Meek looked across the table straight into the eyes of Luke.
Luke said: “You better explain yourself, mister.”
Meek suddenly was flustered. “Why, maybe I acted too hastily. It really was nothing. I just noticed something about the deal. …”
Luke jerked erect, kicking his chair away with the single motion of rising. The crowd suddenly surged away, out of the line of fire. The bartender ducked behind the bar. Stiffy flung himself with a howl out of his chair, skidded along the floor.
Meek, suddenly straightening from the table, saw Luke’s hand streaking for the gun at his belt and in a split second he realized that here he faced a situation that demanded action.
He didn’t think about those days of practice in front of the mirror. He didn’t call upon a single iota of the gun-lore he had read in hundreds of books. His mind, for a bare instant, was almost a blank, but he acted as if by instinct.
His hands moved like driving pistons, snapped the twin guns from their holsters, heaved them clear of leather, grabbed them in midair.
He saw Luke’s gun muzzle swinging up, tilted down the muzzle of his own left gun, pressed the activator. There was a screeching hiss, a streak of blue that crackled in the air and the gun that Luke held in his hand was suddenly red hot.
But Meek wasn’t watching Luke. His eyes were for the crowd and even as he pressed the firing button he saw a hand pick a bottle off the bar, lift it to throw. The gun in his right hand shrieked and the bottle smashed into a million pieces, the liquor turned to steam.
Slowly Meek backed away, his tread almost catlike, his weak blue eyes like cold ice behind the thick-lensed spectacles, his hunched shoulders still hunched, his lean jaw like a steel trap.
He felt the wall at his back and stopped.
Out in the room before him no one stirred. Luke stood like a statue, gripping his right hand, badly burned by the smoking gun that lay at his feet. Luke’s face was a mask of hatred.
The rest of them simply stared. Stared at this outlander. A man who wore clothing such as the Asteroid Belt had never seen before. A man who looked as if he might be a clerk or even a retired farmer out on a holiday. A man with glasses and hunched shoulders and a skin that had never known the touch of sun in space.
And yet a man who had given Luke Blaine a head start for his gun, had beaten him to the draw, had burned the gun out of his hand.
Oliver Meek heard himself speaking, but he couldn’t believe it was himself. It was as if some other person had taken command of his tongue, was forcing it to speak. He hardly recognized his voice, for it was hard and brittle and sounded far away.
It was saying: “Does anyone else want to argue with me?”
It was immediately apparent no one did.
II
Oliver Meek tried to explain it carefully, but it was hard when people were so insistent. Hard, too, to collect his thoughts so early in the day.
He sat on the edge of the bed, white hair tousled, his night shirt wrinkled, his bony legs sticking out beneath it.
“But I’m not a gun fighter,” he declared. “I’m just on a holiday. I never shot at a man before in all my life. I can’t imagine what came over me.”
The Rev. Harold Brown brushed his argument aside.
“Don’t you see, sir,” he insisted, “what you can do for us? These hoodlums will respect you. You can clean up the town for us. Blacky Hoffman and his mob run the place. They make decent government and decent living impossible. They levy protection tribute on every businessman, they rob and cheat the miners and prospectors who come here, they maintain vice conditions. …”
“All you have to do,” said Andrew Smith brightly, “is run Blacky and his gang out of town.”
“But,” protested Meek, “you don’t understand.”
“Five years ago,” the Rev. Brown went on, disregarding him, “I would have hesitated to pit force against force. It is not my way nor the way of the church … but for five years I’ve tried to bring the gospel to this place, have worked for better conditions and each year I see them steadily getting worse.”
“This could be a swell place,” enthused Smith, “if we could get rid of the undesirables. Fine opportunities. Capital would come in. Decent people could settle. We could have some civic improvements. Maybe a Rotary club.”
Meek wiggled his toes despairingly.
“You would earn the eternal gratitude of Asteroid City,” urged the Rev. Brown. “We’ve tried it before but it never worked.”
“They always killed our man,” Smith explained, “or he got scared, or they bought him off.”
“We never had a man like you before,” the Rev. Brown declared. “Luke Blaine is a notorious gunman. No one, ever before, has been able to beat him to. …”
“There must be some mistake,” insisted Meek. “I’m just a bookkeeper. I don’t know a thing. …”
“We’d swear you in as marshal,” said Smith. “The office is vacant now. Has been for three months or more. We can’t find anyone to take it.”
“But I’m not staying long,” protested Meek. “I’m leaving pretty soon. I just want to try to get a look at the Asteroid Prowler and scout around to see if I can’t find some old rocks I read about once.”
The two visitors stared open mouthed at him. Meek brightened. “You’ve heard about those old rocks, maybe. Some funny inscriptions on them. Fellow who found them thought they had been made recently, probably just before Earthmen first came here. But no one can read them. Maybe some other race … from somewhere far away.”
“But it won’t take you long,” pleaded Smith. “We got warrants for all of them. All you got to do is serve them.”
“Look,” said Meek in desperation, “you have got me wrong. It must have been
