'Nobody saw the killing,' said a second man beside Fara, 'but he's gone, hasn't been seen for three hours. The mayor got the weapon shop on the telestat, but they claim they don't know anything. They've done away with him, that's what, and now they're pretending innocence. Well, they won't get out of it as easily as that. Mayor's gone to phone the soldiers at Ferd to bring up some big guns and—'
Something of the intense excitement that was in the crowd surged through Fara, the feeling of big things brewing. It was the most delicious sensation that had ever tingled along his nerves, and it was all mixed with a strange pride that he had been so right about this, that he at least had never doubted that here was evil.
He did not recognize the emotion as the full-flowering joy that comes to a member of a mob. But his voice shook, as he said:
'Guns? Yes, that will be the answer, and the soldiers will have to come, of course.'
Fara nodded to himself in the immensity of his certainty that the Imperial soldiers would now have no excuse for not acting. He started to say something dark about what the empress would do if she found out that a man had lost his life because the soldiers had shirked their duty, but the words were drowned in a shout:
'Here conies the mayor! Hey, Mr. Mayor, when are the atomic cannons due?'
There was more of the same general meaning, as the mayor's sleek, all-purpose car landed lightly. Some of the questions must have reached his honor, for he stood up in the open two-seater, and held up his hand for silence.
To Fara's astonishment, the plump-faced man looked at him with accusing eyes.
The thing seemed so impossible that, quite instinctively, Fara looked behind him. But he was almost alone; everybody else had crowded forward.
Fara shook his head, puzzled by that glare; and then, astoundingly, Mayor Dale pointed a finger at him, and said in a voice that trembled:
'There's the man who's responsible for the trouble that's come upon us. Stand forward, Fara Clark, and show yourself. You've cost this town seven hundred credits that we could ill afford to spend.'
Fara couldn't have moved or spoken to save his life. He just stood there in a maze of dumb bewilderment. Before he could even think, the mayor went on, and there was quivering self-pity in his tone:
'We've all known that it wasn't wise to interfere with these weapon shops. So long as the Imperial government leaves them alone, what right have we to set up guards, or act against them? That's what I've thought from the beginning, but this man ... this ...
this Fara Clark kept after all of us, forcing us to move against our wills, and so now we've got a seven- hundred-credit bill to meet and—'
He broke off with: 'I might as well make it brief. When I called the garrison, the commander just laughed and said that Jor would turn up. And I had barely disconnected when there was a money call from Jor. He's on Mars.'
He waited for the shouts of amazement to die down. 'It'll take three weeks for him to come back by ship, and we've got to pay for it, and Fara Clark is responsible.
He—'
The shock was over. Fara stood cold, his mind hard. He said finally, scathingly:
'So you're giving up, and trying to blame me all in one breath. I say you're all fools.'
As he turned away, he heard Mayor Dale saying something about the situation not being completely lost, as he had learned that the weapon shop had been set up in Glay because the village was equidistant from four cities, and that it was the city business the shop was after. This would mean tourists, and accessory trade for the village stores and—
Fara heard no more. Head high, he walked back toward his shop. There were one or two catcalls from the mob, but he ignored them.
He had no sense of approaching disaster, simply a gathering fury against the weapon shop, which had brought him to this miserable status among his neighbors.
The worst of it, as the days passed, was the realization that the people of the weapon shop had no personal interest in him. They were remote, superior, undefeatable. That unconquerableness was a dim, suppressed awareness inside Fara.
When he thought of it, he felt a vague fear at the way they had transferred Jor to Mars in a period of less than three hours, when all the world knew that the trip by fastest spaceship required nearly three weeks.
Fara did not go to the express station to see Jor arrive home. He had heard that the council had decided to charge Jor with half of the expense of the trip, on the threat of losing his job if he made a fuss.
On the second night after Jor's return, Fara slipped down to the constable's house, and handed the officer one hundred seventy-five credits. It wasn't that he was responsible, he told Jor, but—
The man was only too eager to grant the disclaimer, provided the money went with it. Fara returned home with a clearer conscience.
It was on the third day after that that the door of his shop banged open and a man came in. Fara frowned as he saw who it was: Castler, a village hanger-on. The man was grinning:
'Thought you might be interested, Fara. Somebody came out of the weapon shop today.'
Fara strained deliberately at the connecting bolt of a hard plate of the atomic motor he was fixing. He waited with a gathering annoyance that the man did not volunteer further information. Asking questions would be a form of recognition of the worthless fellow. A developing curiosity made him say finally, grudgingly:
'I suppose the constable promptly picked him up.'
He supposed nothing of the kind, but it was an opening.
'It wasn't a man. It was a girl.'
Fara knitted his brows. He didn't like the idea of making trouble for women.
But—the cunning devils! Using a girl, just as they had used an old man as a clerk. It was a trick that deserved to fail, the girl probably a tough one who needed rough treatment. Fara said harshly:
'Well, what's happened?'
'She's still out, bold as you please. Pretty thing, too.'
The bolt off, Fara took the hard plate over to the polisher, and began patiently the long, careful task of smoothing away the crystals that heat had seared on the once shining metal. The soft throb of the polisher made the background to his next words:
'Has anything been done?'
'Nope. The constable's been told, but he says he doesn't fancy being away from his family for another three weeks, and paying the cost into the bargain.'
Fara contemplated that darkly for a minute, as the polisher throbbed on. His voice shook with suppressed fury, when he said finally:
'So they're letting them get away with it. It's all been as clever as hell. Can't they see that they musn't give an inch before these ... these transgressors. It's like giving countenance to sin.'
From the corner of his eye, he noticed that there was a curious grin on the face of the other. It struck Fara suddenly that the man was enjoying his anger. And there was something else in that grin; something —a secret knowledge.
Fara pulled the engine plate away from the polisher. He faced the ne'er-do-well, scathed at him:
'Naturally, that sin part wouldn't worry you much.'
'Oh,' said the man nonchalantly, 'the hard knocks of life make people tolerant.
For instance, after you know the girl better, you yourself will probably come to realize that there's good in all of us.'
It was not so much the words, as the curious I'vegot-secret- information tone that made Fara snap:
'What do you mean—if I get to know the girl better! I won't even speak to the brazen creature.'
'One can't always choose,' the other said with enormous casualness. 'Suppose he brings her home.'
'Suppose who brings who home?' Fara spoke irritably. 'Castler, you—'
He stopped; a dead weight of dismay plumped into his stomach; his whole being sagged. 'You mean—' he said.
'I mean,' replied Castler with a triumphant leer, 'that the boys aren't letting a beauty like her be lonesome. And, naturally, your son was the first to speak to her.'
