“Our patience,” said Harrison. He stood up. “We’ll pick on Seth. If he won’t play, we’ll have a try at someone else. And if nobody will play, we’ll skin out fast before we starve to death.”
“Which appears to be exactly what they want us to do,” Gleed pointed out. He scowled to himself. “They’ll get their way over my dead body.”
“That’s how,” agreed Harrison. “Over your dead body.”
Matt came up with a cloth over one arm. “I’m serving no Antigands.”
“You served me last time,” Harrison told him.
“That’s as maybe. I didn’t know you were off that ship. But I know now!” He flicked the doth across one corner of the table. “No Antigands served by me.”
“Is there any other place where we might get a meal?”
“Not unless somebody will let you plant an ob on them. They won’t do that if they’re wise to you, but there’s a chance they might make the same mistake I did.” Another flick across the corner. “I don’t make them twice.”
“You’re making another right now,” said Gleed, his voice tough and authoritative. He nudged Harrison. “Watch this!” His hand came out of a side pocket holding a tiny blaster. Pointing it at Matt’s middle, he continued, “Ordinarily, I could get into trouble for this, if those on the ship were in the mood to make trouble. But they aren’t. They’re soured up on you two-legged mules.” He motioned the weapon. “Get walking and bring us two full plates.”
“I won’t,” said Matt, firming his jaw and ignoring the gun.
Gleed thumbed the safety catch which moved with an audible click. “It’s touchy now. It’d go off at a sneeze. Start moving.”
“I won’t,” insisted Matt.
Gleed disgustedly shoved the weapon back into his pocket. “I was only kidding you. It isn’t energized.”
“Wouldn’t have made the slightest difference if it had been,” Matt assured. “I serve no Antigands, and that’s that!”
“Suppose I’d gone haywire and blown you in half?”
“How could I have served you then?” he inquired. “A dead person is of no use to anyone. Time you Antigands learned a little logic.”
With that parting shot he went away.
“He’s got something there,” observed Harrison, patently depressed. “What can you do with a waxie one? Nothing whatever! You’d have put him clean out of your own power.”
“Don’t know so much. A couple of stiffs lying around might sharpen the others. They’d get really eager.”
“You’re thinking of them in Terran terms,” Harrison said. “It’s a mistake. They’re not Terrans, no matter where they came from originally. They’re Gands.” He mused a moment. “I’ve no notion of just what Gands are supposed to be but I reckon they’re some kind of fanatics. Terra exported one-track-minders by the millions around the time of the Great Explosion. Look at that crazy crowd they’ve got on Hygeia.”
“I was there once and I tried hard not to look,” confessed Gleed, reminiscently. “Then I couldn’t stop looking. Not so much as a fig leaf between the lot. They insisted that we were obscene because we wore clothes. So eventually we had to take them off. Know what I was wearing at the time we left?”
“A dignified poise,” Harrison suggested.
“That and an identity disk, cupro-silver, official issue, spacemen, for the use of,” deed informed. “Plus three wipes of grease-paint on my left arm to show I was a sergeant. I looked every inch a sergeant—like heck I did!”
“I know. I had a week in that place.”
“We’d a rear admiral on board,” Gleed went on. “As a fine physical specimen he resembled a pair of badly worn suspenders. He couldn’t overawe anyone while in his birthday suit. Those Hygeians cited his deflation as proof that they’d got real democracy, as distinct from our fake version.” He clucked his tongue. “I’m not so sure they’re wrong.”
“The creation of the Empire has created a queer proposition,” Harrison meditated. “Namely, that Terra is always right while sixteen hundred and forty-two planets are invariably wrong.”
“You’re getting kind of seditious, aren’t you?”
Harrison said nothing, Gleed glanced at him, found his attention elsewhere, followed his gaze to a brunette who had just entered.
“Nice,” approved Gleed. “Not too young, not too old. Not too fat, not too thin. Just right.”
“I know her.” Harrison waved to attract her attention.
She tripped lightly across the room, sat at their table. Harrison made the introduction.
“Friend of mine. Sergeant Gleed.”
“Arthur,” corrected Gleed, eying her.
“Mine’s Elissa,” she told him. “What’s a sergeant supposed to be?”
“A sort of over-above underthing,” Gleed informed. “I pass along the telling to the guys who do the doing.”
Her eyes widened. “Do you mean that people really allow themselves to be told?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“It sounds crazy to me.” Her gaze shifted to Harrison. “I’ll be ignorant of your name forever, I suppose?”
He hastened to repair the omission, adding, “But I don’t like James. I prefer Jim.”
“Then we’ll let it be Jim.” She examined the place, looking over the counter, the other tables. “Has Matt been to you two?”
