"That's the black barstard that beat me up!" the miner yelled. "Him an' his friend there."
Colt moved to stand beside Kinsman. And suddenly Leonov was on his other side.
The miners halted a few feet in front of them. They wanted to fight. They were spoiling for blood. Kinsman stood rooted there, his mind blazing with the memory of the moment when he had felt bloodlust. He was sweating again, panting with exertion, reaching for the cosmonaut's fragile airhose . . .
Not again, he told himself, trying to control his trembling so that the others could not see it. Not again!
"What is this?" Leonov demanded. "Why are we ac- costed by a mob?"
"Back off, Russkie," said one of the miners. "This is none of your fight."
"These are my friends," Leonov said. "What concerns them concerns me."
"He beat me up," said the miner Colt had hit.
"An' him." His companion pointed at Kinsman. "He helped th' black bugger."
"Beat you up?" Leonov asked mildly. "Where are your scars? Where is the blood? I see no bruises. Are you certain you did not merely faint?"
The miner turned red as the men around him grinned.
"I was there with 'im," the other miner said. "They jumped Bert and pummeled 'im till he dropped. In the midsection."
"While you watched?" Leonov asked.
"We ain't tykin' that from no foreigners'"
The mob surged forward.
"Now that's enough!"
Frederick Durban stepped between Kinsman and Leonov to face the angry miners. "We are the guests of the Australian government," he said firmly, "and if any harm comes to us you'll all go to jail."
"What about 'im?" one of the miners yelled. "They can't go beatin' up our blokes and get awhy with it!"
"Nobody beat anybody up," Colt shouted back. "The guy called me a nigger and I punched him in the gut. He folded like a pretzel. One punch." 166
"That's a bloody lie! The other one held me and the black barstard kicked me, too!"
