A Bad Town For Spacemen
BY ROBERT SCOTT
There was a reason why the
city acted the way it did ...
and we were the reason!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I stepped back out of the gutter and watched the tight clot of mendisappear around the corner. They hadn't really been menacing, just hadmade it obvious they weren't going to break up. And that I had betterget out of their way. I got. We were well trained.
The neon of the bar across the street flickered redly on my uniform.I watched the slush trickle off my boots for a while, then made up mymind and headed into the bar. It was a mistake.
New York had always been considered safe for us. Of course there weremany parts of the country that were absolutely forbidden "for your owngood" and others that were "highly dangerous" or at least "doubtful."But New York had always been a haven. The stares there had even beenadmiring sometimes, especially in the beginning.
But things had changed. I had realized that about half an hour aftertouchdown, when we were being herded through Health Check, BaggageCheck, Security Check ... you know the lot. Before, there had beenfriendly questions, genuine interest in the Mars colony, speculationsabout the second expedition to Venus, even a joke or two. This timethe examiners' only interest seemed to be in fouling us up as much aspossible. And when we finally got through the rat race, New York wasbleak.
I should have stayed with the rest, I guess, and of course a publicbar was the last place any smart spaceboy would have gone to. But I hadsome nice memories of bars, memories from the early days.
The whole room went silent, as though a tube had blown, when I shovedthrough the door. I got over to an empty table as quickly as I couldand inspected the list of drinks on the dispenser. This one had a lotof big nickel handles sticking up over the drink names and the wholejob was shaped like one of those beer kegs you used to see pictures of.What I mean is, this was an authentic bar.
Phony as hell.
From the way this sounds, you can guess the kind of mood I'd gottenin. The noise had picked up again right after I sat down and someof the drunker drunks were knocking the usual words around, in loudwhispers and with lots of glances at me. One of the pro-girls (her hairwas green and her blouse covered her breasts—another change while Iwas out) gave me a big wink and then jabbed the man next to her andsquawked with laughter.
I fed a bill into the change machine at the table and then dribbledseveral coins (prices had gone up too) into the dispenser.
I guess I must have had several, because after a while I began to feelcheerful. The noise that was coming out of the box in the cornerstarted to sound like music, and I got to tapping and rocking. Andsmiling, I guess. And that's what triggered it.
People had been coming and going, but mainly coming. And the crowd atthe bar had been getting louder, and one guy there had been gettinglouder than the rest. All of a sudden, he slammed down his glass andheaded for my table. He orbited around it for a while, staring at me,and then settled jerkily down in the chair across from me.
"Why all the hilarity, spaceboy? Feeling proud of yourself?"
He looked pretty wobbly and pretty soft and pretty old. And very angry.But I was kind of wob