeded up and the beads of sweat came out on his forehead. I gave a pretty dramatic rendition, and he reacted, so he was under no Spaceoline. Now will you let me go?”
He let go and I almost fell over backward.
I was set to take off. My feet were pawing the ground without any instruction from me—but then I turned back.
“Hey, Rog,” I said, “can you sign me a chit for a thousand credits without its going on the record—for services rendered to the service?”
That’s when I realized he was half insane with relief and very temporary gratitude, because he said, “Sure, Max, sure. Ten thousand credits if you want.”
“I want,” Isaid, grabbing him for a change. “I want. I want.”
He filled out an official Service chit for ten thousand credits; good as cash anywhere in half the Galaxy. He was actually grinning as he gave it to me and you can bet I was grinning as I took it.
How he intended accounting for it was his affair; the point was that I wouldn’t have to account for it to Hilda.
I stood in the booth, one last time, signaling Flora. I didn’t dare let matters go till I reached her place. The additional half hour might just give her time to get someone else, if she hadn’t already.
Make her answer. Make her answer. Make her—
She answered, but she was in formal clothes. She was going out and I had obviously caught her by two minutes.
“I am going out,” she announced. “Some men can be decent. And I do not wish to see you in the henceforward. I do not wish ever to find my eyes upon you. You will do me a great favor, Mister Whoeveryouare, if you unhand my signal combination and never pollute it with—”
I wasn’t saying anything. I was just standing there holding my breath and also holding the chit up where she could see it. Just standing there. Just holding.