Chapter 1

I’d known for ten minutes that something terrible was going to happen. It was in the cards, building to a zero-count climax.

The spaceport bar was filled with a fresh, washed-clean smell, as if all the winds of space had been blowing through it. There was an autumn tang in the air as well, because it was open at both ends, and out beyond was New Chicago, with its parks and tall buildings, and the big inland sea that was Lake Michigan.

It was all right ... if you just let your mind dwell on what was outside. Men and women with their shoulders held straight and a new lift to the way they felt and thought, because Earth wasn’t a closed-circuit any more. Kids in the parks pretending they were spacemen, bundled up in insulated jackets, having the time of their lives. A blue jay perched on a tree, the leaves turning red and yellow around it. A nurse in a starched white uniform pushing a perambulator, her red-gold hair whipped by the wind, a dreamy look in her eyes.

Nothing could spoil any part of that. It was there to stay and I breathed in deeply a couple of times, refusing to remember that in the turbulent, round-the-clock world of the spaceports, Death was an inveterate barhopper.

Then I did remember, because I had to. You can’t bury your head in the sand to shut out ugliness for long, unless you’re ostrich-minded and are willing to let your integrity go down the drain.

I didn’t know what time it was and I didn’t much care. I only knew that Death had come in late in the afternoon, and was hovering in stony silence at the far end of the bar.

He was there, all right, even if he had the same refractive index as the air around him and you could see right through him. The sixth-sense kind of awareness that everyone experiences at times--call it a premonition, if you wish--had started an alarm bell ringing in my mind.

It was still ringing when I raised my eyes, and knew for sure that all the furies that ever were had picked that particular time and place to hold open house.

I saw it begin to happen.

It began so suddenly it had the impact of a big, hard-knuckled fist crashing down on the spaceport bar, startling everyone, jolting even the solitary drinkers out of their private nightmares.

Actually the violence hadn’t quite reached that stage. But it was a safe bet that it would in another ten or twelve seconds. And when it did there was no chain or big double lock on Earth that could keep it from terminating in bloodshed.

The tipoff was the way it started, as if a fuse had been lit that would blow the place apart. Just two voices for an instant, raised in anger, one ringing out like a pistol shot. But I knew that something was dangerously wrong the instant I caught sight of the two men who were doing the arguing.

The one whose voice had made every glass on the long bar vibrate like a tuning fork was a blond giant, six-foot-four at least and built massive around the shoulders. His shirt was open at the throat and his chest was sweat-sheened and he had the kind of outsized ruggedness that made you feel it would have taken a heavy rock-crushing machine a full half hour to flatten him out.

The other was of average height and only looked small by contrast. He was more than holding his own, however, standing up to the Viking character defiantly. His weather-beaten face was as tight as a drum, and his hair was standing straight up, as though a charge of high-voltage electricity had passed right through him.

He just happened to have unusually bristly hair, I guess. But it gave him a very weird look indeed.

I don’t know why someone picked that critical moment to shout a warning, because everyone could see it was the kind of argument that couldn’t be stopped by anything short of strong-armed intervention. Advice at that point could be just as dangerous as pouring kerosene on the fuse, to make it burn faster.

But someone did yell out, at the top of his lungs. “Pipe down, you two! What do you think this is, a debating society?”

It could have turned into that, all right, the deadliest kind of debating society, with the stoned contingent taking sides for no sane reason. It could have started off as a free-for-all and ended with five or six of the heaviest drinkers lying prone, with bashed-in skulls.

The barkeep made a makeshift megaphone of his two hands and added to the confusion by shouting: “Get back in line or I’ll have you run right out of here. I’ll show you just how tough I can get. Every time something like this happens I get blamed for it. I’m goddam sick of being in the middle.”

“That’s telling them, John! Need any help?”

“No, stay where you are. I can handle it.”

I didn’t think he could, not even if he was split down the middle into two men twice his size. I didn’t think anyone could, because by this time I’d had a chance to take a long, steady, camera-eye look at the expression on the Viking character’s face.

I’d seen that expression before and I knew what it meant. The Viking character was having a virulent sour grapes reaction to something Average Size had said. It had really taken hold, like a smallpox vaccination that’s much too strong, and his inner torment had become just agonizing enough to send him into a towering rage.

Average Size had probably been boasting, telling everyone how lucky he was to be on the passenger list of the next Mars-bound rocket. And in a crowded spaceport bar, where Martian Colonization Board clearances are at a terrific premium, you don’t indulge in that kind of talk. Not unless you have a suicide complex and are dead set on leaving the earth without traveling out into space at all.

Now things were coming to a head so fast there was no time to cheat Death of his cue. He was starting to come right out into the open, scythe swinging, punctual to the dot. I was sure of it the instant I saw the gun gleaming in the Viking character’s hand and the smaller man recoiling from him, his eyes fastened on the weapon in stark terror.

Oh, you fool! I thought. Why did you provoke him? You should have expected this, you should have known. What good is a Mars clearance if you end up with a bullet in your spine?

For some strange reason the Viking character seemed in no hurry to blast. He seemed to be savoring the look of terror in Average Size’s eyes, letting his fury diminish by just a little, as if by allowing a tenth of it to escape through a steam-spigot safety valve he could make more sure of his aim. It made me wonder if I couldn’t still get to them in time.

The instant I realized there was still a chance I knew I’d have to try. I was in good physical trim and no man is an island when the sands are running out. I didn’t want to die, but neither did Average Size and there are obligations you can’t sidestep if you want to go on living with yourself.

I moved out from where I was standing and headed straight for the Viking character, keeping parallel with the long bar. I can’t recall ever having moved more rapidly, and I was well past the barkeep--he was blinking and standing motionless, as white as a sheet now--when the Viking character’s voice rang out for the second time.

“You think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you? Sure you do. Why deny it? Who are you, who is anybody, to come in here and strut and put on airs? I’m going to let you have it, right now!”

The blast came then, sudden, deafening. They were standing so close to each other I thought for a minute the gun had misfired, for Average Size didn’t stiffen or sag or change his position in any way and his face was hidden by smoke from the blast.

I should have known better, for it was a big gun with a heavy charge, and when a man is half blown apart his body can become galvanized for an instant, just as if he hasn’t been hit at all. Sometimes he’ll be lifted up and hurled back twenty feet and sometimes he’ll just stand rigid, with the life going out of him in a rush, an instant before his knees give way and there’s a terrible, welling redness to make you realize how mistaken you were about the shot going wild.

The smoke thinned out fast enough, eddying away from him in little spirals. But one quick look at him sinking down, passing into eternity with his head lolling, was all I had time for. Pandemonium was breaking loose all around me, and my only thought was to make a mad dog killer pay for what he had done before someone got between us.