I handed the Martie a kopek and put the yellow envelope in my pocket, as though I was used to getting spacegrams.
I said to Suzi, “Let’s hit the chow line.” I don’t usually talk that fancy, but I was trying to impress her with my knowledge of antique phrases. Both Suzi and Alger Wilde are students of ancient times and love to lard their conversation with such stuff.
Suzi said, “Sure, Jak. Come on Alger,” which wasn’t what I’d meant at all. And then she said, “Aren’t you going to open that spacegram, Jak? It might be important.”
“Probably is,” I said carelessly. “But it can wait, whatever it is.”
And it did. I opened it after we’d ordered at the spaceport restaurant. I should have waited until after I’d eaten, but I couldn’t know that until I read:
Spacer transporting gladiator Earth–Mars for Interplanetary Games lost. You have been appointed emergency replacement representing Earth. Good luck.
I gulped. If you don’t know all about the Interplanetary Meet which is held every decade, then maybe you don’t know why I gulped. If you do, you do. It’s tough enough being a gladiator on Terra but at least you have a chance of coming out alive; you’ve even got a chance of winning. But at the Interplanetary Meet! Who ever heard of a Terran coming out in one piece? Not to speak of winning.
Sure, I’m a gladiator, but I’ve always been strictly a second rater; in fact, some of the sports writers call me a third rater. Anyway, I’ve always worked in the smaller meets where the gladiators, even when they lose, usually get off with their lives. In the small town stuff, they don’t kill expensive gladiators, if they can help it.
My head was doing double flips trying to figure out some way of making myself scarce, when Suzi said, “What is it, Jak?”
Like a fool, I handed the message to her and she and Alger read it together.
Suzi’s eyes widened and she started to say something, worriedly, but Alger stuck out his hand and said, “Congratulations, Jak. I knew you had great things in you. Now they’ll be coming out. … Er. … That is, just think, one of the three gladiators representing Terra. What an honor!”
I was sunk.
The Interplanetary Meet was just three days off and I had three days to live.
I wouldn’t have been on Mars in the first place if it hadn’t been for an argument I had with Suzi back on Terra just before she was scheduled to blast off for Mars to cover the Interplanetary Games. Suzi is a sports reporter, see. She covers the meets from the woman’s angle. What she really wanted to do was write books about primitive culture; and what I wanted her to do was spend the rest of her life being my wife. Neither of us seemed to have much of a chance of making good.
As usual, Suzi was giving me kert. If you’ll pardon my language. “I don’t know why I bother with you, Jak,” she said scowling. “You’ve had the book a week and don’t know a thing about it. You’re nothing but a drip, a square.”
“Listen,” I said resentfully. “Don’t use those mythological terms on me. Last time it took me all day to look them up. Besides, I try don’t I? My manager’s going crazy because I’ve been spending so much time reading instead of training for my next meet.”
You get the idea. The girl was just gone on the ancients. She wouldn’t have tolerated me for an hour if I hadn’t been willing to let her cram her nonsense into me at every opportunity.
“How long do you expect to be on Mars?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Perhaps three months, Terra time.”
“Three months!”
She patted my hand. “Don’t worry about me, Jak. I’m taking along an extensive microfilm library dealing with the literature and drama of Twentieth Century North America. As you undoubtedly know, it reached its height in the comic books and cartoon movies of the time. Besides,” she went on, “Alger Wilde will be there, covering the meet from the society angle. He’ll be good company. Alger is quite an authority on prehistoric literature.”
“And also on today’s women,” I yelped. “You didn’t tell me that makron was going to be on Mars with you.”
She held her hands over her ears and said indignantly, “Please, Jak, save your vulgarities for the games.”
“I’m going with you,” I grated. “I don’t trust that guy with my woman.”
She flared up at that. “Your woman! Let me tell you, Jak Demsi, when you begin to display the cultural achievements of Alger Wilde, you may begin, just begin, mind you, to think of me as your woman, as you so crudely put it. Meanwhile, I have no desire to link myself with an ignoramus. Besides, I’m beginning to believe that you have no interest in cultural pursuits. You’ve merely deceived me these past months with pretended. …”
“Aw, Suzi,” I began.
I had trouble enough raising credits for my fare, but more still getting last minute reservations on the crowded excursion liner to Mars. It took some string pulling on my manager’s part to get me the tickets. Nobody who can raise the credits would dream of missing the Interplanetary Meet, and every spacer to Mars was packed.
Suzi was surprised when I stepped up to her table in the spacer’s lounge. At least, her eyebrows raised. The little minx was as pretty as a Venusian rose-orchid. She was sitting with Alger Wilde, a makron from the word glorm.
“Hi,” I said, using a prehistoric formal salutation in hopes of pleasing her with my knowledge of olden times.
“By Jove,” Alger Wilde exclaimed. “If it isn’t Jak Demsi.” He added, smirking, “Pardon the expression. Jove was an ancient deity. I sometimes slip and use such terms.”
Did he
