“What’d’ya mean?” I scoffed. “Nobody gets killed in an exhibition match.” I flexed my muscles. “Besides, I can take care of myself up against any earth-side gladiator after—”
He glowered at me. “Anybody who killed the champ, by accident or otherwise, in an exhibition match, would have a nice reputation for himself. You might go into the arena with the idea of not killing your opponent, but would he?”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “I can take care of myself—”
“Look,” he shrilled, “let’s go back over a little recent arena history. Less than a year ago you were a second-rater fighting at the state fairs. You went to Mars to watch the Interplanetary Meet which is held once every decade to decide interplanetary affairs. The ship carrying Terra’s gladiators was lost in space and you were tossed in as an emergency replacement.”
“Sure,” I said. “The first time a Terran ever won an Interplanetary Meet.”
He whistled disgustedly, “The first time a Terran ever lasted more than five minutes.”
“Well?” I said proudly.
He pointed a few fingers at me. “By a fluke! By using a lot of ideas you got from that quotation spouting girl friend of yours, you won by a fluke! Among other things, you played possum, as you called it, under a heap of corpses until all the others were either killed or wounded and then got up and finished them off. The fans throughout the system are still screaming about that.”
“Well, I’m still champ,” I said truculently. “I licked them once, and. …”
“Aw, shut up,” he shrilled. He whirled about and started for the door. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I shrugged and rang for my breakfast. The twinge of conscience I felt inside, I manfully suppressed. I suppose that I really knew he was right, but I’d been getting a good deal of ego-boo the past months and it was hard—almost impossible, in fact—not to listen to it.
By noon the dealcoholizer had completed its work and I felt more or less normal. I suppose I should have been worrying about the bout with the Centaurian, but I wasn’t. Not particularly. I was worrying about Suzi.
Suzi worked for a chain of publications as a female sports reporter covering the gladiator meets from the woman’s angle. What she wanted to do was write books about primitive culture, and for years that had been the barrier between us. She couldn’t stand the fact that I wasn’t particularly interested in the ancients and spent half the time we had together in trying to fill me with the lore she thought the big interest in life. She’d even given me my professional name, explaining that the original Jak Dempsi was one of the outstanding gladiators in ancient times.
At any rate, I knew where she usually had her lunch and made my way there, hoping to be able to patch things up. She’d promised to marry me, after I’d won the championship for Earth, and if there was anything I could do about it, I was going to see her hold to the engagement.
The Interplanetary Viziscreen Service, the I.V.S., occupies a building in Neuve Los Angeles nearly as large as Spacenter. Almost all of the I.V.S. people eat in the Auto Café, and it was there I made my way.
Soft music was playing as I entered and looked over the three acre expanse of tables. Of course, I didn’t have to check them all—Suzi always sat in the sport section with perhaps a few hundred others.
The soft pleasant dining music cut off abruptly and the autorch started blaring out an earsplitting tune that brought back enough of my headache to make me grimace.
Several thousand heads came up and looked toward the entrance where I stood. A movement started somewhere or other and before you knew it, everybody in the place was standing on his feet and slapping his hands like crazy.
Everybody but two.
I could spot them now. Suzi and Alger Wilde were sitting at a table in the sport section. I made my way toward them.
Alger Wilde, I might as well explain here, is a makron from the word glorm, if you’ll pardon my language. He’s been trying, in his smirking way, to get in with Suzi for almost as many years as I have, and until I won the championship was doing at least as well as I. His strong point was the fact that he was even further around the corner in regard to the ancients than was Suzi. They could sit and talk for hours about the primitive comic books and other cultural matters that the average person had no interest in whatsoever.
I still didn’t know what all the clapping was about, and I still didn’t like the raucous music, but I ignored it all and made my way toward their table, rehearsing to myself what I was going to say to Suzi.
When I got nearer, the two of them, self-consciously, also came to their feet and both made with feeble applause to the extent of clapping their hands together once or twice.
I said, “What goes on here?”
We all sat down—with me congratulating myself that Suzi didn’t object—and Suzi, her eyes shining, gushed, “Oh Jak, isn’t it wonderful?”
I said, “I guess so. What?” I looked around the room in irritation. “What’s all the noise about? I can hardly hear ourselves talk.”
Alger Wilde said stiffly, “It’s the new anthem, ‘The Solar System Forever.’ Very patriotic. It was just completed by a staff of more than three hundred of the System’s outstanding musicians. I understand that it’s being played on every viziscreen on nine planets and twenty satellites. On order of the governments of all Solar System League members, the musicians rushed it through.”
“It sounds like it,” I growled. At least everybody had sat down again and were eating their lunch.
The stars were still in Suzi’s eyes. She said softly, “It’s dedicated to you, Jak.”
“Huh?”
Alger Wilde bit
