his way over he’d had to answer to a few score waves of passers-by who recognized him. All right, it was part of the game and to be truthful it gave him a bit of ego-boo.
He made his way to his locker and opened it. He had been away only a couple of weeks or so, but already the contents looked foreign to him, as though he had never seen them before.
He brought out the several personal things that he wanted to retain, but left most of the locker’s contents where they were. Anybody who wanted them could scrounge them. Probably quite a few would want to, as souvenirs of such a celebrity.
He undressed, threw the colonel’s uniform aside, and brought forth the civilian suit he customarily kept in the locker. If he had anything to say about it, that was the last time he’d ever be seen in a uniform. The civilian suit was a bit on the proletarian side, he recognized now, but he could remedy that as soon as he got to an order box. From now on, Don Mathers was yearly going to make the Ten Best Dressed Men of the Solar System list.
Then, even as he redressed, something either Demming or Rostoff said came back to him. They were going to sponsor a “simplicity look” with some far-out plan in mind to lower the standard of living, and with it wage and salary standards. Well, he could think about that later.
Among the things in his locker had been his wrist chronometer, which he had never taken with him into space. For one thing, there was a chronometer in the cockpit of his V-102, and secondly he didn’t want to run the risk of batting it against something while in free fall.
He took it up now and sneered slightly as he compared it to the one that had been given him in Geneva.
There was an enlisted man nearby, idly supervising a half a dozen automatic floor waxers. Don called him over and proffered the chronometer.
“Could you use this, spaceman? I don’t need it any more.”
The other goggled. “Your own personal wrist chronometer?”
Don said impatiently, “Yes, of course. I have a new one. Take it if you want it.”
The other all but grabbed in his anxiousness. He blurted, “Almighty Ultimate! Imagine! I’ll be able to show it to my grandkids and tell them it was the chronometer of Colonel Donal Mathers and he gave it to me personally!”
Don remembered that the German girl had said something similar. She was going to be able to tell her grandchildren that she was the first woman Don had laid after winning his fight over the Kraden, while she was on her honeymoon.
He’d had a small bag in his locker. He put his things into it and left.
He summoned another hovercart and dialed the entrance of the base, but the screen of the small vehicle said, the computer voice metallic, “This transportation is restricted to space base personnel.”
Don said laconically, “I am Colonel Donal Mathers.”
“Yes, sir. Apologies.” The hovercart took off.
At the entry of the base, the guard sprang to attention, but Don ignored them. So far as he was concerned, if he never gave or received a salute again, it would still be too soon.
He dismissed the cart and summoned a hovercab and, after a moment’s hesitation, dialed Harry Amanroder’s Nuevo Mexico Bar. It wasn’t, of course, very far. He could have walked it. However, he’d just as well not be spotted. He’d wind up leading a host into the bar and spend his time there shaking hands and writing autographs.
At least, he was less conspicuous in civvies. He brought out his Universal Credit Card when they arrived at the bar and put it in the slot. The cab’s screen voice said, “Company’s orders. The credit card of Colonel Mathers is not to be recognized.”
He assumed that meant he wasn’t expected to pay. He got out of the cab and hustled into the bar, wanting to get off the street before being spotted.
At this time of the morning, there was only one customer present, a Space Service lieutenant sitting on a stool at the bar. Harry Amanroder, of course, presided, and was idly wiping the space before him with a soiled bar rag. His pudding face brake when he saw who the newcomer was.
“Lieutenant… I mean, Colonel Mathers! I… I never expected to see you ever come in this dump again!”
Don took a stool, two down from the lieutenant, and said, smiling, “This is my favorite bar, Harry. Besides, I have a tab here that’s been accumulating for months. Hell, for all I know, for years.”
Harry stood before him, tears in his eyes. “No, sir. That tab’s been picked up.”
Don scowled at him. “By whom?”
“Byrne.”
Don shook his head. “No, sir, Harry. A hundred times you’ve put my guzzle on the cuff when I was broke. I’ve got more credits in my account than I’ve ever had before, and I’m having no luck at all spending them. But I’m going to pay your bill. I’ll consider it a special favor, if you’ll let me.”
Harry said, his voice all but breaking, “All right, sir. But from then on in, the same thing applies in this bar as anywhere else in the Solar System. A holder of the Galactic Medal of Honor doesn’t pay no tab.”
“All right,” Don said, in acceptance of the inevitable. “But let me have my accounting.” He stuck his Universal Credit Card into the payment slot before him.
Harry went and got the bill from a sheaf of bills in a confusion of fellow bills in a drawer. Don wondered how in the hell the man stayed in business when he wouldn’t turn down the credit requests of any man in space uniform.
Actually, Don was surprised at the magnitude of his own. Hadn’t he
The lieutenant down the bar from him said, in a woozy voice, “How about one with me, Don?”
It was Eric Hansen, who had been here the last time Don had dropped by. A fellow One Man Scout pilot and a member of Don’s squadron—Don’s former squadron, he amended thankfully. Eric was already obviously drenched. At this time of the morning? He was asking for it. It wouldn’t be long before he was ordered psyched, if he wanted it or not.
“Sure, Eric,” Don said.
The other slid off his stool and climbed shakily up on the one next to Don Mathers.
Harry said worriedly, “You sure you need any more, Lieutenant Hansen? Dint you tell me you were due to go on patrol today?”
“Shut up,” Eric said. “That’s why I need another one. Ill have tequila, too, though why I should drink that rotgut is a holy mystery. How’s it going, Don, you lucky son-of-a-bitch?”
Don said, a little irritated, “I didn’t ask for the damn decoration.”
“That’s not what I was talking about. I mean you’re lucky to be alive.”
“That I am,” Don admitted, going into his usual modesty routine. “But anybody else would have done the same thing.”
“Go up against a Miro Class cruiser? Like hell I would. I would have hung back out of range on his flanks as long as I could keep him in my sensors and reported to Command. In fact, that’s exactly what I did do when I spotted mine.”
Don said uncomfortably, “You didn’t have time to close in. You hardly more than glimpsed yours.”
“Thank the Almighty Ultimate I only glimpsed him,” Eric slurred. “I nearly shit myself as it was.”
Don ignored that. He took up his salt and tequila and toasted the other. “Cheers,” he said.
They went through the tequila ceremony and Eric Hansen reeled to the point Don was afraid he’d fall off the stool. Harry looked at him worriedly.
He said to Don, “Won’t they throw him into the brig?”
Don said, trying to keep bitterness from his voice, in his new role as hero, “No. They’ll throw him into space, with an initial double dose of oxygen. He’ll sober up out there. What percentage of Scouts do you think go up completely drenched?”
Harry didn’t answer that, but he looked distressed.
Eric said, “You wanta know something, Don?”
“Sure, Eric.”
“Well, you know that last time I saw you asked if I really saw that Kraden I reported that time? You told me about that friend of yours who didn’t think they were really coming back. And you know, I got around to believing that he was right. I had a touch of cafard, knock on wood…” he knocked on the bar which wasn’t wood but plastic
