He shook his head dolefully. “This here Ring ain’t ever going to be the same again. If we don’t watch out, we’ll find ourselves being polite to one another.”
“That would be awful,” agreed Meek.
“Wouldn’t it, though,” declared Gus.
Meek squinted his eyes and pounced on the floor, scrabbling on hands and knees after a scurrying thing that twinkled in the lamplight.
“Got him,” yelped Meek, scooping the shining mote up in his hand.
Gus inched the lid of the wooden box open. Meek rose and popped the bug inside.
“That makes twenty-eight of them,” said Meek.
“I told you,” Gus accused him, “that we hadn’t got them all. You better take another good look at your suit. The danged things burrow right into solid metal and pull the hole in after them, seems like. Sneakiest cusses in the whole dang system. Just like chiggers back on Earth.”
“Chiggers,” Meek told him, “burrow into a person to lay eggs.”
“Maybe these things do, too,” Gus contended.
The radio on the mantel blared a warning signal, automatically tuning in on one of the regular newscasts from Titan City out on Saturn’s biggest moon.
The syrupy, chamber of commerce voice of the announcer was shaky with excitement and pride.
“Next week,” he said, “the annual Martian-Earth football game will be played at Greater New York on Earth. But in the Earth’s newspapers tonight another story has pushed even that famous classic of the sporting world down into secondary place.”
He paused and took a deep breath and his voice practically yodeled with delight.
“The sporting event, ladies and gentlemen, that is being talked up and down the streets of Earth tonight, is one that will be played here in our own Saturnian system. A space polo game. To be played by two unknown, pickup, amateur teams down in the Inner Ring. Most of the men have never played polo before. Few if any of them have even seen a game. There may have been some of them who didn’t, at first, know what it was.
“But they’re going to play it. The men who ride those bucking rocks that make up the Inner Ring will go out into space in their rickety ships and fight it out. And ladies and gentlemen, when I say fight it out, I really mean fight it out. For the game, it seems, will be a sort of tournament, the final battle in a feud that has been going on in the Ring for years. No one knows what started the feud. It has gotten so it really doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that when men from sector Twenty-three meet those from sector Thirty-seven, the feud is taken up again. But that is at an end now. In a few days the feud will be played out to its bitter end when the ships from the Inner Ring go out into space to play that most dangerous of all sports, space polo. For the outcome of that game will decide, forever, the supremacy of one of the two sectors.”
Meek rose from his chair, opened his mouth as if to speak, but sank back again when Gus hissed at him and held a finger to his lips for silence.
“The teams are now in training,” went on the newscaster, the happy lilt in his voice still undimmed, “and it is understood that sector Twenty-three has the advantage, at the start at least, of having a polo expert as its coach. Just who this expert is no one can say. Several names have been mentioned, but. …”
“No, no,” yelped Meek, struggling to his feet, but Gus shushed him, poking a finger toward him and grinning like a bearded imp.
“… Bets are mounting high throughout the entire Saturnian system,” the announcer was saying, “but since little is known about the teams, the odds still are even. It is likely, however, that odds will be demanded on the sector of Thirty-seven team on the basis of the story about the expert coach.
“The very audacity of such a game has attracted solar-wide attention and special fleets of ships will leave both Earth and Mars within the next few days to bring spectators to the game. Newsmen from the inner worlds, among them some of the system’s most famous sports writers, are already on their way.
“Originally intended to be no more than a recreation project under the supervision of the department of health and welfare, the game has suddenly become a solar attraction. The Daily Rocket back on Earth is offering a gigantic loving cup for the winning team, while the Morning Spaceways has provided another loving cup, only slightly smaller, to be presented the player adjudged the most valuable to his team. We may have more to tell you about the game before the newscast is over, but in the meantime we shall go on to other news of Solar int. …”
Meek leaped up. “He meant me,” he whooped. “That was me he meant when he was talking about a famous coach!”
“Sure,” said Gus. “He couldn’t have meant anyone else but you.”
“But I’m not a famous coach,” protested Meek. “I’m not even a coach at all. I never saw but one space polo game in all my life. I hardly know how it’s played. I just know you go up there in space and bat a ball around. I’m going to. …”
“You ain’t going to do a blessed thing,” said Gus. “You ain’t skipping out on us. You’re staying right here and give us all the fine pointers of the game. Maybe you ain’t as hot as the newscaster made out, but you’re a dang sight better than anyone else around here.
